Friday morning giggle

Riley just saw a photo of Michael Jackson:





"That's funny!", he says. "That woman has no nose."

And what's with the "Burger breath" t-shirt?

And it's back to Burger King

OK, has anyone been to McDonald's and received their new Jungle Book Happy Meal toy? I spent AN HOUR trying to put the thing together. Other parents would look over at me in Spatial Relations Hell (that's level 4 for you Dante lovers out there) and caution their children, "Mommy will TRY to put it together for you, but it seems like it might be a little HARD."

Eventually, I gave up, and let them play with the little Ka snake they gave us. Riley didn't skip a beat - he put it together in a strange new way and then promptly threw his little creation at his sister. Bella threw hers right back and, ALAS! a new fun snake-tree-house-throwing-game was born.

Even so, I think we'll be hitting Burger King from now on, because I'm a retro junkie and I used to hang out in the back of a record store when I was a kid.

But one plus, in the spirit of the crusade to be nice to other mothers, I did make a friend today at McDonald's. I don't know her name, but she couldn't put the damn tree house together either.

Nice to meet you, cute skinny woman in a jogging suit! See you at Burger King!

Chicken and french fries

Um, yeah. Gotta love that sitemeter.

Anyway, I am recovering from Vomitfest 2005, in which *I* was the star.

I. Feel. So. Blessed.

Really.

I will post more on vomiting later, and you can decide whether it was food poisoning or not. But for now, it's time to collect the kiddos and head over to the last week of Duel Master cards. Oh, and I need to pull Adelyn away from the cat's food.

Am I a good mother or what?

Been there, done that.

Oh for goodness sake - everyone's talking about the big Judith Warner article in Newsweek. Maybe I'm a slacker mom and that's what's keeping me from getting my panties in a bunch about the whole thing - or maybe it's just the dirty sweatpants - but I don't think the article is terrible. Quite the contrary, I was thrilled when I saw it.

Bloggers everywhere are debating the merits of Warner's article, but I think they're missing the point - we get it already because we are mothers. So what if she's repeating the same tired mantra? She's doing it on the cover of Newsweek! Of course the article doesn't shed much light on my existence.

I know who I am.

But now, thanks to Judith Warner, people are talking about and debating the trials and tribulations of motherhood - people who are NOT mothers.

People with penises.

Corporate America.

Wall Street.

People who do not actually subscribe to Parents and American Baby and Family Fun.

People who don't get it - and have never thought about the financial and emotional toll of raising a family - are being sensitized to the issue in one of America's leading news magazines.

I can't complain. I am, however, thrilled that people are using their voices to generate dialogue about motherhood. As a mother and frequent reader of countless "Mommy Blogs", it's what I do anyway.

But now, thanks to Judith Warner's article, I'm pleased at the thought that there might be more people listening.

Thank you Judith Warner. Talk hard.

Yesterday she didn't, but...

...today she crawls!!

She's a bit promiscuous, isn't she?

A small sampling of Bella's strange bedfellows...

You know you're having a bad day when...

I just flipped out on Bella for torturing Adleyn for the gazillionth time today, and put her in time out. Riley went flying up the stairs and came back with his "magic wand" of nerf darts.

He pointed it at my stomach and exclaimed passionately, "I'm trying to make you nice!"

The Feminist Mystique

The women in my life are giving me so much material that I don't even know where to begin.

My mother is certifiably crazy. Those of you who know me in real life (and are pretending not to be here - I SEE YOU!!) know this already and the rest of you will likely get snippets over time reagdring just how fucking nuts she is. For the sake of catching up quickly, she was always batty but about 13 years ago she and my father finally split up - ever since then she has been stark raving mad. She has terrible coping skills, spends above her means and then hoards tons of crap, causing her to have a very messy house. We actually stay at my grandparents' home when we visit because my mom's house is not in a habitable condition for my kids, even temporarily.

My grandmother gives the appearance of being less nuts than my mother, but that is a facade. Her mother died when she was 16, and she helped raise her younger siblings. Grandma simultaneously despises conflict, and yet she exacerbates everyone's issues by enabling. She and my mother are extremely enmeshed, and live about two blocks from one another.

I consider myself to be the smart one, as I've moved two hours away.

