What crazy week. Thank God the gingers had no idea how crappy it was in the real world and just enjoyed their spring break.

Sunday:

Look! A totally uninteresting part of a 60 year old submarine! You STILL can’t see the interesting parts (where E works on the modern ones).

Running away from their BBQ pork. Obviously they were switched at birth. Both of them.

Reading with Aunt Erin

Monday:

7:30 am in New London, CT

The first time I tore myself away from the news that day the moon was already out

I let the kids stay up for extra cuddles and totally mindless children’s shows

Tuesday:

I spy ye, matey!

Even pirates need a cup of milk sometimes

Passed out with her (old) Easter hat

Wednesday:

Good morning, this is my tongue.

The gingers are doing their best impression of a cheesy movie slow motion run

Reading hat

Meal plan + shopping list = What’s For Dinner? will be back soon

Thursday:

Stroller Strides at the beach EFF YEAH

The view made working out less sucky

Children’s Museum Hat

A B C’S ARE BETTER WHEN THEY ARE AS LOUD AS THIS SIGN

Friday:

Caught red handed!

There are approximately 300 of these on my phone from this day, since the kids got the iDevices while I watched the news…

…and read ALL the Twitters.

Saturday:

And sometimes my view during Stroller Strides is LESS inspiring

Introducing the gingers to Moe’s

Swinging is fun

 And now school vacation week is OVER and I get some Suzanne-time back. I love love love my children more than life itself, but there’s a point during the day where I want to lock them both in a closet. THE WHINING OH THE WHINING. It’s amazing what a difference 5 hours a week makes to my sanity and patience. Oh and P.S. World? Try not to go totally INSANE again next week, ok?

I get a lot of spam here on ye olde bloggity blog. I would take it as a sign that I was somehow hitting the big time in the internet world but the truth is I’ve ALWAYS gotten a ton of spam, even when I had exactly three readers. I think I just look like an easy target: no comment verification, no captcha, the ability to post with a fake email address. Luckily, WordPress has a handy-dandy feature called Akismet that catches 99.9% of the spammy comments without any effort on my part. But that’s not to say the spammers aren’t TRYING to get published. Today I thought we could examine some of the valiant spam attempts to get their links and keywords published instead of banished to the spam folder (current count: 3,682 comments)…

Flattery:
What I dont comprehend is how youre not even a lot more popular than you might be now. Youre just so intelligent. You know so significantly about this topic, created me consider it from so many diverse angles. Its like men and women arent interested unless it has some thing to accomplish with Lady Gaga! Your stuffs great. Continue to keep it up! (I’m the next Lady Gaga! Says the guy who’s allergic to apostrophes!)

Dang i thought your blog was killer, gave me a car load of information, i never knew, thanks blogger.

Never thought blogging could be soo fun and interesting. Man you know how to do it brother. (Thanks…brother)

You are such an amazing writer. Wishing you a strength and peace that surpasses all understanding as you continue to walk the high road … you are amazing, and I honor you for being YOU! You represent grace and dignity … with a smile that melts anyone blessed to be on the receiving end of it. God Bless you Always, Carrie!!!! (oh, well, that was going really well until the end there)

Sympathy:
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say excellent blog! (Oh noes, penis enlargement medication website, I am SO SORRY we’ll never know what you had to say!)

Randomly Political:
Thanks to the Glen Beck wannabees this stuff is occasionally taken at face value. (on a post about breastfeeding)

I think this president #needs to# go and let’s #get back# on path. I Worship this country! (on a post about my wedding)(and left by someone called “lake havasu city tourist sites”)

“In a recent study, the United States was ranked the 114th happiest country in the world. Then Sarah Palin stepped down. Now we’re at 17.” –Conan O’Brien (that was all part of the comment – I really doubt it was actually left by Conan)

Perhaps English is not their first language. Or their second:
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(Don’t those all sound like that episode of Friends where Joey uses the thesaurus to write the recommendation letter? “Large aortic pumps!”)

Helpful and Important (and Fake) Tech Information:
Hey, just reckoned Iwould let you know that your blog page isn’t displaying proper on internet explorer 4. Anyways, carry on the great job !

Doing some browsing and observed your internet site seems a fraction messed up in my AOL cyberspace browser. But fortuitously scarcely anyone practices it any more but you may want to look into it (maybe your problem is you’re still using AOL?)

And my favorite, Honesty:
howdy, I’m havin a tough time attempting to rank well for the term “kokomo dentist”… Please approve my comment!!

This past Tuesday I took a blissfully child-free trip to Target. I wandered the aisles. I browsed. I picked out all the best clearance Valentine’s Day candy without any grubby little fingers grabbing at it. I spent a good hour and a half filling my cart with the kind of useless, pretty things that make Target the Best Place To Shop Ever.

Half way through the cashier ringing up my purchase, I realized my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

SHIT.

I blushed and apologized and died of embarrassment and swore to the cashier four thousand times that I’m sure it was just in my car and I would be RIGHT BACK, OK? PLEASE DON’T PUT ALL MY STUFF AWAY.

So I went on a hunt for my wallet. It wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t at Guest Service. It wasn’t in the parking lot. I called home – E said it wasn’t on the counter. I drove back to the doctor’s office where I had been just before Target. The nice nurses looked everywhere but we couldn’t find it.

It’s a big wallet. It’s also bright red. It’s always been really hard to misplace and isn’t the sort of thing you drop without noticing. Now I was PANICKED. The stuff in there is IRREPLACEABLE. How am I going to find the time to get a new driver’s license with two kids to drag around? I can’t see a doctor without my military ID (it’s my insurance card) and I can’t get a NEW military ID unless I can get on base which I can’t do without a military ID. IT’S AN ENDLESS CIRCLE OF HORROR. Not to mention the credit cards, my social security card, my membership cards at the aquarium and seaport and the four hundred rewards cards to various stores. For some reason I was oddly worried about those. How will I ever replace my Gymboree Rewards card? MY LIFE IS OVER.

