cat named pig

We have the dubious distinction of owning the dumbest cat ever to breathe air. [Warning: this post NSFL (Not Safe For Lunch) -- if you're eating while you read, you might want to come back later.]

Here’s what I DON’T want to deal with before 7:00 a.m., ever again:

Pig scarfs down her breakfast, then heads to the dining table to chow on whatever the kids have left in their cereal bowls, then immediately barfs it all back up. Onto the table runner on our dining table, because OF COURSE.

But she doesn’t stop there. She promptly begins eating the regurgitated mess as fast as she can, because, again, OF COURSE. Who wouldn’t want to eat their own vomit? Never mind that it obviously didn’t work out so well the first time around — why not try again? You wouldn’t want to let that meal go to waste.

But here’s the best part: in her haste (excitement? Pig: “Sweet! More food!”) to re-eat her cat chow and stolen Kashi, she also eats a hole into the table runner. A baseball-sized hole. HOW DO YOU INGEST THAT MUCH FABRIC WITHOUT NOTICING? Or did she notice and just not care, because “Hey! Sweet! More food!”

Yeah. Not even for sale. You can totally just have her. For free.

Every year, we have the kids dictate letters to Santa. This year, Siena wrote her own, complete with phonetic spelling and inventive punctuation. Elliot dictated his and then signed it with a bunch of capital E’s. Because if one is good, several more are better. Kind of how I feel about chocolates, or hundred dollar bills.

Anyway, here are their letters, painstakingly tapped out with two fingers onto my iPhone (random capital letters by Elliot and extraneous hyphens and apostrophes by Siena included as seen in the originals).

Elliot:

Dear Santa,

I have a Wall-e and I want Eve. I have been a good boy. I I OOO t
E E E EVE

Siena:

Dear Santa,
I want ‘ Eve. I want my one [read: own] computer. And I also want a magniflying glass. I love- you.

Love – Siena

Yeah. I think they’re getting Wall-e’s girlfriend Eve. And I don’t think Siena’s getting her own computer, although it would be kind of nice not to be pestered about PBSKids.org while I’m doing something important. Like scanning Facebook and giving the thumb’s up to people’s pictures of kids in holiday outfits, while ignoring the fact that I still need to order our stupid holiday cards that I made back in October and even bragged about in a fit of smugness on this very blog, before ignoring their existence for six weeks and oh, crap, they’re going to be late again and WHEN will I learn? Smug never works out for me.

Yeah, I know. November 17th today. And not that anyone even cares about Halloween anymore at this point, but here are some pictures anyway. I would hate to deprive anyone of seeing this sad chicken:

[Only one word of the day in this here family lexicon update: humidifier. It continues to baffle (children) and amuse (me), so it gets a whole post.]

Elliot had a stuffy nose the other night, so we got out the humidifier.

OK, fine: to be totally accurate I had gotten it out a few days earlier and cleaned it with bleach to get rid of any germs/dust that might have settled on it over the summer. Because I just knew.

You see, I am cursed to go through life as a modern-day Cassandra of minor pediatric discomforts, always prophesying colds! or ear infections! yet never believed until we are handing over the co-pays and filling the prescriptions. My prophesies are often met with eye-rolling and derision, which is unfair when you consider that they are really just based on common sense. (If the month is not July, and if one or both children have been a) inside a building and b) in the presence of one or more other children, then one of them will get a cold. And if one of my children gets a cold, then he or she will develop an ear infection. Also true: if one of my children gets a cold, then the other one will also have a cold within five minutes. And within ten minutes of that, I will have a sore throat and lose all ability to perceive nuance of flavor in food and wine. After which point, why even bother drinking wine at all? Except to dull my senses as I listen to all the cold- and ear-infection-related keening, of course.)

I seem to have lost myself in a paragraph that got swallowed by the world’s longest parenthetical aside. Where was I? Oh, yes, the whole seeing-the-future thing: if you’re not prophesying colds and ear infections, you’re just not really paying attention. Ahem, Husband.

So I had the humidifier at the ready, which was convenient when Elliot came out of his room snuffling and saying he couldn’t sleep. OH YES YOU CAN. Here, have some steam.

Poor sweet Elliot had absolutely no idea what I was talking about when I said I would bring in the humidifier. He had no idea what word I was even saying.

