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Daring Young Mom Has Moved

2006-08-21T00:15:00.000-07:00

Fare thee well, little Blogger. Oh how I have loved thee.

Please find me at my new home www.daringyoungmom.com.

Update your links. Update your bloglines subs. Update your hairstyle 'cause... dang! See you over there.

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They Are Listening – A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Chapters 11-26

2006-08-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Children hear what you say and understand more than you know. And it’s not just words. They soak up the smiles, the disappointment, the tone, the indifference, the excitement. They are surrounded by your attitude and it becomes a part of who they are.

Yesterday was a bad day. It was a terrible horrible no good very bad day. When I’m having a bad day, I often find a way to blame my children. “They were so whiny and demanding today. Why do they have to fight all the time? Could they be quiet for one second?” By the end of the day, I was feeling low about everything and I was contentious and whiny and loud.

Today was a great day. The children were angels. They were affectionate and sweet and we spent a ton of time together reading, playing fetch (guess who did the fetching), and exploring in the back yard. I was in a great mood all day. The chicken or the egg?

In the book there’s a scene where Francie goes to the doctor for her immunization and the doctor and nurse talk about her like she isn’t even there. She is crushed by their words and they seem shocked that she even had a clue what they were talking about. She also experiences emotional highs and lows based on her parents’ language and behavior.

This got me thinking of just how staggering of an effect I have on my children. When I am feeling anxiety, sadness, or a sense of low self-esteem, they mirror my feelings and behaviors so closely that it scares me. When I don’t show them attention or when I spend the day talking on the phone about how hard the house hunting is or how fat I look in these jeans, the kids basically fall apart.

I feel a lot of pressure as a mother to be “on” all the time, to put on my happy face and act like everything’s okay, even when it’s really not. In the end, the kids can see through this and I also think it’s healthy for them to watch me face a range of challenges and emotions.

What I’d like to show them are positive actions, healthy ways to deal with those emotions. Do I want them to be wallowers and worry-warts? Not particularly.

Okay, other things that were striking about these chapters. I loved the transfer to the new school and the way Francie describes the old janitor as being the entire reason for the improved atmosphere there. It is one more example of a single person making a huge difference in many lives.

I also loved the end of chapter 26 where Teacher explains that Francie’s “embellishments” are not lies, just good storytelling. She teaches her the importance of telling the truth and writing the story, which is a fabulous scene to me as a writer.

I love when writers create characters who are writers because it means they are writing about what they know and Betty Smith’s voice is nothing if not authentic. You feel that she has lived so many of the experiences in this book, whether through her own eyes or through the eyes of the people she grew up with. Maybe she embellishes them a little, but that’s okay. She’s a writer.

Links:
Lauren writes from a New Yorker's perspective about the ways our world has changed and how it remains the same.

Allysha says "[...]Often times it's heartbreaking as Francie has to negotiate the world she has created in her mind with the reality she lives in.[...]"

Schedule:
Chapters 1-10 Saturday, August 12th
Chapters 11-26 Saturday, August 19th
Chapters 27-37 Saturday, August 26th
Chapters 38-45 Saturday, September 2nd
Chapters 46-End Saturday, September 9th

Please let me know if you’ve blogged about the book and I’ll add a link here. And remember, you don’t have to stick to the schedule. If you have something great to say about the first page, let us know.

A Typical Cloudy Day in Seattle

2006-08-17T23:13:00.000-07:00

As witnessed Tuesday, laying in the grass in my back yard.

If we cut down the grass, we cut down on the possibilities for exploration.

Your Time is Limited Little Shish

2006-08-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to up the morbidity level of this blog, I feel it is my duty to inform you that Jack Again, our latest attempt at pet ownership, has very little time left on this earth.

Magoo’s linguistical skills are growing and with them, his obsessive compulsive behaviors. He. Must. Act. Out. The. Words. As. He. Says. Them. He must. He will. He shall.

When he says:

Gick: he must kick something.

Dat: he must go to Dad or grab whatever “dat” he is pointing to.

Jeez: he must eat some cheese or say a silent prayer to the Savior, whose picture he is pointing at.

Deeks: he must get a reply of “you’re welcome.”

