The Agony of “The Corner”

I see nothing wrong with a good, old fashion spanking.  However, spankings don’t seem to work on all children.  Take mine, for example.  AJ is a mini-adult, and he will be the first to remind you of this.  Spankings are completely and totally ineffective on him.  In fact, they veer toward the counterproductive.  Spankings make him angry and apt to spank you right back. 

Enter “the corner.” 

I was a “spanked kid.”  I won’t say they worked on me, come to think of it, they just made me realize the sheer importance of ingenuity…figuring out new and clever ways to not get caught.  I also don’t think I’m neurotic or angsty due to those spankin’s, either.  I don’t think that spankings have long-lasting ill effects (as long as they were just some butt-whacks, mind you).  When we made a major offense, such as the telling of a lie, we even got The Belt. 

AJ gets The Corner. 

Who would have thought that a child could wail like a fire engine at the mention of The Corner.  We simply found the dullest corner in the house.  Nothing interesting to look at.  No possible way of entertaining himself.  And when he’s naughty, The Corner is where he gets to stand.  I must say The Corner is a hundred times more effective than a spanking, in AJ’s case.

But I’m afraid the neighbors will hear his screams and think we’re doing something worse!  It’s just The Corner, I promise. 

He’s really a good kid.  And we have The Corner on our side when he’s not. 

 

Heck On Wheels

My son just loves his new Big Wheel. 

 

You Gotta take the Good with the Bad…

Things about today:

Good:

1.  I’m going to be a huckleberry farmer.  Alright, ‘farmer’ is too strong of a word.  But did you know that you can buy huckleberry bushes online?  I ordered eighteen.  The first two came today.  They will all supplement the lonely, huck singleton already planted out on the land.  Who knows if they’ll ever make berries.  I guess the plants are easy to grow, but getting berries is the challenge.  I got a box from FedEx today.  Out popped two slightly compressed huckleberry plants in one-gallon buckets.  Packed lightly in foam peanuts.  They have blossoms and everything.  At first I didn’t think they were real and that I was the victim of some Nigerian huckleberry online scam artists.  But then a couple of leaves fell off and I noticed a stalk was slightly wilted.  Cool!  But what will I do if the bushes do make huckleberries?  Nineteen huckleberry bushes?  I dunno…make jam? 

2.  I got my car detailed.  I’ve never had a car get detailed before.  I’ve also never had a manicure, but I imagine that the feeling is similar.  What happened was, my “Check Engine” light came on while I was tooling down I-90 at about 85 mph.  I got a tingle of panic.  Is the “Check Engine” light the bad one? I wondered.  Nah, I think the bad one is “Service Engine Soon.”  Or is it?  Ha…”soon” they say…as your engine drops out of your car onto the highway.   It oughta say “Service Engine NOW, mofo!”  Okay so after my train of thought stopped, I made an appointment to get the “Check Engine” light checked.  I might add that the “Cruise” indicator was also blinking.  As it turns out, some air sensor was going bad and it was going to cost about $350.  The standard warranty for a Subaru ends at 60000 miles.  And here I was at 64000.  Doesn’t that just stink, the service guy said.  Ha! 

You underestimated me, service-guy! 

You and your posse of highly-paid labor-guys who were planning to stand around my car, look inside once or twice and then replace a fuse! 

But I bought the extended warranty!  MWAH HA HA HA! Eat that, service-guy! 

He seemed to be annoyed at my dance of triumph, so I stopped.  “Hey,” I said, “since I’m saving all that money, can I get this?”  I pointed at the flyer sitting on the counter.  Gold Detail.  It listed all the things that they cleaned, which was everything, even the engine compartment.  “Sure,” the service guy said.  He was probably thinking “At least we’re getting something outta her…sucker!”  Anyway I picked up my car and it’s so clean I kind of wonder if they brought out the right one.  It even seems to drive better…maybe because it’s happy.  It’s happy because it no longer smells like a combination of toddler fart and month-old Whopper. 

I vow to try harder to keep my car clean.  In order to accomplish this, I plan to tow my children behind the car on a reinforced toboggan.

Bad:

1.  I bought a new lamp for my office.  My new office at my new job is an “inner” office, and I can’t deal with fluorescent lighting.  Yet the dim, flickering bulb over my desk is woefully inadequate, and I may go blind if I don’t get a lamp.  So I found a lamp for 5 dollars.  Score!  Then I went to purchase some light bulbs. 

