December 31, 2005

better than a Magic 8 Ball

As 2005 winds to an end, I’m feeling the pressure to crank out some resolutions. But I’ve really got nothing. I have an annual List of Things I Will NOT Under Any Circumstances Resolve To Do, which includes quit drinking (what’s the point?) and eat better (there is nothing wrong with a diet of Starbucks coffee and Luna bars) and learn to cook (I’ve tried that, several times, and I still can only make three things, only one of which is consistently edible). Last year, I resolved to write more, which lead to this web site, so you should all thank me for that one. And honestly, I think that was the first New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made that has panned out. Go figure.

This year, so far, I have resolved to find a reliable babysitter, someone who can come regularly during the week AND on the weekend. If you live in my area and have any leads, let me know; experience and good moral character would be nice, but availability is really the only essential criteria. Wade and I have agreed to have a Date Night twice a month (as opposed to our current twice-a-year routine; see above about babysitter). And I have promised Jen that I will learn to IM. In the end, I have a list that is both completely do-able and godawful boring, which is probably not a coincidence. But I need a little spice, I think.

And so I will turn to the Internet. What do you all think I should do in 2006? What are you resolving to do? Let’s hear it–I’m up for pretty much anything.

Just don’t suggest I quit drinking.

December 29, 2005

Polly wants a cracker, and maybe a latte, too

So we’re home, and all in one piece–oh, except for Wade, who not ten minutes ago broke a tooth eating a date. Seriously! We were in the kitchen, having a nice chat with Charlie about his lunch (which consisted of a peanut butter-and-honey sandwich, a bowl of blueberries, a carrot, and a banana) and about what each of us likes and doesn’t like to eat (Mommy and Daddy like dates, but Charlie doesn’t!) and Wade bit into the date and the pit was still inside and ta da! broken tooth!

‘I guess that’s why they have that warning on the package, about how there might be pits inside,’ he said, staring at his tooth. Hooray! Now let’s all hope that our dentist is just on his lunch break and not out of the country for the holidays.

Broken teeth aside, our trip home was entirely uneventful. The boys watched videos for EVERY SINGLE MOMENT of the drive, if you can believe that. Usually, we insist on a TV-free window in the middle of the day, right after we stop in Amarillo for lunch; it’s the car version of Enforced Rest Time. But yesterday when we turned the DVD player off, the boys started playing See If You Can Grab My Hand Before I Smack You In The Head, which is a tremendously fun game until SOMEONE GETS SMACKED IN THE HEAD. The third time I heard ‘OW! YOU HIT ME! THAT REALLY HURT!’ (because you know I wasn’t about to turn around and actually SEE what was going on), I said, ‘Hey, who wants to watch MORE Bob the Builder?’ And peace returned to our Honda.

The most surreal part of the day was actually on our way out of Albuquerque. We stopped at the Whole Foods Market for pumpkin spice muffins and some of their fabulous crack-laced coffee, and while we were waiting for Charlie to finish eating already and he was veeery s l o w l y and carefully putting each individual crumb of muffin in his mouth and chewing it 100 times, Wade was staring intently out the window at the parking lot. ‘What are you looking at?’ I asked, expecting him to say, ‘Boob job.’

‘I’m just watching the craziness that’s unfolding out here,’ he said. I glanced out, expecting a squad of police cars, at the least (one morning my parents stopped at Whole Foods for a New York Times and were greeted by a full contingent of APD officers searching for a suspect) but all I saw was a very old man with a very scruffy looking Yorkshire terrrier. I figured the craziness was probably boob related and returned to encouraging Charlie to eat up! so we can go!

When we came outside, though, I saw what Wade had been watching: the little old man with the Yorkie was carefully unloading his parrots from the car and tethering them to a shopping cart, apparently so they could all have a little walk in the Whole Foods parking lot. He had three or four very noisy parrots attached to the cart (by little leashes on their ankles) and there was at least one more parrot still in a cage in the car. The ENTIRE back seat of his car–a tired-looking sedan–was filled with bird cages. Wade looked at me and said, ‘This is the craziness.’ Yes, that would indeed be the word for it.

