Milo

This is Milo.

By day, a mild mannered tea-cup chihuahua.  Protector of laps everywhere.  Fetcher of balls.  Neurotic.  Wuvable.

By night though (or early morning) he morphs into:

Savion Glover.

The world's best tap dancer.

After seven breakfast suckers and the upteenth gift, Moose is too weak to lift his head off the Christmas football...

Even Milo had candy canes for breakfast.

Pull up a floor and relax

I am writing this post today from our old house, free of pesky furniture and bare necessities. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bucket for a table. The bucket is our table. The floor is our chair collection. On the flip side, we have like, seating for 45 now. Sometimes I peer up at Mike and say, 'here, take the good chair. It reclines. ' Then I scoot over to the floor to the left and crack up. Sometimes he laughs. Sometimes he raises an eyebrow and looks concerned/nervous. Since we're only here for a bit, about two weeks, we didn't want to go to the trouble of actually moving in. Moving in stinks. There is nothing about it that we like. We do like it marginally better than moving out though, which is another reason why not to move in: the moving out that would inevitably follow. So we sit on the floor and mime using a remote control to change the channel to the telly that is really just the wall opposite us. Then we complain that there is nothing on, just like when we actually have a telly. Then we go to bed, which looks a lot like our fancy seating for 45, where we spend the wee hours realizing Gianni talks in his sleep and is going to need psycho therapy because he is convinced we are going to move in the middle of the night somehow and apparently leave him behind, so he spends the night smacking us in the faces to reassure himself that we are still indeed, present and accounted for. If one of us gets up at night to use the toilet, he runs crying after us shouting, 'I wanna come too!' but then he gets confused as to whose house we are at and usually runs into a wall or something trying to find the bathroom. But he's fine. I'm sure of it. Sometimes he offers me the good chair and scoots over to the right and cracks up. So? One night, in my concern for his mental well-being, I was cuddling him to sleep and since I was the Oreo cream filling to his and Milo's chocolate cookie, I had my arm over top him. Sometimes he sings himself to sleep, songs like "You're My Cheeseburger" or "The Water Buffalo Song," so while I heard him gently murmuring things, I was busy daydreaming about the large furnished house I'd someday own and not listening. Murmur, murmur, went my boy. Finally, I strain to catch the words and realized he was saying over and over, 'Get off me, Mom. Mommy, you're too heavy...get off me, Mom...' It reminded me of the time Cora was that age and getting over an illness. She was laying on the couch (a real one) and watching The Wizard of Oz. I sat down on the floor by her and stroked her head and smooched her and told her she was going to be alright, etc etc, you know, mothering and all. She finally said weakly, 'Mommy, are you almost done making me feel better cuz I can't see the movie.' Kids. They'll be the death of me, I know it. And yet every time I go to the grocery store, some well meaning elderly gentleman tells me not to blink, because if I do, they'll grow up on me. So I blink, and blink...but they're still there.

Thank goodness.

Also adding to the night time soap opera-etics, is Milo, the gassiest cocker spaniel in the world. He too seems to be overly obsessed with the state of our address and spends every waking and sleeping moment glued to a pair of feet. While updating him for rabies and distemper, the vet asked how he was doing mentally and if he was a happy, contented doggy. 'Of course!' I cheerfully replied as I used all my super woman strength to remove him bodily from my pants, 'He's always like this...real affectionate like...completely normal...can you give me a hand just getting him off my head?' I barely got away with out making an appointment to see the pet therapist.

The girls on the other hand, thrive on the weird, and have had no trouble adjusting and readjusting to their parents lack of employment/housing/sanity. They were seriously irritated to find that their favorite tree in the backyard had been pruned by a zealot, but other than that bit of sorrow, they get along famously. They are thrilled beyond words to go on their first airplane ride to Indiana on the 28th of this month. I have not blogged about our impending employment, not wanting to jinx it as it is not completely 100% final, but the short story for those of you who haven't heard is that we are going to be full time parents. We're really excited and since we homeschool we are already used to people deciding that we're crazy/unstable/and not normal, so if that is your reaction, we live quite comfortably there. It's not the job for everyone and I'm sure we'll find out just how naive we are when we start, but you never know, it could fit us like a glove. I've never been to the mid-west. I've heard a rumor that it's flat. And has tornadoes. Wyoming was flat and had occasional tornadoes. Mostly antelope and wind though. Idaho is flat, 'cept for all the mountains.

In the meantime, I'm just going to pull up a chair - snort - and enjoy my napping child (he's napping naked and if there's anything cuter I cannot think of what it could be) and try to come up with a new name for the blog. I only ever named it what I did because it had to have a name, but I'm sure someone of you creative people could come up with something better. Give it your best shot! Leave me lotsa comments, cause I got very little to do. I plan to lounge in my imaginary posh purple chaise all night and there's nothing on the telly but white paint and I've seen that show, like a trillion times.

Oh, and if you'd like to contribute to the Williams' Family Get Thee Some Therapy Quick Fund, our children's/pet's sanity would thank you.

This is my fifth child: Milo. He's a cocker spaniel mix. Or a crocker spaniel mixed-up, as Anna would say. He's a good doggy. He keeps my feet warm at all times, eats all the toddler messes off the floor, cleans out my car better than a shop vac, allows Gianni to torment him, never lets a ball go unplayed with, and looks at you with those yummy puppy eyes. He also has the worst gas EVER but that's another story for another time.

The crash after the Halloween sugar high. See the six inches of bed space there? That's where I sleep when Mike's on the road. Less like sleeping and more like fighting for my life. Remember the scene in Mission: Impossible 2 where Tom Cruise is hanging off the cliff by his fingernails? Like that. Bonding is precarious work, but on the plus side, they protect me from the bogey man.

