F@#king Toys

Sighing resignedly, I walked up to my husband.  "I just found a chick in your closet.  What do you have to say?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't notice." [snicker]

Tiny wind-up chick, you offend me, sir.  I wonder sometimes if I am the only parent out there who starts to feel like an angry troll when encountering kid toys in my room.  I don't mind as much when my stuff is appropriated/borrowed/outright stolen by my kids.  It is mildly annoying, but not really a big deal to me.  It's just stuff.

But don't be putting your stuff in my space.  It makes me NUTS.  I'm tripping over toy phones, tractors, books, art supplies, you name it.  One thing I care deeply about is my personal space.  When no one is looking, I literally throw the toys out into the hall, into their rooms.  I'm not talking about a gentle toss; I'm looking to impress the major league scouts.  The eight year old in me does a little troll stomp, then I move on.

I know, I know, some day I'll miss this, this and all the myriad messes and dramas that come with small kids, but right now?  You know in The Usual Suspects, toward the end of the movie, when Kevin Spacey turns back and says in a broken pitiful voice "F@#king cops"?

F@#king toys.

They grow up so fast...

Overheard from the other room, as DD watches some Marvel comics animated short online:

"Oh, for goodness' sakes!  Just push him in already."

Cool tricks I can live without (you maddeningly cute little buggers)

1.  When sitting half-awake next to your toddler who has woken up at 2 am insisting that he needs to poop, it is not quite as amusing as he thinks it is to show you how far his foreskin can stretch, or that he can make it "turtle" in the other direction.  Mommy made it this far without seeing and/or knowing this and was fine.  Mommy also doesn't think it is that hilarious that you just put your penis on Dora's head (Dora potty ring).

2.  Asking coyly if I had noticed her cool trick, my DD tries to get me to play sartorial 20 questions in the middle of Target.  Failing miserably (and crabbily), she takes pity on me and reveals that she didn't just get dressed, she got dressed over her pajamas and is, in fact, wearing two cozy layers.  This goes some way toward explaining why she wasn't freezing cold during the car ride to the store despite her refusal to wear a coat in 20 degree weather, and also why she didn't, like every other time we go to the store, complain that the refrigerated section was giving her frostbite.  Snazzy!

 3.  DS is learning what all he can do with his body (see #1 above), including his increasing ability to jump, hop, run, and so forth.  This means that I am called to witness all sorts of "stunts" -- ranging from hopping from legs together to legs apart (ooh!), running over and hanging off the footrail on the bed (ergh - don't break that/hurt yourself), and running in with both legs through one leg-hole of his shorts.  That last one cracked him up no end, and he insisted on going to bed dressed that way.  Thankfully he must have gotten uncomfortable at some point, because in the morning he was wearing his longjohn bottoms -- inside-out and backwards, but otherwise on correctly.

The True Meaning of MLK Day

We're sitting at the table eating lunch today, when I ask DD what, if anything, she learned about Martin Luther King at school last week.  I hadn't even thought about it until a friend with a kindergartener at another school asked what our kid had learned.  So I asked, and she told us they listened to/watched his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.  And we're chatting away (okay, so I'm droning on) about MLK and what he did and how he did it, etc.

All of a sudden DS decides to wade into the mix and starts yelling "It's my turn to talk!  It's my turn to talk!"  So once DD ends her sentence, I turn to DS and say, "Okay, buddy.  What do you want to say?"

"Um, King pokes me in my sleep."
"What?"
"King comes when I'm dreaming and pokes me.  He gonna poke me in my dreams."

Huh.  Interesting interpretation of "I Have a Dream."  What do you say to that?  I got nothing.

Birth day

Today is a national holiday:  my daughter's birthday.  She is SIX!  It feels like just yesterday they were telling me they could see her hair as she was crowning, that they were putting her on my chest, still covered in that white goo and looking at me with huge dark eyes like some kind of confused alien.  She is my biggest challenge (or at least ties with her little brother...) and my greatest reward.  I want to keep pinching myself, trying to get straight that I get to be her mother, that I get to watch the DD show every day.  Even on days when I am dying to change channels, it stills ends up having been worth watching.

I still feel a strong belief in the existence of God, or at least a higher power, a unifying force or cohesive fabric.  One of the things that keeps me there is her.  I can't bring myself to even think that I am responsible for making her, or creating her in any way.  I am good with my hands, but only a mighty force like God could have made something this beautiful.

Happy birthday, Sweet Pea!  Momma loves you.

My name is not Solomon

I remember when Thursday night = start of the weekend, at least unofficially.  Not anymore.  I was out after dark, sure, and I had a guy in my car.  I was taking him back to my place, planning on getting his clothes off and getting him into bed.

Reality check:  he's my two-year-old son.  Who's crying.  And his sister is also crying.  They are waging WWIII over a very small but very soft and pretty white lap blanket.  Each one has brought their A game.  She's sobbing passionately and making dramatic pronouncements about never getting what she wants.  He is very righteously playing the "I had it first card" and politely wondering what sister's problem is.  Technically, he did have it first, but when she requested it and I offered a trade for a larger blanket, he pitched his own back-arching sobbing fit.  I wasn't going to give in just because of that, but she ended up throwing it back at him just to shut him up.  (And she wonders why he always does that.  It's because it works!)  I ended up giving the blanket to him, because he did have it first, and that was the closest thing I had to a legal precedent.

Sigh.  I'm almost afraid to see what TGIF will bring.  Stomach flu and fist fights?  Stay tooned...

I'm Just Here for the Marshmallows

We went to DD's school "Math Night" tonight, and it was actually pretty fun.  The teachers came up with some interesting exercises, and it was fun watching my girl smoke her way through all of them.  I'm her mother and everything, but dang that kid is smart.

But the absolute best exercise was creating a graph out of Halloween marshmallows sorted by color.  I tried to "explore deeper"and turn it into a math problem by asking how many white ones we'd have to eat to match the number of orange ones.  Next thing you know she looked like a chipmunk preparing for winter, and I was left wishing I had faster fingers.  It's getting serious.  She's beating me to the processed sugary goodness.  I'm not ready for the apprentice to surpass the master.

The Top Three Requested Songs in the Party Bus Known as the "Black Car"

Mamma Mia
Whoop Sixxy-Six   (AKA "Route 66," in this case sung by Natalie Cole)
Hey Baby   (No Doubt, feat. Bounty Killer)

And I thought I was tired of the Veggie Tales CDs.  It's like a VH1 Behind the Music reunion, but without the booze.  Lots of shouting, everyone wants to be the lead singer, no respect for the roadie.

I need to come up with some more kid-acceptable tunes to add to the mix.  The "Black Car" has a reputation to uphold, after all.

Who needs pets when you have children?

Periodically I get this urge to get a dog.  Something little but fun, sweet, you know.  I realized on the way to work today that there's no need.  From the instant DS sat up in his crib this morning, he was a dog.  No "Hello, Mommy!"  Just "Woof!"  That prompted DD to resume her favorite role of cat.  It was impossible to get down the stairs without tripping on our two actual cats plus the two method-acting pets.

It's like living in the middle of an improv exercise.  And that's, in a nutshell, why I love love love my little family.