A week already?! And Kittens!

Well obviously life at The Pretties has been insanely boring as of late, since no blog fodder has fallen into my ever waiting lap in the last week... jeez...

Seriously though, nothing has been going on. I've sat down to blog, and got as far as sitting down. Maybe evening signing in. I think once I even say and stared at the white 'create post' screen squeezing my brain, hoping for some kind of creative juices to drip out. No such luck. Even the LPs have been pretty boring lately, not in a 'my kids are boring' kind of way, but in 'they haven't done anything hilarious that I had to share' kind of way. Unless you want to hear all about the LPs beating each other up, screaming, making more messes than me and ten armies could keep up with, but since most of you deal with this at your own house, I'll assume not and spare you ;)

My cousin and his wife had a baby girl on the 4th, which is lovely, who doesn't love a new baby? So we got to go and meet her on Thursday, and I got to hold her. It's amazing how big Ethan's gotten... I don't even remember him being that small and he was. A mere 7 months ago. But it was great, I got to hold her, snuggle her, smell her new yummy baby goodness, and then give her back and go home. No nagging feelings of 'Aww... wasn't that wonderful? Doesn't that make you want to just jump in the sack and procreate again?!' Nothing. I enjoyed it, and I went home. Go me! You're probably wondering why this is a big deal, when clearly to normal people it wouldn't be. When Meaghan was born I always knew someone was always 'missing', I was not done yet. With Emma for the first month I thought maybe we were complete, then a few months later realized - Hello! wrong again! and after several months of discussion we decided to go for Ethan. For the entire month after Ethan was born I kept thinking 'Wow, I could definitely go for a fourth...' and the hypothetical fourth was always in the back of my mind. One day that thought just went away. *Poof* *Gone* The hypothetical fourth is no longer even permitted to being a though in my head, or anyone elses within my vicinity (as in Mr. Pretties) because I am at my sanity limit with three.Seriously though, that whole month after we had Ethan all I could think of was ' Holy crap, I want another one?! When does it end?! What if I want a million of them?! Stop the insanity! Will I always want more?!' So I'm so realized to realize we're done, all of our children are here and no one is missing and I wont ever wonder if we should have had more. What a great feeling. I don't see pregnant people and feel anything other than 'Aww... what a sweet baby bump. Better you than me, I'm really enjoying sneezing without peeing myself lately' . I see new borns and think 'Aww... how tiny and sweet. Still better you than me, I enjoy sleeping for longer than two second increments.(not that Ethan is a wonderful sleeping... since he's not...)' It just makes me happy to know that I'm not a baby producing factory after all, whew!

We haven't done much (read: any) antiquing, things have been pretty tight around here, which is pretty sucky, obviously. I think even Mr. Pretties misses it LoL But if the tax refund fairy shows up sometime in the next couple weeks we'll be going to an auction that has a few great things that should go for even greater prices, which'll be awesome to sell at Aberfoyle this season. Think white painted Duncan Phyfe drop leaf table and chairs - perfect for that space challenged shabby kitchen, child sized Duncan Phyfe styled chairs, a primitive early 1900's chippy white painted cradle, and numerous primitive dovetailed wooden boxes. PS. 43 days until Aberfoyle season starts - woohoo! Spring and summer is just so much better than winter, there's simply no comparison!

Since I'm being painfully boring and obviously have nothing interesting to tell you, I'll just shut up and leave you with some photos I took of our kittens this weekend. It's amazing that everyone is spoken for except 'Nana' and I don't know why! She's got a really sweet face I think!

Jasmine:

Baby Stewie:

'Nana':

And 'Aladdin':

You Can Take That Up With My Nap Manager...

... Or what I would do with a million dollars.

First things first. I'm a napper. I come from a long line of nappers. I don't require a lot in a day, but I absolutely require a nap of some form (preferably long form) inorder for the day to run smoothly. As it turns out, when you have three kids 4 and under nap-time becomes akin to performing a miracle. Right now it's mostly Ethan who feels entitled to not sleep when everyone else is, or sleep, but ensure that he awakes several times hourly inorder to keep anyone else (ie. myself) from getting any kind of consecutive quality sleep, which may infact be worse than no sleep at all. It's one of the great debates.

