Category Archive

In our continuing quest to tear Miss M and Ay-ya-ya apart, the moms determined that a playdate would not be possible today because of A’s doctor’s appointment.

I took my kids to the backyard playground for 25 minutes, until grey clouds loomed so close I hustled them out. But as we got to the lobby I saw A’s mom coming up the driveway with her three daughters in tow. “Back from the doctor already?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I forgot my car keys and didn’t realize until I was halfway down the block.” (I instantly agreed to watch her kids so she could run upstairs and get them, understanding that she could do it in a quarter of the time without them.)

“I switched strollers,” she continued, “so my brain…”

“Stop right there,” I said. “You don’t have to explain any further.”

And now I return to my rush-rush freelance assignment from hell.

At lunch today I was the only adult, among six, without a paying job. Two professors. A lawyer. An accountant. A hotshit political consultant who is writing a book. I was tapped as the person who has a lot of time to do pleasure reading.*

But my children ate their lunches without prodding and were generally well behaved. (There were two rooms full of Someone Else’s Toys.) So there!

Maybe I should have mentioned that I have a devastatingly witty blog?

* Heh. I stay up late Friday nights and ignore the kids between 8 and 9 Saturday morning to achieve this. I don’t really read during the week unless I am totally sucked into a book.

Last night AM was tossing and turning and coughing next to me. Before I figured out that he really was sleeping and I could let him pull that crap in his own bed, I had a startling thought.

I had responded to NSLS’s (newest) post about baby gear last night. I knew that I had mentioned a funny story about AM. But, I believed, I had used his real name. Oh dear*, I thought. What do I do? Do I email her and ask her to edit her Haloscan? Is that idiotic? This is my just desserts, I further thought, for having blog identities so close to the real thing. I was bound to screw up sometime.

But seeing as how it was 1:30 am and I was supposed to be sleeping, I decided to deal with it in the morning. Especially because I realized that many of NSLS’s regular commenters…are people I have emailed with often or met IRL…and already know AM’s real name. Ah, the Internets. How they totally mess with my mind.

And the “of course!” ending to this story? I had used his blog identity after all.

* The G rated version of what I was actually thinking.

Thoughts upon knifing open my first Jersey Fresh ™ Sugar Baby watermelon of the year:

“Oh shit, there must be 500 seeds** in here!”

* Apparently, there is some debate as to whether the way to breed seedless watermelons constitutes genetic modification or plain ‘ole hybridization. But you’d be hard pressed to find one that’s “certified organic.” So spaketh Teh Internets.

** For just the adults, it would be a minor inconvenience. But because Miss M will not even eat the soft white seeds that are part and parcel of any watermelon experience…quelle disastre! Telling her–or AM, for that matter, who, rather like a goat, will eat anything–to pick them out is not an option.

temporarily back in a diaper so i can breathe for six seconds….whew…..

peeing while on the potty is ok (a little whining, but not bad overall), but she won’t tell me when she has to go. makes things frantic when she’s off the potty and boring when she’s on it.

am is staging a coup d’etat because he realizes my attention is elsewhere.

i may never leave the house again. (how do people do this?)

i have been up since 5, but neglected to move my car from the wrong side of the street by 11:30. 

i still have no idea if i am doing this the right way!

did i mention my inlaws are going to be here in three hours for a birthday dinner (only 1/3 made) and cupcakes (made!)? the house is a mess, but there will be other adults here! one for each kid and one for the kitchen! hooray!

My subsconcious has been giving me a workout lately. Anxiety dreams (failing out of, wait for it, vet school–What?!–and being consoled by my mom), weird stuff (a public pool as deep and large as a lake), and, hey, bloggers.

Last night Chichimama and I were somewhere nondescript. (How’s that for enthralling?)

Our kids were nowhere in the dream, but guess who was?

Phantom’s Baby Blue.

How did I know it was BB?

Because we had a discussion about Big Papi. Then she informed me that “the Yankees suck.”

LG should be wicked proud.

Not channeling Winnie-the-Pooh, just tagged as a Thinking Blogger by the clever, sharply funny, and lovely CCW. I am honored and slightly embarrassed, because mostly there’s a lot of drivel here. Some day I hope to have my own well-rested and uninterrupted thoughts at the rate of at least once or twice a day, instead of once or twice a week fortnight.

