Weasel Of Doom

I am leaving for Russia tomorrow. Am I packed? No. Are all the gifts purchased? No. Do I know where half my stuff is? No. Am I done with everything at work? No. Do I know what to take with me for the kids? No. Do I actually want to get going on any of the above? No.

Talked to my parents today. I think Dad got a little upset that I talk to DemonChild in English. Then Dad wanted to talk to me about our financial situation (I finally told him that is easier dealt with face to face). Then Mom made an observation that I seemed to be “on the edge” as I was growling at Squeeker to behave. Um, that would probably be because I AM stressed out and about to lose it. *sigh* Mom also told me to not get worked up when the kids misbehave during the plane ride. I’d love to, but how? I hear it’s easier for guys, but I am always freaking out that I am inconveniencing other people. This is so not going to be fun.

*whimper* I better get something done while the kids are napping.

Found out that SAS *may* not allow gate-check of strollers (*may* because a post on a discussion board and SAS’s own website seem to imply that, yet when I called customer service I was told it depends on the airport and I will *probably* be allowed to gate-check mine). After freaking out for a bit, we now have an alternative plan:

- if I am told at check-in that my stroller has to go into checked luggage, I am going to use the blue carseat/stroller combo and Baby Bjorn. Because the main thing is to make sure D. does not take off for parts unknown while we are stuck in the security check-in/waiting for boarding limbo, and thank God he still fits in the carseat/stroller.

- if I am allowed to gate-check the stroller, we will proceed with the regular carseat.

- in any case, B. is going to end up hauling a carseat home.

And so I am now officially freaking out about the whole trip. What was I thinking, traveling alone with a whiny 9-month-old and an uncontrollable 2.5-year-old. I need my head examined.

- in the interests of science, we bought Benadryl and will give it to the kids on Wednesday night as a test. Best-case scenario: both get sleepy. Worst-case scenario: both get hyper. Can-live-with scenario: at least one gets sleepy. If all fails, maybe I can offer free Benadryl to fellow passengers.

Oh, and we have a bird somewhere in our house. Stupid bird. B. will probably blog about it later.

3 am. I am so screwed.

We bought the Firefly DVD set. Were we responsible adults and went to bed at a reasonable time, or did we decide to watch the whole series? Guess :)

P.S. It’s a crime that FOX canceled the series. BAD FOX, BAD!

P.P.S. We were responsible adults, if by “reasonable time” one means “whenever the last ‘Firefly’ episode got over.” Oh the fun one can have with semantics.

Little buggers do NOT want to go to sleep. Writing this paragraph is accompanied by a rhythmic “thump thump” from DemonChild’s room as he rocks himself in the chair, and ear-piercing shrieks from Squeeker’s as he attempts to cry himself hoarse. These are the same children who would fall asleep on their own just a few short weeks ago. I have a distinct feeling the universe is screwing with us :-)

On an unrelated note, all our passports are back with appropriate visas and stamps for the trip to Russia. If the kids are not going to learn how to fall asleep gracefully, annoyed SAS passengers are going to toss me out of the plane without a parachute.

Squeeker, at almost 9 months, has only two teeth (bottom center), but they are sharp little buggers, and he would like nothing better than to chew on my fingers for hours at a time. My fingers are not amused.

He finally figured out how to crawl forward Memorial Day weekend. I tried putting him down for a nap two weeks ago, and the squeekers he was making were so, for lack of better word, self-satisfied, that I went to look if everything was alright. There was Squeek, standing in the crib, holding onto the railing, and grinning. He has since proceeded to attempting to pull himself up using anything available — parental leg, long-suffering dog, activity table, high chair that moves, and furniture that doesn’t. Chairs in scarily close vicinity of metal table legs are a particular favorite. Once upright, he cruises (often in circles).The other night he pulled up on me and then stood, unassisted, for a second or two, before plopping down on his butt. His teachers at daycare think he’ll take his first steps before we go to Russia in two weeks, and they might be right.

He does not have separation anxiety as much as he has a strong dislike of being left alone. If he is left alone in the great room, he will crawl to wherever the action is, squeekering his annoyance at being abandoned at the top of his lungs. Ignored, the annoyed squeekering will become full-blown shrieking, which is impossible to ignore, and Squeek knows it full well.

He gets up around 6 am, and nurses. Eats a serving of cereal and fruit/veggie at daycare, and drinks two 5oz+ bottles of milk. At home, he eats another serving of veggie or fruit, and nurses before bed. Goes down around 8 pm (though it was more like 9:30pm the last couple of days), and wakes up twice a night to nurse. We’ll see on the 20th how he is measuring up.

