So it’s my husband (TheLameSauce.com)who is behind this, but he put together a bunch of images for the Baby Rabies Inappropriate Elf contest. I decided to enter in one of his photos to be considered. So BOOM. Take that. Consider this scene from Silence Of The Lambs:

"Please mister!!" "It puts the lotion on it's skin or else it gets the hose again."

Voting starts tomorrow. Do it! http://www.babyrabies.com/2011/12/inappropriate-elf-contest/

Phoenix is gross.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B – Because sometimes one finger just isn’t enough.

Exhibit C – Even while holding his pal Woody, the fingers stay put.

Exhibit D – Can you guess where he is about to put Woody’s hand?

As he would say, “EWWWWWWW…*long pause*…guck.”

Poor Sage.  And her bucket.  Just in case.

Has this not been the longest, coldest, lamest winter ever??  Don’t get me wrong–I LOVE winter!  I love the cold because we get to run fires in the wood-burning stove and drink hot cocoa and overeat on comfort food during our hibernation.  I love snow.  But I have a tough time with extended cold with no snow.  Hey Mother Nature, put out or get out!  Bring on some real snow, not this lame crap:

Or bring on spring.  Last week we had a couple of killer teaser days of spring with the gorgeous weather getting into the 70’s.  Heaven on earth.  Oh spring…how I long for thee!

But, seriously, it’s about to get all ‘Here’s Johnny’ from The Shining up in here if we don’t get spring soon because the cabin fever is setting in and things are about to get real.

Freezing cold weather with no snow?  You’re on my list.

Gregg gave me ‘the look’ tonight.  Ya know, ‘the look’!  The one that reads, ‘is it safe to leave the kids unsupervised in your care’ look.  Let’s rewind to 7:30am.

7:30am – I’m getting ready, and I notice Sage lying down “sleeping” in the hallway.  I leave her.  I’m trying to get ready.

8:00am – I’m done getting ready, and I invite Sage to go downstairs with me.  She lets me know that she can’t walk.  Huh?  Get up.  Walk.  She slides down the stairs on her bum and army crawls to the couch.

8:15am – I’m finished whipping up the pancake mix for Gregg to cook.  Gregg stumbles down the stairs after a restful and full night of 5 hours of sleep.

8:16am – I tell Sage to come upstairs so we can get her ready.  She reminds me that her legs don’t work, that she can’t walk.  “Come on, Sage!”  She throws herself to the ground as if she were Tiny Tim and some bully just kicked the crutch out from under her.  “Come on, Sage, get up.”  She stands up and starts walking towards the stairs.

8:17am – As she approaches the stairs, I exclaim in my insensitive manner, “SAGE!  YOU CAN WALK AGAIN!!  This is a MIRACLE!” She immediately collapses to the stairs.  I switch to authoritative, no-nonsense, annoyed Mom.  “Sage, GET UP!”  She starts crying and army crawls up the stairs.

8:25am – Sage is getting dressed while I get Phoenix ready.

8:40am – We accidentally left Phoenix’s tie and ’sports’ jacket downstairs from church the day before.  He is obsessed with ties right now.  He insists on wearing his tie with his robot shirt.  Fine.  Then he wants his sports jacket on with the top button buttoned.  It makes sense.  It would be weird not to eat pancakes w/ syrup without a tie and buttoned sports jacket over your robot shirt.  I don’t fight him on it because Sage already killed my fight.

9:20am – Time to get the kids’ coats on to get into the car to go to food shopping with grandma.  Phoenix takes off running upstairs to his crib to grab everything, like the house is on fire or something, and he must save these things before they are destroyed.

9:22am – After wrestling Phoenix to get back down the stairs with his blanket and man toy only, I hold the blanket for him because I don’t want him to drag it through the dirt on the way to the car.  He doesn’t realize this and thinks I left it in the house.  I try to show him, but he thinks I’m lying or something.  I get Sage to the car into her car seat, while Phoenix makes a break for the house.  I have to corner him behind one of the chairs on the front porch.  He’s screaming.  Of course some neighbors are walking by, smiling, and waving.  I restrain him so I can get him to the car to show him that I have the friggin blanket.  He calms down.

