Wednesday I took some pictures of Miss Demand. There are a few of her actually eating a meal, which has been unheard of recently. In case you are wondering she was eating ham, organic whole grain crackers with sundried tomato hummus and she had kiwi, but she seems afraid of it. There are a few really cute pictures of her in her tent, and then I tried to get some of her at her piano but she wasn't in to having her artistic expression photographed. It was cute because she went into her room and brought out a chair to sit next to the piano, then she just started playing away.










I recently took the advice of "Happiest Toddler on the Block" in regards to getting Demand to eat her food. It involves compromise, and lets just say by the end of dinner the other night Demand had eaten sausage, spinach, and more than her share of tomatoes. It was a peaceful dinner for once.

I have a potentially challenging day today, or as I like to call them, "Saint Making Days". Basically, my little "Sanctifier" has showed signs of being challenging today and we have no car, and no playdate.

Breathe in, breathe out, start coffee.

I think she's paying me back for not being here to put her to bed last night. I had a Wedding Shower across town last night during a snowfall. Obscure babysat until Mr. Sloth got home, but I wasn't home in time to put Demand down.---On a side note, even though I only nurse Demand three times a day, apparently I'm making more milk than I thought as I learned this morning. Wow.

Nursing was a mutual agreement this morning.

I think today will go more smoothly if I shower, dress, and have coffee. So that is what I will do now.

I Can't Have It

Yesterday Mr. Sloth and decided to torchure ourselves by viewing the dream home that we can't buy. First let me clarify, we have a dream *older* home and a dream home that we'd like to build ourselves. This home was everything we were looking for in an older home.

When we got to the home we found out that the woman who had redone the home was an antique refinisher so she not only knew what she was doing, but she had a passion for it. The main floor was gorgeous, including a sunroom and very large dining room with built in window bench and buffet. The kitchen was much nicer (and bigger) it would be with a booth style table built in. It was four bedrooms, one with a balcony. The basement was unfinished, but really nice. The floor was painted and it was all very clean. The woman had replastered all the walls and ceilings, redone all the electrical and plumbing including new copper piping, and most of the kitchen appliances were new as well as the washer and dryer.


The lot was 60 feet wide, about 25% bigger than the rest of the neighborhood.

(Sigh) Unless St. Joseph is going to go out of his way to get this home for us in the next few weeks, it just isn't going to happen. Oh, yes, and the price is unbelievable. That's why we had to see it. The price was too good to be true!!

In the end I had to keep going over the downfalls of the home...detatched garages, no walk in pantry, our lovely refrigerator wouldn't fit in the kitchen, no back door (only side and front door), and no deck,laundry downstairs (although there's a laundry shoot), and half the closet space I currently have. Mr. Sloth made the point of us growing out of the house pretty quickly as the bedrooms were rather small.

Did I mention the neighborhood?? Two blocks from our Church, one block from a library, post office, Dairy Queen, park, convenient store, and coffee shop.

Ok. Ok. Now that we've seen the house we can't have. I will now attempt to forget it. If God wants us to have it, he'll give it too us. And, if he doesn't want us to have it, when it's our time to buy, the perfect house will be out there right?? AND, I'm actually quite happy with our current home. Our only wishes/complaints is that there's no yard or basement. Other than that, it's a great amount of space and we did buy it because it had what we wanted. So at least we're happy with what we have and have a tiny room left for a hopefully growing family.

Ok, here's the link to the home in case you're curious. house

A Defect Model

So these are the terrible twos!!!

Now I can't really complain about Demand but slowly a new temperament is creeping into the life of our otherwise sweet little girl.

First off, I just happened to find our dream home in our dream neighborhood, at a dreamy price, and we can't afford to move right now. Rarrrrr!!!! (That was me growling.) It's a lovely 1936 era home, 4 bedrooms with gorgeous wood accents inside, wood burning fireplace, sun room, bench nook in kitchen, UNfinished basement (which leaves room for improvement), a backyard, two blocks from our Church (one block from Dairy Queen), and at only a little more cost than the home we have now. So we decided to take a look at it anyway...just in case St. Joseph wants to work a few miracles or something.