So the parrots are squawking, the dog is yapping, and my kids are starting to dance around nervously. Charlie looks at the parrots and says, ‘Birdies! Don’t eat me!’ and Henry says, ‘He has a DOG!’ Meanwhile, the little man is trying to get the last parrot out of his car through the door that is next to our car and I can feel Wade trying to see if he has bumped our car with his door. We wait for the little man to see us, but he is intent on his bird; finally, as the boys are about to start screaming, Wade says, ‘Excuse me, could we get into our car?’

‘Of course, of course!’ the little man says pleasantly. ‘Take your time!’ The boys are really worked up now, so we stuff them pell-mell into our already overstuffed back seat and tell them to buckle their seat belts, right now! As we are pulling out, Charlie looks back at the spectacle of the birds on the shopping cart and says, ‘What is that man DOING?’

When I told my mother about the little man and his birds, she said, ‘I’ve seen him! I nearly had a wreck in the WalMart parking lot one day because I was watching him and not looking where I was going!’ Then she said, ‘Do you think he brings his own shoping cart, or was it one that belonged to Whole Foods?’

‘Oh, I’m sure it was one from the store,’ I tell her. ‘How would he get a shopping cart over there? His whole car was full of bird cages!’

‘I don’t think I’ll be using their carts any more,’ she says.

And that was the craziness for yesterday.

December 27, 2005

smooshed by cuteness

My brother has one child, a daughter, who is almost two and a half. She is, undeniably, the cutest two-year-old we know just now, and not only because she shares some of my DNA. Yesterday she was in particularly fine form.

In the afternoon, we rallied all the children (big and small) to go play at the park. My sons, of course, resisted to the end, because GOD FORBID they leave whatever might be going on at Nana and Papa’s house to play outside. My dad had spent the day reminding me that if Henry wanted to swim again, he would take him, even though the pool at the hotel (have I mentioned that my parents, who LIVE HERE and have a house that could rival any bed and breakfast in the Albuquerque area, are staying in a hotel while the rest of us completely trash their house and drink their liquor? How lovely is that?)–my dad kept saying that he would be happy!! to take Henry swimming again, even though the hotel pool was filled with ice water. So when Henry refused to go to the park, I said, ‘Hey! How about you and Papa go swimming?’ and he said, ‘Great!’ and ran into the living room to announce, in his best Outdoor Voice, ‘Papa, will you take me SWIMMING?’ And then Charlie, who was cold and miserable the ENTIRE TIME they were at the pool yesterday, started to cry and said, ‘I want to go WITH HENRY!’ and insisted that he would swim, too, and that it would be FUN. So I packed my kids and my dad in the car, muttering under my breath, and we all went off to the hotel pool.

(Please note: I had NO INTENTION of getting in the pool. I didn’t even take a swimsuit with me. Swimming in December is not in my job description. Just so you know.)

We get to the hotel, and Henry and my dad are getting changed to swim, and Charlie says, ‘I changed my mind. I don’t want to swim.’

I took five big yoga breaths and said, ‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to play with YOU!’ he announces.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘I would like to go to the park and play with Tess.’

‘Really?’ he says. ‘I had no idea.’

Damn that kid. (My dad looked at me and said, ‘Is he kidding?’)

So we go back to the park, leaving my dad and Henry to swim, and when we get to the playground my brother says, ‘Tess, do you want to ask Aunt Susan something?’

And god bless her, she says, ‘Aunt Susan, do you need a cocktail?’