However, when we all get together, there is this crazy dynamic that helps me remember why I moved. Our conversations usually go something like this:

*
*
*
*

No, never mind. I couldn't even type a sample conversation without my head exploding.

Instead, here's an example of my mother's skewed thought processes:

She tells me a story about a woman in a nearby town who recently blugeoned her 14 year old daughter to death. It seems she was fine - totally FINE! - until her husband left her . She was taking Zoloft but that's besides the point - she was FINE!, totally stable -but then she lost her house and so she and her daughter moved in to her mother's house. Then they lost her mother's house due to financial problems (totally not their fault!) and then the child's father had the audacity to file for custody even though he didn't really give a shit about his daughter - he was just trying to be an asshole. So the mother felt she had no other choice but to kill her daughter and attempt to kill herself. And she was FINE before all he screwed her over! Really!

Do you know how she ends the story?

"They should hang the Son of a Bitch."

Yes, she's talking about the Dad. I don't actually recall her mentioning anything about the woman, except that she was fine, FINE! until her husband left. I asked if maybe the father had filed for custody because he saw that his ex-wife was too unstable to care for their daughter - but no, she was certain that wasn't the case - it was just because he didn't want to pay child support!

Can you tell that she's still bitter about her divorce?

She and I don't get along terribly well, leading Riley to say things like, "Will you two just stop fighting!" whenever we are together. I said I would work on that for Lent but it's not going terribly well.

Anyway, she adores my Bella and I am absolutely TERRIFIED over where she will fall into this madness. I'm holding out hope that having two daughters was a blessing from God, in order to diffuse our ancestral insanity (Mom & Grandma each have only one daughter), but for now, Adelyn is too young to interact much with them in any meaningful way.

Bella, on the other hand, is not, and she idolizes them both (especially my mother). Unfortunately, she is beginning to show symptoms.

Exhibit A:

We went in her room the other night to check on her after she'd gone to sleep. Alas! She's not there! But she is hoarding stuff on top of her bed. Hmmm.




So where was she? Here is Exhibit B:




Yes, Bella was sleeping under her bed. With her pink poodle and countless other stuffed animals, of course. Would a sane person do that? Huh? Huh?

Exhibit C has to do with $100 playgroup. Yesterday, she and her friend went into my neighbor's bedroom and covered themselves with Triple Paste and Vaseline. This was what she looked like after we cleaned her up:





Now really, what sane person would do a thing like this? Unless of course, you wanted to put your hair in pigtails reminiscent of Pipi Longstocking:





We had to put cornstarch in her hair to try and get it out, but it didn't really work:




Exhibit D is quite simple - my mother tells the same stories over and over agin. Bella wants me to read her the same stories over and over again.

Coincidence? I think NOT!

I am getting rather frightened by the whole thing. Now, as for the vaseline, thank God for the Internet, because they have whole message board dedicated to getting vaseline out of your kid's hair. I am going to try baby oil and Dawn dish soap tonight.

Citrus fresh scent! To go with the insanity!!

I need lots and lots of luck. Please pray for us.

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Shout out

I have so many comments! I just wanted to say thanks to Christine and Rowan for the site traffic, and to everyone that's stopped by, particularly those who have said hello. Hello! It's definitely nice to get some readers, though I didn't expect to care if I had any when I started out.

Don't I sound like a veteran? It's been a month.

Also, does your husband take risks with your glassware? Mine likes to put delicate highballs in the bottom rack of the dishwasher. The kicker is that they never break. I mean, how can you say "I Told You So" when nothing bad happens? Huh?

A post about my nipples and other things, like just how smart my kids are

Once, after Riley's horrific birth, a lactation consultant came into my hospital room and told me that I had "nipples to die for." This, I must admit, was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I know that sounds lame, but I mean, the woman looks at nipples all day long. Ever since then, my breasts (or mainly my nipples) have belonged to my children.

So fast-forward to me nursing Adelyn. As an eight month old, she is finally questioning where her milk is coming from. She has recently taken to curling up on my naked breast and exploring my nipple when she's done drinking. It's really an odd sensation, to say the least. First, she grabs it and squeezes. Then she tries to pick it off my breast so that she can hold it up and look at it more closely. Once she gives up on that quest, she flicks it and looks up at me and laughs when I squeal in pain.

