November 5, 2007 | Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

You’d think that with the extra hour of sleep we all supposedly got, that yesterday would’ve gone completely smoothly. Of course, I let the kids stay up later, because the only thing that sucks harder than being woken up at 6 on a weekend morning is being woken up at 5 on a weekend morning. (And you know, Monkey would totally be the rat who keeps pressing the bar for a food pellet, getting shocked, and pressing the bar again, totally bewildered by each successive shock. He never understands why we are not overjoyed to see him hours before dawn. “I had a good sleep!” he declares, jumping on the bed. “I am ready to get up now!” And then when I snap at him—in my defense, maybe on the second or third trip into our room when the clock hasn’t even made it to 7 yet—he is horribly wounded.)

Anyway, I had high hopes for yesterday, but I am a fool. (more…)

November 4, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Chickadee: So there’s Fred, and Tom—
Monkey: Sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
Chickadee: Ew, no, they can’t do that, they’re both BOYS!
Me: That’s okay, sometimes boys kiss each other.
Monkey: They do?
Me: Sure, we’ve talked about that before.
Chickadee: Oh YEAH! I remember now. And that’s called… that’s called… wait, I know… that’s called MORMONISM!
Me: Uhhhhhh, no.

November 3, 2007 | Offspring: ecstasy and agony

[Ed. note: Believe it or not, this entire exchange was extremely jovial, punctuated with laughter on both sides.]

Chickadee: So I had my piggy bank, and I tried to get the money out, except I shook it and shook it and— wait. I lost my train of thought. I need to start over!
Monkey: Stop.
Chickadee: So! I had my piggy bank, and I tried to get the money out, except I shook it—
Monkey: Be quiet, I said.
Chickadee: Whoops! Lost my train of thought! GOTTA START OVER! So! I had my piggy bank! And I tried to get the money out!
Monkey: Stop. Talking.
Chickadee: GOTTA START OVER! I had my piggy bank—
Monkey: Put a sock in it!
Chickadee: Lost my train of thought again! STARTING OVER!
Monkey: SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE!

[Here, a brief pause.] (more…)

November 2, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

I have a cell phone, and I love it and I hate it. I love knowing that if I’m out and have some sort of emergency, I can reach someone. I hate that it doesn’t always work, that I often forget to charge it, and that most often when it rings it’s not anyone I wish I speak to.

[Digression: It took the kids' school several months to figure out that someone had input our area code incorrectly in their computers. During that time, if they needed to reach me---which, thanks to my charming Boy Of Many Difficulties was more often than I'd like to admit---they'd call my cell phone and insist that my home phone was out of order. I would always pick up the home phone receiver, note the perfectly normal dial tone, and ask them to tell me what number they had on file for me. It took FOREVER to determine that the main number was correct but the area code was wrong, although, HELLO, why did it never occur to the dialer than it was ODD that we supposedly lived in a different district?]

So when my cell phone rang yesterday with a number I didn’t recognize, my heart sank a little. (more…)

November 1, 2007 | It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I love Halloween, but in the same way that I love tequila—a little bit goes a long way, and too much is, ah, regrettable. The dressing up? That’s awesome. Having candy? Yes, please. (Especially from the point of view of this whole parenting gig, because they go begging FOR ME and then share because they love me. Or because they leave their buckets on the counter and go to bed earlier than I do. Details.) But when Halloween falls on a weeknight and the kids keep wanting to do “just one more house,” at the end of the night while I’m trying to get cranky children into bed, I’m thanking the lord that Halloween comes but once a year.

We went trick-or-treating with some friends, and the friends had other friends come as well… friends-of-friends, I guess they were, and so there was a veritable SWARM of children in our group, which was made up almost entirely of boys. Chickadee walked along with me, most of the time, and my friend’s 2-year-old daughter rode in a stroller, and then ALL THOSE BOYS ran and galloped and frolicked and did things like respond to “THERE’S A CAR COMING!” by RUNNING OUT INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Because that’s what boys do. (more…)