cat named pig

Presenting. . .

Plastic Step Stool Mini-Golf! The ultimate in fun-on-a-budget! (Step stool from Target’s dollar aisle. Plastic balls from long-deceased ball-sorting toy.)

And then there’s this:

I made the mistake of letting Siena observe me playing Tetris, which led to the mistake of letting her play Tetris, which turned out to be the parenting equivalent of letting her borrow my crack pipe, because now she’s hooked. And we’re having lots of conversations about Tetris, which all sound roughly like this:

“Maaamaaaaaaaa. . . .”

“Yes, Sweetie?”

“Can I please play that game with the shapes and you make them disappear? Please, Mama? Please? Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?”

[Stalling as I try to finish what I'm doing on the computer, because I already know how the conversation will end.]

“Ummm. . . What game?”

“YOU know. The really awesome one that you showed me. TERTIS.”

“TET-ris?”

“Yeah, Tetris. TETRIS! YEAH! SO CAN I?? PLEASE?!? PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPL–”

“YES. Fine. But only for twenty minutes. Then I need the computer for work stuff.”

[Repeat at least every two hours, or any time it's been more than ten minutes after I wrestle the computer away from her, suffering permanent hearing loss in the process.]

I have been called out, both by readers and by my advertising network (Did you notice the ads in the sidebar? Click them and I might be able to buy a latte once a month or so!) for not updating in more than two weeks. What kind of mommyblogger doesn’t post adorable Christmas photos the minute the last gift is unwrapped? Answer: the kind that’s too busy drinking Champagne and shoveling Christmas cookies into her mouth as fast as humanly possible, that’s what kind. And I will not apologize for that prioritization, either. But I will apologize for the fact that the last thing I posted, lo these many cold winter days, was a story about cat barf. If you were checking for adorable Christmas photos and had to keep seeing that instead, I am truly sorry. And if you didn’t care either way and still don’t, well, feel free to grab a glass and join me on the couch. The Christmas cookies are all gone, but there are still a few cupcakes left from New Year’s Eve. And plenty of wine in the box.

[Side note: Matt and I are conducting a highly scientific study of Boxed Wines. This will take many evenings of research until we arrive at an acceptable house red and house white. Please leave your favorite in the comments, if you have one. Seriously. Tell us. It's for Science.]

And now, allow me to redeem myself for the cat barf story and for all this un-motherly talk of cheap wine, by FINALLY posting some Christmas photos:

I gave Siena my American Girl Samantha doll from when I was younger. We gave Elliot a book with CD, one of a series that he is absolutely obsessed with. Siena’s eyes filled with tears when she opened the doll. I don’t think I even need to tell you what that did to me.

Making the traditional Christmas Eve Pizza with Grandma. Every year my mom brings over all the ingredients, the kids “help” assemble them, and we stuff ourselves silly on the world’s most delicious pizza. This year the kids also took everyone’s orders for toppings, each with a little notebook and pen. Siena’s list said: “Shrimp, FADA, olivs” (shrimp, feta, olives) and Elliot’s list said: “O O X T E E E I” which I’m pretty sure is Robot for “plain cheese.”

Santa brought the requested magnifying glasses, as well as Wall-E’s gal pal Eve. They spend most of their time sitting on the piano and talking to each other loudly, usually when I’m trying to carry on a phone conversation. The magnifying glasses, it turns out, are the best $3.99 (each) I’ve ever spent. I mean, that Santa has ever spent. Of course. Endless “clues” are unearthed and things are examined closely wherever we go.

It snowed so much Christmas Day that we decided not to drive two hours to Matt’s parents’ house. Fortunately, my dad had  blocks to play with and he had prepared enough food for a wedding reception, so our Plan B worked out just great.

Then we got together with Matt’s family the following day. Siena got a laptop and then spent most of the day updating her Facebook status and blogging about how her mom wouldn’t stop eating cookies.

And now I’m trying to resist the urge to say something cute and wrappy-uppy like “All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas.” Instead, I think I’ll go have a cupcake.

Siena was sick last week and missed school all three days before the Thanksgiving holiday. (The less said about that time of grouchiness and frustration the better.) She went back to school yesterday, and last night at dinner we asked her how it was to be back.

