Motherhood Is Easy...As Long As You Have Nothing Else To Do For The Next 50 Years

Texts, Lies, And Boobs Made From Ballistics Gel

2012-01-26T04:01:00.000-08:00

Something fishy is going on here.

So I went away for a night. Just me. No kids. No Jeff. Just a nice relaxing getaway with a few other people who also haven't had a good night sleep since the Clinton administration. And while we still didn't get much sleep, at least our insomnia was the result of bar-hopping and having to pee in the middle of the night, and not the result of being startled awake by a mini-person appearing at our bedside and insisting that Cookie Monster was scuttling around the house and making ridiculous demands for Oreos at 2 in the morning.

I wasn't really that worried about Jeff being alone with the kids for 24 hours. He's a pretty capable person. Were he dumped onto a deserted tropical island, armed with nothing but a shoelace, a broken lighter and an empty paint can, he would find a way to either sustain himself for the next ten years, or fashion an elaborate escape plan that would land him on another tropical island, this one inhabited by voluptuous Pacific Island women bearing pineapples and pina coladas.

I did, however, think I would be receiving a text every hour or so. A question. A comment. A desperate cry for help. Anything that would lead me to believe that having all three kids by yourself can sometimes be difficult. A question about Finn's feeding habits. Or help locating the entourage of stuffed animals Rollie sleeps with. Or permission to lock Elsa in her room for an hour until she stops shrieking about her chicken nuggets:

What do u do w/ Finn while ur in the shower? (Answer: Strap him in a bouncy chair, ignore him and pretend I don't have children.)

How many bags of fruit snacks can they have in a day? (Answer: Any number is too many, and they've probably already eaten five each when you weren't looking. I never voluntarily dole out fruit snacks, yet the boxes turn up empty every once in a while, and I find wrappers behind various pieces of furniture. Which of course begs the question, why do I even buy them? I think it's one of those purchases I make at the store when I'm in my zombie-like trance in those middle aisles--I don't even realize I'm buying them, yet they end up in my cart as if by some mystical teleportation. Either that or Elsa tosses them in while Rollie distracts me with his very detailed questions about the lobster tank, including whether we can have a pet lobster for our very own.)

Can I take Elsa into the ladies room or will I get beat up by little old ladies? (Answer: No. And Yes.)

How do u get anything done with all 3 kids around? (Answer: I don't. Have you seen the house lately? Or my car? Or my unibrow?)

This was the actual extent of our texting while I was gone:

1:09 PM

Me: How's it going? (Translation: You're ready to pull out your hair, aren't you?)

Jeff: Great! Have fun!

3:18 PM

Me: On our way to eat. Beautiful here. Miss ya. Everything okay? (Translation: I do miss you. I don't, however, miss having to leap up every five minutes to fetch something, feed someone, change a diaper, clean up after someone, or thwart a potential trip to the ER. Which is what you're probably doing right now. Are you insane yet?)

Jeff: Yep! Miss you, too.

7:57 PM

Me: Getting ready to head out. U doing okay? (Translation: If you don't respond to this text in ten minutes I will assume the kids have you hog-tied and stuffed behind a dresser, and are currently raiding the pantry for fruit snacks.)

Jeff: All good here. Don't worry. Have a great time!

See what I mean? He was waaaay too upbeat, chipper, confident and reassuring. I bet he wasn't even drinking, either.

So then I started getting suspicious. I starting thinking that maybe he was just trying to put me at ease about being away for the night. In reality he was actually at his wits' end, up to his armpits in chaos, the house was trashed, the kids were sticky, Finn was screaming, and he was doing his best to put up a good show while I was gone so I wouldn't worry. Or think him inept. Or get all smug and say, See...being home with the kids ain't so easy, is it?

But when I got home the next day, the house was spotless. The kitchen counters were all cleared off. I mean...completely. Cleared. Off. Just so you can appreciate the magnitude of that particular feat, I had piles of stuff on those counters that have been sitting there pretty much since we bought the house. Stuff that had been sitting there so long I no longer noticed it--it had become part of the decor. I was actually thinking about repainting the kitchen to match the lovely shade of junk-mail ecru.

And the laundry was done. I could actually see the bottom of the laundry basket. Not just done--put away. Not left in piles the washer, dryer, children's dressers, the coffee table, our bed, anything that sits still long enough for me to leave a stack of folded clothes on top (yes, this includes our dog). He even rinsed out the little detergent measuring cups. Who does that? Fishy, I tell ya.

Bonus Question: Which are Rollie's and which are Elsa's?

And it's not like the kids were parked in front of the television whilst my little house-elf was busily tidying up the place. When I came home I was greeted by an impressive display of artistic creativity the likes of which I haven't seen since my own sick day a year or so ago.

Being the passive-agressive cynic that I am, I sort of waited around for Jeff to leak out details of his not-so-easy day with the kids. I kept expecting him say something like, "Man, Finn was really having a meltdown for a while there. I was worried that I'd have to make a synthetic boob out of ballistics gel and baggies of formula to make him stop." Or, "Those damn kids trash the house so fast. I don't see how you keep anything clean at all. I felt like I was constantly cleaning up after a couple of circus monkeys." And then I could pour him a beer and we could sit together in mutual commiseration, a new sort of understanding between us.

It's been five days, and he hasn't cracked yet. I'm thinking I need to slip some sodium pentathol into his energy drink. Then we'll who's being honest. And who's being immature and unable to accept the fact that her husband can handle the kids for 26-and-a-half hours without her. Yeah.

Nuggets Of Wisdom

2012-01-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

And then there are times when you find yourself locked in a knock-down, drag-out battle of wills with one of your children, a battle which will only end when one of you ends up eating dog puke.

Sorry. Hope you weren't just eating your dinner. Especially something brown and chunky, like stew.

Actually, it wasn't real dog puke, merely implied dog puke. Elsa's the one who ate it. And while I've been wondering where my baby girl gets her little stubborn streak from, I know for a fact I didn't pass along any dog-puke-eating gene to her. That trait is supposed to skip a generation.

On the night when my daughter proved to me that while sometimes my cooking is unfit for human consumption, a steaming pile of animal vomit hits the spot just fine, I had purchased some chicken fingers from the store and cut some up for the kids, keeping the rest to put on a salad for Jeff and me. And let me preface this by saying that lately I've been trying to work on instilling better table manners in my children. By manners I mean things like like saying the blessing before they eat. Saying excuse me after they burp. Keeping their hands to themselves. Making sure the objects they insert into their noses are retrievable. You know...the important ones.

So one of these things I've been struggling with is having them stay in their seat until they are finished eating. And this one is probably my fault, since I used to allow Rollie to eat just about anywhere--the couch, the floor, the bathtub, while perched atop my shoulders--so long as he actually ate. Man what a battle that used to be.

This time Elsa got up from the table and wandered off to cause destruction somewhere else, leaving one chicken nugget piece on her plate. She had cleaned her entire plate save for that last piece, practically licking the Lightning McQueen decal from the plastic. And so as I cleared her place, I grabbed that last piece of nugget and tossed it in our dog's bowl. (Who says I don't love my dog? Take that, Anonymous!)

A few minutes later, Elsa came flitting back to the table and, noticing that it had been cleared, asked me what happened to her nugget.

Me: Oh, I gave it to Ollie.
Elsa: But I wanted it.
Me: Well you left it on your plate and got up from the table, so I assumed you were finished.
Elsa: But I wasn't finished.
Me: Well, I'm sorry about that. Next time don't get up until you're all finished.
Elsa: Where is my nugget?
Me: I just told you. It's in Ollie's bowl.
Elsa goes to investigate, then pops back around the counter.
Elsa: It's gone.
Me: I guess he ate it then.
Elsa: But I wanted it.
Me: Yes, you made that clear. I'm sorry I gave it to him. Next time I'll make sure to ask you first.
Elsa (quickly whipping up some crocodile tears): I want my nugget.
Me: Seriously, Elsa? You're crying about half of a chicken nugget?
Elsa: I'm still hungry.
Me: Well you can have some grapes or something.
Elsa: I want my chicken nugget.
Me: Elsa, there's nothing I can do about it now. It's in Ollie's tummy.

That seemed like a rational end to the discussion: No matter how badly you want this nugget, it is now housed within the gut of our 12-year-old dog. Case closed.

But 'rational' and 'three-year-old' don't exactly go together like Mario Lopez and cheesy TV. Because even as I sat on the couch with Finn and started nursing him (my children's cue to start behaving like they've been raised by jackals), Elsa followed me, repeating that she still wanted her damn nugget.

Me: Elsa, I don't know what to tell you. You can't have it. Ollie ate it up and now it's sitting in his tummy waiting for him to poop it out.
Elsa: But I really want it.
Me: Elsa, listen, the only possible way you can have that nugget would be if Ollie threw it up outside in the yard and you went into his puddle of barf and got the nugget out.
Elsa: ....Ewwww!
Me: I know. So trust me, you wouldn't want to eat it after Ollie had thrown it up.
Elsa: Yes I would.
Me: No you would not. It would be all gross and chewed up and covered in doggie throw up. Why would you want to eat that?
Elsa: Because I'd want to. (Her debates are often impossible to trump).
Me: I don't think you would.
Elsa: Yes I would.
Me: Really? So if I took Ollie outside right now and made him throw up your nugget and brought it back inside, you would eat it?
Elsa: Yes.
Rollie (who has been listening this entire time and seems quite intrigued by the conversation): Ew!
Me: Yes, exactly. Thank you, Rollie. Ew. Why would you do that?
Elsa: Because I'm still hungry!
Me: Elsa, there is plenty of food in this house that hasn't already been eaten by our dog. Go get a squeezey yogurt. Go get some crackers. Go get something that doesn't need to be regurgitated.
Elsa: ...But I want my nugget.

And since this was quickly becoming a very disgusting rendition of There's A Hole In The Bucket, I finally decided that the only way to get my daughter to realize how grossly (and I do mean grossly) mistaken she was about still wanting her nugget was to demonstrate.

Me: Fine. You wanna eat doggie throw-up? I'll let you eat doggie throw-up.

I called Ollie, took a detour through the kitchen where I grabbed a piece of nugget from my salad and brought it and the dog outside to our darkened back yard. Elsa and Rollie stood on the other side of the back door, their noses pressed to the glass as they watched. I positioned myself in front of the dog and leaned over, pretending first to assist in Ollie puking, and then retrieving Elsa's beloved piece of nugget from the puddle. Because as a parent, if you want to make a point, sometimes you've got to pretend to force the family pet to vomit.

Was I being immature? Sure. Was there a better way to resolve Elsa's insistence on getting her nugget back? Probably. Was I thinking that this would finally put an end to Elsa's obdurate attitude and turn her into a compliant, agreeable little cherub? Foolishly, yes. Did I need Jeff to hurry up and get home so I could hide in the closet and drink a beer? Does a bear poop in the woods? Or, in this case, does a dog puke in the backyard?

I turned toward the door and help up my chicken nugget like a pearl I'd just harvested. Rollie and Elsa looked amazed, and...did I detect a slight look of wariness in Elsa's big blue eyes?

Me (flinging the door open and almost crowing): Here it is!
Rollie: Did Ollie really throw that up?
Me: Yep.
Rollie (looking at Elsa and grinning): Eeeewwww!
Elsa (examining the nugget): Did you wipe it off?
Me: Yep. I wiped it off on the grass. You ready to eat it?
Elsa: ....Is it clean now?
Me: I wouldn't say it's clean. It was just in a pile of barf.
Elsa: Can I eat it?
Me: That's what you wanted, isn't it?

Elsa doesn't respond, but she carefully takes the nugget from me, examines it for a moment, then places it in her mouth.

Rollie: Ew, Elsa! You ate it!
Elsa: Mmmmm...
Me: I can't believe you just ate that. What are you, Andrew Zimmern?
Elsa:Why?
Me (sighing): Elsa, I would never really let you eat something that disgusting.
Elsa: ....
Me: That wasn't really the piece Ollie ate.
Rollie (seemingly disappointed): It wasn't?
Me: No. I would never have given you that, Elsa. I gave you piece from my salad. But I didn't really think you'd eat it. I just figured you'd be so grossed out you wouldn't want it at all.

Perhaps Elsa wants some dessert, too.

Shows how much I know. Score one for Elsa in the stubborn column. And the really really disgusting column.

The Human Butt Weighs HOW Much?

2011-12-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

Yeah. Hi.

I really hadn't intended to abandoned the blog for so long. I miss it. I miss writing. I miss documenting the lovely new tricks my children have been working on. Like just the other day, Rollie put on my glasses and did an amazing impression of Jonathan Limpnicki's character on Jerry McGuire. I just hope that resemblance doesn't continue into Rollie's preteen years.

But seriously...where has the time gone? Finn's already four months old and eating rice cereal. Just pause for a moment while you soak in his ridiculous potential. Eating rice cereal is only the first of many of his amazing feats. Oh wait...that's feasts. Not feats.

And for my next amazing feast--whirled peas

Middle Child Much?

And Rollie just finished his second season of soccer. Which means I just finished up my second season of shouting at him from the sidelines to Pass The Ball For God's Sake.

And Elsa is...still...Elsa....

But I'm not gonna lie. Three kids takes some work. And some time. I know...News Flash, right? Did you know the earth is actually round, too? ROUND? I can't make this stuff up, folks.

Does the 12-oz variety count?

What I mean is, in order for me to handle three kids and NOT want to shoot myself in the eye repeatedly with a Nerf gun is that I've temporarily ceased all other activities that don't involve clothing, feeding, bathing, cleaning up after or engaging my children in some sort of Imaginative Play...although lately Imaginative Play is Rollie pretending Elsa is a wide receiver and his sole purpose in life is to throw things at her, then tackle her. So I guess my role in all this would be that of Ed Hochuli. Which means I need to work on my arm curls with way more regularity.

But that also means that writing, reading, cleaning, shaving, eating balanced meals, and going anywhere where I might feel uncomfortable whipping out a boob (to feed Finn anyway), just ain't happening.

It is kinda nice, in a way. To have an excuse to be a Total Slacker when it comes to everything else in my life. Oh, haven't blogged in a while? Well, of course you haven't--you've got your hands full! Oh, you haven't showered in five days? Well, how could you--you're busy with three little kids! Oh, your house is a mess, you don't return phone calls, your kids are eating nacho flavored Combos for dinner again, your neighbors called the police because they could smell your diaper genie from across the street and figured it was a dead body someone buried beneath your house? Well what do you expect? You're home with your kids all day long!

Well, fear not, dear readers. I foresee more time to write come January, when Elsa goes to preschool two days a week and Finn will be napping for longer than ten minutes at a time. . And if both of you would like your fix in the meantime, I have an article coming out in Parents magazine's January issue. I've included the link if you simply cannot wait to read what marvelous parenting wisdom I have to bestow upon the reading masses. (Namely that whatever shreds of dignity you've managed to cling to throughout your teens and early twenties will be destroyed the instant you have children. But most of you already knew that.)

Plus, now I have a built-in New Year's resolution: Post More Blogs. Which means I don't have to make any other ones, including Exercise More, Eat More Vegetables, Try Not To Lose Track Of My Keys So Damn Often, and Empty The Diaper Genie Once In Awhile.

In closing, I'd like to post a few pictures of Jonathan Lipnicki, in case you weren't sure who I meant. Because really, the resemblance is uncanny. It did of course take some coaching on my end for Rollie to belt out the famous line. After several takes I convinced him to say, "The Human Head Weighs Eight Pounds," instead of, "The Human Butt Weighs Poopy Butt."

Everyone has an awkward phase...right?

Death Of A Salesmom

2011-10-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

I recently came to the decision, possibly after inhaling too many Desitin fumes, that it would be a great idea to sign up for Rollie's school fund-raiser.

I don't know what made me think I would actually be good at selling things door-to-door. The last time I attempted this was selling citrus senior year of high school to raise money to go on the class ski trip. It was such a disaster. To this day I can't even look at a grapefruit without braking out in hives. Why my school chose citrus--something that literally grows on trees in Florida--and not a rarer commodity, like decent pizza, or a pro football team that doesn't suck, is beyond me. Although it would have been difficult to cram a bunch of linebackers into the back of my 1985 Chrysler Town and Country Station Wagon come delivery time.

I could have fit a few kickers, though.

And then there was the failed magazine subscription sale I attempted in sixth grade. I went out, made a whopping two sales, then lost the envelope with the collected checks until the next school year, when I was rearranging my room and found the envelope behind my bed, covered in dust bunnies and Halloween candy wrappers. For the next five years I had to put a lot of effort into avoiding eye contact with those two neighbors so I wouldn't have to explain to them why their copies of Family Circle and Dog Fancy never arrived.

So I think perhaps this wild hair of mine is derived from previous failures. Perhaps I felt like this was my chance to redeem myself, to approach the doors in my neighborhood with confidence, a winning smile, an enticing sales pitch, and perhaps even earn Rollie's class a pizza party (even if the pizza will be mediocre at best).

Chocolate. That's what we are supposed to sell. I have a cardboard box full of chocolate bars sitting on my kitchen counter, mocking me. So far I've sold two. One to Rollie and one to Elsa. I'm very seriously contemplating just forking over the remaining 48 bucks myself. I'm sure I could come up with some creative uses for the candy bars. I could use them in recipes, give them out as birthday presents, for Halloween, Christmas. I could construct Lincoln Log-esque barns with the kids, decorate the mantel in festive gold foil wrappers, leave the bars floating in the neighborhood pool as a prank. The possibilities are endless.

I think my main problem with selling things door-to-door is the fear of rejection. I mean, no one likes being rejected, right? Remember those painful middle school dances? Finally summoning the courage to ask the love of your life to dance, only to hear the awful excuse (like, I'm kinda tired....Really? Tired? You're a thirteen-year-old-boy on a Friday night, you just downed like, three cans of Sprite, suddenly Patience comes on and you're TIRED??), and then you have to trudge off to a dark corner by the water fountain and watch him and an older girl with bigger boobs sway together in the dimly lit cafeteria to Axel Rose's gritty voice. Sigh.

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh right....chocolate. It would be different if I were selling something people actually wanted. Like Girl Scout cookies. Who doesn't get excited over Thin Mints? I get disappointed when I don't get visited by any girl scouts in the early spring. I can't figure out if it's the cookies that make the sale, or the girl scouts themselves and their adorably dorky little outfits. It's genius, really. Girl Scouts are the only medium through which you can purchase their cookies, so of course people won't turn them away. People will seek them out. People will demand their Somoas. Their Tagalongs. Their Trefoils--oh wait...no one really eats those things.

What I need is to have Rollie do all the grunt work. I need to teach him a good pitch line. Give him an inside angle. Put him in a shirt that's free from boogers and shove him into the world, box of chocolate in hand, and dare any of our neighbors to tell his angelic, earnest face that no, they wouldn't like to support his education and satisfy their sweet tooth at the same time.

You'd better buy that kid's candy,
or I'm gonna tackle you!

And if they don't want any chocolate, I will have Clay Matthews and Brian Urlacher in the back of my car, just in case.

Three's An Intestinal Parasite Waiting To Happen

2011-10-06T05:35:00.000-07:00

So what's it like having three kids?

It's a question I've been fielding for about two months now. A question which for some reason is kind of hard to answer. I mean, I ramble a lot when I try to answer it. Although I've been rambling a lot when I answer any question lately. Yesterday at Publix it took my fifteen minutes to let the cashier know that I'd forgotten my coupons. I'm thinking of hiring someone to follow me around with a hooked cane and haul me offstage when my monologues get too long. Or I can download some Wrap It Up music on my phone to play in similar situations. I wonder what genre that would be under. Soundtracks? Classical? Maybe rap...get it?

ANYWAY, the main talking points I touch on when answering the aforementioned question are as follows:

Having three kids is really not that different from having two kids. Honestly. With two kids, you're used to chaos. Messes. Stumbling around the house bleary-eyed and borderline nauseated due to lack of sleep. You're used to laundry that multiplies when you're not looking. You're used to feeling at times like you've lost your mind, and you scream more loudly than a gaggle of fifth grade girls at a Justin Beiber concert. I guess the only difference here is that on top of all this, your clothes will often smell like spit-up. And you have bigger boobs.

And for me, I think the main different pre- and post-three kids is that instead of my children getting into trouble because I was ignoring them to write/clean up/talk on the phone/go to the bathroom, my children get into trouble because I'm changing/nursing/trying to interact with Finn. Which is why I'm struggling to keep up with my blog. And why the house is an eternal state of Holy Crap We've Been Ransacked.

Case in point...the other day I had the kids outside in the driveway, engaging in typical afternoon activities that are my attempt to keep them from trashing the house anymore than it already is. Sidewalk chalk, riding toys, bubbles, the kind of stuff we keep on and around the workbench Jeff bought because he thought he'd actually be tinkering in the garage after work and on weekends instead of passing out on the couch with a half-drunk beer in his hand and taking the kids to Target, respectively.

So Finn decided to christen me with his very first blow-out. I leaped up from the camping chair where I'd been watching them blow bubbles and quickly alerted the other kids that I had to run inside to contain the Monster Deuce Finn had just dropped. You guys stay right there, I told them, pointing to the garage floor. I'll be right back.

(Side Note: There's a reason the phrase I'll Be Right Back is always the death knell for minor characters in horror movies. As soon as you utter those four words, something more terrible than Jennifer Love Hewitt's acting is about to happen.)

I left the door to the house open, so as I quickly changed Finn's diaper, outfit, socks (yes, even his socks had poop on them) and went through roughly eighty thousand wipes, I listened to the cheery sounds of my children giggling and jabbering to each other. What good kids, I thought. They are staying right where I told them. They are actually heeding my instructions. Maybe I should surprise them by reemerging with a couple of popsicles for them as a reward for being such angels.

When I returned to the garage, I discovered just why the kids were giggling, why they had stayed in the garage in the precise spot I'd instructed.

They had stripped down to their undies, had emptied the entire contents of their 500 fluid-ounce bottle of Super Duper Mega Magic Bubbles on the garage floor, and were having the grandest time slipping around in it like the garage was a big, concrete Wet Banana.

Me: You guys!!
Elsa: Look, Momma! It's fun!
Me: What did you guys do!? (Pretty obvious, I know, but sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around the shennanigans my kids have come up with, and their interpretation or what's going on is necessary for me to digest the magnitude of the mess.)
Rollie (as he skids across the floor on his belly like a blonde, wiry penguin): Whooo-hooo!
Me: Rollie! I cannot believe you dumped out all your bubbles!!!
Elsa: Rollie did it!
Rollie: No I didn't. They spilled.
Elsa: Look at me, Momma! Wheeeeeee! She does a barrel-roll in the bubbles, her body shining like a freshly greased pig.
Me: You guys. You...you guys.

I couldn't emphasize enough to them that I truly couldn't believe what I was seeing, but then I realized, this was kinda my fault. I'm the one who decided to leave a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old to their own devices with a giant jug of bubbles and a completely bare garage floor. I don't know why I expected them to actually sit on the floor and blow bubbles like a couple of docile flower children.

Later that day...or maybe it was the next day...I was nursing Finn on the couch when Elsa trotted up to me with a cup of chocolate milk and announced that she had to use the potty. And since she's constantly vacillating between pleas for me to help her and insistence that she can do it (along with everything else on the planet) all by herself, I didn't bother getting up to help her. Oh foolish, foolish woman.

After an especially long bout of silence coming from down the hallway, I called out to her, asking if she was okay.

Elsa: ...Yeah....
Me: You sure? Do you need help?
Elsa: ....
Me: Elsaaaa?
Finally she emerged from around the corner, holding up her cup.
Me: You all done?
Elsa: Yep.
Me: Did you wash your hands?
Elsa: Yes.
Me: Did you finish your chocolate milk?
Elsa: I spilled it.
Me (sighing): Where?
Elsa: In the potty.
Me: What do you mean, you spilled it in the potty? You dumped it in the potty?
Elsa: I dropped my cup in the potty.
Me (eeeeewwwwwww): And then you fished it out??
Elsa: And then I drank it.
Me (finally unhooking Finn, realizing that my daughters possible e coli contamination took precedence over my infant son's afternoon snack): What?
Elsa: I drank water from the potty. She holds up her cup, which now contains water. From the toilet.

I hustled her back into the bathroom, trying to calculate when the last time was that I cleaned the toilet. And as I scrubbed her hands and face with water that just didn't seem hot enough to destroy all the germs I was sure were festering on her skin, I lectured her about why she should never ever ever drink water from the toilet. It was a new speech, once I don't remember giving to Rollie. Surprisingly. I think he ate dog food, and possibly drank from Ollie's water dish. But not the toilet. That I know of, anyway.

And so after having spent the last few days on dysentery watch, I can honestly say that having three kids truly isn't all that difficult. At least my garage floor is sparklingly clean. And now my toilet is, too...just in case.

Sugar And Spice And Dismemberment

2011-09-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Ah, the joys of having a daughter. Little girls are so sweet. So ladylike. They enjoy quiet activities like tea parties, dress up, coloring.... You can almost hear the cherubic, harp-like music whenever they enter a room, all smiling and clean and free from the intent to fart on you at every turn.

At least, that's what I always thought. Before I actually had one.

Don't get me wrong. I love Elsa. Really, I do. She's fun. She's charming. And she only occasionally sticks incongruous objects up her nose.

But over the past few months I've noticed another quality manifesting itself within this chubby little dynamo of a child:

She is more manipulative than Hannibal Lector trying to get a cellmate to swallow his own tongue.

Right now I think her MO is flattery. The other day I was sitting in her room nursing Finn and she played quietly with her baby dolls (quietly in that she was muttering to one of them that she was going to tear its arm off if it didn't eat its dinner...I swear I've never issued that particular threat before...although I am wondering if it might be more effective than threatening to withhold dessert).

I watched her try to pull off the offending baby doll's arm with no luck. And while it was pretty amusing to watch her enforce her own brand of punishment (kinda like how Rambo might have handled the situation) I decided to make sure she understood that pulling a baby's arm off is usually not the best way to get a kid to eat. Since we, you know...have a new baby in the house. And since Finn's hair is looking a little reddish these days, he doesn't need another strike* against him by way of a missing limb.

Me: Elsa, honey...you really shouldn't try to pull her arm off.
Elsa:Why?
Me: Well, because they don't really come off of that doll.
Elsa: But Momma, she's being naughty.
Me: I know, but that's not how you should punish her. That's not how I punish you, is it?
Elsa: ...But I don't want to put her in time out.
Me: Okay then...maybe you can just pretend she is eating her dinner. (Sure, Mom. Let's squelch her creativity in the name of Making Sure She Isn't A Fledgling Sociopath).

Elsa seems to be heeding my suggestion, and I go back to nursing Finn and playing Scrabble on my phone. (Side Note: I'm a 33-year-old English Major, fairly well-read and learned...you'd think I would be a pretty decent Scrabble player. But no. I suck. I can't even beat my red-headed little brother. In fact, he whups me by far more points than any of my other opponents. So maybe the red-head gene isn't a handicap after all. Maybe Finn will be sort of a savant....at spelling seldom-used words in seven letters or fewer. That's gotta be good for something, right?)

Anyway, a few minutes later Elsa approaches me with her naughty baby doll and says in just the sweetest voice you can imagine.

Elsa: Momma, you look like you have strong hands...can you get her arm off for me?
Me (after I've finished laughing): Why thank you, Elsa. Is that a good thing? Looking like I have strong hands?
Elsa just stands there and blinks at me with those big ol' baby blues.
Me: Elsa, I'm not taking this poor doll's arms off. I don't even think they're supposed to come off.
Elsa: Yes they are.
Me: No, I'm pretty sure they aren't.
Elsa: But they are, Momma.
Me: Well, be that as it may, I still don't want you pulling them off.
Elsa: ...But my daddy said I could.
Me: ....Oh really?

This is another card she's been pulling: whenever she’s attempting to do or obtain something I normally wouldn’t allow or let her have, she claims that someone of a higher authority than myself said she could.

“Elsa, you may not stand on the coffee table.”
“But my daddy said I could.”

“Elsa, don’t put Baby Finn’s paci in your mouth.”
“But Nana said I could.”

“Elsa, do not stick balled-up pieces of tissue up your nose.”
“But Little Bear said I could.”

She also enjoys arguing with me. And for a two-year-old, her arguments can be quite compelling. Sometimes it seems like she must think I don't know what the hell I'm talking about:

Elsa (as we're doing 60 mph down a county road): Roll my window down, Momma.
Me: Please?
Elsa: Yes.
Me: ...No, that's your cue to say please.
Elsa: Please, Momma.
I obligingly crack the window.
Elsa: No, open it all the way!
Me: Elsa, I'm not gonna open it all the way--it'll be too windy.
Else: No it won't.
Me: Yes it will. You'll blow away.
Elsa: No I won't--I'm buckled.
Me: ...Well...you got me there.

Elsa is the kind of kid the phrase Because I Said So was invented. I've been using it so much, I'm pretty sure it will be Finn's first sentence. Either that, or, Rollie, stop trying to pass gas on me--don't you know how disgusting that is? Which is another phrase that gets a lot of airtime in my house. Pardon the pun.

What, Me? Awkward?

Still, she has her moments of sweetness. Of tea parties and dress up and coloring. When I'm looking anyway. It's when I'm not looking that makes me wonder how long it will be before Finn emerges from Elsa's bedroom, minus an appendage. At least he could still beat her ass at Scrabble.

* And I'm totally kidding about the whole red-headed thing. There is almost not scientific evidence that having red hair makes one more hot-tempered, awkward or unable to catch--or throw--a football. So it must just be an amazing coincidence with my brother.

Picker Your Battles

2011-08-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've learned a lot these past few weeks.

If you're boobs are leaking in public, for example, another, sympathetic mom will most likely alert you to this fact, and possibly offer up her own embarrassing anecdote, just to make you feel less...well...sheepish. And wet.

