Introduction

Well! My sister convinced me to start blogging since I have the time (thanks to a husband who doesn't say much if the laundry isn't done), have plenty of material (thanks to kids who are "quirky") and have strong opinions on many subjects (thanks to--preblog era--having plenty of time to sit around and think about things.

So! The basics: My name is Tiffany. I'm 31 and have been married to (we'll call him TGTBT, short for Too Good To Be True, because he just is) since November of 1996. We currently have 2 children, The Nut, who was born in 2002, and Frito, who was born in 2007. They are both beautiful and "quirky" girls. I am also 7 months pregnant with another girl who, although has no nickname or definitive real name as of yet, is sure to be just as beautiful and "quirky" as her sisters.

I became a stay-at-home mom July of 2006 and in the past 2.5 years have had more joy, tears, stress, hugs, slobbery kisses and laugh-out-loud funny moments than I have any right to have. Staying home surrounded 24/7 by little people isn't easy. When I decided to stay home I only had one child and I had visions of us in white sundresses holding hands and dancing in fields of daisies. I would see us laughing and playing in slow motion. I would see her sitting in my lap as we snuggled and I read "See How Much I Love You" to her. In short, it would be heaven.

Well, the best laid plans and all that.........you know how it goes. Reality didn't take long to set it. I was going to take the first month home to rest and relax and get her adjusted to no more daycare and THEN I would begin to implement my fool-proof plan for mother-daughter bonding. In August I got pregnant. By September I was dealing with all-day "morning" sickness and The Nut was pretty much on her own. Oh, she had fun in between the bouts of neglect and boredom. Since she was basically responsible for her own sustenance she took it and ran with it.

I woke one morning and stumbled into the kitchen to find a chair pulled up to the fridge and the freezer door wide open. I went into The Nut's room and there she was, with the chocolate ice cream that I can only assume she needed to eat to wash down the powdered donuts she started off with.

She also quickly realized that even if she was doing something that wasn't allowed, there wasn't much I could do to stop her as pretty much every time I sat up and moved I would end up in the bathroom for 5 minutes hunched over the toilet. So she used that to her advantage too and she had a heck of a good time digging up the flowerbed, pouring her bottle of bubbles onto Wally (our English Bulldog) and harrassing the neighbor's lawn people. Do you have any idea how powerless you feel when you yell at your 4-year old to get back inside the house and she leans in long enough to tell you she's almost done burying the dog toys and then shuts the door while you have to decide between the ramifcations of letting her disobey or the knowledge that if you move you may very well set off a chain reaction that would leave you even MORE down for the count for the rest of the day?

I think this is long enough for an introduction and kind of demoralizing because I wanted to keep this thing succinct and on topic. If this is an indication of how the rest of this blog is going to be, and come on, let's be honest, we all know it is, then I offer a preemptive apology. If you knew me in real life this wouldn't be a surprise.

Lastly, as for the blog title-----when The Nut was a toddler 'mean beans' was her name for 'green beans.' Not for any particular reason. They just were. And 'Coleslaw' was actually the name she gave to a stuffed bear when she was 3. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other save for being food items, and vegetables at that, but I like how it represents (in my mind at least) part of The Nut and she's a big reason for this blog. And I tend to find obscure references that don't have obvious meaning to be amusing.