New House, New Place...New Kid?

Ben went back to work today. Well, not real work, but inprocessing. Inprocessing is much akin to going to the DMV, only you have to do it a bazillion times in one day. The lines, the rude people, the taking a million years to get any one thing done because, as the Ben puts it, "the enslave the elderly program is alive and well."

He says this for a reason...many of the people working for the places where inprocessing takes place are senior citizens. In my experience, most of the time they are incredibly pleasant, hardworking people. The problem is that, with how quickly modern technology changes AND the fact that rules/regulations/people's common sense changes all the time, it takes them a little while to get tasks accomplished. Benwas at one "checkpoint" as we call them for 2 hours today. He needed 1 piece of paperwork signed, to pick up about 4 pieces of gear, and there were only 2 people in front of him.

We get aggravated with this on several levels. 1: it just shouldn't take that long. Period. End of story. 2: while we understand that everyone has to make a living somehow, there are jobs on a post like this that should be going to military spouses who want to work (like myself) but can't get a job because all of the positions are taken by people who live an hour away. How on earth does that make sense? It doesn't.

So the Ben was in and out all day. That makes it hard on Monkey. He's become very attached to his daddy in the past 2 months, since Ben has been home most of the time. Now Monkey has to adjust not only to being in a new place, new house, slightly new routine, and a change in his eating (we're currently switching him off of formula to milk and more solid foods), but he also has to deal with daddy coming and going all the time. The  Ben's new job will mean that he is home periodically throughout the day, but then has to go back to work.

At our old duty station, if Monkey saw Benin the morning, but then  Ben went to work, Monkey had a bad day. If Monkey didn't see the Ben until he was home from work for the day, then all was well and everything was sunshine and rainbows. Now Monkey has to adjust to "daddy's here right now but he's leaving for a couple of hours and then he'll be back again" blah blah blah.

So, this morning, Monkey woke up,  Ben  was gone, and we had the meltdown of all meltdowns. Screaming, arching the back, pick me up no put me down punch you punch myself eat not hungry I'M NOT HAPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY kind of meltdown. For an hour. Just as I got him calm, Ben came home. Then he left. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I fully expect this to last for at least a week. Because he's cutting 2 more teeth. And apparently hates me now. Loves daddy, hates me.

Settling in

Well, we're here. It feels SO good to have everything unpacked and *pretty much* in place. You have to realize, with every move comes an adjustment...different number of bathrooms, different layout, different square footage. Did you know that, on a military move, the packers are not allowed to pack things like plungers? I get it, sanitary issues, blah blah blah...but when you're moving somewhere that the closest Wal-Mart is 30 minutes away and it's a GHETTO WM...well, it's something you notice.

Maybe we're picky. We don't like our plungers naked, out there for the world to see. We like them to come in a little house that is all their own, coming out only when they have a purpose. Somehow the thought of toilet water pooling onto the floor just isn't all that appealing to us...go figure.

Then there's the issue of dealing with other people packing our stuff...it seems that these people lack any sort of common sense. Otherwise the kitchen stuff would not be in the same box as oh, say, stuff that was in the garage or the baby's room...or all three rooms in one box. Yeah, 'cause that's so much fun to unpack. You know what else? You can totally tell when the packing crew (who is different from the moving crew) was starting to get tired. Barely anything is wrapped carefully near the end. It's all just a jumble. Which accounts for my missing snow globe that I LOVED that was a gift from my mother in law our first Christmas.

Wait, let me clarify...the entire snow globe was not missing. Just the globe part. The mechanical bottom? That's still there. As in, the very bottom plate with a few gears attached. I can't replace it, it's just gone. They tell you to file a claim for things that went missing and/or are damaged. How do you file a claim for PART of a $20 snow globe that had immense sentimental value? The answer is you don't. Now, the $100 shelving that the movers lost the bolts to? I'm still working on Ben to claim that. I want my garage in organized chaos, thank you.

And now we're 30 miles from the middle of nowhere. Our goal is to go to the middle of nowhere at least once every 2 weeks or so. Since we have Monkey, going the fun "overnight" places nearby (read, ADULTS ONLY nearby places) is kind of out of the question unless family offers to fly here and babysit. That's OK. As long as we're not stranded on our military island for too long without contact from the outside world. Plus, there are some "family friendly" things to do in the area for a long weekend...we'll focus on those for the time being

And getting new plungers...because who really wants to have that kind of emergency and not have a plunger on hand. Even worse...who wants to have that emergency and have a plunger, but not have a house to put it in when the situation is taken care of? Not us.

The Move is ON!

Well, it's happening. The packers and pickup are scheduled, utilities are going to be turned off, keys turned in...and we're driving across the country with an almost 1 year old. I always get comments about how hard it's going to be now that we have Monkey. My response? It's going to be different, not difficult. We already have the 2 dogs that we had to stop every 2 hours for so that they could stretch and do their business. The biggest alterations with this trip are that a) there will be another being in my car making noise, b) we'll have to stop a bit more frequently, and c) we'll be able to cover less ground in a day than we have on previous moves.

We did a test run this past weekend, to a town about 2 hours away that has a decent zoo. Monkey loves the zoo. Plus he rocked his new "newsie" hat and big boy sunglasses! He did great. No major meltdowns except when we were getting him in and out of the car too frequently, and when he was tired. The good news is that when he's tired he turns into the Tasmanian devil for about 10 minutes and then sleeps for an hour, so it's not that bad. Other than that, he was very well behaved.

