I am not worrying. Nope. Not me. I mean, I'm sure it's PERFECTLY FINE that my son has had his new appliances in for three days and is still basically refusing to eat or drink. The fact that I've spent the last three days in the kitchen making smoothies, special yogurts, the smoothest mashed potatoes known to man, and turning cornbread into a beverage only to watch two sips/bites turn into an hour-long odyssey of fury and exhaustion---after which the food I spent so long preparing ends up in the trash---is no big deal. And even though the child doesn't have a spare ounce of body fat on him,...
I've seen a lot of people reference Stuff White People Like recently, either amused or outraged, and I have to say that I haven't yet decided which side of the fence I land on. Some of the stuff there is pretty funny, albeit irreverent. (Which is of course WHY it's funny....) Anyway, I've seen lots of discussion of item number 16, Gifted Children. We all have gifted kids! White people like gifted kids! Also, when our kids mess up, it's just because they're TOO gifted to function on this mundane plane of existence! This is what I'm supposed to believe, apparently. Well, first of all, I am...
The children are home, yes, and boy are their arms tired. (Ba dum bump!) Between the time change, the vacation, and the hellish trip back, they are exhausted beyond all reason. Waking them up yesterday morning for school made me feel like a card-carrying sadist, and yesterday afternoon as first one and then the other melted down while we were out, they took turns pulling themselves together out in the car while I watched from twenty feet away. Chickadee took that opportunity to read a few pages of a book and then slink back over to me and apologize; Monkey clambered into his seat and...
Well, THAT was an exciting weekend. Sometimes my life is just so darned thrilling, I can barely believe it. I dunno... the whole Leap Year thing, it feels like we should mark the day, somehow. We're always saying "I just need a few more hours in the day!" and then we get an entire extra day, and what do we do? Well, I don't know what YOU do, obviously, but I spend it just like any other day, and then I feel like I've wasted my opportunity to catch up. Now I have to wait four more years to blow it the next time. Sheesh. Actually, we didn't spend Leap Day COMPLETELY like any other day. One...
Remember those "choose your own adventure" books? I remember how excited I was when they first came out. And then I realized that no matter what I did, I always picked wrong. You've come to a fork in the path! Do you go left or right? *I choose left and turn to the page directed* Too bad! You walk three more feet down the path and fall into a trap, breaking every bone in your body, and are then eaten by a pack of hungry goblins. Sorry! Story of my life, man. STORY OF MY LIFE. (Somewhere in the back, Otto is now going, "HEY!" Okay, I don't ALWAYS pick wrong. But let's just say I manage the...
Do you remember a while back when I decided that I wasn't going to let my children have any sleepovers until they were, I dunno, TWENTY? Actually, I think I've decided this MULTIPLE times, on account of sleepovers are a tool of the devil. Children are lured in by promises of extra-big fun---surely far huger than a normal playdate, because there's a decent chance of a sleepover involving bacon---and then something tragic inevitably happens. You doubt? Allow me to remind you of Exhibit A. Sure, that was years ago, but the point is that SLEEPOVERS ARE A TOOL OF THE DEVIL. I know I said that...
Yikes. I appear to have, um, struck a nerve yesterday. I'm well aware that people do what they have to do; heck, I did the single mom thing for four years, so you don't have to tell ME. I get it. I am just sometimes amazed and overwhelmed by everything that needs doing (and how much of what needs doing involves me living my life in the car). I also feel like perhaps I wasn't clear in pointing out that I can ONLY manage all of this, now, not just because of my flexible job, but also because of Otto. The kids have wanted to take piano for YEARS. It just seemed like too much, to add another...
I'm one of those people... you know, one of those annoying "Everything happens for a reason!" types. Now, I never use it as a means to deny the inherent suckitude of a situation, and in fact when I miscarried my first pregnancy I entertained many intricate and violent fantasies of what I'd like to do to the nosy old biddy who was our landlady at the time, every time she assured me that it was fine because "everything happens for a reason," but on a grander scale, yes, I think things do tend to come together as they're meant to. (Even when that means ending a sentence with a preposition,...
A few days ago I finally made a call to the orthodontist here, figuring that it would take a while for them to get us in, but also figuring that it wasn't a big deal. You may remember our first orthodontic visit and the subsequent tooth extractions, lingual bar insertion, and gum graft; really, poor Chickadee has had enough dental trauma to last a lifetime, already. But mostly, now that all of that is done, we are "watching and waiting" and so I knew there was no rush to get her in to be seen. What comes next is braces, but not for a while. However, I knew we needed to get established with...
