A new month

well... we did it. everyone here in Johnsonville survived Danny's first month on the outside.

I think the hormones are balancing out; I feel less and less depressed-slash-pessimistic about my personal appearance, my capabilities as a functioning human, and pretty much life in general.


The floors still aren't done, and the world hasn't stopped... go figure. Sure... I'm still cringing... but I've been thinking more about what Rhena's face will be like this year when she gets to open about a gagillion presents from Santa and family members....


As for Danny... my little moosey.... he's great. he still doesn't sleep much, and he constantly eats... but he hasn't peed or jet-rocket-pooped on me in quite a while, so he's currently on my good side.

Rhena continues to amaze me. the things that she says and does crack us up regularly, and though I still watch her like a hawk when she's around the baby... her intentions towards him are nothing but loving.


I had the distinct pleasure of celebrating Chanukah with my Twinkie last night. We all went to her house for dinner. The main course was Latkas and Brisket, and I think I gained about 5 pounds. Not sure if I mentioned it or not, but Twinkie was a professional opera singer, so to hear her sing while lighting the Menorah was a truly moving experience for me. I felt very blessed to be sharing in her family's traditions.

I come from a family rich in traditions, so I'm big on learning about what other people do. Now that I'm a mom and our family is complete, I'm trying to figure out the balance of incorporating traditions that Troy and I grew up with as children into OUR children's lives... but also trying to start some new ones.

This year I took Rhena and Danny to a pottery place and had Rhena paint some ornaments. Danny was SUPREMELY pissed off when I painted his foot blue to imprint the ornament, but I think he's over it now. I think as the years go by and their ornament collection grows, it'll be a nice activity to look forward to each year. At least for now *I* look forward to doing it again, and since they can't drive yet... they'll be doing it again next year. hah!


what are YOUR traditional schticks for this time of year?

Mirror Mirror

So I've noticed lately that I am NOWHERE in the same ballpark of looking at myself and seeing what other people see.

I think I have a decent grasp of who I am and what my capabilities are. I know I'm an attractive person with a normally great personality (hormonal breakdowns not withstanding). I know I'm not, nor will probably ever be one of those HOT MOMS you see on tv or in certain web circles. but again.. I do ok, and most days I would venture to say I'm not painful to look at, nor am I causing secret laughing fits of the general populous.

As a mom, I also feel I'm doing ok. Rhena is healthy and happy, and for the most part, a delightfully well-tempered and mild-mannered polite little girl. But then again, she's two, so that could change in a few years. As for Danny... well, I haven't dropped him yet, and I manage to keep up on his diaper changing, feedings and bathing.

As a wife... well.. let's just say Troy's been getting the short end of the stick lately. he does get dinner cooked every night and he has yet to run out of clean clothes to wear... and he'll get the occasional foot-rub as a bonus at the end of a long day... but that's about all.

but yet... I have to be honest and tell you I feel like I'm really falling short lately. I regularly find myself feeling unaccomplished and distracted, as well as frustrated for the lack of things I seem to not be getting done. plus my hardwoods are so disgustingly filthy it makes me cringe to think of it.

Again.. just being honest. I feel for the most part I'm doing OK...but ok has been feeling like a failure lately. Well, definitely at least not enough. So lately, when I have been communicating my feelings of failure to some friends, I am met with cheers of how great I'm doing and how I'm being too hard on myself.

So this makes me wonder.... am I REALLY being that unreasonable? I appreciate the sentiments my friends slather on me, and I understand that all support is well-intended. I do, after all, have wonderful, generous and supportive friends (both inside and out) and I would say it's just their loving nature that causes them to say what they do.

but in the same token.... back to me wondering.... have their standards dropped??? have their expectations or opinions of my capabilities been hampered such that me showering and leaving the house is REALLY a cause for celebration?

Perhaps no one wants to be the one picking on the post-partum chick... and I imagine fucking with a hormonally unstable woman probably isn't the best idea, so I can't really blame anyone for not giving me some tough love... but still.