“Fire?” he asked, looking worried as I plugged it in. “Dat FIRE in dere?”

“No, sweetie. No fire. It has water in it, and it makes steam to help you breathe.”

“Why it called FIRE?”

“It’s called a hu-MID-i-FI– Oh, never mind. There’s no fire in it. It’s OK. Now lie down.”

As I left his room I recalled how Siena, at about the same age, thought the humidifier was called “Human Fire.”

“I need some Human Fire,” she would say when she wasn’t feeling well, but also sometimes when she just felt tired. I think her mystical-sounding interpretation of its name led her to envision it misting out magical vapors of energy and good health — the Human Fire that fuels us all. I also just thought it was cute.

I kind of miss those days. Last night she told me she knew exactly what it would feel like to be in a cloud — cold and wet — because clouds are made of water vapor that condenses. OK, maybe she didn’t use the word condenses; I think she said “turns back into water” but still. Pretty impressive for a kid who thought the humidifier was magic just a few short years ago. Go kindergarten! Or go PBS Kids! Whichever. As long as she’s learning stuff.

A few months ago I decided to start a new family tradition: Pizza Friday. I love that I can just do that, just start a new tradition whenever I want, because I am one of two adults supposedly in charge here. There’s a lot of power in being a so-called adult (and most of the time I use my power for good, as in the case of Pizza Friday).

It’s a very convenient tradition, given that we all love pizza and by the end of the week no one feels like cooking (or hearing Siena yelp, “NO! NOT [insert any food I might have made that is not pizza/quesadillas/pasta with butter and Parmesan]!!” when she sees what we’re having for dinner).

Pizza Friday has been a great success so far. (How could it not be? The name itself contains two of the nicest words in the English language.) Sometimes we order in, sometimes we go out, sometimes we make our own, and occasionally we just heat up some frozen pizzas and call it a night. This week we had Matt’s sister, her husband, and our sweet baby nephew coming over so we were scanning menus trying to decide what to order.

Matt read a list of toppings out loud, one of which was anchovies.

Siena [making a face]: “Eew — anchovies!”

Matt: “Siena, do you even know what anchovies are?”

Siena: “Yeah, they’re gross bugs!”

Never one to be left out of a conversation, Elliot pipes up: “Yeah, they gross BUMBLEBEES!”

I decided it was time to translate a few frequently-used family expressions into plain English, for anyone who might want to converse with any of us in the near future. As Elliot talks more and more (often without stopping for air, it would seem), we seem to be developing our own local dialect.

1. Bah-do Booty

-Noun, verb, adjective, salutation, etc. Can really be used as any part of speech, in any context.

Origin: Unknown. Somewhere in the depths of Elliot’s crazy two-year-old mind, we guess.

Synonyms: bah-do BAH-do booty; booty bah-do; and bah-do bah-do beak).

Definition: This phrase does not actually mean anything. Yet we find it inserted into almost every conversation, usually to uproarious laughter. (Bonus points if you are talking to a nice elderly lady at the gym and she asks you a nice simple question like, “How old are you?”)

Usage: See previous. Also works in response to any other perfectly normal question or as a call-and-response chant. (Siena: “Bah-DO!” Elliot: “Boo-TY!” and so on and so on, forever.)

2. Old Maybe

Elliot’s name for the clothing store, Old Navy. Siena adopted it because she thought it was funny; I have started using it because I think it pretty accurately describes that particular shopping experience. Maybe I’ll get a cute  sweater and some socks for the kids, or a puffy chicken costume for under $20 — maybe I won’t. Maybe Elliot will make it through an entire outing there without knocking over that fake-dog mannequin in the front — maybe he won’t. Maybe I’ll go stark raving mad if I have to listen to another one of their commercials — maybe I won’t. Old Maybe.

3.  Bebot

What I still call the tea pot even though Siena has been pronouncing it correctly for, oh, four years now.

4. Monkey Bar

Nope, not those things at the playground. Monkey bars in our house are what a normal person might call a cereal bar or granola bar. Another Elliot-ism. (Commonly heard used in the following phrase, “NO! Not the ONION monkey bar!” as shrieked by Siena when you go to offer her a Trader Joe’s Fig Bar. Apparently the Fig cartoon looks like an onion to her. And apparently it’s not on her ever-changing list of Top 5 Acceptable Foods.)