And speaking of wet, another thing I've learned is that little infant boys don't always pee in a trajectory that will hit you, your curious daughter, and the nearest wall-hanging with the kind of water pressure that would make a fireman envious. Sometimes their pee is real sneaky-like (infant boys', not firemen's). You'll be changing him, quickly wiping and applying the necessary ointments and replacing the diaper like your diffusing a bomb, you'll snap the little outfit back up, all proud of yourself that you dodged another bullet, as it were.

But when you pick up your grunting little angel and cradle him in your arms, you pause. What the....his back is wet. Why is his back wet? Is he sweaty? Did I lay him down in a puddle of water? What the F is going on?

What's going on is your son just performed what I like to call The Velociraptor. It's not the pee you see that's the problem. It's the pee that you didn't even know was there.... It's the pee he does off to the side, while you're too distracted by the prospect of getting a full-on golden shower to even notice what's happening. Plus, your son is looking at you all wide-eyed and alert, beguiling you with his innocence, that leaves you completely unaware that he's busy ruining another adorable outfit you've just put on him. Little brat.

However, I'd say the most important lesson I've learned as I stumble around the house in a bleary-eyed state of semi-consciousness, is Pick Your Battles has been elevated to a whole new level.

For instance....I decided to be all ambitious the other day and actually take all three children and the dog on a walk before I had to take Rollie to school (which, thankfully, has proven to be far less traumatic than last year...so far anyway). I strapped Finn into a baby bjorn, shod my two older kids, grabbed the dog leash (after almost forgetting to attach the dog to it), and we were off. Why I decided I could do this without a stroller--or a shot of rum--is beyond me. I can't even blame pregnancy brain anymore, although surely there must be some follow-up ailment to account for questionable post-partum decision-making. Possibly hormones, possibly breastfeeding, possibly the fact that I tried on a pair of previously baggy, pre-pregnancy pants on the other day and couldn't pull them up over my ass. Which was not where I carried Finn, if memory serves.

So anyway, I chose to undertake this incredible journey around the block on garbage day. Add this to the fact that Rollie has been really into the show American Pickers lately, and you start to get the idea of where this walk was headed.

My entourage and I crossed the street and headed up a sidewalk that was practically impassible because of the amount of just...stuff piled up at the end of one driveway. Cardboard boxes, old wicker shelving, plastic bags of various sizes and shapes, broken lamps, broken picture frames and assorted other broken items that appeared to be circa the Carter administration. Minus the vicious, attack bunny-rabbit.

As I tried to determine the best way to steer my little ducklings around the pile, Rollie slowed down and eyed the items with keen interest. It's the same look he often gives these crappy plastic handcuffs that hang in the cereal aisle at the grocery store (which he has informed me he would like to buy so he could use them to handcuff his crush and lock her in his bedroom the next time she comes over....yeah, I know....aye-yay-yay).

Rollie: What is all this stuff, Momma?
Me: It's just garbage, honey.
Rollie: Why is it so much?
Me: I don't know...maybe they cleaned out their garage recently.
Rollie (now stopped directly in front of the giant pile and scrutinizing an especially tacky, gold-colored reindeer): ...Look, Momma.
Me: Yeah, I see it.
Rollie: Why are they throwing it away?
Me: I don't know. It looks like it's missing an antler.
Rollie: It's for Christmas.
Me: So it is. Come, let's keep moving.
Rollie: ...I'm gonna pick that reindeer.
Me: Oh, Rollie, come on. Don't go rooting through other people's garbage.
Rollie: But it's a decoration. We could put it in our yard.
Me: Wouldn't that be lovely?
Rollie: We could keep it out there until it rains, and then I could put it in my room.
Me: Rollie, I really don't want you to touch any of that stuff. Now come on or you'll be late for school.
Rollie (still not moving from his spot, transfixed on the golden reindeer, which now that the morning sun has hit it, is beginning to sparkle like a diamond in the rough): Look, Momma. I'm that guy from American Pickers.
Me: No, Rollie, you are not that guy from American Pickers. That stuff is gross and dirty and full of germs and if we don't keep moving you won't have time to play with any toys in your class before school starts. So let's GO.

Finally Rollie dragged himself away from the garbage pile and kept walking, all the while talking about what a find that reindeer was and how badly he wanted it for his very own. And as if the gods of all that is tacky and hideous was smiling down upon my son, Finn started fussing, which soon escalated into crying and rooting around on my chest in a way that meant if I didn't whip out my boob in about two minutes I was in for some full-scale, red-faced goat-like inconsolable baby crying. Forget the fact that I literally fed the kid 20 minutes ago. And changed him. And already dealt with one Velociraptor sneak attack.

And so I had to make a U-turn and lead my crew back home. Which meant of course, walking past the gleaming reindeer.

Rollie: Look, Momma. The reindeer is still there.
Me: Yep.
Rollie: Don't you think Dadda would like that reindeer?
Me: If Dadda knew it came from the garbage he would put it right back in the garbage.
Rollie: But it's not even dirty or anything, Momma. It doesn't look like garbage. (Translation: we wouldn't have to tell Dadda it came from the garbage.)
Me (sighing as I try to convince Finn that the pacifier I'm holding in his yelling mouth is indeed my nipple): Rollie...I...oh, whatever.Fine. I don't care. But I'm not carrying that thing home.
Rollie: I'll carry it home.

And so it came to pass that I watched my son raid my neighbor's garbage and pull forth his prize: a sparkling, golden, one-antlered reindeer. I walked behind him, watching him proudly strut home with the treasure tucked beneath his arm, the cheap gold-flecked paint flaking off on his school shirt. At one point he raised the reindeer over his head like a hockey player who'd just won the Stanley Cup.

Rollie: Look, Momma. He's pooping on me.
Me: Nice. Rollie.
Rollie: I'm gonna put this in the front yard so Dadda can see it when he gets home.
Me: I bet he'll love that.

One man's trash...

So yeah. Pick your battles. Was I about to get into a heated tete-a-tete with my son about taking a relatively innocuous (albeit ugly-as-sin) bit of abandoned Christmas decor for himself? Nah. Not when I was starting to sweat, with a fussy baby strapped to my chest and an old dog panting at the end of his leash and about to take a dump in the middle of someone's beautifully manicured yard. So what if the reindeer ended up among my hydrangeas? And that Jeff was pretty skeeved out when I told him where it came from (although his response was, You should have made him pick that Christmas tree stand out there--we could use a new one)? I consider this a win in my column.

Although my other lesson of the day is: Don't take the kids out for morning walks on garbage day.

And So It Begins....

2011-08-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back.

Took a break. Gave birth. And now I'm currently enjoying the benefits of having parents who are both retired and are so sick of each other at this point that any external stimuli is a welcome break from sitting across from each other in a sticky booth, watching each other eat platefuls of turnip greens and rice pudding at their local International Super-Duper Buffet.

Their help mainly comes in the form of being extra audience members for my children, whose antics have grown tiresome to me, but Nana and Pop-pop find hilarious. And my dad is very, very good with his intimidation tactics. Why just last night I enlisted his help in making sure my children ate their dinners. He took his duty seriously, and proudly reported that Elsa ate every last bite of hers. Which she subsequently puked up into the double-stroller 30 minutes later. But hey, Pop-pop got the job done.

Baby Finn....So sweet, so innocent,
so incapable of making fart noises with his armpit and a straw.

This entry won't be long, mainly because I am playing catch up with many things, including cutting my children's fingernails so they don't look like X-Men characters. But I wanted to let you know that Baby Finley Palmer has arrived. And he is perfect. Mainly because he can't sass me yet.

I also wanted to let you know that I plan on blogging a lot in the upcoming months, as I see the potential here for many many many entries.

In other words, I am in big, big trouble.

Stay tuned, dear readers. It's on like Donkey Kong.

Scrambled Brain With A Side Of Punky

2011-07-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

I've got five days to go. My brain is scrambled, my belly distended, and I cannot walk into a room without feeling the overwhelming urge to grab the nearest container of cleaner, get down on my hands and knees and scrub (even if that means scouring the bathroom floor with a tube of toothpaste).

I know I've been failing to keep up with my blog, just as I've been failing to keep up with grocery shopping, the news, and the Kardashians. The main reason is that I simply cannot focus on anything. I am in a constant state of distraction. All I can do is feel my belly ball up like a frightened armadillo and wonder if this is it. If this is the beginning of The End. I've already called in my reinforcements (aka, my mom and dad), my overnight bag is packed, all the baby's clothes are washed and waiting to be worn, and I've sworn to Jeff that the other night he purchased my absolute last six-pack of O'Douls. Cannot tell you what a great feeling that was.

And so, I'm not going to try to write a blog entry because it will be a rambling, nonsensical mess (as opposed to my usual entries--linear, focused and rational, with only the occasional jibe directed at David Coulier.) But just in case you can't get enough of my usual stuff, I'm going to redirect you to a side-project I've been working on....

An article for GalTime about Rollie's infamous brand of humor. And I got to discuss it with none other than Soleil Moon Frye. I figured it would be cheesy to tell her that I used to have Punky Brewster sneakers. And they glowed in the dark. Maybe during our next interview....

Rollie Suave, Part II

2011-07-16T05:13:00.000-07:00

It's official. Rollie is girl-crazy.

Yesterday I was without a car, and so I decided to walk to our neighborhood pool in the morning so that we could make it home before the heat of the day resulted in our collective spontaneous combustion. Rollie rode his bike in front of me, Elsa was strapped into the jogger, clad in her favorite (hand-me-down and hence too big and baggy) Dora bathing suit.

As we neared the pool, I heard splashing, giggles and squeals coming from over the privacy hedge. Rollie, who had been pedaling vigorously so he could splash through a dirty puddle, came to a halt, eyeing the hedge with wary yet keen interest.

Rollie: Who was that?

Me: I don't know, Bud. Sounds like someone beat us to the pool.

Rollie: Are they friends?

Me: They aren't friends we know, but that doesn't mean they can't be our friends.

More splashing, squeals and giggles. The tone and timbre telling me that these friends were most definitely female. Which I think Rollie also realized, because I could have sworn he puffed up his chest a bit, sat a little taller on his bike, and started pedaling toward the sound. Kinda like how a peacock would, if peacocks rode bikes with training wheels.

We entered through the gate. Floating around in the pool were three girls a few years older than Rollie, splashing and swimming and communicating with each other in that strange, dolphin-like language only understood by other, six-year-old girls. They stopped and looked over at us as I wheeled Elsa into the shade and unloaded the stroller, then started whispering and giggling. Rollie stood there in his bike helmet, deflated floaty ring in hand, and stared.

Me: Come here, Rollie. You want me to blow up your ring?

Rollie (tossing the ring on the nearest table): I don't need it, Momma. Can I jump in?

Me: ...Sure. Go for it.

I watched Rollie strut, strut, to the pool and do a giant cannonball, spraying the trio with pool water and sending them squealing to the other side. How a four-year-old boy even knows how to strut is beyond me. The only time I've seen him come close to strutting is when he really has to use the potty, and even then it's more of a frantic, stiff-legged shuffle. This was a bonafied, confident, Hey Ladies, Never Fear, The Pre-School Equivalent Of David Hasselhoff Is Here strut. Ay-yay-yay.

Unfortunately for Rollie, the girls seemed more interested in Elsa. Elsa, who just bobbed around the shallow end in her water wings and couldn't have cared less as the girls circled her and asked her her name. Rollie floated beside me, watching.

Me: Why don't you introduce yourself?

Rollie: You do it, Momma.

Me: Don't be shy. Just swim over and say Hi, my name is Rollie.

Rollie: You tell them.

Me: Rollie, they'll play with you if you just go over there.

I don't know why I lied. I had no idea of these girls would accept him. Girls this age are a strange breed. It seems like they are just beginning to understand the power they have over little boys, but are completely ill-equipped to wield it correctly. Like when a superhero just realizes he can fly, leap over buildings and see through the clothing of unsuspecting women.

But Rollie took the bait anyway. As the girls swam around the pool, clicking and squeaking in that dolphin tongue, Rollie dog-paddeled just on the periphery, hanging onto every squeal, laughing, splashing, and ultimately insinuating himself into whatever odd, law-less game they came up with. At one point they aimed a question directly at him, asking how old he was.

"Four!" He replied, then screamed and disappeared under the water, swimming away like a frightened mer-man.

A few minutes later, the gate opened and three more little girls came skipping toward the pool. Rollie's face absolutely lit up. The whole scene was starting to take on the feel of a beer commercial for four-year-olds. I half-expected a hidden radio to start blaring Beautiful Girls.

There my baby boy was, floating in a sea of estrogen, surrounded by six females (well, seven if you count Elsa, who was uncharacteristically quiet and tolerant of her waterwings). I had only intended to stay at the pool an hour, but I felt bad dragging him away from what was apparently right up there on his Top Five Greatest Moments Of All Time, right after the first time he saw the Magic Kingdom Castle, and right before the first time he realized that he could pee standing up.

And so I watched him for another hour, mentally shaking my head at some of his pick-up lines (I can do a hand-stand. Want to have an underwater tea party? Want to see how long I can hold my breath?) and laughing to myself as he donned his swim mask and swam around under the water, no doubt watching the girls from a new angle and wondering how it came to be that he scored such a jackpot this day.

Eventually I did have to cut the fun short so we could walk home before it rained. And before Rollie asked if they wanted to play with his torpedoes (pun obviously not-intended on his part, but I couldn't risk the suggestion being made in front of other adults I don't know very well).

I suppose this is just the beginning of a looooong, complicated and often-times heartbreaking journey of Rollie's interaction with the opposite sex. I can only imagine the conversations that lie ahead, the advice he will seek, the possible tears he will shed and the giddiness he'll experience. Hopefully Elsa will be a good resource for him--unless he starts mackin' on her friends. Or his friends start mackin' on her. Geez, is mackin' on even still a phrase people use? I am so not ready to have teenagers.

Members Only...Without The Cool Jacket

2011-07-09T05:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry I've been slacking lately....

Actually, the main reason I haven't written much in the past week is that I haven't really been home. I've been lost inside my local Costco, you see. Wandering around for days, surviving solely on free samples of cocktail wieners, cream puffs and a special blend of vitamin water and my own tears. It was a terrifying, dismal ordeal that I am just now comfortable discussing.

It all started a few weeks ago, Jeff came home after an excursion to our Town Center with my in-laws and my children, while I stayed home and vegged on the couch (fully intending to clean, pack stuff away and write, but once I got horizontal it was waaay too difficult to hoist myself off the couch without the aid of a 150-pound man...operating a crane). When Jeff returned, he was all gleamy-eyed and cautiously excited, which made me think he must have just purchased that Ford F-250 he keeps virtually building online and drooling over. (He claims that we need a truck so that we can tow things. Since, you know, we have so many things piled up in our driveway and yard, just waiting to be towed around by said truck.)

Jeff (as soon as he found me lying on the couch in pretty much the same position as when he'd left): I got you something.
Me (thinking he was about to pull out some fluffy bedroom slippers, or a new body pillow, or even a peanut butter cup blizzard from DQ. All of which would have been extremely well-received.): Oh yeah?
He disappears around the corner, where I heard a rustling of plastic. He then emerges, straining under the weight of a 30-pack of paper towels.
Jeff: Ta-dah!
Me: ...Wow....
Jeff: Paper towels!
Me: ...Yeah, I see that.
Jeff: I got you some more stuff, too.
Me: ...I can't wait.
He leaves the wall of paper towels on the floor and disappears again, this time hefting what looks like a small swimming pool of Tide and an equally ridiculous container of Downey.
Me: Wow, hon. Thanks...
Jeff: We joined Costco!
Me: You did?
Jeff: Yeah. You, too. We're all members now.
Me: ...Oh....

Now before I am labeled as an ingrate and possibly a complete bitch for not jumping up and down at the prospect of belonging to a wholesaler chain, let me give you a bit of background information on Jeff and my relationship with stores like Costco, Sam's, BJ's and the like:

I hate them.

Seriously, I would rather go to the dentist, the doctor, a Katy Perry concert. I'd rather see a three-hour show featuring nothing but clowns, mimes and Dora the Explorer than have to stumble around the 1000-foot high aisles, the tables strewn with Levis and polo shirts, the DVD's and books and plasma screens and tire racks and refrigerated cases of shrimp platters and veggie trays big enough to serve all 58 members of Blood, Sweat and Tears. I think I simply get overwhelmed, and have a sort of out-of-body experience when I try to process everything. Kinda like giving birth...to a 100,000-square-foot baby that has its own optometrist and snack bar.

Jeff and his parents have always belonged to wholesale clubs. It's sort of a family tradition for them, not unlike other families getting together for post-Thanksgiving charades of Fourth of July wheelbarrow races. Jeff's family like getting together every month or so and making a trip to Sam's Club. Had I known that once I married Jeff not only would I become a member of his family, but also a member of Costco...well...let's just say he owes me a pass on his mandatory participation in my mother's infamous treasure hunts.

I think my main issue with places like Costco is that I have never had much experience with Buying in Bulk. Having so many kids in our family, you'd think that this would have been my mother's main method of shopping. But no...my memories of childhood revolve primarily around the time I stole a box of Fruit Rollups and lied for weeks about it, because I spied them first and knew if I didn't make my move, they would have been instantly devoured like a swarm of siafu had marched through the kitchen. Perhaps this painful memory could have been avoided had my mother purchased a 50-pack of them, but alas, most things she came home from the grocery store with were packaged in a size that didn't require my parents to build a shed in the backyard to house them.

And so when I open my linen closet and am practically smothered to death by an avalanche of Bounty, I can't help but feel kind of...overwhelmed. And I think knowing that I have such an enormous inventory of paper towels causes me to be a little more liberal with my use of them. It's okay if I use twenty sheets to wipe up spilled water--I know where I can get some more! I can use the paper towels for all kinds of things--cleaning, bathing, covering up on chillier nights. The kids can build towers with the rolls, they can climb on them, sword-fight, use them as telescopes, pillows, stand on them to reach more paper towel rolls. The possibilities are endless. Unlike the space in my house to put them.

I think Jeff is a little disappointed that I'm not embracing the concept of Buying in Bulk, and maybe over time I will warm up to the idea of coming away from a store minus $300, but plus a cement block of cheddar cheese and a lifetime supply of spaghetti sauce. Or maybe we just need to have a few more children to make Costco a necessity and not just a fun excursion for Jeff and an excuse for me to be dropped off at the Katy Perry Mime Show while I wait for him to return with more cleaning supplies and giant cans of tuna. Well, I know where we can get one more kid. He's sitting on my spleen right now. Three weeks and counting.... Then maybe we can make a family trip to Costco for a 75-pack of Michelob Ultra.

That I can do.

Family Ties...Minus Tina Yothers

2011-06-28T02:06:00.000-07:00

I read an article in the NYT Motherlode blog the other day about how to make sure your kids grow up to be friends. Actually, I think the article was asking readers if there was an actual way to make your kids grow up to be friends. By means other than, you know...beating them with reeds until they promise to run right out to their nearest Piercing Pagoda and buy a Best Friends necklace for their sibling.

This subject has always fascinated me. I am very interested in the whole concept of sibling rivalry and the bonds that tie us all together in knots so complex that extricating ourselves from them is like trying to pull gum out of a 2-year-old's hair (or a gum wrapper from her nostril, which I've had recent experience doing, and proved to be more difficult than the Popcorn Kernel Incident).

I think this fascination stems from the fact that my five siblings and I are very close. Like, extremely so. Like, for awhile there it was almost an unhealthy, co-dependent kind of relationship, built on love, trust and mutual appreciation for Jaws, Star Wars and Silence of the Lambs. And alcohol.

But I would like to figure out exactly why we're all so close, so that when my children get older, they will enjoy their own unhealthy, co-dependence on each other, fueled by their own appreciation of scary movies and Zima snuck through bedroom windows and stashed inside bathtubs full of ice. I think much of our closeness stems from the fact that my siblings and I all have a similar sense of humor. And by similar I mean dark, irreverent, twisted, and founded upon the idea that if we laughed loudly enough our parents wouldn't notice that we were walking around with only one contact lens because we tore the other one roughly three hours after receiving our very first pair, and we were NOT about to tell our father that he just dropped two hundred bucks for us to spend seventh grade with 20/400 vision in our left eye.

Anyway, the main idea from the aforementioned article that resonated with me was: if you really want your kids to be close, you've got to let them

1.) fight
2.) have secrets
3.) make fun of you. With abandon.

Well, Rollie and Elsa definitely have that first one covered. They fight just like any other set of siblings. Always have, really. Rollie will boss Elsa around, Elsa will get annoyed and lunge at him, Rollie will invariably resort to kicking at her like a mule. Elsa will cry and tattle. Rollie will run and hide. It's almost tedious in its predictability. I mean, once in a while can't they throw a chair at each other just to mix things up a little?

The only person in my family who I ever really fought with was my sister Carrie. You remember Carrie, don't you? Two years older...irritable...liked to write stories about me in which I was a bumbling idiot who never bathed, changed clothes or had any friends. Man, did we fight growing up. Although I will say that it was usually because I did something to piss her off, and Carrie was never one to hide her displeasure. Displeasure here usually manifested itself in clawing my arm with her fingernails, running me over with a hose caddy or spool, or verbally assaulting me with a Christian Bale-like ferocity, only without the charming accent.

Dispersed throughout our childhood, however, were moments when we were comrades. Silently giggling together through never-ending church sermons. Sitting together in mutual punishment for failing to eat our mother's horrific concoction of squash and seasonings that was an abomination to child palates everywhere. Getting stuffed in the way back of our father's un-airconditioned '75 Buick station wagon as our family barreled toward a relative's house in the dead of summer (and getting waylaid for an hour or two because either a.) the car broke down, or b.) someone's belongings blew off the roof rack). It seems like it was the rough times in our young little lives that really brought us closer. The times when we could band together in shared loathing for long sermons, squash, Buicks, and roof racks .

Which makes me think that if I want my kids to have a close relationship with each other, I'm gonna need to start introducing them to some hardships. Something besides me failing to DVR Wonder Pets.

As far as my children sharing secrets, they seem to have that one covered, too. Many times have I heard them giggling, then a rustling in the pantry, and when I finally heave myself up from whatever tuffet I've been lounging on to investigate, I find them hiding somewhere with an entire bag of marshmallows, laughing over how large their cheeks have gotten, filled with sugary goo. They are not yet savvy enough to not get caught, but as soon as they are, they will have their share of secrets that I won't ever be privy to. Which is fine with me...do I really want to know that they just ingested their own weight in Skittles?

One thing my kids haven't done yet is make fun of me. That I know of, anyway. But I'm sure in about eight years they will have this one covered too, mainly because I will be embarrassing the crap out of them just by merely existing. Which I frankly can't fathom. I mean, I'm definitely not the coolest person on the planet, shocking as that may sound...but I really don't know how I'm going to embarrass my children. Perhaps just picking them up from school will be downright mortifying (and I plan on having a normal car--I will NOT pick them up in a broken down motorhome like my own father had been known to do on occasion. Seriously, it's the times like waiting outside with fifty other eight graders after a school dance when my ride home was mistaken for either a.) a U-Haul, or b.) the ice cream man, that solidified my relationship with my siblings. Who else would understand the horror of having the most embarrassing mode of transportation on the planet, driven by the school's band director? My siblings, that's who.)

But if my children take after me in any way, shape or form (aside from their affinity for Dairy Queen), they will find a way to make fun of me regardless of how cool a parent I am. And if I want them to foster a closer relationship, the kind I still enjoy with my siblings, I might as well start downloading some old Milli Vanilli tracks now, just so I have something to blast over the car speakers when I pick them up from their own school dances. Since I won't have a motorhome to cart them around in.

Life Is Like A Box Of...Um...Something....

2011-06-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

So...anyone notice that the number of blog entries I've been producing has fallen off in the past few months?

It's not that life in the Scott household is any less exciting, boisterous and blog-worthy as it once was. Oh no. In fact, just the other day I had to wipe Elsa's nose with my own shirt, because she herself was shirtless, let out an atomic sneeze, and nary a tissue was in sight. How's that for exciting?

Instead, I believe I've fallen victim to a phenomenon that plagues The Swollen and Annoyed:

Pregnancy Brain.

And because I'm battling such a powerful bout of Pregnancy Brain right now, instead of coming up with something original to write, I'm shoplifting a snippet from my next book for you to enjoy, while I waddle off to the couch, snuggle up with my body pillow and remote, and see how many times I have to hear my children shriek in the other room before I have to hoist myself up and investigate (and possibly reattach a digit).

So without further ado, here is a segment from Chapter 5--The Fifth Month (aka, No, We Are Not Naming The Baby Jean-Luke Picard Scott Of The Star Ship Enterprise…I Don’t Care If It Is A Family Name)

I myself was a skeptic at first. Pregnancy Brain, I internally scoffed. What a bunch of baloney (ew…can’t think of baloney right now). So you’re telling me that just because my body is busy creating another life and giving me mystery twinges in my left buttcheek that my brain can’t remember to make sure I put on deodorant in the morning?

That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And it’s not just a chance of walking around smelling like a Taco Bell all day that shoots up five thousand percent. It’s the little brain functions we normally take for granted that will leave us wondering why we suddenly feel like we must have smoked waaaaay too much pot in college.

One day I was in the kitchen with my husband and he was nagging me about cleaning off the refrigerator. And while I can usually hold my own in an argument with the World’s Most Logical Man On The Planet, during the course of our conversation I found myself struggling for verbal breath.

Jeff: So you think you might want to take some of these pictures off the fridge?

Me (staring blankly at the ten-year-old pictures of our families during various vacations and other moments of merriment): Pictures?

Jeff: Yeah, you know…it’s looking at little cluttered.

Me: Cluttered? You think?

Jeff: You can hardly tell what color the fridge is underneath all this stuff.

Me: But I like it.

Jeff: Can’t you find some nice frames for these pictures.

Me: But I like looking at things.

That was my big argument. I like looking at things. What I'd meant to say is that when I'm standing in front of the fridge, filling one of my gargantuan bottles with water to stave off another lovely side-effect of pregnancy--constipation--I like to look over the snapshots of yesteryear and remember the good old days when none of my siblings had yet to procreate, and we all still had fun together. (Yeah, doesn't that make you want to run out and get knocked up, too? Not only will you turn into Forest Gump for almost an entire year, but your days of carefree fun are so over. Oh yeah, and you won't poop again until the next presidential election.)

To this day when I’m having a brain fart (yes, I just used the word fart. After having kids I throw around potty words a lot more than I used to…sort of a disintegration of my intelligence), or I offer up a lame argument during a discussion with my husband, one of us will say I like looking at things. It serves as a humbling reminder that I am not always whip-quick on the uptake. Hard to believe, I know.

After doing some extensive research on the matter (ie, Googling it and finding a WebMD article), I have found that Pregnancy Brain is due to a number of factors—exhaustion, hormones, preoccupation with the fact that you can no longer fit into your fat jeans, let alone your skinny jeans. Pregnancy Brain will cause you to forget to swap your clothes from the washer to the dryer—until you notice the smell of rotting clothes coming from your laundry room. It will cause you to set down your purse, your keys, your toddler and spend the next twenty minutes scouring the house and swearing under your breath that you can’t find them (and you’ll really start swearing when you finally do find your toddler contentedly rubbing blush into your cream-colored carpeting). It will make you forget words, names, lyrics, the state capitals, and whether or not you like the show Jerseylicious (side note: you don’t). Some experts even believe that a pregnant woman’s brain actually shrinks. Watching Jerseylicious while you eat an entire bag of peanut M&M’s will do that.

Here endeth the Pregnancy Brain snippet. I'm off to sew Rollie's thumb back onto his hand.

Nobody Nose

2011-06-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

And then there are situations when, even in a state of semi-panic, I can still visualize the blog entry that will come out of it.

So Friday I decided that the acrid smoke of distant forest fires that has blanketed our county for the past week was probably not the best thing my young children should be inhaling. And instead of coming up with some neat craft or indoor game for us all to enjoy together, I plopped the kids on my bed with some popcorn to watch Peter Pan, while I settled myself into the office chair and started pecking at the keyboard, determined to get in some uninterrupted writing before a.) Elsa decided she'd rather come sit on my non-existant lap and start pressing random keys until I gave up and paid her attention, or b.) Rollie lost interest in a movie he's already seen fifty billion times and started leaping from the bed to the rocking chair until he miscalculates one jump and winds up with a massive head wound.

Amazingly, I was able to get out about 800 words or so, lost in the creative process (or I may have already gotten distracted by emails, Yahoo headlines and the fact that I could stuff a few Oreos in my pie-hole without having to share with my children), before Rollie's sweet, angelic face appeared at my side.

Rollie: Momma?
Me: Yes, darling son?
Rollie: ...I did something.
Me (thinking in German accent--alahm, alahm!): ....Uh-oh. What did you do?
Rollie: ...I...something's in Elsa's nose.
Me (leaping up as quickly as I can in my delicate condition--which is actually still pretty darn fast. Kinda like when an elephant suddenly spots a mouse): What is in Elsa's nose?
Rollie: I'll show you.

I followed my son into my bedroom, where Elsa was perched at the foot of my bed, staring slack-jawed at Peter Pan crowing onscreen. I leaned down and peered into her nose, where I saw a uncooked popcorn kernel lodged in her right nostril.

So many times we moms are confronted with the strange, the incongruous, the macabre. I've found things in the most interesting of places: a quarter shoved in my computer's disc drive. A purple pipe cleaner sticking out of a doorknob. Play-doh in places play-doh has no business being. These things are usually somewhat innocuous, and may even make us chuckle at our children's creativity and manual dexterity.

And I'm not one to freak out at little things. I try to take most of the jack-ass things my kids do in stride. I don't gasp when they take little tumbles. I don't have hissy fits when they draw on the carpet or wig-out when they jump on the couch. I used to think this was due to my being a really cool cat, but right now I actually think it's because I'm usually on the brink of passing out from exhaustion, and most forms of freaking out require more energy than I can physically summon at any given moment.

But man, when I saw Elsa's little nostril obstructed, I went into this total hand-wringing, mother-hen mode that even I didn't recognize.

