January 15, 2006

bloggity bloggity BoB

The other morning I spent half an hour trying to find a particular post about how Charlie roams around the house at bedtime. Eventually, after rereading like half of everything I’ve written here, I found it–and then didn’t link to it correctly, thus undermining my grand plan to make a point about . . . something, I don’t remember what now. In the process, though, I got a good look at where Friday Playdate has been in the last year, and frankly, I still don’t have any idea what I’m doing on this list, but I am enjoying the BoB-related Internet love of fantastic people like Matthew, who made this cool banner. Hooray! So do your civic duty and vote.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are a few posts I am proud of, or at least not embarassed by. Enjoy!

count on me

I don’t know that sexy is the word I would use

Buddha wept

the butter people

call it hysteria if you like

an open letter to Charlie’s teachers

the Henry of all Henrys

and we will fill it with sangria

the boy just ain’t right

playdough is good and so are crayons

warning: this post includes talk of severed body parts

I’ll bet Hawk Girl is good at freeze tag

I have a whole bunch of other things to tell you, about my trip to Houston and Baby Andrew and how Henry cried the ENTIRE WAY HOME FROM SCHOOL because we’re no longer having Enforced Rest Time, but it’s time for dinner and I need to go microwave something. And have a drink.

January 13, 2006

rest time is over so I’m leaving town

I had a dinner date with my friend Leslie last night and when I picked her up, her smallest son was in the high chair eating potato chips. Jake is eighteen months old, which is shocking to me; I swear he was just born yesterday and now he’s walking and trying to talk and pretending to help her vaccuum the living room. It’s amazing. ‘He’s not a baby any more!’ I said (stupidly, but still).

‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness!’

I know what she means. I love babies, but I don’t actually miss having one in the house; now that Charlie is finally potty trained, we are a house of Big Boys, which is wonderful!

Except . . .

It’s time to give up Enforced Rest Time.

I know, can you believe it? But it’s true. We’ve strung this nap/rest thing out for FIVE AND A HALF YEARS. Every day since Henry came home from the hospital there has been some sort of designated Everyone Will Rest period during the day. We have built our family life around this. And it has kept us sane.

Recently, though, we’ve noticed that there is not much napping going on, which only makes sense. Henry is really too old to need a nap every day; for a long time, I was able to sucker him into sleeping by laying down in the bed with him (thus scoring my own nap as well) but he finally caught on and refuses to let me do that now. Instead, he spends Rest Time going potty and putting multiple band-aids on his poor gnawed fingernails. And since he has to BRING me EVERY SINGLE USED band-aid, there’s not much rest for me, either.

Charlie could really still use a nap during the day, but has somehow convinced himself that he is MISSING SOMETHING if he falls asleep while Henry is awake. When we go to get him up in the morning (because yes, he will stay in his bed until we come to get him, which is wierd since he gets up repeatedly at bedtime, but whatever) the first thing he says is, ‘Is Henry up yet?’ How cute is that! But he now spends his Rest Time either jumping on the bed (not restful!) or bringing me his digital clock to ask, ‘Is it time to get up?’ I’m trying to teach him what TWO ZERO ZERO looks like, but he prefers to have me read the clock for him. Every eight minutes for the entire hour.

Recently, Rest Time–with the band-aids and the jumping and the no resting–has become the bane of my existence. Instead of being a peaceful hour (or two! and a half!) where I could Get Things Done, it has turned into the hectic 40 minutes between 1:00 and 2:00 where I race around like a idiot trying to load the laundry and clean the kitchen and return phone calls and check my e-mail (although, as you know if you have e-mailed me recently, I don’t actually ANSWER the e-mails because THERE ISN’T TIME).

And then the boys get up, at EXACTLY 2:00 (because I taught Henry to tell time, what was I thinking?) and they want to have a snack and they want to play outside and they want some ATTENTION for god’s sake and I’m still wondering when I’m going to get FIVE MINUTES to myself today. And they are cranky from the boring hour in their rooms and I’m cranky because they don’t STAY in their rooms and we still have like FOUR HOURS to slog through before Wade comes home and it just sets a bad tone for the rest of our day. So, you see, this is no longer really restful or productive.