This brings us to, you know how people always talk about what they'd do if they came into large (very large, forget all your worries) sums of money? Mr. Pretties always says he'd get a nanny and a cleaning lady. I concur on the cleaning lady, because, again, cleaning your house while your kids are growing up is like shoveling the snow while it's still snowing. Seriously. But I've always disagreed on a nanny, I wouldn't want someone else raising my kids, spending more time with my kids than I do, etc... unless ofcourse we could located a real-life Mary Poppins, in which case who am I to deny my children that? I just can't fill those black pointy shoes... I digress...

So while I'd be out antiquing (with kids in tow) and other such related money spending activities (with kids in tow) I'd be hiring a nap manager ASAP. MmmHmm. My nap manager would be in charge of making sure the household nap went exactly according to schedule. Every.Single.Day. The Pretties don't always want/need naps anymore, so with the nap manager that should no longer pose a problem, she'll just hang out/entertain them while I take a nap sans interruptions (unless they're important, obviously). I will require atleast two hours of designated naptime, but three is far more effective.

Mr. Pretties also enjoys a good nap, and he can take advantage of the nap managerial situation as well, but he'll have to have his own designated nap area because I nap alone. I do not like to hear snoring while I nap, tossing and turning, or have someone attempting the cuddle. No thanks. Napping is a solo event and should be treated and respected accordingly. Wilma (the boss. aka the cat) will be the only other living soul allowed in my napping area, and only because if I don't, it's a vast possibility that she'll beat me when I wake up. And, she's a good napping buddy (buddies and partners are totally different things) and sleeps at the opposite corner of the bed (unless she's sleeping on my head. Or something.)

I would pay the nap manager handsomely because I believe the raise in quality nap time I'd be receiving would greatly improve all areas of my life and those of my family, and really, can you put a price tag on that? The nap manager may also be required to sleep over once a week so I can be reminded what a complete uninterrupted night-time sleep is like. I'm sure it's just dreamy and think I'd like to be reacquainted with it, even just one out of seven nights in a week.

I thought of this fabulous idea while dozing this afternoon. It came to me when you know when you're just falling asleep and then all over a sudden "WAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" and you nearly have a heart attack and die because you went from being 100% relaxed to waking up in mid air and landing in some kind of Ninja ass-kicking move that you didn't even knew you knew let alone could get into, because clearly nothing of this world could possibly make a sound like that! Unless ofcourse you happen to have a seven month old baby... who just happens to want a bottle, or maybe just two sips of one because it's totally way funnier to drink your bottle two sips at a time and wake up 10 times an hour to do so. On second thought, I think we should spring for the nap manager now... right now...

Disclaimer:

Obviously I love the pretties to pieces, even Ethan (aka LBP) who wakes up 100x per nap, so this is not a 'damn my kids suck' post incase there were a few confused readers. This was a 'damn, I need a nap manager to improve my parenting' post. Just so you don't think I'm all mean and complainy, sometimes 'posts' get read in a different tone than I type them in :)

Bird Catching 101

... or why cats and bird feeders don't mix...

Today as Emma's cat brought us a frozen sparrow-cube as a present I was reminded of Mr. Pretties and I pre-children and the first cat Mr. Pretties had ever owned.

When Mr. Pretties and I first lived together we lived on the third floor of a century home in a neighbourhood that sported a whole lot of pigeons (Hey, don't judge me, I can't help it if the pigeons have good taste in housing... or something like that...).
I was 8 months pregnant with Meaghan when Mr. Pretties opened the door to let Screamer in (he was siamese, what can I say?), but noticed nano-seconds too late that he was also with bird. Very. Large. Bird. Screamer was a very small cat. And he's hauling this bird that's atleast twice his size. Picture a guinea pig trying to haul in a turkey... you get the idea. He comes in making that trilling noise that only a cat with a present can make. Me, having years of experience with cats bringing things home thought nothing of this event aside from 'Crap. Now I have to take it out and bury. Thanks you little weiner...' while Mr. Pretties is a complete raving nut. "Why on earth would a cat do that?!" "How the hell did he catch that thing?!" "Is he going to eat it?!" "We have to get rid of him, he's wild!" And so on and so forth...
As I'm preparing to remove Screamers snack of choice he lets go. And it takes flight. It is not dead, nope not. at. all... And, it's flying around my livingroom. There is a very enormous, angry pigeon flying around my livingroom, and me in my very pregnant state trying to catch it (hello?! I'm not a cat!) while trying not to collapse in hysterical laughter.
Where was Mr. Pretties you ask? Why he was standing in the bathroom with the door shut, waiting for me to give him the all clear... what a man...