The rules are as follows:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Everything I read on a regular basis offers me something, but here are a few standouts.

Anita at This, That, and the Mother Thing. I’ve been reading Anita’s blog since 2003. (Isn’t that forever in Internet time?) She is an inspiration for anyone attempting to balance work and life, parenting and life, or self-improvement and life. And she has a vegetable garden that makes me jealous every summer. I could blame my presence in the blogosphere on her–I eventually started reading the (sorely missed) mc via Anita, then got from mc to Phantom and Phantom’s blogroll and that was the end of life as I knew it.

Speaking of Phantom Scribbler….She’s probably been nominated a gazillion times, but she deserves it. Interspersed among all the self-deprecating remarks and cute kids are wonderful posts about books, politics, and the world at large. And toddler nursing. Plus she runs the best mid-week therapy session on teh Internets.

Moxie’s blog, but in particular her Ask Moxie column. Take the best of parenting columns, advice columns, and recipe columns, put them in a blender with coconut milk and you’ve got Moxie. She answers every question with research, thought, and grace, then opens up the comments for other parents to help each other. An invaluable resource for me, and when trying to help others I’ve got to really think and reformulate my own parenting processes. It’s kind of like having a life editor right there in the computer.

Chichimama at A Day in the Life. She’s witty, her kids are cute, and she gives me hope that one day (soon!) I’ll be able to sleep at night and cook dinner and come near to sanity again. Some of her posts literally changed how I approach Life-at-the-Moment and now things are better.

jo(e) at Writing as jo(e). Confession: I don’t read jo(e) every day. Because her blog is like a rich dessert. It makes me think, wonder, and laugh. I only treat myself when the kids are sleeping, the sink is empty, and I don’t have other distractions. Her writing is beautiful and just has this amazing calming effect on me. (Her kids are almost grown, so she’s been where I am now, and come through to the other side with her Self intact and still improving. Whenever she leaves a comment for me I feel like the Queen stopped in to say hello.) Just wow. The pictures she posts are icing on the cake.

This morning in the wee hours (4? 5?), I was nursing AM for the second or third (or fourth?) time overnight.

I was on my right side.

And I looked over my left shoulder, to where he normally sleeps, and had a panic attack because I didn’t know where the hell he was.

It didn’t last for more than two seconds, but long enough to realize I had to blog about it. Assuming I remembered. (And I did!)

Apparently, my brain is full.

Full of what? (We’ll skip the obvious reply.)

Among other stupidity, the lyrics to Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita.” (I discovered this yesterday when I heard it on the radio.)

I wouldn’t object so much, except that I don’t particularly like that song, nor did I in 1987. I enjoy grooving to many other Madonna songs far more.

What a waste.

Just now, instead of putting on a video for Miss M while AM nursed to sleep, I pleaded with her to play quietly in her room with her Little People. The seventh (or so) request was the charm, and AM got a solid six minutes of blessed silence in which to fall asleep and completely ruin the rest of my Friday schedule.

I tucked him onto the floor of our bedroom and popped my head into Miss M’s room. “Octopus very clean,” she told me, proffering the turquoise octopus from the Little People Pirate Sea Skiff set.

“Oh,” I said, not really sure where she was going with this.

“Octopus very clean,” she repeated. I took the octopus and there was some tacky transfer to my hands. The scent was unmistakably grape-y and sweet. What had she gotten into? The infant tylenol? No, I got it.

Her toothpaste. (Aside: Oh, no, did they stop making this fluoride-free?)

She had used her (brand new, as of last night) toothbrush and her (brand new, as of last week) toothpaste to “clean” her octopus. In a bizarre twist of fate, I didn’t yell; I merely took the toy to our bathroom to wash it off and survey the damage. Miraculously, there were just a few purple dots in the sink, and the toothbrush was carefully laid on top of the toilet tank.

Someone without kids would probably be horrified that I had left her unsupervised for 10 minutes, that she had gotten into the toothpaste (our unsafe-to-swallow fluoride-filled Colgate Total was right next to hers), or that I meted out absolutely no consequences besides, “Oh, Miss M, please only use your toothbrush for your mouth. And only when a grown-up is helping you.”

I just lost my head because I was so entirely relieved that my bathroom (newly cleaned) wasn’t awash in sticky purple ooze. And she had ”cleaned” only one toy. Hallelujah to that. The rest is just funny.