Andi’s exciting life.

It’s that time again. Time for a huge catchup post because I’ve fallen behind. This time I’m even more behind than usual because something went horribly wrong with my Wordpress. I couldn’t log into my own blog, but thankfully Matt straightened it out. Now I can fill you in on the last couple months.

1. We thought we didn’t get into any preschools because we only applied to two and we were waitlisted at both. We thought we’d hang around at Slippery Fish for another year, but then we got a call from Playmates at the end of May with the good news that a 3-day morning spot opened up for Falco. We were thrilled to accept, and Falco will start there at the end of August. It’s a co-op, so I’ll work one morning and he’ll be there without me two mornings each week.

2. At the beginning of June, Falco fell down a step at school and broke his clavicle! It was very sad, and he had a rough couple days. He didn’t need a sling or anything, so we just had to wait for it to heal. He bounced back incredibly quickly. Within a week he was only guarding it a little, and after three weeks he seemed like nothing ever happened.

3. A few days after Falco’s injury, I got rear ended again, smashing the rear window again. The dude who hit me wanted to pay for it on his own, and I went to a body shop where he knew the owner. The guy ended up getting a black door that he could swap out so it was a cheap fix, which was fine with me. However, now the back door doesn’t quite match, it isn’t water tight (which I need to get fixed), and the exhaust makes a weird noise. It just passed 100,000 miles and is looking a little worse for wear, so I’m hoping to trade up for a Prius soon anyway.

4. We went to Mississippi last week, and Falco did great. The flights were 1,000 times better than last time, and he slept well and was cute and fun. We stayed in a fancy pants condo on the beach with a gorgeous pool, and that made for a nice getaway. It was really nice to see my family, and I was especially glad Falco got to see his great grandma, Ma-Ma Hazel, who is about to be 97!

5. The pets are all fine. Rosco is back on meds for his only eye, and he has regained some vision. Adelaide is stable on her current meds and pretty much acts like a civilized pet again, though I don’t really trust her alone in the house. Miu is still around and unremarkable.

I think that’s all the exciting news I have to share, and people probably stopped reading a couple paragraphs ago anyway. Stay tuned for photos TOMORROW!

As you may have been able to tell from my tale of tears, last weekend wasn’t great. Falco had a tough week of hitting his friends, telling me to go away, and generally demonstrating how terrible two can be. Fortunately, this week he was an adorable, delightful child, and I am no longer considering putting him up for sale. When he’s good and sweet, he’s off the charts cute. Today the three of us had a great day, and I am once again relishing motherhood. Falco’s bad days (weeks) are rough, but the good days make it all so, so worth it.

Matt’s startup, Cubetree, has been in stealth mode for over a year. Today was the official public launch, and it’s all very exciting. Check it out (for free!) and invite some coworkers.

Nothing says Mother’s Day like your 2-year-old driving you to tears. Tonight at dinner, Falco said to me, “Go away, Mommy. Leave me alone.” I told him that it wasn’t nice to say things like that and if he did it again he couldn’t have a cookie (which I baked earlier and he was begging for throughout dinner). He told me again, “Leave me alone,” so I took away his dinner, which he wasn’t eating anyway, and told him to get down from the table with no cookie. I’m sure there’s no way that punishing my kid for pushing me away could backfire.

As soon as I got him down from the table, I went outside and started sobbing in the backyard. This is my baby. He used to want only me for everything, so it cut deep for him to tell me to go away. This is the first time he’s ever hurt me with words like that, and I know it’s just the beginning. I think I preferred it when he hit me if he was upset.

While writing this, I remembered that Mowgli in The Jungle Book says, “Go away! Leave me alone!” and turns away exactly like Falco did to me. I just bought him that movie a couple weeks ago, and he loves it. He watched it this morning, so he was probably just mimicking that. If movies are going to teach him crap like that, I think we’ll go back to only watching Oswald, a show about being over-the-top polite and friendly.