In the mornings, I change and dress both boys in DemonChild’s room. Often, DemonChild would bring a book to read. Immediately, Squeeker would abandon whatever object he is chewing on, and attempt to crawl onto the book. DemonChild is not always thrilled about that.

D. is starting to occasionally say three- or four-word sentences. This week, the sentence du jeur is “rain rain go away” – when he feels ambitious, D. even tries to add “come back another day” to the sentence, with mixed results. He says “wain wain go way” with such joy on his little face, though, and such enthusiasm, that it is impossible not to smile back. Oh, and it seems to be working, too – we haven’t had any rain this week.

We were running late going to the funeral service on Tuesday, and D. benefited – he got his favorite McDonald’s meal, chicken nuggets and french fries (and over in Russia, my mother’s spidey sense just went off – “Grandson Eating Junk Food Alert! Heart’s Bleeding! Commence Plotting Healthy Meals!”). After D. finished eating the nuggets and the fries, we told him they were all gone. Silence from the back seat. Then “Fwench fwies, all gone…. Chicken nuggets, all gone… Bye bye, nuggets…. Bye bye, fwench fwies….” A pause for the enormity of it to sink in. And again, in a philosophical tone of voice for “all gone”s and a sad one for the “bye bye”s, “Fwench fwies, all gone…. Chicken nuggets, all gone… Bye bye, nuggets…. Bye bye, fwench fwies….” He must have said that at least ten times. B. and I were cracking up.

And talking about bye-byes, when he is in the mood D. would bid farewell to all inanimate objects that cross his path (bye-bye school bus… bye-bye stick… bye-bye juice) but asking him to say bye-bye to people has a 50% chance of getting a loud NOOOooooo and a scream reminiscent of un-oiled door hinges.

Random D. hits:

• He knows you are supposed to say “bless you” when somebody sneezes. So, when he sneezes, he says “bless you” to himself;
• It has become almost impossible to take pictures of him because he would either (a) would not stand still and run away somewhere or (b) would not stand still and run towards me to see what picture appears on the back of the camera;
• He loves to read books, and can spend quite a bit of time turning pages and shouting out what he sees in the pictures;
• His repertoire of words now includes bicycle, motorcycle, lawnmower, truck, school bus, and airplane. He is trying to say a lot more words in English, while ignoring every Russian version of them;
• He is yet to meet a stick he can resist;
• If there is dirt somewhere, no matter how difficult it is to locate, D. will find it and proceed to make it his. As a bonus, he would dump buckets of sand onto his own head
• B. has told him to apologize to S. so many times that now when he is asked to say “I am sorry” D. goes straight ahead to “I am sorry S.,” regardless or not Squeek was actually involved in whatever incident triggered the apology request
• He loves to be tickled, and sometimes would lift up his shirt to expose the belly, and say “Tickle tickle!” He would also pull my head in so I can blow a raspberry on his stomach, while at the same time trying to push me away. Needless to say, he usually ends up sans raspberry.
• He loves to be chased; everything is a game. He runs around, on the floor, the table, the windowsill, laughing his head off as we chase after.
• If he can’t sleep at night, he will drag his blanket to the rocking chair, climb in, rock really hard for a while, then curl up and fall asleep.

It’s midnight, and I still need to clean up downstairs for the game Friday night. I should have been cleaning for the past hour, but goofed off playing Forty Thieves instead. The kids will probably wake up by 6:30 at the latest, so we are looking at four hours of sleep max if I actually do get off my butt in the next fifteen minutes and go clean, instead of deciding to play “just one more solitaire game”…. We all know what lies down that road :-)

This week went by tremendously fast. For a change, I was productive at work; pissing boss off to the point that he had to close his eyes, take a deep breath, and count to ten at our staff meeting, however, is virtually guaranteeing an “attitude needs adjustment” on the performance review next week. Do I have great timing or what?

