Okay, I tried the cucumber thing with Hubby and he didn’t get it. I explained what I was doing and WHY and he still didn’t get it. I then wagged it at him invitingly and he laughed. Men are dumb, throw rocks at them.

Was wondering what your thoughts about this story were: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,294783,00.html Just think; you can start this new trend with baby #2!!!

“No yike, too feaky”?? My heart just melted and dripped gooily down over my ribs.

During my last pregnancy, I had so many dreams about Logan from Gilmore Girls, I started wondering if I had a BRAIN TUMOR or something.

Double-whammy laugh with wondering how much a ticket to Africa costs, and then telling Riley that Africa has lions. Betcha toddlers in grass huts DO freak the hell out over nothing. Betcha they wanted to put THIS piece of grass THAT way, and that this OTHER piece is “too green.” Furthermore, I’ll bet they pick holes in the walls whenever their parents leave the room for even ONE SECOND to pee.

When I lived in Senegal, the toddlers were incredibly well-behaved. I was invited over to someone’s house for dinner one night and there were four toddlers there, all about two years old. And they sat there, on a mat, clearly sleepy, all in a row, for THREE HOURS and did not cry or even make a noise once the entire time.

But! There is a reason for this! The reason is because they have all learned from a young age that if they scream and cry and act like brats, they will be hit. Not spanked, but really hit. So yeah. Unless you want to go with that parenting method, you may be stuck with a very small diva.

TOO FREAKY. Oh my God, that’s too much.

Also, dude, I wake up with Dead Arm three times a week now, and I’m not even pregnant.

I also had the raunchiest dreams both times I was pregnant. Too bad they were usually about my husband, who at the time, I didn’t want anywhere near me. Pregnancy does blow.

Ha–glad you liked the cucumber molestation…and Warcrygirl, my husband “got it” right away b/c his favorite thing in the world to do is sneak up behind me and hump me, as he says, “in a jovial manner.” Turnabout’s fair play and all that. :) Glad to know someone else is striking a blow for female-kind out there!

God I have the dead arms too, and fingers, and so early in my pregnancy (from practically as soon as I knew). Annoying.

Your stories about all the words that Riley says are so cute and so heartbreaking. My son is older than Riley and we would KILL for two words in a row! She said, pouting. :)

I do think kids in other countries, and cultures, are better behaved. In the Happiest Baby on the Block, though, he talks about how different it is for them, even in their newbornness. Like they’re always carried around with their mother and they might be put to the breast like 100 times a day! I used to think of that a lot when my babe was teeny, like I’d think “he’s nursing a LOT but at least it’s not 100 times a day!”

oh.my.god. too feaky? are you kidding me? he knows the word “feaky”? i am just dying over here.

I lived in West Africa for six months and never saw a temper tantrum thrown by a toddler. I attribute it to their “attachment parenting” techniques, which I absolutely will be doing with my son. Not because of Dr. Sears, but because of my time spent in Africa where there is no such term as “attachment parenting.”

I have Dead Arm too! I have Dead Arm too! Does this mean I am now officially pregnant?!???? :-) I rolled over and fwapped my husband with it and didn’t even know. Whoops. Sorry honey, the baby did it. . . .

oh, the kid thing. i used to tell people that there was no way in hell that i could eve end up spoiling my kid, because he went through a phase where he threw a tantrum about EVERYTHING. the sun is up, that wall is too yellow, the sky is blue, yada yada yada. but also things that could be fixed, like he would be all OH MY GOD YOU WON’T LET ME HAVE CANDY FOR BREAKFAST?! and one day i said FINE and handed over the candy in the hopes of some peace and – i got it for a second, then the screaming started again, OH MY GOD YOU’RE LETTING ME HAVE CANDY FOR BREAKFAST, WHERE IS MY CEREAL, WOMAN?! kind of thing.

it ends, sort of. eventually.

On the Africa thing I lived in Ghana for 6 mos. – very rare to see a tantrum in a toddler there. I concur with the previous commenters – extreme attachment parenting and they beat the shit out of them too. So, yeah…

I would even settle for a very short pause button…

Oh yes -weird tastes in your mouth – I so remember that -ten I would try to explain to ny husband what the taste was like and the only explanation I could come up with was that it tasted like dead. He didn’t understand. As for the dead arm thing I often got a dead leg and when I got out of bed I would just crumple to the ground – it was funny for the first five times – after that not so much

Thank you for these gentle reminders that I am not sturdy enough mentally or physically for motherhood.

