Take a Gander...

...And throw him down the stairs. That jerk totally deserves it after what he did to that old guy. We don't have a new song this week since Iris is still firmly in love with the Farmer in the Dell, but she did expand her horizons to include Goosey Goosey Gander sometimes. I'm not saying I approve of this behavior (*cough*kylestopshowingherthestupidvideo*cough*), but it is what it is, so here you go. I guess we do have a new song, just try not to watch it around children.



Okay, why is he in his lady's chamber? Why would a goose who is seemingly intent on checking out some lady's bed care one way or the other if some old guy was praying or not? Are we really teaching the youth of India (and elsewhere, I suppose) that violence is okay if you don't follow the rules? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy threatening to cut my co-workers if they chew too loudly or play with their clicky pens too frequently or like, breathe really loudly, but that's FUNNY because I would never ACT on it. Probably. But that goose is seriously just rude. Don't you think that old guy was kind of frail? Has he no concern for osteoperosis? Why is this a children's song?



TELL ME WHAT TO DO

Iris is fully potty trained at school. She initiates her own visits to the bathroom and almost never has accidents. She naps without a diaper and has for weeks. I think her last accident happened like two months ago, seriously. At home, her response to "do you have to pee" is always "NO." If you force her to sit on the potty, she will sit for hours and hours and insist the entire time that there is no pee. Then she'll stand up, pull up her pants, and pee on the couch/floor/your lap. She will wake up in the morning with a dry diaper and hold her pee for hours after waking. I have seen her go over 14 hours without peeing. Help me.

Meet Aloyshious Fitzpatrick Kelley

Don't freak out, I made that up. We still have no idea what to name this kid. All I'm saying, is that if "Guy" is a real name, then "Dude" totally is too.

{Fig 1: (Skeletor) Face}

{Fig 2: (Hobbit) Feet}


{Fig 3: (I know it doesn't look like it but it's definitely a) Penis}

Iris Music Thursday: Somebody Hug The Cheese!

I'm really very sorry to be doing this to you. I really, really am. As someone who has lived the reality of this song on repeat for days, I can tell you with pristine sincerity that I am completely remorseful to impose this earworm on you. In the spirit of honesty though, I'm required to share.

I don't know how to explain Iris' love of this song. She wants to sing it or hear it all the time. She likes the predictability of the lyrics, for sure. She bops her little butt around to the tune, while nodding her head in time with the beat in a very serious, musical connoisseur-type fashion. She's cool with the farmer, the wife and the child. She's fairly ambivalent about the nurse, but by the time we get to the dog part, she knows that the cat part comes right after, which directly precedes the mouse, and she is not pleased with the mouse. The mouse takes the cheese, you understand, and the cheese stands alone!

Iris: Mommy, da cheese crying!
Me: Yeah, the cheese is alone, isn't he?
Iris: Yeah, he sad. He crying.
Me: Well yeah, there were a couple of tears, but look, they dried up! I think he feels better. I, for one, don't really mind being alone. It's kind of nice sometimes, really. Refreshing, you know?

Iris: ...

Me: What?
Iris: Mommy. Da cheese sad. He need a hug. Why he sad? MOMMY! Da cheese SO SAD!
Me: Hey, why don't we go watch something a little more uplifting like Elmo, or Gabba Gabba, or like shark week or really anything else...

Iris: NOOOOOOOOOO MOMMY, FARMER DELL! FARMER DELL!

ad infinitum...



I'd also like to note as a point of extreme awesomeosity, that when this video finishes and that little list of YouTube inspired suggestions pops up, the same production team who brought you this fine specimen offers another nursery rhyme called "Goosey Goosey Gander." We watched it after the very first viewing of this video because hey - it's a nursery rhyme! Says so right here! I don't really know nursery rhymes, American or otherwise. I'm sure there was a part of my life that was absolutely full them, but that was like 25+ years ago, so you know... I don't know any nursery rhymes.
Anyway, "Goosey Goosey Gander" is an Indian nursery rhyme about an old man and a goose. The old man decides not to say his prayers, so the goose grabs his leg and throws him down the stairs. Twice. The end. That was just a freaking excellent way to bounce back from the sad cheese incident.