Matt’s giving Falco a bath and putting him to bed tonight because I was on the verge of crying every time I looked at him. I’ve got to toughen up if I’m going to deal with him telling me he hates me when he’s a teenager.

I’ve collected a few funny things Falco has been doing lately that I want to write down before he grows up and stops being unreasonably cute.

What’s not funny is that he’s losing a lot of his cute mispronunciations. “Mama” for banana was one of his first words, but he recently started saying banana like a normal person. Same goes for “appy” for apple, “pow-powf” for pacifier, “peapock” for peacock, etc. I don’t care for this new speech improvement. Soon he’ll be reading and writing and shaving and moving out.

Are you like me in that you depend on your husband to find all your new music, counting on him to look for new quirky, upbeat, probably British, indie pop bands? Well, you might not be exactly like me, but maybe you don’t know where to find new music. Head on over to CD Baby and see what you can find! There you can browse ridiculously specific genres and listen to samples, read reviews, and download MP3s. As I type this, I am downloading three CDs of bands I never would have known about unless Matt happened to find them, and I can’t wait to hear more. Check it out!

A few times lately, I’ve caught glimpses of my reflection and worried that I’m just a few burritos away from seeing zoomed in footage of my belly on a CNN story about obesity. The question is, what do I do about it? I’m not going to give up wine or burritos or chevre or wine or pizza or wine, that’s for sure. I used to be able to lose a few pounds by skipping breakfast a few days in a row, but now that I’m past thirty, it’s not so easy, and I hear it only gets worse. So, this means, ugh, adding exercise to the picture.

Fortunately, I have good friends who go to a good gym. After going as their guest to the very nice, new UCSF gym a couple of times to take our kids swimming, I joined with the aspiration of working out at least twice a week. Tomorrow is the big day. I’m meeting two of said peeps to go to a spinning class. Falco is prepped that he is going to stay for an hour at their kids’ club with two of his friends from school, and I am going to do my best to not have a heart attack while trying to keep up with my two athletic pals. I hope to live to tell you how it goes.

Today I was grateful for Falco’s poorly-pronounced baby talk. We were alone waiting in a very small lobby while our car was getting an oil change, and another customer came in. He was an Asian surfer bum type, with bleached, long, shaggy hair. Falco stood staring at him with great interest for a while and then started asking me (loudly), “Is this a lady? Is this a lady?” Luckily, it sounded more like, “Is iss a waywee? Is iss a waywee?” so I don’t think the dude knew what he was saying. When I wouldn’t really answer him, he then started asking “Is iss a man? Is iss a man?” I tried to change the subject, Falco went back to staring, and I’m pretty sure the guy was oblivious to the whole thing.

Mental note: I am going to serve Shirley Temples to the kids at Falco’s third birthday party. I’m not sure what theme that would fall under exactly. Something about umbrellas? Or Communism? I have eight months to come up with something.

Someone (thanks, Mom) pointed out to me today that I have not updated my blog in a while. I KNOW. Despite my new year’s resolution to write a post at least weekly, I get busy and tired and just don’t take the time to write. At some point, I am going to have to admit that I am a working mom, not just a stay-at-home mom, because my part-time job takes up all my free time during the day (my messy house is proof). I used to spend Falco’s nap time doing things like cleaning and blogging, but now I spend every scrap of time I have trying to cram several hours’ worth of work into two or three hours. I’m not complaining: I’m making money, don’t have to find childcare, and learning a ton of new stuff. I’m just giving my excuse for letting “Andi’s Exciting Life” fall through the cracks.

ANYWAY, since I last wrote, we have had Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and our twelfth anniversary. Falco talks like crazy, goes in and out of hitting phases, and is ridiculously cute and funny and tiring. The pets are driving me nuts, and I’m on pins and needles waiting to get acceptance/rejection letters from the two preschools we’ve applied for this fall. Matt is good. I’m good. Life is good.

Pictures will follow to document all of the above.