Seven Quick Takes

Linking up with Jen of Conversion Diary for seven quick takes.

ONE

Max peed in the potty yesterday!  Before I go into the actual story of how that happened, please pretend that it was completely intentional and that I am the greatest, most successful mother ever.  Ready to pretend?  Ok....GO!......................................................
Here's how it went down:  After an evening of him screaming to eat while I fixed dinner and then refusing to eat said dinner, I gave up and started his bath.  Before I knew it, the unthinkable happened...yes, poop in the tub!  I have been very lucky these past 19 months of his life and he has never pooped in the tub with me.  His father and grandmother, yes, but never me.  I did what any mature, rational parent would do and whimpered and whined and asked the nobody in my house, "come help me, what do I doooooo?"  I had enough sense to take him out of the tub and I put him on his little potty.  I fished the offending fece out of the tub with a bath toy and stuck my bare hand into the depths of the poopwater to open the drain.  Meanwhile, Max was sitting pretty on the potty and when I took him off...BAM! THERE WAS THE PEE PEE!  Completely accidental, but I made an ENORMOUS deal out of the liquid gold and the man looked pretty pleased with himself.

TWO

Yes, I cleaned the tub with clorox and washed my hands a gracious plenty of times.  So don't you be worrying about that now, ok, mom?

THREE

I can't believe I'm going to type this, but this blog is sort of like a neurotic baby book and I want to remember all these moments so I'm going to.  This morning Max was being awfully quiet when he woke up and I think we all know where this is headed.  Yes, Andres went to get him and the next thing I know he's running back into our room telling me to get the freak up because there is poop everywhere.  I will spare you the details because I think your imagination will suffice, but we had a pretty significant cleaning and laundry sesh this morning.  Andres says that maybe Max possibly looked a leeeetle bit guilty, but in the meantime he's never sleeping in only a diaper and a t-shirt again.

FOUR

I almost bought this horrifying costume at a consignment sale.  Andres was a devil for his first Halloween and has always wanted Max to follow in his footsteps.  By the way, I was an angel for my first Halloween, make of that what you will.  I am super strongly against dressing my son up as Satan.  I mean, imagine showing up to some church's Fall Festival with your child as a Beelzebub in the midst of God-fearing folk.  Why not just dress him as Judas Iscariot and have him carry a purse of quarters and go around kissing people?  Yet, Satan is acceptable? Not on my watch.  So a crocodile/alligator it is.

FIVE

I ran a half marathon once and that right there is visual proof of my athleticism.  There is a 5 mile race in Durham on October 20 and I don't think I can do it.  But I want to.  My theory is that if I look at the above picture long enough my stamina and endurance will come back.  Sounds like a solid plan to me.  

SIX

I took chili chicken tacos to a new-mommy friend on Wednesday night.  They are a leeeetle spicy and her baby has gas so I went easy on the seasonings. 

Do you realize you just took flavorless tacos to a Mexican?--Andres Frowow

Oops.  Fail.  He was right.  I'm so ashamed.

SEVEN

Do you realize that I mentioned pee, poo, or gas in 50% of the above quick takes?  And now, with the inclusion of numero seven that over half of this post involves bodily functions?   What I can say?  We are living the Glam Life in here.

Five Favorites

I am linking up with Hallie for another round of Five Favorites. 

I've noticed that I've been posting pictures of Max and family events as my five favorites.  This week I'm changing it up, lest you think I'm all substance and no vain.  In no particular order, here are my favoritos:

UNO

 

Cindy Crawford's Meaningful Beauty serum

This stuff is amazing.  I put it on at night and it makes my skin feel really soft and (I feel) it evens out my skin tone.  Since using this product (and this whole brand) I've only had one breakout, which probably occured because 1.  I sometimes sleep with my makeup on and 2. I eat tons of gummy bears.  So try it.

DOS

Bare Minerals eyeshadow/liner in Sex Kitten

Bare Minerals is the only brand I've ever been able to use as an eyeliner.  I lack the skill to use anything else.  I like to mix up my colors and try a new one each time. Thus far in my eyeliner career, I've used a blue, a green, and a purple.  I am super excited to try this brown.  It looked amazing on my hand, so let's hope it looks just as good on my eyes.  I don't use this as a shadow, only a liner.  I've been using this brand for at least two years, and this is only the fourth liner I've bought--it lasts forever!

