Month: June 2005

Yuppie Times Two

I just did what I said I’d never do: I bought a side-by-side double stroller.

This one: Baby Trend Expedition Double

A few reasons:

#1. I have a LOT of trouble pushing the Jeep one we have — have to lift the entire back end, which is tough on my wrists. I have recurrent tendonitis in my wrists. So I need one that is easy to push. I tried all the front-to-back ones in my price range at Babies ‘R Us and they were all just as bad as the Jeep one at home — early impossible to turn. For comparison, I pushed a few singles (with Helen in them) just to be sure it wasn’t the floor causing the difficulty. Nope. Pushed the side-by-side standard strollers. Also hard to navigate. Tried a baby jogger for grins. Oh, wow. What a difference!

#2. Our Evenflo one that WAS easy to push has broken, and I can’t get their customer service to contact me about replacements for the broken part. The replacement part has also been removed from their website (it was there the first time I checked, but now is on indefinite backorder… Other reviews of the stroller indicate that this is pretty much a universal problem, so I don’t think the replacement parts will fix it anyway).

#3. Standard front-to-back double strollers have a weight limit of 40 pounds per child. Helen weighs about 36 pounds now. The baby jogger has a weight limit of 50 pounds per kid, so we could conceivably use it for a while.

#4. Jerry just signed up for the Disney Half Marathon and will need to be training. This way he can train AND get the kiddos out of my hair. 🙂

#5. The girls like to sit side-by-side in shopping carts and in the car. They hold hands a lot. It’s sweet.

The con that it’s WIDE and won’t fit through doors will be annoying, yes. But I don’t plan on bringing it inside anyway. I plan on walking OUTSIDE, when the girls wake me up hideously early. Might as well use that time for something constructive. And it’ll certainly fit in the back of my Subaru.

So. I have a Baby Jogger. I feel like such a yuppie.

Sopping Wet

This morning, Alice woke up at 6. I fed her and got dressed, and we went downstairs to the midlevel. She toddled around and I checked email and we waited for a little while for Helen to wake up. She didn’t. So I went back up, told Jerry that Alice and I were going for a walk, and that Helen would be coming up to bother him in a bit.

So, Alice and I embarked on our walk, Alice still in pajamas. She jabbered in Alicese for the trek up to my mom’s house, and as we got to Mom’s street, I saw Mom and her friend Susy heading towards us. So we joined them and walked for over an hour. It was fun, but MAN, I’m outta shape. Alice passed out about 40 minutes into the walk and snoozed for the rest of it (which I thought might affect her morning nap, but did not! Yay!).

It’s very very humid today (as if that’s different from any other day), but I was dripping when we got home at almost 8:30am. Ick. I feel good after my shower, though!

And tonight I’m going to my second water aerobics class at the pool down the street. Tuesday night was a lot of fun, and I’ve paid for the whole 10 weeks of the class. So pray for dry weather every Tuesday and Thursday night between 9 and 10pm. It’s really fun — they turn off all the overhead lights and just leave on the pool lights. This way the instructor can see what we’re doing better and we’re not staring up at the overhead lights when we’re watching her. And it’s a GREAT workout.

Hopefully I’ll see some of my squishy post-partum tummy go away. I used to always have a flat stomach; I miss those days. I *could* just do a million crunches every day, but that’s just not going to happen. I started the year with the resolution that I would do 100 crunches a day. I failed on January 2. Oops.

Feel the Power

Yesterday I dropped my cell phone and broke the LCD, so now the screen looks like stained glass. Mostly pretty shards of purple and blue. Loverly. The phone still functions as normal; I just can’t see the numbers I punch in, and I can’t tell who’s calling if the phone is open. And, horror of horrors, NO TEXT MESSAGING!!! This wouldn’t be so bad except that this (and email) is how Jerry and I communicate all day. We’re frequently sending text messages back and forth. It’s an addiction. Like all my other addictions.

So added to my List Of Stuff To Do was an impromptu trip to Verizon to see what their diagnosis would be.

Helen did not WANT to go run errands. She wanted to sit and watch the PeeWee Herman DVDs that godfather JD gave her for her birthday. But Mommy was a meanie.

As soon as Alice woke up from her morning nap, we hit the road. Verizon (I have insurance on the phone, so my replacement arrives tomorrow), junky fast food for lunch, the portrait studio to pick up Alice’s 9-months photos and purchase Helen’s 3-year photos, and then to the Great American Cookie Company in the mall to get Helen the Elmo cookie I promised her if she was good. Which she was, all things considered. She’s three, after all, which means that she’s got demons coursing through her veins, so all in all I was pleased with her performance this morning. We shall be renewing her contract.

After all that, she didn’t want an Elmo cookie. When faced with the choice of Elmo, Cookie Monster, or Oscar the Grouch, Helen HAD to have Oscar. So we got Oscar. And two chocolate chip cookies (one for Mommy and one for Alice). Then Helen wanted an M&M cookie — more than the Oscar cookie, which I had already paid for. So I got the M&M cookie and told her she could have Oscar after nap.

Then we went to Williams-Sonoma (happily eating cookies) and bought a wedding gift for the daughter of a friend. While we were waiting for the gift to be wrapped, Alice dropped part of her cookie on the floor (I had given her half a cookie, and she dropped about 2/3 of that), and then erupted in urgent, “Mum-mum-mum-MUM-MUM-MUM-MUMMMMM!” as she leaned over the edge of the stroller and gazed longingly at the confectionary bliss that was out of her reach on the floor. So we threw THAT away and I gave her the other half of her cookie, which she finished.

And THEN we came home for nap, which was foiled by a disagreement between Helen and Tango. Neither girl took much of a nap today — maybe about 30 minutes, tops.

I tried to give blood at the Red Cross, but I’m too anemic from nursing Alice… Got a T-shirt and two coupons for free stuff from Domino’s Pizza and Chick-Fil-A anyway, though, so that was cool.

Ran a few more errands (including purchasing steak at Publix — you know, to up my iron), and then came home. Drove all the way out to Madison with Logic in the back of the car for Dog Agility Class, only to find the building locked up tight and no one around. Huh. Drove all the way back. Took Helen to watch about 20 minutes of a swim meet that’s going on two doors down from our house. She thought THAT was cool.

So. Busy busy. Now you know why I haven’t posted until now. I know you’ve been obsessively hitting “refresh.”

Oh — and Oscar the Grouch, still uneaten, is now in the freezer for use as a bribe on another day. All Hail The Power Of The Cookie.