Cannot for the life of me remember what we did Monday night, except that I went to bed around 3 am. Tuesday we went to a funeral service for the grandfather of my best friend from college; she herself is in China, but we did get to see her parents and her sister and her sister’s baby girl who, while only a few weeks older than Squeek, is already walking holding onto people’s fingers (apparently, she skipped crawling altogether) and eating cheese (because she decided she does not like being fed with a spoon). Due to some unforeseen errands, we did not leave until 1.5 hours later than we planned, and so arrived at the church just in time for after-service dinner. I felt compelled to explain that “Contrary to how it looks like, we did not just drive here for the free food.” ;-) Wednesday night we had our weekly visit with E. & S. Their little boy is getting so big! The fact that he sleeps well at night is total salt to my wounds, too. Tonight Mel came over and played with D., and B. went food shopping with S., but the way the timing worked out I hadn’t actually been able to do any cleaning while the kids were away. Friday night is the game, Saturday we are going to a wedding reception, and I think on Sunday I will just curl up into a little ball and sleep until it is time to call my parents. I am sure the guys will have a different plan, though *grins*

[update an hour and a half later] Downstairs still a mess. Waiting for second wind, but it is running late. On plus side, wrote some more blog posts, and am doing laundry. On minus side, having difficulty keeping eyes open.

[update next morning] Second wind never did show up, the bastard. We’ll see how much cleaning I can manage to do tonight, before the game. Hint: not bloody much ;)

Months ago, when DemonChild was just starting to get into repeating occasional things said to him, he hunkered down next to me and poked a finger at my stomach. “It’s mama’s fat,” I told him, amused at the serious way he was prodding the love handles. “Mama’s fat,” DemonChild repeated, and grinned.

Once every couple of weeks since then, he’d come to me, lift up whatever shirt I happened to wear to belly-button height, give the revealed rolls a poke, and pronounce, “mama fat!” Figures, right? ;-)

This has been a long and in many ways unproductive week. We had company on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (great fun, but not conducive to house-cleaning). I had to do a lot of medical running-around – to the surgeon who did sentinel node biopsy operation when my melanoma turned out to be bigger than 1 mm (Tuesday: scar looking fine, but too thick at the bottom, so four cortisone shots were administered with an air gun), to the dermatologist (Wednesday: no suspicious new moles, scheduled mole removal from face and neck in September, and a checkup for BelovedSpouse in July), to the opthalmologist (Thursday: he remembered that I was pregnant last time I seen him, asked if I had another boy or a girl, and proclaimed my vision to be 20/20). No more doctors until the 20th, when Squeeker goes in for his 9-month checkup.

BelovedSpouse got pulled over last Friday night for having a front and rear headlight burned out on the Jetta. Owner’s manual unhelpfully suggested taking the car to the dealership to replace the bulbs. I was looking for something along the lines of “pry the covering away with a flat-head screwdriver,” but no such luck. As of Tuesday morning, an hour and $70 later, we have a car with all four lights again.

My passport arrived, with the matrimonial name duly written in. Tomorrow, shoes I have ordered from FamousFootwear will arrive, and very likely not fit. Thank God for free returns to the store for online purchases. Also this week, one hopes, the t-shirts I ordered on clearance from Kohl’s will come. Optimistically, I went with Juniors Medium, and have since developed a dark suspicion I will not fit into any of them. Returns to store to the rescue, again ;-)

Was nowhere near as productive at work as I wanted to. Praying that the Russian vacation will recharge my work batteries.

And that’s a quick update on my boring life.

Russian Consulate called today. They were very nice. They received my paperwork. They noticed that they made a mistake before – a wrong stamp was used, so instead of “marriage certificate” it says “birth certificate” on the consular verification. Upon finding out I was leaving for Russia on the 1st of July, they promised to put the “MATRIMONIAL NAME” into my passport ASAP, and asked me to ship them the originals of the translated apostilled marriage certificate after I get back, so that they can affix the appropriate stamp.

Our phone conversation was very nice and very civil. Why couldn’t it have been like that yesterday? It seems like I should keep my whiny posts “on hold” for a couple of days, because invariably if I post them right away something happens to make me write a “things are better now, disregard the previous rantings” post.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Russian Consulate in Seattle. (There are consulates in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, Seattle, and Houston. Sticking one somewhere in the middle of America never crossed anybody’s mind, and as a result Wisconsin is assigned to Seattle. The mind boggles.)

On one hand, they were helpful when I had to get a last-minute “permission to enter Russia” piece of paper after my foreign passport expired last summer. On the other hand, “answering the phone, and being nice to people who call” is apparently not in the job description for some of the ladies who work there. It seems that half the time my phone conversations with them are an exercise in frustration, at least for me. [This paragraph has been slightly edited from a previous version, that somewhat exaggerated the facts. In my defense, I was very frustrated when I wrote it. The new version is a more fair representation of the facts.]