Me: Oh. Oh no. Okay, hang on a second guys.
Elsa (tearing her eyes from the screen long enough to notice me gaping helplessly at her nose intruder): Rollie did it.
Me: I know, hon, it's okay. Just don't breath in, okay?
Rollie: Why not, Momma?
Me: I don't want it to get stuck in there. I might not be able to get it out.
Rollie: Why not, Momma?
Elsa: Rollie put popcorn in my nose.
Me: I know, I know.
Rollie: I was trying to put it in her mouth.
Me: Your aim is way off, buddy. Elsa, breathe through your mouth, okay? I don't want that popcorn to go any deeper in there.
Rollie: Why not, Momma?
Me: Rollie...just...gimme a second here.

I snatched a tissue from the dresser and held her left nostril closed, then instructed her to blow. But as she did, I had a hard time discerning whether she was exhaling or inhaling. Which sent me into further panic. What if I can't get it out? What if I have to take her to the emergency room? What if they can't get it out without performing open-nose surgery? Is there such a thing? I'm such a terrible mother.

With visions of her inhaling the kernel further into her nasal passage, and from thence either into her brain or down her windpipe and into her lungs, where it would lodge itself in a nice, warm, dark corner of her alveoli and sprout into a cornstalk, I grabbed my daughter off my bed and hurried into the bathroom, Rollie trailing behind, uncharacteristically quiet. Probably stewing in his own juices of guilt and self-beration.

I set my human Whirly Pop on the counter and dumped out the entire contents of a manicure set my mother-in-law bought me like, eighteen Christmases ago and I hadn't used since Rollie's birth. Inside was a small tool designed to both push back cuticles, and fish tiny objects from the delicate nostrils of children. It's long, thin, and bent at the tip, sort of like a hoe for tilling the world's tiniest garden. With flashbacks of playing Operation, I inserted the tool into Elsa's nose and pried the popcorn kernel out.

Elsa: You got it!
Rollie: Lemme see.

I held the offending kernel out for Rollie to study.

Me: Never again, Rol. That could have been really, really bad.
Rollie: Why?
Me: Because I might not have been able to get it out. And then we would have had to go to the hospital.

Perhaps it was seeing me in such an unusual state of concern. Or his own conscious crushing down on his little blonde head. Or the fact that Elsa was getting all the attention. But whatever it was, Rollie looked up at me with those gray eyes and burst into tears. And I just had to pick him up and cuddle him, even though when I do so now his feet dangle past my knees and my OB doctor would probably kill me for lifting such a big load.

Me: It's okay, Rol-Rol. She's fine. Just promise me you'll never, ever put anything in anyone's nose ever again.
Rollie (sniff sniff): O-kaaaay.
Me: Not your nose, not Elsa's nose, not your friends' noses.
Elsa: Ollie's nose.
Me: Not Ollie's nose.
Rollie: What about his ears?
Me: No. No one's ears, either. Okay?
Rollie: Okay.

Whew. Crisis averted. For now. Although I can just imagine the trouble these two are going to get in down the road. Elsa will be Rollie's guinea pig, always the one to try the asinine things he comes up with. Which is pretty much how my own relationship with my big brother was. Which means I have a few more trips to the emergency room in my future. Sigh. At least it's only 15 minutes away.

So...discussion time! What's the weirdest thing your child has ever inserted into an orifice?

Your Father's Idea This Was

2011-06-08T04:16:00.000-07:00

Another thing I've learned as a parent of two young children is that concepts I take for granted as being relatively easy to grasp can blow the mind of a 4-year-old boy.

Take the movie Star Wars for example. The other day, Jeff decided that Rollie wasn't being mentally challenged enough by the idea that my belly is roughly the size of a bean bag chair because tucked away inside is a small human, and so he introduced Rollie to the magical world of Storm Troopers, Wookies, and Harrison Ford before he divorced his wife, got an earring and can only get roles where he is either about to retire, coming out of retirement, or on his way to a rest home.

Episode XXVIII--Mark Hamill Looking Like He Could Use A Nap.
And A Shower

And so we drew the blinds, popped some popcorn and settled in to watch Episode IV--Mark Hamill At His Aesthetic Peak.

The opening music blared, and I started reading the opening paragraph to Rollie. And thus, the incessant line of questioning commenced.

Me: "It is a period of civil war...."

Rollie: What's civil war?

Me: Um...it's when certain factions within an empire are fighting against each other.

Rollie: ....What's a faction?

Me: Just a group...of people....

Rollie: Why are they fighting?

Me: Hang on a sec...."Rebel spaceships, fighting from a hidden base...."

Rollie: What's a rebel spaceship?

Me: Rollie, just listen...".have won their first victory against the evil Galactic empire."

Rollie: Why is the galactic empire evil? Are they bad guys?

Me: Yes.

Rollie: But why are they evil?

Me: I don't know exactly. Maybe they're just grumpy.

Rollie: The galactic empire is grumpy?

Me: ....Sure. The grumpy galactic empire. (George Lucas is probably rolling over in his hyperbaric chamber right now)

Rollie: Where are the bad guys?

Me: Rollie, you want me to read this or not? "....During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the empire's secret weapon, the Death Star."

Rollie: What's a Death Star?

Me: Weren't you listening? It's the empire's secret weapon.

Rollie: Is the empire full of bad guys?

Me: Yes, remember? The grumpy galactic empire?

Rollie: But why are they grumpy?

Me: Rollie, I don't know. Maybe they didn't take their naps.

Rollie: But where are they?

Me: You'll see. "....Princess Leia races home aboard her starship...."

Elsa (whose eyes have suddenly lit up): Where's Princess Leia?

Me: Oh...well, she's coming.

Elsa: Is she a princess?

Me: Yeah, kinda.

Rollie: Aw, there's a princess in this?

Me: Yes, but she's really strong. She's a strong princess.

Elsa: Can I see her?

Me: ...In a second, Els.

This peppering of questions should have indicated to Jeff and me that we were in for a very chatty 112 minutes of intergalactic excitement. It was like Rollie was a newborn who also had the ability to speak and had absolutely no idea what the hell anything was. Everything was foreign, strange and extremely realistic (pretty impressive for 1977, which also spat out such cinematic gems as Orca, King Kong and Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo).

So for the next several scenes, Jeff and I took turns answering Rollie's questions, which ranged from the basic (What's a Jawa?), the esoteric, (What's the force?), the complicated, (Where are Luke Skywalker's mommy and daddy?), and the materialistic (Can I have a real light saber like he has?). I guess I'd never realized how confusing Star Wars really is. I mean, watching it as an adult is a whole new experience for me. I never realized what a whiney little bitch Luke Skywalker is. Or that the man who played C3-PO must have been incredibly uncomfortable during the filming. Or that throughout the entire movie, Carrie Fischer is not wearing a bra.

Plus, unless you already have some background knowledge of the plot, Star Wars is actually pretty complex. And that's for your average adult. For a kid who still hides his eyes during particularly intense sequences of Little Bear, Star Wars piles on some heavy, heavy sh*t. Throw in laser guns, light sabers, and the cantina scene when Obi Wan chops that guy's arm off (which thankfully Jeff and I remembered was coming and shielded our children's eyes before they could see the brutal aftermath of what happens when you mess with the wrong Jedi), and I started to wonder why the hell we thought it was a good idea to feed Rollie a bunch of material that will give him his first taste of Hollywood-induced nightmares (at least that don't involve being forced to watch Hot Tub Time Machine like Jeff has been trying to do to me for the past few weekends....).

We didn't make it very far past the cantina scene before Rollie started asking about Yoda, the more kid-friendly character of the series. Because he has older cousins, Rollie's already been exposed to several characters and plot lines of the trilogies. He also knows that Darth Vader used to be good, and (spoiler alert) that he is Luke Skywalker's father. Although he still doesn't really get why, if Darth Vader is such a bad-ass, his light saber is pink. I suppose some mysteries of the galaxy will never be solved.

Like why Orca never attained the critical acclaim of Jaws....

Ben Dover

2011-06-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a good idea at the time....

My dog has this really annoying habit of dropping pieces of his food all over the floor when he eats. And then not cleaning up after himself. Kinda like some other members of this household.

And now that I'm sporting a physique that causes some serious water-displacement in the bathtub, bending over to do anything is just not worth the effort. Even if I spotted a hundred dollar bill, a gift card to Target, a coupon for a free pedicure, an autographed picture of Matt Damon naked; none of these things is important enough for me to lean down over my behemoth belly and pick up. (Now if it were Matt Damon himself who was on the ground and needed help getting up...different story....)

And so when I saw the scattered bits of dog food on my carpet a few days ago, I had a stroke of what I thought was absolute brilliance...

Me: Hey Rol?
Rollie: What, Momma?
Me: How would you like to earn a whole dollar? (Steep, I know, but this should illustrate to you just how damned annoying I find my dog. And how gigantic I'm becoming.)
Rollie: I would like that a lot.
Me: Okay...all you have to do is pick up Ollie's food and put it back in his dish.
Rollie: Sure!

Foolishly thinking my son would complete his task in twenty seconds, I waddled off to his room, where I planned to scrounge up the dollar from his wallet. I even heard Elsa pipe up that she wanted to help, and soon the sounds of some serious teamwork came from the other room.

This was quickly replaced by sounds of Elsa shrieking, followed by the sound of a heavy plastic dog food bowl tipping over.

I waddled back into the kitchen, where I discovered that the Kibbles and Bits had multiplied.

Me: Hey! What on earth is going on in here? (Translation: Holy crap, WTF are you jackals doing?)
Rollie: Elsa did it!
Me: ...Elsa dumped that entire bowl onto the floor?
Elsa: Rol-Rol did it!
Rollie: No I didn't, Elsa!
Me: Enough! Come on, you guys, this should have been the easiest dollar you'd ever make. Now pick it all up and put it back in the bowl, please.
Rollie (leaping up): I know what we need!
Me: A couple of obedient little children?
Rollie runs past me and to the pantry, where I hear him rummage around for a few seconds before emerging with a little broom and dustpan.
Me: Oh, Rollie...you probably don't need that.
Elsa: I'll get one, too. Be right back.
Me: You guys...I think you're making this more complicated than it has to be. (Translation: This is going to be a complete f-ing disaster.)

But they seemed unaware of my skepticism and started busily sweeping up the food....and by busily I mean sort of pushing it around the floor with their respective brooms and more or less scattering it around even worse than it already was.

Our next pet is going to be a fish.

Me: You guys...can't you just...get it together in a pile and then pick it up? No, not like that, Els. Here, Rollie, show her how to do it. Rollie, no, you're just scattering it more. Look, there's pieces all the way over here now. Rollie. Look, bud, you're making a huge mess. Hey. Hey! You guys! Come on, seriously?! This doesn't have to be that hard!

Yes, I was probably handling the situation wrong. Yes, if a parenting expert had been watching this scene and taking notes, I would have gotten an earful about how I should have been positively reinforcing their effort, and offering suggestions in a pleasant tone of voice, and perhaps even getting down on my hands and knees and helping them do it more efficiently. Except that if got down on my hands and knees, I wouldn't be getting back up without the assistance of a few neighbors and a small forklift.

And so I left them to their mess and went about the house getting other things done. Like trying to remember where the hell I put my coffee from that morning. As I searched, an unstoppable inner monologue ran through my head:

You know what? This is their fault. If they'd done it right in the first place, they'd be finished picking it all up, and a dollar-twenty-five richer by now. They know how to pick something up properly. I shouldn't have to stand there and cheerlead every freaking thing they attempt. They're old enough to know the right way to do something. If I had to hold their hand every time I wanted them to do follow simple directions, I would never get anything done, and they would grow up to be dependent little morons who needed Mommy to spoon-feed them every minutiae of their lives. Well, not this Mommy. They need to learn to listen to me and do what I say the first time I say it.

Listen to them. Little shits. I bet they think this is funny. I bet they are trying to see how far they can push me before I finally cave and pick up all the damn dog food myself. And then they'll just wander away into another room, where they'll make another mess that they have no intention of cleaning up. Yeah, laugh it up, ankle-biters. Let's see who's laughing when I go over there and force you to pick up all the food with your smiling little mouths and spit it into the bowl. How 'bout them apples?

Okay, so I know the situation was getting a little out-of-hand. I know that I should have seen it escalating, should have come up with some creative way to make this task fun. I should have made up a song about putting dog food where it belongs, or turned it into a game or a craft or a competition to see who could pick it up the fastest or get the most pieces into the bowl first. Because really, isn't that how we eternally patient and fun-loving moms are supposed to treat everything? Isn't that how all our battles are supposed to be won? With happiness and harmony and soft voices and gentle words?

I'd Ben Dover for this any day. Sorry, Dad.

Well, this battle was won with a lot of yelling, threats, sarcasm, and the eventual decision on my end to vacuum the house so I couldn't hear them arguing over the bigger broom or pelting each other with bits of dog food. The end result was the same--the food was cleaned up. Forty-five minutes later. And I got to keep my dollar. I think I'll use it to rent Invictus from my local Redbox.

The Most Horrifying Place On Earth, Part III

2011-05-29T09:10:00.000-07:00

Why do Jeff and I do this to ourselves?

During a moment of what could have only been total intoxication, we decided to take our children to Disney World this week. Not sure what my thought process was here: I know! What better way to celebrate my 30th week of pregnancy than to shlep our two young children around in the blazing-hot sun, weaving in and out of families who have a.) the personal bubble of a cheap suit, b.) three of their own kids, one of whom just dropped his chocolate-coverd Mickey bar on the sizzling sidewalk and is now having a DEFCON 2 meltdown, and c.) just purchased a fifteen-dollar princess balloon and are trudging along in front of us, their balloon banging us in the face and taunting our own daughter into thinking that if she screams loudly enough maybe we will buy her one, too.

In all seriousness folks, it really wasn't that bad. I mean, it could have been much worse. As I walked around, soaking in the antics of other people's children, it made me incredibly grateful that right now the most annoying thing my own kids have been doing lately is stopping to save worms whenever we see them on the sidewalk, even if they have already shriveled into earthy little french fries. That and since I've been wearing skirts a lot more lately, Elsa finds great hilarity in trying to lift them up when we're in public. Lovely.

And if it sounds like I'm high and mighty and judgmental of other parents, that's fine. I've got no problem admitting that I judge other people's parenting skills. Just like I have no problem admitting that when Jeff's already sleeping in the evenings I sometimes switch the TV over from How It's Made to Supernanny, just so I can REALLY feel grateful about my own kids.

Which is kind of what this trip was to me. An episode of Supernanny. In HD. Without the charming British accent. (Side note: somehow Supernanny can get away with telling the parents they completely suck and their kids have a better shot at life if wolves were rearing them because she delivers this news with a Cockney lilt. I think I will try that next time I tell Jeff that instead of staying home and helping him put the kids to bed, my girlfriends invited me to dinner and a movie. So sorry, Love. Gonna take in a show wif me mates, then off ta Olive Garden for a bit-a me dinnah. Be back by ten, ol' chap. Hol' down the flat till then, yeah? Cherrio!)

The Post-Disney Crash

Not that I can really blame parents for their children's behavior at The Happiest Place On Earth. Disney World is like a drug for kids. When kids are at Disney World, they stay up for days at a time, they don't want to stop and eat, they talk excitedly and giggle, they see animals talking to them, grown adults sporting petticoats and top-hats and tap dancing in the street. And then they get overwhelmed and upset and have emotional meltdowns, their bodies become cooked noodles and they have to be dragged away, strapped into strollers and quickly carted off before they hurt themselves or someone they love. And then they pass out.

Bring on the singing, disembodied heads!

For parents, Disney World is a place to test our survival skills. We're hot, tired, hungry (or have just eaten some terrible, Mickey-shaped pizza and are battling a raging case of indigestion), and have just waited in a ninety-minute line to float above a psychedelic Neverland for five seconds, comforting our terrified daughter all the while that the crocodile was not about to leap into our rickety pirate ship and bite her little head off. We will do anything to make it all as bearable as possible. We will fork over obscene amounts of money for souveniers, crappy food, liquid sugar in cups that light up, sing, glow in the dark and probably leak toxic chemicals onto your hands, we will ride Small World as many times as it takes to erase the memory of The Haunted Mansion from our children's impressionable minds. We do it all in the name of happiness and harmony, and in the name of If You Promise Not To Whine And Paw At Me Anymore I Promise I Will Get You A Pirate Makeover, Complete With Man-Liner, Dreadlocks And A Winona Forever Tattoo. Yo-Ho!

A white skirt was not the best fashion choice

Not that this makes us bad parents. Or good parents. Just human parents whose decision-making skills have been severely damaged by the central Florida sun, making it seem perfectly reasonable to drop ninety dollars on a buffet meal so our children can cling to us in horror when a giant Goofy in a chef's hat gets way too close to our table in an attempt to high-five their maple-syrup covered hands. Call it an expensive social experiment. Or a form of self-inflicted torture. Or a life lesson to Jeff and me that we should take the kids to visit Nana and Pop-Pop next vacation; going on a treasure hunt for doubloons and old shopping cart wheels is suddenly very appealing.

Although I gotta admit, those chocolate Mickey bars sure are delicious. I think I too would burst into tears if I dropped mine on the sidewalk. Especially if it fell onto a worm and smothered him in vanilla goo. Which, now that I think about it, isn't really such a bad way to die.

And IIIIIII Will Always Love Yoooou-Tuuuube

2011-05-20T14:35:00.000-07:00

Caution: The following blog entry may result in you getting a particularly irritating Whitney Houston song stuck in your head for the next several hours, which may in turn cause you to seriously consider taking a power drill to your frontal lobe. I cannot be held liable for any carpet cleaning bills you may incur from such procedure.

As Elsa gets older, one thing I've noticed about her (besides her amazing ability to speak to dolphins at the same pitch and decibel level) is that she loves to sing.

Perhaps this is a girl thing. Rollie isn't much of a singer. He'll sing once in a while, sometimes in a tune I can even recognize....as long as it's Happy Birthday. But for the most part he prefers talking. And yelling. And making unintelligible noises and sticking out his tongue and just being obnoxious. Which, as we've all recently learned, is definitely a boy thing.

Elsa, on the other hand, has always enjoyed singing. Even more so since we recently attended a minor league baseball game. During the seventh inning stretch, a little girl went out on the field and sang a cute little warbly rendition of God Bless America. Elsa was enraptured. She talked about it the whole way home, and while I put her to bed, she asked me to sing it to her. Eight times in a row. And a 2 a.m. encore. And a 5:30 a.m. encore (during which I discovered that I sound like an 80-year-old smoker at 5:30 a.m. She didn't ask for me to sing again after that performance.).

Now that she can talk, almost carry a tune, and hold a microphone (which could be anything from a disembodied Barbie leg to an actual microphone back from our pre-child karaoke party days), Elsa spends a lot of time staggering around the house in various stages of undress, belting out the tunes. Kinda like how I imagine Liza Manelli probably spends much of her time.

I guess what this really means is that she is my daughter after all (and because she looks and acts nothing like me, I had my doubts for a while there). Back when I was a kid, one of my biggest fantasies was to sing the Star Spangled Banner at a baseball game. I practiced singing it whenever I thought no one could hear me...in our backyard, in the shower (on the rare occasions that I took one), in my bedroom, in the back corner of the school bus. Anyone sitting close-by likely thought I was just extra patriotic...and a little strange. And that my socks didn't match. And that I smelled a little funny.

ANYWAY, Elsa's newest obsession is YouTube. She will sit on the floor with Jeff's girlfriend--I mean iPad--and search for clips of this little British girl named Connie singing I Will Always Love You. Yeah...that song from The Bodyguard. Yeah. Whitney Houston. Not sure how I feel about my daughter being an indirect Whitney Houston fan, but she's also a big fan of drinking her own bathwater, so I'm hoping both things are symptoms of being two years old and not knowing any better. At least let's hope so with the Whitney Houston thing.

Elsa's YouTube obsession sometimes leads her to find clips of other things that are actually more obnoxious than a precocious little ingénue and her six-year-old vibrato (I know...is there such a thing as a precocious ingénue? Or something more obnoxious than a six-year-old with a vibrato?). I leave the room while she's watching Connie, and when I come back she's found a clip featuring little kids singing and farting in the bathtub. Or a montage of babies doing things like sneezing, eating and other mind-boggling feats, set to music by James Brown or Chubby Checker. Eeeesh. I guess there's still time to mold her into a little person whose humor is just a tad higher-brow, but sometimes I feel like she should be more refined by now. Perhaps a trip to the opera is in order. Or at least some YouTube clips that don't revolve around bodily functions. I'll take The Bed Intruder at this point.

So Rollie is a runner, and Elsa is a singer. Wonder what the next one's secret talent will be. If my own family is any indicator, the youngest will be really good at skate-boarding, speaking in monotone, and bench-pressing his own body weight. And really bad at staying out of Texas jail cells. (Kidding, Ev! I will always love yooooouuu!)

It's Not You, It's Me

2011-05-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

You ever feel like some days you just weren't meant to get a single f-ing thing accomplished?

Yesterday was one of those days.

I swear, sometimes I can't tell if my children are being exceptionally naughty on a given day, or if I am just exceptionally irritable. Or if I'm exceptionally irritable because my children are being exceptionally naughty. And yes, that was a potential drinking game--every time I write exceptionally you're supposed to drink. Have one for me. Or ten.

Or it could be that I'm seven months pregnant and at that point in my pregnancy where I feel like there is not possible way I could get any bigger. Every time I eat I feel like a gastric bypass surgery patient who's seriously stretching her limits on food intake. Two bites of cereal make me feel like I've swallowed an inflated balloon. My stomach skin is stretched taut as a snare drum, my waddle is decidedly pronounced, and clothes I was certain would last me until this baby arrives are riding up over my belly button like I'm trying to revive the babydoll half-shirt craze of the mid-nineties (remember those gray CK One t-shirts? That's what all my t-shirts look like on me right now. I should just get some platform sneakers and a pair of overalls and try to recapture the glorious look of my college years. I've already got the freshman fifteen...and then some.).

This entry was actually not intended to focus on me and how disgusting I'm starting to look/feel/dress. This entry was intended to be a ten-paragraph rant about my children and how horrible they were yesterday. But you know what? As soon as Jeff came home and took them for a nice long evening jog in his initiative to get back in shape while my own figure languishes in the land of Never Fitting Into Those Skinny Jeans Again, I almost forgot exactly what my children did that made me wish it was acceptable in our species to cook and eat our own young.

Honestly though, the reason I feel like they were so horrible is that I actually had to hang out with them all day long. I think I much prefer days when I can sit and ignore them for an hour or two. Every time I tried to ignore them yesterday, to sit and write, fold laundry, or tug my t-shirt down over my stomach, chaos erupted somewhere in the house. Chaos in the form of Rollie doing something to make Elsa cry, and Elsa crying because she was a.) overtired, and b.) realized that she could get Rollie into a lot of trouble this way.

It's kind of sad to realize that a bad day for me is one where I'm fully cognizant of my children for fifteen hours straight. It was one of those days where I just didn't get a break. I felt like a guy whose needy, bipolar girlfriends were smothering him to the point where he just wanted to "cool off for a little while," but instead of allowing this to happen, the girlfriends started to go even crazier--they tore apart his couch, peed on his carpet, sat on his floor and threw around a bunch of puzzle pieces at each other and cried hysterically. Which is also why I wasn't sure if it was me or the kids that was making the day seem like one gigantic, time-out riddled Mobius Strip.

So yesterday, I just gave up. Yesterday I just did whatever the hell my children wanted. Yes, that meant going to two different parks, fishing in my backyard (where we caught three fish that I had to remove from their respective hooks--one of which was through the poor fish's eye, and yes it was as gross as it sounds...my dreams will be forever haunted by a slimy brim sporting an eye patch, his little fishlips forming the question Why? Why?), allowing them to ride their tricycles inside the house, and making a playground for them out of blankets, couch cushions and coffee tables. If it meant they weren't poking each other in the eyes or beating each other over the heads with plastic otoscopes, then I guess it was a win in everyone's column.

An exceptionally tiring win, but a win nonetheless.

Rollie Suave

2011-05-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

So Rollie has officially developed his first crush.

I'm not even sure how it started. They were at a park together, and from what I could tell, she stood around with her hands on her hips a lot, and ran away from him when he chased her. I suppose that's how all great love stories begin: Boy meets girl, girl puts her hands on her hips, boy becomes smitten and chases girl around the playground to steal girl's headband.

Ever since this love connection, Rollie has been begging me to invite her to every park, pool, and other public place we frequent. He asks about her age, schooling, and if she can run super fast. I guess it's all part of his screening process. Some guys look for brains, or big boobs or other facets of compatability. Rollie looks for speed. I hope this doesn't translate into him liking fast women later in life. Eeesh.

This little girl is two years older, a head taller, and doesn't seem to realize Rollie even exists. Perhaps this also lends to her mystique, her allure, her intoxicating appeal. That and the fact that she can ride a bike without training wheels. I mean, who can resist such talent?

The last time they were at a park together, A____ sat and dug in the sand with a few other kids while Rollie hid inside a playhouse and watched her through a little flowershaped peephole like a miniature Aqualung. He occasionally chucked a plastic shovel or other cheap toy in her direction, then ducked back inside the playhouse to gauge her reaction. She gave him no such satisfaction, but ignored his advances and kept digging to China. Playing hard to get, I suppose.

And so the dance went on. Rollie continued his attempts to appear smooth, charming and otherwise irresistible to A_____, and A______ remained coy, only glancing in the direction of the playhouse when an object Rollie had thrown landed too close for her liking. I could only imagine how things will play out in a few years, when Rollie is in school with even more super-fast girls to chose from. He'll be sent to the principal's office daily for throwing things; girls will be lined up at the nurse's office with black eyes and bloody lips, my son forever burned in their consciousness as that weirdo kid who used to throw everything at them that wasn't nailed down.

Yesterday, Rollie must have come to the conclusion that impressing girls is a mystery he must start solving now, since it's a nut he'll be trying to crack for the rest of his life. He wandered into the kitchen where I was cleaning an exploded soda can from inside the freezer (so that's what that huge popping sound was a while ago) and asked:

Momma, how do girls get boys' attention?

Me: How do girls get boys' attention? Um...what do you mean, Bud?

Rollie (looking both uncertain and hopeful that I will be able to give him any pointers. What would I know, anyway? I'm a knocked up old lady who hasn't been on the market in almost 15 years. If I tried to flirt now I'd be about as successful as Rodney Dangerfield trying to pick up chicks at Lilith Fair ): I mean...what do girls do to get boys' attention?

Me: You mean what can a boy do to get a girl's attention?

Rollie: Yeah.

Me: You mean what can you do to get A_____'s attention?

Rollie: Yeah.

Me (Holy crap, seriously? We're already having this conversation? But, I can still calculate your age in months! You still have unused pull-ups sitting in your closet! You still drink from a sippy cup!): Oh Rollie....Wow....Well I guess you could start by tapping her on the shoulder.

Rollie: Why?

Me: Well, because touching someone is a good way to get their attention. (Hmmm...perhaps not the best piece of advice I should give.)

Rollie: What if they're too far away for me to touch them?

Me: You mean like you the other day?

Rollie: Yeah.

Me: Rol, you can't just stand there and throw things at people. Then they won't want to be around you.

Rollie: Oh.

Me: You've got to just go up to them and start talking.

Rollie: Oh.

Me: Or, you know what you could do is tell some jokes. Girls like boys who are funny. At least, I do.

Rollie: But I don't know any jokes.

Me: Sure you do. You know all those knock-knock jokes.

Suddenly Rollie looks up like he's seen a break in the ominous storm-clouds of girl-dom, and the sun of possibility is streaming down upon him.

Rollie: Knock-knock!

Me: Who's there?

Rollie: ..... Mickey Mouse's underwear!

Me: Um...that might not be the best one you've got, Rol. A_____ is probably more sophisticated than that.

Rollie: ....Knock-knock!

Me: Who's there?

Rollie: ....Banana.

Me: Okay, Rollie, you probably shouldn't lead off with that one, either. Come on, you know some better ones.

Rollie: ....Knock-knock!

Me: Who's there?

Rollie: ....Interrupting cow.

Me: Interrupting cow--

Rollie: MOOOO!

Me: Ah-ha! See? There you go. That's a good one. That'll get her attention.

Rollie: Why?

Me: Because it's actually funny.

Rollie: Why is it funny?

Me: Because it's like, this rude cow is at the door, cutting you off. It's unexpected. Sometimes the unexpected is hilarious.

Rollie: ....Knock-knock.

Me: Who's there?

Rollie: Mickey Mouse's bottom!

Me: See, that one's just not funny. You need to stay away from ones like that.

Rollie: But it was unexpected.

Me: Yes...I guess it was.....

An air of authority also impresses the ladies

And so it came to pass that I gave my four-year-old son his first lesson in how to impress the opposite sex. When I recounted this to Jeff last night, he told me I should have advised Rollie to just be himself. Yes, perhaps. But then again, being himself could be disastrous. He is a little boy, after all. Pretending to be a skunk and spray his scent on her probably won't win him any points.

Preparation Anxiety

2011-05-04T11:43:00.000-07:00

It's funny how now that I'm waddling around like an extremely tall and underdressed penguin, I've been getting a lot of those obligatory questions people are compelled to ask any expectant mother:

How are you feeling? Large. Slow. Like I can't possibly get any bigger, even though I have 12 weeks to go. I am also currently mourning the loss of my belly button. We had such a history together.

Do you know what you're having? A baby. Possibly male. Definitely enjoys sitting on my bladder in the middle of the night.

Do you have any names picked out? Yes. Unfortunately Jeff and I are failing to reach an agreement on any of them. This is the problem with being married to a man who went to high school with twenty thousand other people: every name I come up with has a negative association for him. Apparently there was a high concentration of a-holes at Lincoln High.