Last night after dinner we had her singing songs, because the whole point of having kids is to provided family entertainment, and John got her started on a song about a bumblebee. ‘I’m holding my baby bumblebee/Won’t my mommy be so proud of me?’ Very cute. Then there’s the bit about how the bumblebee stings the singer, and then this: ‘I’m smooshing my baby bumblebee/Won’t my mommy be so proud of me’ which was accompanied by the appropriate smooshing hand gestures. And the more we laughed, the more she smooshed and sang, and despite the fact that the song was all about killing an innocent bee, my god it was the cutest thing ever! Since the kids went to bed, we have compelled my sister-in-law to sing the song probably ten more times. There is also a verse about wiping the smooshed bee guts off on your pants–how fun! I will be singing this song every day.

This morning Tess and Charlie had a tea party, complete with fancy hats borrrowed from my mother’s coat closet. Tess had a straw garden hat and Charlie had a cowboy hat; they served tea and crumpets to their stuffed buddies for a while and then decided to be cowboys, waving their tea cups in the air and yelling, ‘Yee-ha!’ And the cuteness nearly killed me.

December 26, 2005

nine hours of Wiggles later . . .

On Christmas Eve morning, my sister-in-law and I went and had our nails done (she had a pedicure and I had a manicure). It was lovely, except for the fact that the nail salon had the televsion tuned to ESPN and turned up ALL THE WAY. I like ESPN, I really do, but there is something not right about the combination of a manicure and the story of Randy Moss’s crappy season. In addition, the woman who did J’s pedicure was extra surly; J had picked out some lovely wine-colored polish and she said something about having nice red toenails for Christmas and the woman snapped, ‘This isn’t red. It’s dark.’ Well okay! I had the salon manager do my manicure, which was fine, except that I’m always a little freaked out when I have a man do my nails (although it did explain the ESPN, yes?). But he did a fine job and our nails looked lovely and we managed to drag the whole experience out for over two hours (because, you know, after the nails are done they have to dry, and Starbucks is a good place to let the drying occur).

In the afternoon, I went with my mother to pick up the take-out for dinner; she had ordered eighteen tamales and an enchillada casserole from our favorite local Mexican place. Easy enough, yes? No.

Girl At Cash Register: Okay, and you have two dozen tamales.

Mom: No, I had a dozen and a half. Eighteen.

Girl At Cash Register: Okay, but a dozen is $18.95, and we’re not sure how to charge you for a half dozen.

Mom: ?????

Girl At Cash Register: Anyway, it’s cheaper to get two dozen!

Mom: ?????

Girl At Cash Register: So, is that okay?

Mom: Can I freeze them?

Girl At Cash Register: Sure!

Mom: Okay. Whatever. How much do I owe you?

The whole way home, I kept saying, ‘We don’t know what half of $18.95 is! Okay?’ and my mom just laughed. In the end, of course, it was good that we had the extra six, as we ate every single one of them. And I feel confident that should I ever need to go back to work, I can call this particular restaurant and get hired immediately, as I can divide $18.95 in half correctly IN MY HEAD.

Yesterday was a long day of I don’t know what. I never actually got dressed, I just went from pyjamas to sweats, and I never left the house. We opened presents for about two hours, and at the end we still hadn’t opened anything not for the kids. They didn’t get all that much stuff, but they had to play with everything as they opened it. My mother gave our niece a new baby doll, one that comes with it’s own diapers, and Tess sat on the sofa changing the baby’s diaper for probably 20 minutes. She would put the new diaper on and announce, ‘She’s POO-PY!’ and start all over. My sister-in-law finally said, ‘Okay, I think that’s enough poopies for one day!’ Poor baby doll.

The kids played and the adults drank and ate and then everyone napped (oh, except for me–I spent the ENTIRE nap time looking for Charlie’s binkie, which I had somehow made up in the bed that Wade and I were sleeping in, and he was crying and saying, ‘I need my binkie,’ and I felt terible about losing it. But then I found it and rewarded myself with a martini. Because I had earned it!). In the late afternoon, the men took the children swimming and the women stayed behind; when Wade started talking about going to the pool, my mother said, ‘I think I’ll stay here and drink.’ God I love my family.

Today we’ve all sobered up and are back to the regular routine. Although I am still on vacation and I might have to squeeze in one more Bloody Mary before the day is over . . .

