Encore
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.
I tried not to laugh
[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.] read more…
Who?
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. read more…
Reese’s for breakfast
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. read more…
The road to hell is paved with justified purchases
You know what today is, right? No, no… not Halloween. I mean, yes, it IS Halloween, but that’s not what I’m talking about. OBVIOUSLY it’s Halloween, and I know that mostly because I spent three hours last night finishing Monkey’s costume, because I am nothing if not a champion procrastinator.
Today is the day our new dining room table and chairs are available for pick-up!
Oh, did I not mention that? About the dining room furniture? I totally meant to. I mean, inbetween NOT buying any furniture because THE MONEY, OH GOD THE MONEY and then HOORAY! IT’S ON SALE NOW! and this other big thing which was potentially going to cost a bunch of money and had me sulking around the house all I JUST DON’T GET TO HAVE ANYTHING NICE BECAUSE I’M A STUPID LOSER (yes, it IS hard being me, why do you ask?) and then that thing turning out to not happen—which sort of felt like FOUND MONEY—we then decided to buy the furniture and I totally meant to tell you about it. read more…
Why yes, they ARE speshul
I feel like I’ve been writing about the kids a lot recently… like, more than usual. It’s almost as though this is… I don’t know… some sort of mommy blog or something. Huh.
On the one hand, I know. I KNOW. They are amazing and wonderful to ME, but every parent thinks their kids are awesome, and what makes me think mine are any better or more interesting or whatever than anyone else’s? I mean, PRIDEFUL MUCH?
On the other hand, my children are no strangers to MAKING MY HEAD EXPLODE, so when they’re being fantabulous I do feel like I’ve earned the right to share it with the world, you know, just to offset things like the stories about boogers. That’s our motto of parental pride around here, you know. “SO MUCH MORE THAN BOOGERS!” we chant around the dinner table. Go Team Mirspawn! WOOOOOO! read more…
Go Sox! No, really, PLEASE GO
It’s not that I’m not a fan of the Red Sox, because OF COURSE I am a fan of the Red Sox. I find that down here in the south I am even MORE of a fan of the Red Sox because it rather feels like more of my identity is hinging on it, somehow; and so this has nothing to do with my love of the team, or even how it just never stops being funny to me to poke Otto and say, “Hey! There’s my favorite player, COCO CRISP! I bet he turns all chocolatey in milk!”
And I am delighted that they won the Series. Truly, I am. In fact, I would like to extend a very special, heart-felt thanks to them for sweeping it the way they did, because GOOD LORD I AM TOO OLD TO STAY UP THAT LATE NIGHT AFTER NIGHT. Honestly, the baseball, it is killing me. Er, was. Now I can go back to my normal geriatric schedule.
Not that I REALLY stayed up most of those nights, anyway. I would dutifully watch the first three hours or so with Otto out in the living room, and then a commercial would come and I’d suggest we get changed and watch the rest in bed. And then I’d fall asleep the second my head touched the pillow. read more…
Good blame
Chickadee was invited to a (co-ed, if it matters) birthday party for today. Said party was taking place at a local campground. Because it was a camp-out.
Now, I will fully acknowledge that I am an over-protective mama, but I found this very, very weird. I don’t know this kid, and I don’t know his parents. And despite the fact that I regularly spent a MONTH at sleep-away camp every summer by the time I was 8, and these were 9- and 10-years-olds, I found a party invitation to go sleep in the woods bizarre.
The party was slated to begin at 4, and I RSVPed to the hosts letting them know that Chickadee would be delighted to come for the evening but would likely not sleep over. This prompted the mom to mail me back with a veritable resume of their camping expertise, I suppose to ease my mind that she’d be in good hands if I elected to let her stay. She also offered up a sleeping bag and a tent, as if perhaps she thought this was a decision born of a lack of proper camping equipment. read more…
To love, honor, and motivate
When Otto and I got married, he was a 36-year-old bachelor. He’d never been married, never lived with a woman. People would elbow me and cast meaningful glances in his direction while joking about how it would take me a while to “train him” (as if he were a puppy who would require frequent newspaper smacks on the nose to learn not to pee in the kitchen), and his friends would shake their heads sadly while telling him “Dude, life as you know it IS OVER.” And I had been on my own with the kids for over four years; we had our habits—such as they were—and bringing Otto in was sure to make for some difficult changes, we thought.
I am not going to sit here and tell you that it’s all been smooth sailing, because change is hard. Period. We’ve all had to adjust and that takes some doing, plus it just takes time for new routines to feel comfortable. So has it been a cakewalk? Of course not. Has it been the stressful calamity some predicted, ending with Otto fleeing from the house to the safety of the garage—where no one shrieks about being touched or poked or looked at, where cups aren’t left to put themselves in the sink, where everything is where he left it and no one needs to sit on his lap right this second? Really no. read more…
Useful for life, useless for blogging
So guess what I did this morning! Go on, GUESS!
I put on a sweater. Because I was COLD. Which is sort of newsworthy in and of itself, I suppose (it’s official: my blood has thinned), but that’s not what I wanted to tell you.
No, actually what I was referring to was the fact that today we had the long-awaited 504 meeting to “get things straightened out.”
I drove over to the school this morning with trepidation, bracing myself (and here I reveal my overwhelming geekiness, fair warning) with the rather soothing thought that even if the meeting didn’t go well, it would surely yield so much blog-worthy goodness that it would prove useful, either way. This steadied my nerves and I headed in ready to do battle. read more…