Anyway, as soon as Mr. Sloth came home from work we all jumped in the car to drive by the home. When we got back Mr. Sloth wanted to shovel a bit of snow that had been sitting in our driveway for weeks. Demand stayed outside with him enjoying the warmer weather. He tried bringing her in once but she insisted she stay outside. Then I asked if Mr. Sloth could bring in the stroller that was on our sidewalk. Well Demand saw the stroller and thought she was going for a walk, which she wasn't. And that's when the meltdown began. Since we were bringing her inside to eat dinner the meltdown continued over the course of the meal with her refusing to eat anything making for aa very unpleasant meal.

Finally she asked for an "ornge" which was actually a grapefruit, but I figured it was better than nothing. For the next four minutes while I peeled and segmented the grapefruit there was complete silence in the house. Something we are not accustomed to here. After dinner I pulled out the "Happiest Toddler on the Block" book that I currently have out on loan from the library and searched for a chapter entitled "unreasonable toddler" (There was no such chapter.). I then informed Mr. Sloth that we had to "return" Demand as she was in fact, a defective model child.

We should be expecting our replacement toddler any day now.


Luckily, I kept my patience by some miracle and we all worked through the situation fairly unscathed.

Laughing or Crying

Toddlers constantly either make you laugh or cry, and sometimes both at the same time. Friday morning started well. Demand and I were up and ready in time for Mass which is not always the case. She was even pleasant enough during Mass that I was able to stay for a bit afterwards. (Usually she's putting her hat on after Communion.) Anyway we headed home and she started to play nicely by herself for about 10 minutes, then things went downhill.

All of a sudden she decided that any previous boundary or rule established in our home was null and void. In a matter of a half an hour she managed to press as many buttons on my computer as possible, eat an eraser, tear the curtains off my bedroom wall, and then we reach the climax of the morning. I was getting a bath ready for myself, but of course, being a toddler, Demand wanted to splash in the water as it was filling. We have a two feet on the floor rule which was of course ignored, and in her attempt to reach the shallow water she toppled over into the tub of water completely clothed.

That was one of the laughing/crying moments I spoke of previously.

The fall was of the variety where you can almost see her guardian angel lift her up and gently set her back down. And Demand being the personality to never really like to be dirty or sticky, was not pleased to find herself clothed and wet. So in my frustrated-I-told-you-so manner I picked up my sponge of a child and removed her clothing including the fresh cloth diaper that I had just put on her moments ago, but was now soaking wet.

I had now moved the baby gate into the bathroom to prevent further temptation only to find her hovering over the top step of the stairs. --It's at this point where I'm sure you're wondering who in the world would leave stairs ungated with a toddler. Well Demand is a stickler for safety, usually starting her decent down the stairs on her bottom halfway down the hallway, just in case. So the gate, in our house, is more of a precaution, not a necessity. Apparently, Demand was not happy with the unfolding of events upstairs and just decided to move the party downstairs. Then again she might not have been thinking clearly since half her head was wet. I dashed across the loft and scooped her up while half-heartily asking her what her problem was.

With that I decided to nix my bath and take my friend up on her playdate offer. So I dried the left side of Demands hair and off we went. When we got to our friends house, I dropped off Demand and did a much needed coffee run seeing as my friend's morning started with two very awake babies. (19 months and 4 months) waking up at 5:30am.

It was a much needed coffee-playdate.

The good news is that my attempts to keep my patience paid off, with the help of coffee and company. After the playdate, we headed home where Demand had lunch and then a nap, waking up ten mintutes before Grandma arrived to babysit. I was then off to my hair appointment which I thoroughly enjoyed, but was oh-so-much more money than I was expecting it to be. Apparently they scheduled me for the super-dooper-experienced hair dresser who gets paid per snip. I should have been tipped off when she offered to dry clean my laundry and vacuum my car, at least that's what's should have been included in that price.

I was home in time for dinner, then I put Demand to bed and left Mr. Sloth to his couch and cable while I went out and had night of sushi and giggles. Sad thing was I was the only girl there, but I was not the only one giggling. So weird.

Fresh Pictures

While figuring some things out on my camera this morning I managed to grab a few fun shots of Demand. If this turns out, I'll post more. They are a little blurry, but you can still see her cuteness.

