"I'm just a KID mom"

Posted on 10/03/2015 by amberunraveled

Every once in a while I get lucky and witness the girls playing together peacefully, cuddling or otherwise just being totally adorable. O has been teaching W songs recently (when they aren’t throwing down or scaring the shizzle out of each other). O stages W in her “acting scenes” and makes her “say her lines“. It’s adorable. She helps her sing “you are my sunshine” and has been working on ABC’s and numbers with her.

I’m not entirely sure what I witnessed O teaching W last night but it was so cute I had to spy-video it. I got it perfectly on film. I do however have a feeling it won’t be as cute if they actually use this one-liner on me anytime soon. Though I might be impressed at the methodology and thought behind it.

O's favorite things

Posted on 08/28/2015 by amberunraveled

I’m big into lists right now. I don’t know why. I actually take that back, I have always been big into lists. My entire life is like a giant, never-ending to-do or grocery list. But maybe because the school season is approaching I have started thinking in an even more structured and nonsensical way about everything in my life.

So to go with the theme of lists here are five of O’s favorite things in life right now;

making messes. It doesn’t matter where, it’s just her thing. Dumping toy boxes, spilling drinks, getting anything and everything everywhere. All messes in my house were created by her. (or the dog. Unless O is shredding dirty diapers and eating sh*t out of the trash can and just blaming the dog but I doubt it.)
scotch tape. Scotch tape is like the newest obsession in my house. She scotch tapes everything. She tries to make books and scotch tape them together, I keep trying to introduce staples as a much more efficient book making mechanism but she won’t stand for it. She even scotch tapes her barbies to stuff, like the kitchen cabinet knobs. It’s like these poor barbies are trapped in giant scotch tape spider web fiasco’s all over my house. It’s both weird and creepy – however may be appropriate to keep around as Halloween Decor.
1. as a side note W is into that blue painter tape. C uses it to tape down drawings and plans to the drawing table and W likes to rip off 1 million smallish pieces and stick them all over her face and body.
stickers. F stickers. I hate you stickers. I have like a sticker infestation in my house right now. There are stickers stuck to the hardwood floors, toilets, toys, my desk, the kitchen table, the windows… when W was a baby I saw this weird blue thing in her mouth and C and I had to hold her down and dig a blue circular sticker with a flower on it out of her mouth – it was stuck to the roof of her mouth! I kept that one for the baby book obviously. All others stickers get destroyed onsite.
signs. We have pictorial signs all over the place right now. There is a picture of a girl “scotch taped” (go figure) to the bathroom door because that’s the girls bathroom, sorry daddy you must go outside and do your business. There is a picture of W and another picture of O taped to either side of the family room, because that’s their respective sides of the room for playing. I also found about 8 random signs taped to the wall space above the couch in my office varying in images from flowers to unicorns.
clothes. So she is super obsessed with clothes right now. I know, adorable right? No. It’s effing annoying. She is constantly changing, like “oh, I sneezed and got germs on this shirt – I must change 563 times and throw every article of clothing I own all over the room and for good measure I will also throw some over the upstairs railing down onto the couch in the family room. AND in case that doesn’t drive Mommy to hide in the pantry and drink copious amounts of wine I will THEN proceed to hide the most important articles of clothing, the staples mommy always picks for me to wear in hidden locations, like under the bed or at the bottom of the toy box….”

Listen to me complaining. Like I don’t think everything O does is the most absolutely adorable and hilarious thing ever ever ever. Keep doing your thing O, and I’ll just keep cleaning up after you, it’s my job – plus it gives me great material. (And interesting talking points when my neighbors come over. I doubt anybody else in the neighborhood has Barbies taped to their kitchen cabinets.)