All the light bulbs have jumped on the Go Green bandwagon.  I was intrigued.  Could *I* be green?  Might *I* contribute somehow, little ol’ me, to saving the earth?  I picked up a package of those curly pretzel bulbs.  “Lasts six years!” the package said.  “Save $141** in energy with these bulbs!” the package said.  I noticed the warning asterisks, and flipped the package around.  The warning reminded me of the contract that Willy Wonka (Wilder not Depp) made all the kids sign, starting out with normal sized writing and getting smaller and smaller and…anyway, the gist was that if you used the bulb for four hours a day for the next six years, your energy savings would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $141**, if lots of other factors came into play and if nothing went wrong***. 

***But it could go wrong. 

I’m no mathematician, but $141/6 years/12 months/30 days ended up saving me about six cents a day***.  I decided it was not worth paying eight bucks for a fancy, green-packaged, tree-hugging, whale saving pack of four light bulbs when I could get four gas-guzzling, forest-fire starting, blood diamond, DDT-drinkin’, starving children bulbs (that were of a higher wattage, mind you) for ninety-four cents.  Sorry earth.  I love my wattage. 

2.  You can’t buy Bran Flakes anymore, apparently.  I am pissed about this.  I love Bran Flakes.  Before you ask, I am not a senior citizen.  But it is what I grew up on.  They used to be called Kellogg’s Bran Flakes.  Over the years, they became Kellogg’s Complete, and you could get them wheat-bran or oat-bran (I love the oat variety).  Is this because people just want their stupid Froot Loops?  It pained me to spell that out.  It is NOT ‘Froot,’ you dumb toucan.  I miss my Bran Flakes!  The metamucil is just not the same.

Side note:  A while back I did a post on Extreme Bust-Up Flaming Nachos.  I want to apologize to all the pervs out there who keep landing on my blog because they were searching for “extreme busts.”  I feel terrible about all the confusion.  I mean, there are dozens of you every week. 

You all must be terribly disappointed.

 

Little Friends

AJ made a little friend at the park on Sunday.  The park is awesome…huge, landscaped, complete with lake and creek and wonderful bridges and things to climb on.  The sun finally came out after a long, long, extra long winter here in Montana and suddenly the park was packed with families.  AJ was a little intimidated by all the new kids, but in a short time he was venturing onto the slides.  He didn’t latch on to any kids, instead playing with ‘Mac’ his imaginary friend. 

Soon a mommy sat next to me and we both had babies with us.  Babies are a great way for moms to start talking to each other.  There are endless questions such as “How old?” and “Is he/she sleeping?”  Her baby and my baby were born only three days apart, as it turns out.  And then she said she had a 3 1/2 year old running around on the rocks.  How convenient!  So did I!  So we introduced the kiddos and they spent the next two hours throwing grass into the creek, racing around the playground, building houses for ants, and making the very last pile of snow in the park into snowballs.  I was very happy to see AJ having so much fun with another little kid finally.  Bonus:  I got the mom’s phone number so we can meet at the park again. 

 

I Blame Homer Simpson

Parents get freaked out when they think their children are in trouble.  I figured that once I reached adulthood, this silly worry would go away.  However, it just gets worse, according to one of my mothers-in-law (I have two…).  Apparently the older your child is, the more there is to worry about.  I guess I can understand.  Parents spend their thriving years raising kids, keeping them safe, feeding them, spending every last stinking dime on their stupid sports uniforms and yearbooks.  Children are a huge investment of time and money, not to mention all that love and DNA crap.  So when it comes to worrying about their children, can you blame them?

Back to me foolishly thinking that it would stop when I no longer qualified for that 18-24 target age group…

I had a house in Northern Virginia when I was working in DC.  Here is what my life consisted of when I lived in DC:

• Wake up (4:30 AM)
• Leave for work (4:50 AM)
• Leave work for home (4:30 PM)
• Arrive home (5:30 if light traffic)
• Simpsons/King of the Hill reruns (5:30 - 6:30)
• Dinner, read, bathe (6:30-8:00)
• Bed (8:00 PM)

One day, a day just like any other day, I came home.  I was in a great mood because traffic was smooth and I got home before dark.  All the neighbors were coming home too.  I was going to make myself a nice dinner and get some reading in before going to sleep and waking up and doing the whole commute thing again.  I took my cell phone out of my purse, plopped it on the coffee table and turned on the Simpsons.  It was the one where Homer attempts to assemble a barbeque in the backyard.  Things go crappily, and Homer begins beating the life out of that poor, unsuspecting grill.  Homer screams like a madman, and the grill is reduced to a pile of nuts and bolts. 