Now, even if you've never breastfed, I'm sure you've encountered a man that was a little too rough with the goods once or twice. It hurts. But I'm really rather assertive and have therefore never put up with this from a man for very long.

Riley had this thing when he was Adelyn's age where he thought it was quite funny to bite me with all four newly acquired teeth and then giggle furiously when I cried out in pain. I tried everything to get him to stop and eventually had to transition him to a bottle - this is when I found out that I hate making formula and cleaning bottles more than getting my nipples bitten, but alas, it was too late.

What I think is neat about all of this (yes, ever the optimist with the sorority girl vocabulary) is how she seems to be just so curious about her food supply. It's rather advanced, if I must say so myself.

Bella, by the way, was an angelic nurser. She gently caressed my breast while she ate and looked up at me adoringly, which is why I nursed her for 15 months. I actually cried when she weaned herself.

Oh, how I long for those days. I thought girls were supposed to be more gentle than boys? I am in trouble with this littlest one.

Since we're once again speaking of milestones, Riley also did something cool this week. He and Bella went to "lunch bunch" for the first time (isn't that a silly name?) and when I picked them up, I asked Riley who he played with. He kept mentioning two friends that I knew weren't there that day, and I pushed him, "Are you sure???" because I started thinking maybe I was crazy. Finally, he looked at me and admitted, "No, I was lying because I wanted them to be there." Now, kids his age often lie as a means of magical thinking, just as he illustrated with his comment about wanting his friends to be there with him. But the fact the he actually has the insight to realize it? Again, totally cool.

Now, I hate to neglect the middle child, but Bella's really having a rough week. She's fighting an interstinal virus and has been cranky as hell, which is to say that the hairs on the back of my neck have been standing on end all week long, like, at the merest whisper of her voice. She has actually been waking up early (why must they do that when they're sick and need their rest?), and I hear her at the top of the stairs, still in her pajamas, saying, "Uuuh, I want Daddy to pick me up, uuuh, I'm angry at you!" before she's even seen anyone. Bad bad news. Whiiiiiiiine. All. Fucking. Day. And where the fuck is Daddy anyway? At work, of course.

But she's still cute as a button, so I forgive her. She'll make up for it next week, I hope. In the meantime, I'm still taking her to see her grandmother this weekend because she has been acting out little plays with her Happy Meal toys. They all go something like this:

Pink candy pony: "I want to go to Grandma's house"
Purple pinwheel pony (in an older, Grandma-like voice): "OK, I'll pick you up"

And then she gets under her covers and "drives" to my mother's house. But first she stops at McDonald's - do you think I go there too much?

So I'll mostly be incommunicato this weekend. And as I'm staying at my mother's house, I will also be drunk as frequently as possible.

Just a sliver of my life on display

Today is February 10th. This time last year, I was pregnant with my third child and working full-time in a job that I adored. I looked rather svelte in my dressy maternity clothes, because the "fat" spot, if you will, was where it was supposed to be.

At about 3:00 on February 10, 2004, I likely sauntered into a cross-systems meeting with a snack in my purse. I had no guilt about eating a high-calorie treat, because I was "eating for two!" and I needed the extra calories. Someone probably opened the door for me, or pulled out my chair. When I entered the meeting, people quieted down. I facilitated, and afterwards, the participants thanked me for my help. Some told me I was "going places", while others asked if I could train their staff. On the way back to the office, I enjoyed listening to my favorite song on the radio. I stopped to chat with my friends on the way to my desk, finishing up a funny conversation that we enjoyed during lunch. We planned a trip to Target for lunchtime tomorrow, to window shop and buy Valentines for the kids. I called my husband and told him what I needed him to do to start dinner, and that I'd be home in time to finish cooking. My boos came around and handed me an envelope - final confirmation of my pay raise - a raise! - for a job well done.

