Spying on Your Readers 101

Hello Internet. I've missed you old friend. I know it's been a while. Lets just say I wanted to take a holiday vacation, but I'm back now so let's get right down to it:

Instead of writing about something you all probably want to hear about, like what it's like taking a 3 year old and a 1 year old on an 8-10 hour drive to Mexico and back, or how we brought in the New Year amidst very questionable machine gun fire, or how many tacos i was able to consume in 6 days, I'm going to write about something off the wall. Something I noticed happening with increasing rapidity while i was gone: How many woman got duped by the target brand pregnancy test during Christmas.

If you blog and have any vanity at all you probably have some sort of analytics program set up. I'd like to say I'm "above" this, but sadly its not true. I revel in the amounts of readers I get, and feel like a rejected loser when nobody comes around. For those of you unfamiliar with what an analytics program does, it tells you how many people came and read your blog, where they came from, and if they return....it does not give names and addresses so you can stop sweating. Three reasons I have this program:

1. My vanity
2. My vanity
3. So i can make sure my blog and pictures don't get used in a profane way somewhere on the Internet.

It's for this reason that I noticed a sudden rise in popularity over the holidays. Suddenly without trying i became an overnight Internet sensation....okay, not really. It turns out the holidays are a good time to take a pregnancy test.....and also a good time to freak out about it. For once it wasn't me doing the freaking out.

I realized today that Mariah is now older than Hayden was when I got pregnant the second time....I should also tell you that I held a very adorable 3 day old baby last week.....I looked dreamily into her sweet little face and thought "I can definitely do this again...." while Hayden and Mariah smashed her little toys and screamed in the background.

Christmas Spectacular

Decorating for Christmas with little kids is so much more fun and exciting than decorating by ourselves was. I was moved to tears several times just seeing how excited Hayden got over the Christmas tree (and not just because I'm PMSing....okay, probably mostly for that reason). I put the Christmas lights on the tree, we plugged them in and for the next hour Hayden ran around the house exclaiming "Happy Christmas!" to everyone and everything, including his stuffed cat. Then he sat down on the floor in front of the tree and said, "it's wonderful," in hushed tones. It was so sweet I completely forgot the hot chocolate throwing incident from yesterday and the unwrapped toilet paper filled bathroom incident from this morning.

This afternoon I made some sugar cookie dough with visions of him and I bonding over a fun activity. Something new and exciting that we had never done before. I imagined how I would role out the dough for him and he would use the cookie cutters to make cute little shapes, then together we would place them into the oven while exchanging secretive smiles. I think I failed to remember that he is only two. That was probably my first mistake. Maybe that dream works with a 5 or 6 year old....who knows I'm not there yet. What actually happened was more like this:

Me: "Hayden, let me role the dough and then you can cut the shapes...."

Hayden: "Can I have a bite?"

Me: "No, we're going to cut shapes and then bake them and eat the cookies."

Hayden: "Can I have a bite now?" (reaching...)

Me: "No, just wait!"

Hayden: "I WANT A BITE!" (reaching and grabbing)

Me: "Put that back! wait till we cut shapes!"

Hayden: "I want another bite."

Me: "How about we cut shapes?"

Hayden: "BITE, BITE, BITE, BITE!"

Me: (sneaking a bite for myself), NO!..............................okay.

It ended with me frantically cutting shapes so there would at least be some cookies, while Hayden gobbled his weight in cookie dough and plain flour. I guess we're just a cookie dough eating kind of family.

Unless you want to be very stressed out, annoyed and have your little imaginary dream shattered I'd say It's always better to go into activities with a 2 year old without any preconceived ideas of how it will go. Lesson Learned.