In some probably sadistic way, I think maybe it would be nice to hear that yeah... I DID drop the ball majorly, and I DO need to step up my game a little. I mean... nobody gets better being told they're perfect all the time, right? not that I'm being told I'm perfect... but being told all the time how I'm exceeding all normal expectations isn't giving me any incentive to do better.

Granted, I fully recognize that if NO ONE was telling me I was doing a good job, I would still probably feel like an unaccomplished piece of shit... so perhaps this is a moot point.

i'm lucky to have the support network that I do, and appreciate the way my loved ones try to boost my morale and make me feel better about myself. But I also appreciate the girl in the mirror who isn't complacent just getting by every day. I just wish that the messages I've been getting from each lately weren't so opposite of one another.

The week that wouldn't end

sometimes, especially when you're a raging post-partum bag of hormones, you have a bad day.


sometimes... those bad days are really only a few shitty events in the morning that set your mood to foul for the rest of the day. I seem to be a master of those kind of days. Even back in my swingin' single days... I can recall waking up late, slightly hungover, only to find that my period had unexpectedly arrived and ruined a super-cute pair of underwear, and... well... you get the point.

And now... well, now that I'm married and the parent of two other beings, I'm four times as likely to have shitty events, cause there's my OWN propencity to welcome misfortune, and as well as the likelihood of Troy, Rhena and/or Danny being in a bad mood and passing it on to me.


So with that in mind... trust me when I tell you this week doesn't seem like it will ever end. cause you know... SOMETIMES you get hit upside the head with shitty events for four days in a row.

and that's the catch you see. cause while I WANT this week to just be over already.. (cause trust me when I tell you this has been one humdinger of a week for me) yes, while I want the week to just be over, I then realize that we're one week closer to Christmas, and I think of all the things that aren't done yet and I start to breathe funny and sweat.

Come to think of it, since becoming pregnant, I've been spending a lot of time on that emotional fence. I often find myself just surviving by repeating the mantra of this only just being a phase, and how it shall too soon pass, whatever the "this" or 'it' may be.

and just as suddenly as our house can turn into an utter screaming chaos, I find myself wrapped in a moment of wonder and accord and I find myself wishing I could freeze time.

oh well. 'tis the season, right?

A Week(end) moment

so I'm taking advantage of the fact that Troy's home from work and I'm allowing myself to be online.

so I guess while I'm here, I ought to say out loud that it's Troy's birthday. not that it really matters to most of you... but here in our house, it's another official occasion for Rhena to sing happy birthday, and for me... well, it's another reason to eat cake.


so happy birthday to Troy. bring on the cake!


ps... new pics are on the photoblog, including some of the newest Johnson.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled silence

... just letting you know that I really have nothing to talk about.

we've been in survival mode lately.... and while that's going fine by most counts... it's pretty exhausting.

I've begun to adjust to the humungo TV, as well as very little sleep and the GINORMOUS milk cans that have replaced my once-oh-so-cute boobs. Though I must make a point of noting how being adjusted to something and actually LIKING something are two different things. well.. maybe not so much the TV. I'm starting to like it. expecially since my blind ass can pretty much watch it now without glasses, the screen is so freaking big!


my head has been residing in a place somewhere between up my ass and in the quiet fog of sleep deprivation... so I pretty much have been unable to finish complete sentences lately. I do much better in the morning after my mug of cold coffee, but I could just be so far gone that I only THINK I'm doing better when in actuality, the caffiene is just making me talk FASTER, so it seems like I'm actually saying more.


but yeah. it's friday, and I made it through my first whole week (5 days) of 2 kids by myself. wow.. just writing that makes me tired. but still... five days. and no one got hurt! not a bad start, if I do say so myself.

alrighty... I'm off to do things that I only dare to dream about when both kids are awake. you know.. like EAT, and use the bathroom.


have a great weekend, gang!

Coming up for Air

well, every once in a while here at the Fever, I like to talk about stuff that's completely NOT related to babies.

today needs to be one of those days. I'd tell you why, but then I'd be talking about babies, and we're not doing that today.