9:45am – We roll up to Wegman’s, the most beautiful place on earth.  I get Phoenix out of the car seat and stash the man toy back into the car so I don’t get stuck having to pick it up over and over again while we’re in the store.  He starts crying as we walk into the store because he doesn’t have his ‘dah doy’, which means ‘man toy’.  Bloody hell, my ears are starting to bleed at this point, but we’re in public and image management is critical so I keep my cool.

10:45am – We drop grandma off.  Everything seems cool.  We survived food shopping without any in-public incidences.

10:48am – We pull into the drive way.  “Mom, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“WHAT???  Are you serious?”

“Yes…”

CRAP!  I don’t do vomit.  I put the car in park, and hop out to yank her out of the car before she does any damage because a car that smells like vomit?  B-A-R-F!  We’re standing on the driveway now.

“Sage, do you need to throw up?  If you do, just do it now.”

I bring her with me to the front door.

“GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGGGGGGGGGG!  Get up here!!”

BWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  Yup.  She puked all over the front porch about 10 seconds before Gregg rolls up from the studio.

He takes her from there and helps clean her up in the bathroom.  I go back to get Phoenix out of the car.  I bring in the groceries between rounds of Phoenix slamming the front door in my face.  Then he rips down the child gate and goes into the bathroom where Sage is and starts messing with her which causes her to cry more.  I have to kick him out while I’m trying to put groceries away.  Is it nap time yet??

12:15pm – I get lunch ready for them.  Sage eats a little toast and apple sauce.  Phoenix throws his food, refuses to sit down in his booster chair, and I give up.

1:00pm – We throw them both down for nap time.  We force Sage to nap because between her paralysis and her vomiting, I refuse to deal with what is next with her without her getting some more sleep.

4:00pm – We wake Sage up, and she and I watch She-Ra.

4:30pm – We wake Phoenix up.  We should have left him. He is throwing tantrums and won’t let go of me.

5:15pm – I’m trying to get dinner ready, and he decides to dive at the dishwasher door which opens which causes him to fall.  My ears start bleeding.  Gregg comes in and puts a gate up to keep him out of the kitchen so I can get everything ready in peace.  But really, where is the peace when a kid is screaming and crying his heart out because he can’t get to you.  I release him from prison.

5:50pm – We’re eating dinner.  Phoenix defiantly throws his fork on the ground.  Then starts crying that he wants his fork.  We leave the fork on the ground.

6:20pm – I’m a beaten woman.  The kids have driven me crazy today.  I have that crazed look in my eye that if something else happens, I’m going to lose it.

6:20pm – Gregg gives me ‘the look’.  He decides to stick around “for the safety of our children”.  ‘The look’ is on ‘my list’.  I say, “you’re giving me ‘the look’.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I fear for our children because my wife is nuts’ look.”

I grab the camera and with flames coming from my eyes I say, “DO THE LOOK, GREGG.”

He can’t stop laughing so I can’t accurately capture ‘the look’.

“You’re killing my blog post, Gregg.”

Does anyone else’s husband give them ‘the look’ or are most of them so tuned out that they don’t even notice?  Gregg makes an executive decision to put the kids down 30 minutes early.

7:00pm – Peace.

Forget about storing a baseball bat next to your bed so you can beat down an intruder.  Get an umbrella.

A few days ago I look up because I can sense a presence at the door.   Sure enough, there is Sage.  Being all creepy in the dark.

“Hi, Sage.  What’s up?”

“Mommy, my throat hurts.”

“Oh no!  Come here.”

She approaches my side of the bed.

“Have you been coughing?  Does it hurt when you co—”

Cut off.  Mid sentence.

BWWAAAAAAAAAAA.  VOMIT.  Fire hose of atrocities.  BWWAAAAAAAAAAAAA.  PUKE.

Bloody hell, what is going on??

BWWAAAAAAAAAAA. BARF.

Will it ever end?  Help me, baby Jesus!

BWWAAAAAAAAAAA.  HURL.

Geez.  I thought she said her throat hurt.  Not ‘hey mom, I’m about to puke all over the side of your bed.’

I don’t do vomit.  I can’t handle it.  I will hold my puke in at all costs, no matter how much I know letting it out will ‘make me feel better’.

