I’m back from surgery. Aside from the massive bruising and lumpiness on my body, it’s harder to tell I had children now. Not that I don’t wear those particular scars with pride. It was the stretchmarks that were killing me.

During my recovery haze, Lily hung out with me on the couch as much as her two-year old personality would allow. One of her favorite phrases from bad reality tv, repeated at a loud decibel: “Where are all you Bee-Otches?!?!?” (Slang for “bitches). Nice. Arden’s starting to talk, though her speech is all vowels and babbling. Still, she seems to think we can understand her and emphatically says “babababbababa” over and over again while making eye contact. The other day she said “YOBA!” and Lily thought that was hilarious. We don’t know what it means, but it sounds cool.

Lily seems to be doing well at her new school. She’s making new friends and soon the pool will be open. She can’t wait for that. She may end up not loving the pool as much as she did last year since I’ve enrolled her in swim lessons and the director of the program said that they generally cry and pitch a fit for the first few lessons . . . but after 6 lessons, they swim. It’s hard to imagine Lily swimming under the water and holding her breath, but this particular schools says they can learn to do it even younger. I just don’t have it in me to sign Arden up yet!

Yes, it’s been far too long. I got a yucky sinus/respiratory infection, and was out of it for the better part of the week waiting for the first round of antibiotics to work. They didn’t, I got worse, and two visits to the doctor later + one Z-pak, I’m feelin’ fine. I still sound like a 1-900 operator, but that has its perks.

I turned 34 today. It was pretty anti-climactic, as all birthdays beyond 21 have been. I worked all day, felt annoyed for most of the day, and got into an argument with someone within Association for Accounting Marketing about starting a local chapter here. I love it when people from outside of the state tell me all about the accounting firms within the state. Hello, I live here - and work in the industry. I’m, uh, familiar with the way things work around here.

Speaking of which, we now have some clients in Northern Virginia, and Jennifer and I both agree that it is very, very refreshing. Richmond is incestuous within the business community. Everyone knows everyone. It gets old after a while. It also has major benefits. It’s nice, however, to work with clients who don’t know the same people we do, and have no preconceived notions of who we are, or who we aren’t. The billing rates are nice, too.

Lily is doing fine, but killing my mother while we wait for Barony to have an opening for her. She poops in her diaper during naptime, removes it, and usually ends up splattering her bed with tidbits of excrement, all the while screeching happily, “Grammy/Mommy, I made a BIG poochie!” It’s disgusting and really, really irritating. I wish she’d screech BEFORE she pooped so I could put her on the toilet, but so far no luck. She is totally potty-trainable in terms of her maturity, speech, and understanding of the concept - it’s her iron-clad will that is keeping her from doing it. I wonder where that came from.

In a couple of weeks, Mike and the girls and I will descend on Aunt Dana and Uncle Richard and meet up with the Savage family at the Asheboro Zoo. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. We don’t get out much, so therefore, it doesn’t take much to thrill us. I haven’t seen Susan and Eddie and Jenna in a hundred million years, and I’ve yet to meet Colin, so that’s pretty exciting too.

My big brother Steve is here from Michigan, laying tile in both of our upstairs bathrooms and generally helping us out a ton with our big bathroom remodel (thank you tax return). I am hoping my few good connections down here will help convince him to move here permanently. The more family, the better. Good lord, did I just say that?

Today I realized that we really need a vacation. With the exception of one night away before Arden was born, Mike and I have not taken a vacation since we went skiing in Colorado. That was when I found out I was pregnant with Lily. I need 7-10 days off. No email, no telephone, no work. I feel fried and crispy, but we’ve got a lot of work product to shove out the door before the end of the summer. Thankfully Sara has been helping us out. She’s a project manager above all project managers, and every day, Jennifer and I thank the lord above for her presence. She has saved our sanity and maybe one of these days she’ll make some money with her own company - I don’t doubt she’ll be extremely successful if she puts her mind to it. If anyone needs a professional organizer, she’s the one to straighten you up.

Lily is home sick - again. I assume that all children in their first year of public daycare/schools go through this, but it seems excessive. I feel so badly for her. I feel badly for Mike and I too. This comes on the heels of trying to decide whether to move Lily to a new daycare or not. Considering many of the good ones have a one-two year waiting list, the other options aren’t all that thrilling. At least by fall she should be able to get a space at our first choice. In the meantime, we’re surviving and so is she.

Somebody asked me recently how I’m able to balance work and motherhood. Apparently the answer is, not very well. I think we all do the best we can. My friend Kelly has the right idea - she hired her daughter’s Goddard School teacher away as a nanny. No dealing with other sick kids or parents who knowingly bring their sick kids to school. On the other hand, the main reason I wanted to send Lily to daycare was for the social interaction piece. That has definitely been good for her.

Arden is still not sleeping through the night. We’ll try rice cereal again, and then maybe some fruits and vegetables. We aren’t getting a lot of sleep, and when we do, it’s punctuated by screaming outbursts from one or both of the kids. I don’t really know why she’s not able to go all night without eating. Perhaps she has her mother’s love for food.