Engh-engh-engh-engh: he must repetitively whine this syllable until I lose my ever-living mind.

Now his latest word is “shish,” which means in any language “little fishy”. Magoo loves the shish. He adores the shish. He wants to clutch the shish from its watery enclosure, squeeze it lovingly until its eyeballs pop out, throw it on the floor and march off in search of more Jeez. He’s very hungry and also religious.

Now that he’s learned to climb up on a chair, he is frequently seen pushing one around the house, in search of prey. Nothing is really safe unless locked away. And what's the point of having a shish if it's locked away so no one can see it?

I’m afraid for you, little shish. You are still so small and have so much potential for… um… swimming and such.

I Don’t Want Them to Lie

2006-08-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

And they will. They’ll lie through their teeth. It’s considered wrong to speak ill of the dead and a person’s death brings all kinds of healing and magical forgetfulness dust.

When Aunt J was dying, she looked over the wonderful things that were going to be said about her, picked out a specific item and said, “Don’t LIE.”

Driving home today from the funeral of a fabulous and not-possible-to-exaggerate woman, I could not stop crying. I was not sad about her death. Her husband passed away 28 years ago and she was more than ready to join him.

I was sad about my death. No, it’s not imminent. Not that I know of.

There’s just so much more I’d like to be and do before it happens. I want them to be able to tell the truth. So from the tears comes this partial list, a list of the truths I hope to cultivate:

She was kind.
She was the wife her husband wanted and the mother her children needed.
She not only loved people, but she showed that love in a way they could understand.
Her hands were worn in service.
She had her priorities straight.
She knew her limits but stretched them slightly every day.
She didn’t let her desire for appearances outweigh her children’s need for adventure.
She did not waste a breath speaking ill of other people.
She didn’t take the last cookie.
She greeted rather than waiting to be introduced.
She asked people to sit down.
She actively listened.
She remembered.
She helped people discover their beauty.
She left places more beautiful than she found them and people happier than she met them.
She was humble and confident.
She generated, rather than consumed, peace.

Tip Tuesday – Emergency Preparedness

2006-08-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hurricane season is almost upon us. There are readers of this blog living in earthquake, tsunami, tornado, winter storm, bird flu pandemic, country music infestation, and even war zones.

All kinds of disasters are going on throughout the world and all we can really do is prepare the best we can, pray hard and then go on living like we mean it.

Who knows if the next terror attacks will involve spit-wad activated nuclear bombs contained in pocket PCs? Not me. I most definitely do not know, homeland security personnel reading this blog. Please do not shut down my site.

We can’t know everything but we can plan for the things we do know are likely to happen. Here are a few random tips for emergency preparedness. Please share yours in abundance.

1. Keep an axe under your bed – Now that you’ve sent me your addresses for those removable tattoos, I may be coming for you. If you’re one of the lucky few who did not give me your street address, you still may want to keep that axe or hatchet handy. If you live in an earthquake zone, there’s a good chance that during the quake your doors will shift, making it either impossible to get out of your bedroom or to get into other rooms in your house. If you’re in an earthquake zone, you should also keep a pair of old shoes (for broken glass) and a flashlight under the bed. This is one of my favorite tips because it’s really easy to do and very practical. Just make sure the hatchet is safe from your kids.

2. Have a single emergency contact – Often in times of emergency people are not able to call into or within the disaster zone but some calls can be made out. Designate one person living in another state to be your main contact. Then if your family is separated in an emergency, you can each call that one person and tell them your whereabouts and they can let you know if they’ve heard from the other members of your family. We emailed all of our family on both sides and told them to contact Dan’s mom in Utah if there was ever an emergency in Seattle. She will be the one person who knows what’s going on.

3. Have enough food and water on hand for at least 3 days but hopefully as much as a full year in case of emergency. Make sure this food is usable (no cooking required unless you have a stove and fuel available) and something you will and can actually eat.

4. Find out about your city and county emergency procedures.

5. Go to the Red Cross and FEMA websites to find tips. They also have print materials they can send you free of charge. The LDS provident living website also has some great ideas for getting started with food storage, including tables to guide you on how much basic food to store.