Sh*t that freaks me out

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

in no particular order;

turning the light out then running up the basement steps
the ocean
dead bodies – of any kind
larva
parasites
having my ankles slit from someone hiding under my car or bed
closed shower curtains
bathroom mirrors at midnight
tailgaters – not the party kind
old men
boogers
thinking about people hiding in the trunk of my car, while I’m driving, at night
ghosts
bears
gangsta’s
Baltimore City, specifically where I work
people choking
heights
vans with no windows
men in groups
parking garages
feces
mass transportation
having an arm or leg hang off the bed when I’m sleeping
motels
masks
Miley Cyrus

potty

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

We have a book “everybody potties”. Girls do it, boys do it, Grandma does it,Kitty does it, Puppy does it… and that’s basically the book. It’s cute and its that thick cardboard so your kids can chew on it and won’t be able to shred all the pages into subway lettuce like a gerbil in heat. Why do kids shred paper? It’s like this instinctual impulse to just destroy, everything. I can;t even build blocks with my kids because it’s always a fight. O has got the hang of it finally but W is like Godzilla still, no building or structure is safe. Maybe they learned it from the dog? She is a major shredder though her specialty is diapers. She doesn’t like the clean ones, the dirtier the better, it’s a sickness really.

Anyway I found this image of our book, I keep it in the car for light reading in traffic.

So I got this for O when she was small and W likes to read it in the car. All you have to say is “Pee-pee” and they go ape-shit laughing like hyenas on crack. If you say “Poop” there’s no coming back from that you will likley have an accident of some sort.

SOOO on to the point, O was begging me to read her “book” she is obsessed with making books these days, and I am annoyed because like any real mom I am always trying to do something that requires my full attention and I am never able to give my full attention to anything because someone is inevitably always requiring something of me AT ALL TIMES > wow, that seems harsh and awkward and a little violent but you know what I’m saying don’t act like you don’t.

So I take a break from whatever it is I am doing to look at her book because. And this is what I find…

Cover. Awwww. She can write her name so I am not sure what this says but it has a heart and a little girl so I say “Awwww”

Page 1. WHAT??? HAHAHHA OMG this is a COMEDY, ok damn well if I knew that I would have read it a long time ago, I LOVE comedies. Dude. Leslie Patricelli better watch her back because O is like totally as good an artist, (if not better since she’s 4) than that lady’s artist, or that lady if she does her own artwork.

then this page. BOOM > that’s what I’m screaming. what. She is clearly on the potty and she is doing her thang. Now, don’t be judgy – I don;t know if that’s the sink or one of those things you use on the beach to search for coins and other relativley metal things, or maybe she’s watching her iPad? I’m not sure, but you know what, it doesn’t even matter. Because my 4 year old writes books biatches and I can actually read them. I am like SO PROUD. She is so funny. And awesome and cute and smart and I just want to SQUEEZE her so hard that her eyes bug out. But in a loving way not a violent way.

Oh BTW when I was looking for the potty book image I found this:

This is so going in C’s stocking this year. I might buy everyone one.

2 cents

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

The good the bad and the ~~ugly~~ why the f did I watch this and ruin my life.

We love movies in this house and watch them in abundance. I used to watch everything from thrillers, slashers, sci-fi, action to drama… and then slowly the extreme versions of certain genres (thank you P.S. I love you, I had a migraine from excessive sobbing for like a month) began to erode my brain and etch themselves so deeply into my soul that I like couldn’t bounce back. Like I still won’t go into my bathroom and look in the mirror at midnight, I don’t care if you think that is juvenile it’s my life we’re talking about here. And I don’t care who you are if you’ve watched any Final Destination movies you aren’t driving behind any trucks with lumber, metal poles of re-bar or any other building material even if it is strapped down. It’s unclear to me if this is some sort of a hormonal imbalance or just the fact I have an obsessive personality with a tendency to hold on to all things emotional way too long. Maybe it’s because I am an artist, yea lets go with that.

So I am laying in bed wondering what I should blog about since nothing particularly exciting has been happening lately and it dawned on me why I was laying in bed at 1:47 am wide awake in a certain state of paranoia anyway.

