cat named pig

. . . 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.

In which I reveal my idiocy for your entertainment. Once again.

I realize it’s only Wednesday, so of course, there’s still plenty of time for bigger, more dramatic parenting FAILS, but the last couple days have just been a little off. Witness:

1.  Sending a whole apple to school for snack for a child with one missing tooth and one loose one.

2.  Giving same child stern lecture on need to keep better track of personal possessions (i.e. brand new mittens) while at school, only to reach into backpack and pull out missing mitten.

3.  Leaving small child’s extremely wet and messy handprint turkey at Spanish class. I am actually OK with this one, given the aforementioned wet-and-messiness, but he will be upset when he realizes it.

4.  Asking child’s Spanish teacher, in Spanish, if there is a place to change diapers. Except I say “handkerchiefs” instead of “diapers.” And, as I’m asking, I reflexively use the baby sign-language sign for “change diaper handkerchief” because I think it is somehow helping me communicate. (Note to self: It’s not. And you look like an idiot.)

5.  Falling, once again, for the fallacy that sunny skies automatically equal a warm day. Failing to dress anyone adequately for leaving the house, and failing to leave enough time to scrape frost off windshield, making us almost late to the Spanish Class of Forgetfulness and Humiliation. STUPID WEATHER. You continue to mess with me.

There are more, there are always more, but the small child is awake from his nap now and I have to go try not to screw up getting his snack and changing his handkerchief diaper.

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:

So I haven’t been updating for a while, because Life decided to give me the opportunity to experience first-hand what my kids go through when they (frequently) get ear infections (with great frequency). Fair enough — I hadn’t had one in years, maybe decades, so I guess it’s possible I had forgotten what it felt like.

And maybe I had gotten a tad complacent, given the aforementioned frequency with which the kids get ear infections. We know the drill by now: child has cold, child begins to act like complete jerk and/or complains of ear pain, doctor appointment (”Yep! It’s red!”), antibiotics, grouchy jerkmonster turns back into sweet, happy child and all is well again. Until the next one. So maybe I had it coming.

Anyway, rest assured, I now fully understand the specifics of the unique discomfort otitis media causes, and I promise to be more sympathetic in the future when my children suffer. (And to refrain from referring to them as “jerkmonsters.) (It is possible that I perhaps acted like a bit of a jerkmonster myself this past week. Because my EAR CANAL WAS ON FIRE.)

*Segue.*

Or Segway. Photo courtesy of this site, where I notice they sell gift certificates for their tours. (Note: I will totally do a Segway tour of the Twin Cities if you buy me a gift certificate.)

Shoot — now I need another segue.

Whatever. So tonight Siena and I were doing her reading homework (she brings home a short book at her reading level each night) and after she read it to me a few times, I went to complete the form that comes with it. The form includes some questions on how many minutes a day we spend reading, which skills we observe Siena using, and whether the book is too easy, too hard, or just right.

I should probably mention here, for those of you reading who don’t have daily contact with Siena, that competitiveness is a trait we have frequently observed in her. (Almost as frequently as we’ve observed ear infection symptoms.) The child is super-competitive.

I should also mention that a few weeks ago, she came home from school excited because she had moved up to the next reading level. The excitement was short-lived, though, as she immediately went on to say that she wanted to move up another level the next day.

“See, Mom, I can totally read this book — watch.” And she proceeded to work her way through a book that I would say was just exactly at her level. ”So you can just mark on the sheet that this was waaaaay easy and then I can move up again. I’ll be the only kid to move up two levels in two days.”

Yeah. Like I said, competitive.

So imagine my surprise tonight when I went to fill out her form after reading, and I noticed that part of it was already completed for me. Specifically, the part at the bottom that says “This book was was: Too Easy/Too Hard/Just Right.” Next to “Too Easy,” in turquoise marker, someone had written, “Yes, too easy.”

Well, she clearly had to do some careful reading in order to fill that out. And some writing. Maybe she is ready for the next level.

[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.

Elliot is on a Nap Strike right now. Like, literally right now, as in, at this moment he’s supposed to be napping and I’ve put him down twice but I hear him tip-toeing not-so-quietly up the stairs to see what I am doing. And what I am doing is ignoring him and hoping the situation will resolve itself without me having to get up.