I did end up catching it and releasing it outside, but if someone had taped us looking in it would have been very comical. I still thank the stars to this day that that pigeon had been kind enough to turn off his poop generates as they're infamous for the good old 'poop and fly' method of making large messes. I can't even fathom the mess my livingroom would have taken on. We would have had to move. Clearly.

Ahh... memories.
And what ever became of Screamer? Someone thought he was so fabulous that they stoll him off our front porch a couple years later, and who was the most upset about it? Mr. Pretties... it's a good thing he's such a brute and hates pets so much. Right.

I've Got A Golden Ticket...

Or atleast Meaghan thinks she does...

Meaghan is quite fascinated (as in obsessed) by the movie Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, and by extension, golden tickets (Back story: Charlie finds a 'golden ticket' in the chocolate and takes over the factory) Mr. Pretties and I did some major cleaning up this week in loo of the landlord inspection (aka. the babysitting extravaganza, which went off without a hitch thank God) which may or may not have unrooted things we didn't know we had. I digress.

As I was helping Emma wash her hands in the bathroom I hear Meaghan in our bedroom yelling in the most excited voice possible 'I'VE GOT A GOLDEN TICKET!!!!!' (which, by the way, is the punch line in the movie) and comes barreling in to show me. Now this is not unusual, Meaghan is forever finding 'golden tickets' which are generally a store receipt, a piece of paper, a plastic tomato slice from our vast selection of play food, or it may even be invisible. Whatever. But not today, today I'll be damned, she had a bright and shiny golden ticket! Wondering what on earth she'd found I decided to inspect it closer, only to find that it didn't exactly say 'Golden Ticket' as Meaghan had thought, but instead it neatly spelled out 'Trojan'.... I'm not sure where she found this, how she found it, or that it even existed in my house (Ahem, it expired in 2006...) but I could.not. stop. laughing. Seriously. I suggested she go show Mr. Pretties her golden ticket. Let me tell you, a facial expression says 1,000 words.

Is Brass Recyclable?

Apparently it is when Mr. Pretties is in charge ;)

I've been stripping an old washstand and in the process I also needed to strip the original brass hardware that had, oh, about 75 layer of good quality lead paint on them. At the direction of our landman I set them in margerine container with some stripper (the paint kind, not the corner kind... c'mon on now) and syran wrap over the top (did you know it's the fumes that strip the paint not the actual gel? I had no idea...) so I did that several times and finally got them all nice and brassy like. I put them back in the container out on the deck to air out because they were pretty reaky... A week goes by and I go back out to get them so I can wash them off and... low and behold, the container is no more?! So as is the case when anything randomly goes missing in the Pretties household, I ask Mr. Pretties if he happened to where they might be... and, if it were a possibility that he put it in the blue bin and forgot and thus it went out Wednesday morning... He didn't need to answer, his 'Ohhhh shiznit...' face said it all. Crap. But that's okay actually, I was debating replacing the original hardware with glass repro. hardware but felt uber guilty for drilling new holes and dissy the old hardware by not using it, problem solved!
When in doubt, chuck it in the recycle ;)

Strike!

Or, how to bowl with preschoolers...