 TRES

 

This perfume is called Flowerbomb.  I was in Sephora the other day, for maybe the second time in my life.  I smelled this perfume and liked it.  Didn't buy--but I wanted to.  I've never owned "nice perfume" because I have these incredible pheromones that smell EXACTLY like Brown Vanilla Sugar from Bath and Bodyworks.  But maybe I will ask for this perfume as a gift from someone.  Any volunteers?  

CUATRO

If anyone reads the blog PinterestToldMeTo, you know about these jeans.  These are Vigoss jeans and they can be found in the juniors department at Nordstrom.  I really want the pair on the right for fall.  I actually found 3 pairs of Vigoss jeans at a consignment store, but they were all one size too big.  Major sadz.  

CINCO

These camo Toms right here. 

I'd post a picture, but I think we all know what Toms looks like.  Plus also, probably camo too.  It took me  a LONG time to jump on the Toms bandwagon, but they are the most incredibly comfy shoes ever.  And they do grow on you.  I don't think anyone will ever say that they are the most attractive shoe, but the colors and patterns are fun.  No one ever says, "I like your shoes" when you wear Toms.  They qualify their statement by saying, "I like your Toms."  The camo pattern is really cute, for a pair of Toms.  When my navy pair wears out, I think I'll buy the camo.

 

Sylvan Heights Bird Park

Team Frowow visited the Abuelitos (Andres's parents) for Easter.  We are so lucky that they live only an hour away!  Upon arriving, Consuelo (Andres's mom) suggested we go to Sylvan Waterfowl Park.  I smiled and nodded and pretended to be very enthusiastic.  In reality, my inner monologue was like, "Water foul?!?  You want to take Max to some filthy, stanky water treatment facility?!?  We are all going to die!!!"

In reality, waterfowl is some sort of scientific code word for birds.  Now my inner monolgue was saying, "ewww, birds" but even I know birds are better than stanky water.  

We packed up and drove to Scotland Neck, NC.  Scotland Neck is in the middle of nowhere, but somehow is home to an 18-acre avian display.  How does stuff like that happen?  I think it's the largest in America or something crazy, but I couldn't find a statistic like that on their website. Here is something that confused me:  it's called a waterfowl park, but not all the birds lived in the water (i.e., they weren't all ducks, flamingos, or geese).  The animal kingdom puzzles me. 

Here we are about the enter the park.  I had to get one last pick with my boy before getting mauled by waterfowl.

Here we are inside the park.  I'm smiling through my fear.
"Hey, Heather, have you ever heard of sunglasses?"  "No."

One of the main attractions of the park is a huge cage where an outrageous amount of these little birdies flit and flutter around your head.  For $1.00, you can purchase a stick of food and the birds will land on you, freak you out, and possibly give you avian diseases.  I put on my brave face to allow Max to have this one-of-a-kind experience.  Oh, the things we mothers do.

 Max's face says it all.  I'm with you, buddy.

 A little birdie landed on Max's foot.  That bird knew a sweet thing when he saw it.  And I took deep breaths and tried to keep my composure.  Inner monologue at this moment:  "Germs!  Disease!  Germs!  Disease!" 

 After exiting the aviary, Andres took a family shot.  This one is posed.

 And this one is true to form.

 I got a shot of some parrots because Max is half Colombian.  Fact:  in EVERY book taking place in Latin America, one or more of the characters will own a pet parrot.  By every I mean books by Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 "You're still not wearing sunglasses?"  "No.  I am not."

 But the smarter, more beautiful Aunt Mariana is.
All in all, the waterfowl park was an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.  It's always nice to do something out of the ordinary.  I do plan to take Max again when he is older.  I think it will be great learning opportunity and he will have a great time feeding the birds.

Pomp and Circumstance

On June 8, Andres's little sister, Mariana, graduated from high school.  When Andres and I met, Mariana was 10 and in the 5th grade.  What in the world happened?  I was so excited to watch her graduate, and even more excited because Max's bizabuela and Tia Angela were visiting from Colombia!  Max is so lucky to have had a chance to meet 4 of his great-grandparents.  

We arrived at the school (in North Carolina, most graduations are held in the school gym, which is so strange to me) a few minutes early (miracle!), so we had an opportunity to talk with family. Here is Bizabuela meeting Max for the first time.

She couldn't stop staring and kept saying "lindo, lindo" over and over.  Max is an attractive guy!  Finally, the music began and the graduates entered.  What is it about Pomp and Circumstance?  It makes me feel so nostalgic and I was fighting back tears for the entire song! Does that happen to anyone else?  No?  Oh.  Ok.