I listened to Homer scream as I changed out of my work clothes.  The doorbell rang.  No one ever rang my doorbell.  I looked out the bedroom window.  The street was blocked off by a fire truck!  Red lights bounced off the thick trees and the neighbors smart yellow siding!  What the hell?!  An ambulance pulled up.  I ran downstairs.  What in the world?

Two police officers were standing on my porch.  “Can I help you?” I asked.  The officer looked concerned. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“…Yeah,” I said.  “What’s going on?”

“Are you in the house alone, ma’am?”

“Yes,” I said.  What did I do?

“Do you mind if we come in and take a look around?” said the second officer.  “We want to make sure no one is forcing you to say that you are alone.”

“Come on in,” I said.  “What’s this about?”

“We received a call that someone had broken in and was beating you,” the officer explained. 

“What?!??!?”

The police came in and looked around the house.  My phone rang.  I answered in.  My mother was on the other end of the line, barely breathing.  She was yelling really loud, like she always does on the phone, like it’s still 1910 and we’re yelling into cans.  “Are you okay?  Oh my God, are you okay?”

Curiouser and curiouser.  “I’m fine, mom.  What’s wrong?”  

“Are the police there?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” I said.  “How did you know?”   I had not yet made the connection.

“Why did you call me?” she asked. 

“I didn’t call you,” I said.

“You called me and you were screaming!  Someone was attacking you.”

“…”

“You called me,” said my mom.  “Are you okay?’

I’ll leave the rest of the very confused conversation out to make a long story shorter.  Apparently when I had tossed my cell phone on the coffee table, it dialed the last person I had called (Mom).  She answered the phone and heard Homer Simpson beating up that effing barbecue.  She was sure it sounded like me, and that I was getting attacked, and that somehow I managed to get the telephone to call her.  I mean, who else would you call if you were getting attacked and murdered? 

The cops didn’t really laugh much when I figured out what had happened.  I guess it’s not funny when a Simpsons rerun is responsible for what was probably several thousand dollars worth of emergency response.  I mean two officers, a fire truck and an ambulance.  Impressively, it only took fourteen minutes for them to arrive at my house…a 911 call in Butte, Montana calling about a potentially dire situation in a busy, populated part of Virginia during rush hour.

So I can look back on it all and chuckle a bit now.  I was furious at the time.  All my new neighbors gazing at my house in curiousity…as the 911 crews swarmed in, ready to get the perp.  I was flabbergasted that my mom would think I would be so retarded to call her…a ten digit dial 2500 miles away…instead of a three digit 911 call to a police department that actually had funding.  I understand a bit better today.  If you think your kids are in trouble, it’s hard to think clearly.  It’s hard to think at all. 

Well I haven’t heard my mom panic like that, that barely breathing thing, again.  That is, until yesterday.  My brother pulled quite the stunt this weekend, which I will get to in the next post. 

 

 

There’s a Hole In The Bottom of My Sock…

I get more holes in my socks than anyone I know.  This could be due to either:

a) Everyone else throws their socks out when they get thin and ready to hole-ify

b) I walk funny

I can’t be sure which is the cause…of course, maybe its

c) I’m really cheap when it comes to clothes, and the 6 pack for $3.99 isn’t up to snuff

Anyway, I was invited to a mommy group last night.  This was very exciting to me, because it’s a mommy group that consists ONLY of working mothers…and coming from the land of stay-at-home snooty mothers who think you’re tragic for having to actually WORK during the day instead of taking your children to the park, and meeting for coffee klatch, and heading for the spa…well this concept was new and exciting.  But I think I blew it.

See, the mommy group was held at one of the mother’s houses, and they had just refinished the basement, and with the new carpet and whatnot we all had to take our shoes off.  For other women this is generally not a problem.  Most women seem to be able to remove their shoes and out pops a clean, trendy looking sock.  And if they were to continue removing that sock, you would probably see a precious set of toes replete with fresh polish.  Forget about calluses. 