Do the kids know they're about to have a baby brother/sister? I think so. Elsa asks me every day if she can push the baby in the swing, so I'm pretty sure those first couple months will be fraught with me yelling at Elsa to for the love of God stop pushing the baby swing, are you trying to scramble his brain? And Rollie is finally starting to ask some interesting questions. "Is the baby crawling around in your tummy?" "How is the baby going to come out?" "What will the baby eat?" (which led to some hilarious follow-up questions I will have to blog about soon), and "Can we name the baby Foppy? How about Gloppy? How about Uniqua?"

One of the more thought-provoking questions I've gotten lately has been, Are you ready for three?

This one actually gives me pause. I was most recently asked this at a playdate. I sat there, arms resting on my wiggling belly, watching other people's kids toddle around, eat food from the floor and take things from each other like chubby, pillaging pirates, and thought, Holy crap, am I ready for three?

And then I asked myself, is anyone ever really ready for kids? It's like asking someone if she's ready to have her nipples in a vice, have an eternally messy car and get an average of nine seconds of sleep a night. So when you put it that way, the answer for me is a resounding Hell To The No.

So how does one prepare herself for having three kids? I mean, I'm used to the chaos, the cushionless couches and the toy-strewn floor. I'm expecting errands that take an average person about ten minutes to take me roughly three days, possibly with someone puking in the car en route. I've already accepted the fact that I'm going to have to carry this child around for the first eight months; leaving it anywhere within reach of my children will be like leaving a dead antelope out for a pack of hungry hyenas. And, I'm fully anticipating being visited by not one, not two, but three different little people each night, like my own personal ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas If You Don't Rock Me Back To Sleep Tonight I Will Haunt Your Dreams For All Eternity.

I am having a hard time picturing how much different three kids will be. I know I had a taste of it a few months ago, but I have the feeling babysitting someone else's well-behaved three-year-old is nothing compared to actually being a mother of three. Jeff and I will officially be out-numbered. We will no longer fit neatly in a row of airplane seats, amusement park rides, restaurant booths...we will no longer have enough bedrooms in our house, room in the bathtub or beer in the fridge. We will, in essence, be in biiiiig trouble.

Topless and sporting a black eye only make them more endearing

Sigh. I'm such a sucker.

But you know what? They sure are cute. Especially when they're unconscious. And three sleeping kids is three times as rewarding. So I suppose I'm as ready as I can get.

I'm definitely ready to get my drink on again.

Snakes And Snails. And Snookie.

2011-04-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

I've come up with something amazing. It's just a theory, really, but I truly believe that this will turn the scientific, anthropologic, mathematic and cosmetic worlds upside-down. I don't think the world has seen anything this earth-shattering since the revelation that George Michael is gay.

You ready? Here goes....

Four-year-old boys can be really obnoxious.

I know, right? Will your world ever be the same after reading those eight words? My apologies if it's hard for you to go on with life as usual. Unless you're my neighbor and life as usual for you means leaving garbage on your front porch and letting your miniature doberman use my backyard as a toilet. In which case I'm glad I shattered this life as usual thing for you.

Why I ever thought that four was the magic age when all the annoying bullsh*t kids dish out would cease is beyond me. Maybe I heard it somewhere, from some all-knowing, all-seeing Reiki Master of a mom, but in all likelihood, this mom had only girls.

I guess I can see how four-year-olds in general are good for some things. They are strong enough to open the fridge on their own, thus able to help themselves to drinks and food (and bring me a beer while they're at it). They are usually potty-trained (unless it's night time. Or we're at the pool. Or the beach. Or a birthday party and they are too wrapped up in playing hide and seek to stop for two seconds and find a bathroom, and end up going in their pants, then claiming they placed last in a water-balloon fight). And they are relatively self-sufficient at dressing themselves (although their outfits typically consist of faded, way too-small t-shirts paired with elastic-waisted way-too-small gym shorts, an ensemble they believe will give them the extraordinary power to run super fast but in actuality makes them look like they are about to participate in a pickup volleyball game circa 1987).

But four-year-olds are also kind of at a developmental crossroads. They seem like they should be too old for tantrums, yet still they throw them, sometimes with as much gusto as an overtired two-year-old whose candy you just snatched. They seem like they should have the ability to be rational, yet when you stop them from trying to balance an 8x10 picture frame on their head while they stand in the middle of your tile kitchen floor, they look at you like you've sprouted an extra nose. You tell them to come to you, and sometimes they dart in the other direction, only now they're too spry for you to catch them (or your too pregnant to give chase, in which case you have to lay a snare trap, bait it with Thin Mints and say in a loud voice that you swear you just saw an anaconda slither past. Works every time.).

Four-year-old boys in particular have a highly developed penchant for the obnoxious. They essentially think they are hot sh*t, and because they can dress themselves and buckle their own seat belts, they also have full liberty to tell me my bottom is big, they are stronger than I am, and that they bet I can't count all the way to 80 million (and because I refuse to accept that challenge, they automatically assume I can't and tease me all the way to the grocery store about it. And if you're thinking, well, that's not too obnoxious, try listening to a kid sing "Haaa-haaaa, you can't count that hiiiiiigh," over and over for five full minutes. Those five minutes will feel like you've had to sit through Gilbert Godfry reading an instructional manual on crocheting).

They also think they can outsmart everyone on the planet. Rollie's new thing is taking candy, gum and other sundries I usually dole out on a restricted basis and hiding behind the couch to consume it. I've found all kinds of wrappers, crumbs, empty juice pouches and other evidence of his surreptitious gluttony back there, littering the carpet like it's a tiny stretch of the Jersey shore (minus the hypodermic needles...and Snookie). I've heard him rifling around in my purse, or the sound of him opening the fridge and then the pitter patter of his feet as he sprints to his hiding spot. I think he's mistaken my exhaustion for stupidity; because I don't always stop him must mean that I have no idea what's he's up to. Which makes him try to land bigger fish the next time. I've caught him lugging entire bottles of maple syrup and economy size bags of M&M's back there. Not sure what he was planning on doing with that combination--perhaps his version of tarring and feathering Elsa?

The only thing I'm concerned with at this point is that Rollie is slowly transforming into a jerk. I'm not sure how much of the teasing, the hiding, the darting out of reach is just a phase that all little boys go through, and that he will eventually revert to the semi-sweet morsel of a child he was a year ago. Or is this more of his personality coming to fruition, a sneak peek at what I have to look forward to (more of the same, only on a grander scale--one day I'll discover him behind the couch with a few girls, a keg of beer, a bouncer and a mechanical bull. Yee-haw.).

Wait...he's whaaaaat?

I guess for now I've just got to have faith that my son will turn out to be the delightful people both his father and I became in spite of our own childhood transgressions. I gotta have faith faith faith....I gotta have faith-a faith-a faith-AH!

Don't Quit Your Day Job

2011-04-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Back in high school, one of my dreams was to become a stand-up comic.

I would sit in class and watch my fellow schoolmates and teachers and take mental notes of bits I would deliver to an adoring crowd. I pictured myself in a bolo tie and shoulder pads, clutching a microphone as I paced the stage and occasionally paused for a sip of water in between jokes. I watched stand-ups on TV, stayed up on Saturday nights for Late Night At The Apollo, rented videos featuring Dennis Wolfburg, Paula Poundstone, Dennis Miller, practiced my impressions on my friends. I became enamored with a person's ability to have an audience rolling the aisles, and decided that one day I too would be up there, in the spotlight, shrouded by a fog of cigarette smoke and the drunken haze of onlookers, delivering punchline after punchline, the mother of immaculate timing and funky suspenders.

And then, of course, I realized that my stage presence peaked in sixth grade, and I am now more terrified of speaking in front of an audience than I am of being eaten by a shark (my previous Number One Fear). Which is probably why I'm a writer.

If I ever were to perform a stand-up routine now, however, I'm pretty sure my jokes would be all about having kids. In fact, if you'll indulge me for a few minutes, I think I'll practice a few lines on my dear readers. (And my apologies if this sounds like a Seinfeld routine; I'm on my second cup of half-caff, the kids are pinching each other instead of eating the banana and M&M pancakes I just made them, and the dog keeps scratching to come inside but his paws are covered with wet grass and I just don't feel like getting a towel and wiping them off right now....)

So what's the deal with you kids eating off the floor? What, does your food taste that much better once it's got some bacteria, crumbs and dog-hair stuck to it? Was it missing that extra kick of Play-Doh flecks? Maybe I should stir some dust bunnies into the sauce next time and save you the trouble of flinging it onto the ground, clamoring down from your booster seat and eating it from the tile.

And what is it with you wanting to watch the same movie ten times in a row? Is your short-term memory really that crappy? Don't you remember the story-arc, climax and conflict-resolution you literally just saw three hours ago? Do you really like seeing Bambi's mother getting popped off by a heartless hunter over and over? Or hearing Mater's catch phrases ad nauseum? Because I sure don't.

What is so funny about interjecting the word "Poopy" into every freaking conversation? Seriously, is it the sound of the word itself that tickles you so, or do you sneak such language into discussions about the weather and your day at school just to see if I'm paying attention? I know you've only been on the planet a few short years, and you have much to learn about the art of subtle comedy, but give me a break here. If I don't laugh the first time you say it, I sure as hell am not laughing the ninety-seventh time you do. Pick a new word to overuse. Preferably one that doesn't identify bodily orifices or functions.

Who in God's name came up with the phrase "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo?" and has someone shot them yet? Is this the best taunt you can come up with, kid? Whatever happened to insulting someone's mom? Or his haircut. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo? Are you kidding me? Come back and tease me when you've learned the fine art of the intelligent jest. Or at least when you can properly identify my current source of insecurity and exploit it with some aplomb (which right now would be my giant ass).

And what's the deal with all the splashing? The tub, the pool, puddles, the milk in your bowl of Lucky Charms....Why must you send droplets of every liquid you encounter flying across the room? Do you like having dirty, sopping wet shoes? Is the appeal of stepping in an oily, mucky puddle with cigarette butts floating in it so great that you can't hear my threats of annihilation if you even think about sticking your pinky toe in the water? Forget Disney World this year--next time you want to go on vacation I think I'll just bring you to the grocery store parking lot after a heavy rain. Eh? Who's with me?

(...crickets...)

....Okay, so maybe it's a good thing I never invested in those bolo ties.

The Belly Dance

2011-04-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

You know what? My giant belly is really starting to come in handy.

It makes a great catcher for stains that would have normally ended up on my lap. It's a lovely conversation piece (now that people aren't afraid to acknowledge it as a pregnancy and not just an unfortunate over-indulgence of ice cream sundaes). It evokes smiles, nods, and--if I'm shlepping my children through a steamy parking lot and they're whining in harmony--looks of sympathy.

Most of all though, it gets me out of a lot of things I would normally have no excuse for. Now when I botch my parking job in the garage, leaving Jeff enough room to exit his car only if he possess the superhero ability to turn himself into a vapor, I just blame it on my belly. As in, I can't possible squeeze out of my own car if the door is too close to the wall. Sorry, honey.

Or like yesterday, when I brought the kids to the infamous Burger King play place so I could kill some time before Rollie's soccer practice and so they could pick up some cool diseases (hey, with flu season over, I really miss my pediatrician).

I let them loose on the series of germ-infested tunnels while I sat, ate a chicken sandwich and rued the heartburn that loomed in my future.

Rollie's voice echoed down the big twisty slide: Momma, come up here!

Me: Oh, sorry Rol Rol...I don't think I can this time.
Rollie: Why not?
Me: Well, my tummy's just a liiitle too big to fit through those tunnels.
Rollie: Please, Momma?
Me: Rollie, have you seen my tummy lately?
Rollie: Just come up one time?
Elsa: Come up here, Momma!
Me: You guys are doing great without me. You don't need me up there.
I heard banging around, and the entire structure shook as my children scurried around like ROUS's searching for some cheese.
Rollie: But it's super fun, Momma!
Me: I bet it is.
Rollie: I'll help you up!
Me: Wouldn't that be a sight? You'd probably need a lot of butter to get me through there.
Rollie: Why would I need a lot of butter?
Me: To squeeze me through.
Rollie: ...We could use some ketchup!
Me: Hmmm...
Elsa: Can't catch meeeee!
Me: I'm sure I caaaan't.

Back in the day, when I was relatively svelte and agile, I climbed around in those tunnels and tubes before. I've seen the shed skin cells, the grime, the skeletons of other parents who disappeared inside the labyrinth to retrieve their children long ago and never made it back out. I've crawled around on knees that groaned in protest and emerged feeling the overwhelming urge to take a five-day shower. I consider that one of the biggest displays of love for my children I've ever known. In fact, this should be the standard by which all love is measured. Forget songs about hoofing it for hundreds of miles, being faithful or even dying for someone. If you will spend ten minutes crawling around inside a Burger King play place for your love, you are one devoted soul-mate.

But now that I'm large enough to have my own gravitational pull, I can avoid such displays of affection.

I've also managed to worm my way out of other things. I can't climb to altitudes exceeding 5' 5" (meaning I can't even sport three-inch heels...not that I ever did....). Putting things away in the attic is off-limits, as is washing the roof of my car (which requires a step ladder and a Shawalla). I have begun relying on my children to bend down and pick things up that I drop. Or that they drop. Or that the dog refuses to eat off of the floor. I can't clean with certain cleaners, I can't paint, I can't clean out litter boxes, I can't handle Jeff's supply of Viagra (kidding! He take Cialis).

And I've perfected the art of kicking things into place. Like when I'm straightening the house, and I'm herding toys into my children's respective rooms, I now dribble them down the hallway like and through the open bedroom doors (and then remove my shirt and tear around the house shouting Gooooaaaaalllll!!!! Yes, being six months pregnant allows me to get away with all sorts of strange behavior...just ask my vacuum cleaner). This kicking toys technique is one I learned from my own mother, who used to send books, clothes and other personal items I'd left around the house skittering across my bedroom floor with one swift kick of her foot as she hurried down the hall. I would swear she was a soccer star back in high school, but I don't think they had soccer for girls back then. Plus she claims to have been the Bernardsville Pogo-Sticking Champion of '58, so I guess her time was spent jumping up and down, not kicking balls. Right, Dad?

So yeah, I'm definitely in the honeymoon phase of my pregnancy. I love it enough to crawl through a fast food play tunnel for it. Does anyone have any butter?

Bend It Like Rollie

2011-04-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

In our quest to shape Rollie into a professional soccer player (who will then go on to marry an ex-Spice Girl, move to LA and be named one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People), we enrolled him in our local Under 5 soccer league.

Let me preface this by saying that I am so not one of those parents. You know what I mean...the ones who get all worked up, think their kid isn't getting enough playing time, yell at coaches and refs, and ultimately punch other parents in the head out of pure frustration and lack of anger management skills. I don't project my own failed attempt at soccer onto my son. I don't live vicariously through my children's successes because I wasn't quite good enough to make the US woman's olympic soccer league. Or even get off the bench much on my JV soccer team.

That is, I wasn't one of those parents until I started watching Rollie play. Because now that I've spent approximately 45 minutes sweating on the sidelines of a tiny soccer field yelling like an over-caffinated cheerleader as a flock of children follow a rolling ball around a field like a school of clumsy fish, I can see how parents get themselves whipped up into a tizzy. I sure jumped up and down waaay more than a woman in my delicate condition should have been, and I'm usually about as excitable as Ben Stein at a monster truck rally. Good thing Rollie's not yet capable of being embarrassed by his parents.

Watching 3- and 4-year-olds play anything sport-like is hilarious. They look like they should be really good. They've got the uniform, the shin-guards, the cleats, the eye-black, the silly haircuts and the propensity to throw over-dramatic temper tantrums in the middle of the field.

But once the whistle blows and the ball starts rolling, it's total comedy. Kids running in the wrong direction, kids standing in the middle of the field crying, kids doing the pee-pee dance as they wait on the sidelines for their chance to chase the their team mates around and kick the ball into the next field. I kept waiting for someone to throw banana peels onto the grass and watch the kids slip around as they stumbled after each other to reach the ball. It would have added to the slapstick hilarity, and made for some great YouTube clips.

Rollie was with the first group of kids on the field, and as soon as the game started he took off with the ball...toward his own goal. For a few heart-stopping moments I was pretty sure he was going to score on himself, thus becoming the team pariah and letting down the entire town who'd come to see the Monkey Sharks celebrate the first of many victories. But fortunately (or unfortunately), his aim is a little off. Just slightly. Either that, or there was some quixotic force field around the goals, making it impossible for the ball to go in even with a direct kick from five inches out.

One thing I will say about Rollie: he sure is fast. He was like Forest Gump out there. I mean, I've kinda known he's a fast little sucker--chasing him around the house to diaper him or wipe his nose has always required more effort that I've cared to admit. Now I can no longer catch him unless I'm at a full-on sprint in properly laced sneakers. It's like chasing down a cheetah. Who's about to wipe his peanut butter-encrusted face on the couch. At one point during the game, as Jeff and I watched our son dribble the ball toward the wrong goal, Jeff whispered, "Maybe he'll be really good at track."

I'd had such high hopes for Rollie when we first signed him up. Jeff literally had Rollie kicking a ball around the house before he could walk. We signed him up in January, bought all the gear, Jeff set up a net in the yard and practiced scoring and passing drills. We were the epitome of parents who really, really wanted to see their son excel at something athletic that wasn't Extreme Semi-Naked Couch Leaping.

Now we have adopted the mentality that you always hear about but figured it was the mantra of The Second Best: It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. And for me, it's how worn out the game makes you so that you'll go to bed early and sleep through the night for a change.

The Devil Wears Nada

2011-04-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

You know how about two months ago I was singing the praises of turning four? Of how great it was now that Rollie is four years old, he's so much easier to get along with and does eeeeverything I say now, and it's almost like having another adult (albeit one who enjoys potty humor just a little too much) in the house? I believe the word I actually used to describe Rollie as a four-year-old was...angel. Which I guess is sort of fitting. Lucifer himself was an angel at one point, right?

I don't know why I do this to myself. I brag about my kid being potty trained to someone, and two second later my kid pees in her undies right in front of us. I tell someone else how my kid is pretty outgoing, while my kid hides behind me and avoids eye-contact like a guilty defendant. I ask my kid to write his name in crayon so his granny can admire his penmanship, and instead he shoves the crayon up his nose and laughs like a stoner watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Kids can sense when you're asking them to perform like trained monkeys, and instead they act like the kind of monkeys you see at the zoo who throw sh*t at each other. So charming.

Anyway, now that Rollie has been four for a while, he's learning all kinds of things I suppose are necessary for him to establish a sense of self. Like that it's getting more and more difficult for me the physically force him to do things. Or that Mommy doesn't always know everything (which is why he's been using the oh-so-endearing phrase I Told You So. What is he, Rush Limbaugh?). Or that lately everything he touches becomes a gun. Kinda like if King Midas lived in South Central.

The biggest battle I currently wage with my son is--and for some reason I cannot for the life of me fathom why, and if anyone out there in Readerland can help me out with this one I will be forever grateful--washing his hands.

Washing his hands.

I simply do not get why this is so awful. Seriously. I suggest he wash his hands when we get home from school, the store, playing outside so that he has enough dirt under his fingernails for me to plant a garden there, and he immediately acts like I've just asked him to remove his own appendix with a pair of chopsticks. In a haunted cemetery. On Halloween night.

He's even started lying to me about what he has and has not touched in the bathroom, simply so he will not have to take the ten seconds required to soap up his hands and rinse (I realize he's supposed to wash them for longer than ten seconds...I think we'll be working our way up to that...kinda like being able to run for five minutes before you can do a marathon...or if you're like me, being able to chase your kid down the dog food aisle before you can chase your kid across the entire upper floor of the mall). Maybe he's worried that the world will keep on spinning without him, but if he did the math he'd realize that arguing with me about it wastes far more time and energy. Perhaps math won't be his strong suit. Wonder where he got that trait from.

Yesterday he disappeared for a few minutes and I just knew he was going to the bathroom. When he emerged, the following conversation ensued.

Me: Where'd you go, Rol-Rol?
Rollie: Um...just playing in Elsa's room.
Me: Oh yeah? Did you go potty, too?
Rollie: No, I didn't have to go.
Me (deciding to employ the old trick of making children squirm): Rollie, look at me.
He looks up with wide, innocent eyes.
Me: Rollie, I need you to tell me the truth so I can trust you.
He blinks.
Me: Rollie, did you use the potty?
Rolle: No.
Me (Dammit, what are you kid, a pathological liar?): Well then who left the toilet seat up?
Rollie: ...Maybe it was already like that.
Me: No, I know for a fact it wasn't already like that. (Another great thing about being a mom--I subconsciously notice little details like that when walking around the house. I also remember where I've last seen toys. Becoming a mom is like having a special chip implanted in our brain that allows us to scan rooms and remember exactly where toys are strewn so that the next time our children come whining to us that they can't find their action figure's tiny Storm Trooper helmet, we know that it is on the floor right beside a dirty sock, a paper from school and a wayward card from his Memory game.)
Rollie: Well, maybe Elsa did it.
Me: No, Elsa didn't do it.
Rollie: Ollie must have done it then.
Me: Come on, Rollie, Ollie doesn't know how to use the potty.
Rollie: We should teach him how.
Me: Wouldn't that be nice?
Rollie: Then he wouldn't have to go in the backyard.
Me: Stop changing the subject, you. We are talking about whether you went pee-pee or not.
Rollie: And you wouldn't have to scoop up poopy from the grass.
Me: Sigh.

After much back and forth and needling at his tenuous conscience, I finally managed to get a confession from him. Yes, he used the potty, and no, he didn't wash his hands. Or flush. Or close the lid. So it wasn't Ollie after all.

Which brought me to another dilemma: Do I punish Rollie for his dishonesty, or praise him for finally coming clean? If I punish him, will he tailor his methods so that soon he'll be able to avoid detection? If I praise him, will he figure that lying isn't really that big of a deal? What if he gets better at lying, or starts lying about bigger things? Is lying the gateway drug of the Land of Disobedience? Soon he'll be stealing money from my purse and beating up kids at school. He'll come home with a tattoo and refuse to cut his hair and I'll find Black Sabbath albums stashed beneath his mattress and comics wedged inside his school books.

Man, sometimes I miss the good ol' days, when my biggest struggle with him was trying to get him to keep his clothes on. Now I don't care if he's naked, as long as his hands are clean. Literally and figuratively. Especially literally.

Fraternity Hoes

2011-03-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

I am starting to panic.

It's spring time in Florida. The azaleas are in full bloom. The trees are cloaked in splendiforous green. Pollen is coating everything, including my car, my patio furniture, and the grimy pair of pink crocs that have been sitting on my back porch for two months.

All of this is fine and great, except for one thing. Two words. First word...sounds like...fraternity. Second word...sounds like...hoes.

Yeah. Maternity Clothes.

Is it just me, or are most maternity clothes hideous? Jumpers. Overalls. Billowy tops with ties and straps and designs in prints I wouldn't make curtains out of for a gaggle of VonTrapps. And WTF happened to the Motherhood store at the mall? One minute it was right there next to the plastic, germ-infested kids' play place, the next minute, gone. Did the play place scare tomorrow's crop of would-be mothers into sterilization? I mean, I can understand how that would happen...I myself feel my ovaries curling up like party favors whenever I pass it and hear the screams or see little kids clamoring, sneezing, or chewing on the brightly colored equipment. But where's a gal like me supposed to go for anything that doesn't ride up, fall down, expose my butt crack or other wise give strangers a sneak peek at waaay more skin than they wanna see. I am this close to buying a pair of gladiator sandals and a bunch of white sheets and trying to get the whole toga look back in fashion.

Yesterday I went into American Eagle, as if I can still squeeze my quickly expanding ass into a pair of skinny jeans. Whenever I walk into that store I sort of forget that I'm twice as old as their intended demo. I forget that I usually have at least one kid in tow, who is leaving a trail of goldfish behind him or her. I forget that I have already stumbled over that thin line between a girl who can still pull of a frayed-hem mini skirt and a pair of espadrills and a thirty-something mom who should start thinking seriously about wearing gloves in public, because those freckles on her hands could almost pass for liver spots.

Anyway, I was returning a shirt that looked like it would fit me until I got it home, tried it on and realized I looked like a shirk-wrapped bowling ball. As I stood at the counter, I casually mentioned to the cashier that they should start up a maternity line (as if she was the one who would personally oversee the design and manufacturing of such a line).

She just kinda looked at me, glanced at my children, who were busy hiding among the Low-Rise, Destroyed, Indigo Washed, Boot-Cut Ex-Boyfriend Jeans and tearing apart the boho jewelry, and said, "Yeah. There's an idea."

As in, Yeah, lady. Like we really want our fresh-faced college kids sporting the same looks as a bunch of minivan-driving, boo-boo-kissing soccer moms who use their Facebook status updates to keep each other apprised of their kids' potty-training progress.

I get it. I know there are more important things in my life than trying to look fashionable, especially when I'm starting to drip salsa directly onto my pregnant stomach instead of into my lap like I usually do. But another wonderful side-effect of being pregnant is having your priorities seriously out of whack.

For example, right now I also care more about vacuuming my house on a daily basis than I care about pretty much anything else on the planet. It's like an addiction. An affair I'm having with my vacuum cleaner. I sit down with my kids fully intending to play whatever nonsensical game du jour Rollie has come up with, and all I can do is look at the carpet and see every sub-atomic particle of dirt, dust, hair, crumb, and grain of Ovaltine. My eye starts to twitch. I get shaky and sweaty and after about five minutes of pretending to be The Octopus Princess from Mars, whom Fire Marshal Rollie is going to save, I am having a full-blown anxiety attack, which will only be alleviated by pulling out my Dirt Devil, turning him on and letting him suck to his heart's content. Dow-Chicka-Wow (that's my porno music, although I'm thinking that's not quite right...when it's spelled out it looks more like the title of a Nick Jr. cartoon).

Luckily, I’ve managed to turn my vacuuming obsession into something of a game with my kids. They pretend the vacuum is an alligator coming to bite their feet, and they squeal and fall over each other in an attempt to get out of its path. Of course I’m sure eventually there will come a day when I accidentally suck up Elsa’s big toe in the rotating brush, but for now, the arrangement works; the carpet gets somewhat clean, and the kids think I’m spending some quality time engaging them in some imaginative play. Only the Dirt Devil knows my secret, and at night, when we're spooning in bed, he promises me he won't tell anyone.

So, if any of you see me sporting bedsheets and suspiciously large hickeys on my neck, please understand...I'm five months pregnant. Someday I'll start behaving like a normal human being again.

Counting Sheep. And Condoms.

2011-03-27T03:43:00.000-07:00

Ah, Daylight Savings Time.... How do I hate thee?

Not that I mind Elsa waking me up at 6:12 in the morning instead of 5:12. That part is definitely nice. I hear the little shuffling of toddler feet across my carpet, and I open one bleary eye to see the silhouette of my daughter before me, her hair in disarray, her hands clutching some object I know she didn't go to bed with...a crumpled bag of Goldfish...a package of wipes...a condom (true story...we'll see if we have time for that one). 6:12 is doable, it feels like I'm actually synced with the circadian rhythm of the rest of the country and not floating in some unpopulated time zone in the middle of the Atlantic.

But it's the new shift in bedtime that is throwing us all off. Whereas during the winter months when we're all in a sort of post-Christmas stupor, the kids would bundle off to bed at 7:30, leaving Jeff and me a few precious hours where we could laze around, reconnect, and pass out during an episode of Pawn Stars, now we spend those hours taking turns chasing our children (usually Elsa) back to bed so we can enjoy our new subscription to NetFlix without having to pause it every five seconds so our darling daughter doesn't catch a glimpse of something terrifying and refuse to fall asleep at all. (Side Note: Last night I actually fed that fear by telling her that if she didn't get her little heiney into her bed and stay there for the rest of the night, the MGM lion she glimpsed--who very well may be hiding beneath her bed--was waiting to snatch her by the ankles and drag her back into its lair if she got out one more time....What? Too harsh?)

Even on nights when we can actually get the kids to bed without standing up and sitting down like we're at a Catholic mass, we have yet to master the art of getting our kids to stay in bed. Not sure what the secret is, what sort of Ninja-Samuri-Warrior-Jedi-Sorcerer moves are required to ensure a child will stay in his or her own damn room all night...any advice on this would be helpful. Sometimes we end up playing our own version of Musical Beds, but this usually a last resort. I've woken up in the morning with just Elsa, just Rollie, both of them, them plus Jeff, just the dog, and once with an empty carton of ice cream, a handful of potato chip crumbs, a guilty conscious and raging heartburn.

Sometimes I wake up in one of my children's beds but have no memory of how I got there...kinda like that surprise party I went to in college when the guest of honor was 45 minutes late and the rest of us were hammered by the time she finally showed up...I think I brought my contact lenses home in shot glasses the next morning, and my eyeballs reeked of tequila for days afterwards. And on mornings when I actually wake up before either of the kids, I feel oddly compelled to leap out of bed and get as much done as possible before I become enslaved by their breakfast demands and general morning crabbiness (and then I feel compelled to go right back to sleep).

There are nights when Rollie comes into our room every hour, half awake and crying about something scary. Nights when I get only one visit from him but three visits from Elsa, who is usually wide awake and asking for cereal at three o'clock in the morning, chipper as a robin in the rain. Nights when I wake up to the feeling of something climbing towards me from the end of the bed, and for a split second I swear I have a cat that's about to cuddle up on my head and smother me with its long bushy tail. But then I realize it's Elsa, who has figured out how to hoist herself up on the footboard and try for a stealthy entrance, hoping to settle in between Jeff and me without us noticing our own personal version of The Bed Intruder.

Not that I'm complaining. Okay, so I am complaining. Sort of. I mean, I have come to accept the fact that I will no longer sleep like I did pre-kid. No way. I learned that from the first night in the hospital with Rollie, as I rocked him during an hour-long crying jag and wondered if it was possible for me to fall asleep standing up...kinda like a cow. But I guess if I'd realized that I wouldn't sleep for more than three consecutive hours ever again, I would have really enjoyed sleeping back when I could luxuriate in bed until eight in the morning. Back when going to bed at midnight meant I could still get seven hours of sleep. Back when I wouldn't bolt up in bed because I suddenly heard the crinkle of a condom wrapper in my ear and thought Jeff was dropping me a hint. (Jeff is far more subtle with his sexual overtures...I can't remember the last time he beat my over the head with a club and dragged me off by my ponytail...not since I got my hair cut at least.)