Yesterday, I had to call and ask about getting the “matrimonial name” entry added to my new foreign passport. (Mother Russia, home of a thriving bureaucracy. We have domestic passports and foreign passports. Foreign ones expire every five years. Way back in 2001, BelovedSpouse and I had to go to Seattle in person to submit the paperwork for a new foreign passport. When I got there, it turned out all the forms they sent me earlier were now obsolete. The new forms, which I had to fill out right there, asked obscure questions like “address of your high school in Russia.” High school in Russia was almost 10 years in the past then, and I haven’t kept its address close to my heart. I ended up calling my mom on a calling card ($400 bill, as it turned out later) to figure that one out. Good times. Almost got a divorce, as I recall. Did get the new foreign passport six months later, though. When I tried getting a new passport again in 2006, I was reminded it would take months, and given the useful “permission to enter Russia” piece of paper mentioned above.

Which brings me to another aside. SIX to NINE months to get a new passport??? What do they do, grow special papyrus for the paper and hunt elusive squid for the ink? And then hand-make the paper and re-construct the printing press? Mail the passport back to Russia for processing, via geriatric pigeons? Inquiring minds want to know.

When I did enter Russia, we were told it would take three months to get a new passport. Not really viable, since I was leaving in three weeks. But miracle of miracles, a new passport could be obtained through a travel agency in an expedient manner. For a fee, of course. They DID NOT like that my old passport was issued by the Seattle consulate, and refused to transfer the matrimonial name part, which ties together the last name on my passport with the last name on my green card and the last name of my children. Bastards. And this ends this convoluted aside.)

To my surprise, the phone got picked up after 10 rings or so (usually, I either get a busy signal, or nobody answers. It is best to have a large chunk of time available before calling the Russian Consulate, and a strong thumb to hit the “redial” button over and over). I tried to explain my situation. I am always nice on the phone: I apologize for mistakes, I try to explain things, I am not rude or obnoxious. The consulate in Seattle is immune to my charms, though.

I made the mistake of starting with “when you renewed my passport a few years ago.” “We haven’t done anything like that for at least 20 years!” said the indignant lady on the other end. “Are you trying to say we did something illegal?”

Argh. This is going well. “No, no, no, not trying to say that at all. It’s actually not relevant. What IS relevant is the stamp you put in it with my married name.” “Stamp? We don’t do stamps. What are you trying to say???”

“I had to send you an apostilled and translated marriage certificate. You made a note in my passport with my married name. But that passport expired, and I got a new one in Russia. And they did not put the note in.”

“Oh.” She tells me the proper term for the matrimonial name addition. I have to mail a written request to the consul. With both passports, and a copy of the apostilled and translated marriage certificate. (Which, incidentally, is in Russia – Dad is going to try scanning it and emailing me the scans. If that fails, there is always FedEx. THEY can get stuff here next business day. Perhaps the consular pigeon-keepers should consider outsourcing.)

Then I make another mistake. “Do you know how long it will take?” I ask. “How long will it take, she wants to know! You haven’t even sent anything in yet!” Eeeeep. I could have sworn I am speaking Russian, but apparently it is not the right version. “No, no, no. I mean how long would it take to get processed once it gets to you?” Three to four days, I am told. The married name note is four words (MATRIMONIAL NAME: LASTNAME FIRSTNAME) and a consular stamp in the background. I should consider myself lucky they don’t need five days – one for each word, and one for the stamp.

And here we are. I have cobbled together a request for adding the married name note to my passport. It’s not very good, because I forgot what proper term to use. In the morning, I will go to FedEx and send out visa applications for the boys to a travel company in Georgia, and my plea for acknowledgment of my married name to the consulate in Seattle. God willing, all will come back before July 1.

And after we get back from Russia, I will call the consulate again. Because I am a glutton for punishment, and because I want to get Russian citizenship for the boys (will make traveling to Russia a lot easier, and they can go to the rest of the world with their US passport). Who knows, I might luck out and get a sympathetic consulate worker. I know they have them. I have talked to some of them before. They were nice. They liked my jokes. They HELPED. And even the lady yesterday – she did tell me what I needed to know, even if she felt the need to treat me like I was an idiot. Customer service oriented, most of them are not. I wonder why. It’s not a very bad job, is it? They have time off for Russian AND American holidays. The hours do not seem too ornerous. The office, from what I recall, was nice. Now if only the pesky Russians would stop bothering them :-)

