I really suck at blog maintenance

But I'll try to get caught up here. We had a new addition to our herd, Andrea Regan was born 6lb12oz on September 4th. Puts her halfway between Miss Shelby and The Boy as far as birthdays go. She is THE most calmest baby EVAR. And she does this thing with her eyebrows. The toddlers have both adjusted. Lucas is always helpful to let us know AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS that "Daddy, daddy, daddy, baby crying, baby crying!!!" Meghan (the mean girl) is happy to deliver a binky to the baby anytime. We now have five binkys in the house, and we actually know where all five are for once.

Oh, and we moved in July. Bought a house this time, no more renting for us. Owner financed a 4/1 with a GIANT master bedroom addition in a small town, southeast Hill County. We're now far enough from Dallas-Fort Worth to ignore the BS that goes on up there, yet we're close enough for Mama's work. We're also a half hour from Waco and about fifteen minutes from Hillsboro. This lets us do our shopping locally for the most part, since even Waco has wonderful places like H-E-B and Best Buy and Sears. :)

The herd has adjusted well from moving...again...and the school seems to be on track. They fired the science teacher already, because he refused to go by the state-set curriculum. He wanted to use the 7th-8th grade science book for ALL grades. Which of course meant he didn't have enough books to go around and Miss Shelby ended up with photocopied pages in a binder. TEA didn't like that and now he's working the counter at a 7-Eleven. Probably making more money, too, but that's beside the point.

Mama took a couple of weeks working a second job at Starbucks, which was great for the coffee, not so much for her sanity and a few other things, but she may or may not return in about a week. I tried really hard to find a seasonal job, and I did have one for Black Friday weekend, a temp position selling floor care items and power tools (o rly?) and of course, Monday morning, temp agency calls to let me know the position is cancelled. I should have expected they only wanted extra help for the one weekend. I should not have worked as hard as I did to sell $3500 of power tools in those 4 days.

The Jellybean is gone, thank God, and all we have is the Suburban. Oh and a Torino. *bats eyelashes*. My loving wife went on eBay, spent $355, and bought me my dream car, a 1976 4-door Gran Torino. White on blue. In Oklahoma. And then she spent $320 to have it brought here. It does run, it does drive, it does need quite a bit of work but nothing I can't handle. I've made a few repairs to it already and I'm only a few bits away from roadworthiness. Battery, battery cables, a high beam headlight, a parking brake ratchet mechanism springy thing, and a pair of 16" wiper blades, and it SHOULD pass inspection. Wish me luck. Oh, and she bought this car for me from her LAPTOP in the HOSPITAL before DELIVERING our latest BABY!!! Is that love or what?

My question is, if my wife and I get into it in the back of the Torino, would it be a threesome?

I'm way under 500 here...

Lucas has decided today is naked day.  I'm not sure what put him into this mood.  First thing this morning he goes potty.  Perfect.  That's what I want to see.  Then since we're out of pull-ups at the moment, another diaper goes on.  It lasted about an hour and then it was off.  So I put another on him and ten minutes later it's off.  I add shorts to the next diaper and that also lasted about ten minutes.  I add a shirt and shorts to the next one and it's all off in a few minutes.  I give up.  He knows where to pee.  Hopefully his makeshift stepstool (a kitchen pot turned upside down) will hold up.

Meghan is fascinated by everything today.  Sing Along Elmo, a fake toy cell phone, one of Lucas's cars, and a throw pillow.  All have captured her attention for at least 15-20 minutes each.  Now she has found a little cake shaped magnet that plays Happy Birthday.  This little toy has been around our various homes for YEARS.  The batteries JUST WON'T DIE.  It played on for a half hour this morning fussing at the kids to stop playing with it.  Then I realized I was SITTING on it.  Now that it's out of my makeshift computer seat (a bag of clothes on top of a laundry basket full of toys), the baby found it.  Joy.  Maybe she'll conveniently LOSE it somewhere like the six binkies we've gone through in the last few months.

Speaking of binkies, I broke down and bought her another two-pack of them to help with getting her to sleep.  I really want to ween her off these things.  But maybe since she's decided to pick her nose all the time recently, having her suck on a thumb or finger would be a bad idea.  So maybe I'm a bad parent, bowing to the desires of my child rather than the needs, but until things are settled here in the new house and we have more of the things we need to make us comfortable and feeling at home, little things like binkies might have to make do.

Who we are...and a blurb about wet wipes...

So we're out of baby wipes, and I'm sick of washing washcloths, so we're using wet paper towels until payday.  I have decided that I absolutely refuse to change any more diapers without some form of DISPOSABLE wiping products, be them Swipers, generic wipes, or damp paper towels.  The washcloth thing is cramping my style.  Case closed.

I'm throwing out names randomly here on this weblog, so maybe I should clarify who everyone is...