Oh yeah, the condom story....so about a month ago a girlfriend of mine left her travel mug at my house, and when I returned it to her I put a new condom inside it, just to be obnoxious. Unfortunately for me, I returned it to her at a very crowded zoo parking lot, so when I left the zoo with my kids that afternoon, the condom was waiting for me on my car door handle. Hoping not to attract any attention from strangers, my own kids, or a hungry MGM lion, I snatched the condom and stuffed it into my diaper bag. And like pretty much everything that gets hastily stuffed into the diaper bag, I forgot about it almost immediately.

That next morning around 4, I was awakened by Elsa, who had apparently raided the diaper bag on her way to make her ritualistic visit to my bedside. She handed me what I thought was a fruit snack wrapper, until I realized she'd discovered my stash of prophylactics and decided to bring me one. Poor thing--I didn't have the heart to tell her it's way too late.

PS-- Can you do me a favor? You know that button at the top of my blog for Circle of Moms Top 25 Funny Mommy Blogs? Can you just click, scroll down until you find my blog name, and click on the little thumbs up icon. I think I'm hovering somewhere around #27, and I'm hoping to crack that Top 25. That would be so cool. I promise to return the favor to you in the form of perpetual commiseration and entertainment from now until one of my children spills Juicy Juice on my laptop and fries the keyboard.
Thank you!

Thick As Thieves

2011-03-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Having more than one kid is wonderful. Your kid will always have a built-in friend. A life-long ally and confidant. Someone to stick up for them when the world is cruel. And, as with my own lovely children, someone to blame when something breaks or goes missing or the dog is sporting an interesting bald patch on the side of his butt where beautiful tufts of fur used to be.

Monday was the first day of routine normalcy after a long stint of visiting family elsewhere, family visiting here, or getting ready to go enjoy some pool, park or playdate merriment. We didn't have anywhere to go, anyone to see, or anyone to hide from behind a giant Easter candy display at Target because I let my kids dress themselves in outfits that made them look either a.) like they were trying out for a role in Oliver, or b.) had just run away from the circus.

But after a week of being charming for house guests and relatives alike, my children apparently decided their wells of charisma runneth dry. Which meant that I got to hang out with two mini-people who often make Christian Bale and Lindsey Lohan look like Mr. Rogers and Mary Poppins. (I would have also accepted Charlie Sheen in lieu of Christian Bale, but I think that horse is dead. Although I've gotta admit, I'm kinda feeling him on the whole '10,000-year-old brain and the boogers of a 7-year-old.' Only mine are the boogers of a 4-year-old. On my dining room wall.)

The problem with Rollie and Elsa is that when they decide to be crabby at the same time, their crabby manifests itself in completely opposite ways. When Rollie is crabby, he's whiny, demanding, and the bones in his body are temporarily replaced with rubber bands. Seriously, ask the kid to do something as simple as wash his hands, and instantly he collapses on the floor in a pool of fleshy jello and Buzz Lightyear jammies, an odd, high-pitched whine emanating from the mass.

When Elsa is crabby, she's just a sparky little shithead. She'll throw stuff, kick stuff, purposely gets in the way. She'll run off to play in the bathroom sink and come back soaking wet with Rollie's toothbrush hanging out of her ear. She'll just do the most obnoxious, random crap, and when I inevitably put her in Time Out, she'll scream and bang her head against the wall a few times, just to let me know how bad she thinks I suck.

And if she decides she's not sufficiently raising my hackles, she'll try her antics with Rollie. And that's when things at my house go to eleven on the Mommy's-About-To-Lose-Her-Freaking-Mind-O-Meter.

Monday morning as I attempted to convert the kitchen from the aftermath of what looked like an Iron Chef competition where none of the contestants remembered his glasses, my children were in the TV room, taking in one of the many educational shows in Nick Jr.'s line-up. (At least, I think they're educational. That's what the disclaimer at the beginning tries to tell me. I'm starting to wonder though...with the amount of TV my children watch, they should be coming up with esoteric theories about the universe. Or at least theories behind why Mommy should have to clean up the scattered puzzle pieces if they're the ones who threw them all over the place in an apparent attempt to recreate the confetti scene from Footloose.)

All was calm for about 5 minutes. And then:

Rollie: Elsa...I can't see.
Elsa: Peek-a-boo, Rol Rol.
Rollie: I don't want to play peek-a-boo with you.
Elsa: Peek-a-boo.
Rollie: Elsa, you're in the way!
Me: You guys....Be nice. (I know...nice try. Trying to curb a potentially explosive situation with the suggestion that my grumpy children "be nice" is like trying to talk a suicidal bridge-jumper down with the promise of taking him to a romantic comedy co-starring J-Lo and that robot from Short Circuit.)
Elsa: Peek! A! BOOOOO!
Rollie: Go away, Elsa! I don't like you right now.
Elsa: Knock knock, Rol Rol.
Rollie: No, I don't want to hear your joke. Go away!
Elsa: Knock knock!
Me: Rollie, just say Who's there so she'll leave you alone.
Rollie: ...Who's there?
Elsa: Mickey Mouse's underwear!
Rollie: Go away, Elsa. Go on the blue chair. (The blue chair is the equivalent to exile on a deserted island with nothing to do but unzip the matching throw pillows and pull out the polyester stuffing, which is what Elsa proceeded to do once she'd hoisted herself up.)
Rollie: Mo-mmaaaa...Elsa's doing something.
Me: What's she doing, Rol?
Rollie: ....
Me: Rollie, what's she doing?
Elsa: Ta-dah!

And since from previous experience I've learned that when a child says Ta-Dah, this is not to reveal some amazing and wonderful trick she's performed to the surprise and delight of an adoring crowd, I abandoned my attempts to revive my kitchen and went to investigate.

Me: Elsa, put that stuffing right back in the pillow.
Elsa: Ta-dah! (She pulls out another handful and throws it on the floor.)
Me: Elsa, I'm serious. Get down and pick that up. You are ruining my pillows.
Elsa (batting her blue eyes at me): Um...no thank-you, Momma.
Me: Um, yes, thank-you. Please do it now or you're going in Time Out.
Elsa: No way, Jose. (Why do I feel like this phrase is somehow politically incorrect?)
Rollie (eyes glued to the TV screen): Put her in Time Out, Momma.
Me: Rollie, let me handle this, please.
Elsa: Ta-dah! (Stuffing goes flying)
Me: That's it. (I stride over to the blue chair and snatch up my insolent daughter, who now realizes I mean business and is trying to roll out of my reach). You are in time out.

I stick her on the floor in the designated spot and set the microwave timer. And try to ignore the screaming and banging, even though it's penetrating my brain like I'm hungover and have awakened next to a jackhammer testing facility.

Let's fast-forward to lunch, just because trying to chronicle every nuance of bad behavior my children displayed before noon will turn this blog into the War and Peace of posts. So I set out their typical fare of turkey, cheese, grapes and crackers (because if I don't represent all four food groups I will feel like I somehow disappointed my sixth grade health teacher...and that he might come hunt me down, his zippy track pants swish-swishing all the way), and went off to do something productive...quite possibly mark on my calendar just how many days I have left until I can finally drink a beer. (123. But who's counting?)

I reenter the kitchen to find every blessed grape I put before my children on the floor. And both children perched in their chairs like devilish little gargoyles.

Me: You guys! Why are there grapes all over the floor? (Uh...gravity, Momma....hellooooo?)
Rollie: Elsa did it.
Me: Um, I don't think so, Rollie. Both of your grapes are everywhere.
Elsa: Rol Rol did it!
Me: You both did it, and you both need to get on the floor right now and pick every last one of them up.
They both giggle, like I've just suggested they moon the neighbors across the lake. Again.
Me: Do it now guys, or you're both going in Time Out. Here. I hand them a colander. Put all the grapes in this, please.
Like an idiot, I leave the room again, and after about 30 seconds I hear more giggling.
Me: What's going on in there?
Rollie and Elsa: ......
Me: You guys? I give up trying to get anything done and return to the kitchen, where my children are on the floor beneath the table, squishing the grapes up and putting the crushed carcasses into the colander.
Me: Okay, this is not at all what I asked you to do. Why are you squishing those grapes??? As if I'm going to get a civilized answer, like, "Momma, we are seriously contemplating starting up our own winery, and we wanted to see if this year's crop of Chilean grapes had the proper characteristics to produce a full-bodied, mature carafe of wine."
Rollie: Because it's fun.
Me: Well, here's a paper towel--I want you to wipe up all that yucky juice from your grapes, finish cleaning up, and then you're both going in Time Out.
They do what they're told, even though it's becoming clearer to me that Time Out is about as effective a punishment as making them eat a handful of M&M's dipped in marshmallow fluff.

As promised, I put them in time out together, ignoring them giggle and make faces at each other as I try to finish whatever the hell it was I was doing twenty interruptions ago. Although I have to admit, it is kind of funny, them being so f-ing mischievous. They feed off each other, and seem to have a great time seeing how much they can get away with before Mommy goes Joan Crawford on their dimpled little asses. They remind me very much of my sister Carrie and me, and all the sneaky crap we used to pull--although now that I think about it, nothing we did seemed to really faze our mother. She'd seen enough by the time kids 4 and 5 rolled around that if we elicited an over-tired sigh or banishment to the backyard, we must have really done some serious sinning. Needless to say, Carrie and I found ourselves in the backyard a lot. Even in knee-deep snow with negative 12-degree windchill.

Uh-oh--I hear the Wrap it Up music coming on, so I'll cut the rest short. Even though throughout the rest of the afternoon, my children managed to:

a.) break one of our kitchen chairs
b.) pee on the floor (where my dog came this close to licking it up before I freaked out and put him outside, even though it would have saved me the trouble of cleaning it up myself)
c.) drop a 20-pound speaker component on his big toe and send me into heart-attack mode where I thought there was another ER trip in my immediate future

122 days and counting

d.) get into the Ovaltine. Again.

Okay, I think that's it.... How many days did I say were left before my next beer?

Treasure I-S-L-A-N-D

2011-03-18T03:19:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a three-day visit to my parents' 'Winter Home' in beautiful, bustling, only slightly overrun by buffets, dollar stores and decidedly creepy looking out-buildings Wildwood, FL.

Rollie and Elsa LOVE visiting their Nana and Pop-pop. They look forward to going for weeks, and when the joyous day finally arrives, they clamor excitedly into the car, swing their legs in anticipation, and don't even start whining for a full ten minutes into the trip. Their excitement stems from the fact that Nana and Pop-pop will laugh at antics that make my eyes roll so often my children think the irises aren't blue but in fact a slightly pinkish shade of white. Nana and Pop-pop find the entertaining hilarity in Elsa's Ovaltine escapades, or Rollie's incessant line of 'what-if's', or my own exasperated responses to each child's bid for attention. Nana and Pop-pop have already been there, done that, their own energies sapped long ago. Now my arrival is a sort of Punch and Judy show for their enjoyment...kind of like when spectators watched gladiators ward of lions and tigers. No doubt it's pretty amusing to see their youngest daughter barefoot and pregnant and running herself ragged to keep her own daughter from testing the tensile strength of Nana's antique tea set. And when needed, my parents did a good job of interjecting their own brand of discipline...in the form of Pop-pop threatening to remove his baseball cap and expose his bald head to the transgressor. Worked every time.

One good thing about going to Nana and Pop-pop's house is that my children have pretty much free reign over the entire estate. The estate here being the glorified double-wide, the sunporch and the carport. My mother doesn't mind when Rollie loudly slams his cars into each other all over her nice wooden floor. My father thinks it's riot when Elsa pounds out a few chords on his piano with her sticky fingers, or plays Hide The Cell Phone, Hide The Remote, and his personal favorite, Hide Nana's Reading Glasses. And they both got an enormous kick out of the look on my face when I pulled into their driveway after a few hours of leaving the kids in their charge and found my children, clad in nothing but undies, a sopping wet diaper and their respective crocs, squealing and ducking from the spray of Nana's garden hose. At least I didn't have to give them a bath that night.

And of course, one of the visit's highlights was going on one of Nana's Famous Treasure Hunts. Although I'm beginning to think of them more as Nana's Famous Half-Hour Spent Digging Around In Dirt And Unearthing Everything Except What Nana Buried There A Mere Twenty Hours Ago. My mother, God bless her, kept leading a treasure hunt pep rally for Elsa and Rollie, asking them if they were excited to go on the treasure hunt, and telling them she'd apparently heard tell of treasure-discarding activity going on in the woods nearby, and that we needed to take a golf-cart ride there post-haste and see what loot awaited us.

Pop-pop, armed with the metal detector, swept the ground where Nana could have sworn Native Americans used to play with Matchbox cars and pennies from 1992, and the fun commenced. What began as a simple excursion to collect some of Pop-pop's sock-drawer change turned into a heated spelling bee between my parents:

Nana: Rollie, why don't you start digging here?
Rollie crouched on the ground and proceeded to paw at the ground with his bare hands like a fox digging up a dead muskrat.
Pop-pop: Move over Rol, let me check. Sound of metal detector beeping, indicating we were burning-hot-close to a surprise.
Nana: I'm pretty sure this is where I B-U-R-I-E-D it.
Pop-pop: This says there's something right H-E-R-E.
Nana: This should be where the A-I-R-P-L-A-N-E is.
Pop-pop: Keep digging, Rollie.
Me (noticing the amount of dirt amassing under my son's nails and getting really grossed out): Um, can't you guys use the shovel?
Nana (digging half-heartedly at the loose soil and dead leaves): Try again, Hon.
Pop-pop sweeps the ground again, metal detector beeping insistently now.
Me: There's definitely something there.
Nana: The shovel is hitting something.
Pop-pop leans down and pulls up what looks like a wheel off a dirty old roller skate.
Rollie: Wow....Is it treasure?
Me: Maybe if you're a Xanadu fan.
Pop-pop: Are you S-U-R-E this is it where you B-U-R-I-E-D it?
Nana: Yes. I even put S-T-I-C-K-S to M-A-R-K it.
Pop-pop: There are S-T-I-C-K-S all over the P-L-A-C-E.
Nana: Not like the ones I P-U-T there.
Pop-pop: You're like an amnesiac S-Q-U-I-R-R-E-L.
Nana: Oh, S-H-U-T-U-P.

In the end, Rollie and Elsa wound up with a wheel off an old shopping cart, a door stop, a plastic flower pot and 83 cents. Last I heard, Nana and Pop-pop are still outside digging. Although I'm thinking that the metal detector is picking up the hardware from Nana's new hip....

We're Going Streaking!

2011-03-11T03:49:00.000-08:00

Having a baby is a lot like being inducted into a secret club. Or a fraternity. The first six weeks of motherhood are the hazing period. Only instead of swallowing goldfish and streaking through the quad, you're getting sprayed in the face by tiny streams of pee and shlubbing around the house with your boobs hanging out (because lucky you, your nipples are chaffed and cracked and the best remedy is to let them air-dry after every feeding. Although I'm sure you won't hear your husband complaining.).

Recently a couple in our neighborhood had their first baby. Before they were pregnant, they used to zip around in their sporty cars, the husband sometimes on his motorcycle, go on date nights, and basically enjoy the life of any couple who has yet to join up with Phi Beta Pooh. Jeff and I would watch from our driveway and wave, and then mumble something like Lucky Bastards to each other as we dragged economy packs of diapers from the back of the car and hollered at one or both of the kids to do not under any circumstances pick up that dead worm from the driveway, put that mulch in your mouth, or pee next to the garage downspout--for God's sakes everyone can see you there, can't you at least try to be a little discreet??

But a few months ago while out walking I spotted the female half of the couple sporting what was obviously a round, pregnant belly. (And believe me, I am not one to ask a women if she is expecting unless the woman is like, going into active labor and begging me for drugs.). So I struck up a conversation with her, during which I congratulated her, asked he when she was due, if she knew what she was having, and told her how impressed I was that she'd lived across the street from me for two years, seen the antics of my children and still decided she wanted one.

Then she said to me, "I'll probably be running over to you for advice once I have this baby."

"Really?" I asked, truly flattered that I must look like I actually know what I'm doing. Which I couldn't imagine was the case. I mean, doesn't she hear me shouting at my children pretty much every day, especially when the weather is nice and my windows are open? Do I really look like I have it together when I'm chasing my children down to get them into the car, or when Rollie is happily watering the shrubbery with his own personal stock of Miracle Grow, or when I'm out washing my car with them and having to constantly keep them from either drowning each other in the hose spray, or soaking me so that I look like I'm desperately trying to attract attention from the landscaping company that never fails to drive by on my car-washing days? (Shut-up, Jeff...I do too wash my car more than once a year.)

Anyway, we spied the balloons tied to the mailbox, the various visitors pulling in and out of the driveway, and Jeff and I knew the day had arrived, and these poor suckers could kiss their date-having, motorcycle-riding days good-bye. A few days passed, and we didn't see any signs of life from the house. The shades remained drawn, the garage door shut, the lights eerily dimmed. It was like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory...nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out.

After Jeff reported that he finally saw the husband hustling into the house armed with bags of fast food, I decided to offer to make dinner for them one night. Because I was seriously so ravenous and so unable to do much of anything those first few weeks of Rollie's life but breastfeed my demanding little infant and shuffle around the house in a daze with my boobs out like a zombified Lady Godiva. If it weren't for other people bringing me food, I would have been left to nibble on battered moles left on my doorstep by neighborhood cats.

So last week I brought over one of the only edible dishes I can prepare, along with a six-pack of beer. The new mom invited me into a house that had yet to see the battle scars of a kid who is old enough to draw on carpeting or use wall space as his own personal booger despository. And when I asked her how things were going, she sighed the sigh of a woman who has recently discovered that it's actually possible to get negative sleep in one night.

"I think his nights and days are mixed up," she told me. "The doctor said the baby's using me as a human pacifier. He eats every two hours, even at night."

Man I felt bad for her. Because that is exactly what I went through four years ago. How long ago it seems when I was the one without make-up, a shower, a scrap of self-confidence that I was any good at this whole 'mommy' thing....Actually that pretty much describes me yesterday.

All I could really do was shove food and beer at her and assure her that soon she would learn to function on nothing but dry cereal, Diet Coke and three hours of sleep. Because the only reason it gets better is that you just get used to it. You make it through the initiation, you make it through the bleary-eyed crying jags, the desperate attempts to get your baby to take a damn pacifier or locate an appropriate spot to nurse him before he explodes in frustrated anger that your boob isn't in his little pie-hole like Right This Second. You get used to doing more laundry than a prison inmate, and hearing Nick Jr. shows singing away in the background, and regretting every bad thing you ever did to your parents because you are now a strong believer in the karmic synergy of the universe (which means I am in for an interesting round of adolescent bullshit from a certain female child of mine).

And sometimes you love it all so much that you decide to do it again. And again. And, so help you God, again. That's when you move from a regular member of Phi Beta Pooh to the high priestess of the Fraternal Order Of People Who No Longer Go On Vacations To Places That Don't Have Grown Men Dressed As Cartoon Characters. They're an elite bunch. I'm still trying to figure out the secret knock. It sounds suspiciously like wine being uncorked.

Uh-Oh-valtine

2011-03-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

A month or two ago I started an entry having to do with lessons I've learned since being a mother of two. I think I only got through the first lesson before getting distracted by God knows what, but I'm sure it had to do with me discovering Elsa on top of Rollie's dresser, the shattered remains of his piggy bank on the floor, or Rollie using my laptop's disc drive as a new place to shove his quarters.

Either way, this morning I learned another valuable lesson I'd like to pass along to all my dear readers.

Lesson Two:

If you're child enters a room and immediately says, "We're sorry, Momma," he is guilty of some atrocious crime. And his accomplice is just as guilty as he is, if not more so.

I set my children up with every conceivable luxury they could possibly want while I take my showers: Their favorite show (right now it's Bubble Guppies, which has so many gross incongruencies--underwater campfires, undersea airports, fish that can play the mandolin and sing in Spanish accents--I don't even know where to begin), cups of chocolate milk, a nice comfy couch. And this morning, since we'd just returned from a long walk around the neighborhood, I assumed they were fatigued enough to stay out of mischief while I was out of eye-sight and ear-shot for eight minutes.

Side Note: You'd think I would know by now that one can never to assume anything when it comes to children. They haven't ingested anything but bathwater and boogers in three days, but one can't assume they're hungry. They went to bed at 10, woke up at 4, and had fifteen nightmares in between last night, but one can't assume they'll actually take a nap today. Their favorite princess nightgown is buried beneath ten pounds of dirty, stinky laundry, but one can't assume they won't dig it out from the pile, put it on, and make it into the car, only to be discovered because the scent of sweat and bacon is heavy in the air.

The shower is a dangerous place to be trapped. The hot steam, the flowery soap, the fantastic water pressure can all lull a mother into thinking that since she can't hear anything but her own thoughts for a change, then everything beyond her foggy refuge must be copacetic. (My question is, if someone is aware of her own blissful ignorance, is she still in fact, blissfully ignorant? Or is she just a mom who would like to get in a decent shower for once without one of her children coming in and asking her where her penis is?)

I got out, wrapped myself in a towel, and then Rollie came into the bathroom.

Rollie: We're sorry, Momma.

Me: Uh-oh. What are you sorry about?

Rollie: We spilled our chocolate milk all over the place.

Me (already picturing chocolate milk sprayed across my beige walls like someone had stabbed the Nestles Quick Bunny to death): How did that happen?

Rollie: Elsa did it.

Me: What exactly did she do?

Rollie: I'll show you.

I followed my beloved son into the family room, where I saw all the makings of a crime scene: A stool had been pushed up to the counter, where I'd unwittingly left out the giant canister of Ovaltine. The canister was nowhere to be seen, but its contents had been dumped onto the coffee table and carpet. As I inspected further, I noticed little tire tracks through the brown powder, and the tread patters left on the couch cushions. And Rollie clutching a chocolate-covered toy truck in his sticky hand. I found Elsa standing in the corner of the room, the canister of Ovaltine sitting on Jeff's subwoofer, which was also now covered in chocolate dust, the surrounding carpet coated in the same Willy Wonka pixie dust.

I didn't scream. I didn't freak out. I didn't threaten time out or drawing and quartering or anything like that. I was just so...exasperated with the whole thing that I didn't trust myself with any response at all. If I opened my mouth, the most horrible of accusations would have poured forth. If I touched one of my children they may have instantly burst into flames as my anger somehow passed from my fingers to their chubby upper arms. All I could do was wonder how long it would be before every species of cockroach on the planet set up camp beneath our couch and waited until bedtime before descending upon my family room and gorging themselves on sweet, vitamin-fortified goodness.

Then I started cleaning (starting with Elsa, who even had it in her hair). This was my best comeback. Oh yeah kids? You gonna make a gigantic mess while mommy's in the shower? Well I'll show you! I'm gonna get out the vacuum and start cleaning up after you! Take that, you little shits!

In all fairness to them, I really should not have left the Ovaltine so visible and accessible while I was out of the room. I've already had to clean up after the results of my indiscretion twice (once I had to make Elsa stay sitting on the floor, the canister in front of her, while I Dust-busted her lap). I had been keeping it way up high on a pantry shelf, to where Elsa couldn't reach it even if she was standing on her tip-toes on a phone book on a kitchen chair. So really, I'm the idiot here.

Lesson learned: Dump Ovaltine all over the place once, shame on you. Dump Ovaltine all over the place twice, shame on me. Dump Ovaltine all over Jeff's subwoofer...clean it before Jeff comes home, turns on the stereo and wonders why a strange, brown, powdery substance is puffing from the speaker.

Oh Yeah...I'm Pregnant....

2011-03-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

So I'm approaching the halfway-point of my pregnancy. One week to go. One week until I'm officially 'Five Months Pregnant,' and thus entitled to that wonderful, amazing thing called Parking For Expectant Mothers.

I guess technically I've been entitled to that all along, but during the colder months, I was super-paranoid about taking these spots, then clamoring out the car in a bulky sweater and having other, more obviously-pregnant woman give me the stink-eye as they waddled past from way back in the nosebleed parking section. (This actually happened last month at our local Babies R Us, and while I normally wouldn't have opted for the Expectant Mothers spot, it was raining, I had both kids with me, and I was decidedly bloated that day anyway. I did make a bit of a show of hoisting myself in and out of the car and walking with the Pregnant Lady Sway, but I'm fairly certain those key marks on my car weren't there when I'd first arrived.)

What parking lots should really have is a designated area for people with small children. The spaces would be in rows littered with speed bumps, the parkings spaces themselves wider by a foot in all directions, with cart collection areas every other spot. And maybe a person stationed outside at all times to wrangle a stray toy or child and help you wrestle everyone into their seats. This area would be right up front, perhaps even alongside the fire lane, so people could distract their kids with the possibility of a fire engine sighting and the kids would press their noses to the car windows and give parents enough time to shove their crap into the back of the car and get the hell outta there.

Sorry, this entry wasn't meant to center on parking lots (or around them, or whatever preposition you're supposed to use with the word center...Amy? You out there?). But that seems to be a metaphor for this whole pregnancy: My mind wanders. I have not truly focused on this pregnancy with nearly the scrutiny that I had with my first (or even second). I have been almost too distracted to notice that I happen to be gaining weight, sporting bigger boobs and now have little bumps and burbles in my belly that I'm pretty sure are not the result of an unintelligent culinary decision at the Taco Bell Drive-Thru. I would like to marvel more at the miracle going on inside my body, but whenever I want to pause and reflect on this little gift, someone attempts to scale the bathroom counter to reach her brother's toothbrush and use it as a scrubber to remove the peanut butter smears she got all over the wall. Or someone else is tugging at my shirt, demanding I play Toy Story with him, starring his figurines from the movie and a tiny stuffed tooth he got from his dentist, who will be the protagonist of the story (the tooth, not the dentist).

Not that I'm, you know...complaining. I think when I was pregnant with Rollie, I had waaaaay too much time on my hands. I reflected way too much about the fact that I wanted to vomit pretty much the entire first trimester. Or that I couldn't button my favorite jeans anymore at precisely 22 weeks gestation. Or that my prenatal vitamins left a taste in my mouth that made me feel like I'd just eaten a container of Neptune Salad that was just beyond it's expiration date (which may have contributed to the whole "Think I'm Gonna Barf" feeling those first thirteen weeks).

Even with Elsa, I still had a daily opportunity to lie around and count the minutes until my next milestone, my next ultrasound, my next brownie sundae. Back in those days, I had a child who actually napped, I wasn't writing as much, and the house was still in decent shape (meaning I didn't take one look at the wall behind my kitchen table and feel like I was serving spaghetti to Jackson Pollock every night).

In a way, it's good that I don't really notice this pregnancy. It's definitely making the time pass more quickly. I don't feel as sick, as tired, I haven't been obsessing quite as much at how large certain areas of my body are becoming (including, but not limited to, my appetite for Cinnamon Toast Crunch). I'm trying to take this whole pregnancy in stride, just sort of going with it and hoping my vascular system doesn't completely collapse before the end of July (seriously...spider veins....in places I didn't even know I had blood flowing....And I say spider veins because they just sound cuter than vericose veins...almost like you'd want to have them as pets and not want to remove them yourself with a pair of sterilized pliers because you cannot stand the sight of them).

But do I really want the time to go by quickly? Am I really in a huge hurry to be a mother of 3? If you've read the entry where I tried that for a few days, you know that I'm quite ill-prepared for this next phase. And a bit terrified. If I think I don't have time now to reflect on anything, once the third one is here, I definitely won't have time to reflect on even the most banal of lives little questions (like why are there currently ten-thousand children's-sized socks residing in the crack between my washer and dryer? Or why is there an odd odor of chocolate-flavored cheese emanating from beneath my couch? Or how in the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks did my mother do this SIX TIMES?).

In all seriousness, folks, I really am excited and feel pretty blessed that I'm having such a smooth pregnancy. And I am currently taking bets as to whether this kid is going be a boy or a girl; we're not finding out this time, so you won't see a payout until July, unless we decide to keep all the money to save up for a Stinky The Garbage Truck toy.

Until next time, dear readers. I'm gonna go scarf up some Cinnamon Toast Crunch. (Or is that wolf down? Or wolf out?)

Anything You Can Do

2011-03-01T03:49:00.000-08:00

I believe there is a special bond between little sisters and big brothers. Big brothers teach you how to be tough. How to 'shake it off.' How to fly over your handlebars and blow snot rockets and hit a fastball. They blow your precious dollies and Barbies to smithereens with Black Cat firecrackers, and while you are horrified and want to scream, you are also fascinated that such disregard for pretend human life exists. You are intrigued by the daring your big brother must posses when he passes his finger over a flickering candle flame, or builds his own ski jump in the front yard and practices helicoptering in mid-air. And when you try to imitate his roof-climbing, his fence-scaling, his rock-skipping, you find yourself falling painfully short, your skinned elbows and bruised ego reminders that you will never be as good at certain things. That when you finally beat him at ping-pong or Hunt the Wumpus, it's because he let you.

I already see this bond forming between Rollie and Elsa, and I love it. Sure, they get on each other's nerves, and sometimes I have to intervene before Rollie slide-tackles Elsa or she takes a chunk out of his arm (and sometimes I am way too late). But for the most part, their relationship has become familiar: Cool Older Brother Who Can Do Everything, and Adoring Little Sister Who Wishes She Could Pee Standing Up, Too.

The problem with this dynamic right now is that Rollie has picked up some charming phrases from God knows where, and now Elsa has caught them like they're chicken pox. Phrases like "Booger Head" and "Oh My Gosh," may not sound so bad when coming from an adult of lower intelligence or even a kid in elementary school, but when my 2-year-old daughter is prancing around the house in her plastic princess heels saying Poopy Butt over and over, it seriously makes me cringe. And wonder if other kids won't be allowed to hang out with mine because their parents don't want them to pick up up any obnoxious language. Soom I'll get calls from other mothers from Rollie's class, and be forced to admit that yes, her son probably heard Snotty Penis Head from mine, and that I understand if Rollie is the only one in preschool not invited to her son's birthday party. At Disney World. All expenses paid.

