I know I'm forgetting a million things....

I need to document some Stella milestones!

Let's see.... She's a genius, basically. Don't know who her parents are....

• She sings the entire ABC song; complete with the "now I know my ABCs" part at the end. Now, a lot of the letters are repeats and you can't understand quite a few of them, but she has the tune and knows more of the letters than she doesn't know....
• She also sings Twinkle Twinkle from beginning to end.
• She also sings (catching the theme here?) the theme song to "Family Guy." When the song starts, she yells "Gay Guy!" (no, I'm not even kidding!)
  
• She LOVES macaroni and cheese and will eat an entire Michelina's frozen dinner herself.
• She's talking in sentences...and narrating everything we do "Dada go potty?" "Mama cooking?" etc...
• More is MUEY, Milk is MA MOLT
  
• She counts "One, Two, Three, Adook (quatro), Cinco, Seize, Siete, Ocho, Nueve, Diez
• Whenever you say "want to watch Dora?" she immediately answers with "AND BOOTS?!?"
• She loves loves loves her crocs and cries when she has to take them off.
• She is fearless in Neh-Neh and Bapaw's pool.
• She is in the process of learning important old school rap songs (thanks to yours truly!)
• She always has her toenails painted and shows everyone "NAILS!!" atleast 200 times a day. When you say "Who did that" she says "Mama do it!"
  
• When she has a "boo boo" she will also show you that 200 times a day. When you ask "What happened?" she says "Sissy do it." (Sissy is the cat. Sissy has been declawed for over 6 months now...yet she gets blamed for it all. Poor Sissy.)
• She has her "friends" that go night night with her. I'm shocked she can fit in the crib with them all. Before she goes night night, we have to run down the list of all of her friends who are waiting for her. There is Pablo, Uniqua (she calls her Arocka), Tyrone, Big Tasha and Little Tasha (we have 2 different size Tasha dolls - and she calls her Tata - so it's Big Tata and Little Tata. LOL!) Elmo, Baby Tad, Minnie Mouse, Big Blankey, and Little Blankey. And don't forget the Birds slideshow on the ceiling.
• Her favorite food is Ice Cream (I-Keem) and will keep saying "more i-keem! more i-keem!" and if you don't give her some, she yells "PLEASE?!?!?!?"
  
• She loves ice ("ike") and steals it out of people's drinks. Proof?

And here is the latest video with some new tricks....including my latest masterpiece - dedicated to all of my LMC Girls. You got it - "Baby Got Back"


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I WISH I was bored.

I have eaten so many peanuts and m&ms (Not peanut m&ms; peanuts AND m&ms) that I have literally made myself sick. How STOOPID!

It's emotional eating at it's best. I have not updated in awhile as my work life has been chaotic. Two weeks ago I was on cloud 9 - being a part of a 9 member team working on a very important special project. Then last Friday, a new org annoucement came out that leaves my work fate hanging in the balance. I mean, I HAVE a job, so I'm not worried about that part. I'm just worried about WHAT job that will be.... thus the peanuts AND m&m overdose.

I have not received any direction on where I am going and what I will be doing and if I get to stay on the special project or not (my main concern....) So, please, if you could just take one moment and say a prayer, or send a vibe, or do a little dance... for a positive outcome regarding Stephanie's job woes. Thanks in advance.

So, other than turning to bad food for comfort (why can't I turn to carrots?) I have been busy at home as well. There's always something to do. Always something going on. We rarely get time to relax in the house or on the deck.... but that's ok. Atleast we are not bored.

Pictures from Father's Day

Weekend Wrap-up

It's been great. It really has. We got SO much done around the house and we have a total sense of accomplishment AND we had some fun at the same time.

Toby worked his hiney off this weekend. The heat doesn't bother him so he was outside the entire weekend almost. He cut ALL the grass (it's a lot) and loaded up the giant pile of debris from the old deck and took it to the dump. He went by Lowe's and bought a new dishwasher and hauled that home and installed it. When he opened it up, I stood there and did the SATC "Hello Lover." Because I LOVE A DISHWASHER and that is one appliance I have NEVER taken advantage of. I KNOW how much I appreciate it.

I cleaned a lot and organized a lot and took care of our child a lot.... I did a big grocery shop to replace our ENTIRE fridge and bread products.... The bill was $180, but with coupons and my Kroger MVP card, the bill came to $130. I rock!