SO ANYWAYS.... things have been trucking right along in these here parts. In a post-partum moment of despair, I pointed to the TV section of the Best Buy ads that comes in the Sunday paper. Needless to say, by merely showing the faintest interest in TVs, I opened a floodgate I soon would not be able to contain. In all actuality, though, I think those floodgates would have been bum-rushed even if I was in the same room as Troy and the ads at the same time. (Yes.. Troy is THAT bad.... remember the ooh-ooh-gotta-go-to-the-world-series fiasco a little while back?)

so floodgates were opened, nay I say Pandora herself was up my ass with her box of despair, and there was no going back. So Troy got his TV. oh, excuse me, WE got the TV... I forgot. It's a gift for BOTH of us. yeah. whoopity do.


so since we have this behemoth monster in our living room now, we decided it was time to get caught up on the netflix movies that have been kicking around. After three failed attempts in the hospital to watch "road to Guantanamo", we decided to just return it. I don't think troy made it past the first 5 minutes of any time it was on.

we've seen Primer, which I think I would have liked better if, you know.. I was a rocket scientist or something. oh wait. I WAS one. strike that. make it enjoyable if I had a PhD in mathmephysics or something. I mean, it was a good movie, but whoa. some of that shit was way deep.

another decent to good rating for a movie would go to I am David. It ranged from cute to heart-wrenching, and definitely made me think of how appreciative I am for the way things are here in Johnsonville.

Lastly... we wasted two hours of our lives this weekend watching Silent Hill. (not even putting a link cause I don't want to be associated in any way to that crap) I can NOT even begin to go off about how sucky this movie was. Granted, there were some cool special effects, but jeepers, batman, if they spent just a FRACTION of their special effects budget on better writers or better actors... well, I suppose it would have still sucked. yeah, it was THAT bad.

it's a shame, too. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, or perhaps my criteria is too high, but I really haven't found a good horror flick lately. I mean, there are some really good (read disturbing) movies out there that border on slightly plausible that make you think... but it seems all the horror flicks just run by a shade of hokey anymore.

Now when I was younger, I'll definitely say Freddy Krueger had me jumping once or twice. now when I watch the movie, I laugh. Have we become a society TOO reliant on good special effects? I dunno, cause it seems as if nowadays the more special effects I see, then less scary something is?

My all-time favorite scary movie is the Exorcist. Not only did it have the holy-fuckernuts shock factor, it also grapples with the possibility of being able to happen. well, for me it did, but that's just cause I go to church and Ouiji boards freak me out.

but the point is.. how OLD is that movie? surely there is a good (read scary) movie out there that's been released within the past ten years?

so get to it, gang.... leave me a comment and suggest a movie. I'm looking for scary ones, but I'll take other good movie hints as well.

peace out.. I'm off to take care of things I'm not talking about today!

will you still love me?

when I'm 34????


yeah. today's my birthday. holy crappernuts. I'm 34, and the mom of 2 kids. I swear if anyone asked me 10 years ago where I thought I'd be in 10 years, I doubt I'd answer that I'd be sitting on the couch watching my two year old daughter pour water from her cup onto her head and praying that the grunting from my less-than-two-weeks-old-son is really just the result of him pooping, and not the onset of another demand to be milked yet again.


But I'm here now, and all things considered, it's not so bad.


yesterday was a pretty random post, but that's kinda how things have been flowing around here.


BUT... today is my birthday, and for all intents and purposes, it's the beginning of a new year for me. I'm excited for what the new year will bring for the fever.... both the knowns and unknowns.


I know for sure that this month will be busy, what with the new baby, visitors, Christmas, then Danny's Baptism on the 30th. Springtime will see my students and my very own Godchild celebrating their first Communion (trip to new jersey with two kids... whooo-boy!)

there will be potty training of Rhena, there will be first words and first everything elses with Danny.

there will be feeble (but hopefully successful) attempts for me to lose weight and get into a shape other than 'flubby'.


and a whole lot more. shit, I may even do another template one of these days.

but for now, I'll just leave that one in the category of 'unknowns' and enjoy the day. or at least enjoy the cupcakes that are about to come out of the oven. Can't go wrong with a little cupcake action on the birthday.

happy december, gang!