I overheard the following conversation a few days ago.

Rollie: Hey Elsa, guess what?
Elsa: What?
Rollie: Boogers
Sound of both children dissolving into giggles.
Rollie: Hey Elsa, guess what?
Elsa: What?
Rollie: Poopy Butt!
Sound of both children dissolving into giggles again.
Me: Rollie....I don't want to hear that kind of talk, buddy.
Rollie: Elsa, guess what?
Elsa: What?
Rollie: Booger bottom.
Me: Rollie....
Elsa: Poopy Butt!
Me: No, Elsa, we don't talk that way.
Elsa: Poopy Bottom!
Me: Rollie, you can't use those words around Elsa.
Rollie: Why?
Me: Because she's little and she repeats everything she hears from you.
Rollie: But what if I have poopy on my butt?
Me: We don't say butt, we say bottom. (Man, could I sound stuffier and like I have less of a sense of humor? I actually prefer the word butt...it's shorter, more to-the-point, and for a Mom On The Go, possess that sort of succinct directness that is much more effective: I'm about to spank your butt seems to carry much more weight when I hiss it across a restaurant booth than I'm about to spank your bottom, which sounds like it came from a frail, proper grandma whose weak spanking would be barely register on the Pain-and-Humiliation-o-meter.)
Rollie: So I can say poopy bottom?
Me: Only in the correct context. Like in the bathroom. If you have actual poopy on your bottom.
Rollie: What if I have boogers on my bottom?
Me: ....Then we should probably have a lesson on proper tissue use.

It's not just Rollie's jokes that send Elsa into hysterical laughter. He's been pulling some physical comedic stunts that also tickle her funny bone. He pretends to trip and fall down, and not only does she chuckle heartily, she attempts the same nose-dive into the carpet (sometimes with tragic results). He mimes throwing up a stuffed animal, or plucking one from her ear, and she squeals with delight. I've heard him teaching her how to play games, how to draw pictures, and how to shoot hoops on their four-foot basketball net. And while she is an eager pupil, she still stomps on the rules, scribbles on the carpet, and knocks pictures off of end tables with her hook-shot.

I can just picture them in 7 or 8 years....they'll go off together and Elsa will be the one to come home with a bloody knees, the result of a bike jump attempt gone awry. Or missing a shoe because she tried to follow Rollie across a muddy field but one of her rain boots got sucked off her foot. Or she'll get stuck on the roof of their grandmother's house because she saw Rollie out there earlier but when she climbed out there on her own, the window she crawled through shut and locked behind her and she was stuck on the porch overhang for half and hour wondering if she should shinny down a nearby tree or stay where she was until someone noticed the hungry vultures circling above the house. (Yes, these are all true stories....Matt actually got in huge trouble for the roof incident. Sorry about that one, Matty).

But for now I'll just have to keep stifling conversations about bodily fluids being emitted from the incorrect orifice, and trying to find clever substitutes for words both my children find uproarious. I think I need to invest in a good thesaurus. And lots of bandaids.

Birthday Suit

2011-02-22T02:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Rollie turned four.

I've been someone's mother for four years. To me, that doesn't sound like very long. I mean, four years is a long time for say, solitary confinement. Or to wait in line at the DMV. It is not a long time to be someone's mother. In that time, I feel like I should have much more figured out by now. I mean other than being an expert at changing the diaper of a child who is standing on top of an airplane toilet, while trying to keep said child from pushing the flight attendant call button, the flusher, and the secret bell you ring once you've joined the Mile High Club.

But I've only just begun. I've only reached base camp in what will certainly by a long, arduous and rewarding climb, where I will possibly lose a limb, or pass out and have to be rescued by a giant Saint Bernard bearing a little keg of whisky. Or if I'm lucky, a six pack of Michelob Ultra.

We really get shoved into parenthood though, don't we? We go into this whole thing knowing that we will have a baby, and that this baby will turn into a toddler, a preschooler, a kid, and hopefully, a functioning, relatively normal member of society, who may or may not one day be president, or at least be able to pay his rent on time. But nothing really prepares us for it. Not books, not classes, not snippets of advice and cautionary tales from other parents. This is definitely a Learn As We Go gig. And you know, for the most part I've been pleasantly surprised.

For example, I knew I would eventually have to cut Rollie's fingernails. But until I actually did it, I had visions of me accidentally lopping off a fingertip in the process. I knew I would eventually have to clean up his puke, and just assumed that it would be the most disgusting, Rob Zombie horror-flick scene I could imagine, with gratuitous projectile fluids and exploding torsos. But when the time came that I was on the business end of a barf-o-matic, it was more like a Rob Zemeckis puke scene, with tasteful special effects and catchy theme music and a sort of feel good ending that almost made me wish I had someone to share it with. I mean besides Rollie.

(Wow, I just realized that I've been pleasantly surprised at how un-disgusting my son throwing up was to me. I have got to get out more.)

Rollie has come a long way in his four years on earth. When I first started this blog, he was in the throes of being Two. He threw things, he peed on the floor, he refused to nap, eat, stay dressed or speak in complete sentences (or at least sentences that didn't unnecessarily include the word Poopy). Now that he's four, he pees in the toilet. Or outside. Or in an empty water bottle if we're out and about and I just don't feel like hauling everyone into a disgusting gas station restroom. So yeah, we've made some progress in the past two years.

The neatest thing about Rollie turning four is that he is experiencing things he'll carry with him for the rest of his life. He'll remember the time he ate breakfast with Winnie The Pooh (probably because it was the first time he could use the word 'pooh' and not elicit a Mean Mommy Face from me). He'll remember the nature hikes we used to take in our neighborhood (especially when Mommy realized we were trespassing on private property and hustled everyone out of the woods before the shotgun blast went off). He'll remember going to school and learning about numbers, letters, and how to wash his hands after handling something one of the multiple Aiden's in his class just sneezed on.

And if he doesn't remember the time he donned Elsa's homemade tu-tu, her princess heels, and pranced into the family room to show me his get-up...well...that's why God invented cameras.

Happy Birthday, my sweet boy. Your legs look amazing in those shoes.

Top O' The Food Chain

2011-02-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

Remember back when Rollie was around 2-and-a-half, and every other word out of his mouth was 'Why?' (and every other word was 'No')?

Well, that phase seems to have been replaced by a new, more complicated version of the 'Why' question:

'What if?'

I've gotta say, this new variation on his line of inquiries is slightly less exhausting than having to answer 'Why' all the time (and being constantly humbled by the number of things I can't explain). On the other hand, Rollie is now presenting me with all sorts of scenarios I have never entertained before, and sometimes the hypothetical consequences of his 'what if's' are disastrous. Especially when we're at the zoo.

We went to the zoo yesterday with a group of friends. As we passed by the pens and cages filled with animals that looked benign but were surely just pretending that they couldn't rip out our larynx with a casual swipe of their giant paw, Rollie started up with his 'What if's'.

We stood before a sleek and restless leopard pacing its pen and while I tried to encourage my children to marvel at the splendor of the animal kingdom, Rollie had different ideas.

Me: Isn't he beautiful?
Rollie: ...What if I was in there with him?
Me: Um...I don't think you'd want to be in there with him.
Rollie: Why not?
Me: ...Because he might think you're food.
Rollie: Why?
Me: Because leopards eat little animals for dinner, and you'd probably look like a little animal to him.
Rollie: But I'm wearing sneakers.
Me: I know. Still, you're little and fast, like an animal he might want to...you know...eat.
Rollie: But I'm super fast with my sneakers. What if I could run away from him?
Me: Rollie, it's a leopard. They're even faster than you are.
Rollie: What if he couldn't catch me?
Me: ...Well then maybe you guys could be friends. (Hell, what do I know about the temperament of leopards? Maybe when their stomachs are full they like to just hang out with other animals, laze around and shoot the breeze and engage in the occasional footrace.)

Dow-chicka-wow

We entered the snake exhibit, and after wrangling Elsa back into the stroller, I found Rollie standing in front of a glass enclosure, his mouth agape. I wandered over to him, and saw he was staring at an ENORMOUS anaconda. This thing was HUGE. The Dirk Diggler of the animal world. And even with four inches of snake-proof glass between us and him, I somehow felt very vulnerable, like he was picturing how nicely his body would fit around us, how the sound of our bones crunching in his coils would be music to his ears...wherever they were.

And then Rollie's voice broke through my horrific reverie:

Rollie: What if I was in there with that anaconda?
Me: Trust me, you would not want to be in there with that thing.
Rollie: What would he do if I was in there?
Me: Probably eat you.
Rollie: But what if I was nice to him?
Me: I don't think it matters to him if you're nice or not. He probably eats nice animals every day.
Rollie: Like what nice animals does he eat?
Me: I don't know, like deer and zebras and stuff. (Yes, we have come a long way since the lion conversations we used to have a year ago.)
Rollie: What if he let me pet him?
Me: ...If he let you pet him, I guess you'd get to feel his skin.
Rollie: And then would he bite me?
Me: Anacondas don't really bite. But they squeeze.
Rollie: ...I like being squeezed.

I'm sure there was a huge discrepancy between what Rollie thought would happen with each scenarios he broached, and what actually would happen. All day long I had mental pictures of my son being eaten, squeezed to death, mauled, trampled, and impaled on a giant rhinoceros horn, while he was probably picturing himself lying in the sun with his new BFF's--the jaguars and the lions. They were furry, and probably soft. And cuddly. Until they got hungry.

Rollie's 'what if's' brought to mind this book my dad used to read to my siblings and I when we were little, entitled Peep of Day. It was a devotional book, but of course the only passage that we really cared about was all about how fragile the human body is (and this is an actual quote taken directly from the book...I think it was printed in the 1800's or something. Back when it was totally okay to terrify children into submission. It's actually not such a bad idea now, come to think of it):

"How easy it would be to hurt your poor little body! If it were to fall into the fire, it would be burned up. If hot water were thrown upon it, it would be scalded. If it were to fall into deep water, and not be taken out very soon, it would be drowned. If a great knife were to run through your body, the blood would come out. If a great box were to fall on your head, your head would be crushed. If you were to fall out of the window, your neck would be broken."

I know...how messed up is that? And there we sat, my siblings and I, snickering at the disgusting visuals of our bodies being torched, exsanguinated, drowned, and sustaining massive head wounds. This was the foundation of my childhood: What if (dot dot dot)?

Now that he's almost 4, Rollie seems ready to handle the brutal truths of his imagination. Are leopards friendly? Hell no. Do raccoons bite? Yeah, especially rabid ones. Do giraffes like to be pet? Only if you're about to shove a head of romaine lettuce into their pie-holes.

Which is why I felt compelled to buy him a big, stuffed anaconda from the gift shop on the way out. So he could at least pretend that anacondas are soft, furry, and they love to cuddle up at night with absolutely no desire to suffocate him in his sleep. I don't, however, think I'll be reading him Peep of Day anytime soon.

Rollie Loves Chotchkies

2011-02-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

Rollie has this piggy bank on his dresser. He's had it since he was born, and every time Jeff or I have extra change, we slip it inside the piggy bank (and until we start a 529 for him, this will also be his main source of college funds...well, that and the full academic/soccer/trumpet/pottery scholarship he will also get...to Yale).

Lately, Rollie's been accessing his college funds by way of climbing onto his dresser and removing the piggy bank from its perch beside his Dusty Rhodes bobblehead doll (I know...I don't know who that is either, but it was a free giveaway at a minor league baseball game last year. This is why we are running out of space in our house and our garden tub sometimes doubles as a guest bed: random chotchkies like bobblehead dolls, happy meal toys and stuffed animals that procreate like dirty laundry).

What Rollie garners from his piggy bank he puts inside a little wallet shaped like a tiger's face--another free chotchkie from our grocery store--and comes to me announcing that he has enough money to buy something at Target. And that's when Rollie gets a little lesson in economics (at least I think it would be in economics....what little I remember from that class is largely overshadowed by the distracting bionic nipples my high school economics had. They poked through the five undershirts he wore, sometimes scraping along the blackboard like hard, hairy fingernails as he wrote).

Rollie: Momma, can we go to Target? I want to buy something.
Me: With what, your good looks?
Rollie: I have lots of money, see? He jingles his tiger wallet in my face.
Me: Oooo...how much ya got in there?
Rollie: Um...probably forty-seven dollars.
Me: In change? I'm not sure about that, bud.
Rollie: Well, maybe I have eleven.
Me: That's quite a disparity. Want me to help you count it?
Rollie obligingly dumps out his earnings and together we count out the change.
Rollie: See, Momma, I have eleven.
Me: Rollie, you have sixty-two cents.
Rollie: Is that a lot?
Me: Not really.
Rollie: ...How much is a lot?
Me: Well, it depends....
Rollie: Is eleven a lot?
Me: ...It's a lot of like, cockroaches. It's not really a lot of money....
Rollie: ...Is seventy a lot?
Me: Yes. That would be a lot. Unless you wanted to buy a car or something.
Rollie: ...What can I buy with this?
Me: Um...I can't think of anything that only costs sixty-two cents at Target.
Rollie: ...Can I have some more money? Can I have seventy dollars?
Me: No, but let's see if we can find you some more quarters.

We pillaged his piggy bank and managed to dig up about $10 in quarters. Not bad for a kid whose main source of income is what he finds in parking lots and beside vending machines.

And with Rollie's tiger wallet stuffed to the whiskers in change, we headed through the drizzle to Target.

Ah, Target. Where would a Stay-At-Home mom be without Target? That beautiful red and white bullseye is nothing if not hypnotic; a zen-like calm overcomes me every time I see it glowing through the gloom, as visions of disinfectant wipes, paper towels in bulk and Easter candy wipe my troubles clean away. Target is my refuge, my go-to place in times of turmoil or on days when the weather is crappy, the kids are driving me nuts and a perfect 20-minute drive followed by an hour of wandering up and down the tidy, pleasantly-arranged aisles cures all ills.

I follow Elsa and Rollie around the toy section, commenting on the various toys they admire and test while I sneak sips of their Icees and check my email. Everything is serene. Everyone is happy. Oooolllmmmmmm.....

We get to the aisle with the toys from Cars, and Rollie's second lesson in nip--I mean economics begins:

Rollie: What can I buy here?
Me: Well, you can have any of those cars up there, or these here. Or, you can get a couple of little things.
Rollie: Okay...I want to get this one. He selects a giant semi-trailer, it's grill grinning out from the extensive packaging.
Me: Um...not that one. That one is thirty dollars. You only have ten, remember?
Rollie: But do you have thirty dollars?
Me: Rollie, I have even less money than you do right now.
Rollie: Okay...how about this one? He points to a box of cars from the movie, also overpriced and overpackaged.
Me: Don't you already have all these cars?
Rollie: But these ones are super shiny.
Me: Well if you'd stop playing Smash 'Em with your cars, they'd stay shiny, too.
Rollie: Can I please have these?
Me: Rollie, they cost more money then you have. You can spend ten dollars. Or you don't even have to spend it all--you can save some of it for later, until you have more to buy what you really want.
Rollie: No, I want to spend it now. What can I get?
Me: I told you, hon--any of these right here. Or we can look at Star Wars stuff, too.
Rollie: No. I just want Cars stuff.
Me: Okay, well...try to decide. I follow Elsa down the aisle, where she has become enamored with this awful talking garbage truck that tells jokes, moves, and, God help me...farts. Where oh where are we headed as a nation when toys like a flatulating garbage truck turn into something kids actually want and parents will actually fork over the fifty dollars for?*

Then I hear Rollie mumble from up the aisle:

Rollie: I can't decide what I want.
Me: Maybe you should just get something small and save the rest of your money.
He doesn't answer, but wanders over to where Elsa is staring fixedly on Stinky the Garbage Truck.
Rollie: Can I buy that?
Me: Absolutely not. I don't think I would let you even if you had enough money.
Rollie: Why not?
Me: Because he's loud and obnoxious. I could only imagine life with Stinky the Garbage Truck in our house.... it would be like living with a bachelor uncle who stays in the basement and is trying to get a stand-up career off the ground. Kinda like Uncle Joey from Full House, only with better punchlines.
Rollie: Why is he obnoxious?
Me: ...So did you decide what you wanted to get?
Rollie: Well...if I can't get the garbage truck...and I can't get those cars...I guess I'll just have this. He picks up a remote controlled speedboat, also out of his price range, and hands it to me.
Me: Rollie, this stuff you can ask for for your birthday. But right now you can't afford this.
Rollie: But I really want it.
Me: I understand. That's part of life honey--you've just got to pick out what you can pay for today. Or start saving your money for later.
Rollie: .....
Me: Maybe you can start doing chores around the house and earning money that way.
Rollie: What are chores?
Me: Like cleaning your room. And putting your clothes in the laundry.
Rollie: I put my jammies in the laundry yesterday. Can I have some money?
Me: Well, that's not quite what I was thinking....plus I don't have any money.

Rollie wanders back to where the Cars stuff is. His eyes scan the multitude of brightly colored boxes and labels and prices he can't yet read. I wonder if any of this is sinking in, or if this is just a lesson for me to start taking my kids to the library on rainy days.

Finally he selects a race car that he doesn't yet have from the movie.

Rollie: Can I have this one?
Me: Yes, you can. You sure this is what you want?
Rollie: Yes. Do I have enough money?
Me: Yep. And you'll have some leftover, too
Rollie: Okay....Can we go to the mall?

Today is another rainy day. Thankfully, Rollie has school, and his college fund has been depleted to a bunch of pennies, nickels, and souvenir daubloons from the Fountain of Youth. It will take a while for him to earn enough money to buy Stinky The Garbage Truck; by then another loud, obnoxious toy will probably have taken its place. Like a life-size David Coulier doll that comes with over a hundred catch phrases. "Cut It Out!"

*I just read online that Stinky The Garbage Truck also eats little Matchbox cars and poops them out. I suppose they are the source of his terrible gas. I can't make this stuff up, folks.

Scarface

2011-02-04T04:35:00.000-08:00

Well, Rollie almost made it to his fourth birthday before his first trip to the ER.

I guess it was likely to happen at some point. Kids hurt themselves all the time. Jumping off of moving swings, double-bouncing on trampolines, bicycle crashes, unfortunate Wet Banana mishaps. I'm kind of surprised the nation's ER's aren't clogged with kids who have just tried a neat trick with a homemade catapult involving a tree branch and their little sister.

Or who, like Rollie, stood up in a bathtub despite their mother's constant chirpings that doing so will result in them slipping and splitting their chins open like so many lobster tails. Mommy is always right.

Every guy I think I've ever known has a scar on his chin. What is up with that? Guys are always smacking themselves on the chin. Every grown man I know is unable to grow facial hair on a small line on their chin due to a childhood scar. Why is the male species so careless with such an important part of its face? The chin is always described in romance novels--one of the first things you hear about is a man's chiseled chin or a cleft in his chin or a chin that could cut through the strings of the bodice that could scarcely contain her heaving bosom. Yet men everywhere are engaged in such chin-desecrating practices as diving face-first into coffee tables, standing too close to friends wielding baseball bats, or trying to break up two people fighting over the last can of vienna sausages at the local Piggly Wiggly.

Luckily Jeff stepped through the bathroom door just as I sat there, holding a washcloth to Rollie's chin, wondering how I was going to get it together enough to assess the damage, dress everyone and bundle them off to the nearest hospital. Jeff stayed home with Elsa and Rollie and I piled into the car to make the journey northward. Rollie requested he bring a few items to keep him company, and of course I would have allowed he bring pretty much anything his little heart desired, even if that meant dragging in the life-sized cardboard cut-out of Donald Sutherland we keep hidden beneath our bed to ward off vampires.

Instead, I buckled Rollie into the car with a cup of chocolate milk, a plastic pirate hook, a plastic sword, a Lightning McQueen car, and Jeff's iPad. And we were off.

Emergency Rooms are scary places. And this is coming from a thirty-something-year-old woman. I can't imagine how scary it must have been to poor Rollie, huddled behind me at the checkout counter, giant band-aide affixed to his chin as people shuffled by in hospital masks and bags under their eyes, or lay down across the wooden chairs, in various stages of consciousness and pain. It made me incredibly grateful that this was not a place I've ever had to go with my children.

While I signed us in, a woman sat not ten feet away from us in a wheelchair, apparently going into full-on, stage-five labor. Her shrieks echoed off the disinfected tile, sending Rollie into a leg-clinging, eye-watering panic I haven't seen since his first day of preschool. I tried to reassure him that the lady would be okay as I desperately tried to remember his social security number. (I felt like telling the lady that labor was the easy part...it's the next twenty years of her life that will make her want to scream like that).

I led Rollie over to a nice, relatively non-upsetting corner of the waiting room, where we spent the next 45 minutes eating Rasinettes and racing each other in our marble maze app--Rollie on my phone and I on the iPad (side note: he kicked my butt. I'm starting to worry that ten years from now I'm gonna be one of those parents who begs her children to show her what this crazy, newfangled internet is all about).

Then the nurse called Rollie back to check his vitals. It brought on some comic relief, since the male nurse sounded straight of the set of Fargo:

Nurse: How ya doin', little buddy?

Rollie: .....

Me: Rollie, say hi.

Rollie: hi.

Nurse: Well, let's have a look atcha, alrighty?

Rollie: .....

Me: It's okay, Rol-Rol. He's here to help you.

Nurse: We'll getcha all fixed up real good now. Okey doke?

Rollie: ....Ok....

Nurse: And then we'll have ya outta here real quick. Alrighty? Whatcha do to yer chin there?

Me: He slipped in the tub.

Nurse: Ouch. Bet that didn't feel real good now, did it?

Rollie shakes his head. And I wonder if this cheesehead is super-duper excited that them there Packers are goin' to the Superbowl, dontcha know?

Nurse: Alrighty now, let's getcha back here so they can fix up that chin-a yer's, okey doke?

Rollie's new bad-ass chin

We were whisked away to a quiet corner of the wing, where another nurse taped Rollie's chin back together and bandaged it up. I bribed him with promises of Icees and milkshakes if he held still long enough for the nurse to see what she was doing. All your friends will be super impressed with your chin, I told him as I held his hand and wiped the tears from his face. You'll be a celebrity at school. Elsa will be so jealous with all the attention you'll get. Because isn't that the best part about getting hurt like that? The attention, sympathy and celebrity status that comes after a childhood injury? That's how I managed to get attention in my family--constantly needing stitches (okay, so twice....two of the best days of my life. My family nickname is still Buttscar, after a rather unfortunate sledding accident. Kids, don't ever try to slide down a snow-covered hill that was littered with sharp rusty objects just that autumn--the rusty objects are still there).

Rollie did pretty well, all things considered. He was racing Lightning McQueen up and down the hospital bed by the time I paid my bill and we were discharged.

On the drive home, we could see the winking lights of the hospital from the interstate. And the following conversation ensued:

Rollie: That looks like a bunch of ice cubes.

Me: Yeah, it kinda does at night, doesn't it?

Rollie: Why is the hospital so big?

Me: Because all kinds of people have to go there...people having babies...people who hurt themselves like you did...people who are sick...people who go to work there.

Rollie: People who run out of toys.

Me: I don't think running out of toys means you have to go to the hospital.

Rollie: It means you have to go to Target.

Me: ...Yeah, I guess that's one place you can go.

After a few minutes I think he's asleep, but then he pipes back up:

Rollie: When I can drive, I want a big black van.
Me: You thinking of joining the Secret Service?
Rollie: I want a van like Auntie Amy's.

Me: Oh yeah? A minivan? What would you want inside, a tv?

Rollie: I'd want a little tiny mouse. And a little tiny bed and a little tiny blanket.

Me: That sounds comfy. Would you drive the mouse around?

Rollie: Yes I would.

Me: Where would you take the mouse?

Rollie: Wherever it wanted to go. It would just tell me where it wanted to go and I would take it there.

Me: Like Target?

Rollie: Yes, and I would buy him whatever he wanted.

Me: You'll have to make sure you have a job so you can make enough money to buy it whatever it wanted.

Rollie: ...Well, I would buy it an Icee. And maybe one toy.

Me: That sounds good.

After a few minutes, I checked in the rearview mirror and saw the sillohuette of his head bent to one side and faintly heard the soft, rhythmic sound of him breathing. I hoped he was dreaming of chauffeuring his hypothetical mouse to Target, where they could share an Icee and browse the toy aisle to their hearts' content.

The Oy Of Parenting

2011-02-01T11:25:00.000-08:00

Now that Elsa has turned two and Rollie is almost four, I've noticed a profound difference between them:

Rollie is an angel, and Elsa is...well...two.

All I can say is, I'm so glad I've been documenting Rollie's life in this blog since he was two. So now I can look back and think, Oh yeah, so Rollie used to (insert horrific, deliberately insolent behavior here) all the time. So it's not that Elsa is Rosemary's Two-Year-Old*. She's just doing what parenting magazines everywhere like to gently label Testing Her Boundaries. Which is the progressive, 2011 term for being a total shithead.

I don't think she means to be a total shithead. And I'm not being fair when I say total shithead. It's not all the time. Sometimes, she's actually the better behaved of the two. Like, when she's sleeping. Or when I'm sleeping, and I am visited in the middle of the night not by a two-year-old demanding a cup of milk and that I turn on every blessed light in the house because she's scared of some nameless, nebulous and indescribable monster that may or may not look like a lion, but by an almost-four-year-old who has been told over and over that he'd better stop waking mommy up in the middle of her Matt Damon fantasy dream or so help her she will snatch every Cars-related item from his room, put them in a garbage bag and smash them to bits with a baseball bat.

It's the other 14 or so hours of the day when pretty everything turns into a battle. Even the most mundane requests I have of her: Elsa, please come here so I can put on your socks. Elsa, let's go pick up Rollie from school. Elsa, let me wipe of your hands before you pet the dog and end up with long, furry mittens, turns into a mind game more complicated than the ones Hannibal Lecter must play on a first date. I have to plan out how I'm going to present the next task/chore/outing/command to her so that it will be met with the least resistance. And by resistance I mean Elsa giving me a shit-eating grin and running in the opposite direction (usually her closet, where she slides the door shut and waits for me to start threatening her to come out...she knows darn well I'm not going to slide the door open because I did this once and ended up catching her hand in the crack where the doors overlap. I felt terrible, and she got away with whatever it was I was about to punish her for. Smart little bugger.).

It's exhausting. All the chasing around and barking commands and manhandling and cleaning bodily fluids from the floor. I feel like Charlie Sheen's personal assistant (Hey-Yo!). But I guess that's how it's supposed to be, right? We mothers wouldn't get half the respect we do if every time we asked our children to do something, they actually, you know...did it. Like the first time (or I'd take the second of third time and still be impressed). That's all part of the Joy of Parenting. And lately, Elsa is heaping on and extra dose of Joy.

And what's up with Rollie suddenly being a total angel lately? I ask him to do something, and I'm stunned when his response is: "Okay, Momma." I'm like....Wait, what? You mean I don't have to come back with my arsenal of reasons why I want you to wash your hands the instant you get home from school? You mean I don't have to plead with you to get into the car, or pick up your toys, or eat your broccoli? But I've gotten so good at rationalizing with a 3-year-old. I've gotten my rebuttals and counter-rebuttals down pat. I don't even have to resort to Because I Said So anymore with him. It's so easy it's almost no fun.

Then I think back to all the stunts Rollie used to pull when he was two, and I realize that this is just beginning with Elsa. Soon I'll be celebrating opposite days and yell-fests in her honor instead of Rollie's. And we've still got another one coming. You'd think I would have it all figured out by the time kid number 3 rolls around. But you know better.

Plus, she's so darn cute. Sometimes looking at her goofy face is all I need to get over myself and all the little daily irritants and laugh at my daughter and give her a big bear hug. If I can catch her.

Especially when she tries to bag her own feet as evidence. I've yet to find the crime scene.

*Wouldn't Rosemary's Two-Year-Old be a great sequel to Rosemary's Baby? "What happens when Satan's Spawn starts throwing tantrums in the middle of a crowded Disney Store? Find out in Rosemary's Two-Year-Old. Starring Charlie Sheen."

Garbage Pail Kids

2011-01-25T11:25:00.000-08:00

When we were growing up, one of my siblings' and my favorite toys was this giant, wooden spool.

No, that is not a typo. I didn't mean pool. Spool. Like the kind that could have possibly housed a few hundred miles' worth of thread. I have absolutely no idea where my father got this thing...the dump, perhaps? Or he found it on the side of the road, abandoned by some poor idiot who had no idea the treasure he or she was just throwing away, clueless to the hours and hours of joy and splinters it would bestow upon a crew of lucky kids.

We played all sorts of fun games with this spool, usually orchestrated by my older brother Matt. You remember him...the one who used to convert the bedroom my sister and I shared into a haunted house, complete with nail polish-covered Barbies dangling from the ceiling. The one who used old computer punch cards to make replicas of sharks, guns from the show V, and the entire helicopter cockpit from Blue Thunder. Anyway, he like to use the spool for games of balance and agility. We'd stand on top of it and see how long we could balance before the spool began to roll either under the force of gravity or the force of Matt pushing it so he could watch one of us sail to the ground, where we landed on our asses.

Come to think of it, our father brought home all sorts of cool stuff from the local dump. Saturdays were his preferred day to scavenge, which I guess was because other people from our town brought their castaways there, and our father knew the pickings would be good. Not like he had to fight through a throng of other dumpster divers clamoring for that perfect hubcap, lampshade or Mother's Day gift. We lived in an affluent part of central Jersey, where six kids on a teacher's salary meant toys mostly came by way of hand-me-downs, garage sales, or, on a really good day, the dump. No need to worry about bumping into acquaintances while he was up to his elbows in banana peels. He scored me a Big Wheel there. Purple with yellow trim. He also brought home stereo speakers, few bicycles, toy trucks, Sit-and-Spins, Hoppity Horses. In fact, my most treasured toys came from that giant landfill off of route 206.