6. If “they” say evacuate and you have the time and means to evacuate safely, JUST DO IT.

This is just the tip of the ice berg. Share all your great ideas and links and we will revisit this topic again.

When it's Too Embarassing for my Blog

2006-08-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

I just write it up over at Parenting.com.

Beauty in Every Soul – A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Chapters 1-10

2006-08-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

Betty Smith paints with words, talented beyond my limited means to express. As I read this book, I ask myself over and over again the question – WHY HAS NO ONE MADE ME READ THIS BOOK BEFORE?

I’m sure Betty would say that a person cannot be forced to read a book but must discover it on their own. I can imagine she would deny the perfection of her own exquisite prose, stating that there are multiple sides and shades to anything, the good must be taken with the bad and a love or distain created out of the complex web of contradictions.

I was hooked from the moment she began to describe the old man, seated in the bakery.

“Francie stared at the oldest man. She played her favorite game, figuring out about people […] her thoughts ran…

‘He is old. He must be past seventy. He was born about the time Abraham Lincoln was living and getting himself ready to be president […] He was a baby once. He must have been sweet and clean and his mother kissed his pink toes. Maybe when it thundered at night she came to his crib and fixed his blanket better and whispered that he mustn’t be afraid, that mother was there […] Now his children are getting old too, like him, and they have children and nobody wants the old man any more and they are waiting for him to die. But he don’t want to die. He wants to keep on living even though he’s old and there’s nothing to be happy about anymore.’ […]

A terrible panic that had no name came over her as she realized that many of the sweet babies in the world were born to come to something like this old man some day. She had to get out of that place or it would happen to her.”

Aging and death are recurring themes in this book, the idea that our time here is limited. As I read, I feel a growing sense of urgency, an urgency to get out of this place I’m in before “it” happens to me, to choose my life and not live by accident.

Francie’s mother chooses to take charge of her life and clings to the direction she has created for herself, while her father lets life happen to him, playing the victim and enabling himself to fall deeper and deeper into a hole of self-loathing. The amazing part about these two and all of the characters in the novel is the depth with which they are portrayed. I LOVE that I can simultaneously identify with and censure a character. I adore that they do not feel like flat people made up of words on a page but rather living, breathing beings who might accidentally let a fleck of spittle fly my way if I'm not careful.

The description of the way Francie’s sainted grandmother views the world seems to be a roadmap for the way Betty Smith wants you to view the world she has created within the story, seeing the good and the bad in people but choosing to embrace the good, realizing that we are all flawed and we are all deliciously beautiful in all our failure, triumph and daily plodding hypocrisy.

Near the end of this week’s section, on page 95, a Woman is telling Francie’s mother Katie that the child is a whelp who would be better-off dead. Although Katie feels no great love for her child, she fiercely disagrees with the woman’s conclusion.

“Don’t say that,” Katie held her baby tightly. “It’s not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It’s growing out of sour earth. And it’s strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.”

“Aw, somebody ought to cut that tree down, the homely thing.”

“If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful,” said Katie. “But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is. Look at these children.” She pointed to a swarm of dirty children playing in the gutter. “You could take any one of them and wash him good and dress him up and sit him in a fine house and you would think he was beautiful.”

And you’d be right, Betty Smith, he would be beautiful because he already is. We all are.

Yes, you too.

Avoidance

2006-08-11T23:08:00.000-07:00

Today Heather has asked us to tell her one thing we're currently procrastinating.

I am currently procrastinating opening a very spam-ish looking piece of postal mail that says:

IMPORTANT -- DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY DISCARD

State law requires that you take care of an important matter related to your move.
Please do this today.

What if I discard it ON PURPOSE? What then? I don't know. I'm sort of putting off that decision for a while.

I Tried to Push Magoo off the Wagon

2006-08-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

But he wouldn’t budge.

Last night I came home late. Dan had put the kids down already, which is always a sort of bitter-sweet experience. Bitter because I love them and I adore to squidge them, and sweet because I get out of doing the real work and yet I can enjoy them in their most lovable state, the one where they’re sweetly sleeping and not wiping their spaghetti mustache on my pants because I didn’t get them a nakum fast enough.