Daddy - 29 (for now), Alan, Occupant, employed part-time, student full-time, drives The Moose II

Mama - 33 (again, for now), Amy, Honey, TheWife, full-time student and supervisor, drives The Jellybean

Izzy - 15, lives with her daddy up yonder, has a learner's permit

Kri-kri - 13, oldest living with us, big sports player

Miss Shelby - 8, 9 soon, will be in 4th grade in the fall

The Boy - 6, 7 soon, will be in 1st grade in the fall

Lucas - 2 1/2, my first son, big car nut like Daddy

Meghan - 1, my first daughter, more stubborn than her mother, binky 12-step program dropout

Andrea - -2 months, due 9/6 but we're hoping for sooner, and she's NOT TWINS!

Bebaw - almost as old as our house, mother of Mama, drives Bebaw's Truck, works full-time, technically lives in Houston

Mom - older than our house, mother of Daddy, lives in Ohio (1200 miles of joy), works full-time, drives a Buick (her 3rd white Century in this lifetime)

Dad - also older than our house, father of Daddy, lives in Ohio (1200 miles of pain), works full-time, drives a Camry

Pantallideth - 28 or so, friend of the family, used to work for Mama, will be the partner in Two Fat Guys Automotive

Two Fat Guys Automotive - when Daddy gets around to starting his car lot/junkyard/auto repair facility, this is the name Panties and I picked.

Amyco - wholly owns all of the above subsidiaries ,see "Mama"

The Moose II - 1988 GMC Suburban, gray and maroon, 454 TBI and you feel every pound of torque.  8-passenger at the moment (technically 5 since the 3rd seat is on our porch) but I'll get around to throwing a bench up front to give us our 9 seat belts we need when Izzy visits and after the newest is born.

The Jellybean - 1999 Ford Taurus, dark blue, a little more than halfway paid for (although we've already given them double what it's worth, maybe triple), and our primary mode of transportation.

Other vehicles I may reference in this blog...

The Van Of Questionable Mechanical Integrity - 1991 Ford Aerostar, what I was driving when I met Mama, what I lived in for awhile the prior winter, and everything on it broke but the engine while I had it.

The Steel Turtle - 1979 Oldsmobile 88 sedan in cash money green, a $500 beater that got me through spring 2008 quite well.

Royale With Cheese - 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 coupe in white, a $400 beater that got me through fall 2005 and spring 2006 quite well.

Milkshake - 1989 Chevrolet Celebrity sedan, a $300 beater that gained me $633 in inspection/tags tickets, kept me from getting a Class A CDL, and got us all sorts of tickets from FTW while we lived up there.  Milkshake is the condition of the oil, a blown head gasket parked it and I scrapped it instead of fixing it up, and fixed up an $800 Intrepid with two blown head gaskets instead.

Strong Bad III - 1971 Ford F-250 pickup in mustard yellow, also called Frenchie, a $1000 truck with no brakes that helped us move to Cleburne and took out the trash from summer to winter 2007.

Strong Bad II - 1970 Ford F-100 pickup EXACTLY the way I wanted it, stolen from me October 2004, but since I hadn't titled it yet, police wouldn't let me file.

Strong Bad I - 1967 Ford F-100 pickup, nice but automatic, my first pickup truck in 1997.

RANT: Wal-Mart Prices

OK, Wal-Mart generally has very good prices on their items.  And they are willing to price match other stores.  BUT NOT other Wal-Marts.  My wife purchased two air conditioners from the Hillsboro Wal-Mart recently to supplement the one I bought off eBay for $25 last month.  It works fine in one of the small bedrooms but wasn't nearly enough for the master bedroom or living room.  So she bought a 5050BTU unit for $109 for the living room and a 10KBTU unit for $208 for the master bedroom.

On one of our grilling demo weekends we were in the Waxahachie and Burleson Wal-Marts and noticed the EXACT same 10K AC unit for $40 less than what we paid.  We also noticed milk was $4.13 a gallon at our store and $3 a gallon at these others.  So the next time we went to Hillsboro, we asked for $3 a gallon milk (since HEB and Brookshire's and others do that) and got it.  We figured, why not do the same thing with the AC unit?  We took it our receipts and they told us basically to get lost, that they don't compete with their own stores, only with competing stores.

Our next step now is to pull the AC unit out of the window, the one I spent a half hour carrying heavy stones to the side of the house to make a makeshift weight-distributing tower for, and take it back to Hillsboro for a refund.  Then we'll go to the Cleburne or Burleson store and buy the $168 AC and put it up instead.  The Hillsboro Wal-Mart will have to sell this unit at a discount since it's opened and used, or they'll have to salvage it out to Liquidation.com or something.  And we'll probably buy it back again and toss it in the living room :)

Occupant Ilied Industries: 2

Wal-Mart in Hillsboro: -1

Pnw3d!