Feel free to print this and keep it in your pocket for reference next time you come over. Of course there are many other strange expressions and uniquely, uh, customized pronunciations in our little spin on the English language, but this makes a good starting point.

While we don’t have the results here to post yet, we just completed survived our third year of family portraits with the talented Rob Mueller. I should say now that any credit for artistic framing and/or simply getting everyone to look at the camera at the same time goes to Rob. There are, however, a few things we’ve found that make the photo session easier, in addition to finding a good photographer:

1. Jettison all concept of personal dignity. If you are a parent, you have probably already done so. Or at the very least you are making great strides toward no longer caring how you are perceived in public. Which is key for picture-taking, because when you are not in the shot yourself, you will be required to

a) dance like a monkey,

b) make monkey noises, and

c) yell things like “Take your hand out of your pants!” in order to get decent shots of your kids.

2. Choose a public place for the photo shoot. (Only  recommended if you have successfully completed Step 1 above.) While this will lead to inevitable distractions, you can also make the distractions work to your advantage. We did our pictures at the Farmer’s Market this morning, and had no shame about repeatedly yelling for Elliot to “LOOK! At the PUPPY! Right behind Rob’s head!” even when there may or may not have been an actual puppy walking by. (Another tip: scrupulous honesty is not necessarily your friend here.)

3. Opt for a mix of posed portraits where everybody (ideally) smiles at the camera and more candid shots of the family interacting, as a family. Important note: this will happen whether you want it to or not, so go ahead and decide in advance that you want this mixture. That way, you won’t feel frustrated when half your photos turn out looking like these, from last year:

Or this one:

[Siena: I'm so over this. I'm hiding behind my hair until we can leave. Laura: This is FUN! Stay ENTHUSIASTIC everyone! See how ENTHUSIASTIC I can be?!? Elliot: Get me outta here. NOW. Matt: I'm smiling, but I'm also gritting my teeth. Into a fine powder. I will spit tooth-dust into the grass as soon as this is over.]

4. Let go of the little things. Like looking normal. I let Siena wear a ballet tutu this year because I figured she’d be more cooperative if she got her way early on in the wardrobe negotiations. I drew the line, however, at Elliot’s chicken costume. (Apparently I still have some tiny scraps of dignity left somewhere.) He did get to pick his orange striped socks and he seemed happy enough with that in the end.

5. Ease up on the caffeine beforehand. See: every single picture of my gigantic smile above.

6. Be sure to reward everyone when the pictures are done. Last year, it was a round of mini-golf at the artist-designed course outside the Walker that we had been eyeing all summer. Followed by naps for the kids, and some recreational Vicodin TV and internet time for the adults. This year it was chocolate chip cookies and Oktoberfest beer samples at the market. Followed by dancing to German music for the kids and more recreational Vicodin beer samples for the adults.

Now we just have to wait and see how they turn out.

8:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, and my beloved husband and I are on two different floors of the house, curled up with separate laptops and at least eight internet browser windows open (each).

Is this sad? Is this modern marriage (with children)? Is this exactly what I want to be doing right now?

The answer, perhaps to all three but certainly to the last question, is yes.

Would it make things worse if I told you our last conversation was a raging argument heated debate calm and logical discussion about Twitter?*

Yes, it’s a pretty dorky state of affairs over here, that’s for sure.

…..

*A calm and logical discussion in which I was absolutely and undeniably right, and during which my rational arguments and compelling rhetoric left Matt’s position as little more than a smoldering wreckage of ideas THAT WERE NOT RIGHT.

I mentioned yesterday that I had a Trader Joe’s story to share. It’s not really about Trader Joe’s, but it took place there. It could’ve happened anywhere, but the fact that we were at Trader Joe’s at 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night made the whole scene that much more hilarious.

Why? Because the St. Louis Park Trader Joe’s, what with its close proximity to Uptown, at 5:30 on a weeknight, is pretty much jam-packed with Uptown hipsters stocking up on cheap organic dinner ingredients and cheap wine. You see jeans so trendy you didn’t even know that was a trend yet, save for the number of people in the store wearing similar ones. You see young couples holding hands as they decide on the right appetizers to serve their friends who are coming over for a drink later, before they all go out to the bars at 10:00 p.m. You see, as you’re pushing your shopping cart full of chatter-y kids and granola, lots of people who make you feel old and uncool.