For dinner, I cooked a frozen lasagna IN MY STOVE. That was a monumental experience. Stella was eating in her high chair, and I left the room for 2 seconds and this is what I came back too. Good thing we were going to the pool afterwards!










It was the first time in Neh-Neh and Bapaw's pool this season. Here is the bathing suit of this year...(the rest are hand-me-downs, but a girl HAS to have a new bathing suit every summer - UNTIL they get to be $100 and then you get to wear the same one since High School. Just sayin.)










Here we are arriving at the pool...







Swimming with Bapaw - the girl has NO fear.




Pooped




All covered up and ready to go home







Today, we attended the birthday party for my cousin Jenn's child Alanna. She is four! It was at a place called the Playroom... Stella loves it there. Especially the ball pit.

On the way there, I looked back and Miss Thing had her glasses on...upside down!




Then we got to the party and she insisted on wearing her sunglasses inside. She's just too cool.




Then she played....







Then it was time for cake. This was amazing to me. She sat at the table with the big kids and really was like one of the gang. I really realized at this point that she is getting so big and growing so fast....













And this is the BEST. I took this video for my brother Matt to see the party in action...well, while I am filming, my child steals the birthday girl's cake. TWICE.


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Week Wrap-Up

My brain is like one big fried egg. That's been in the pan too long. TGIF!!! I need a weekend! A REAL weekend with no surprises.

This week has been exhausting. On the work front AND the home front. And the rodent front.

I know you are all dying to hear about Ralph S. Mouse.



Anyway, we have not seen him or any signs of him since Monday when Toby shot at him (with a bb gun and Stella and I were not in harm's way - just for the record) and he ran up into the stove. (And then Toby tried to cook him on Tuesday...) We are thinking that he waited for all to settle down, and left the stove (before the broiling session) and escaped the house through his secret portal (we still don't know where that is exactly) and he went somewhere to die or is living life on the outside as a wounded rat soldier. Either way, I don't care as long as he does not come into my house and chew important tubing and wiring again.

We were seeing signs of his presense - loaves of bread being ripped into and eaten, droppings, and we could even HEAR him at night. Like Saturday night when it sounded like 3 WWF wrestlers were going to town in my kitchen. Since Monday? Nothing. So, I really do think he left.

Regardless, I took control again last night. I marched myself into my kitchen and declared myself President again. I cleaned it up, emptied all of the food from the fridge from the last week that went bad in our absense, washed all the dishes, and rearranged shelves. I still have more work to do this weekend...but atleast I am back in control.

I told Toby - I have this fear of this giant rat jumping out and attacking me. Well, that ain't going to happen! That cheesy saying of "he's more scared of you than you are of him" really is true.... even if he is in the kitchen, he's not coming out while I am there. The only reason we found him this time was because the dishwasher was leaking and we pulled it out and found his homestead.

Tonight might involve some new dishwasher shopping. I hope so anyway... I HATE to wash a dish by hand. But we sure can't afford this so soon after the giant deck.... Oh well, that's what Home Depot cards are for........ Yuck.

Someone please win the lottery and give me some of it.

On the work front, I am working my hiney off. I have been put on a Project Team of 9 people to accomplish a pretty big task in 60 days.

I am sorry to be vague; but if I tell ya, I gotta kill ya.

I am not in my usual office - we are sequestered in a different office building in the basement...where there are no windows...underneath the cafeteria, so it sounds like it's thundering all day every day. We're in a cluster of cubes and I can hear my co-workers long fingernails clicking on the keyboard as we speak.

It's not SO bad... And I am amazing at how much I have learned and developed in just ONE week - with seven more to go.... It's exciting on several levels.

This new office is in the Far West End - near the big mall and other great shopping and eating destinations. I'm really really trying not to gain 900 lbs and drain my bank account. Oh, that's right - it's already drained. But seriously, I went out today to run an errand really quick and NEVER AGAIN WILL I DO THAT. It took 1.5 hours to go down the street and back. The traffic out here at lunchtime is BRUTAL. Alteast that will curb my lunchtime adventures. There is a strip of restaurants across the street and that will likely be the ONLY place I venture to - to meet friends who work nearby every so often. Other than that, I am staying in.

Working out here has seriously taken a toll on my Jazzercise attendance. Like, there is NO attendance lately. I hate that...but I am much farther away and I am working a bit of overtime on the project and am unable to make it to the 5:45 class...and I am DAMN sure not attending a 7pm class. I am keeping my membership though... maybe I can squeeze in a Saturday class sometime (although that is my STELLA time and I do not like to take away from that) and I want to be ready immediately to return when this project is over and I am back to normal.