Oh heavens. 

Out from my six year old Dansko clog came two mismatched black socks (both black, but with different patterns).  My big toe in all of it’s hangnailed, callused glory was popping out of one sock, and my scruffy, grey, I’ve-had-to-stand-too-much-in-my-short-life heel was bursting out the other.  This was totally obvious to the other moms.  I could tell, because they were all staring at my feet.  When they saw that I saw they were staring at my feet, they quickly looked away and starting chit-chatting with each other.  “Is that little Dylan?  Is he sleeping through the sock?  I mean, the night?”

Oh, why couldn’t I have foreseen this?  I’m a working mom, after all…can’t I AFFORD socks without HOLES?  Maybe scrub my heels once in a while? 

Years ago when I was commuting into Washington D.C., I had just parked the car in the lot after an hour and a half drive.  It was in the elevator that I noticed I had one brown shoe on, and one black shoe.  I had to drive ALL THE WAY HOME because I couldn’t be the crazy chick who wears different shoes.  Or so I thought. 

I must be retarded, at least in the fashion department, because it was last spring when…

One morning I got dressed for work, took the trash all the way down to the end of our very long driveway, walked all the way back to my car, got in my car and drove 25 miles to work.  There I parked in the parking garage, walked down three flights of stairs, crossed the street, went up the elevator…and then I realized my feet felt a little “off.” 

I looked down and both my shoes were black, but one had a heel.  An effing heel. 

We’re not talking about slut-heels or anything, but a height-making, chunky sort of heel that I definitely should have NOTICED while I was doing ALL THAT WALKING.  I had to bravely walk all the way back to my car, drive to Target, walk into the store (limping by now…but no shoes, no service!) and purchase a new pair of shoes.  What is wrong with me?  I guess if I can’t be bothered to check for two matching shoes, then I should stop worrying about the socks. 

Anyway, when I finally did manage to get a couple of the ladies to talk to me, I did my best to act normal and confident.  Because I am normal and confident.  Okay, perhaps just confident.  I think I will be invited back.  Maybe.

Thankfully it’s almost sandal season.

 

Maleesha’s foot…the next day

 

I Want Sleep, please

There is NOTHING more annoying to me than laying in bed with your eyes closed and having someone walk in the room to say “Are you sleeping?”  If I WAS sleeping, I’m not anymore, because you just woke me up.  If I wasn’t yet asleep, I was trying to be, and now I am irritated that I would have woken up if I had been asleep and I am also mad because apparently you don’t give a crap that I am obviously tired, and unless the house is on fire or children are bleeding I do not want to be disturbed, just for the next couple of hours if that’s okay with you.  Even if an asteroid is headed directly for North America, or if they’ve finally invented a teleportation device, or even if robbers just walked out the front door with the TV set, or even if breaking news proves the existence of aliens or that Elvis is really still alive, I do not want to be bothered. 

I just want some sleep.

 

The Paranoia of Mothers

There you go, walking along enjoying your life, not worried about anything except for whether or not you will get off work early enough to go to the happy hour.  One day you wake up and there are other people living in your house, namely a husband and children, and you wonder how it all happened.  Or at least I do.  And you don’t worry too much about the husband, even when he is a photographer who wanders among the high cliffs of lightning bolts and the cougars of death, but you do worry about the wee ones.  All the time.  Especially if you work and have to entrust their little lives to others for a good part of the day.  Moms (except for crack moms and meth moms, probably) all belong to the Major Leagues of Paranoia, to some degree.   

Not all mothers are paranoid about injuries, or about germ infestation in their kitchens, or about kidnappers.  And some moms are only paranoid about one of these things, while some are paranoid about all of them and more.  I have certain paranoias when it comes to my children.  Germs are not one of them.  My son often eats off our (disgusting) floor after he drops food on it.  Things like macaroni and cheese.  He also never gets sick.  Immune system strengthening at its best.

They say that people spend most of their lives worried about the wrong things; plane crashes, house fires, wayward asteroids. 

My own mother spent most of my childhood worried about:

Balloons

Every single freaking time my brother and I were around balloons, a strict warning would come from Mom.  She was eagle eyed around balloons.  For you see, at any moment, the balloon could pop, go whizzing around the room, hit us in the back of the throat, at which point we would choke to death on pastel-colored latex. 