On this move we're going to rig up Ben's iPad or my Kindle Fire to let Monkey watch cartoons in the car. Plus we'll be stopping at almost every rest stop for him to run around and get some air. I'm excited; new place, new experiences, new friends (and old friends, we already know people there, and they are being kind enough to let us stay with them until we get housing!)

Best of all, we'll be closer to family, and there is a ton to do in the general area (within 2-4 hours) so we'll be doing some great weekend getaways!

The After-Christmas Clean Freak

I am a freak. My family has been saying it for years, and most of the time I just brushed it off. Freak? Me? No. I just like things how I like them. This year, I realized that they are right.

I am not the bearded lady, or the elephant man. I have no serious mental disorders (that we know of :P) and no urges to do things that most people don't have as well. Except for my cleaning binges. Those enable me to proudly let my freak flag fly.

Christmas this year was great. Monkey was enamored with the tree, and the presents, although I'm sure he thought we were crazy when we encouraged him to rip the paper off them. Although breakfast was late, it was good...homemade espresso cinnamon rolls. Then nap...yay for naptime!

Ben and Monkey had a great afternoon of playtime and snuggles. Me? I was in the kitchen. All. Freaking. Afternoon. Ben wanted Boeuf Bourguignon, and I refuse to make that without homemade bread as well. The Bourguignon takes, on average, 4-5 hours to make. The bread takes about 3.5 hours. Both need the oven. Timing is crucial.

So I didn't fully clean that night. All the wrapping paper, ribbons, boxes and bows were either saved or thrown away, needles from the tree swept up (don't need Monkey choking on those!) and dishes were in the sink, if not clean.

Needless to say, the day after Christmas, I went full on freak. The kitchen was cleaned (because it desperately needed it), and then I thought "I'll just do the floors." That turned into me on my hands and knees for an hour, scrubbing all baseboards, moving furniture, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping. In the process (which needs to be done on a fairly regular basis due to having 2 shedding dogs) one of our speakers fell off it's shelf and hit me square on in the back of the head. What did I do? Said "ow," held frozen veggies to the quickly-forming lump on my head, and then got back to work. Seriously. Who does that?

Did I stop there, even though I felt nauseated for the rest of the day? Nope. Played with Monkey, worked on laundry, and worked some more on the needlepoint for Monkey's quilt (that I meant to have finished before he was born. Oops).

Oh well...it's all worth it. I'll leave you with a few pics from Christmas (that don't show our faces, sorry. I'm paranoid.)


I have to go attack the baseboards in the Master Suite.

Watching Daddy put the
 tree on the car

Before opening presents

Is all this for me?

Monkey's "Haul"

Time to play!

Merry Christmas!

Although we weren't able to go home to be with the extended family this year, we're having a wonderful time! Our cozy Christmas is involving WAY too many toys, Espresso Cinnamon Rolls, Boeuf Bourguignon, Homemade Garlic Parmesan Bread, playtime, family time, and of course:

Happy Holidays!

The Teething Continues.

Monkey is now cutting his THIRD tooth in two weeks (or so). This one's an upper front, and the poor child got my big chompers. Here I was thinking he had a cold, but it's just congestion from teething (I'm pretty sure).

I'm still not in love with the amount of snot I'm having to deal with. I was kind of hoping it wouldn't hit until he could understand when I asked him to blow into a tissue. He does, however, think his battery operated aspirator (or, as it's more lovingly known in our house, electric snot sucker) is a toy. He walks around holding it, pressing the button to make it run.

And yes, I said WALK...he's WALKING everywhere! It started a week before he turned 10 months. Our lives as we know them are over.

My Problem With Couponing

I love a good deal. I love saving us money, especially because finding work has been a challenge for me. But I have a serious problem when it comes to couponing: I refuse to feed my family nothing but processed fat lard chemicals crap food. I insist, for the most part, on making things from wholesome, fresh ingredients, and make things from scratch whenever possible (I just need that dang pasta maker attachment for my Kitchenaid, then we'll really be going strong).

I watch these shows like Extreme Couponing on TLC, and while it's amazing that they can do that well with couponing, I don't see a whole lot of fruits and vegetables going into those carts. What do I see? Microwave dinners. Candy. TONS of cereal (and we're not talking organic granola). Soda, toothpaste, laundry detergent...that's all in there. Fruits? Veggies? Fresh meat? Nah.

Just once, I would like to see a cart filled with real ingredients for a healthy balanced meal. That won't happen though. Why? Because those things don't have coupons. And they're not exactly cheap people! To eat healthy you get punished in the price. That just plain sucks. America has a weight problem for a reason: we're obsessed with the easy way out. The fast, instantly gratifying way that clogs our arteries and makes our fat cells expand like Violet Beauregard's after eating Willy Wonka's gum that is a three course dinner. No wonder our butts are the size of the death star...all we eat is processed carbs and sugar!

OK, OK, I'll step off my soap box now. But seriously, why can't a couponer's shopping cart look like this:

Instead of the reality, which is this: 

Oh, and can we throw in the 97-120% savings as well? Thanks so much.