Signed,
Your squeemish, wussy reader,
-G

I find it interesting to read about the toddlers in Africa being well behaved (because they are hit??!!) We have a guest teacher from China in our school this year. After a week of observing American classrooms, she made the observation that children are more freeer here and that we are MUCH more lax in our discipline methods. HOWEVER, she also said that our children our much happier here too. She commented on how much more laughter is in our school and how much the kids smile. In fact, when she called home to talk to her 9 year old daughter, she aplolgized to her for being to hard on her and encouraged her to go outside and play more. So our culture does a great job too, even if you have to deal with the Terrible Two Tantrum occasionally.

Ha Ha you crack me up! Luckily somebody at work gave Chuck a bag of cucumbers, I’ll have to torment him with them. See how you like it!
I could also bring one into bed without him knowing and first thing in the morning while HE is trying to sleep in I’ll start poking him with it. Welcome to my world!
It’s funny that you said douchebag, that’s one of my new words that I have been using when people at work annoy me.
Too bad about your dream ending just when it was starting to get good, doesn’t that always happen?

I’ve always wondered what children in Africa (or parts of India, or other parts of the world where food and entertainment choices are low) do in their toddler stages. Do they say, “No rice and daal mama!” and then their mom says, “well that’s the only food we have, so suck it,” and that’s the end of that? I dunno.

I get dead arm, too…even while not pregnant. I think I sleep on my back with both my arms kind of over my head or something.

Okay. The cucumber thing is just too hilarious. I would never have thought of that! My husband will FREAK out. (Too FREAKY!)

Also, I often wonder about the toddler living in a community of huts myself. Do they just kind of wander around and put everything in their mouth? There would be no way to contain them. It would SUCK. But, maybe they are happier because they are just always outside. And when we’re outside there seem to be very few tantrums!

For better or worse, I think our kids might have more tantrums simply because they’ve always had choices. It takes them longer to learn that there are some things they are just not allowed to control. I used to teach first grade and I’d say 25-50% of those kids were still learning! :-) My favorite are the weather freak outs. . . my daughter doesn’t like it to be too sunny or too windy in particular. If it is too windy (oh, I don’t know, more than 5 mph) she refuses to walk. Now that’s fun. Although she does have something of a remote mute button, and her name is Dora the Explorer; works every time. Too bad it’s wrong to leave her parked in front of the television for eight or nine hours a day.

I always have that metallic taste in my mouth after eating tums, so maybe it is related to the vitamins or something?

When I was pregnant I didn’t dream about men, I had dreams about tornadoes; which should have been my first clue that I was not about to deliver and “easy” child!

I, too, am suffering from Dead Arm. I wake up several times a night to shake out my hands because one or the other is tingling numb. I don’t remember this with my other pregnancies…so I’m actually glad to hear I’m not the only one who has it!

When my niece Rachael was developing her language, her thing was “Too yeats.”

“Hey Rachael, do you want to blah blah blah?”

“No,” she’d say, “Too yeats.”

We could never figure out what that meant.

I get the dead arm all the time, not just when preg too. I had REALLY BAD Carpal Tunnel when I was pregnant. Dead arms = freaky. Dead fingers = eeewwww. They could easily be cut off and used in place of the cucumber, no problem. And I wouldn’t feel a thing.

P’s latest thing is to look at something and then say “That’s ‘mazing!!” And yesterday she said that something was “really ‘citing”. Cute. Cute little kids. And I would like a mute button not only for my child, but also for my dog who barks at everything, all the damn time. Even wind.

http://www.opaqueprintproduction.com/jbblog

My kids always had too cute things to say. At one time, we tried to teach our now 20 year old to say, “I am a victim of my genetic inheritance” (we all have VERY straight hair). He wouldn’t say it……he thought it was dirty!

I had weird stuff when I was pregnant, too. I couldn’t do the dishes, because my legs would go numb. I had the metallic mouth, and a highly sensitive sense of smell. Elevators were torture – I could smell the breath of everyone in the elevator!

I get dead arm – even now……and the food aversions! With #1 it was beef. #2 was Chicken. #3 was the worst, for four or five months, I couldn’t even think about vegetables or fruit. I couldn’t cook vegetables for the others for dinner. I could barely buy frozen corn! Finally, I got over most of it and could eat salads and fresh fruit. But not wanting to eat veggies, nearly killed me! I love ’em!

