Dear Couple Enjoying A Romantic Stroll By The Cemetery The Other Night,
You probably remember the Subaru Outback driving very slowly past you with the windows open, Thriller blaring from the speakers, and a crazy-eyed Ethiopian doing his best Vincent Price imitation, laughing like a maniac with his head out the window.
Yup. That was us.
Sorry.
Sincerely,
The Creepy Family With A Newfound Love Of Michael Jackson Who Was Not Trying To Terrify You, But To Let The Song Finish Before We Got Home
I just finished cutting the hair of everyone in my family (except for me, of course. Having given myself the “Small Wonder” bangs in college, I am way too smart to trust myself with sharp scissors. Those other three are damned fools). I am now left with a toddler with crooked bangs (that were crooked to begin with, but she wouldn’t let me straighten them), a giant pile of straight ginger and curly black hair on the floor, and a husband with a very small bald spot on the side.
While Bucket claims that this is a great haircut for Peeta and I should always cut hair after starting cocktail hour, I maintain that it is far better to cut hair sober, mainly because Bucket can’t see the giant chunk I accidentally took out behind his ear. Damn vodka!
We just drove home from dinner and “Call Me Maybe” came on the radio. As Bucket and the kids were rocking out in the car, Peeta mentioned the winky guy at the end of this video, whom both my children love.
And then we discovered that not only do the children love Winky Guy, but Bucket and I have crushes on him too. We discovered this when I mentioned that Winky Guy lives the next town over, at which point I was informed by my husband that he is the team’s catcher. Thank you, Google.
We stopped short of looking up his address and hiding in his bushes. Really. We did.
And this, people, is why the Internet is a dangerous thing.
Noodle, as I am changing her profoundly stinky and disgusting diaper: “I wish Daddy change it.”
You and me both, sister. You and me both.
So we’ve been trying to get Peeta to bed earlier the past few nights because he’s wrecked from the long weekend, and he has two parties to attend on Sunday. So last night I read him his books and told him he had to go straight to bed without playing.
About 20 minutes later, I hear him crashing around upstairs. I yell to him to go to bed. He yells back that he’s peeing. I tell him to go to bed, thinking he’s finished.
About 15 minutes later, I hear him crying. I go upstairs. He tells me that he was going to pee, but I told him to go back to bed, and now he has to duper pee, and why did I say that when I just told him earlier in the day to listen to his body when it says he needs to pee?
I let him pee and then he came back in for some love. I told him I was sorry, and then noticed his fan was off. Why’s your fan off?
“I turned it off so that you would hear me crying and come upstairs and ask what’s wrong, so I could tell you I needed to pee.”
He’s crafty, that Peeta.
Yesterday, Peeta came home from school with a story. M, the resident badass of room 105, stepped on a roach (or perhaps a beetle) during recess. The teachers at Peeta’s school tell the kids not to kill living things. So Peeta told on him.
Peeta has a very strong sense of morality, and his nickname is “The Enforcer.” He spends a lot of time ratting people out for things that he feels are inappropriate. I’m starting to worry that he’s going to get a reputation as a tattletale. So I tried to gently address it.
Me: You’re right, Bud. That wasn’t very nice of M to do, but you really shouldn’t tell on people unless something really bad happens, like if someone gets hurt.
Peeta (looking really disappointed in his idiot mother): Mama, the BUG got hurt.
Shit. He got me. Lawyered by a seven-year-old.
So we just took the kids out for ice cream after dinner. The guy behind the counter was handing me my cone and I stepped back from the counter, right onto the foot of a small child. Just as I was saying, “Oh! I’m so sorry!”, the kid looked at me and snarled, “DON’T STEP ON MY FOOT!” His grandmother patted him on the back and they moved along.
And I thought, “Hey kid, let me introduce you to the back of my hand.”
A few minutes later, after I got all the cones for all the kids and we were walking outside, I passed the kid’s table. He had dropped his ice cream on the floor.
And I thought, “Hey kid, karma’s a bitch.”
Today is the first day back at school for Peeta after April vacation. We had a lovely time, but let me please be clear: I am not equipped to spend every day, all day, nine days in a row with my children without help from Bucket. Bucket was working this weekend and last on the bathroom, and I was in charge of child entertainment. Don’t get me wrong: he did his best to help out, but you can’t be in two places at once. As such, here is the final tally for me, Peeta and Noodle over vacation week:
Burritos consumed: 9
Pizzas consumed: 7
Pasta dishes consumed: 6
Miles biked/walked/scootered: 43987529384
Hours of Go, Diego, Go! watched: about 47
Visits to Fenway Park: 2
Number of times the Red Sox blew it: 1 (Witnessed in person. Let us not count the actual number over the week.)