Thankfully, Mariana is a Frowow, so we only had to wait for the "Fs" before leaving the auditorium.  The native was starting to get restless.  We took him out to play in the cafeteria, aka Germ Heaven.

He practiced strutting his stuff around the high school, in preparation for being the big man on campus one day.  Not that he's going to date any girls.  He only loves his mom.  Forever.  On a side note, we would really like for Max to attend Cardinal Gibbons for high school.  Andres likes it because "it's Catholic" and he went to a Catholic high school.  I want him to attend Cardinal Gibbons because I like the sound of the name "Gibbons."  
After the ceremony, we gathered in Germ Heaven for more pictures.

 Oooooo.  A tassel.

The principal herded everyone out of Germ Heaven to the humid, sticky outdoors.  Humidity Purgatory?  Nature Limbo?  Is it an upgrade or downgrade from Germ Heaven?  I don't know.  I'm distracted by the sign over the door that says, "It's possible."  I feel like there is something to say there, but I'm going to refrain.

Doesn't Mariana look cute in this picture?  I've known her for seven years, and she never had a moment of awkwardness in adolescence.  Freak.  I hate chu.

We learned that Max doesn't like hats and by that point my native wasn't restless, he was DONE.  So, where do parents go when their children are fussy?!?  RESTAURANTS!  We's so smart.

 It actually wasn't that bad, because you see the woman on the left in the dress?  She's Max's grandmother.  She's also a baby whisperer.  And Max's favorite person on earth.

 Upon arriving back at the house, we played our favorite game.  It's called "Child Labor." 

After mowing the lawn, Max resumed his normal activities.  Namely, torturing the cat.

And playing with the remote.

It was so fun to celebrate Mariana's accomplishments with family near and far.  Mariana is so cute and smart, and we're going to miss the free babysitting her greatly when she moves out of state for college later this month.  

Los Cinco Favoritos

This edition of five favorites is going to be sort of like my presidential platform.  Kinda.  Actually, no, no, no...if I wasn't a lazy typer, I'd delete that.  These five favorites are for the future Max when he says, "Mom, I want to talk to my girlfriend's dad about marriage" edition.  Allow me to explain.  Once upon a May weekend, Team Frowow was here:

Gorgeous, no?  We were there with a wonderful group of my college friends who are like family. Somehow in the course of the weekend, my friend's daughter was pledged to my son in marriage.  At least they would each have fantastic mother-in-laws.  In the words of my friend Dawn:

If you can't trust your mother-in-law, who can you trust?

Amen, yes?  wink.

Anyways, my friend totally approves of this arrangement for her daughter because, as I stated that weekend, here are 3 of Max's favorite things:

1.  Jobs.  

Max will support his family.  I'm not saying he needs to make one billion dollars a year.  I'm not even saying that he needs to make enough for his wife to stay home.  Of course, I think that is wonderful, but dollars just don't stretch as far as they did in 1950, amiright?  What I am saying is that a consistent income is a good thing.

2.  Food.

Yes, my marriage campaign included food.  Who doesn't love food?  People need to eat. Specifically, they need to eat the bacon wrapped scallops that my future daughter-in-law's father prepared for dinner that weekend.  At least that's what I heard.  I wouldn't know.  I didn't get one.  Oh well, I'm looking forward to them at the wedding reception.

3.  Health insurance.

Health insurance is important.  Yes, it's expensive.  Do you know what's more expensive?  Any hospital or doctor's visit not covered at all by insurance. For example, when I was on maternity leave I had to pay a billion dollars for COBRA insurance.  It's a good thing I did, because my routine check-up at my ob was a zillion dollars, had I been without.  Health insurance is something you can't afford NOT to have.

Those three things my son can promise his future bride.  They are my favorites.  Now for two more:

4.  Zevia ginger root beer.  SO good.  My two favorite sodas in one.  Maybe they can go with the bacon wrapped scallops at the future reception.

5.  Pancakes.  Oink and Yum.

To see the 5 Favorites of normal people who don't suffer from Perpetual Strangeness and Disjointed Thoughts visit Hallie.

How to Sell your House Part IV: Iron Curtain Realty

Ahhh, where were we?  Right there.  Ok, so to recap: we've sold our house, put an offer on one house and didn't get it, and are now in an apartment.  We are in the sweet spot of transition with boxes everywhere, throwing money down the toilet on rent, and the germs of countless occupants festering in every corner of our abode.  Life is good.