***spoiler alerts***

Backcountry – An urban couple go camping in the woods and find themselves lost in the territory of a predatory black bear.
So usually I read a synopsis of all movies C buys because he isn’t as discriminatory about watching movies that ruin your life, or ability to sleep at night. Somehow I missed the part about the black bear and just figured it was a typical escape for your life from some backcountry hillbillies, or marijuana growers, or drug dealers or any other group of bad guys that would typically hunt down a couple in the woods. It started off harmless enough with a romantic canoe down a mountain and camping in the woods, slow and awkward – then all the sudden it took a turn for the worst, showing excessively graphic mauling of human flesh, skin being torn from limbs. I mean this guy was essentially gutted having his intestines eaten while simultaneously screaming at his girlfriend to effing run for her life. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so terrified and scarred had canoeing and camping in bear country not been a favorite pastime of mine – see my earlier post on “wild camping”. I feel sick writing this and when the sprinklers came on at 10 pm and water started hitting my window I was absolutely effing certain a bear was attempting to break into my house to dine on my organs.

The Forger – A thief works with his father and son to forge a painting by Monet and steal the original. Together, they plan the heist of their lives.
YES. Thank you John Travolta for being in this movie, NOT. Who doesn’t love the other JT? Well this synopsis is a bit misleading if your like me with a tenancy to break a muther effing pipe and lose all ability to control the water works this movie is NOT for you. It was also slow, not the original action movie we thought it would be. As a matter of fact what the synopsis should read is “A thief makes a bad deal to get out of prison and spend quality time with his teen son who is dying of cancer” No I didn’t see that coming until it was too late either. You can thank me later for saving you a night of emotional turmoil.

Avengers Age of Ultron – amazing, a little bit of side story’s to go with the main plot. Light, action packed no tears no fears. C thought it was too busy. I liked it, I did weep like a baby at a certain point but someone had to die.

Terminator Genisys – very good. Might be my favorite so far. It was a little confusing, there was a lot of time hoping and parents younger than children and weird computer talk, and memories happening before they actually happened kind of stuff so it was a bit hard to exactly follow but whatever its a terminator movie, just freaking run for your life and you’ll be a’ight.

Strike Back (2010) – This is a bit of an older TV show that I saw on Amazon Prime and remembered my parents and my brothers were in to so I started watching. Wow. It’s good, I got sucked in and watched the two Prime seasons and then bought the third and watched. The cast is attractive, the plot for each episode is exciting, lots of action, (lots of hardcore nudity and awfully rowdy sexual content which I could of done without) but other than that it was soooo good. I’m even less sad that the series ended because one of the leads (Sullivan Stapleton; also seen in 300 Rise of an Empire – soooooo good) is in a new series called Blindspot which I plan to check out.

Under the Dome – ugh what happened? It was off to a good start but now I can’t even get through an episode. I guess with any series you binge watch your bound to run into the inevitable lack of plot. Especially stories like this that aren’t really going anywhere story wise anyway…

Is it better to have a series burn itself out? (Beauty & the Beast, Under the Dome) Or END (or get dropped) and leave you feeling abandoned and empty like your boyfriend just dumped you. (White Collar, The Tomorrow People) I don;t know all the answers but I hate when good things come to an end. It’s so hard to fill the void.

don't get the glue

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

I may be a bat shit crazy helicopter mom with regards to safety hazards but I will be dammed if my children’s serial lack of situation awareness doesn’t both constitute and justify my consistent and habitual behavior.

I have a new love of snow crab legs that I like to enjoy while sitting on a bean bag at the coffee table. It’s the little things people, let me eat my crab legs and drink my wine while watching a movie on a Monday night…

Anyway it was a regular evening around 8 pm of course right before bed when O decided to do a swan dive over her pottery barn anywhere chair straight into the coffee table. Right in front of my face, literally inches away! It was fast and clean and very Ninja like. She essentially did some sort of screwed up reverse back bend while simultaneously smashing her facial area into the edge of the table. With my cat like reflexes I snatched her up and ran into the kitchen, I have no idea why, suppose the kitchen seemed like an appropriate place to run to – maybe it was my fight or flight impulse to just run somewhere. Regardless I grabbed her face and inspected her mouth to see all her teeth in place and not bleeding! Thank little baby Jesus. C runs over at this point and I reassure him she is totally fine and it just sounded worse than it was. Except he disagrees and says put on a bra we’re going to the ER. Not sure why I didn’t think to look at her chin but there it was a gaping hole. My worst fear, ok well one of them, there are a lot but this is up there.