Which is why I'm thinking about changing tactics when it comes to obtaining toys for my own children. It seems like stuff I get from Target or the Disney store just doesn't have the same character, the same shelf-life. My children like them, play with them for a little while, but for some reason these toys aren't as captivating as toys that came from the dump. It's like dump toys held this sort of character, this palpable mystique...like people who've come back from the dead. Or have seen the movie Freddy Got Fingered and lived to tell about it instead of stabbing themselves with an icepick through their ear and into their temporal lobe like I'd wanted to do.

Now that the gift-giving orgy that was our December is over, the focus in this house has shifted away from what Elsa and Rollie want for Christmas to what Rollie wants for his birthday. It's less than a month away. And now every time we go anywhere that sells anything that could even be remotely considered a plaything, Rollie asks that we put it on his wish list. This includes the gas station, the post office and the liquor store (what...you don't take your kids to the liquor store? What do you do, leave them in the car?).

I'm sure the fact that we've accumulated an obscene amount of toys over the years doesn't help our children appreciate the finer points of dumpster diving. Their toys have taken over almost every room in our house, and we are now running into the problem of storing them all. Especially now that we have another little juice-dripper on the way. Can't get rid of baby toys until next year. And by then Rollie will have moved onto more complex toys with smaller parts and all kinds of fun things for a baby to chew on. At least as kids get bigger the toys get smaller and easier to store. Until the kid is a 34-year-old man whose ideas of toys are lawn mowers and flat screen TVs. Hopefully Rollie will be out of the house by then.

Anyway, I'm thinking that I need to start incorporating trips to our own local dump in with our weekly errands. I'll dress the kids in some grubby clothes, let them out of the car and tell them that anything they find in the heaps of trash that isn't rusty, falling apart or infested with rat turds is theirs for the taking. Who knows what sort of surprises await us at the Nine Mile Road landfill? Maybe I'll finally get to relive some of my more cherished childhood memories and score a giant spool. And some tetanus, while I'm at it.

Chewing Is Overrated

2011-01-21T12:01:00.000-08:00

Today I took inventory of my pantry and came to an undeniable truth:

My kids eat a lot of crap.

Yet another oath that I made to myself pre-kid that has been broken, shattered like so many cheap, plastic, Made In China toys clogging Rollie's toybox. At some point between Elsa's 1st and 2nd birthdays, I have slipped into the habit of purchasing prepackaged, preservative-laden food, some in ungodly hues, loaded with refined this and processed that. You know how many boxes of fruit snacks I currently have in my pantry? Three. You know how much fruit is actually in fruit snacks? Less than none. Fruit snacks are like negative fruit. Anti-fruit. If you were to place fruit snacks and actual fruit in a particle accelerator and slam them into each other, an atomic explosion would occur. I think I smell a plot line for Dan Brown's next novel. He can thank me later.

My freezer is full of chicken nuggets, french fries, frozen chocolate chip waffles and neon-colored popsicles. I have sqeezey yogurts and juice pouches in the fridge, cereal bars and every flavor of Goldfish crackers in the pantry (the chocolate graham crackers ones mixed with the pretzel ones make a great snack...if you have raging PMS). I have yet to buy these things called UnCrustables--premade, frozen PB&J, but I'm sure it's not far off. Especially considering the mental turmoil I go through each time I make Rollie a sandwich by hand. Damn you, John Tesh.

Did you know they even make applesauce in a pouch? Applesauce. Let's take the most basic, easiest thing to eat in nature and make it even easier by removing the need to physically transport the applesauce from a spoon to your mouth--just stuff one end of the pouch into your pie-hole and suck. Soon they'll start selling pre-packaged foods that are already partially digested. All your kid has to do is swallow it and it goes straight to their blood cells. Cuts out the middleman altogether. Besides, your kids need to save their energy for more important things. Like watching five episodes in a row of UmiZoomi. Plus, then your kids would never need to poop, thus eliminating the need for potty seats, enemas, and any more time spent wondering when the hell your seemingly capable child will ever learn to wipe himself.

I didn't plan on being a convenience-food mom. Not that I was going to make my children's baby food by getting a bunch of produce from local organic farmers and throwing it into a blender with some wheat germ. But I sure wasn't planning on bribing them to pick up their toys with Pop-tarts and Cheetos, either. Sure, they're lowfat Pop-tarts and baked Cheetos, but I'm still thinking this will not garner me a top prize in the Heathy Children's Culinary Awards. Slim Goodbody would be so disappointed. And Richard Simmons. Unless they are the same person. I get their perms confused sometimes.

All I can say is, Thank God my sisters had children first, so I had the chance to pass plenty of judgment on what their kids ate before having my own. That, plus I learned a lot from watching their children eat. I had no idea kids could subsist for weeks at a time on peanut butter crackers and Crystal Light. Or gummy worms and Ovaltine. Or marshmallow fluff sandwiches and root beer. Now I use my sisters as sort of justification for my own kids' diet. Sure, Rollie had a cookie as a reward for eating his Lucky Charms. But Amy's kids eat Lucky Charms for dinner. At least my kids have the decency to eat Toy Story-shaped Macaroni and Cheese for dinner....before sucking down their brownies-in-a-tube.

Stay tuned on a future blog entry: How I Came To Foot The Bill On My Pediatric Dentist's New Mercedes.

Somewhere Over The Double Rainbow

2011-01-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I spent four glorious, child-free days on the other side of the country.

My sister is getting married in July, and since I'm pretty sure waddling onto an airplane, looking like I might go into labor if anyone so much as breathes on me is highly discouraged by the TSA, my OBGYN and my HUSBAND, I opted to fly out and visit her before my belly got too big to qualify as carry-on luggage.

And so with my children safely in the care of my parents, I packed my bags, bid my family adieu (which I'm pretty sure is French for Adios, Suckers!), and left for the airport, visions of sitting peacefully in seat 15F for six hours dancing in my head.

After having been around at least one of my own children pretty much all day, every day for the past three years, ten months and 27 days, I sometimes forget how amazingly FREE I am when I don't have the little shirt-tuggers following me around and asking for fruit snacks every five freaking seconds. How even a menial task like using a public restroom seems so beautiful in its simplicity when it's just me. I strutted on inside, did my thing, washed my (and only my) hands, and I think even had a chance to glance in the mirror, marveling at how unfrazzled I looked for a change. I didn't have to wait for the handicapped stall, didn't have to reprimand anyone from peeking beneath the doors or touching the little aluminum maxi pad disposal container or winding toilet paper around him or herself as I sat helpless on the porcelain throne, my threats echoing and futile and probably pretty entertaining to a passerby.

And that was just at the airport. The trip itself was almost as relaxing as the restroom at JAX. I luxuriated in a king-sized bed for hours and hours, not having to get up because of nightmares, lost loveys, or because the dog has decided that he absolutely has to go outside and sniff around the grill for some remnant of last summer's charred bar-b-que, then pee on it. I didn't have to coordinate my shower with five other people to ensure that Elsa didn't take my absence as an opportunity to practice her penmanship on the living room carpet. I didn't have to cut up anyone's food, wipe anyone's ass or do anyone's laundry. I even read two entire books during my travels. The kind without pictures.

And because I was able to have a few minutes of uninterrupted thoughts while I was away, I had an epiphany: People who don't yet have children have an ENORMOUS amount of free time on their hands.

Now before I have Childless Adults Anonymous and People For The Ethical Treatment Of Adults Living Child-Free, Unfettered Lives banging down my door, demanding retractions and sensitivity training, let me elaborate here. I understand that there are plenty of people out there who don't have kids and also have no free time. And I'm not saying that people without kids just lay around all day long, watching YouTube clips and 8 consecutive episodes of Weeds, snarfing down popcorn and soda, their biggest inconvenience hoisting themselves out of bed to walk ten steps to the nearest bathroom.

But that's exactly what my sister and I did the first day I was in LA. And it was fabulous.

I couldn't get over it. I couldn't believe I was actually lying around for hours and hours, only lifting one greasy finger when I wanted more popcorn. I kept remarking to my sister how nice it was, and that the last time I lay around like that was roughly five years ago, when I was severely hung-over.

"Really?" she said, sounding awestruck. "This is a typical Sunday for me."

"Really?" I sounded equally awestruck. "That's awesome."

I spent the entire weekend around my sister and her fiancee, my brother and his girlfriend, and a variety of other people, none of whom had children. I felt like I was a guest at some secret society, an underground subculture of citizens who can do pretty much anything they want when they aren't at work. We went out to breakfast, lunch, dinner at restaurants that had neither play areas nor kids' menus. We drove around LA and I didn't worry about one of my children getting restless or dumping entire bags of Goldfish onto the floormats. We walked down sidewalks and I didn't need to grab sticky little hands or sweatshirt hoods to keep munchkins from fleeing into oncoming traffic or irritating the elderly. We shopped in stores that didn't carry toys or diapers--I don't think I've ever gone this long without patronizing a Target. It was such an odd feeling, like I'd forgotten to wear underwear. And pants.

The thing was, toward the end of the trip, I really started to miss the little gum-swallowers. My hand felt empty, my voice underused. I felt too rested, too sane. I hadn't prepared a single cup of chocolate milk in LA, wiped a single nose. Which was all great in the beginning, but as I packed up my bags and prepared for the journey home, I found myself actually looking forward to soothing Elsa in the middle of the night, smoothing her hair and feeling her warm breath on my cheek. I couldn't wait to see Rollie's blond head bopping around the house, to hear his unrelenting questions and inexorable requests for me to play Toy Story with him. I couldn't wait to slip back into the familiarity of crappy sleep, dishpan hands and toy landmines.

And while it was fun introducing my sister to the Bed Intruder Song and the Double Rainbow, when my dad emailed me pictures of my kids and what they'd been up to while I was away, I couldn't wait to see them again. There really is no place like home.

PS--I really missed Jeff, too.

1+2 = @%$&!

2011-01-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

For the last 18 hours or so, I've had a taste of life as a mother of 3.

As of right now I'm wondering what the HELL I was thinking. Why did I decide to become one of the elite group of mothers who no longer holds her sanity high on the list of things she'd like to cling to. That and the ability to make it five minutes without yelling at someone to either hurry up, slow down, or for the love to God stop wiping your nose on your sleeve and use a tissue like a decent human being.

I'm starting to think I will never, ever be the same again. With one kid, you get a break when the kid naps or goes to bed. With two kids, you occasionally get a break when for that brief moment of impossible bliss their naps overlap. Or when one kid is sleeping while the other zombie-fies in front of the TV for 45 minutes. Or when they are both actually playing quietly without lunging at each other like rabid little badgers. Unfortunately this break usually consists of folding laundry, loading the dishwasher, changing sheets, or simply rocking back and forth, hugging your knees to your chest as you quietly hum the theme song to Wonder Pets in a minor key (because hey, at least you're sitting for a few minutes).

With three kids....um....yeah....What the f*** do people do?? How do they keep themselves from becoming screaming, sighing, hand-washing psychopaths, whose soul scrap of happiness comes from the thought of being in a nursing home in fifty years, where they can sit and watching TV and eat meals in deathly silence to their failing heart's content? Surely there must be some secret, something mysterious and divine that only mothers of three-plus kids knows...something that will only be revealed to me when baby # 3 finally comes. How do they manage to perform all necessary tasks to make civilized existence possible for themselves and their families and still have time to, you know...take a crap? (Sorry to be so uncouth. It's been a long week.)

So my friend went into labor last night, and since we had prearranged that I would be on the shortlist of people to watch her daughter for her, I received the call. I was honestly more than happy to help, as soon I will be the one begging friends, acquaintances, UPS delivery men, neighborhood dogs to watch my children so I can shove one more out into the world. And my friend is new to the area, leaving her whole family in a different state, where they can't drop everything and come to your house to watch your children and systematically destroy every good habit you've tried to instill in them since birth (seriously...just got back from a weekend alone in LA and come home to find Elsa has regressed to pacis, bottles and eating food that comes only in squeezie form....Not that I'm not grateful, Mom and Dad. It's just...you know...I've got my work cut out for me. Oh yeah, and PS--what happened to Elsa's closet door?)

ANYWAY....my friend's daughter just turned 3. She's really cute. And not at all shy. She came over at 8:30 last night--just as my own children were whining away in their respective beds--and started playing with Elsa's toys. And asking either Jeff or me what each and every accessory was. Actually, the way she worded it was, "Do you know what this is?"

That was the way she worded everything. This morning she followed me around the house, watching me get ready, clean up breakfast and try to hustle my own children out the door before the next election.

"Do you know what you're doing?" she kept asking. Which sounded pretty funny, because I'm sure much of the time I looked like I had no f-ing clue what I was doing. From putting on make-up to changing Elsa's diaper to loading the dishwasher, she asked over and over, "Do you know what you're doing?"

Nothing will ever make you truly scrutinize your own parenting techniques than being in charge of someone else's kids, too. I'd tell Rollie for the fifth time in a row to please put his clothes on, and because it had evolved into me yelling at him that if he didn't do it I was going to spank his bottom, I stopped and wondered if my friend's daughter was ever on the business end of a spanking threat. Or was ever yelled at, period. She was just staring at me, seemingly bewildered that a mommy could even get that loud, much less pepper her offspring with promises of physical harm. No wonder she kept asking me if I knew what I was doing. Chances are I looked like I was out of my clueless, frazzled mind.

We rode in my car, and I found myself wondering if she listens to Disney music in the car, or stuff by the Gorillaz and Led Zeppelin, like my kids do. I wondered if she ever struggles while her poor mother tries to strap her in her carseat, refuses to hold hands across a busy parking lot, or purposely puts chewing gum in her hair, like my children have been known to do. I marveled that she went right to bed when I told her to, she said please and thank you without being prompted, and all she wanted to drink was water in an age-appropriate cup. Then I started to wonder if my kids are a little more rascally because they listen to Led Zeppelin, are allowed to chew gum, and get away without saying please on occasion. Man, if the secret to functional, well-mannered children is having to put up with the music from Aladin during road trips, I think I've got me some soundtracks to buy. And some earplugs.

All morning long I kept thinking, So this is what it's like to have three kids. This is why my sister, who has three children, never answers her phone. Or wears make-up. And practically jumps out of her skin in excitement at the mention of going to Starbucks for a half-hour or getting a mid-day pedicure. With two kids, I'd rather relax at home and write or watch TV when I get a break. After having three, my idea of fun will be getting the hell outta my house, regardless of reason. Even if it means getting a foot amputated.

My friend's daughter comes back tonight. I've got roughly four hours to practice giving off the appearance that I do, in fact, know what I'm doing. But I think this time would be better spent fixing Elsa's closet door. And burying her pacis in the backyard.

Slipping One Past The Goalie

2011-01-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

Jeff and I decided to start the new year off with a bang.

We're having a baby.

Yeah. Another one.

Because I come from a big family, I'd always known I wanted more than two kids. Back then it seemed to me that two kids was almost too...calm. Not enough chaos for my taste. Of course, this was also back before I actually had any kids of my own. Back when I was part of the chaos, and not the one trying to control it. Two kids means you only have one other person to play with. Only one other closet to raid. Only one other person on whom to inflict bruises, to tease, to argue with, giggle with, watch Star Wars and Jaws with, complain to, commiserate with, hold back the hair of as your sibling drunkenly retches into your parents' flower beds. Yessiree....the more people you have to hold back your hair while you puke up your two-for-one rum and Cokes, the happier, more well-adjusted adult you will be. I am living proof of that.

So now we're going to have three kids. Half the chaos of my childhood. I don't think I know what I've gotten myself into. We've all heard about how two kids are harder than one, but three kids are easier than two. I kinda don't see how in the hell that is possible. It seems like adding children to your family causes exponential increases in noise, toys, laundry, grocery bills, therapists, and the amount of alcohol you consume. Three kids in a family increases all these things nine-fold. Which means that if my parents had been the drinking kind, they would've needed their own still in the backyard to compensate for whatever nonsense the lot of us brought on. This explains why my father holed himself up in the garage-converted bedroom in the darkest, coldest corner of the house for hours, huddled before his cobbled together NCR computer, oblivious to the rest of the house unless one of us hit a wrong note on our respective band instrument (I can still here my father's shouts of "b-Flat, b-Flat!" wafting through the heating vents from his man cave below), and my mother holed herself up in her bedroom in front of the TV precisely at 6 pm, refusing to come out even if one of us kids was simultaneously puking and bleeding out onto the linoleum (if it were onto her Oriental rug, that was a different story).

Anyhoo, having already been through two pregnancies makes me feel like something of a seasoned mom. None of this is new, none of it is earth-shattering or ground-breaking. I've already said goodbye to beer, privacy and my belly-button long ago. I received a tote bag from my OB's office stuffed with magazines, a pregnancy planner and a plethora of lists and pamphlets all about what to expect and how to prepare for the upcoming bundle of joy. Instead of poring over the literature and turning into a sobbing mess because my ill-eqipped little self had SO MUCH TO DO in the next eight months like I did the first time around, I let my kids ransack the bag and turn the magazines into glossy confetti. I recycled the planner and am now using the tote bag as a storage bin for Elsa's baby doll accessories (of which she now has about eighty thousand. Seriously, between her birthday and Christmas, her bedroom now looks like a maternity ward, a bunch of plastic, bald babies strewn around in various stages of undress, replete with magic bottles, rattles, bath toys, personal trainers and spiritual advisers--the last two were really hard to fit into a pink tote bag from OBGYN and Associates).

All the reading material regarding pregnancy I've come across is understandably for first-timers. For the moms who wonder if they need to give up their monthly Big Mac, if they should invest in wipe-warmers, if their bodies will ever be the same again (the answer to all these is a resounding No. Although I have to admit, what I have lost in terms of my figure I have gained in boundless knowledge of ear infections, Hot Wheels paraphernalia and the program line-up of Nick Jr).

This time around, my biggest concern is how to field the questions I'm sure Rollie will start asking when he realizes that the huge lump under my shirt is an actual baby that will eventually have to make an appearance. I can already imagine the blogs that are forthcoming. The last discussion we had on the subject, Rollie concluded that he must have dug his way from my womb...kinda like an armadillo. I haven't bothered correcting him yet. Guess Jeff and I have some 'splainin' to do....

Oh yeah, and I have begun work on my next book...Pregnancy Is Easy...Unless You're The One Who's Pregnant. Stay tuned, dear readers.

Christmas Traditions And Cottage Cheese.

2010-12-23T15:01:00.000-08:00

Since we are still a relatively young family, Jeff, the kids and I don't really have any long-standing Christmas traditions yet. Every year has been a different variation on the whole Get Together With Family, Exchange Gifts, Drink, Eat, Observe A Random Nervous Breakdown, and Breath A Sigh Of Relief When Crazy Grandma Fails To Pull A Steak Knife On Someone During Christmas Dinner.

Now that we have kids, I'm thinking that the time has come to establish some sort of tradition, something the kids can count on besides Mommy dodging questions about how Santa can enter our house through a glassed-in fireplace, how he enters homes without chimney's, and why Elsa gets any presents at all when she's been so blatantly insolent for the past month (okay, so this question I'm asking myself....I guess the answer is because she's two...because she's inherently evil...because this is finally my parents' cosmic revenge for the time I stole a box of Fruit Roll-ups and subsequently weaved a month-long web of lies, false accusations and evidence-planting before finally confessing to my crime).

When I was a kid, Christmas was filled with traditions. With things I could always count on year after year. Like advent calendars. And candle-light church services. And fighting with my siblings over who was going to get stuck with the snack pack of Raisin Bran cereal in his or her stocking while the rest got to feast on Sugar Smacks, Golden Grahams, or the Mother Of All Christmas Cereal: Lucky Charms. Seriously, this battle was waged every year....Raisin Bran was the lump of coal in our house. You got Raisin Bran, and Santa was basically peeing directly onto your head.

As we got older, our father introduced to us what became known as the Annual Check Hunt. Or, as it eventually became, the Annual Everyone Else Finds His Or Her Check Except Carrie, Who Will Ultimately Stomp Off To Her Bedroom, Ranting About Conspiracies And The Unfairness Of The Universe. Hunt.

The Annual Check Hunt was quite elaborate, now that I think about it. Our father would write a little story about Christmas, and embedded within the story were clues as to where everyone's check was hidden. Some of the clues were obvious: Race against the clock, Swept under the rug, The idea was shelved. As time went on, however, and our father got more creative (or perhaps simply crazier), the clues became a bit more...esoteric. If the story contained something about a mouse, this meant a check was stuck in the fridge, inside a wrapped slice of cheese. If the story had the word potato, someone's check was stuffed between the couch cushions. If a story made reference to the color red, someone's check was hidden in our mother's China cabinet.

Carrie usually had the hardest time finding her check. Not because the clues to its whereabouts were necessarily the hardest (though I do remember hers being in the cheese once), but because on a scale of 1 to 10, Carrie's level of patience was pretty much a negative google....Even less when my father would offer her more vague and cryptic clues as he looked on with a mixture of amusement and anxiety. And our mother's calm attempt to steer my sister in the right direction only incensed Carrie further:

My Mom: What's your clue, Car?
Carrie: I don't know, something about family legends.
My Mom: Oh, okay. Well, what sort of legends do you know about our family?
Carrie: I don't know? You're always taking about Benjamin Rush being some long lost ancestor.
My Mom: Okay. So do we have any Benjamin Rush paraphernalia anywhere?
Carrie: How the hell should I know? Do you have a constitution replica hidden somewhere? A powered wig stuffed in a cabinet? A bucket of leeches on the coffee table?* (Interestingly enough, all three of these things was a possibility)
My Mom: ...Noooo....
Carrie (sighing heavily and rolling her eyes): This is so stupid.
My Dad: What's the matter, Carrie? Not getting your whey?
Carrie: No, and Mom's just giving me stupid, annoying clues that don't make any sense.
My Mom: Benjamin Rush isn't stupid.
My Dad: Why are you telling her about Benjamin Rush?
My Mom: Because he's part of our family legend.
Carrie: Why, because some stupid long-lost great uncle said he was related to us?
My Dad: I think you're making this tuffet, er, tougher than it really is.
Carrie: Great, Dad. I guess I'm too freaking idiotic to figure it out myself.
My Dad: No, but it sounds like your patience is hanging by a thread.
Carrie: You think?

Eventually the game would boil down to Hot and Cold, which would lead Carrie into the kitchen, the fridge, and eventually into a half-eaten container of cottage cheese. Unless of course she just became so irriated with my mother, she simply gave up and stomped down the hall to her bedroom, loudly proclaiming that she hated checks, Christmas, cottage cheese, and pretty much everything else on the planet.

We developed other traditions--sneaking alcohol into the house through my bedroom window, cleaning out the fridge and playing Name That Leftover, and acting out entire plays where we each took on the role of a different family member (the first Christmas Jeff spent with my family, he had to play My Mother. That performance pretty much sealed the marriage deal for me). Each one brought my family closer. To a mental institution.

And so, my little family has some growing to do before we start getting strange. Or perhaps we're already there. Either way, establishing our Christmas traditions over the years will be a fun, interesting ride. I'm already scoping out places to hide my kids' checks. The butter dish looks like a good spot.

Merry Christmas, dear readers. Peace.

*For years our mother has cleaved to the idea that Benjamin Rush (our great-great-great-great-uncle's cousin thrice removed or something) killed George Washington with leeches. While I have found nothing online to support this theory, I will say that our mother has proclaimed all sorts of things, including that whales do not deserve to be saved from beaching themselves because they are the dummies who beached themselves in the first place. Ah yes...gotta love my mom.

Elsa's Greatest Hits

2010-12-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow Elsa will be 2 years old.

While I spare you the sappy, sentimental overemphasis that I cannot BELIEVE my daughter is 2, I would like to recount a few of her shining moments over the past year (which means the time she pooped in the bathtub and then tried to catch it with a toy basketball hoop will not make the cut)....

This was her first birthday, and her first time eating chocolate cake. I kinda opened a Pandora's box here. This child eats more sugar than some European countries. You should have seen the temper tantrum she threw on Halloween when Jeff confiscated her treasure trove of lollipops. Well, here...I'll show you....

Behold...the Tootsiepop

I WANT MY TOOTSIEPOPs!

F*ck my life

Anyway, my darling daughter has turned into quite a little pistol over the past year. This may be because she is almost 2, and therefore about the enter that whole "I Am Going To Have Everything My Way And If You Try To Contradict Me I Swear I Will Urinate On The Carpet Every Chance I Get" phase. Or this may be because genetics are starting to take their stranglehold on her, and she is poised to be the handful that certain other members of my immediate family were when I was growing up. How my mother managed to make it through all of our childhoods without drinking a drop of alcohol is beyond me. Perhaps the combination of Smartfood popcorn and peach-flavored Diet Rite she used to indulge in while watching Matlock and Murder She Wrote have some sort of Valium-like effect. That is the only explanation to how she managed to maintain a small slice of her sanity.

Still, Baby Els does have her sweet moments. Like her first steps. Which she didn't bother taking until she was 15 months...

Or the first time she saw creepy animatronic pirates burning and pillaging a fake city. That was adorable...

Or her first beer.....

Or the first time she sat in a box. Since, you know...that's right up there with first steps...

Or the first time she helped me bake brownies.

Or the first time she was mistaken for a boy. (We were trick-or-treating...I guess it didn't help that she was head-to-toe in Rollie's clothes....)

And I'm trying to be unbiased here when I say that Elsa is such a fun, spirited little girl, and I'm veeeery interested in what the next year with her will bring. If she's anything like Rollie was when he was two, you, dear reader, are in for some serious reading enjoyment.

Your enjoyment is my insanity.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Pea. You're the best.

Not Couture

2010-12-14T04:48:00.000-08:00

This past weekend Elsa and I engaged in the first of what I'm certain will be many violent, bloody battles that are as old as the invention of mothers, daughters, and those sweatpants with words woven into the butt:

We fought over her outfit choice.

My friend gave me a huge box of clothes her 4-year-old daughter had grown out of, and inside was a nightgown with The Little Mermaid on it. When Elsa saw it, her eyes lit up and her chubby little hands reached out for it in plain, unadulterated desire. All other thoughts of babydolls, boogers and dumping water from the bathroom sink into a coffee table drawer vanished as a single, obsessive idea took root and began to grow: From now on, this will be my second skin.

At first it was cute. She pranced around in the polyester gown and proudly showed it off to whoever would indulge her. Which in this house is Jeff, Rollie, and me. And the dog, but he only pays attention to her if she's either purposely dropping entire chicken nuggets onto the floor, or is preparing to climb on top of him and ride him around the living room.

That night we went to look at Christmas lights at Rollie's school, and instead of making her change into a normal, non-institutional-looking outfit for the trip, I just threw some sweatpants and a coat on her, not bothering to coax her out of the nightgown and into something sane, like a sweater with doggies all over it. She also wore a bright pink, floppy Minnie Mouse hat, because hey, what evening outfit isn't complete without an obnoxious sun hat covered with cartoon mice? Sure she looked like a crazy old lady--all she needed were a bunch of cats following her around--but she was warm, happy, and...gotta put this out there...pretty darn adorable.

When we got home, Jeff and the kids slept in a tent in the backyard (yeah, I know...probably best saved for another blog), so I just stuffed her in her sleeping bag, Ariel nightgown and all, and fled to the house where I spent a luxuriously lonely night in my bed, by myself, completely devoid of any nighttime visits from whimpering trolls. Aaahhhhh.....

The next day, however, when it was time to peel that crusty, well-worn nightgown from Elsa's little body, I was met with some resistance. And by resistance, I mean a full-blown, top o' the lungs screaming temper tantrum.

I understand her unwillingness to relinquish what she believes to be the Absolute Coolest Thing She Will Ever Wear. I myself have been known to wear the same outfit for days on end, convinced that not only was I the envy of every person who saw my cowgirl shirt with the real yarn braids hanging from it, but I was also so cute (think Shirley Temple meets Cindy Brady....although I was actually more like Cousin Oliver meets that nerdy girl in Head of the Class), that soon a TV executive would snap me up and make me into the next Small Wonder.

The thing is, I don't ever remember my own mother stopping me from fantasizing, and therefore wearing whatever the hell I wanted to achieve my dream of being a robot on a deliciously cheesy 80's sitcom. The only time my mother actually forced me to wearing something against my will, it was a green checkered pantsuit when I was in kindergarten...which may or may not have acquired a mysterious hole in the knee and was henceforth unwearable. Perhaps she learned her lesson, and from then on did not give a rat's ass what I wore, as long as I was clothed (although as I got older, I was never clothed enough for my dad's liking...he would have preferred I shop at Hoop Skirts R Us and The Turtleneck Emporium).

So maybe I shouldn't be so insistent that Elsa wear regular clothes all the time. Perhaps I should encourage her own individual style, and applaud her the next time chooses and outfit that says, Hey, I may barely be two years old, but screw the establishment! I'm gonna wear this Little Mermaid nightgown until it gets so tattered you can blow it from my defiant little body like dandelion fluff.

Besides...there's plenty of time to fight with her over much more important issues. Like not playing in her brother's pee-pee stream. This is a battle she will thank me for winning down the road....

Elsa wearing this Spring's collection

Elsa's Summer line

Santa, The Boogie Man, And Joe Namath Walk Into A Bar...

2010-12-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

This Christmas season has proven itself to already be very different from Christmases of yore. I feel quite ill-prepared to explain to an overly-inquisitive little boy the inconsistencies of Santa Claus.

To be honest, I'd almost completely forgotten about the magical effects of having your children believe that an obese man with a 41-inch waist and a giant sack of toys can enter your house through a 12" by 18" opening in your roof. And can be at the mall, the grocery store, the town center and your local Target all at the same time, sometimes with food in his beard, sometimes with glasses, sometimes with an entourage of groomers, photographers, and college students dressed as elves. There is nothing more magical than a 19-year-old co-ed dressed in candy-cane leggings begging scores of weeping children to smile, for the love of God, please SMILE.