Anyways, one day a little house appeared on my radar (my radar is a code word for zillow).  It was in a cute neighborhood and it was YELLOW.  I have a thing for yellow houses.  They look so cute and quaint and make me long for the good ole days of the 1950s, when I could vacuum and clean and look like this:

Instead of this:

As you can see, getting this house was vitally important to my physical appearance.  That is what a yellow house can do for you.  The only problem was that our agent was out of town.  As a result, her coworker was afforded the pleasure of meeting Team Frowow and enduring our banter and neurotic behavior.

This agent was not just any agent.  He was an EASTERN EUROPEAN agent.  I was so excited that  Andres practically had to give me mouth to mouth.  See, I'm a strange, weird, nerdy dork.  And during student teaching in college (which was one of the worst experiences of my life) I sought refuge in learning everything I could about Czar Nicholas II.  Why?  I have no clue.  In my defense, I believe it was my friend Sylvester (name changed to protect the guilty) who checked out every book on Russian Czars from the library.  I have three theories to account for our strange behavior:

a.  Sylvester had a research project that neither of us remember

b.  Our student teaching/internship experiences were so horrific that reading textbooks about Russia brought us joy

c.  We have serious problems

The answer is probably 100% C and 50% B.

Anyways, suffice to say that I was super excited and may have possibly thought for 10 seconds about leaving our sweet agent and hiring the Real Estate Czar.  Then, the following occurred.

The outside of the house looked something like this:

And before we even got through the front door, the agent wasted no time in explaining that the house actually looked like this:

Apparently, the Masonite siding was in absolute disrepair (to us it looked equal to or better than most Masonite siding we'd seen) and had a host of other problems,  including gray cabinets in the bathrooms (which I loved) and a painted deck.  He claimed that once you painted a deck, you were stuck with that color forever. Andres was like, "Uhhh, can't you just paint it a different color?"  According to the agent, that would be a no.  NO PAINT FOR YOU!  Every time he pointed out the flaws of the house he would say, "I show you these things."  Imagine hearing that every 10 seconds in an Eastern European accent.  I was annoyed with him, but simultaneously in Russian Heaven.  I'm weird.

The funny thing is, he never even mentioned the two main issues of the house: 1. the backyard (horrible landscaping, trees everywhere) and 2.  the fact that the master bathroom didn't have a door separating it from the master bedroom.  Instead, he started talking about a wonderful house in a different neighborhood that we would "just love."  Ummm, I'm not stupid buddy, stop pimping out your own listing.  

After he stopped "showing us these things" we traveled to a second house.  Upon getting out of the car he immediately said, "Oh, this is not good.  This is not good at all."  In our minds, it obviously wasn't good because the house backed up to a noisy street.  But in actuality, the house was not good because of the beige vinyl siding.  I know.  I know.  I will pause for a moment to allow you to think of something worse than living in a house with beige vinyl siding.

 

I couldn't think of anything either.
Evidently, beige vinyl siding is a problem because vinyl cannot be painted. (Hallelujah!  That's the whole point of the stuff!)  The agent told us in a very foreboding tone that we would be stuck with the color beige forever.  Maybe bad things happened to those with beige vinyl siding back on the bloc when he was growing up, I don't know.  But if you are one of millions of Americans with beige vinyl siding on your house, I'm sorry your life is a vast, barren wasteland. Try not to think about it and the feeling might go away.  Best of luck to you.

Well, once our agent came back into town she went to the YELLOW house and agreed that it was not the: 

that her coworker (who truly is a very nice person who is good at his job) made it out to be.  After lots of consideration about the backyard and the master bathroom, we decided to put an offer on the house.  Aannnnnnd....we were rejected!

What I am about to say holds no weight considering my blog is riddled with errors. 
The agent who wrote the rejection letter had the worst grammar ever.  Ever.
As I said, I realize I use horrible grammar on my blog.  But, it's a blog, not a professional document.  So I'm allowed.  For your reading pleasure, I will now share the first sentence of said letter:  
Thank you for your interest on our home. 
Ugh.  It still makes me cringe.  And it just got worse from there.  I had a great time using red font to fix all her errors, but Andres stopped me before I could forward it back to our agent to send to the seller's agent.  Boo.
Our agent was all, "You can try again with another offer," but I was all, "This house sucks.  We don't need this house.  This house needs us."

Yeah!  I don't need a yellow house to make me look good!  There are tons people out there who find this attractive:

Take that, 1950s-yellow house-pretty-cleaning-housewives!  POW!