Since boring parental-type questions (like “how was your day?”) tend to elicit bored teenager-type answers from her (like “good” or “OK” or “fine – can I have the car keys?”) I’ve learned to ask specific questions. I started out with the tried-and-true “What was the first thing that happened when you got to school?”

This was Siena’s response:

“Well, as soon as I came into the classroom, all the kids jumped up and ran over to give me a hug and they were all swarming around me and it was all crazy so I said ‘Whoa, give me a high five or one of these’ [she proceeded to pantomime bumping knuckles and then pulling her hand back to explode it] and most of the kids didn’t know what that was so they gave me high fives, but one kid knew and he helped me show the others how to do it.”

So I’m picturing my five-year-old surrounded by a bunch of friends giving her high fives and bumping knuckles (and exploding it — here’s a more detailed explanation, Dad, since you have no idea what I’m talking about right now) to welcome her back to school after missing a week, and it is pretty much the best mental image I’ve had in quite some time.

In summary: kids are awesome, and obviously my work as a parent speaks for itself if a fist bump is her preferred method of greeting her classmates.

…..

[Full disclosure: I can’t actually take credit for teaching her to pound it and explode it. I clearly recall some of my younger cousins instructing her in the technique at a family reunion a couple of years ago. But I will go ahead and take some credit for the heightened sense of ROCKSTAR that compels her to still use it two years later, and with such aplomb.]

. . . you get free tickets to the musical Grease for a Wednesday night and you’re disappointed because you don’t want to be out late on a school night. (Even though it’s your kid’s school night, not yours. But you still have to deal with getting that kid out the door in the morning, which takes eight hours’ sleep and a pot of coffee. At the very least.)

. . . you can’t find anything clean to wear to Grease because, despite having done five loads of laundry this week, you still have not gotten all the kids’ dirty stuff washed before starting on your own.

. . . while watching the musical, you feel a twinge of sympathy for Sandy’s parents at the end when she transforms from goody-two-shoes to cigarette-smoking, skintight-legging-wearing, teased-hair tramp. (Her poor parents, you might think to yourself as she struts around the stage in her shiny spandex pants, I bet they’re so disappointed that she completely changed herself for some guy. I hope my daughter never does that.)

Apparently I no longer identify with the high schoolers and now I identify with their parents instead. From here, it’s just one long downhill slide into being a grouchy old lady yelling at those darn kids to keep off my lawn and not understanding how these newfangled telephones work.

When you’re paying someone to take pictures of your family, do you really want to end up with this many  photos of your kids dancing with hands in their armpits? Perhaps we should have intervened and made the kids stop goofing around (as if they would have listened to us). Then again, has the Chicken Dance ever been documented so beautifully?

[Note: we are not criticizing Rob, who just shot what we gave him to shoot. And what we gave him, apparently, was a lot of Chicken Dancing. But there were many great pictures in the 100+ that he sent us -- these just happened to be the funniest. Maybe you'll see some real ones on our holiday card. ]

The other day at the playground we ran into Siena’s friend from preschool and her little sister. I looked around for their mom so I could have an excuse for ignoring Siena’s constant stream of  ”Look, Mama!” chat with her and didn’t see her anywhere. Then I saw a high-school-aged girl say something to Siena’s friend before offering to push them all on the tire swing.

My eyes lit up: a babysitter! Who doesn’t appear to share my loathing for the tire swing! (Hard to push; can only be enjoyed with adult assistance; someone inevitably tries to get off too soon and gets hurt — many reasons to dislike those things.)

I felt my heart rate increase. My palms were sweaty. I knew I had to make my move soon, before they got off the swing. I walked over and stood there awkwardly for a minute before working up the nerve to introduce myself.

I mentioned that I was Siena’s mom and that Siena had gone to preschool with the other girl. The babysitter responded with her own name, smiled politely, and went back to pushing the tire swing. The conversation appeared to be over, but I wasn’t willing to give up just yet.

“So do you live in the neighborhood?”

I tried to sound casual. She answered that she lived on the same block as Siena’s friend.

“And do you, ah, babysit for them often?”

She did.

(Was I visibly drooling?)

“So do you. . . um . . . babysit for any other families in the area?”

(My face was turning red. Could she tell?)

She responded enthusiastically that she babysits all the time. She loves kids, and she even has her Red Cross babysitting certification.  I took a deep breath and decided to go for it:

“So do you think, maybe, um, do you. . . think . . . I could. . . call you sometime to babysit my kids?’