Magoo woke up shortly after I arrived, screaming as though he’d had some terrible nightmare, like the one where you’re driving to Butte, Montana naked in front of a crowd of people and you NEED to pull over to pee so bad but every exit is blocked by evil clowns sucking back helium and singing that Celine Dion Titanic song. I’d scream too… if I’d ever had a dream like that.

Dan went to save him, but I ended up joining in the fun (okay, I completely took over after Dan got him to the calm-snuggly phase).

He was so cuddly and squishy and needy and it was one of those moments I fantasized about before I had children. Me and my baby dolly alone in a dark room, the nightlight softly glowing. I rocked him back and forth, humming nonsensically soothing songs. I kissed his peach fuzz and gently squoze him. He nuzzled into me, batting his sweet sleepy eyes, his bottom lip sucking and fluttering in and out.

I knew what he wanted. I knew I still had it and I knew I had to either give it to him right then or abandon him and go have “the talk” with Dan about whether or not we were ready for round three of Operation Repopulate Seattle with Attractive Small People.

I thought “Seattle needs more cuteness and we need to start that crusade tonight” was a pretty hard sell.

So I offered my weaned-two-months-ago-but-his-mom-still-inexplicably-has-the-goods bubby a taste of the special milk “he” had been missing so desperately.

Yeah.

He acted like I was trying to jam my elbow down his throat.

My appendages bashfully retreated as he walked off arm in arm with his new girlfriend.

“Mom, I’m with Nuby now.”

Yeah, whatever. Suck rubber. What do I care?

~This post inspired by Jess~

Wiki-wiki HOW

2006-08-10T00:33:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Lauren for pointing me towards this after reading my interview over at mommybloggers.com.

Here's the excerpt she was referring to:

Mommybloggers: We love that you host Daring Family Freestyle Rap Battles. In fact, we're thinking that there needs to be a way to incorporate it into BlogHer 2007. Can you give us a sample of your lyrical prowess?

Kathryn:

Get yer tooth-BRUSH from the vanity, OOO let’s fight cavities

You better put away the play-doh, this moment
You own it, you better never let it go
Crusty. You only get one tub, do not miss your chance to show
Grammy your sculpture once before bedtime, yo

You really don’t get the whole experience with just the words on the page. If you could picture me as one of the white moms on Oprah trying to “get down” with one fist raised in the air, attempting some wooden-legged booty-poppin’ as they watched Mary J. Blige perform recently, you’d feel like you were actually there in our living room for a DFFRB. Laylee and Dan like to add some flava with a sweet two-fingered wiggedy-wiggedy faux-vinyl-spinning maneuver which I plan to incorporate into my own routines at some future date.

The tips on the WikiHow Site are invaluable and I'm sure the flo will be more flo-inacious after I read through those a couple of times. I especially like the part where it explains that to "spit" in rap culture does not mean the "forcible expulsion of saliva from the mouth". Thanks. We are all so much more "down" now.

******
Oh, and the Blog This tattoos are gone. I still have a few MommyBlogHer tatts for any mommas out there who want them.

All He Wanted Was a Piece of Fruit

2006-08-08T23:05:00.000-07:00

My good friends, parents of Big Moses (the underwear swapping boy), are jumping ship and moving to California. As a faithful Seattle area resident for the past 3+ years, I find this traitorous move extremely unforgivably traitorous.

I just got the invitation to their going away shindig and it has been asked that we bring nothing but fruit to the memorial services, at Big Daddy Mo’s request. It was listed as his “final” request.

This is troubling to me on many levels. Will there be a firing squad after the beach ball volleyball? Is he too good for The Best Cookies in the State of Washington? In his fruitalicious plea, is he suggesting something about the people of California or his fellow Washingtonians? Dude. We can’t even bring granola?

And finally, if you’re reading this Big Mamma Mo – so help me if this is the final request I get out of you. Seriously, if we lose contact – I will hunt you down and I’m gonna be wielding something more powerful than a piece of fruit.

Red? There is No Red!

2006-08-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

There is no orange or purple either.

Dark pink?

Yes.

Orangy Pink?

Yes.

Purplish pink?

Also affirmative.

Laylee wanted you to know that.

