Metal Meredith

This is your only warning.

When you don’t have kids, the horror stories start at “terrible twos”. When you have kids, you come to know better.

I was expecting Vivienne to turn into a beast overnight when she turned two. When she was very little, I overheard some moms talking about their toddlers. I clearly remember exactly what one said to the other “Terrible Twos? No way. Three is so much worse.” I was very nervous at that point.

Welcome to almost-three. Please, take a seat and let’s chat about it. I will tell you a few stories of the past week and you decide.

Sunday: Vivienne went through another non-pooping weekend and by Sunday she resembled Andy Rooney’s permanent furrowed brow. At noon, Phil and I decided to administer a little something to make things “run more smoothly” for her.

Although the label clearly said it would work in 15 min up to one hour, 8 hours later she was hitting and screaming and crying at both of us until she finally cleared out. After she picked out a “poopie prize” (yes, it has come to that), she informed both Phil and I that she was all done and would never poop again. We looked at each other, smirked and thought “Great.”

Tuesday: We met my sister at the Mall for some lunch and some playtime. Since Monday was a happy day, Tuesday started the cycle of full of crap = nasty attitude all over again. After she curled up on me when she was done eating, I thought we were in for a nice afternoon. Of course, this was just a ploy to get to the playground.

She spent a good hour jumping, climbing, playing with other kids, running around, laughing, sliding and having a great time. When it was time to go, I gave her two warnings. On that last, I waited for her to go down the slide, informed her it was the last time and then grabbed her when she came out.

Suddenly and without warning, her head spun around 360 and she started spitting pea soup all over the….ok, maybe not that bad, but it wasn’t pretty. Fortunately, if my sister ever questioned her decision not to have kids, she was immediately satisfied. Vivienne proceeded to hit me, scream as loud as she could, spit at me, spit again, kick, go limp and then yell a few more times as I picked her up with one arm and grabbed her shoes with the other.

It didn’t end there. She yelled most of the way home until I started to talk to Phil on the phone. She then proclaimed that she was angry and showed me so by pushing her brow in and down, glaring straight at me and pursing her lips. It didn’t stop until she fell asleep at naptime.

Wednesday: After school, she typically plays with Sam in the school parking lot median, transporting the gravel from one end to the other in the “Gravel Relocation Project 2006”. On Wednesday, she walked straight to the car, grabbed the keys from my hand, turned around and looked right at Sam. “No Sam, I go home now,” as she put her hand right up in front of her and turned to get into the car. Ouch.

Thursday: So far today, we have been in time out twice, where she is forced to sit in her tiny chair, facing a closed door in the extra room. It isn’t a happy place and she knows it. After enduring her spitting at me for not getting Her Majesty juice right when she asked, it was time out for her. Instead of her typical 2-3 minutes, it lasted 6 because she would yell, scream, kick the door and continue to spit.

When I finally came into the room to collect her, I sat down next to her and didn’t say a word. She looked up and said (with a tiny smile, I might add), “I kicked the door and spit at you when you were in the other room.”

Lord. Help. Me.

or Everything Is Coming Up Sweetie

Vivienne has many pet names, some nice and some not-so-nice. I won’t bother typing out the list because inevitably someone will be offended that we called her “Poppy Nuts” for a good year. But one that has stuck the whole time has been my constant use of “Sweetie Pie”. Apparently this has not been lost on Vivienne.

About 6 times a day Vivienne asks if we would like to play with her dollhouse. Up in her room are 4 play areas; one has a dollhouse, across the room is the playground, floating around between is a Jungle Train and on her table is a Pirate Ship. We spend our time taking the 3 boys and girls, the mom, dad and baby back and forth from house to playground. Then, the tiger will be sad and need to find his friend the parrot at the pirate ship and all hell breaks loose.

Somehow in the midst of all of this playing, Vivienne named all of the people in her game. This is where it all began. There is a Asian girl, her name is Meredith. The mom in the house, her name is Meredith, too. Then, the dad is Dad, the little boy is Little Boy (we never said she was super genius.) Both the baby and the little blond haired girl ended up with the name, ‘Sweetie Pie’. We thought that was really cute.

Then, everything started being Sweetie Pie, the bear and the little bear was Mommy and Sweetie Pie. Phil made her a tiny juice cup out of playdough which suddenly made her juice into a game of mommy and sweetie. Sticks, lint, pieces of paper, french fries, cars, frogs, nothing is able to escape the name game. Lately, the banisters on the stairs have even been tagged. When going up or down, Vivienne will tell you, “You hold onto the Mommy railing and I will hold Sweetie Pie railing. Then, we will share the big one together.”