Here's what I did today at 3pm:

After driving my son to preschool this morning, I returned home (with his two sisters in tow) and tried to get a shower while the younger one slept. The older one locked herself in her bedroom accidentally while I was showering and screamed loud enough to wake her sister, so I never got to blow dry my hair. It is now a frizzy, knotty mess. I was, however, excited to wear my new Target workout pants (a $16 splurge!) that 1). make it look like I work out and 2). hide the flab from my 30 lb. weight gain. I am wearing the slipper socks that they gave me in the hospital after the birth of one of my children - you know, the kind with the no slip stripes on the bottom - and my husband's shirt from 1987. I have actually applied makeup for the first time in a week, but only by appeasing my toddler with lipstick and eyeshadow first.

We drive to pick UP my son from preschool and eat a quick lunch before our Little Gym class, but nobody ate lunch (except for me - a half of the hot dog that Adelyn didn't eat), because we were going to The Little Gym people, and their little stomachs just can't handle that much anticipation! So when we rushed home to nap the littlest one again, the other two screamed and cried that they were starving, and why couldn't I just feed them before they eat each other. Of course, the cat threw up the flowers that the kids bought me for Valentine's Day, so I had to clean that up first. I ran out of paper towels.

I stuck a DVD in and then made some popcorn for the kids. The kitchen garbage was overflowing, and I decided to empty it, but I couldn't get the bag out of the canister. I asked Riley to help, but he thought it was too "gross" and went back to his movie. I finally got another bag and tried to dump one into the other, but I ended up with garbage all over the floor.

A broken egg. A shitty diaper. The cat's vomit, and Bella's vomit from yesterday morning (I didn't even mention the mild gastrointestinal thing she's fighting), when she threw up in her carseat. At least two banana peels, and the skin of an avocado.

I cleaned it up and came downstairs to try and read some blogs - maybe even write an entry. I am interrupted no less than eight times by the older two, who are fighting over the popcorn and the blanket. The DVD blinks out and is replaced by a TV show. The popcorn runs out and is replaced by two oranges and a pear.

Then, just as I am typing this very sentence, the baby wakes up screaming.

No one says thank you. I smell like vomit. My feet are itchy and I realize now that I only put mascara on one eye.

What a difference a year makes.

Accidental Tourist

Funniest Google hit ever...I'm the fourth one down. OK, so it's my first Accidental Google Tourist, as far as I can tell, but still.

Hello and welcome. Don't invite my daughter to your house if you want your guniea pigs to live.

Note to Self:

Never, ever, in the rush to make gravy (the RED kind people, I'm Italian) before the kids get off to school, chop tons of garlic and then put your contact lenses in without washing your hands.

Also, check to see if your daughter left her Barbie dolls on the stairs before descending with a laundry basket. It will help to avoid falling down the stairs , thereby losing at least two layers of skin off of your elbow.

The pain, people, the pain.

Fly Eagles Fly

We are not a sports family. Once, Vincent and I won a trip to the Superbowl on the Wednesday before the game, and we had to ask who was playing - it was in Atanta, the second matchup of the Bills and the Cowboys. I was rooting for the Bills, and bet pints of beer on the game with the Texans seated all around us. The Cowboys won, I was out $60 in beer money, and while I was sad, we had a good time.

But my son - my little four year old boy - was intriguied by the Superbowl this year. His preschool teachers gave him an Eagles pin, which he wore with pride leading up to the game. Now the boy has never actually SEEN a football game, but he wanted to know all about this one. Of course we were going to watch - we always do, and I love the commercials - but this year, we got green and white cupcakes and my kids learned the Eagles fight song and sang it with glee all day on Sunday. Even Bella learned the words.

When they went to bed, the Eagles were in the lead.

So when my husband and I watched their disappointing loss last night to the Pats (a team I regularly root for, mind you) I was heartsick. Not for the city without a single Superbowl victory, basically a place for "not-quite" and "we-mighta-if we'd only..." sports enterprises, but for my little boy.

My husband and I sat on the couch talking about how sad we were going to be to have to tell our son that, despite the cheering and dancing and singing, the Eagles had lost the Big Game. There would be no day off of school on Tuesday for the Big Parade. I lay awake in bed thinking about the excitement that would inevitably be in his eyes when he woke up, and how it was my job to teach him a lesson about the reality of winning and losing. That's what mothers do - we hold their tiny little hands each time they lose a little bit of the Magic - the magic of wishing stars and believing if you want something enough, that it will always come to you.

Yes, it was just a game, and he took the loss in stride. But my heart broke just a little bit this morning, watching tiny speckles of Magic drift away from my little boy's eyes.