Smoke detectors

Sleepovers at other houses always followed a long period of questioning and/or phone calls to the other house.  “Do they have smoke detectors?  Is it a trailer house?  Trailer houses burn down faster.  Do they have a back door in case you need to escape?”  The next day when I returned home, follow up questioning took place.  “So did they have smoke detectors?  Do you think they change the batteries in them?”

Of course they had a back door, Mom.  They didn’t live in a cave. 

Toasters and coffee pots

Had. To. Be. Unplugged.  At all times.  Otherwise they were certain to burst into flames, because it was in the newspaper once, and it happened to a real family somewhere in Tennessee once.  It was sure to happen to us.  And at that time, we better hope that our smoke detectors had batteries in them.

But here is what Mom should have been paranoid about:

Babysitters

I had some doozy babysitters.  The one that comes to mind as a shining example of babysitting horror is the one who locked my brother in a closet all the time, gave us “snakebites” (or “Indian burns”, depending on what your neighborhood kids called them), brought her boyfriend and his friends over to the house and threatened us with interesting methods of death if we ever told on her. 

And of course there was Gramma Gigi.

Toothpaste

As children, we ate massive quantities of toothpaste.  This habit started at summer camp, 1985.  There was no candy to be found, so one of the older kids at summer camp suggested we eat our toothpaste.  It was a delightfully minty flavor.  As an adult, I bothered to read the warning label.  It’s really bad to eat toothpaste.  Besides getting fluoride poisoning, your teeth can turn brown and soft.  Gross!  Plus I bet had I not eaten all that toothpaste, I would have ended up smarter than I am today.  If I ever have to get a brain scan, the doctor will be looking at pictures of the inside of my head and say “I see the problem…a class four toothpaste deposit on the right frontal lobe.”

Weird Al

Not Yankovic, of polka fame.  Weird Al was a guy who lived three blocks away from our house.  All the neighborhood kids were obsessed with Weird Al.  No one knew what Weird Al looked like, but we all knew what he sounded like.  When we kids wandered the neighborhood for hours, our paths went by the broken, weedy sidewalk that went by Weird Al’s weird house.  It was brown, with a caving roof.  Plywood was hammered randomly to the side of the house and spray painted with messages: Keep Out.  No Dogs.  Good Morning.  When we walked by, a deep voice would come from the screened in porch.  Weird Al would call out “Hey kids.  <weird laugh here> Come on over.  You can come over.”   We could make out Weird Al’s large shadow.  Later on in junior high, we’d prank call Weird Al during sleepovers.  We kept Weird Al on the phone for hours. 

Looking back, he was probably just a lonely old dude with a sorry house.  However, there is a strong possibility that if any of us were stupid enough to go meet Weird Al, our bones would have been discovered centuries later in a slab of cement that used to be his basement.

Now here is what I am paranoid about:

Magnets

I am always imagining my son eating magnets, for some reason.  This is because I watched the news story from last year about the Magnetix toys that some kid ate, and they stuck together in his intestines, and his intestines ruptured and poisoned him.  I am always looking at the floor for wayward magnets.  You never know what a hidden magnet might roll out of; remote controls, toy dinosaurs, pillows. 

I should not worry about this at all because I taught my son at a very early age to bring me little things that he finds on the floor.  Over his three years he has delivered heavy duty staples, nails, tacks, and esophagus-shaped plastic items to me, no problem.  If he found a magnet, I am sure he would use it to hang his artwork on the refrigerator.  Still, I am worried.

Poisonous plants

I watch my son outside to ensure he doesn’t eat the mushrooms that pop up after a good rain.  I watch to make sure he doesn’t taste the pine cones…pine cones are a gateway plant.  I know you can eat dandelions, but I don’t want him to do this because today it’s dandelions, tomorrow it’s a poinsettia. 

Rattlesnakes

I don’t even have rattlesnakes around my house.  There is no logic when it comes to paranoia.

And of course I am paranoid about:

Toothpaste

We lock it up.

