Seriously, can you believe this kid?

Going and turning one-year-old already.

I must confess, I did not have plans to throw him a birthday party. Since none of our family live near us and he’s too young to have “friends” (I mean, I guess he could have friends, but that means I’d have to make friends so we’ll just keep saying he’s too young for friends) we figured we’d just give him some presents, let him tear into a piece of cake and be done with it.

But my mom had other plans. I let her take over and she threw him a “monster” of a birthday party.  I literally did not do anything except buy some cheese and slap candy eyes on the cupcakes.

Seriously.  My mom is amazing.

I did sort of help her pick the monster theme though, which was a huge hit.

And she ran wild with it. There were monsters everywhere.

No bowl was safe.

We monster-fied some red velvet cupcakes. Super easy. You just need a grass piping tip and some candy eyes. Boom! Monster cupcakes.

I forgot I did help make some Oreo-eye-balls for the cake. An eye ball artist I am not. But what monster is perfect anyway, right?

We even got the child to keep a hat on his head for longer than 2.5 seconds. A true birthday miracle.

Of course, my favorite part of the day was when Wyatt finally got his cake. And not just because that meant I finally got cake too, but that didn’t hurt.

He’s got his “woman, where’s my cake” look pretty much perfected, I think.

Finally, we stopped torturing him.

My mom’s house was filled with friends and family on Saturday, which was overwhelming and wonderful all rolled into one.  I’m so glad she forced convinced me to have a real party.

Do you guys go all out for birthdays or just keep it simple? I think either is great, as long as there’s cake, of course.

You know what I love about the end of the year? Christmas.

You know what I hate about the end of the year? Christmas. Or rather, the rush to Christmas.

Seeing Christmas lights next to the Halloween candy.

Being bombarded with Christmas ads before we’ve even had Thanksgiving dinner.

Listening to people brag about how all their Christmas shopping is done, and it isn’t even December yet.

The inevitable countdowns that start the day after Halloween. Did you guys know there are only 43 days until Christmas? Only 43 days. Only.  So rush to it or you might just miss the whole holiday, right?

It’s overwhelming and I hate it.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep up. And even if I could, I don’t want to.

I freaking love Christmas. But I don’t want to see Christmas trees up yet. I don’t want to see your house blinking with lights. I don’t want to start shopping for gifts. I don’t want to bust into my collection of holiday music. And I certainly don’t want to hear it blasting out of the speakers at Target.

I just want to slow down. I want to be in the right now.

Maybe it’s not even just about Christmas, now that I’m thinking about it. It’s about all our moments. Deciding to savor them instead of rushing to the next one. Because the next one is there, waiting. Why are we in such a hurry when we’ve got perfectly good moments going on right now?

So, maybe stop thinking about Christmas. Just for today. Don’t worry about a tree or decorations or music or presents. Just be in the right now. See how that feels.

First of all, never have five cats.

You think one cat is cute? It’s true, they are. Two cats? Yep, still pretty adorable. Plus they can play together. Lovely.

Three cats? You’re pushing it.

Four cats? You probably need to hang a lint brush around your neck at all times.

Five cats? You’ve reached threat level DEADLY CRIMSON. Because cats are conniving and manipulative creatures. Get too many of them together and you’re in danger. They know how to work you over. They nuzzle you and make you think they care, and then they puke in your lap. Not because they’re sick, but just because they can. Multiply that by five. You’re scared, aren’t you?

You should be.

If you ever wonder why I’m mentally unstable, it’s because I have five cats. No question.

Well, we thought we’d be proactive and move the cats over to the new house so they could get acclimated and then they’d be out of the way while we’re trying to pack and get the truck loaded.

It was a good idea.  And it was a disaster. If you want your kitty transport experience to be just as painful, please follow these instructions

1. Don’t plan a damn thing. Wait until the last minute to collect all the kitty gear. It’ll make things extra hectic.

2.  Make sure you have less cat carriers than you do cats. This forces you to transport loose cats in the car.

3.  Stalk your cats through the house whispering “here kitty kitty.”  It’ll freak them out and make them harder to catch.