(Pleasesayyespleasesayyespleasepleaseplease.)

“Sure.”

(OMG! She said yes! But does she actually want to or is she just being polite? How do I tell?)

“So do you think I could, like, get your phone number and give you a call sometime?”

“Sure.”

I pulled out my phone before she could change her mind, then proceeded to fumble with it awkwardly as my fingertips turned to elbows and I lost all ability to work the touch-screen. I finally opened a new contact and asked her again for her phone number, praying she hadn’t changed her mind in the half-hour it took me to navigate my own phone. She gave me her number and even spelled her name for me. I grinned like a maniac and thanked her profusely, all the while yelling at myself in my head to CALM DOWN — STOP ACTING SO DESPERATE.

I put the phone in my bag.

“Cool. So I’ll, um, give you a call sometime. Thanks.”

She left and I rounded up my kids, still red-faced and grinning. I got her number!

But I’m going to play it cool now. I’m going to wait at least five days before I call her.

But I guess you have to have a few things in order first (I recommend making a list):

1. You have to know where your camera is. I suck at this.

2. You have to have a charged battery in the camera, with enough charged-battery goodness to last the duration of the event you want to document– let’s say, your daughter’s birthday party, for example.

OR

3. You have to bring an extra battery to the birthday party.

4. You have to know where the connector-cord-thing is that connects the camera to the computer. (What? Like that’s not what you call it?)

5. OK, let’s be honest here. You know where the connector-cord-thing probably is, or at least where it is most likely to be (in a crystal bowl on top of the buffet, along with an iPod Nano and some headphones and some other mystery cords, and yes, it’s totally normal to keep your connector-cord miscellany in a Orrefors wedding gift — where else do you put it? And frankly, what else do you use the crystal bowl for?) So it’s not so much that you can’t locate the connector-thingy, it’s more that you are not willing to get up, and cross the room, and obtain the connector (and the camera, which probably only has like two birthday pictures on it because the stupid battery wasn’t charged GARR).

6. In other words, you might wait just a little longer to post your pictures of a birthday cake garishly festooned with ice cream cone turrets and the entire cast of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, and possibly one or two pictures from the party at the park (from the half-hour before the camera battery died). But Birthday Party the Fifth was fun, was apparently everything Siena hoped it would be — this was a relief, as she had many hopes and expectations —  and at some point the leftover cupcakes will fuel an expedition all the way across the room to retrieve the camera connectidy-doo-dad and pictures will be shared with the world. Eventually.

[Ed: I uploaded some pictures from Mother's Day to Flickr because it was easier than getting off the couch. And, you know, because Mother's Day just happened. Like five minutes ago. In May.]

You, the reader: Another list? For the love of God, woman, form an actual paragraph already!

Me: I don’t have to. I’m thirty.

I may never write in paragraphs again, or use anything other than bullet points to organize my thoughts. Which, at the moment, are mostly about food and birthday parties. That reminds me:

• Wednesday night’s birthday celebration (planned by Matt; revealed to me last-minute, thus giving me a surprise without actually forcing anyone to hide and jump out yelling “SURPRISE!”) was very fun and surprisingly well-attended for a weeknight. Friends with kids/jobs/addresses in other states who still hung out for a few hours in our backyard are awesome.
• Staying up too late on Wednesday led to some regrets on Thursday, especially with regards to crabby children who CANNOT LEARN TO SLEEP IN, NO MATTER HOW LATE THEY GO TO BED WHY WHY WHY?!?
• Our Crabby Thursday of Regrets was not enough to get Matt and me to stop watching Weeds (Rachel, if you’re reading, we found it online!) at a reasonable hour. We also had to catch up on So You Think You Can Dance that we had missed because we were busy watching Weeds. So, you know, still tired.
• But not too tired to go running again! That makes four times in the last week, if you’re counting. (Incidentally, that also makes four times in the last nineteen months or so. We needed some time apart, running and I.)
• Birthday RSVP tally for Siena’s party on Sunday: 51. Fortunately, that breaks down as 30 adults, 21 kids. So we’ll have a slight advantage in terms of numbers. And in terms of ability to drink beer. That’ll help.
• Dinner plans for tonight: sushi with my family. More birthday-related awesomeness! I should probably go get ready. You know, soonish. (Matt: “NOW.”)
• Not really a bullet point item, but a question pertaining to food and birthdays, which were the general themes giving this list any semblance of cohesion: anyone have a good (easy) recipe for homemade frosting? Or is the pre-made stuff the way to go? I am planning to spend tomorrow making a metric crap-ton (scientific unit of measurement) of birthday cupcakes, and also a cake shaped like a princess castle. So I will probably go the pre-made frosting route, but you never know. Feel free to weigh in.