Trick or treating with the Pops. One cherry sucker was all this dude needed. The small dude. The larger dude needed a beer.

Want a piece of candy, little kid?

Typical of my children: a masquerade ball princess and a zombie. Just call em Night and Day. They got enough candy to last until Easter, which is of course, the goal of any self-respecting ghoul. Ghouls have goals, don't they? They even got uber cool stuff like microwave popcorn and glow necklaces and organic juice boxes. Me, I don't give out the good stuff. In fact, I forgot to buy candy and ended up sneaking it out of what the girls collected to give to the door knockers. Shhhh! Sort of like taking money out of their allowances in order to be the Tooth Fairy. Not that I would ever do that. Right.

Birthday candles....mmmmm, a pyromaniac's dream! And the dairy free, egg free cupcakes weren't half bad. I'd include the recipe, but something tells me no one wants it...

How'd y'all survive the piggy flu epidemic? We had mild-ish cases ourselves, but it's nice to feel oh so healthy again. Gianni and I were sick on both his birthday and Mike's birthday, Mike had it for several days and the girls got fevers and one night of tossing their cookies. Hopefully, our immune systems will be so strong now that if it comes back, wham bam, thank you ma'am, we'll not even feel it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. I try to throw up no more than once a decade, so I'm good till 2019 now.

Other than that, life goes on as normal. I'm starting to get just a tad, just a smidge, just a hair, stressed out about our living/working/surviving situation. In lieu of flowers, please send gifts. Or a large farmhouse with a porch and a happy little tire swing and a nicely paying job for Mr Williams.

In other news, the evil and short one put my cell phone in a glass of ice water for approximately .03 seconds and that was long enough to turn it into toast. Yup. Stick a fork in it. In lieu of phone calls, please send letters.

introducing Milo, the wonder dog

So here is Milo (not the sharpest tool in the shed/smartest dog in the park/one taco short of a mexi plate) after getting what he deserved when going through the garbage. I really did want to help him, really, as he completely panicked and started violently running in circles and smacking into walls, but I was laughing WAAAAAY too hard.

Sorry about the change of website! The old one, not to sound ungrateful, kept wanting me to pay for space. And we all know how thrifty I am. I am Goodwill's Customer of the Month after all. So here I be and thanks for following!

Here's an excerpt of something I found cute and funny. It's a to-do list that the girls wrote the other day. If you can't decipher the creative spelling, the answers can be found below.

1. play in a box
2. read
3. woch tv
4. play Wii
5. tell koch koch jokes
6. tock
7. play outside

1. yep, it really is 'play in a box' 2. read 3. watch tv 4. play Wii 5. tell knock knock jokes 6. talk 7. play outside.

It reminds me of the list Buddy wrote for his dad in "Elf." But it was a busy day: no time for Snuggles I guess.

In other Williams' news: the dog, Milo, has spent an entire year training Gianni to play fetch and it has finally paid off. He used to roll the ball over with his nose next to a one month old infant and wait patiently for that same infant to jump to his feet, grab the ball, hurl it across the room, and then hand out bits of bacon from inside his onesie pocket when it's returned. Now that Moose is walking and gleefully throws footballs (and anything else) Milo's dedication has finally born fruit. It's pretty cute and one of these days if I can figure out how to turn the digital camera into a camcorder, I will post it for you all to laugh over. The Little Pitcher also likes to throw things down the stairs. He stands at the top and lobs all sort of things into space. Shoes, binkies, toys, books, dishes, crayons, they all go flying by my head at some point during the day. He also makes the sound effects to go with them - a high pitched noise for the flight, then a crashing sound for the landing.

Well, in a few days Anna will go from being the shortest six year old in town to being the shortest seven year old in town. Definetely due for a growth spurt, Roosky is still a little dynamo. She is getting the hang of reading (thank you, Lord!) and getting more and more independent. Cora is off with Daddy in Rock Springs for a couple days, so it's me and her and several showings of "Mamma Mia" and "Hairspray." A couple recent Anna-isms for you:

While referring to our landlord, she called him 'the guy who REALLY lives here."

When she asked if our friends were going to be able to adopt their foster son, we explained that these things take a lot of time to decide. She paused and thought for a bit and said, "well, I can understand that. It takes me like, 15 minutes to decide what kind of ice cream I want!"

While I'm sharing things that will embarrass them later in life, here's one from Cora. We were studying slavery and trying to make it appropriate for her age group I explained that a hundred years ago she wouldn't have been friends with her good friends, Sammy and Meeka or Jamel and Kiana. With the innocent reaction of a color blinded child, she burst out in wonder, "They're black?!?!"

Those are the good points of our days here. The filler is me wiping the boogers off my shoulder from my sniffly one year old, trying not to throttle the first grader who just read the word 'actually' but is stuck on the word 'go,' and having all out war with the eight year old who refuses to wear anything but holey jeans, Broncos tshirts, and a baseball cap to church. Those events are peppered with long, daily rounds of "sniff out where that dirty diaper got off to," cooking with a toddler sized leech attatched to my legs, a failing battle with the basement monster who is soiling more clothes than I can laundry, trying to hold onto misc. children in the mighty Wyoming wind, readings of the Twilight series because my age is obviously dyslexic and I'm really 13, and episodes of Lost Season 3 that aren't going to watch themselves. It's going to be a looooong winter/spring here in Wyoming, so be prepared for more pointless ramblings and musings that go nowhere!