In an attempt to explain this magic in simple terms, I sang Rollie Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Which is apparently quite a confusing song to a kid who's just grasping the ridiculous concept of flying reindeer in the first place.

Me: You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry....
Rollie: Why do I have to watch out?
Me: Well, not in a bad way. You just have to make sure you're a good boy.
Rollie: What will happen if I'm not?
Me: Ah-ha...listen....You'd better not pout, I'm telling you why...Santa Claus is--
Rollie: Tell me why, Momma.
Me: I am, just listen....Santa Claus is coming--
Rollie: Why, Momma?
Me: Rollie, lis-ten! Santa Claus is coming...to town.
Rollie: ....
Me: He's making a list...and checking it twice...
Rollie: Momma, I thought you were gonna tell me why I have to watch out.
Me: ...Rollie, I did. I told you Santa's coming.
Rollie: ....Is he coming to get me?
Me: No, Santa Claus is nice. He's going to bring you toys. I mean, if you're good.
Rollie: ...Am I good?
Me: Sometimes. Usually.
Rollie: ...But why do I have to watch out?
Me: Be-cause...He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness--
Rollie: But I'm bad sometimes.
Me: Well then, I guess you need to work extra hard to be good.
Rollie: But Elsa's naughty sometimes, too. Elsa's more naughty than me.

Which is true--lately Elsa has found herself in Time Out daily, whereas Rollie's have dwindled to once or twice a week. And Elsa's Time Outs are generally because she hits me when she's pissed. Just like her Auntie Carrie used to do, God help us.

Me: You both need to work on being nice.
Rollie: But Elsa does more than me.
Me: ...He sees you when you're sleeping...He knows when you're awake....
Rollie: Will he come to get me when I'm sleeping?
Me: No, Rollie, he's not like the Boogie Man. He's Santa. He's jolly. He brings presents and stuff.
Rollie: Who's the Boogie Man?
Me: ...Let's sing a different song.

This went of for several more minutes, with Rollie's chief concern being that Santa Claus is coming to get him, while he's sleeping no less. Santa sees him at his most vulnerable. If Santa were a 13-year-old girl he would freeze Rollie's bra and draw on his face with eye-liner while he slept.

Which might explain why every time we've encountered a Santa, Rollie has been reticent to sit on his lap. I'm not surprised, given the Boogie-Man-esque image Rollie has of him, coupled with the Jerry Garcia beard, the hearty laugh and the velour jumpsuit...if we didn't know better, Santa would seem like a hysterical crazy person who likes to drape himself in fur and velvet. Kinda like Joe Namath, but without the pantyhose.

The other issue I've run into with Rollie is that I left his presents in the back of our car and before I could transfer them somewhere in the house where Rollie wouldn't find them (which would probably have to be the laundry basket, since Rollie is apparently allergic to putting his dirty clothes where they belong), he saw them.

Rollie: What's that?
Me (Crap): Oh, that's nothing. Just some...stuff.
Rollie: It looks like toys.
Me (realizing the Target bags are spilling their contents--Mr. Potato Head, plastic dinosaurs, roller-skates--onto the floor): Well, they are toys, but they aren't for you.
Rollie: They look like they're for me.
Me: I know they do, but they aren't.
Rollie: Can I play with them?
Me: No, Hon. They're for another family who won't be able to buy presents this year. (Okay, so I know lying about benevolence probably goes against every creed in every religion, but in all fairness to me, we have been buying presents for families in need lately....just not these ones....)
Rollie: ...Won't Santa bring them presents?
Me: Well, yeah...but we are, too.
Rollie: Why?
Me (Sigh. How do I turn this into a life lesson? Or at least get him to shut the hell up?): Wouldn't you be happy if you couldn't have any presents at Christmas and someone bought some for you?
Rollie: But I've been good this year. Santa's going to bring me presents.
Me: You think so, huh? Santa must not read my blog.
Rollie: What's a blog?

Ah yes...I suppose I will save that conversation for another time. Preferably when he's 30.

Seriously though, despite what the contents of this blog might suggest, Rollie really is a good boy. I'd say about 85% of the time (although 50% of that amount is spent in slumber). Which is up from last year by about a billion percent.

Elsa, on the other hand....She needs to pull in some extra credit if she expects to find anything under the tree. Maybe Joe Namath will visit in the dead of night and leave her an autographed football and a well-worn pair of queen-sized Beautymist pantyhose.

The Buck Stops Here...Literally

2010-12-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

My father-in-law has become somewhat obsessed with his new DVD burner. He and my MIL have about five hundred thousand old VHS tapes, and he has added to his bucket list--right beneath inventing a robot that will simultaneously pressure wash his house and make him ice cream cones--the chore of transferring every single one of them onto a DVD. And making Jeff and I a copy for our own collection.

Some of these movies I wouldn't mind having, strictly from a guilty pleasure standpoint. Pretty Woman. The Firm. The Making Of Thriller. Some of them, however, I'm pretty sure will sit in our movie drawer like a hand-knit, three-armed sweater from a well-intentioned but clueless great aunt. Whitney Houston in Concert. Jaws III. Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot. The best use I can get out of these would be to use them as DVD decoys for Elsa--she can play with these, pull them from their jewel cases and load them into her Dora oven without me worrying that she's going to damage the movies I actually like. Nothing against Whitney Houston, of course. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice lady.

Anyhoo, one move my FIL copied for us was Bambi. Rollie has never seen Bambi before, and yesterday while Elsa was napping and I was trying to put the house back together after what appears to be a six-day potato chip bender, Rollie needed some downtime that didn't include him discovering how many animal figurines he could hide within the branches of our Christmas tree.

I put the movie on and sat down with my laptop beside Rollie, ready to get some work done while Rollie was regaled by animated wildlife and the happiness it surely emanated.

Yeah..... I don't know if you remember Bambi or have seen it recently, but that movie is pretty much a 67-minute-long attempt to permanently destroy your child's sense of security, his belief in the goodness of man, and his conviction that skunks are stinky and should not be brought home as pets.

I couldn't do much work while sitting there with Rollie, primarily because I had to field the multitude of thought-provoking questions Rollie started asking as soon as the opening credits finished rolling. Luckily for me, Rollie's recent interest in death, animals eating other animals and the whole Circle of Life thing has allowed me to skip over some of the more basic ideas of Animal Mortality and cut right to the chase, as it were:

Rollie (after hearing the crack of a gunshot during one of the Most Depressing Scenes In Cinema History): What was that, Momma?
Me: ...That was a gun.
Rollie: Why did it sound like that?
Me: That's just what they sound like, Love.
Rollie: Why are all those animals running?
Me: ...Because a hunter is after them.
Rollie (watching with concern as cartoonish feathers fly around onscreen--the result of panicked pheasants being blown out of the sky): Why is a hunter after them?
Me: Because...he wants to...eat them.
Rollie: Why?
Me (Ay-yay-yay...here we go): That's how some people get their food.
Rollie (likely getting ready to ask another follow-up question, but suddenly realizing that Bambi is looking for his mother): Where'd his momma go?
Me (oh crap): Um...his mother got shot. By a hunter.
Rollie: Is she okay?
Me: No. She's not.
Rollie: Will Bambi find her?
Me (seriously about to cry, between Rollie's look of bewilderment at the very idea that a young fawn can't find his mother, and the sound of Bambi's pathetic little voice calling out for her): No, sweetheart. She's dead. But don't worry....his daddy is there, see?
Rollie (who will not be distracted with the fact that Bambi's emotionally distant, ten-pointed buck of a dad has just shown up to explain to the weeping baby deer that his beloved mommy quote, Can't be with you any longer): Why is she dead?
Me: Because the hunter shot her, honey.
Rollie: ...Is the hunter going to eat her?
Me: I hope so.
Rollie: Why do you hope so?
Me (sort of forgetting myself as I feel the anger welling at the injustice of animated deer everywhere): Because otherwise he would have just shot her for pleasure, and that's messed up.
Rollie: ...Why is that messed up?

Sigh.

The movie didn't get any better. After the mother eats it, Bambi and his cohorts get twitter-pated the following Spring. Twitter-pated. Aka, horny. Yeah, try explaining THAT one to a 3-year-old. Thankfully, the next scene was a pack of wild dogs chasing Bambi's love interest up a hill, followed by a raging forest fire. Whew--I dodged the sex talk this round!

Yeah, I think next time we're at our in-laws, I'm going to request a copy of The Deer Hunter. Why not just go for the full-on mental breakdown next time Rollie and I have a few hours to kill on a rainy afternoon?

Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

It's the time of year when I like to sit down for ten consecutive minutes and jot down a few things that I am thankful for.

Since writing that sentence, I've gotten up three times--once to get Rollie a quote Special Treat for eating all his Apple Dapples, once to open a mini box of raisins for Elsa (who already got her Special Treat but God forbid Rollie get to have something and she doesn't at the Exact Same Moment) and once for letting Ollie outside so he can get away from Rollie, who was following him around the kitchen to offer him a lick of candy cane).

Still, I am thankful for these interruptions. It means that my children are healthy enough to eat candy at 6:30 in the morning. And my dog is intelligent enough to go in the opposite direction when he sees one of my children coming at him. And that my coffee is strong enough that I don't feel like going back to bed the instant my healthy children start whining for Special Treats while my dog paws at the back door to go poop in the yard.

I am so thankful that I am lucky enough to stay home with these little carpet pee-ers. Mainly because I can't imagine going to work all day long, and then coming home and squeezing hilarious exasperation into two hours that is usually spread out over the course of an entire day. Somehow it seems like finding Elsa shredding up an economy sized box of tissues all over my carpet would be far less endearing if I'd just come home from a long day of meetings, office politics and smelling the collective gas of three other cube-neighbors.

I am so thankful for my family, too. My parents are here, nestled on my couch in total silence because a commercial is on and my dad would rather listen to a legion of out-of-tune violins playing Mozart than a 30-second Snuggie pitch. And despite their getting weirder and weirder with each passing year (no joke--an hour ago my dad went onto the back porch with an empty milk jug he'd filled up with water so he could use it to "strength train" and my mother was asking for advice on how to apply icing to a cake because she's "never done it before"), I still adore them.

I am thankful for my siblings, most of whom are right now hurling toward my house by air and by interstate. I am thankful for the fellowship we will enjoy, sitting around the table eating turkey no one in my family had to touch (which means that it had virtually no chance of being ruined...unless my brother spills his beer on it). I am thankful for my quirky, off-beat childhood, which I think has contributed largely to my ability to behave inappropriately in a variety of settings. This includes Chinese restaurants.

I am thankful for my friends, without whom I would be curled up on the top bunk of Rollie's bed most of the day, being pelted by Matchbox cars and pacifiers from below as my children demanded I come down and reenact Toy Story 3 with them. I am thankful they all have children who can be as difficult and draining as my own, and that they aren't afraid to admit it. I am thankful when they seem to know more about motherhood than I do, and I'm thankful when I can dole out my own advice without them suspecting that I'm completely talking out my ass.

And I'm thankful for Jeff. I've known him half my life and he still surprises me. And makes me laugh. A lot.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, dear readers. May you enjoy every minute of the holiday (even if this requires you to pound an entire bottle of wine alone in your mother-in-law's bathtub). Cheers!

Maggots And Snails And Puppy-Dog Tails

2010-11-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

After three-and-a-half years of viewing our dog as this hairy thing that we walk and sometimes feed, Rollie has decided that suddenly Ollie is his new best friend.

Ollie is our 11-year-old Chow mix (mixed with what we're not sure, but I think it's part grouchy old man and part throw-rug). I've written about his life before our kids came along and ruined everything, but in a nutshell, here's an illustration for you: Ollie pre-kid = our furry, adorable son. Ollie post-kid = our stinky, inconvenient Swiffer.

Ollie is not a kid-friendly dog. He's not one of those dogs that kids can lie on and tug his ears, one that curls up at the foot of Rollie's bed or patiently allows Elsa to dress him up in bonnets and socks. He doesn't much care for our children, but tolerates them only because they still struggle to get food from their plate to their open little mouths without dropping at least half of it onto the floor. He's gained 5 pounds since our kids entered the scene. And even though he seems quite aware that our children generate an unending supply of vittles, he would just as soon smother them with his bushy tail than lick up their spilled mac&cheese.

Despite this, a few days ago Rollie began following Ollie around and talking to him. I'm not sure where Rollie's new-found attraction to our dog stemmed from, but his one-sided conversations usually go something like this:

Rollie: I love you, Ollie.
Ollie (lying on his side in the middle of the kitchen): .....
Rollie: You're my best friend.
Ollie (sighing through his nose): ....
Rollie: We're gonna grow up together, you know.
Ollie: ....
Rollie: You can come to school with me, and go on the playground and go to Publix.
Ollie: ....
Rollie: Would you like me to pet you?
Ollie (lifting his head and looking at Rollie like, are you serious?): ....
Rollie (edging closer to Ollie): See? Isn't this nice? You like being pet, don't you?
Sound of Ollie's dog tags jingling and his nails on the tile as he gets up and trots to a different part of the house.

Not that I mind seeing this unrequited love unfolding in my kitchen, but in a way it's sort of...unfortunate that Rollie is just now realizing that Ollie is our pet. I mean...Ollie's 11. What is that, like, 98 in dog years? Rollie is waiting until Ollie is essentially on his way to the Great Fire Hydrant In The Sky before he decides to fall in love with the dog. Here I was thinking when the day finally comes when Ollie trots through the Valley of the Shadow of Euthanasia, Rollie would care less. Now I'm watching Rollie plop down in front of the dog to read him If You Give A Moose A Muffin. And all Ollie wants is for Rollie either feed him some peanut butter or leave him the hell alone.

Yesterday Rollie seemed to accept that he and our dog weren't about to split a Best Friend necklace, and so he tried to substitute another animal in Ollie's stead.

A dead snail.

This snail has been hanging on our back porch for a few days now. I figured he was just extra slow, and didn't think much of him until Rollie came to me while we were in the backyard, holding the snail between his fingers.

Rollie: Look, Momma, a snail.
Me: I see that. Why don't you go put him back where he was?
Rollie: No, Momma, I'm gonna keep him. He's gonna be my pet.
Me: I don't think snails make the best pets, bud.
Rollie: But he's so cute. He wants to stay with me.
Me: Um...not sure if that's such a good idea.
Rollie: What can I put him in?
Me: Why don't you leave him outside and just visit him?
Rollie: Do we have a bowl I can keep him in? I can put him right next to my bed.
Me: ...Yeah, we have a bowl.
Rollie: Little Bill has a hamster, and now I have a snail.
Me (realizing that the show Little Bill must have been the inspiration behind Rollie's latest pet obsession): Ooooh...okay....

And so it came to pass that I pulled out Jeff's favorite cereal bowl, filled it with water and held it out for Rollie to deposit his pet snail.

When Jeff came home later and Rollie proudly showed off his new best friend, Jeff reaction was a little more sane than mine.

Jeff: This snail isn't a water snail, Rol.
Rollie: But he's happy in there.
Jeff: I don't think he is. I think we need to put him out in the flowerbed.
Rollie: No, Dadda. He's mine.
Jeff (studying the bowl): Are those baby snails in there?
Rollie (seemingly overjoyed that he is the proud papa of a bunch of squirming little baby snails): Where? Where are the baby snails?
Me: There weren't any baby snails there when we put him in the water.
Jeff (scrutinizing the bowl more closely): Oh...no...those are maggots.
Me: So that's why that thing smelled so bad.
Rollie: ...Can I keep them, too?

Their early relationship. I'm pretty sure Rollie was finding
some leftovers in his folds for Ollie to snack on.

Jeff took the bowl outside and unceremoniously dumped Rollie's pet snail and pet maggots into the flowerbed. Rollie looked on somberly, then ran back inside to look for Ollie. Who was busily licking up remnants of dinner from the floor.

Gender Bender

2010-11-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

Rollie has been on a kick lately. He has been categorizing things based on gender. People, animals, toys, articles of clothing. Some of these make sense: Elsa is a girl. Others...well...let's just say that I never knew his bedspread had a penis.

His new way of labeling genders has evolved from the classic Boy and Girl to a more advanced way of viewing the traditional models of male and female: Peacocks and Peahens.

It's all Jeff's fault. He and Rollie had an in-depth conversation about how peacocks are boys and peahens are girls. The next day on our walk, everything Rollie saw he tried to label. A bright red cardinal, a flower, a water fountain. When an old man on a giant tricycle pedaled past (don't laugh--my mom has one, too), things got a little...confusing.

Rollie: That girl on the tricycle is a peahen, Momma.
Me: Actually Rollie, that's a man.
Rollie (craning his neck for a better look): Why is that a man?
Me: What do you mean, why? He just is, bud.
Rollie: But he's on a tricycle.
Me: So? You have a tricycle. Are you a peahen?
Rollie: ...No.... I'm a peacock.
Me: That's right. So's he.
Rollie: ...But Nana has a tricycle.
Me: Yes indeed she does.
Rollie: Is Nana a peahen?
Me: Among other things.
Rollie: Does she eat peanuts?
Me: Sometimes.
Rollie: ... Does she have a big tail?
Me: No. She has big hair, though.
Rollie: Why does she have big hair?
Me: That I couldn't tell ya.

I don't know if it's a boy thing, a three-year-old thing, or strictly a Rollie thing, but his whole gender identification obsession strikes me as quite hilarious. I try not to emphasize to Rollie what toys he should prefer, what colors he should like, or what ballet move he should perform only in private. His favorite toy is a diecast Lightning McQueen, but his favorite color is pink. His favorite show is Dino Dan, but his favorite aisle at Target is the one with a bunch of Disney princesses encased in a plexiglass box (and they belt out musical numbers when you press the big button on the box. Yes, it's as obnoxious as it sounds).

So I suppose Rollie has a feminine side? He's part of a new generation of semi-masculine tomgirls? He's a Metrosexual Peacock?

And just when Rollie thinks he has the whole peacock/peahen gender bending riddle figured out, he sees something that throws him for an absolute loop.

This weekend I took the kids to our local PetCo to kill some time while we were waiting for Jeff to stop goofing around at the brewery and participate in some family bonding (which usually includes buying diapers, goldfish crackers and using about 50 thousand baby wipes to clean up the inevitable spilled milkshake from someone's carseat.)

It was Adoption Day at PetCo, and toward the back of the store were several cages with wiggling, panting, yipping dogs. As my children were cooing over a beautiful brown mutt in one cage, an older-looking dog paced in the cage next door, pawing at a rawhide on the floor. This dog didn't have much fur on her tummy, but did have six large, saggy dog-boobs, evidence that humans aren't the only members of the animal kingdom to suffer from the post-baby saggy-boob affliction.

While I was lost in silent commiseration with my fellow um...female, Rollie came over and peered inside the cage.

Me: Aren't these doggies cute, Rol?
Rollie: ...That's a boy doggy, Momma.
Me: I'm pretty sure she's a girl, buddy.
Rollie: But look, Momma. She's got a lot of penises.
Me (realizing that if I don't set the record straight on this one, Rollie may start assuming that all breasts are actually large, supple penises in disguise...which may ultimately put a huge damper on his dating life): Those aren't penises, Buddy.
Rollie: ...But they are, Momma.
Me: Trust me, they aren't.
Rollie: ...But he has so many.
Me: Yeah. It looks like that, doesn't it?
Rollie: ...I don't have that many penises.
Me (thank God): And you never will.

I suppose I could have explained the whole canine Crying Game to him, but some things are better left unsaid. At least in the middle of a crowded PetCo.

Swearing Mantis

2010-11-10T03:02:00.000-08:00

Tell me if this sounds familiar to you (and yes, I am looking for validation that I am a good, attentive mother and not a lazy, disconnected mom-slug):

So the other night after the kids were snug in their cages, I'm sitting on the couch with Jeff and we're rehashing the day's events. He's telling me about his meetings and emails and meetings and I'm listening with at least one, maybe one-and-a-half ears, offering the necessary commentary and support that any loving wife would (which means my mind wanders over to the Laundry, Facebook and Matt Damon only a few times).

He asks how my day was, and I try to remember back to the talking points. Not always an easy task, since sometimes my days blur together in one long, convoluted mishmash of picking up toys, yelling and scraping uneaten meals into the sink. But this day does contain some highlights that stand out. And by highlights I mean situations so frustrating I wonder what the return policy is for Mr. Stork (I kept the receipts for both children just in case).

And so I begin my soliloquy about the day. Right about the point where I'm relaying how I discovered that Rollie can reach the top of the fridge by scaling the counter and standing on his tip toes to pillage the stash of Halloween candy, I notice Jeff has a look on his face. It's a look I recognize, although usually it's because it's coming from my mother-in-law in response to something she's seeing my children doing that she silently disapproves of. Apparently The Look is hereditary.

Me: What?
Jeff: ...Did you see him do that?
Me: Yeah, I stood right there and watched him climb onto the counter like a friggin' lemur. No, I didn't see him do it, I was in the driveway with Elsa pulling weeds.
Jeff: .....
Me: What?
Jeff: Nothing....
Me: What?
Jeff: No, it's just....what if he'd fallen?
Me: ...But he didn't fall. It's not like I condone counter surfing. I was Out Side.
Jeff: Well, did you tell him he's not allowed to do that?
Me: Uh, yeah?
Jeff: What did you say?
Me (thinking about how I discovered Rollie munching on a piece of candy I knew had been on top of the fridge. I told him very firmly that I didn't want to ever see him climbing on the counters again, and his response was: 'But Momma, you didn't see me do it.' Somehow I don't think this will make Jeff feel better): I just told him to never do it again because it wasn't safe.
Jeff: He could have fallen and caved in his face.
Me: I know that.
Jeff: .....
Me: Come on, it's not like I can watch them every single second of the day.
Jeff (sounding like I'd just told him the earth is flatter than my post-children chest): I guess.
Me: No. Seriously. I cannot possibly keep watch over both our children all day long. There's no way.
Jeff: ...I guess.

And before I grow gigantic pincers, lunge forward and bite my husband's head clean off, I try to see things from his perspective: He's at work all day, leaves the house before the kids wake up and usually comes home after bath time. During the week, he only sees them for maybe an hour. In that hour, the kids don't leave his sight, mainly because they are so crack-happy that he's home they follow him around like a couple of intoxicated ducklings. The poor man can't even use the bathroom without one or both of them pawing at the door and yelling at him underneath it until he lets them in. So I can see how he wouldn't quite grasp the potential for me to be on one side the house trying to be productive and our children on the other side of the house, trying to see what happens when Rollie uses Elsa's tummy as a golf tee.

Sure, I could be vigilant 100% of the time. As long as Jeff doesn't mind eating air-sandwiches for dinner, wearing dirty laundry to work, and wading through piles of dog-hair, toys and stepping in puddles of God-knows-what to get to a bathroom with layers of grime on the countertops and orange rings in the toilet. Oh yeah, and as long as he doesn't mind me being a bug-eyed raving lunatic who flees into our closet and sobs in incoherent relief the instant he gets home.

As I explain these things to him, Jeff's Look if Disapproval morphs into one that says, I'm sorry for being an a-hole...you'll have to forgive me...I'm away from my children 14 hours a day and when I hear stories of them running around an environment with so many hazards, I get nervous.

Which is precisely why I'm all for investing in those giant cages I've been talking about. No Muss, No Fuss. Fill it with toys, food, a little hay, and bam. No more counter-surfing. No more goose-eggs. No more jumping on the furniture. I can already see the look on Jeff's face the day he comes home and finds me in the kitchen, whipping up a six-course meal that he and I can enjoy in harmony while our children playing peacefully in their matching cages.

Brat Stew

2010-11-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article entitled 16 Things I Have Learned About Being A Mother by Chris Jordon (a mother of seven, which means she is one child crazier than my own mother...if that's possible).

I think this title inspired me to view the other day as a series of lessons in motherhood rather than as a prime example as to why animals eat their young (and sometimes bite the heads off their mates...but we might save that for another blog).

So here we go:

Lesson 1: The phrase "Poopy Butt" is an unacceptable classroom expression.

Let me set the stage for you (and forgive me if I go off on a tangent--I've had a lot of coffee today): The day began in relative calm. Elsa and I took Rollie to school. Dropped him off without incident. Elsa and I went to Target for some Icees, diapers and Holiday Season Overload. (Side note: if I were Thanksgiving, I'd be really pissed off right about now. Halloween costumes on clearance, candy on sale, and Christmas Trees going up where foam tombstones and skull-shaped fog machines used to be. Where the hell are the gravy boats and cornicopias? Where are people supposed to go for all their pilgrim garb and ceramic turkey figurines? If Thanksgiving were a person, it would be the Middle Child of the holidays. It would be the one to shave its head, sneak out to 7Seconds concerts, burn incense in its room and get in suspended for hurling ice cream sundaes at underclassmen. Christmas is lucky Thanksgiving doesn't sneak into its room in the dead of night and cut off all its hair.)

So after a little mother-daughter bonding (which included cleaning up half of a cherry Icee from the middle of the hair-care aisle), we went to pick up my sweet, darling Rollie.

When I poke my head into Rollie's classroom, I don't even see him at first. His teacher notices me and ushers me in.

"Where's Rollie?" I ask.

She points to a corner of the room by a bookcase, where Rollie is seated with his back to the room.

Oh no.

"Rollie, you can come out now," his teacher says, "but why don't you tell your mommy why you were in Time Out?"

I kneel down to his level, but he won't look me in the eye. Gosh, if he ever wants a future in professional poker, he's gonna have to work on his tells big time.

"What did you do?" I ask. Several different ways. And I get nothing. Except a couple of I don't knows and one face-plant into my shirt.

Finally his teacher pulls me aside and says in her best ventriloquist impression, "He said Poopy Butt."

I almost start laughing, and immediately want to ask: So did he get in trouble for the Poopy or the Butt? In what context did he use it? Did he use the words consecutively? In a derogatory manner? Was he merely repeating someone else's phraseology? Ah, so many questions, so few Time Outs.

As we're leaving, I attempt to lecture Rollie about how it's not nice to hurt people's feelings by calling them names like Poopy Butt, but Rollie interrupts me.

"Momma, I wasn't calling Aiden a name, I was telling him a funny story."

"But Rollie, your teacher didn't know that."

"Momma, you said 'but.'"

"No, that's not the same as the Butt you said."

"Butt rhymes with But, Momma."

"....So it does."

Wow, so that went a little long. Guess I'll have to save the other fifteen things I've learned for another post (including the reason why I recently almost went Praying Mantis on Jeff). And this first lesson may not have made me want to cook and eat Rollie for dinner, but by the time Lesson Nine rolled around, every time I looked at my son I imagined his head as a personal pan pizza.

Until next time, loyal readers.

Holy Spit

2010-11-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

Here's another one for you....

Today when I picked Rollie up from school, I peeked in the room to see him sitting on the floor amid an assortment of foam blocks. He wasn't constructing anything with them, but just sort of rolling around in them like they were a bunch of dollar bills and he was Demi Moore.

His teacher spotted me and called out, "Rollie, your mom's here."

He paused mid-roll and grinned at me. What an angel, I thought. What teacher wouldn't find him to be just a complete joy and delight to have in class?

Then his teacher said, "Rollie, why don't you tell your mommy what happened today?"

I turned to my son, expecting him to start spinning tales of how he won a spelling bee with the word ostentatious, or that he constructed a Moses diorama with a real burning bush. Or that he at least followed the line leader out of the classroom without stopping to pick up and eat a piece of gum from the sidewalk.

But instead Rollie let out an Velociraptor-like screech and buried his head in a pile of brightly-colored bricks.

Confused, I glanced at his teacher. Maybe Rollie was just being modest, and she would regale me with stories of my son's genius.

"We had a little spitting incident," she said.

"Spitting incident?" Surely she must be mistaken. Surely she meant that some little snotty-nosed hooligan was spitting on my darling child out of pure jealousy. Surely you can't be serious. (I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.)

She shook her head, "It really wasn't a big deal, but he did have to go to Time Out, right Rollie?"

"Time Out?" I spoke the words as if Rollie has never ever in his forty-three months on this planet spent one second of it in such a place. As if the very idea of my son in Time Out was as incongruous as ...wait for it....wait for it....a stick figure in a Botticelli painting (sorry folks, it's been a long day. That's the best I could do).

At this point Rollie seemed to know he could no longer hide beneath the blocks, and decided to try a different tactic. He ran up and flung his arms around my legs, planting a big juicy kiss on my hip bone.

"Rollie," I pulled away and looked into his wide-eyed face. "Who were you spitting at?"

He put his finger up to his chin, as if trying to remember if he was even guilty of such a crime. Or perhaps trying to decide how to convince me that the spittee deserved the giant loogey Rollie delivered right on the cheek.

"Richard," his teacher said. "But it's okay. He went to Time Out for a little while, and he apologized to Richard, so it's all good."

All good? All good? Rollie's a spitter. God help me, I have a spitter. The teacher may as well have told me Rollie's been simultaneously eating paste, wetting his pants and playing with his wiener in public.

But it gets worse.

"Usually when I send Rollie to Time Out, he goes there no problem..." the teacher said.

My head started spinning. Usually? Like, is this a daily thing? Do they spit at each other like a class full of camels or is Rollie the only creepy germ-spreader of the lot? Is he a repeat offender? Is he already blazing a trail straight to juvy? First it's spitting at Richard, next it's pulling fire alarms and stealing lunch money? Should we stop saving for college and start saving for a good defense attorney?

"...but today he had a hard time listening..."

Oh. Dear. I no longer possessed the ability to speak. All I could think about were the times when I try to send Rollie to Time Out on the couch and he collapses and flails and sometimes when I come back to check on his I find that he has removed all his clothes and is walking across the back of the couch like Carrie Strug on the balance beam.

I must have been several shades of horrified, because his teacher added, "I can usually count on Rollie to be my good listener, so I guess he's just having one of those days."

Ah, yes. A small glimmer of hope that maybe Rollie isn't quite ready for the Boys Ranch. Maybe he is just having one of those days. Whatever the hell that means.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of investing in one of these:

Dr. Lector was never put in Time Out for spitting on anyone.