On Saturdays Monkey goes to a social skills group. It's a nice little thing where he and five other kids who can't seem to interact with others for longer than ten minutes without having a big hairy hissy fit all work together to learn new things. Like how to read others' facial expressions! Like alternatives to screaming in frustration! Like how to complete a given task for a trip to the prize box! The sad truth is that when Monkey tells me about a kid in the group who can't grasp something that he has no problems with (for example, empathy isn't one of his issues; he can read facial...
Today many wedding-related items arrived in the mail. (Again with the wedding? Sheesh, could I shut up about the wedding already? No, apparently I cannot. But in about a week and a half I'll stop, I promise.) First I found Otto's wedding ring flung to the side of my steps by my alert and caring FedEx delivery man. I was here at the house all day, so I can say with some certainty that he drove up, threw the package out of the truck, and drove away as quickly as possible. I'm sure his failure to ring the doorbell and HAND the package to me was out of concern for my well-being. He probably...
My children are having a rather boring vacation week. I've been working all hours for the last couple of weeks, wedding planning is coming down to the wire (who told me the worry ended with shoe selection? THEY LIED), we're still keeping the house clean 'round the clock in case anyone wants to stop by and buy it (would you like to buy it? it's... house-y!) and it just isn't a great time to schedule some Big Fun. Add this to my already towering pile of mommy-guilt, I guess. So far the most exciting part of vacation week has been the Unlimited Popsicle clause. Basically, for $2.99 I've bought...
I cannot stop with the goats. Goats, goats, everywhere. My hair is like a flock of goats, and my children, they are like a herd of goats. I was surveying the state of my house this evening and didn't feel even a little guilty about accusing them of being a herd of goats. Actually, that may be slightly insulting to goats. I'm pretty sure that goats eat EVERYTHING, so if they were TRULY goats, instead of eight empty cups and two pop-tart wrappers and assorted popsicle sticks being strewn across my family room, they would just eat it all and leave the area tidy. That might be good. (But then...
I gave Chickadee one of these for her birthday today, and she promptly ran off and shot several feature films destined to be blockbusters. That's because for the third day in a row, school continues to be underwater closed. Chickadee was kind enough to allow her brother to participate, and the only thing I love more than the giggles in the clip below the fold here is Monkey's response when told to "say something intelligent." Prepare to be stunned by my children's brilliance and maturity. (Also, by my excellent parenting. If you listen closely, you can hear me calling from the next room....
Tonight I made two dozen cupcakes with PINK frosting, because it HAS to be PINK, and no, it could not be the convenient can of STRAWBERRY frosting, it needs to be BUTTERCREAM. Pink buttercream. With sprinkles. Flower-shaped sprinkles. The cupcakes in question are for school tomorrow, assuming that there IS school tomorrow, which is not a foregone conclusion, you know, because we haven't had school yet this week. (In fact, I'm having a bit of deja vu, although fortunately this time I am enjoying the periodic glugging of my sump pump rather than bailing out my basement.) But you assured me...
Tonight the kids and I finished reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door (the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time). In the final chapters, our protagonists are fighting Evil itself. The life of young Charles Wallace hangs in the balance, but so too does the future of all living things, all forces of good and rightness. The kids snuggled up, one on either side of me, and Chickadee kept interrupting. "I don't like this," she would say, "this is scary and I'm afraid Charles Wallace is going to die." "Mama!" Monkey would add, "what if this story was REAL?" I did not---could not---tell them that...
At dinner tonight the kids asked if I have any pictures of myself from when I was little. I was impressed by their maturity, you know, because there was a time not too long ago when both of them would've insisted I sprung from a pod as a full-grown mother, never having eaten marshmallow breakfast cereal or practiced kissing on my poster of Rick Springfield in a past life. I assured them that I did, and when I was done eating but they were still flicking rice at each other, I went and grabbed my baby book. My mother gave it to me a little while ago, and I knew there were a bunch of school...
Tonight my children bounced off of one another and careened around the upstairs and generally behaved with good---if somewhat frenetic---cheer. When I flopped down onto my bed and asked if we would be reading tonight, Chickadee rushed to my side. "No," she said, putting her hand over our book (which was still sitting on my nightstand), "I don't want to read tonight." "Really?" For my kids to say they don't want to read is akin to declaring that they're not in the mood for oxygen. It never happens. "Why don't you want to read?" "I would rather have some quality family time," she replied,...
