April 2005 Archives

I just posted a bunch of new pics on flickr. Alecia took them all, so I'm letting her write the titles/captions.

Just to clarify, the stuff all over Maddie's face is Alecia's lipstick. Our little mischief maker not only figured out how to get the cap off, she knew exactly what to do with it. Well, almost exactly...

(Oh, and the strangers in the pics are Katherine Jackson, our next door neighbor, and her kids, Anne and Cannon.)

We haven't posted in a few days, mostly due to a lack of energy, but also due to a lack of events to post about. We went to little Raelyn's second birthday party on Saturday and the Jonquil Festival on Sunday. We posted pictures of both on Flickr, but apparently didn't feel like giving a play-by-play on either. :) They were fun. Maybe Alecia will have more to say than that.

Other than those two outings, there's not much going on. Maddie's starting to act out a little for attention now that Josie's becoming more active (Josie coos and smiles all the time now, in between her brain-piercing screams). Maddie's still the cutest kid in the world, though, so we can endure it. The only thing that gets tough is that she's also been dropping F-bombs at inappropriate times. I was blaming this on the in-laws until I had a moment of road rage last week and realized that she may be picking her new vocab up in the car.

The road rage was something worth posting about, I guess. Some guy was swerving across lanes and cut us off three times--THREE TIMES!!--causing us to almost wreck with the kids in the car. He really seemed drunk, and everyone was honking at him and giving him the finger. When we got to the next light and he was in front of us, I leaned out the window and let him have it. It was one of those veins-bulging, eyes-burning moments of rage, when you feel as if you could knock someone's head in, if only the tire iron was within reach. He yelled back, and we proceeded to scare the old lady in the car next to us with our dialogue. We may also have scared Maddie and Josie, which is heartbreaking, considering that my rage was a midguided effort to protect them. I was sooooooo close to getting out of the car, which would have been totally stupid and pointless, especially considering that someone had just been shot in a road rage incident a few days prior. I can have a temper sometimes, but this was different, this was some jackass endangering my kids. Grrr.

So Maddie heard a few F-bombs at that time (Alecia has also admitted to dropping one or two while in the car), and now Maddie's saying it herself. When Alecia had her at Target the other day, Maddie was totally misbehaving, taking things off of shelves and throwing them like some little monkey. Alecia placed her back in the shopping cart and held her little hands. "Maddie, stop. You are not getting down." To which Maddie replied, "F**k!" followed by "F**k, f**k, f**k!" Alecia always tries to play it off when she does that. "No, you can't have your fork," or "Yes, that is a truck." But it's pretty damn clear what the cute 18-month old with the potty mouth is saying.

Anyway, that's about all I have for today. Alecia's mom (Regina) is getting married this weekend, so we'll be out of town from Friday to Sunday. We should have a lot of pictures when we get back to Atlanta. Wish us luck with the weather...it's supposed to be an outdoor wedding, and we're having a typical Atlanta spring right now. Did you know Atlanta gets as much rain, annually, as Seattle does? It has something to do with the city being in a valley and in the middle of the road for most tropical weather fronts. We get some seriously torrential downpours here, almost weekly during the spring. It gets old real quick. Of course, it's almost better than the 110° days that follow...

Who needs a coupon for The Picture People when you have a crappy digital camera and a few free minutes after bathtime?

A few more pics are up on Flickr. By the way, if you notice the fifty or so videogame pictures I put up a few days ago, just ignore those. They're from a superhero game I play (me so geeky), and I put them up for another site I have.

The girls had their 2-month and 18-month appointments yesterday, and all is well. Josie had to get some shots, but Maddie was up-to-date on hers. It's funny to note, though, that Maddie is still in the 10th percentile for her height and weight and Josie is in the 90th. They really will be wearing the same sizes soon. Also, Maddie's anemia is gone and she no longer needs iron supplement.

Speaking of Maddie, we've spent a lot of time with her friend Grace lately. Grace's mom, Carolyn, and I are good friends and the girls like playing together. Actually, that's an understatement. The girls LOVE playing together. Maddie can go without a nap all day, stay up late in the evening, and still be happy if Grace is around. She wakes up every morning lately and goes to the door, calling out "Grace!" I have to remind her that Grace is at her own house. She has also named her baby doll Grace. Not Josie. No, not the name of the actual baby in our house, but of her best friend. It's adorable to see. The girls hug each other and will even hold hands when we're all walking. I'm working on getting some pictures of them together so you can see what I'm talking about.