In a rather last-minute and surprising (to me) decision, Matt took both kids to South Dakota for the weekend to attend his family reunion. Which involved camping. With a two-year-old and four-year-old in a tent. He is a brave and noble man, and deserves to be heartily commended. While I very much look forward to family camping trips when the kids are older, I was perfectly content not to be included this time.

So instead of waking up covered in tent-sweat (if you’ve ever been camping, you know what I’m talking about) with one child or the other’s foot in my face, I’ve been having a lovely stay-cation right here at home. Three full days and nights without my beloved family has been like an early birthday present. It’s been quiet and peaceful, and — best of all — I have completed every single bathroom-related task without a single interruption! (Bathroom privacy is the ultimate luxury to a parent of small children.)

The following is a list of conclusions I have reached during this peaceful time of reflection — if I can implement even half of them while my family is around, I will lead an enormously satisfying life:

1. If you make an evening appointment at my salon, they offer you a glass of wine. Which makes it even more relaxing. No more Saturday mornings in the chair for me!

2. I need to make room in my life for running. Running and I have had an on-again off-again relationship since high school cross country. We’d go steady for a while, then break up when something more exciting came along, like going to Paris, or starting a new job, or being pregnant (and convinced the only exercise I needed was walking to the ice cream shop). Most recently, I haven’t been running because it’s easier to take the kids to the gym where they can play in the childcare and I can use the machines. But I went running around the lake twice this weekend and loved it. (Even though I turned fuschia.) I need to do more of that. (The running, not the fuschia. Ideally that will improve with time.)

3. Cheese and crackers makes a perfectly delightful dinner. Even more delightful when consumed on the patio, with the laptop for music (and writing this blog post). I love eating outside and I need to make my family do it every night in summer, instead of just when we grill. (Which is almost every night in summer, but still. Why waste a chance to be outside when we have so few months that are warm enough?) I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner cheese and crackers outside this weekend and it was fantastic.

4. If I don’t have to fix a snack every five minutes for anyone, I can complete a billion-item To Do List in no time. I’m not sure how to apply this discovery to life when the kids are around — maybe I can teach them to make their own snacks while I successfully transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer without forgetting about it for days and having to rewash it. Maybe?

5. If I go to Target by myself, I will buy a cheap sun dress. I actually already knew this one, but confirmed it yet again. I don’t buy much in the way of clothes for myself these days, but I will be rocking a cute red dress on my birthday next week and it almost makes up for the fact that I have to be thirty.

6. If my husband and kids are away for three nights and three days, I will miss them by the end of the third day. A little.

Dear Two-Year-Old,

Not every question needs to be answered with “BAH-DO BAH-DO BOOTY.” In fact, most don’t. Just something to consider.

Love,

Mama

…..

Dear Mama,

BAH-DO BAH-DO BOOTY!

Love,

Elliot

…..

Dear Four-Year-Old,

Please stop calling your brother a “Bad Boy”. I think he’s a pretty good boy most of the time, except when he tackles the cat. Although, it is pretty funny when he calls you a “Bad Boy” in return. I guess I can see your point.

Love,

Mama

…..

Dear Elliot,

YOU’RE A BAD BOY!

Siena

…..

Dear Siena,

NO, YOU A BAD BOY! BAH-DO BAH-DO BOOTY!

Love,

Elliot

…..

Dear Elliot,

I know! Let’s call Mama a BAD BOY! It will be really funny.

Love,

Siena

…..

Dear Mama,

YOU A BAD BOY!

Love,

Elliot

P.S. BAH-DO BAH-DO BOOTY!

…..

Dear Coffee,

I need you. Why so slow this morning? Please brew faster. Your cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Laura

…..

Dear Mama,

I HAVE A BOOTY! I HAVE A BOOOOO-TY!

Mama’s a bad boy!

BAH-DO BAH-DO BAD BOY! BOOTY!

Love,

Elliot and Siena