Which is fine, right up until the kids start singing.

And what are they singing? Their favorite song, of course: “Battlefield,” by Jordin Sparks. Yes, Jordin Sparks of American Idol fame. And yes, they first heard this song when you played them a clip from So You Think You Can Dance, because you thought they would enjoy the part where the guy jumps and the girl rolls under him. And you were right — they did enjoy this, so much that they asked to watch the video nine billion more times. Not only do they like the dance, they are also in love with the catchy music.

(This is how an obsession is born.)

Every time we’re in the car now, Elliot will request “Battlefield.” He doesn’t understand that the radio is not an iPod, and that we can’t just play it for him on command. (We have not gone so far as to download the song, nor have we told them that this is an option.) Siena understands how the radio works, so she simply requests that we try to find the song. Which means we drive around listening to a lot of cheesy pop music while waiting for it to come on.

We had heard it in the car right before we got to Trader Joe’s that night (Siena made us wait in the car until the end of the song before going in) so it was fresh in their minds. So naturally, they both started belting it out like they were singing for their lives in front of Simon Cowell. I mean belting it. Full volume, full intensity.

The looks we got from other shoppers who wouldn’t be caught dead listening to this stuff were priceless. May their children some day embarrass them by singing a song not recorded by a hip new indie band so obscure no one has heard of them yet. May they sing it loudly. And with feeling. In public.

Well, not so much “adventures” as “things I have thought about today, mainly food-related.” But I felt the need to post an update after the sad tale of Siena’s first bus ride to camp.

And the update is that all is well, from what I gather. She comes home tired but rebounds nicely after dinner. Right now she is happily playing with Elliot and singing “9-1-1, Shorty fire burnin’ on the dance floor, whoa-oh” in a voice that sounds way more like Sean Kingston than you might expect from a five-year-old girl.

And she has plenty of fun things to tell us about: “shooting bows and arrows,” the giant slide, swimming, “the rock climbing where you go like this” (elaborate horizontal body contortions indicate that she is referring to bouldering), and at least one kid in her group whose name she can remember, a girl named Amelia. (Amelia, wherever you are, you have my undying gratitude for being nice enough that Siena remembered your name. She didn’t even remember the counselor’s name.)

So camp is going well, and I am feeling foolish for worrying that it wouldn’t. I just can’t shake the image of her hesitating in the middle of the bus, looking for a seat and ending up all by herself. It kills me. ***Sentimental Parenting Cliché Alert*** It kills me that I can’t go everywhere with her for the rest of her life and smooth out every possible bump in her path, making sure she is happy and comfortable at every moment. But even if there were any way of doing anything even remotely close to that, Siena, of course, wouldn’t want me to. She would kill me. She is tougher than I give her credit for, and way more independent than I ever expect of the baby I used to nurse five times a night, who never wanted to be out of my sight.

Other recent adventures/thoughts include pesto, lots and lots of pesto, and that comfy Ma Ingalls feeling I get from making something seasonal and storing it away for the long winter. (Like you can’t get fresh basil in December in the year 2009, and like freezing some pesto is in any way akin to the endless canning and preserving that went on in olden times, I know. [Eyes rolling at myself.] I still like it.

I also found a white skirt for Siena at Target for a whopping $3.49, and this is significant because 1) Elliot was mad that I wouldn’t buy him one, too and 2) Siena had asked this very morning if, instead of a plain white T-shirt to tie-dye at camp, she could have a skirt instead. And I had doubted that I could find a white skirt anywhere, much less a cheap clearance one, much less a cheap clearance one with shorts attached, making it playground-appropriate. Sometimes Target just really comes through for me. AS THEY SHOULD — I GO THERE ONCE A WEEK, EVEN IN WEEKS WHEN I ALSO GO TO TWO OTHER GROCERY STORES. Target, I can’t quit you.

Speaking of grocery stores, I have a Trader Joe’s story — for another post. It amused me, but this is getting long enough. So in place of a conclusion, I offer you this photo of some sweet corn and a bowl of melted butter:

Sweet corn and pesto. Summer, how I love you. And Camp, thanks for not destroying Siena’s enthusiasm for life. That’ll come later, like when she gets her first job.