 

Valentine’s Cards

My son is only three, but he still “has to” bring little Valentine cards to his preschool tomorrow.  So we filled some out tonight.  He picked out a “Pixar” themed pack of cards, so his wee little classmates will be getting cards with Toy Story, Cars, and the Incredibles on them.  He wrote his name on each one, often in the wrong spot…so we went through twenty-three cards to get eleven good ones that will be taken to his class tomorrow.  He is also in charge of bringing carrots and ranch dip for the Valentine party they are having.  Sheesh.  Only three and my son is already a Valentine’s Day kind of guy.  He learned at school that Valentine’s Day is “hearts and flowers” and he keeps reminding me about it. 

Thankfully we didn’t have to make a shoe box this year.  I’m sure that is coming soon.  You know, the shoe box?  From elementary school?  Who knows if they still do it.  We sure did, back in the day.  My class always had to decorate a shoe box (usually we remembered to do this the night before, sending mom one step closer to the looney bin by reminding her that we needed a box tomorrow, as we brushed our teeth for bed) with pink and red and candy hearts, and cut a little slit in the top.  This was so our classmates could stuff a Valentine inside. 

We kids were told multiple times that we “better bring enough Valentines cards for everyone, or else.”  This part was the worst.  The dread of wondering if the cute kid in the third row was going to give you a really good card, you know, one that said “You’re the best!” instead of the lame card that said “Totally rad!” or “Friend Time.”  On top of the stress of waiting, trying to pick out appropriate cards for classmates was also rough.  Which card to give the cute kid in the third row?  (I’m almost certain that only girls thought about this) 

Or more challenging, which card to give the smelly kid in the back who frequently pooped his pants?  You didn’t want to give the wrong idea.

 

So this is what it’s like…

…to have two children.

 I’m really in awe of those people that show up on Discovery Health channel, you know, the people that have quintuplets and triplets two years apart.  Their houses must instantly become tornado-stricken, spit-covered diaper bins.  I have no idea how they do it.  Maybe if you carry more than one child in there, some hormone kicks in that delivers extreme patience to the mother.  Or possibly these parents begin to experiment with hard drugs.  Either way, our house looks like it’s been ransacked with Munchkins, and the dishes are piling up next to the laundry.  AJ even pointed out that the stack of laundry on the couch “looks like Pikes Peak” as he started to climb it.  And Macy doesn’t even sit up yet.

Well of course we all know babies like to wake up seventy-eleven times per night and eat three drops of milk and then immediately doze off into a peaceful three minute nap, which allows Mom and Dad to juuuuuuust fall back to sleep, and that is the point baby screams again.  So two nights ago, we awoke to hungry baby at the same instant AJ got sick on the other side of the house.  Screams and wails floated from both ends of the house and met in the middle…it was a medley I like to call “So You Have Two Kids Now.”  I started laughing.  Jesse looked at me very seriously and said “That’s it, I’m leaving.”  He’s still here, but that may be because he’s too tired to escape. 

 

The Ultimate Sacrifice…

…is selling all of your books.  But I’ve finally accepted that most of them, I just won’t read anymore.  The ones that I know I will re-read, I am keeping (but that’s only 20 or so).  The others are getting sold on Amazon.com.  Anything that remains after a couple months I will give away or donate.  We are just plain out of room and getting rid of my hundreds of books will free up a bit of space.

Why are we out of room?

Macy Jane Speer is here!  She is brand-new, has her daddy’s chin and ears, her Grampa Mitch’s family’s hair, her Gramma Sue’s middle name, and may also have inherited her mother’s legs and feet (sorry, kiddo).  She is very laid back and mellow which is a nice trait in a baby.  But she is why we are out of room…not that we’re complaining too loudly, mind you…but suddenly we wish we were one of Those Americans that have a 3000 square foot house and a nice fenced yard.  Oh well. 

 

Will Poop For Video Games

(No, not me.  Gross!)

We’ve been struggling with the dreaded potty training for a while.  Number One has been going smoothly for a long time, but there was no way son was going Number Two.  It seemed to scare the bejesus out of him.   

We tried the “gold star” chart, which really helped the process for Number One become ingrained in his head.  This worked after attempting the failed Cheerios method (using them as targets was supposed to work well), the Elmo Potty Video, and everything else.  The closest we came was the “Pee on a Tree” method which works well in a rural area but feels an awful like housebreaking.  Housebreaking a dog is way easier than teaching a kid to use the potty, actually.