We are at the 6-month mark. Time to see how the resolutions from January are doing ;-)

1. Be a better wife – not so good
2. Be a better mother – doing OK for a given value of “better”
3. Be a better friend – needs improvement
4. Be a better employee – would help if work decided to be a better employer first…
5. Get organized – so not happening
6. Take pictures of the kids every day, or at least every other day – changed to “Take pictures of the kids at least once a week”
7. Blog every day, or at least every other day – changed to “Blog at least twice a week”
8. Keep track of money – made some progress, realized we don’t have any money to keep track of, gave up in despair
9. Pay everything on time – automated all that could have been automated, took out a home equity loan to pay for everything else
10. Go through all the boxes in the house – sixth months, zero boxes. Not looking good.
11. Waste less time – doomed
12. Get American driver’s license – DONE. Hell reports first snowstorms in millenia.
13. Decide whether or not I want to apply for American citizenship this year – DONE. Not this year.
14. Send out S.’s birth announcements and Christmas cards – oh, forget the Christmas cards. Still hoping to get to the birth announcements.
15. Go through my clothes and get rid of at least some of them – not yet (see point below)
16. Lose 10 lbs – changed to “Get in shape.” Status: bought book to help self get in shape, proceeded to eat fattening foods and sit on ass. Result: bigger stomach and thighs. Why are we not surprised?
17. Not kill any more house plants – strategically killed off a few. The rest are still alive, and hoping to be repotted.
18. Videotape kids doing cute stuff at least once a week – changed to “Videotape kids at least twice a month.”
19. Clean and organize office at work; keep it that way – postponed until after I get back from vacation in August, since we are moving offices in July, and that’s a perfect time to organize everything how it should be.
20. Finish OGRE afgan for B. – no progress; think will take it to Russia with me.

DemonChild is at an “interesting” age. That is to say, his favorite word is “NO” and his solution to problems is throwing a giant temper tantrum. And when you add in the fact that he is STILL not talking in sentences, there are times DemonChild will try the patience of a saint, and saints we are definitely not.

At the other end of the spectrum are things that are cute once, but become a pain in the butt if overused. For example, DemonChild has figured out that you can see the picture we have just taken on the back of the digital camera. So now it is virtually impossible to take a photo of him, because the moment he sees us with the camera, he starts running towards it, screaming “demonchild! squeeker! alligator!” (harking back to the day he made this awesome discovery, when we took a picture of him running around with the toy alligator while Squeek stood at the toy table).

Or the fact that getting dressed in the morning or taking shoes off when we get home or going upstairs for diaper time now involves lots of chasing, screaming, giggling, and going limp at critical moments. All lots of fun, except when you are already running late and Squeeker is screaming his head off (or sleeping) and there is just no time for a fifteen-minute-long prelude to whatever it is we absolutely need DemonChild to do.

Oh the joys of parenthood. Kids need to come equipped with a leash and an off button :-)

Squeeker’s newfound mobility has made him a much happier baby. Also, apparently, a baby who once again wants to eat every two hours or so during the night. Take last night as an example. He was tired, so I nursed him around 7:30, and put him in the crib. Then he wanted to revisit the boob at 10:30. And at 12:00. And at 1:45. And at 3:15. Then he snoozed until 6:15, had his breakfast suckle, and by 8:15 or so felt an urgent need to make sure the boob was still there.

And then there is a matter of naps. There are those mythical “totally awesome naps” he occasionally takes at daycare – kid clonks out for three hours at a time. On the weekends, however, Squeek prefers to catnap as he nurses – two fun activities for the price of one, not to mention for the time of one. Last Sunday he did nap for over three hours, but that’s because he had managed to squeeker himself into total exhaustion, what with finally figuring out how to crawl forward.

I put him in the crib today, hoping against hope that he’ll nap. Happy little squeekerings coming from the room. When I went in to check on him, Squeektar was standing up in the crib, grinning. Methinks he wants to skip the whole crawling thing and go straight to walking upright.

Yesterday was E.’s last day at work. She is entering the exciting world of freelancing. Before leaving, she “promoted” me:

“Chief Priestess of the domain. Thou shalt smite those unworthy websites that gnaw at the underbelly of our holy site.”

Two E. quotes to go:

• “Send me the assless track photo when you get a chance”

• “I think we should all start writing e-mails in 1. the third person and 2. like we’re from an Arthurian legend.”

Good luck, E. Without you here, it’s a lot less fun.