December 23, 2005

searching for Santa

One of my family’s favorite Christmas stories goes like this: one year, when my brother and I were little enough that we still whole-heartedly believed in Santa, we went to Mass on Christmas Eve (thus dodging the Christmas morning crying of children who did NOT want to leave their toys to hear about some shepherds and some angels–my mother was raised Methodist and is very practical that way). On our way home, my brother was looking out the car window and he saw a light in the sky. And it was moving!

‘I SEE SANTA’S SLEIGH!’ he yelled. ‘We have to get home before he gets to our house!’

We raced home and pretty much went straight to bed, thus giving my parents a chance to have a romantic Christmas nightcap before they had to start assembling things. But my brother was CERTAIN that he had seen Santa (and not an airplane, which is what we all now agree he saw). I suspect that part of him still thinks he did.

Last year we told Henry that story, not about the airplane but about how Uncle Johnny saw Santa’s sleigh one year, and Henry was convinced (as we had hoped) that it was true and rode home from Christmas Eve dinner with his head smooshed up against the car window searching the sky for any glimpse of Santa. And yesterday he brought it up again. ‘Remember when Uncle Johnny saw Santa’s sleigh?’ he said dreamily, just as though he had been there and really did remember it. And I think maybe he does.

I told my brother about this, and said, ‘Henry seems to think that you’re the key to seeing Santa.’

And my brother said, ‘I think I am!’

This year we are having Christmas at my parents’ house with my brother and his wife and daughter, and I am sure we will be looking for Santa’s sleigh. In just a little while, we will be on the road to Albuquerque; Charlie has already told my mother that he is going to watch Wiggly Wiggly Christmas the WHOLE WAY THERE. I got on the phone with her after this and she said, ‘Your dad just came back from the liquor store.’ And if you can’t see the connection between those things, then I don’t think you can have Christmas with us.

So here is wishing all of you a peaceful holiday. May you have delicious food and plenty of martinis, and may you not be driven to distraction by those you love most in the world. And I will be back soon with photos of our holiday chaos.

Happy Christmas to all!

December 22, 2005

do something funny, kids! right now! Mommy needs content

So I am halfway through my New Year’s site redesign (and yes, we really do need some color up at the top there, and the banner itself needs some work) but I had to stop because I’m still not ready for Christmas–oh, and there is the small matter of how I don’t know the code to add more color or make a real banner, but never fear, I shall learn, and then won’t Friday Playdate be pretty! Or something like that.

Anyway, I’m feeling very New Year New You-ish (but not in an eat better/drink less/exercise more kind of way, you will be glad to hear, it’s more of a pretty-shoes-might-make-me-happy kind of thing) and since I didn’t have time to get a haircut and you’re not really supposed to shop for yourself three days before Christmas, I decided to redesign the site instead. I’m also thinking of New Topics for the New Year (in other words, what besides my children could I write about?) but I’m coming up short there, too. I mean, there’s fashion, but how many more times do I have to remind you all about the rule for low-waisted pants? And I could tell you about the novel I am reading except that I don’t know if I like it (I don’t think I do, which is sort of a heresy these days, yes?). Movies? Well, we only just saw this, so we’re a little behind (and this is still on Bravo all the time, and it still makes us laugh out loud every time we watch it, which is every time it’s on). See? I’m fresh out of ideas. Soon I will just start reposting thing from the archives, to see if you notice!

The real tragedy of being all out of things to say is that several of you nice people nominated Friday Playdate for a Best of Blogs award, which cranks up the pressure to write something! Ideally something funny! And about my children! Anyway, thank you, from the bottom of my heart; I appreciate it so much. It’s an honor to be up there with all those other really impressive mommy blogs. Go read them all, and don’t forget to vote (I expect you to vote your conscience, and not vote for me just because I will ply you with martinis and chocolate cake). You all are the reason I keep writing–well, that and the money.

And if anyone wants to help me finish my site redesign, let me know! There might be cake and martinis in it for you. And maybe even some money.