Just another day.

Where did I go wrong?? For some reason Kataeya is so anti-shopping that I think she has decided to make every experience at any store as unpleasant as possible. She's smart that Kataeya! She doesn't only "pretend" not to hear me but she does things to rile up Haley so that the only thing coming out of Haley's mouth is loud, annoying and uncontrollable. Little girls are supposed to like shopping aren't they?? She's so girly in every other way I guess I just assumed she would like going to the store.


Each morning when I drop her off at school she turns and says, "Remember Mommy, run all of your errands before you pick me up!"

So yesterday I was busy putting the house back in order from our trip to San Diego over the weekend that I didn't have time to run my errands while she was at school. When I picked her up I had to break it to her that we were going to run to JoAnn's Fabrics really quick! I even tried to pep her up by telling her that we were going to buy fabric so I could make them dresses for our trip to Fiji. She still wasn't having it. An hour and a half later I'm walking out with a pouting 4 year old and Haley who is screaming at the top of her lungs because I told her no when she asked to hold a sewing machine on her lap.


What could have been fifteen minutes turned into an hour and a half of me telling Kataeya to, "Come back!" and "Put that down!" and "Didn't I just tell you not to touch that?!" Also filled with Haley wanting to hold every ribbon in the ribbon aisle then either throwing it on the floor or unraveling it, with me giving in each time to keep her high pitched screaming to a minimum.


Some would have just left... but oh no not me! I was the lady in the store with the kids that you think Geez Lady, get ahold of your kids! I must have threatened Kataeya twenty times that I was never going to take them to the store ever again. At the time I thought I was the big bad bully but that's exactly what she was hoping for!

Well here are the fruits of yesterday's labor.

"How Old ARE you??"

That's the golden question for me.

I just loooooove how long it takes people to ask me that! What I love even more than that is their face when they hear the answer! My wonderful MOMS CLUB was so welcoming and non-judgemental when I first joined which made it so comfortable. It took about a month before anyone mustered up the courage to ask me my actual age. I know everyone kinda had a guess in their mind especially since I'm accompanied by a 4 1/2 year old but they were nice enough to assume I was a little older than I am.

It's actually nice if I even get asked that question. Most of the time people assume I am the babysitter of MY children. They aren't very shy about it either! It amazes me how presumptuous strangers can be. I wonder which factor makes them think I'm the babysitter more, the fact that they are fair-skinned and I'm not or because I don't look old enough to have two kids, let alone one. Either way it's gets pretty frustrating sometimes.

The girls and I were in an Asian market that I stumbled across when making a wrong turn in Van Nuys. When I went through the check out line, the lovely Filipino woman (being nosey just as all "Aunties" are) began asking me my life story and instantly judging me because I have an almost five year old. Then when she asked why I married so young, I confessed that I was only married last October, her mouth practically dropped to the floor and I got the one eyebrow-raised look. Not only had I had "relations" at 19 but they were premarital!! All of my mistakes were laid out for her in the same amount of time it took her to ring up my lumpia and pan de sal. Then she started reprimanding me in Tagalog and I just smiled and went on my merry way... "Oh, Auntie!"

To Wean or not to Wean

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

The common factor among all of these pictures is not only Haley... but her "Ba" or more commonly know as her pacifier.

Now this isn't just any old Ba. No no no, this is the Ba! I've bought numerous pacifiers but all to Haley's repugnance. You name it, I've bought it! Even the same exact brand, color, texture and size. She has spent the last 22 months wearing in that same piece of silicone that it must have some special scent on it that only Haley can recognize. It's been boiled day after day, it's been sewn to it's attaching clip in fear that the sacred Ba would be lost!

As soothing as it may be for a child, the pacifier was clearly designed by a mother desperately seeking some sanity! At least that's what I like to think. Kataeya also had a love for her "Fier" as she called it. When two years old came around it was decided that it would be taken away. She did it cold turkey! That was a loooooong week. After that experience you think I would have learned and would have taken a different route the second time around...

Haley will be turning two in July so Brad and I knew that it would soon be time to wean Haley of her Ba. After receiving a good suggestion from Nancy and another friend of mine, I decided to just do it one day! She had been taking it off and leaving it around the house. I would jokingly tell her to throw it in the trash and she would laugh that goofy laugh of hers and actually walk over to the trash can but I knew that the moment I went to put her down for bed she would go crazy so we would tell her not to throw it away.

On the 23rd of May I was sitting at the computer and glanced over my shoulder and spotted Ba laying on the floor. I thought to myself here is your opportunity! Take the suggestions and just do it! So I grabbed the Ba and before I could take another breath I had snipped the top off of it! I then carefully placed it back right where she had left it.

About a half hour later she came racing around the corner yelling, "Mama look-a look-a!!" My stomach dropped and I turned to find myself cracking up because she had such a look of disbelief on her little face. She then continued to tell me, "Ba's brokten! Look-a Ba brokten!"

Holding back tears of laughter, I responded with as much bewilderness as her, "What?! Ba is broken?!"

"Yeah. Ba brokten!"

Then she tried it and instantly spit it out to say, "Ewww, gross!" And ran back to her room to play. Then we lived happily ever after.... yeah right! So I said it was the 23rd because this is key, the Friday leading into Memorial Day Weekend. The drive down to San Diego that night was insane! You would have thought that her entire world was flipped upside down!

Here we are a little over a week later and we have had our moments and then a few more moments and then a few more after that. She doesn't miss it or call for it like Kataeya did, she just screams in spurts at anything directed toward her.

As I look back over the week I think it's been a relatively basic transition. But for Brad who is less than a week away from taking the second exam for his CFA probably doesn't think it went as smoothly as I do. I clearly didn't think it all the way through but what's done is done!

Who knows... maybe I'll get it right the third time around!