Uncle Sal is here and ready to golf. I’m hoping the rain holds off on Friday so Mike can go with him. He needs some downtime. My dream vacation right now would be to stay in bed for 8-10 hours undisturbed.

I tried to blog from the Richmond Airport while waiting for the flight to Detroit, but something locked up and I lost the entire post. Oh well. Richmond has wireless internet, and I hijacked Jennifer’s laptop while she was going back to the car to find things I had forgotten to bring with us.

It’s good to be back, although the event in Detroit went well. I met the world’s biggest jerk while there - he worked for the firm. He put a new face and meaning to the words “pompous”, “rude”, and “unpleasant”. I told Jennifer that my mission in life is to somehow use him as an example when training attorneys on how NOT to act. I will find a way one of these days - I guarantee it. Our latest e-alert that is going out next week was based on another unpleasant experience we had with a client - they got us involved at the last minute and then were complaining about their results. Duh . . . no planning at the outset means a crappy campaign, unless you get really lucky.

It was great seeing Steve, Kim and Vader. I crashed at their house in St. Clair Shores and drank their tasty carbonated water and played around on the MLS with Kim while she looked for a new house. I love their house - it reminded me of our first house back in the days when we could live in the city without even thinking about the quality of the schools. Our the proximity of Wal-Mart to our house. We’ll be in our current house for at least another couple of years. In the meantime I just try to breathe every time I get claustrophobic looking out at the cul-de-sac and my neighbors as they all frantically breed and upgrade from minivan to minivan.

Lily’s new trick is to take off her pajamas and diaper and poop on her quilt. She thinks it’s hilarious. Two nights in a row now - NOT hilarious. Mike finally swatted her on the rump tonight when she took her diaper off again. I don’t know what that’s all about. It seems to me that if she is able to take off her pants and diaper and needs to go to the bathroom, she should be calling our names. However, I guess it’s more fun to just poop on the bed instead. It gets us running, that’s for sure.

Arden is sweeter than ever - thank god. She’s really easy going and generally very happy. This week has been a test for all of us. Lily was so sick, with a high fever and a very bad cold that turned into an ear infection. So far Arden hasn’t gotten it. I had to leave for Detroit at the pinnacle of her sickness, which made me feel awful and I constantly worried about her while I was gone. Thankfully mom and dad pitched in and watched her so Mike didn’t have to miss work. Between his mom’s death, his “I don’t want no mo’ kids” surgery and Lily’s illnesses, he’s missed a ton of work. Lily is feeling better, but she’s very devilish these days and into everything. There have been many wonderful things about daycare. She is definitely more social, knows how to play with other kids, and understands the concept of sharing. She also knows how to spit, hit, and have temper tantrums. “No” is still her favorite word. I do think if my first choice preschool has an opening that I will move her there in the fall - there are some things I really don’t like about Tuckaway. Thankfully I love her main teacher and so does Lily. For now, it works out just fine.

We got to play outside today - the weather finally feels spring-like. Lily played on her swing set and I put Arden in the front pack and we watched Mike stain and seal the deck. We have so much yardwork to do - it’s not funny. I think we must have 100 bags of leaves to rack up and I’m not exaggerating. That and the normal mulching and digging new plant beds - it’s going to take some time. Did I mention I haven’t cleaned the house lately either?

Cristin is coming for Easter weekend. We’ll try to do some fun things and entertain her while she’s here. Mike even suggested getting a babysitter - wow, an adult meal without having to worry about coloring or kid’s menus?!? Sounds heavenly to me . . .

Lily is a total nutball, in case any of you didn’t realize this by now. I got a call from her daycare center this morning. Conversation is as follows.

“Hello, Ms. Del Bueno?”

“Yes?”

“This is Samantha at Tuckaway. I’m sorry to bother you, but I wanted to let you know that Lily has been telling me her ear hurts.”

“Yes, she’s been saying the same to us. We think it’s because she had an ear infection a couple of weeks ago and we’ve continued to ask her if her ear is bothering her. We also talked about going to the pediatrician tomorrow morning to make sure everything is okay with her ear, and she’s obsessed about that now. She’s had a full course of antiobiotics so I doubt she still has an ear infection at this point.”

“Great, but I wanted to call you because when I asked her why her ear hurt, she told me that she “shoved a pen in her ear”. Is this possible?”

“Umm, she’s had no access to pens on the way to daycare - did she have any access there?”

“No, Ms. Del Bueno, but I always check because one time a little boy here told me his ear felt like there were rocks in it. We had a good laugh, only to find out later he’d shoved a pebble into his ear canal. So we wanted to make sure she hadn’t been putting pens in there.”

(end transcript)

Can you imagine a 2 year old telling someone that she shoved a pen in her ear?!? These people must think we are insane - first because she keeps asking for coffee in the morning, and now because she’s shoving sharp instruments into her ears (or at least telling people she is). I’ll be lucky if we make it to the end of the year without Child Protective Services coming to investigate us. I’m heading out shortly to pick up the wild one herself, and her equally wild sister. I wonder what kind of report I’ll get tonight . . .