I drove all the way home on the brink of tears. Once I saw the empty counter and realized my wallet was good and really, truly missing I lost it. Sob sob sob. Hopeless despair. E finally realized I wasn’t going to just pull it together and got up to help me look. WHATEVER  HUSBAND. IT’S LOST. FOREVERRRRRRRR. There’s really no point in going to look in the car because…

Oh, hey. Lookit there. It was under the passenger seat. It must have fallen out of my bag and slid back to where I couldn’t see it while I was driving. Oopsies.

I drove back to Target and collected my cart o’stuff, most of which suddenly seemed stupid and silly and not worth buying but at this point I was too embarrassed to put anything back. In fact, I threw in a couple extra things from the check-out lane to, I don’t know, make up for being such a moron. Because somehow in my head three packs of gum and a chapstick is what it costs Target to leave my cart between two check-out counters for 45 minutes.

Yesterday I did all our meal planning and went to Stop & Shop to buy $200 worth of groceries. Half way through the checker ringing up my purchase, I realized my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

SHIT.

I panicked. I blushed and apologized and died of embarrassment. I told her to finish putting all my stuff in my reusable bags and I would be RIGHT BACK with my wallet, swearsies. No, really, I have money! I can afford these things! I am not some sort of crazy person who just likes putting things in a cart for the hell of it!

I checked the cart. I checked the parking lot. I drove home. I checked the driveway and the back porch and the counter. I started to freak out. AGAIN, UNIVERSE? REALLY?

I yelled at E “I lost my wallet AGAIN! I just left a whole cart of groceries with the cashier and she thinks I’m a crazy person. Can you believe it? TWICE in one week!”

E looked at me and said “Did you even check the car?”

Guess where my wallet was.

As I mentioned before (even earlier in my pregnancy than this ridiculously early post), if Sandy ends up belonging to the hot dog half of the hamburger-hot dog population, we’ve already got a name picked out. It’s an awesome, cool, unusual, non-yet-overused, legitimately-from-my-immediate-family-not-a-third-cousin-twice-removed-in-law name.

But y’all, as much as I am TOTALLY COMPLETELY 100% IN LOVE with this name, I am skeered. Skeered people are going to think I’m a crazy person, skeered it’s a totally stupid thing to name a baby, skeered that the internet is going to mock me. I can’t even bring myself to put the name out there – not here on the blog, not on the baby message boards, not to anyone besides my parents and E’s parents and one friend I knew would understand. E actually told a few relatives a while back while I made desperate cringing “no don’t say it don’t say it DON’T” faces behind their backs. Then I ran away before anyone could react so I don’t know what they thought. I just can’t stand the thought of someone saying “Oh. Really? Are you sure?” to a name that I’ve got my heart set on.

I have no idea why this is bothering me so much. I do not live in an area where everyone calls their babies Bob or Mike or Jacob. I know Lucien, Calvin, Tristan, Reid, Brody and Gideon, all of which I would put in the same category as the name I want to use. And now that I’ve heard them 10, 20, 500 times none of those names seem even a tiny bit strange. They aren’t even “baby names” anymore – they’re just people I know, although admittedly tiny, drooling, crap-their-pants people.

My name isn’t even unheard of. I sent a totally crazy stalker Twitter direct message to a blogger who happened to mention her nephew was named my very special secret name. (I may have scared her with my craziness and/or questions.) I also freaked out when I saw MY name on a list of unusual names that are gaining popularity – and according to a few websites it’s now in the top 200 most common. I promise it’s not Heahstan or Cenwig or Kinkson or Syre or anything else from the Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing collection (WARNING: That link is a giant time suck. HUGE. DO NOT CLICK unless you have several hours to waste.) I promise I’m not really a crazy person. I promise even my own mother thinks it’s a fantastic name.

I also promise to stop talking about it now until I know for sure if we even GET to use it. Because the more I stress now, the more likely this baby will end up being a girl anyways. So it won’t even matter.

And for the record, if you’re DYING to know what the name is, send me an email or a Twitter DM or something. It’s not a secret, I’m just SKEERED.

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Minor housekeeping note: I finally broke down and joined the Top Baby Blogs list almost all my internet friends are members of. Unfortunately, you need like a quadrillion votes to show up in the top 100 so I’m going to be doing a little begging self-promotion. No registration or anything required: just click on the banner below and then click on the big icon in the middle of the screen. You won’t see my button until I make it to the front page (AHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahah!! Ha.) but rest assured you made my day just by voting!

Dear lady on the sidewalk in front of the post office,

You are probably a very nice person, although I do not know because you are a total stranger. I agree that you do not look crazy, at least not in the stereotypical smelling-of-booze-pushing-a-shopping-cart-ranting-about-the-end-of-the-world way. Perhaps you have a little bit of trouble understanding personal space, but in general I know your intentions are harmless. You most likely live a very normal, average life right here in town. There’s a pretty good chance you even see a doctor regularly and are not carrying any infectious diseases.

I’m sure my son does remind you of when your “babies” were that age. I understand that time goes by very quickly, and I should cherish every moment. (You may be shocked to learn you are not the first person to give me that advice.) I am incredibly blessed to have such a beautiful child. It’s great that your daughters seem like the kind of girls who will give you lots of grandchildren some day – although perhaps that’s more than I needed to know about them –  and I hope they are as beautiful as my own Baby Evan.

All that being said, if you ever EVER EVER put your lips on my baby’s face again, please believe I will punch you in the mouth.

Thanks for understanding!
xoxo
Suzanne