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.