Now THAT's a snowman!

See? It was just powdery snow that last time! My kids CAN build a snowman! Check out the carrot eyes...my husband is so creative!

No, not FOOTballs silly, the OTHER kind...

I had one of those hold-your-breath Mom moments the other day. Riley was getting out of the bath and cheerily proclaimed, "Hey! Where did my ball go?" as he proceeded to fumble around his scrotum. Yes, well, exactly. One of my son's little four year old testicles had disappeared back up into, well, we weren't sure where it had gone.

First, my husband too a shot at finding it. Then, as Riley hopped and giggled, I tried to locate the missing testicle. Was it playing peek-a-boo with us? Where on earth does a testicle go, anyway? Jacksonville?

So first, I call my brother, and ER doc who is currently working nights. He's sleeping, but my sister-in-law tells me that he'll call back when he wakes up.

Not ten minutes later, my normally very laid-back brother calls, and he sounds a bit alarmed. It seems that this can signify a "surgical emergency" that, if not treated within a six hour window, would cause loss of the testicle, and writhing pain.

"Is he in pain?" he asks.

"Well," I say, "he's sleeping right now, so probably not. But now I'm starting to worry. He tells me no less than three times to call my pediatrician in the morning, and I fight the urge to go and wake him up and take him there NOW.

The next morning, still no complaints from Riley, so I drive him and Bella to school. Then I make an appointment for him to see the doctor. David, my brother, calls me AGAIN to ask how Riley's doing, making me all the more nervous.

Later, when I pick him up and tell him that we are going to the doctor so she can help him locate his missing ball, Bella proclaims, "I have your ball Riley! It's in my backpack!"

Just when will the psychotherapy begin for that poor child, I ask you?

Vincent comes home from work and reminds me that his friend's son had surgery recently to correct his ball, which had crept back up into...see, I don't really know where they go, but wherever it is, it's BAD.

I take Riley to the doctor, and he pulls his pants down (a favorite activity!) and stands up on the examining table. This is the part where she and I stick our faces no less than six inches from where my son's testicle is supposed to be.

"There it is," she says.

"Really?" I ask. "Where?"

"There," she points. "Can you see it jumping around in there when he giggles?"

We both lean in closer, noses almost touching my son's "special purpose." I see no sign of the lost ball.

"If you can see it dancing, it's not a problem," she asserts.

Uh....yeah. She actually used the word dancing in conjunction with my son's private parts. So, twenty bucks down the drain, but my son has two testicles, and that's a good thing. The left one is just sort of...hiding. Great. I'll take what I can get so long as no one needs to go exploring down there with a scalpel...we had enough of that when he was an infant.

In other ball news, being that we're from Philadelphia...

GO EAGLES!

An ode to Jocelyn...

I know you are here
Come out of hiding and say...
Hello, Konichiwa, Ciao.

Haiku

Vincent woke up last night to find me sitting beside him in bed, brow furrowed, counting on my fingers.

Frothy sweetness melts
Caramel Macchiato
Oh, how I love thee

Obviously, I am opting for the three syllable pronunciation of the word "caramel."

A week of milestones and the overzealous use of italics

Well folks, it was a week of milestones at the humble Stoli abode. For the first time, I really really enjoyed myself at a "My Wall Oven is Fancier Than Your Wall Oven" event. Maybe that's because I didn't have to make small talk with people I don't terribly care for, since we were too busy drinking wine and sampling almond crusted oysters and Pâte à Choux (Ugh! NOT at the same time!).

No matter, it was divine. You should try a cooking class, really. I always insisted that I didn't need a cooking class, because, well, I know how to cook. But that was before I realized that they serve food at these events. And you can find out little chef secrets, like how to make your own buttermilk in a pinch. Who knew buttermilk was just milk and vingar? Huh? Not me.

Vincent had a milestone last week too. This is the first time Vincent has had the flu in about 5 years. Unfortunately for him, there was a major deadline at work - something about production quotas and, I'm not really sure what he does so I can't elaborate - and so he went in early and came home late every day last week. Then he went right to bed. Yeah, so my kitchen's a mess, but since I don't have one of those wimpering husbands that expects the earth to stop rotating when he is sick, I am trying to baby him somewhat. This week, he has been home sick every day so far, but I am not writing about this week in this post. You'll have to read about this week next week. Or something like that. I'll let you know.