So, I’ve got a two and a half year old little boy and a twelve week old baby girl, and lately we’ve been explaining to Bryan why he can’t do some things like sit in the baby’s swing or use the baby’s pacifier. It always goes something like this:

Me: Bryan, you can’t sit in the swing. You’re too big.
Bryan: *stare of death, followed by hitting the swing and walking off in a huff*

This has unfortunately come back to haunt me, because now, whenever I ask him to do something like pick up a toy or put his shoes up, his response?

“I can’t. I’m too big.”

Dead arm? Definitely a second pregnancy thing for me. Yucky mouth taste was both; I attributed that to the nasty vitamins but maybe it’s just a pregnancy thing. The worst thing about my second pregnancy was that the heartburn was ten times worse than the first. And I always got told to sleep on my right side for better blood flow. Well, for some reason, sleeping on my right side siphoned the bile right up into my throat. Hell. Sorry heart, since I couldn’t do back or stomach either, I had to go with the left side.

I love “too feaky”. So cute. Molly’s latest thing that we laugh at (sometimes) is that she doesn’t want to eat some foods because they are ” disgustin’ “. Even the Dora soup she BEGGED me to buy at the grocery store.

I thought of you today when I went to my 1st ultrasound. They have a plasma flat screen right in front of the chair so no neck pain! I’m having a girl. Here’s hoping you have one too. :)

How old do kids have to be to travel alone? Do you think we could get a group rate on the tickets to Africa?

You know, now that you mention it I’ve been having an awful lot of *ahem* intimate dream as of late. And I also had a wicked metallic taste in my mouth this morning. Maybe I’m pregnant. Although the metallic taste might just have been the metal shavings I got in my mouth while cutting said substance over head. And the intimate dreams could just be because I’m wasting my sexual prime and the gravy has backed up into my system causing hormonal typhoons. I’d better hit the woods and find a good stick to pee on anyway, just to be safe. (I never got how that works, but whatever)

The numb/tingling dead arm can be caused from a B12 deficiency. I am not pregnant and was having the same thing happen to me. I just knew it was a pinched nerve or something like that so when my doctor told me that he wanted to check my B12 levels, I thought he was nuts. However, i was very low on B12 and now get a B12 shot every 2 weeks. For some reason, my body doesn’t absorb the B12 that we get from our foods. With you being pregnant, I bet the baby is absorbing all of your B12. The shots do not hurt and do the trick. No more dead arm feeling (until it wears off which is why I go every 2 weeks) and it gives you a ton more energy. Might be worth having your doctor look into.

My 21 month old has “Awesome!” and “Cool!” and we die laughing. Just recently she expounded with “I’m naked!” when having her diaper and clothes changed. It’s all very funny. Particularly when she sees my husband sans shirt, points to his nipples and says “Circle, circle.” Ah, yes, shape recognition!
Makes up for the eleventy billion decibel tantrums. Well, maybe not entirely, but it does help a little.

Hey Sundry, I was just answering my emails and a question floated up to the top of my thought cauldron. I know on large sites like YouTube or live journal or whatever, there are a lot of trolls being total assholes. I get them trying to rile me up on my videos all the time. They aren’t really a big deal for me since none of the crap I upload is personal, or even slightly important. Not to mntion I like fucking with them right back, and they usually aren’t even in the vicinity of intelligent. But I wondered if you ever get internet trolls barraging you with blog related hate mail? Or even maybe just some really uptight prudes who disaprove of your foul language and tattoos, and think you are a dirty heathen unfit for parenting, and decide to perform their moral duty to let you know what an awful person you are? Cause I get haters all the time, every day, but a personal website might attract a different clientele. I don’t know.

Josh: Youtube is trollacious to a bizarre degree. I have the feeling most of those guys are about 13. I don’t think those type of people have the patience/attention span for a boring personal blog, so no, I haven’t really been flamed like that.

Although I did piss a lot of people off with a bad Steve Irwin joke on the ClubMom blog once. Hoo boy.

When I was pregnant and had freaky growing-fast fingernails? It was a GIRL. I’m just sayin’!

I read the first paragraph to my husband and the look on his face was priceless! I wish I could describe the look of sheepishness mixed nicely with the “What? Is there a problem with this type of behaviour?” Next time there’s a cucumber in the house, he’s getting a good poke!

Created the greatest artsclei, you have.