the baseball title means two whole days acting like immature kids!

St. Louis is not JUST the number one crime ridden city in America... and honestly that isn't fair-- just depends on the neighborhood. most of the area is hubcap friendly and mug-free and if you are really nervous about it, you are totally allowed to conceal and carry ;) anyway, not just that, but also the greatest baseball city anywhere! and this weekend we are a little crazy! if you didn't hear (which i seriously cannot even fathom), our cardinals just made one HELL of a comeback and won a little tournament called the World Freaking Series!!

My husband is a very small fan. In fact, he might leave me if Adam Wainwright would have him....

The last game got pushed to Friday because of a rain out earlier in the week and that was just fine because then we could actually go out like big kids and be festive with the drinking of spirits and such. It was not quite as heart stopping as the game the night before and we were also a tad worn down from staying up so late watching said game and then dragging ourselves to work the next day BUT it was still a great game- and who cares how it all went down- they won the World Freaking Series!
Side Note: I think it interesting that even though you can shout obscenities at a large tv screen in the presence of others and still appear completely mature, if you skip out on work the next day because you are oh so sleepy, that is frowned upon.... adulthood, hmmph.



So then after all that excitement, the boys got to have a super parade downtown today and we being idiots superfans thought they would miss our smiling mugs if they weren't there. We opted to ride the Metro down because we figured parking would be ridiculous, though we have never done this before in the history of the world. And now after experiencing the insanity that is Metro to and from insanity of a Cardinals World Freaking Series Parade, I can't for the life of me figure out why people don't just drive the damn car like we usually do- there is no way all those 14 zillion people were experiencing it for the first time. We have used it for other purposes, but I will never do that again for anything stadium related.

Once we finally got there, it was pretty fun, though you must be one who counts sitting on your husband's non-cheerleader shoulders in a cloud of smoke watching players roll by about 15 rows of people in front of you a fun afternoon. of course I live for that brand of adventure. I also like run-on sentences.

About 3 seconds later he said "I think I just herniated a disc"

In all seriousness though, we had a good time together this afternoon and are super super excited to claim the World Freaking Series champions as our own for the second time since we've been married. Also, our first child was conceived shortly after they won last time so I guess we better watch it lest we get another babe for summer and let the charismatic one win! And tomorrow is more excitement with Halloween- as if you don't know that. A will probably want to dress up as a Cardinal but I am sure he would much rather take home his teacher salary than be a World Freaking Series Champion in real life.... besides he couldn't carry me on his shoulders if he were actually IN the parade.

My camera decided to be a moody teenager about 5 minutes before King Albert rolled by. It is cranky when low on batteries as it should be, but it pulled together for a few more shots. His wife back there is totally spending his 20 quadrillion dollar contract for the next 40 years in StL in her head- look at her telling me to back off her man ;) Just kidding- I am sure she is a lovely person, but I am sure she has better shoes than me so I can't help but joke at her expense (pun intended)!!

We kept waiting for a child to come crashing down on our heads- they are not our kids folks!!

Thank you StL for being so awesome!

these snooty little rich girls have nothing on me

 I haven't posted anything since Monday so you probably think I have been lying around eating bon-bons or something... not so much the case. In addition to recovering from the (overdramaticized) canoe swamping heard round the world), I have been crazily finishing off my last week of summer session and am now a happy professor on summer sabbatical.... or maybe just a six week break before fall semester kicks in. I think sabbatical sounds much more impressive, like I am a full-time, life-changing, mind-stretching dead poet society type.
But no, despite the impressive use of hyphenated words, I spend many more hours on facebook than in the classroom. I eat cheap fake Mexican, wash my hair in 8.5 seconds and wipe stinky butts.
I am just a mother.
But I think I was meant to be an heiress. Probably still a mother, but also an heiress.
All day today I have been  sucked into pinterest and the thousand party and style blogs I frequent and all that did was reinforce that I would be really good at spending money for a living. I would throw mean dinner parties and clambakes and shop vintage and designer and then I'd travel. And shop. And go to the park with my kids. And shop. And I think I would still cook for the fam because I am just a little bit  "next food network star" but I would only shop at great local markets and order free-trade chocolates off of the internet.
So parents, today I am just a little pissed that you don't own a hotel chain because I would really like to extend my sabbatical into a permanent position. But I would settle for spending other people's money so if anyone wants to take me up on that I will let you pseudo-adopt me- unless you have real heiresses for children- I don't want to have to share closet space.

Guilt and other mommy feelings

This parenting thing is HARD. Not just a little bit of a challenge but a cram for an entire semester and then still feel like you are winging it kind of thing... really freaking hard.
We have been shut into our house for days- weeks actually- because of winter onslaught and I am tired of all day arguments with 3 year olds and non-napping infants. It doesn't matter that I know better than to argue with someone without a fully formed frontal lobe, the kid really knows how to push my buttons. And he throws one heck of a tantrum.... so do I for that matter (I guess he is paying attention to at least one thing I say/do). Discipline has started to feel like a chore for me and does not seem to be working at all. I know I am not alone in this and truly I understand that the age has everything to do with it. One of these days my sweet faced boy will actually be "sweet" again but for now I just go day by day. Also he is completely jealous of his mommy hogging and perpetually enchanting baby sister! It is impossible to even out the attention since I nurse her 4 times during the day and she is in that clingy separation anxiety stage. So how do I make him feel loved and supported when half the day I am attached to his nemesis and the other half of the day he is in time-out for smashing her face into the floor or yelling at me??
Did I mention this is impossibly hard?! I am the primary disciplinarian because I only work part-time but at the same time, I feel like it is up to a mommy to be the ever present rock of support for a kid- the one who kisses the ouchies and tucks them into bed- acting a mom is an oxymoron for sure.
We have a deal that he gets 3 songs when he gets tucked in bed but in return he has to whisper and be quiet to not wake up baby sister (see earlier post)- entirely a work in progress. Tonight he ran yelling onto his room, slammed open the door and jumped into bed with a war cry. In return I told him (gulp- i knew the firestorm that would ensue) he was going to bed without a song because he was not quiet, that I loved him and would see him in the morning. Enter legendary tantrum, complete with screaming at the top of his tiny lungs, an awakened screaming baby to match and another headache for mom and dad. I retrieved the baby and my husband went to explain to him why it went down like it did. Hard enough, but then the guilt sets in. I am nearly in tears myself because I am again with the other baby while he cries himself to sleep in the other room BUT to go sing him his song would certainly be counterproductive.
Anyway, I just wanted to lament the feeling of a loss of tonight's happy little bedtime. The only consolation is that the under-developed, tantrum-prone neuroanatomy of a three year old will probably not remember me forever as the viscious mommy who ditched him in his time of need for his crying baby sister... but I will remember :(