Controlled Chaos

Well, I can't guarantee this blog will be very "motherhood-ish", but it's more of a "day in the life". My blog, my rules.

Two years back, Natalia and Jeremy had surgery within one week of each other and I vowed at that time, never again. As in, never again are two Lacows allowed to have surgery within a short time period. In true Lacow form, we broke that rule. 

You see, Jeremy and I are living out our geriatric dream of having busted up joints in young 30 something bodies. I have a jacked knee, which I had some arthroscopic surgery done on my birthday (of all days), followed two weeks later by Jeremy having hardware removed from his foot. Yep, we are a sexy crew. Let me painfully elaborate.

My knee was keeping me from doing two things dear to my heart - Jillian Micheal's Ripped in 30 and wearing high heels. Not to mention walking on the sand once a year was painful. Something obviously had to be done, right?! So it was off to the orthopedist after me whining about this bum knee for five years. It just so happened the available date for The Knee God Surgeon was on my birthday. Oh, did I mention Jeremy had planned a surprise birthday party for me that day? Well, it was a surprise until he freaked out about the planning and had me start planning it myself. Any who, I had heard that getting a knee "cleaned out" was no big deal and that after 3 days people were back to work, normal, happy, cured, whatever. Yeah, I think you know where I am going with this. 

The day of my surgery (ie my birthday) was also Natalia's first day of school. At a new school. With a new bus route. With new friends. This is bigger than surgery in my book, so I drove myself to the hospital and had Jeremy stay with Natalia to see her to the bus and rally her for the first day. My plan was to steal one of my night shift friends away from the ER at 6am to do some pre-surgical hand holding. Of course this is the morning that a couple of people decide to shoot each other and someone else was intubated in another room. Needless to say, no friendly nurses to spare, so I made the walk of shame to pre-op on my own. Jeremy showed up sometime while I was in surgery and was there when I awakened..... with a non-rebreather mask on and covered in hives from the antibiotic they gave me. Oops. Nothing a little Decadron and oxygen couldn't handle.

Since I was convinced this surgery was cake and Jeremy is not used to party planning, I helped clean the house a couple hours after I got home from surgery. Hey! It was just a knee thing. We had our little party gathering (costumes and all), but by 10:30 I let everyone know that I was down for the count. Holy cow I was sore. Not to mention I stayed sore and not for just 3 damn days. Ohhh, no, no, no. When I went in for my post-op appointment I found out why. Evidently my cartilage in my knee was a bit more complicated than just a "touch up". I spent two weeks on my tush - pouting. No, I should not have been cleaning the house or vacuuming the same day as my surgery.

On a good note, at least Natalia is back in school, so I am not feeling totally guilty for being a couch potato these last two weeks. I have to say that her new teacher is awesome. Homework is so organized that Natalia can actually do it by herself without me having to spoon feed assignments to her. Amazing, right?! Okay, so let me recap some mommy daughter stuff since I haven't blogged in a while and my last blog was all "sad clown face" stuff:

The day before my surgery we hit the fair. We wised up this year and got the "ride until you puke" bracelets. Jeremy shouldn't have bothered because he evidently does not like to puke. I only came close to vomiting once on the Viper, but I had just had a beer. Classic. Natalia peer pressured me into going on the upside down rides which were totally fun. It's not that I don't like going upside down, or that it makes me sick. Let me just tell you that I have taken care of these carny folk a time or two and I totally don't trust the craftsmanship of rides put together by a man with a positive drug screen and a blood alcohol level of 0.25. We obviously lived to tell the tale. Can I tell you something else? I milked a cow. That's right! Yes, yes. Natalia milked her too, but I milked a cow. I don't know why I'm so impressed since I produced my own milk for half a year, but at the time it was the coolest thing ever. Natalia totally squirted the woman manning the "cow milking station" in the face. I thought it was funny. Hey, we got stickers and everything. Got milk?

Natalia has adjusted to her new school super well. Just so you know, the back of the bus is still THE coveted place to sit. Yep, that's where the cool kids want to hang and if you happen to go to Christine Donnell, then you get first dibs because Silver Sage kids get picked up second. It's kind of a big deal. Also, Porter has looked at Natalia AND asked to borrow her pencil eraser. She is expecting him to kiss her on the cheek next, but I let her know that boys that age really don't roll like that. I told her he is more likely to punch her in the arm. She was kind of disappointed, but said she would keep hoping. I tried to explain to her that boys that age just don't think about girls in that romantic kind of way at all. She just looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. I thought it best to change the subject. 

There is still an ongoing fascination with squirrels on the playground. Again, these are the animal varietal, not the strange human kind. I clarified. At her new school they no longer make "habitats", instead the girls gather nuts and acorns during recess, leave it in a pile where they think the squirrels may frequent, then recheck these areas during the next recess to see how much squirrel activity is going on. Natalia is very serious when she talks about this squirrel research. I asked why she cares so much and she looked at me with this distasteful and incredulous look and stated "They need food for the winter mom!" Um, okay. Sorry, but squirrels are rats with fluffy tails and are disgusting. We shall agree to disagree on the squirrel quarrel.