Toploftical

Aside from being cranky, large, constipated, cranky, tired, and cranky I'd also like to announce that I am smug. Okay, not really, but this clip is too funny not to share (you've probably already seen it before, but watch it again anyway). Also I happen to know what tomorrow's musical offering is and trust me, you're going to want something awesome really nearby to cleanse your brain of the numbing repetitiveness that is the um, agronomist in the ravine.
I told Grandma K. the other day that when I find out the sex of the baby on Monday, I will tell everyone except HPD (who has been asking me if I know the sex of the baby yet every day since she saw the calendar which clearly states the date of the appointment as MONDAY MAY 23RD). Blah. Anyway, I plan to tell HPD that we know the sex of the baby, but we're not telling anyone. I giggle every time I say that.

FBK is officially a kicker or a dancer or like, a future color guard champion or something. Don't think I don't feel you tossing that little fake wooden rifle around in there, kid! I am not afraid to ground a fetus! There is historical precedent here! Anyway, s/he is very active, traditionally after meals and through the entire night. Yayyyy. This is the destined dream-sleeper child, so I'm glad s/he's getting all that activity out now. Gotta be prepared for all that sleep that's going to happen. Allll that sleep. Yeah....

Jovian Heavy

I'd like to think that I am particularly in-line with Thursdays in general. I am drawn to them. I am of them. I have always loved them. Thursday is my day.

FBK is due on a Thursday. My half birthday and Thanksgiving fall on the same Thursday this year. Iris was born on Thursday, February 26th, and I have been convinced all day that today is definitely Thursday. This pregnancy hits 20 weeks this Thursday, and conveniently enough, Iris Music Thursday! usually happens on Thursdays, mostly because it happened to be Thursday when I came up with the idea.

The contemporary name Thursday comes from the Old English Þunresdæg, "Thunor's Day." Somewhere along the line the "n" was dropped and we got "Thor's Day" out of that mess. A lot of other changes happened over the ages, but mostly we need to know that Thor is the god of Thunder, and his name from the Romans is Jupiter (Latin: Iuppiter, Iūpiter) (also called Jove). In Vedic Astrology, Hindu astrologers named the planet Jupiter after Brihaspati, the religious teacher of the gods, and often called it "Guru", which literally means the "Heavy One."*

Jupiter is a gas giant with a mass slightly less than one-thousandth of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium; it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements. Its shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it possesses a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator).*

Being that I am so full of Thursday-esque properties, it is extremely accurate to state that I am a massively heavy oblate spheroid, a thunderous gas giant if you will, with a rocky core. Watch out.

And now, here is a random picture of Katie Pants for No Reason At All (tm)!!

{Pants has the funny in her brain.}


* I ripped off all sorts of information from Wikipedia. In the words of the great Mike and Em: "Look it up."

Somebody buy me this book

I will say that I shamelessly ripped off this information from a co-worker (thanks, J-Bo!), but it was too beautifully fitting to pass up. I mean seriously. SER-I-OUS-LAAAAAY. I need this book. See fantastic CNN article here. Obviously I'm never going to actually read it to the children, but I figure that Kyle and I can take turns holding one another, rocking gently and reciting lines from this book, the hold-ee of course depending on who was in charge of bed time that night (ahem: me).

FRICK.

Hey, remember that awful woman I work with? She's the one with the problem of accidentally asking her co-workers to physically harm her with her non-verbal cues? Let's be real subtle and give her the pseudonym Histrionic Personality Disorder, just for confidentiality's sake. Well, old HPD recently revived her attentions towards me, and I fear I have only myself to blame.

{Anna Nicole and HPD share similar value systems and fashion-senses}

Two days a week, I work at 6:30 in the morning, as does HPD. Yesterday I managed to forget my office keys, so I had to actually summons HPD from her desk to let me into the office. This of course, opened the gates for conversation (con-ver-sa-tion, n: 1. oral exchange of HPD's sentiments, observations, opinions or ideas 2. instance of such exchange wherein only HPD may speak). I had actually experienced a lovely HPD-free streak of good fortune for going on about six months there, but yesterday's dumbass keyless situation just threw that era right out the window. An obnoxious, but surprisingly short by HPD standards conversation ensued, and then we went to our separate corners to work.

So OF COURSE, this morning when I attempted to get to my seat and begin my work day unmolested, I was unsuccessful. HPD was at my desk in under five minutes. I hadn't even logged on to my computer yet. She had some fake reason for needing to stop by, like asking my opinion of something without actually attempting to solve the problem on her own before contacting me. I answered her question quickly - which of course annoyed her - and that's when she began making up reasons to stick around.