The other fun in naming comes when there is more than 2 things and they get seperated. If in the car and one goldfish snack falls down into the chair, the other has lost his friend. Then we must do a little fake crying goldfish that is sad because he lost ‘Friend’ goldfish in the chair. Later, when reunited, the goldfish will exclaim “Sweetie, Sweetie, I find you. I miss you so much!”

I suppose we should just thank our stars there no one has been named “Dumbass” and move on.

So I never post here, having little to say, but I feel compelled to comment on my recent purchase, the 1990 Volvo 740 Turbo wagon meredith mentioned a few posts back.

Okay, so after driving this thing for close to a month now, I can say a bit about it. First off, it needs a turbo, not to be sporty (although that may have been the marketing objective), but because it would be vastly under powered without it. Secondly, it is very...buggy. Buggy like software is buggy. I seem to be a magnet for these cars (’84 Camry, ‘65 Ambassador, ‘79 Civic [1st generation!], ‘80 Datsun). Or maybe it’s just because I can never afford to buy a new car. Anyway, here’s what I mean:

1. Test driving the car and the windshield washer does not work. I peek under the hood and see that the fluid line is not attached to the pump. Fixed. A week later, the line is attached, but I have no washer fluid. Suspect faulty pump or bad fuse. Need to double check fluid levels, but pretty sure that’s not it.

2. Overdrive is the “default” setting when in drive 3. To disable, there is a button on the drive selector which bumps it out of overdrive and prompts the display of an orange up arrow on the dash. You can push the button and get out of overdrive, but you cannot push it and guarantee that you will go back to overdrive. In fact, the car will randomly take itself out of overdrive at any given time. Very annoying, particularly at highway speeds. Suspect faulty wiring (pray it’s not the computer).

3. Rear driver’s side door lock. This lock is a powered lock and will not open by pulling on it. The power locks are triggered by locking/unlocking the driver’s door or tailgate via key or the lock itself. Rear driver’s side door lock will occasionally not work. This seems to be related to ambient temperature, but I don’t have enough data yet. Suspect faulty wiring or bad lock mechanism.

4. When turning slightly beyond straight on there is tightness in the steering that gives abruptly. Very noticeable at highways speeds when steering in more slight. Suspect steering rack. Not happy about this one since I sure it won’t be cheap and it will have to be fixed. Didn’t notice this when test driving. Always a good idea to get out on a highway if you can.

5. Complete lack of cupholders. Okay, not technically a “bug” — just bad design. Do people not consume beverages in Sweden?! WTF?!

So the car is certainly more comfortable than the truck and slightly more enjoyable to drive. Only time will tell if it was $1000 well spent or not. So far, I feel pretty good about it. We’ll see how that holds up once I get an estimate on the steering components.

Almost Not the Same Anymore

I wanted to point out that Phil and I have almost been in this house a year now. It is scary to think that it feels so completely not done, yet we have done a lot. What can that really mean? When we bought this house we saw it as a ‘for right now’ house that would grow with us, as we needed it to. Having no idea what the future held, we took the leap of faith and just went for it. Neither one of us were in love with the house, but I could see it for what it was, a giant project. Little did we know that we would have less money to take on those projects within a few months of moving in.

What we had hoped would take a few months is now coming up on the one year anniversary. I created a house blog to keep track of the progress as well as stop the incessant questions that seem to come when projects start. My mother and I have the same need for information and we both want to ‘see’ what is going on. I hope there are more than three of four people that check this site, but I suppose it is more for me than anyone else.

Since moving in, we have done a lot by most people’s standards. After watching many of those house hunting shows where a couple will walk into a house and critique it for their needs and hearing “Well, we will have to paint this room” in disgust, I have realized that not everyone sees a house as a project, like I do. We moved in here and I can’t think of one thing we really wanted to keep. I was excited about having a hug-antic bedroom and a real sized kitchen and those two things stopped me from caring about the original 1977 vinyl flooring in three rooms, the orange shag carpet in the upstairs and the overall “yellowness” of the entire house.

Now, I am in this house. I still don’t feel totally moved in. We have 2 rooms that have yet to be used as anything other than storage. I have to paint another 3 rooms before I have the whole house coated. We still have 2 floors to replace. However, we have removed a wall, re-carpeted and redone an entire bathroom. Things are starting to look less yellow, less colonial and thank god, even less 1977.