Josie is turning out to be even more social at this age than Maddie was. Simply make eye contact with the little sprout and she smiles and gurgles, inches her head down to form about 4 or 5 little chins. She even smiles and laughs at Maddie now, who has taken to telling Josie "It's t-okay" when she cries.

As hard as the past few weeks have been, I'm loving every minute so far with these two little girls. Seeing them react more to each other each day is wonderful as well. We are so blessed, even if that does mean that we'll never sleep again (or so it seems...) :)

It's been a while since I've posted and a lot has happened so I'll try to remember to fill everyone in as much as I can. Bill has been pestering me to write about our trip to Alabama last weekend too. Forgive me ahead of time for my writing style and grammar, but both girls are napping and time is of the essence.

I took both girls to my mom's last weekend to help with some wedding planning (my mom is getting remarried at the end of April) and to let everyone else meet Josie now that she's off her monitor. We had a great time and Maddie got a chance to run around outdoors and play with her cousins, Bubba and Cheyenne. In fact, she played so much all weekend that by Sunday afternoon she was completely worn out and acting like a zombie. That also happened to be the time that my cousin visited with her husband and adorable daughter, Graisi. Maddie was so tired (and hadn't really taken a good nap) that she just held onto my leg and stared the entire time. So much for the little social butterfly that we describe on this website all the time.

Josie also got a chance to meet her cousins and her Poppa, whom she absolutely loved. I've never seen her smile and coo at anyone else more than myself, but Ralph had to simply look at her and she would gurgle and make sounds with the biggest smile.

We spent Saturday at the mall in Montgomery helping my mom find a dress to wear for her wedding. It was, um, rather interesting because we got so many random comments about the girls. Most were nice, but a few left me puzzled:

1) One older woman came up to us and asked about Josie's and Maddie's ages. She then went on to say, "It must be hard..." I agreed, thinking she was talking about having two little ones so close in age. But no. She went on to say, "It must be so hard having one child so cute and the other one not." EXCUSE ME???!!! I honestly would have inflicted physical harm on the woman had I not been completely shocked. In fact, it took me a good ten minutes to really let the fact sink in that she had said that to me.

2) One customer to another outside the bathroom while I was changing Josie, as heard by Mom and Michel: "What are they doing to that baby in there? We should report that they're abusing it." (I was changing her DIAPER! Of course she cries and hates it. Her cries are just a little, um, dramatic.)

3) EVERYONE thought Josie was a boy. Okay, I know they all look alike at this age, but when a baby is wearing pink with roses and bows, doesn't that give you a clue?

It made for an interesting weekend, to say the least.

Other interesting things noticed lately:

- Do you know what happens to raisins after you swallow them? I do. Especially if your kid swallows them whole. I discovered some grape-like things in Maddie's diaper last week and started getting worried until I realized that they were raisins, that had PLUMPED UP AGAIN. Yuck.

- Your 18 month-old will try to remove her diaper whenever possible, making it nearly impossible to leave her alone without pants on at any time. She'll also remove her poopy diaper while she's napping and play with it, leaving you to discover a big surprise in her bed when you go in to get her later on. Double Yuck.

- Your 2 month-old will inevitably projectile spit up 1) right after a bath, 2) as soon as you put clean clothes on her, or 3) whenever you are wearing black. Note to self: Only light-colored clothes from now on.

Originally uploaded by the McLochlins.

This is what happens when Maddie gets into mommy's stamp and ink set. The poor girl is as pink as this website!

Also, if you click over to our flickr photos page, you'll find some pics of the girls from their trip to Alabama this past weekend, as well as some of them in their new outfits from Grandma Gene Gene.

Finally, I had me a little surgery today. Can you guess what I had removed? Warning, the photo set I created to document the experience has some graphic pictures in it. Not for the faint of heart. (I almost posted them on here, but thought I'd save my mom the grief.)

What a crappy site redesign. This is what happens when you spend your whole weekend watching bad sci-fi and eating chicken wings, then try to get a redesign done in three hours before your wife comes home.

Actually, it's what happens when you have no idea what to do with the site. Alecia wanted retro, so it has sort of a retro feel. But who could have predicted the pinkness of it all? Or the all-lowercase text and funky background?

I really don't know what I was thinking. I swear I've done better in the past.

Anyway, if you find areas of the site that don't yet work, be patient. I really did rush this, and didn't get to test it all. There may be pages that don't fit the new design or just don't work at all.

Sheesh, I'm getting a headache just looking at it. What a mess.

(This is another story about our cat, so if that sounds incredibly boring to you, I'm sure there's something else you could be doing.)