Darn it.

…..

Aaaand I’m back. He’s in bed again but still on strike. His demands are unclear: he wants cereal (”CEE-YAY-YUL”) after nap but refuses to take the nap itself. (Note: I would be more than happy to meet this demand, provided some actual napping takes place first.) His rationale for the strike is also unclear. Reasons given have included: “I too sick to nap,” “I NOT TIRED” (those two seem to contradict each other; either you’re sick and you need rest OR you’re bursting with energy, but not both), and the simple yet firmly stated “I NOT DOING THAT.”

Hard to argue with logic like that.

If this continues much longer I’m going to be forced to give up on the nap and put on WALL-E, thereby revealing my ultimate weakness as a Nap Enforcer: I don’t actually care if you sleep or not. Naptime is for dinner prep, e-mail, laundry, and Twitter — not for round after round of failed negotiations.

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.

People have been asking for pictures of Elliot’s haircut. While it’s not thaaaat dramatic, it is quite handsome, in my completely unbiased opinion.

Here are a few that I took with my phone when it occurred to me halfway through the appointment that hey! this first-haircut-ever-in-his-life-besides-that-one-awful-time-at-home-with-the-nail-scissors might be something to document! You know, with a photo.

Here he is getting a sucker after the haircut was done:

As soon as we got outside, I tousled it up to get rid of the side part that looked a little too 1950’s salesman for my taste, and it hasn’t been styled again since.

What else is there to say about it? He sat in the chair like a champ, probably because he was watching Elmo. He said “thank you” for the sucker. And ever since the big day, he’s been loving the attention from friends and family who were relieved about the wispy mullet’s demise. (Full disclosure: I still sort of miss the wispy mullet. It was cute. See below for a “before” picture of the full wispy, party-in-the-back-and-on-both-sides glory.)

Are you wondering what’s going on in this picture? He explained that he was playing Duck Duck Grey Duck. With the Fisher Price Little People and two dinosaurs. Because, why not? Incidentally, that was when I decided to home school Siena and never let her leave the house again. This poor little guy needs someone to play with. Someone alive — it’s hard to make a triceratops run around the circle.

And then he lined them all up.

Because I am in a great mood, here’s a little Sunday night round-up of things that fall solidly in the plus column:

• It’s officially Chili Season — a bigger deal to me than Football Season, although they definitely overlap and both go well with beer. We kicked the season off this year with the classic vegetarian chili recipe we’ve made so often we can do it without thinking. Or while watching football, as Matt did this weekend. (I would argue that’s the same as not thinking; he might disagree.) Sunday nights and one other meal a week are now accounted for, from now until spring — wahoo!
• It’s also (duh) Pumpkin Season — I made these on Friday night and they’re almost gone. And if I’m honest? I’m totally having one for breakfast in the morning. (For lunch I’m eating the leftover cream cheese frosting with a spoon.)
• Sara and Avery were in town from South Dakota, and the girls didn’t even destroy anything while Sara and I sat around and talked about foods that taste good. We also enjoyed a pumpkin ale, because, you know, ’tis the season.
• This weekend we went to: the farmers’ market, Trader Joe’s, and Rainbow Foods. We are ALL SET, grocery-wise. We won’t need to leave our house for a month. Which is fine, since it’s supposed to snow again soon. And that cuts my will to leave the house in half every time.
• In a burst of Martha-esque inspiration, I threw my customary laziness to the wind and worked on our holiday cards for this year. IN OCTOBER. We might just send them out BEFORE the holidays this year, instead of just pretending they were supposed to be “New Year’s Cards.”

Wow, this is a fairly boring list that in no way justifies how happy I feel right now. I think this sudden joie de vivre is mostly due to the fact that I was sick earlier in the week and then a miracle took place and now I AM NO LONGER SICK. I CAN DO ANYTHING. (If you read this blog last winter at all, during the Great and Tedious Chronicling of Minor Unwellness, you might understand why the simple fact of recovering from a cold feels miraculous. I AM HEALED!)

(Whoa. Calm down there, Self.)

Here are some pictures of kids with pumpkins. Happy mid-October!