Shapes And Colors

I have been severely aware for a couple of months now that my 2-year old son, Lucas, is quite able and interested in opening the fridge to see what he can find.  Most of the time, he'll grab an apple, rinse it off in the sink, peel off the sticker (you have no idea the number of places I have found these stickers), and eat the thing down to the core.  But sometimes he sees other things he wants, and if he can't open/consume/drink/destroy it himself, he'll bring it to me or my wife.

Tonight the victim was a package of turkey lunch meat.  He brings the whole unopened package to me and says, "Daddy, curkey!"  So I take it from him, return to the kitchen, and give him a slice.  He says, "Daddy, CIRCLE!!!".  And yes, it's a circle.  "Daddy, curkie CIRCLE, hahahaha!"  And within a few seconds, it's gone.  Nom nom nom nom...

I just like the fact that he figures out these shapes and colors and names on his own now.  Circles, triangoos, skares, reds, boos, geens, yay-yos.  He can even pick out white, gray, and black.  Any pickup truck in silver or bronze or pewter is Bebaw's truck.  Bebaw is grandma.  Pepaw is grandpa.  Hell, any pickup truck is Bebaw's truck but then he CORRECTS himself and says "Bebaw's truck but WHITE".  Suburbans are Daddy's truck.  Green old beaters are Daddy's car, even though Daddy's car sold a month ago.  Blue Tauruses 1996 and newer are Mama's car.  And in case you forgot, Mama's car is Boo.

Another quote from him earlier, when he wandered into or bedroom where Meghan was taking a nap in her PackNPlay, "Daddy, Maymay id CRYING!"  Of course, Meghan is crying because he reached into the PackNPlay and woke her up somehow, and Meghan is now looking at me to say, "Daaeeee, bub bub aw rrrRRROOOOOOOWWWRRrrr!"  Loosely translated, that means, "Daddy, my brother just woke me up from my nap AND I WANT TO KILL HIM DEAD!!!"

She's the cutest thing you know, just bubbly and full of energy and now that she walks EVERYWHERE she talks and tells me about what she sees while walking through the house, waddling like she's nine months pregnant or something (hey Honey, that sound familiar?).  Tonight though, she got her food (fish sticks, mac n cheese, chocolate pudding) and her bath, and we put her to bed, and she screamed like we had dropped her in a pot of boiling oil.  So I sat down with my TV dinner, and grabbed Green Eggs And Ham, and read to her.  She was fine with that and by the end was almost passed out.  But her eyes were still open, and as I rubbed her belly to get her to fall fast asleep, Lucas came rushing out of his bath, stark naked, dripping wet, and looking for Daddy.  It took about another half hour to get her back to sleep.  That was 10pm.  It's 11:30pm now, and Lucas is still running amok.  But he got his curkie, and his sippy cup, and he's sitting in Shelby's lap awaiting the few more minutes of BabyFirstTV neccessary to knock him out.

I'll definitely have to post about BabyFirstTV sometime.  If you have children 5 or under, and you have DirecTV or a giant lawn shade type of satellite, you MUST get this channel.  I'd happily pay the $80 or so a month we spend on the whole cable package just to have this one channel.  More later.  Bedtime as soon as I get a confirmation of a sleeping Lucas.

I suppose I better put something in here...

...or else the blog might eat me.  During FLARG, even.  Please don't blow up the host planet, since it is your home planet.  Duh.  And if I hear one more thing about a Re-Do, I'm going to redo your face.

Help, I've been sucked into the world of blogging.  It matters not that I've kept a LiveJournal for five years.  If I don't have something on Blogger, I'm invisible.  Which normally would be fine for me, but since my wife saw some other guy having a stay-at-home-daddy blog, she thought I ought to get on here and share my experiences.

Well, she asked for it.

My wife comes in here a few minutes ago complaining that the youngest is sucking on her arm and she's going to have hickeys.  So maybe someday she'll let me give her a few more.  But for now, Meghan is sitting in my lap eating cookies, making crumbs, and sucking the crumbs off my arm.  If my wife doesn't want baby hickeys on her, don't give the baby a cookie.  Simple solution.

My wife is also about 29 weeks pregnant with what will be my 3rd child, her 7th.  The oldest daughter doesn't live with us, so that means our family will shortly have 8 members.  THREE OF THEM UNDER THREE.  I'm so glad the Suburban we have is so well equipped for this.  The 3rd row seat sits right under a giant squirrel cage fan AC unit above the back windows.  White noise, anyone?  I think the car seats should ALL go back there.  It might be more diificult to load them, but we certainly won't have to listen to them.  But I'm selfish.  I like my tire-wind-road noise much more than babies screaming at the top of their lungs.