She told me about her car and her horses and her boyfriend's dad's pituitary gland tumor, and some other stuff I probably don't care about, but I wasn't really paying attention. This is the part that amazes me about HPD; I can literally turn my body away from her and start working on my computer, and she just... keeps talking.

Anyway, it is at this point that my dumbassery really comes to bite me in the ass. HPD spies the calendar that hangs behind my head, the calendar upon which I write personal appointments (i.e. non-work-related appointments, not like personal, personal appointments), and she sees the "20 week ultrasound" note scheduled for May 23rd. Please let me note at this point that I am one day away from being 19 weeks pregnant. I OBVIOUSLY look pregnant, and I have for a few weeks now. I'm not trying to hide anything here, and though I never made a grand announcement of pregnancy to the office, it's clear to everyone that I am pregnant and the knowledge is widely accepted.

Well, ol' HPD takes one look at that note and starts squealing. Like, peel the paint from the walls, jumpy-clappy dance, squealing. She begins this weird loop of questions in an attempt to get me to engage with her: "Are you EXCITED?!?! How far along are you? I bet you want a boy! I bet KYLE wants a boy! ARE YOU EXCITED????" Ahem: Yes. 'Bout halfway. Don't care. He doesn't care either. Yes.

Let's just say that HPD is... interested in pregnancy. She wants to be pregnant. I'm not sure if she actually wants a baby so much as she wants the attention that you get when you have a baby, you know? She is obsessed with all things pregnancy and to a certain extent, baby-related.

A co-worker of ours (lovely woman, too nice for her own good, very sweet lady) had a baby about a year ago. HPD got this woman's phone number from the internet (wtf?? can you do that???) and texted/called her while she was in labor 20+ times before lovely co-worker woman shattered her phone on the hospital wall as a result of all of the HPD attempts at contact. After a day or so of labor, lovely co-worker was rushed to emergency c-section. Two hours post-op, HPD shows up in her hospital room. Lovely co-worker and HPD are not friends. Lovely co-worker did not tell anyone in the office a) the name of the hospital at which she planned to deliver, and she certainly did not share b) her actual room number (or PHONE NUMBER, OMG). She did not invite visitors, and HPD was clearly unwelcome.

As hospital staff were escorting HPD out of the hospital room, she attempted to goad Lovely co-worker in to allowing her to visit them at home, once discharged, so that they could visit uninterrupted. Um, she said no.

I'm afraid this does not bode well for my future. Actually, I'm just afraid. Human Resources is aware of the situation, and I am to notify them immediately if anything even remotely close to the level of stalking that Lovely co-worker endured happens to me. I consider that level of attention to be normal for someone who does not know the difference between right and wrong. This is someone who might not necessarily understand what is wrong with trying to walk out of the hospital with someone else's baby.

Looks like the game is afoot. You want to mess with my hormones right now? You want to mess with MY CHILDREN? REALLY?? Bring it, nut-job.

Future blackmail fodder

I'm afraid things aren't going to be too updatey around here for awhile. I am heading off to the great District of Columbia (not to be confused with the fine shops located in The District IN Columbia; entirely different locations, I assure you). I'll be gone from Wednesday evening till Sunday afternoon. I will likely miss Iris Music Thursday! this week, and frankly have no intention of thinking of anything even remotely associated with adult responsibilities while traveling. So you're not likely to hear from me till after my return. Fortunately for my lovely readers, 87% of you are the people I'm going to visit, so not too many people will be vastly disappointed with my bloggy absence, as you will be reveling in the awesomosity that is spending time with dear ol' me in the flesh. You're welcome.

I have compiled this delicious selection of photo/video offerings for your viewing pleasure, and to hopefully tide you over till regularly scheduled programming recommences.

Iris' current favorite outfit. We had to hide the shoes - it was just getting out of hand and they are so small they cut her feet now. Also? The no pants thing: better learn to love it because it's her preferred state now.

ROCK from Megan Kelley on Vimeo.

Iris and I happened to be playing in the yard the last time band practice happened. I'm serious, she stood next to the garage and rocked out this way for like 20 minutes. It. Was. Awesome.

Future Colin Burgess from Megan Kelley on Vimeo.



And this is what we've done many Saturday mornings in a row now, till we had to prepare the house for sale and the snare drum *mysteriously* found itself relocated to the garage one night while Iris was asleep.

P.S. Do you like the new blog design? Books are neat, right? The new layout makes me absurdly happy, so if you don't love it, for God's sake, lie to me.