We did the bowling thing with Meaghan's preschool on Tuesday (yeah, so I'm going to use names now, we're all friends here and I know most of your kiddies names. So, we have Meaghan (4), Emma(2.5) and Ethan(6mos)). I was stoked about staying and hanging out with her during this life altering event. I was under the impression that she was too. We get there, get settled, and... she doesn't want to bowl. *sigh* Finally I convince her to give it a try, she slinks up the balls, rolls it out of the holder nearly rolling it on her foot, drags it with her arms hanging way down low, dragging on the group Neanderthal style, does the limpest loft into the gutter I've ever seen and slouches away. I'm sorry, isn't there some kind of prerequisite that demands that you must be atleast 9 before behaving like that?! So we let the other three in our group take their turns (you know, the kids who actually wanted to bowl...) and then it's Meaghan's again, except now that bowling appears to be good enough for everyone else, she may as well have at it too. So she gets right into it and next thing I know I'm refereeing her from bullying the other kids out of their turns! What the?!

We had an hour for bowling (and with 3 and 4 year olds, that equals about two turns each) and ofcourse Meaghan is now starving to absolute death. Yes, I did feed her breakfast only 90 minutes before, but, now I get to play the ever exciting part of the bad mommy who doesn't want to pay $5 for a sample sized bag of Dorito's like everyone else's awesome mom. In all honesty I left my purse with Mr. Pretties since I didn't think an hour at the bowling alley warranted me having to keep track of it and mind small hands and their magnetic attraction to purse pockets (not in a pilfering kind of way).

Then we have the mom in our group who came with her DD and brought her little baby (do you have any idea how happy it makes me to know I can look at other moms with teeny weeny babies and not feel the need to run off and find Mr. Pretties and convince him of the imperativeness of procreating again?!) which was nice, but she ignored her daughter the entire time and sat at a table at the other side of the alley (note: all the moms in our group had babies on their lap). No big deal really, the other moms and I pitched in and helped her with her turns, until the last three frames. Now as you know, when bowling the computer keeps track of turns and basically you get three rolls each turn, it counts as a roll when a ball reaches the end of the alley. Now with preschoolers, those balls don't always make it there... so the mom who decided to help her daughter out at the end realized that waiting for her daughter's ball to reach the end of the alley was taking a long time, so for each roll her daughter did she did one too, to get it on to the next turn. Great. Except for the part where that meant 3 rolls = 6 rolls and you've now taken your daughters turn as well as mine. Meaghan can be very strong willed and high strung, she likes watching the numbers on the screen to tell her when it's her turn and to see how well she's doing (she bowled by herself with me standing 3ft away and was beating butt to my complete shock) and now the other mom has taken her turn, messed up her score (she was throwing gutters intentionally) and doesn't even get it. I know, I know, who cares, it's not a big deal, etc... etc... but it really bothers me when people are completely oblivious when they do things like that and I am a 100% non-confrontational person so there was no way I was saying anything about it. God I really need to grow a pair...

Oh shoot, that reminds me, tomorrow is 'Show and Share' day at preschool... now I have to think of something to bring... better get on that right about now...

In other news, Mr. Pretties and I are going on a date Saturday night. Our landlords gave us a movie theatre package (tickets, snacks, drinks, etc...) complete with childcare for Christmas in, oh, 2007 and we had yet to use them (no reason really... the kids love them, we trust them, Mr. Pretties works odd hours and they both work very long hours so I hated to ask them) so they're coming Saturday and bringing dinner for the kids. Mr. Pretties and I haven't been on a date since I was pregnant with Emma in 2006 so we're about due. We aren't really movie people, but we'll enjoy it anyway and I'm looking forward to it. We really need more date nights, especially now that the LP's are a little older.

Apparently Jasmine has taken a plunge in the aquarium and it's up to me to rescue her (Meaghan says the reasoning behind my need to rescue is because I'm a brave knight... go figure...) so I better get on that too or who knows what'll happen, you know how aggressive angel fish can be...

Poly Kittens

Simply Stunning - I just tried to pop you an email but it got sent back to me undelivered and I can't view your blog info to comment back LoL We're located in Ontario, Canada. I found this Craigslist Ad for Jesup, GA though http://brunswick.craigslist.org/pet/1024009346.html that might (or might not) be helpful!

If you wanted to contact me my email is MMPretties@hotmail.com

Thanks so much, and what lucky cats you've an outdoor enclosure is always the way to go!