Here's a big one - Riley wrote his name for me for the very first time. I was beginning to get very very worried about the boy. He is so advanced in so many ways...he is really quite articulate and his reasoning skills are extraordinary. We actually debate, he and I, and our discourse on the possibility of dessert or the morality of being a tattletail is more compelling than the televised matchups of Bush and Kerry (OK, OK, I'll be fair and point out that those debates were boring as hell, but still.).

But with all of his (very opinionated) verbal skills, he has little patience for sitting still. Practicing with pen and paper? Forget it! (Of course, we cannot color in this house, for fear that Bella will write all over everyone and everything, so maybe it's lack of practice).

I began to notice that the other kids in his class were beginning to draw pictures of rocket ships that actually looked like rocket ships with fire shooting out the back - completely oblivious of the changes in the space program, but rocket ships nonetheless. Their faces looked like faces! Their flowers looked like flowers!

Their snozzberries looked like snozzberries!

Like that. Some of the other kids were beginning to sign their works of art as well, with real, discernable letters. And then Riley would make this enormous scribble on a page with a single crayon and on the bottom, dubiously, it would say something like "A snail crawling on rocks" or "A big red fire engine."

So anyway, I was starting to worry. My husband and his whole family have completely illegible handwriting. My brother is a doctor - his handwriting is bound to decline - so maybe this was a gentic thing? At Christmas, we were sent home with an adorable card from Riley, signed in his own hand. I was thrilled - but doubtful. Would a preschool teacher fake a kid's signature on a Christmas card?

Enter Crayola and their magic color system - you know the ones where you draw on the special paper and the ink magically appears? (Yes, I bought it at Target, where the hell else do I go?) I pulled some out the other day, and magically (they do say it's magic), Riley sat down and wrote his name. Once.

Then he made a big furious scribble and told me it was a rainbow.

You all heard about playgroup and the hamsters (first cage opening, first grooming session) and the magic markers (first artistic impression on wool and lead paint). But, being Bella, she needed to top herself, so she pooped in the bathtub with Riley. Luckily, Vincent was doing the bathing, and got the kids out of the tub when he saw it floating by. I actually took a photo of the poop, thinking that I could do a link, something along the lines of "Hey! Look what my kid did this week!" and then you'd click and there'd be a picture of the poop, but after re-examining the idea, the picture looked like poop in a dirty dirty bathtub with soapscum and other unidentified dirt, and I bagged the idea. After all, I'm sure that the rest of the Internet cleans their bathtubs periodically, before their kids poop in them, and I just couldn't handle the scrutiny. Call me a coward.

Bella also scribbled on the wall in pencil - oh wait, that is not a first - but she did begin speaking on the telephone like a real person. Up until about last week, she would nod yes or no whenever someone asked her a question ("Does Bella miss Grandma???") and I would have to translate ("Yes, Bella loves Grandma soooo much!"). It got old, so this is a nice development. Also, it's really really cute to listen to her have the same innane conversations with my mother that drive me mad, day after day. Go figure.

Adelyn is no longer a toothless wonder after last week. Maybe that was why there was so much diahheria two weeks ago? A solitary bottom tooth has sprouted. Also, she is very very close to crawling (one leg gets stuck, otherwise she's good to go), which has me a bit freaked out. I have a 4 year old who washes his hands compulsively and a 2 year old who sits under her bedcovers and "drives" all day (this is an adorable pastime, I assure you), so how do I put a locked baby gate at the bottom of the stairs again? Or does the third child just have to figure out how to climb up the stairs on her own without falling? I'll let you know.

Oh yeah, one more first...I took Riley and Bella bowling on Saturday - there was a free township thing - and they were incredible first timers. Bella got a strike by sitting at the end of the lane and slowly rolling the ball to the pins. Riley had great form, bounding up the lane with enthusiasm and tossing the ball like a pro.

It was a good week.


Can you believe they make such little bowling shoes?? Also, my disclaimer: Bella was dressed by her father today. I would never put a striped shirt with flower printed jeans. EVER.