Since Alecia took the car--and the kids--to Alabama for the weekend to help her mom out with some wedding planning, Todd gave me a lift to the vet yesterday to pick up Astrid. I knew two things going in: 1) the cat would be very unhappy, and 2) she'd be wearing a cone on her head to keep her from licking her wound. What I didn't know is that the poor cat had major surgery and now looked like Frankenkitty.

Here are a couple of pictures of our poor kitty after her surgery. The white tubes are the drain the vet inserted. It will be removed on Monday, if all goes well.

WARNING: While these aren't pictures of open flesh wounds, they are almost as gross. Mom, you may not want to click on them.

A close-up of the area.
A rear-view of the cone.
A front-view of the cone.

As you can see, our lovely little cat looks like an animal testing experiment. But the really painful part of the story is what happened when she came home.

The doctor told me I needed to keep Astrid away from other animals and indoors for about ten days while she healed. She was already fighting infection, and the drain provided an easy avenue for more problems to enter her system. Plus, if she or another animal started licking or messing around with the wound, it could cause all sorts of trouble. I decided the easiest way to keep Astrid away from our dogs and out of danger was to seal her up in the office with her food, water and litter box. When Todd and I brought her home, hissing and snarling within her travel box, I took her straight into the office and set up a space for her. Being the loving owner that I am, I felt guilty that our explorative cat would be trapped inside for so long, so I opened one of the windows to let in some fresh air and let her peer out through the screen.

Within a few minutes of being released from the box, Astrid was calmly sitting on the windowsill, gazing at the great outdoors. It seemed like she was going to be fine, for now.

That's when the screen fell out.

I'm still not sure what happened here. I'd popped the screen out back in December to pass the cord from some Christmas lights in through the window. I guess I must not have replaced it correctly. When the screen fell, the kitty saw her opportunity. She leapt for freedom.

Panicked, I ran out the front door to get her. When she saw me approaching, she took off running in the direction of our back yard. At least she was staying close to the house, I thought. I followed her into the backyard, where she scrambled to hide under our back porch. It's not usually that hard to get her out from under the porch--I just shake her bag of treats, and she comes to me. Surprisingly, this was no exception. I shook the treats and she walked out from under the porch, only slightly suspicious of me. Just before she could get to me, however, she tried to reach back to lick her wound. Frustrated that she couldn't do so, she let out a big meow and rolled over in the dirt. The dogs, who had previously been ignoring her while they wandered around our fenced-in yard, saw this as an invitation to wrestle. They ran at her, barking, causing her to freak out and dash for a new safe spot...under the shed.

By now, I was cussing and Todd was laughing. We got the dogs inside again, but the kitty was determined not to come out. Todd headed home, as I pulled a chair onto the porch and settled in. After about fifteen minutes of waiting, the cat finally emerged. I headed for her, intent on bringing her in. She headed for the fence, determined to get out. She was faster. Before I could reach her, she had jumped the fence. To make matters worse, as she jumped, her cone got stuck on the fence. She dangled for half a second, suspended by the cone around her neck, but quickly fell free on the other side of the fence. As I ran to the gate, trying to get to her, she ran for the hills.

I didn't see her again for eight hours.

I wandered the neighborhood, talking to neighbors and calling her name. She was nowhere to be found. I was getting really worried. She not only had a partially open wound, but she had a tube straight into her inner workings. I thought there was a good chance that something would get into that wound. Or, even worse, that the cat (or another animal) would pull out the stitches or the tube.

Around 9pm last night, after I'd almost given up hope, I opened the back door to let the dogs out and she came wandering in. Her stitches and tube were covered with dirt, but seemed to be intact. While she ate her food, I wrapped her in a towel so I could re-attach her protective hood and clean her wound a little without her biting me. She's been inside since then, mostly asleep under Maddie's crib.

The worst part of this whole story is that Alecia couldn't be here to help me chase the cat or to share in the worry. After all, this animal owes her inclusion in this family to Alecia. Years ago, when I brought home a litter of nine kittens that had been left in a box by the soccer fields, I had no intention of keeping any of them. I'm allergic to cats, and think they have too much attitude for pets. But Alecia kept sneaking the runt of the litter out of the room we had them in. After the other eight had been adopted, she begged to keep just that one.

See what you did, Alecia? Next time, you're getting a goldfish.

Today is my dad's 65th birthday! Happy birthday, dad!

I would put up a picture of you when you were younger, as is the normal internet tradition on birthdays, but I'm having trouble fitting the stone tablet into my scanner.

We love you and hope you have a good birthday!