So, the plan for this weekend is to just get the house back in order. Toby wants to search the house over and concrete any holes where the rodent could have gotten in.... he's already concreted in a few holes (like the one behind the dishwasher) but I guess he'll do a thorough hole-searching-and-concreting session again... Then he is going to remove the pile of debris from the backyard that includes materials from the old deck and the old dishwasher... he wants to cut the grass and put a light in the shed....

I plan to finish the kitchen. We have a birthday party to attend on Sunday. I might have dinner plans with a friend if she gets back to me with her availability. Other than those things, I plan to get Stella in the POOL for the first time this year. (I'll post a zillion pictures of that, for sure.)

It sure is hot enough for some pool time!

In other news, my daughter is cute and smart

I have been meaning to get this on video forever... She has SUCH a crush on Diego and loves the show. There is a segment in the middle where he sings a song and claps in a certain sequence. Claps 3 times, pause, claps 3 times, pause, etc... She claps with him AND PAUSES and has been doing this for months. I don't know why I think this is amazing, but I do. She also puts her hands to her face like he does and yells whichever animal he's talking about. The show is so interactive, and she answers all of his questions... It's so fun to watch!


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And then here is my mini-me. This is where I sit and work on the laptop nearly every night. When I get up and leave the room, she is ALWAYS in my spot (using the mouse) when I come back... Too funny! (Oh, she refers to herself as Stessa...and Neh-Neh and Bapaw (my parents) were there when I was recording so that's why she's talking to them...)


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She's growing up too fast, ya'll.

A Recipe you DON'T want to have to try.

Preheat oven to 550 degrees.

Sit and wait to see if you smell burning rodent.

No?

Go back to waiting. And listening. And eating out.

Sigh.

Fast Food Nation

I'm never cooking again.

It's now trapped IN THE STOVE.

Rat: 1, Toby: Zip

This is what I saw when I walked to the kitchen after my shower to start my coffee.

It's early in the game, and my husband has already lost it.


So, last night we heard 2 traps go off. And we drifted back to sleep, dreaming of a rat-free kitchen. But when we got up this morning, there we no rats trapped. And a pack of hamburger buns had been chewed into....I bought that pack of buns yesterday and put it up on the highest shelf in the kitchen. He climbed up there. CRINGE.









So, that's a view of the kitchen right now (sans dishwasher - waaahhh!) and also a long-shot view of my husband's genius. I swear, if THIS works, we are opening a Pest Control business. I'll do the books.

A Rat Tale.

So I might have neglected to mention that a few weeks ago, Toby discovered that his garage (which is not connected to the house - it's in the back of our yard) was infested with rats. RATS. Not a mouse. Or mice. Or even A rat. RATS. Plural. And BIG.

They were living in the walls and feasting on the dog food...and making a house in the fridge out there...and in the sofa... So when Toby moved the fridge out away from the wall for some reason and TWELVE giant rats scurried out, that began the Rat Wars.

So, fast forward a month and he has since gutted his garage, torn out the walls, gotten rid of the fridge and the couch and all of the work benches and rebuilt them and saturated it with Rat Poison.... the garage is doing well now.

But those rats have to go somewhere, right?!?! We have found LOTS of dead ones in the yard...and we have set bait stations all over the yard and outside of the house...It seemed to be under control.

So, yesterday morning I was getting ready for a GREAT weekend. I was so excited that NOTHING was on the calendar except to go see Sex and the City with some friends at 5pm. My Mother in Law was coming over to watch Stella and Kendall. Kim, Julie, and Katie were all coming over to go with me...and Heath and Chris and Toby were going to do the usual - drink beer and play pool in the garage. I was hoping to run some errands in the mornings and just get some stuff done. Nothing crazy.... Just take it easy and ENJOY a NON-eventful weekend.

Well, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! How DARE I think of doing that.