To be fair she didn’t even cry all that much. I on the other hand….

So disgusting.

Note to anyone who has a “clean” cut. They requested the use of glue which at the time I was all for because it seemed less invasive and traumatic for all of us involved but the glue didn’t seem to hold and the wound opened significantly over the next day or so. I was so disappointed I didn’t demand stitches, oh well live and learn. We got a prescription silicone scar gel to treat the scar and over the last few weeks it has helped drastically but what a nightmare.

trouble

Posted on 08/25/2015 by amberunraveled

Dearest Cousin (you know who you are),

I am both excited and terrified for your upcoming wedding. I know it will be the most amazing, memorable night of your life, it’s after all every girls dream to have a wedding with family and friends, a gorgeous gown, a loving night full of dreams and happy endings. However, I am genuinely scared O may not comprehend this is not her wedding, she talks nonstop about her wedding and her wedding dress and the party and flowers and how excited she is to be having her wedding.

Maybe there is a book on this topic. Like you can buy books on how “every body uses the potty” (oh, which reminds me O wrote a book specifically on this topic) or you can buy books about when your family pet dies and goes to animal heaven. I need to purchase the How to teach your 4 year old she is part of a wedding, but it’s not her wedding. Ugh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Then there is W. Look at that face. It just screamsssss trouble, it may not scream it in an articulate manner in which you the recipient would understand, but you would get the point.

They are both so excited for “their” wedding and ask me nonstop when their going to have it.

Keratin Smoothing Treatment

Posted on 07/23/2015 by amberunraveled

My hair is a hot mess. I heard a persons hormones change every five years and that can have an impact on hair texture. Mine has progressively gotten coarser. I had thin pin straight hair until puberty then it went curly. I never had a beautiful curl like O but more of a Brittney Spears type crimp, and mostly in the back… very weird and stupid.

Here are some unflattering pictures of my lion look. This is blown out with no product. I should go out in public like this. I could scare kids. It is so fluffy. Like a collie. I look like Lassie.

You know how people get dogs that look like them? I should get a Lassie. OMG I have a mini Lassie…

Her hair changed to a woolly freaking mess after she got fixed. We are both in the same sinking hair ship. At least we have each other.

Anyway, I bought this:

Keratin Complex Natural Keratin Smoothing Treatment 4 oz

$54

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G1MOZ2K?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

Got it off Amazon and gave it a try and it worked really good! It took forevvvvvvver but mostly because like I said I have a lions mane. And I should have gotten the 8 oz for sure.

wash with a clarifying shampoo
blow dry
spread on smoothing serum and bake for a while
wash again
blow dry again
flat iron for like a million years

done. This was after the serum application and blow dry. It is still fluffy but there is a small difference.

This is after flat ironing for a gazillion years, It was very smooth and thin. You can’t get it wet or wear any hair ties for 3 days. I got stuck in a terrible downpour on the second day but after washing it stayed very straight and didn’t frizz or curl up at all.

It worked really great and did exactly what it was supposed to do. However… I will never do it again because my hair though frizztastic was very super soft. After the treatment it felt like straw for daysssss. I couldn’t wait until this shit washed out. I could stab someone with the disgusting stiffness of my perfectly stick straight hair. Ultimate decision it worked great, felt terrible. It lasted like 2 – 3 months. It’s finally out and I am so much happier. Guess the grass isn’t always greener!!! I just bought a iron wand thing and I am going to embrace my curlish hair and try to at least reduce the frizz but I must say I am much happier dealing with frizz than stiff nasty straw!

box trolls

Posted on 06/10/2015 by amberunraveled

O. M. G. this movie was horrible. Not only are these things totally creepy but the movie was weird and dark. Guess it was my fault for not looking at the rating before we had family movie night and watched this awful train wreck. I just assumed cartoon – kids, plus C’s mom was talking about how the daily shows were all touting that someone carved all these figurines and positioned them all individually throughout the whole movie so it wasn’t computer generated or something – that could all be rumor mill though I wasn’t interested in this enough to find out so I have no clue what the facts are…