Moving things along

Since I'm new to this way of blogging so I will be playing around with how to add pictures and such, please bear with me. This picture was taken by Mr. Sloth's sister last summer. Doesn't it look like it belongs in a magazine?? Mr. Sloth looks so great, and he NEVER smiles for pictures.

In case you were wondering Demand used the potty two times so far today. First thing this morning I was changing her diaper and she was trying hard to say something, finally I realized she was saying "pee". "No way!", I thought. I haven't even talked to her about going on the potty, etc. I set her on the floor and she went straight to the laundry room (where we have the mini-potty) and sure enough she went!! It's true what they say about girls learning fast! Impressive green one!! I wish she had taken the speed training on sleep as well!! Oh, well, can't win them all. In fact this is all moving too fast for *me*. I don't mind diapers, after all we do a mix of cloth and disposable, and well, I'm afraid of loosing my baby! (Mr. Sloth doesn't feel the same way about diapers) But this seems rather complicated as well. For example we were at Bible Study this morning and it was obvious that she had to go...twosies. Well I wasn't prepared to scoop her up, search for wipes and dash downstairs and attempt to have her go on a normal toilet. I'm going to have to work on being more prepared. (Good thing I know some boy scouts!)

So in case you're wondering (and I'm sure you are) Demand has gone number 1: three times, and number 2: 4 times and we haven't officially started training her yet!

Long Awaited Photos

Ok, so these pictures are from Demand's first birthday, and she's now 19 months, but better late than never. One day, hopefully soon, I will have beautiful prints of these framed around my house. Demand was such a ham that day! I had the pictures taken at the park across the street from my favorite park in the world. I used to go to the park to read when we lived in our old place. I have very fond memories of that park. (sniff, sniff) Enjoy the pics, but know that Demand is twice as tall, cute and has hair down to her chin now!!

We're Baaaaack!!!

Hello everyone, after a long hiatus I have decided to start posting again.

First, and explanation. One day Lazywife had a glitch but Mr. Sloth was too busy trying to set up a new business to fix it and quite honestly I was just as busy. Days turned into weeks, and then I realized. Who am I kidding?? I'm not Lazy anymore!! Toddlers will do that to you.

So thank you for being a part of Lazywife, and welcome to "The Whine Cellar". We will be keeping our 'code' names for old times sake. Sidekick came up with the name for the blog. I found it fitting since we not only have a whiny toddler but Mr. Sloth and I are not too bad whining ourselves.

I'd love to tell you that you haven't missed much, but in fact you have. Demand says 30+ words and has started to potty training, yes, potty training. She also started sleeping through the night. It only took 19 months (insert drowsiness) and she's only been doing it for two weeks, but we're still happy. (AND we didn't have to do cry-it-out!)

As for Mr. Sloth and myself, well Mr. Sloth did get that business up and running although everyday is a crap shoot and every month God likes to surprise us with how much money we will or will not make. (We don't like surprises.) Me? I've rediscover the joy of cleaning, organizing, and parenting with much help from cable television shows such as "How clean is your house?", "Mission Organization", and "Jon and Kate Plus 8". (more on those later) I've been staying unlazy, or as I like to call it slothfully-thin, by teaching Religious Ed at our parish (and I've dragged Mr. Sloth and Obscure into teaching as well). Demand and I volunteer, if ever so briefly at a Lifecenter, Demand and I still attend Bible Study on Thursday mornings, and we usually have a playdate on Fridays. It's not much compared to some, but it keeps me busy and keeps a good rhythm to the week.

Yes, Demand now has a regular playmate which has reduced my drinking by about two drinks a week. Playmates are priceless. In fact between Demand having a regular friend and sleeping through the night I'm starting to feel like a normal person again. Turns out, I wasn't lazy, I was exhausted.

Mr. Sloth works outside of the home again which is for the better. The only downfall is that we still only have one car (although it's completely ours!! Yay!!) so some days I'm stuck inside with Demand and some days I have to drive Mr. Sloth across the city and back. (gripe, gripe, gripe)

Ok, I'm going to try and coax Demand into a nap so I do some much needed work.