Visits to Lowe’s: 1
Visits to the Science Museum: 1
Sleepovers: 1
Number of brain bleeds had by Mama: maybe 10
Number of bitching colds experienced by Mama on the last day of vacation and after: 1
Number of times Mama said “I am not cut out for single parenting.”: innumerable
This weekend was supposed to be the last one Bucket was working on the bathroom (but not anymore–thank you, Lowe’s!). Pray to the gods that he finishes up soon and I can have shared parenting responsibilities back. Pray, damn it!
There are things people don’t tell you about having kids. Their nails grow like weeds and you are eternally cutting them. Baby poops get a lot grosser after they start solid foods. 18-month-olds often go through a delightful phase called the 18-MONTH-SLEEP REGRESSION, or, as I like to call it, hell.
Noodle stopped sleeping through the night and started waking up screaming, as if she was in agony. Then, she stopped taking naps. I would put her down, and instead of waving goodbye and curling up over her knees to go to sleep, she would stand in her crib, yelling and shaking the walls of the crib like she was a caged animal (I know this because we have a video monitor on which I spy on her regularly while she’s sleeping).
After about four days of this, I took her to the doctor to get her ears checked because we’re about to go to Africa and the last thing I want is an ear-infected child flying to Ethiopia for 16 hours. But no, her ears are perfect. As the doctor said, “There’s nothing wrong with her. Well, maybe there’s something wrong with her, but it’s not her ears.” Did you hear that? Even the doctor has diagnosed my daughter as evil!
Three days ago, she wouldn’t nap for the sixth day in a row. She played quietly for about half an hour and then started the shrieking. And shrieking. And shrieking. I had things to do, though, so I ignored her and locked myself in my office where I couldn’t hear the blood-curdling screams. Let it be said that this is the first time I’ve let her cry it out. I am a big ole sucker and usually go running in as soon as she whimpers. But not this time. I let her scream for two hours before she eventually keeled over from exhaustion and fell asleep. Which is what you do when you’ve been sleep-deprived for a week (Noodle, not me. Or maybe me, now that I think about it).
Three days ago, and she’s slept beautifully since.
Mama: 1. Noodle: 948735983247529352987.
So yesterday Tibs came home with another delightful assignment from The World’s Greatest Teacher, otherwise known as She Who Shall Not Be Named. Thursday is the 100th day of school, and GOD FORBID we let that significant milestone pass us by without proper recognition. SWSNBN (I’m abbreviating here, people–go with it) sent home a small Ziploc bag and the directions to find 100 things, sort them into groups, and put them in the bag and BY NO MEANS SHOULD THEY BE BIGGER THAN THE BAG UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH.
We chose Cheerios, mostly because we had a ton of them kicking around and I was far too lazy to think of anything else. Tibs counted them up, and then sorted those bad boys into 20s. We had five piles sitting there, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure how to get them into the tiny Ziploc in their five groups. So I called Bucket, mostly to rant about SWSNBN. “Put them on string and make them into bracelets,” he said in that annoyingly calm, practical engineer voice. YES! Bucket is a genius!
He was a genius until it came time to string those bastards on. The string we had was too fat to fit into the Cheerios without unraveling, so I had to find a needle and thread each one myself, because Tibs kept poking himself with the needle. I got increasingly stressed and twitchy and ranty, to the point that Tibs was patting me on the back and saying, “It’s okay, Mama. You’re almost done,” like I was running a marathon or having chemo or something.
Today, he came back from school with the CHEERIOS STILL IN HIS BAG. I restrained myself from ranting about the incompetence of SWSNBN, and put his bag by the door where it lives. Cut to a few hours later, when he and I were playing the traditional family game when each of us stands in opposing corners of the living room and we try to nail each other with soft objects. He dove to avoid my projectile stuffed mouse, and tripped on his backpack.
There were many words that ran through my head just then, but I’ll just say: shit. Of course, about half of the Cheerios had broken off the strings, but no one string was entirely decimated, meaning that we had to add some to almost all of them, and start a couple over from scratch.
Just kill me now.
half-assed mama 