Yesterday I was telling our psychologist about this, and about how much the no-napping thing STRESSES ME OUT and about how difficult the afternoons are any more because Henry is so caught up in his own head and Charlie is all hepped up from an hour of jumping on the bed, and she said, ‘I think you may need to rearrange your afternoon. Maybe go to the park after lunch and have quiet time a little later in the day.’ And I thought, THAT IS BRILLIANT! Although I did wonder what’s wrong with me that I couldn’t figure that out on my own but needed to pay a health care professional to help me, but whatever. I have a solution! Whoo hoo!

I also have Big! Plans! to give you all a nice list of BoB-worthy Friday Playdate posts, not so much because I think it will persuade you to vote for me but because it will get me off the hook of having to come up with anything new to write about; of course, with no Rest Time and this whole travel thing, it will have to wait (oh, and it took me half an hour this morning to find that post about Charlie not wanting to go to bed. Ha ha! I’m doomed). In the meantime, throw some BoB love at Chag (America’s Funniest Stay Home Dad) and Ramblin’ Educat (if only ALL teachers were this cool) and the dudes at DadCentric (because they serve drinks). And let’s all hope that I survive the rest-free day, and can find some clean underwear.

January 11, 2006

hold on a sec while I breathe into this paper bag . . . okay, that’s better

When Henry was a toddler, my friend Caroline and I decided we would start a playgroup. Between us, we knew six women who had babies more or less the same ages as ours. So we called everyone up and said, ‘Fridays! 11:00! Lunch and play!’ And this went on for two years, every Friday, without fail. We might not make it to church on Sunday, but by god we would be at playgroup. Because it kept us sane.

I loved those girls. We rarely talked about religion or politics, and despite the fact that we were all making different choices about how to parent (breast, bottle, co-sleep, crib, husbands who helped and husbands who didn’t) we were able to hang out and laugh and have a good time. Quite honestly, although they may not know it, they were a lifeline for me.

Eventually, though, we started to lose people, first to Bible studies, then to second babies, and finally to preschool. We keep in touch, in a loose kind of way, but it’s not the same. And often, on Fridays, I miss my playdate.

But now there’s this whole Best of Blogs thing, and I feel like I have been invited to join the universe’s coolest virtual playgroup. One where martinis would most certainly be served. Or tequila! Even better! And we would probably have a babysitter who would entertain the children, so we could all sit around and talk about things unrelated to parenting, like what we’re reading and our current plans for world domination. Doesn’t that sound like fun? And because some of my favorite Mommy Bloggers are on the list with me, it makes me feel like my Friday playgroup is back, in some wierd virtual form.

And although I want you to vote for Friday Playdate (because I’m competitive that way and I want to win) I like those other bloggers a lot, and I think you should read them all, and of course, vote your conscience. Although I will reward you with cake! And martinis! So vote now! Vote often! But only as often as the rules allow. And no, I don’t know anything about the rules. Sorry!

Now, if you will excuse me, I need a drink to steel my nerves–er, I mean, to celebrate! Yes, that’s it, to celebrate. Hooray!

I prefer HoHos myself

Yesterday, on the way home from school, Henry and I were talking about what polar bears eat. (What? They’re learning about bears at school this week!) He said, ‘Do they eat people?’

‘No,’ I said (I had the Fact Sheet his teacher had sent home, in case you’re wondering how I know what a polar bear eats). ‘Do you think they eat Twinkies?’

‘Wait, I remember!’ he said proudly. ‘Polar bears eat SEALS!’

‘That’s right, Henry. Good job.’

There was a pause, and then he said, ‘But what’s a Twinkie? Is that some kind of little animal?’

The poor, deprived child . . .

January 9, 2006

tongue-tied

We’re one of those houses where certain words are not permitted–and no, I don’t mean words like ‘fuck’ and ‘jackass,’ although we try to keep those unsaid as well. No, we have a list of things we don’t say and before you start mocking me, remember that I have one child with an ASD and one child who imitates his brother and you’ll see why we have this batty rule.

One of Henry’s quirks is a tendancy to echolaic speech, which means that he can mimic ANYTHING with surprising accuracy, and will often replace actual conversation with lines from books or movies. Recently we’ve been watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets over and OVER again; Henry’s current favorite moment is when Harry and Ron and Ron’s brothers first arrive at the Weasley’s house and Mrs. Weasly bursts in a starts yelling at them. ‘Where HAVE you BEEN?’ she storms, pronuncing ‘been’ like ‘bean.’ And when Henry declaims this line–as he does EVERY time someone leaves the room and then returns–he sounds EXACTLY like the woman in the film. It’s eerie.