4.  When the cats inevitably end up cowering in fear under the bed, poke them with brooms so they run out the other end. But make sure there’s no one there to catch them.

5.  Don’t put the notorious puker into a carrier. He can’t vomit all over the car if he’s in a carrier, after all.

6.  Stuff as many other humans and babies in the car at the same time with the cats. The extra company means extra ears to hear their whining.

7.  Make a pit-stop. You need the experience of sitting in a parking lot with five cats that are puking and peeing all over the place.

8.  Open the car doors unnecessarily, but only if you’re woefully unprepared to chase cats across a parking lot.

The cats are now safely tucked away in the basement of the new house, where they will live the rest of their lives because I’m never moving those suckers ever again.

Do you guys have cats? Are they slowly destroying your sanity? I’m thinking of starting a support group.

I totally meant to post about Halloween on Halloween. After the Trick or Treating was over. After the baby finally passed out. After I’d stolen most of his candy.

And then, I got sick.

I got real sick.

So sick that I spent all of Friday in bed, generally oblivious to what was going on around me. I don’t think I’ve slept so much in my adult life. It was ridiculous. I didn’t even get on Facebook once. So you know it must have been bad.

But, I’m back to almost normal today though. I actually ate more than crackers. And I packed a few boxes in preparation for our big move. And I had roughly 17 panic attacks thinking about the rest of the house I need to pack.

Yep, pretty normal.

We did have a pretty great first Halloween with Wyatt though.

This is the kind of picture you get when you’re trying to take a 3-person selfie with a baby who likes to grab everything.  Oh, the memories.

Ryan’s mom bought Wyatt this super awesome pirate costume last year, but I put it in his closet and sort of forgot about it. So, the awesome and creative parents we are, we went to Walmart and bought him the cheapest pumpkin costume we could find. Nothing’s too good for my baby!

When I discovered the long-lost pirate costume I figured I’d hang onto the pumpkin one. Just in case. And as you will later discover, I am totally psychic.

Here he is cursing me for putting him in a hat

Shortly after this I put him down in the living room so I could take care of some important things in the kitchen (sneaking Snickers from the trick or treater’s candy bowl is important, yeah?) and when I came back he was sitting in a puddle of his own puke. This was like the mother-load of vomit. Wonderful.

But you see, totally psychic. I knew.

After a bath and a quick change we had a pirate-turned pumpkin

Then it was off to the Mall of America for some trick or treating. That was an…experience.  I still think it was a better choice than walking around with a baby in the cold rain, but apparently most of the Twin Cities also thought it was a better choice as well.

It was crowded and women who should know better kept ramming me with their strollers. And kids who probably don’t know better, but I don’t care because I’m mean, kept bumping into me and PERSONAL SPACE ISSUES.

I have them.

We got home kind of late, but we still had a few trick or treaters, which I think had a lot to do with the Halloween disaster extravaganza going on across the street. I’m pretty sure you could see that sucker from space.

I am definitely not sorry that we’re moving away from this neighborhood. Nope. Not one single bit.

So, have you ever had any costume disasters? I’d love to know I’m not alone! 

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Remember when I’d just had a baby and a month later I had to move three states away to a city where I knew not a single person?  And I lost bits of my sanity I’ve been searching for since?

That was less than a year ago.

And because we like to keep things interesting, we’re just going to go ahead and move again.