I survey the damage.  Gross.  It’s fairly contained, thank goodness.  But, eww.

And then I notice the real damage…she puked on my book!  MY BOOK!  The book that I am reading.  My beloved Hunger Games book.  Mockingjay.  Katniss.  Peeta.  Gale.  Katniss and Gale.  Gale and Katniss.  Katniss and Peeta.  Peeta and Katniss.  Who oh who will you choose, Katniss?  District 13?  District 13 is still inhabited?  Why did you wait forever to help out the other districts.  Damn you, Capitol, and your brutality and your sick, sick Hunger Games.  Peeta?  You’ve been hijacked.  And you’re a mutt of your former self.  PUKE.  On my book.  Son of a.

“Oh my gosh!  Sage!  Are you okay?  Gregg?  Gregg??  Did you catch this?  Sage, do you need to throw up anymore?”

Gregg volunteers to clean it up.  Good man.  He runs Sage to the bathroom, holds her hair, and she pukes some more.  We are off to a good start today.  At least I’m awake and alert.

If I had had an umbrella next to the bed, I could have opened it up and protected my book.  The vomit would have hit the umbrella and slid down the side into a little pile a safe distance from my precious book.  But I don’t have an umbrella next to my bed.  My book is collateral damage.  Gale…  Peeta…  Katniss…

But, really.  Who really needs a baseball bat next to their bed?  How often is your house going to get broken into?  Once.  Maybe twice.  Get a dog.  That should help.  And how often is your kid going to be puking his or her guts out?  Countless times throughout his or her childhood.  And an umbrella will protect your book.

Today my gas tank was on empty, so I needed to make a trip to fill ‘er up.  I pull into the gas station and notice that there are only two pumps open that are on the same side of the gas port.  I roll up to it, planning on pulling all the way through, at the same exact time that, we’ll call her ‘Bad Day Becky’, pulls in on the other side who obviously has the same plan as me–to pull all the way through.  We make eye contact, and she proceeds to do throw her arms up in exasperation over my nerve to pull into the same gas port at the same time as her.  Bad Day Becky is probably in her mid-to-late 40’s, and she doesn’t look like the type to react like this.

I get out to pump, and she stays in her car.  Okay…you’re all brave inside your car, and clearly I’m VERY scary, so stay put until I’m done, m’kay?!!  Of course it takes FOREVER to fill the car up, and I glance over at her several times to see that she is talking on her cell phone and avoiding eye contact at all costs.  Finally my tank is filled, so I put the pump back.  Bad Day Becky feels now is a good time to exit her vehicle and to start filling up her tank.  I turn to her because, though I’m VERY scary, I am a nice person at heart.

“I’m sorry I upset you, but we did pull in at the same exact time.”

I didn’t think she heard me because she totally ignored me until she broke out in some weird spasm with really obnoxious eye rolls.

I responded with, “Wow.  That’s how you’re going to act?”

“I’m having a bad morning, okay?” she responds back.

“Lady, you’re not the only one with problems.  My husband got laid off 16 months ago.”

Oh yeah, I dropped the ‘my husband got laid off’ card.  It works.  It does suck that he got laid off.  I’ve hardly slept a restful night since.  That could be from stress from running Modern Bird Studios and ModTots, but for today’s purposes, we’ll blame it on his getting laid off.  So, technically, that means I have had 16 months worth of bad mornings.  My ’suffering’ trumps hers.  Boom.

More weird, exasperated spasms.

I should have gotten all Adam Sandler/Big Daddy on her.  “You’re not mad at me, you’re mad at your father.” And then she would have gotten all Steve Buscemi back, “I am! I am! I hate my father!”

I laugh, get in the car, and drive away.  I just made her bad morning worse, and I didn’t even mean to.  Win?

What to do on a rainy day?  How about having a play date involving making cookies and destroying the freshly cleaned kitchen??  DEFINITELY!

So, I was strapping Sage into her car seat when she says to me, “Mom, I’m four years old.  I’m not a child anymore.”  What the WHAT??  Sage, you’re FOUR!  F-O-U-R!  You can’t even spell ‘four’ yet.  Isn’t she a bit young to be pulling that line??

Phoenix just mauled a Smurf.