Lastly (for reals), it is amazing how independent Natalia has become over the summer. She scooters two blocks to her friends house and shows up later, usually after dinner. Then she'll head out again across the street until just before bed. The truth is, she would rather play with her friends than just hang out at home with Jeremy and I. No, I'm not obtuse, but up until this summer, she would have a couple play dates, but would mostly hang with Jer and I. Not so much anymore. She apologizes for it a bit because she says she misses us. Awe. Isn't she so cute you want to eat her up? I tell her that she's supposed to want to ditch us for her friends and that we'll always be here. I love having kids running in and out of our house, the phone calls back and forth, the impromptu sleep overs and friends over for dinner. Love it! It makes our house a home. I love the controlled chaos of children and pets and family. We have another Disneyland trip coming up the first week of December. Every vacation is super special with the three of us, but Jeremy and I were talking about how much we are really going to appreciate this one. We know that Natalia loves her friends time, but we are going to covet our time with her as our little Lacow trio where we get her all to ourselves. No friends, no boys, no squirrels. Just us, churros, Disney and "rides till you puke". 

Clarity and Corn Mazes

I love fall because this is when I know I get to gear up for the holidays and our yearly family vacation. Jeremy and I are pretty blatant about the fact we vacation on the off season because our goal is to get away from people. Can you blame us? Both of us have jobs that frequently involve humans who smell like blood and regurgitated alcohol, who scream at us. We are going to pull our sweet cherub out of school to sneak away while the majority of the populous is otherwise occupied with jobs and school. You would think this would keep the blood and alcohol thing to a minimum. Go figure, but it's job security for both of us.

So what has been going on? Well, first and foremost, Natalia has got glasses. Not those sneaky non-prescription "attitude" glasses that show up in school pictures unbeknownst to the parenthood until the photos are sent home and we can't pick our kid out of the student lineup. Nope, the real thing. Natalia asked "Mom, do you notice how every pair I try on looks good on my face?" Yes, baby. I know. She posed this as a questions, but I think she was saying more as a statement. How does Natalia explain the marvel of her new clarity? "Mom! I can see the makeup on their faces.  Can you see the makeup on their faces?" This is her observation of the actors on TV from the table viewing area during dinner. Aw, poor thing. It is sad not to be able to see all the great makeup options during "Once Upon a Time". The princesses are so pretty. I do like how she thinks her vision is not only improved, but now must be better than Jeremy or mine. We just go with it because she is an 8 year old girl and there are plenty of battles during the day to be waged. It's about the war people, not every battle is won.

Other than that, family outings have included hiking in the foothills (which was her pick and she complained about the exertion the entire time) and the corn maze hosted by Jeremy's work. We were kind of disappointed this year because there were some budget cuts and we missed out on our annual bag of donuts. We did however indulge in the roasted corn. Um, two ears of corn that we swap back and forth between the three of us. I don't know which ear started where, but we all end up happy with junk stuck in our teeth. This year they had tether balls set up. What started out as a cute "just hitting it back and forth" to play with Natalia, got all competitive in a take-your-jacket-off and throw it down kind of way. It was a bit of a spectacle, but Jeremy and I get a little carried away, much to Natalia's annoyance. What can I say? You meet someone in high school and you just stick with that same playful competitive mentality - even into middle age. Or maybe that is just us.

I actually hate the corn maze part. It is five miles boring to me. You walk around, it is five degrees cooler, I'm waiting for Satan and Malachi from Children of the Corn to come out, and it is really just a time waster because I have no sense of direction and can't read that map. Here is what I have learned to do as a solution - put Natalia in the lead and follow her. You would think we would get totally lost, but this child has her father's sense of direction. She leads us here and there, but after ten minutes always finds her way back to the original path and out of the maze from the same place we started EVERY TIME. Now her sense of direction isn't so great as for her to know that we are right back where we started and she feels this tremendous sense of accomplishment and Jeremy and I tell her how amazing she is. See. Everyone wins.

This year we actually bought pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. I'm a girl who loves options, so there was a patch side for baby pumpkins, regular pumpkins, and designer pumpkins. Now we didn't know about the afore mentions budget cuts ahead of time and didn't bring a lot of cash with us, so we headed over to the baby side. Now that I think of it, those pumpkins are still in the bottom of my purse and cost us a whopping $.35. That's right. Big ballers. 

So here I am hanging out, just me and the dog because Natalia has ditched me once again for her friends. She is sleeping over at Kayla's because Kayla wouldn't be down with my Halloween decorations. Natalia is very proud of them and isn't bothered by my "stab man" sillhouette. Halloween is more fun now that she is older and I can make the decorations more scary, but the payoff is that her costumes for the next few years will always be mostly pretty. I am kind of tired of explaining Draculora to my friends and where she falls on the Disney Princess to Bratz doll skank scale. Oh well. I remember wanting to dress like Madonna and singing "Like a Virgin" and "Papa don't Preach". It could be worse. 

Speaking of Disney, our vacation is only five weeks away. Finally Jeremy and I will have Natalia all to ourselves for a week without the option of her ditching us for her friends. It will be Thanksgiving, Disney, then right on into Christmas. After that there is nothing to do but snowboard the winter away.