I’ve mentioned several times about the issues with this rental house, but I’ll recap them for you:

• Before moving in they were supposed to hang blinds and paint walls.  None of it was done.  We had to buy blinds ourselves and hang them.
• The house was disgustingly filthy when we moved in. It was clear they didn’t even make an attempt to clean before allowing new renters to move in.
• They’ve tried to squeeze more money out of us by claiming we didn’t put the gas and electric in our name soon enough and we need reimburse the owner.
• The oven randomly fluctuates in temperature. Usually up to 550 while I’m baking a delicious batch of cookies. They’ve known about this since my first week here. No one has even come to look at it, let alone fix it.
• The heat broke a couple of weeks after we moved in. In winter. In Minnesota. It took them nearly a month to fix it. That’s right, I lived in a house with a tiny baby for nearly a month with heat that barely worked. Awesome, right?
• The house failed the fire inspection in a couple of major areas that they were told to fix that day, basically. Two weeks later, nothing was fixed. They finally fixed the issues after the fire inspector threatened them.
• The property manager sent an e-mail late one evening that I didn’t see until the next morning, telling me he’d be out to look at something in the morning. He didn’t even give us 12 hours notice. When I didn’t answer the door, he just went ahead and let himself in. I guess it’s good I was wearing pants.
• The tiles surrounding the tub were clearly installed poorly and are literally falling off the wall. They’ve known about this issue for months and nothing has been done about it.  We’ve made futile attempts to fix it ourselves, but someone needs to rip it all out and install it properly.
• The fridge leaks in several places.  We suspect it’s tied somehow to the ice maker, but we don’t know for sure because no one has ever come to look at it.
• A minor leak coming from under the kitchen floor turned into a flood every time I tried to do dishes. It got so bad that it took several towels to soak up all the water everyday. They knew about this issue from the time I noticed the minor leak, and even after I told them that it was rotting the sub-floor of the kitchen, they did nothing. Finally, after a couple of months, someone fixed it.
• The air conditioning stopped working and they didn’t send someone out to look at it until summer was nearly over. The technician told us he highly recommends, due to the age and condition of the furnace that we invest in a good carbon monoxide alarm. That’s not scary or anything, right? When the property manager was informed of this, he said “thank you” and never said another word about it.
• The lawnmower stopped working (the one they provided for the house) and they basically told us we needed to figure out how to fix it. We ended up having to rent a mower so we didn’t look like we were coming home to a jungle everyday.

Despite the multitude of problems with this house, I was fully prepared to stick it out until we could find a place to buy. I didn’t want to really move again if I didn’t have to. It’s a hassle. It costs money. It costs sanity.

But then we got this on our door:

When we moved in we were told we had to pay gas, electric, and trash. We’ve never received a water bill or any other notice of late payment here. it would stand to reason someone has been paying that bill all these months.  But when I brought the issue to the attention of the property manager he told me the water bill is our responsibility and we should pay it.

Hold on.  Hold on.  That’s all he had to say about it?  I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose. But still, I guess I just expected more. Finally after more urging on my part I got him to at least agree to contact the owner to see what was going on.  That was 10 days ago and he has not bothered to respond to any of my attempts to get in touch with him.  I had to pay the water bill myself to make sure it didn’t get turned off.

And that was just the last straw. If this guy was willing to let us live without water (which, by the way, it’s illegal to rent a home without running water so I did his sorry behind a huge favor by paying the bill) then I was willing to fork over whatever was necessary to get out of here.

So life is going to get a little bit…interesting.  We found a lovely house 30 minutes south of here and found out today we were approved to rent, so we’re signing a lease tomorrow. I’ve tried to communicate our intention to move to the property manger, but again, crickets.  I’m not sure how to proceed with him. I mean, I know how I’d like to proceed with him. But I don’t think I’d get away with smearing him with honey and tying him to an ant hill.

For now I’m just going to focus on the move and hope he doesn’t cause us anymore problems than he already has.

Here’s a sneak peek at the new house

Not my dream kitchen by any means, but it somehow has this awesome six-burner gas stove. I’ll take it!

And the bathroom. Nothing is falling off the walls.The light switch is in a normal place. And the door actually shuts without having to ram it with your shoulder. That sink is stupid though. I won’t pretend I like that sink.

And my future office/lady cave. I think I have room in there for all my junk. I’m excited. Plus it has doors. The child will be so sad he can’t unplug all my electronics.

Man, if you stuck with me through that long rambling post, I owe you a cupcake. But you’ll have to wait a bit. Right now I have to walk around the house having a panic attack while I look at all the stuff I have to pack.