But still, nothing worked for Number Two.  Until we noticed that our three-year-and-two-month old really, really loves video games.  So much so, that we bought him a V-Tech V-Smile or whatever they are called.  We placed it nicely up over the living room armoire, where he could wistfully stare at it but not reach it. 

Well finally, finally he went yesterday, in the potty, though it was a very small, er…deposit.  We let him play the new video game system for 30 minutes.  We then put it back up to unreachable spaces and said he could play more next time he…made a deposit.

So today…today!  Success!  He sat up suddenly, looked at us, and proudly announced he “had to poop.”  And he did!  Right where he was supposed to!  My goodness, I wanted to take a photograph of his creation (no, I didn’t) because this is a momentous occasion!  (We’re really, really sick of diapers…what makes it worse is that he is as tall as a four or five year old, so we get strange looks when we have to change him in public places, ala ‘why isn’t your kid potty trained yet’)  And we are going to let him play another 30 minutes of his video games. 

Call it bribing if you want…I call it a major accomplishment!  Let’s just hope he takes to Number Two as well as he did Number One…

 

The Aftermath, or Malaria for Christmas

Ah, the day after Christmas.  I always have mixed feelings about this day.  On one hand, I am excited for the upcoming year.  On the other, I am sad that the tree has to come down, and that I have no more excuses to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas every night (although I guess I could use the writers’ strike as an excuse to continue).

We tucked in AJ last night.  He was very sad to have to put away his new things and go to bed.  I assured him that Santa wasn’t coming back to take the toys now that Christmas is over…he would get to play with them tomorrow, too. 

Since they are making toys with roofies these days, and I’m pretty old-fashioned, AJ didn’t get a lot of toys from Santa.  He mostly got puzzles and colored pencils and paper and things like that.  However, earlier this year he did sit on Santa’s lap and asked for only one toy: a Lightning McQueen race car.  He was the only kid in line not to cry on Santa’s lap, so what could we do as parents, other than make sure that the boy got his one wish?

AJ opened his presents yesterday, wide-eyed and full of peppermint.  He was so excited about his toy race car.  It’s one of those toys that makes noise, unfortunately.  It says a bunch of one-liners from the movie Cars when you shake it.  However, AJ loves it and it’s his Christmas present so we ignore the noise, even after the 546th time.

Now a little background: we still keep a monitor in AJs room at night.  We can’t hear what he is up to otherwise, and that kid is always up to something.  It’s been quite a while since we had to get up in the middle of the night for anything, though.

This morning at four o’clock, I shot up in bed after hearing a ripping, thundering noise.  What in the heck?  Was the furnace exploding?  Was a plane falling out of the sky?  Then the ripping noise turned into a long screeeeeeech and I heard a metallic voice say “The checkered flag is mine!”

Stupid race car.

In other exciting news, I got malaria for Christmas!  No, not the real tropical disease, but this:

It’s a stuffed malaria from Giant Microbes.  Now I can’t take credit for this find…we first discovered it from the greatest reality show ever made, Kid Nation.  Now one of the kids, the kind of kid who is going to grow up to either make great discoveries of galaxies, cure cancer, or eventually go off the deep end and shoot people from a tower, well, he collects Giant Microbes.  A clip of the show was of his mother on the phone, telling him that his microbes missed him (If that isn’t love, then what is?)  Further research resulted in the discovery of Giant Microbes.

Microbes come with an informative tag with information about the disease/malady they cause in real life, along with some of the devastating truth.  We don’t really think about malaria too much, but it kills a lot of people elsewhere, especially children.  So while my stuffed malaria may look cute and fluffy (AJ has named him ‘Wormy’) he is really representative of sinister death.  Maybe you will find a reason to purchase a Giant Microbe too.  You could send Black Death to your former boss, or that neighbor with the barking dog.  You could pick out a little somethin-something from the Venereal line(TM) for a former significant-other.  So many possibilities, and they’re about eight bucks per affliction. 

 

Beef Eve…aka: Tradition Overkill

Traditions…I’ve always liked the idea of traditions.  This is possibly because I didn’t grow up with any regular, reliable traditions (at least that I can remember) but now with my own family, I can tradition-away all year long. 

Growing up, we never took an annual summer trip.  We couldn’t light fireworks that made noise because they would give my dad ‘Nam flashbacks (and there is nothing lamer than a ten year old kid with smoke bombs and snakes when the kids across the street got M-80s and got to blow up mailboxes).  We stopped going to church for Easter because everybody got jobs and started working every Sunday.  We didn’t have green bean casserole for Thanksgiving. 