***spoiler alert***

What I do know is the movie was creepy, the trolls were creepy and at the end during the big monologue of individuality where the bad guy smashes all the trolls with a big stamper O lost her shit and flipped the F out and I was left dumbfounded staring at the TV thinking WHAT THE F IS THE RATING ON THIS SHOW!!!???? Yes, again bad parenting I should have done my HW. Obviously the trolls were all fine and had snuck, (WTF is “snuck” not a word? Spell check keeps telling me it’s not a word. What is the problem – what is past tense for sneaked???)

Anyway all the trolls had escaped their boxes and all was well with the world, happy ending tra-la-la, but still to see O completely devastated made me want to hurt people. Whatever. Lesson learned, although the rating thing only would help with the creepy-ness of the movie because O has since had complete and utter breakdowns from Big Hero 6 and Home. It saddens me that she got stuck with my emotional instability. I just watched the latest Fast and Furious and cried like an infant. So sad!!!

AND to top it off my kids want to wear boxes like all the time. Its so annoying to try to cut holes in boxes. Big Hero and Home are totally EXCELLENT movies. I mean, who doesn’t love Jim Parsons?

fair

Posted on 06/10/2015 by amberunraveled

We took the kids to the fair last week. I am excited just thinking about it. I love taking the girls to do fun stuff. Plus I have been shooting a webseries on the weekends so I wanted to do something fun and special with them. Plus, plus I wanted to see how W did on the rides because I want to plan a Disney trip.

O being herself. Hollywood 24/7.

Look at that face! She was so adorable. I was nervous she was going to blow a gasket because she’s all in the “do-it-myself” phase which literally makes me want to throw shit. There is a lot of stuff that drives me crazy that I have been able to let go of since having kids; like order, hygiene, a clean house… but when I am in a rush, like every morning – I don’t have time to watch you take 27 minutes to put on your underwear, W. Nor do I have time for you to change your outfit 64 times, O. I am just about capped on my maximum OCD tolerance. I digress…

Anyway I thought W was going to loose her shit and fight me standing next to her on the carousel but she let me hold on to her. Actually I was pretty bummed because C bought them both unlimited ride bracelets before we realized W was too small to ride any rides!

Lucky for us this fair wasn’t too strict on rules and let W onto the rides anyway! We just watched the rides first to make sure there weren’t size restrictions for a reason… like the higher up ones.

That was her first ride by herself, she had this weird face the entire time and she didn’t move a muscle, O had the same reactions on her first rides when she was little! We were like… “is she scared?’ “is she going to cry?” “why is her face like that?”

Then she got off and wanted to do it again, and again, and again so we knew she loved it.

W reallllly liked all the rides that were horses. I think she would totally *love* to ride horses when she grows up but I doubt C will ever let that happen. I used to ride horses for years when I was younger and decided to pick the hobby back up after I met C. He would come watch me in my lessons sometimes and decided I wasn’t very good. Just because I got thrown off a lot doesn’t mean I wasn’t a good rider, I like to think I had very challenging horses – therefore I was actually an excellent rider… but anyway –

They let her on a bunch of rides she was too small for – oops!

We were safe about it though. This little kid swing was awesome.

C won a prize throwing a baseball at a wall of bottles. He had to break a bottle. He’s so manly and strong.

O and W played this game of throw a ball in a hole – win a prize. O picks a cute blow up pony. Ugh, W not so much.

She picked some crazy ass purple alien. Whats worse is the damn thing stands up by itself and she puts it in odd places throughout the house and scares the shit out of me. She also put stickers all over its face for some reason. Creepy.

Ssssso fun. I want to try Dutch Wonderland next.

Amber Unraveled

Category Archives: my daily life

"I'm just a KID mom"

O's favorite things

Sh*t that freaks me out

potty

2 cents

don't get the glue

trouble

Keratin Smoothing Treatment

box trolls

fair