I get up and start a cup of coffee and hit "start" on the dishwasher. I'm standing there waiting for my coffee when I notice the dishwasher is leaking. Damn! Toby looks at it and thinks it's the seal around the front but he knows nothing about dishwashers, so I call Dad and he comes over for a visit and a peek at the dishwasher. He also thinks it's the seal around the front so he suggested I clean that off and get some of the grit off of it - maybe it will seal better because maybe the dirt is making it lose suction....blah blah. So he leaves and I do that and cut the thing back on and LAY ON THE FLOOR (this is important for later...) and look between the dishwasher and the cabinet to REALLY look at where it's leaking and I notice it's coming from the BACK of the dishwasher and is pouring out between the dishwasher and the cabinet on the floor. In other words, it is not dripping from the front of the dishwasher.... it's the back. So I tell Toby that and he says "that's impossible! The only way for it to come out is the front..." so he humours me and pulls the dishwasher out from under the countertop into the middle of the kitchen floor to look back there and

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THERE IS A GIANT RAT LIKE GIANT LIKE A FOOT LONG AND I SCREAM SO LOUD AND RUN INTO THE LIVING ROOM AND JUMP UP ON THE COUCH.

I mean, SHIT!!

So, this rat runs under the fridge now. I call Dad in a PANIC and yell at him to come back that we found the problem with the dishwasher it's a GIANT RAT!!!!!!! With our panicked selves, we looked at the dishwasher and that f-ing rat had chewed all of the wiring and tubes - no wonder it was leaking! And apparently he had set up homestead there for awhile because he had PIECES of bread and all kinds of food - probably from our trash can. UGH!!! I'm cringing while I type this. Toby said that "rats" to him are like "snakes" to me. I doubt it - because if that was the case and we had a snake living in the kitchen, there would already be a for sale sign on our front yard and we'd be living out of my Mazda Tribute.... but he is pretty worked up too.... We're both just in a frenzy.

So, Dad comes running across the yard with a bb gun wrapped in a big black garbage bag. LOL

I put up the baby gate to corral the rat in the kitchen. Stella and I go lock ourselves in the computer room and listen.... I swear I wish I had a video camera of what happened next. I can't see what's going on but I can hear it. It went something like this:

Dad and Toby in the kitchen "rocking" the appliances trying to get the rat to come out.

Toby: THERE IT IS!
Dad: screams
Toby: Wayne! Gimme the gun! Gimme the gun!
Dad: I'm trying to load it! How do you load it?
Toby: Give it to me. I had one years ago.
Dad: I got it loaded - here you go!
Toby: (Lifts the gun to shoot the rat but the trigger won't pull) SAFETY! The safety is on! How do you get it off!!!
Dad: THERE! THERE!
Toby: SHIT!! Where'd he go?

Rat: What a pair of clowns.

So anyway, the rat got away. The kitchen is OUT OF CONTROL. We're both shaking and nervous and grossed out and depressed. Plan of action? Ignore it.

We label the kitchen "out of commission" and just leave the baby gate up and go back to our plans. Zana and Erik arrive to keep the girls...and the big girls get in the car and go to the movies. The boys did their garage thing.

The movie was PERFECT. I loved every second of it. EVERY SECOND. I SO miss that show... I'm ready for Part II of the movie!!! And I ate enough popcorn mixed with goobers to last me for years and years... (It had BEEN years since I ate that wonderful concoction. Shoot, it had been years since I went to the movies!!)

So, we get home and just hang out with friends and chill out.

Everyone leaves and Toby passes out on the couch and I go lay in the bed and read. I cut out my light around midnight and it wasn't even 5 minutes before I hear rustling in the kitchen. Then stuff being knocked over.

I go running into the living room and whisper/scream: "TOBY! RAT!!" and his drunk ass says "I am in no condition to deal with that now." So, ok. I went back to bed and listened to my kitchen get turned upside down.

Dad had gone out to buy 2 glue strip traps and a snap trap that we had set up earlier in the day... so in my head, I was envisioning this rat being caught on the glue trap and knocking itself around trying to get loose.

Um... No.

When I got up this morning, I looked in there and the rat wasn't caught at all. The traps were all untouched. That thing was literally just running around knocking shit over! The stuff that usually sits in the window sill was on the counter. It had even gotten into our saltines. I swear that thing was like "Screw ya'll. This is MY crib!"

So, today we have unloaded the dishwasher and handwashed everything. We have removed the dishwasher and thrown it in the pile of old wood and construction from the old deck that needs to go to the dump. (When we catch this dude, we will celebrate by going to get a new dishwasher. Dammit.) And we also bleached the entire kitchen from top to bottom. We went to Home Depot and bought 8 more of the snap traps to "saturate" the area.

Toby said that he is going to put so many traps in that kitchen tonight that we shouldn't even LOOK at it because our eyes might get trapped.

He said "the war is on" and that rat is going to GET IT tonight. I hope so.....