To this day, I’m still not sure what a Yule Log is.  We never put lights on the outside of the house, because my mom was certain that the lights would catch fire and we would have to live in a cardboard box behind Albertsons all winter.  We usually got to open a present on Christmas Eve, but sometimes we just opened everything on Christmas Eve.  Then we’d have some kind of big dinner, and that would be really nice.  The menu changed every year.  We never, ever ate ham, because none of us liked ham all that much. 

The only thing that was certain in my house was that you could never be certain of anything.  Would dad steal my car after too many beers and bring it back with a huge dent in the side?*  Would the cat that rode around on my shoulder decide to be brave and cross the street in front of a speeding vehicle, and die?**  Would we decide to go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and would my dad, after too much wine at said restaurant, start retelling (loudly) about the time he got a tapeworm on the farm?  And would the ten other tables of patrons in the restaurant be so horrified that they would all leave?  Would the rest of us want to jump in the river, drowning ourselves?*** 

So in the midst of trying to struggling to find traditions in my past, I am totally over-doing traditions in the present.  I noticed this recently when my son and I were making Christmas cookies (Okay, I was making the cookies; he was smearing red icing on the dining room chairs).  I realized that I lost my cookie cutters.  This really, really upset me.  I managed to fashion some snowmen shapes from various sizes of glasses and lids; however I had to freehand the trees (they looked like arrowheads, according to Jesse), and forget about attempting to make stars.  Mostly, we made circles.  I tend to be a bit OCD about things anyway, but the fact that the Christmas cookie cutters were missing made me break into a cold sweat.  So maybe I am taking the need…the need to make Christmas cookies with my son a little too far?   

Here are some of the traditions that we have established so far…these are just the Christmas ones:

 - Put together a gingerbread house

- Christmas card assembly line, where each person signs the card

- Find or make one new ornament for our Wildlife Tree theme

- Make colorful Christmas cookies  (note to self…buy new cookie cutters for ‘0

- Watch Charlie Brown Christmas

- Make hot chocolate with real marshmallows and whipped cream

- Beef Eve

…what’s that you say?  What is ‘beef eve?’  Well, Beef Eve is our new tradition idea.  We have a bunch-o-family to visit due to various divorces, remarriages, etc. and of course everyone wants to eat dinner together on Christmas Day.  So instead of being the one to make Christmas Day dinner, we decided we will eat somewhere else that day (this year it will be ham at J’s mothers).  But Christmas Eve will be ours, and on Christmas Eve, we will roast a giant hunk of cow.  Forget about turkey or ham.  We ordered a 2 lb Chateaubriand from Kansas City Steak company this year, and while I was hoping my family would come visit, alas…it will just be us on Beef Eve.  (We’re glad…if you’ve ever had Kansas City’s Chateaubriand, you wouldn’t want to share the leftovers either)

Most of all we just like to say it.  Come on, say it:  “Beef Eve.”  It’s fun.

* This really happened, near Christmas 1995

** This also happened on Christmas Eve, 1991

*** This too happened, the day before Christmas, 1996

 

Bribe them with cake

I have a sick three year old.  He has a fever of 101.5 and hasn’t eaten in the last 36 hours or so.  I did convince him to have a popsicle this morning, but he isn’t too keen on liquids either, which is bad. 

I’m going to attempt to get him to eat by making a chocolate cake.  If he doesn’t want chocolate cake, then that’s serious, right?

I’m making an attempt to de-badforyou-ize the cake as much as I can by doing the ol’ pumpkin secret ingredient:

• 1 box chocolate cake mix
• 1 can pumpkin
• 2 eggs

Mix the ingredients listed above and bake according to the directions.  The darker chocolate cake you use, the better the pumpkin will be disguised.  If you are health conscious, you can do this all the time, using 3 egg whites instead of the 2 whole eggs. 

Yes, it’s still a chocolate cake…but adding pumpkin adds fiber and vitamins that are generally absent from your everyday cake. 

I just popped it in the oven…I hope he eats it. 

UPDATE:  The child has eaten some cake!  At first he passed on it, but after thinking “hey, it’s cake” he decided to try it.  Four bites.  Now he is eating a popsicle again.