Anyway, last year Henry came home from school and announced that ’stupid is a bad word.’ I suspect that one of the kids in the class referred to someone else as ’stupid’ and that Henry heard the teacher (who he cited as his source) tell the child that ’stupid’ was not an acceptable word. We tried to explain that while one should not describe PEOPLE as stupid there was nothing wrong with the word itself, but for Henry the rule is the rule: stupid is a bad word, regardless of context.

However, I grew up in a family where ’stupid’ was a useful adjective, a sort of polite alternative to ‘damn,’ as in ‘This stupid corkscrew doesn’t work right!’ But now, any time I use ’stupid’ one of the children (usually Charlie, which I will get to in a minute) announces, ‘Don’t say stupid!’ Which makes it very VERY hard for me to talk about our President and most of his policy decisions. But I digress.

Other words we don’t use in polite conversation at our house: ‘hate’ and ‘kill.’ At one point there was some discussion about whether ‘dead’ was okay, but we were able to convince the boys that while ‘kill’ is mean, ‘dead’ is just a fact. Please tell me you have these talks with your preschoolers as well. Please?

Charlie, who is not the least little bit echolaic or hyper or anything but normal, has appointed himself Family Language Policeman and takes great glee in reporting whenever any of us wander into forbidden territory, which is how I learned that I say ‘Jesus Christ!’ when I drop things, like my car keys or cell phone, and that I tend to overuse ‘dammit.’ This tendancy is also delightful when we’re reading Harry Potter, where the word ’stupid’ comes up quite a bit. In addition, the various characters have been known to tell each other to ’shut up,’ which is also off limits (although I’m the only one who ever gets busted for it, and it’s always for saying it to Wade in a saucy, Stacey London kind of way which seems perfectly appropriate in some contexts). But because he’s the Language Police, Charlie will solemnly interrupt whoever is reading to say, ‘Excuse me, but stupid is a bad word. Don’t say stupid.’ I think that will be the first word he learns to read because I’m always pointing at the text and saying, ‘See? It says stupid right here. Can we keep reading now?’ Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t be reading Harry Potter to my three year old. Huh.

So yesterday morning, I’m making coffee and chatting with Wade while the boys are playing with Playmobil pirates (planning to overthrow the Playmobil castle, if I heard them correctly, by smashing the castle door with their catapult, which is a nice peaceful Sunday morning kind of pretend) and I said something about someone being a Baptist. Now, I live in Oklahoma, where this is true of virtually everyone. And no, I didn’t say it in any specific tone of voice, you know, like the one I use when I say Republican. I just said, ‘Blah blah blah she’s a Baptist.’

And Charlie’s little head pops up from the death and destruction he is raining down on the Playmobil people and he announces, ‘Don’t say Baptist!’

‘What?’ Wade says.

‘DON’T SAY BAPTIST,’ he repeats, very firmly. ‘That’s a bad word.’

My kids–they’re so . . . wierd. Can I say that?

January 8, 2006

it’s still not THAT kind of web site

Hey, look at my cool new digs! How fantastic is this? Props* to Chag, who listened to all my craziness (’I like pink! And green! And three columns! And I think I’m breaking some copyright laws, too, with that picture!’) and came up with this spiffy template, in pink and green, with three columns and no copyright issues! And a bitchin’ new logo to boot. I’m so happy. Thanks, Chag.

And, as if that weren’t enough, I have a JOB! Yes, you heard right, a job! With interesting work and real money! The fabulous Jen has hired me to do some contract work for her consulting company. In my family, this is the dream: I will be working from home, which means, as my brother says, that I don’t even have to put pants on if I don’t want to. Although I will certainly put pants on, because I’m not that kind of girl, but they won’t necessarily be nice pants! Or even clean pants! Ha ha!

But! Don’t think this means you can stop clicking the Gooogle ads. Click them now, in fact. Go on, I’ll wait. They’re over there on the left now. Click click!

So I’m feeling pretty good here, as I have been able to lively up the site AND turn a buck all without resorting to porn! Although I guess I will be working without pants . . .

*I’m so not cool enough to say that in real life, at least not without people falling down in hysterical laughter. Which you may be doing now, I don’t know, but at least I don’t have to hear it.