***********
I just wrote what I like to think is my last post about BlogHer... for this week... and it's being hosted over at the Mommybloggers' site. They were nice enough to hand out (read this: attack people and brand them with) custom-made washable tatts at ye olde conference.

For those of you who were unable to attend, I accidentally grabbed about 30 of them from the table the last night (I swear they said something about “take as many as you’d like”)

If you'd like one of these fabulous tattoos, email me your address, tell me which one you want, swear a blood oath that you'll email me a picture of yourself wearing it, and I'll mail you a tattoo as a service to the town, courtesy of the Mommybloggers.

Then I'll post a gallery of all the tattoees with links to your blogs.

***I'll let you know when they're gone***

One Year of Blogging

2006-08-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

This month marks my one year bloggiversary. What a wild ride this has been!

In celebration, the Mommybloggers are hosting my debutant ball over at their place. So put on your lace gloves, save me some room on your dance card, and stop over for a glass of lemonade.

Back to the Nerdery

2006-08-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

When I got back from the conference, my parents were already here waiting for me, cleaning and organizing my house and building shelves like an elite trained strike force the government can only dream of employing. My garage went from this:

to this:

in the course of a few days. I can PARK in there now for the love of PETE! Who ever heard of such a thing? Maybe I'll just install a strobe light and start a discothèque instead.

Last week my home was filled with friends and family. Now that they've all left, I return to my blogging nerdery like a wino to his bottle.

My new post is up over at Parenting and here's the schedule for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn discussion. Feel free to post comments here or comment on your own blog and leave a link in my comments.

Chapters 1-10 Saturday, August 12th
Chapters 11-26 Saturday, August 19th
Chapters 27-37 Saturday, August 26th
Chapters 38-45 Saturday, September 2nd
Chapters 46-End Saturday, September 9th

That's about 100 pages per week. You don't have to stick to the schedule and you can definitely go WAY "off topic" in your discussion. If you're discussing it, that makes it "on topic". Happy reading. It really is a fabulous book.

Guy Kawasaki - My New Best Friend

2006-08-02T22:09:00.000-07:00

One fine collegiate day I was walking on BYU campus when I spotted a guy across the quad who looked SO familiar. It was amazing. I was sure I had seen him somewhere before, but not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. I felt I had seen him so many times that we had possibly been very good friends at another time in my life, possibly even relatives.

My casual glances turned into stares and eventually I made a direct beeline for the dude with one question on my mind. “Do you recognize me?” He looked so familiar that I simply HAD to discover our past connection.

As I drew closer, he began looking at me and smiling, a quizzical look on his face. I smiled and continued to close in, never breaking eye contact until I stopped, alarmed, 3 feet in front of him. It was Steve Young. No relation to Daring “Young” Mom.

My eyes widened. I turned on my heel and marched firmly back across the quad.

I’m the girl who walked up to Melissa my first 10 minutes at BlogHer and asked her name and whether or not she had a blog. Yeah, she’s tampering with a little blog called Suburban Bliss.

I got an email at the conference from my father-in-law Pops telling me that Guy Kawasaki would be at the FilmLoop booth and I should go over and say hi. “Sure,” says I. “I’ll go chat it up.”

So I walk over to the booth and start asking everyone their names. I can’t remember his name at this point but I’m sure if I hear it, it’ll ring a bell. None of their names are soundin’ familiar. So I start asking if there’s anyone else who might be working the booth later on and what their names might be. Do they know anyone else in the company with another name than the ones they’ve been listing?

The woman at the booth finally comes out and asks me why I want to know.
Me: Well, I’m supposed to meet somebody named “Guy Something”.
Booth-Lady with British Accent: You mean Guy Kawasaki?
Me: Ye-AH! That’s it. He here?
BLBA: He’ll be here tomorrow but I’m sure he’ll be absolutely swarmed.
Me: Cool. I’ll just stop by.
BLBA: He’ll really be swarmed. Would you like me to set up an appointment with him?
Me: I… I… don’t know who he… is? My father-in-law told me to say hi.
BLBA: We should probably set up an appointment.
Me: No, I really don’t have a clue who he is. I’ll just try to catch him tomorrow.

The next day in a moment of Zen I not only see Guy across an empty ballroom, but I actually recognize him (okay, how many Asian MEN were actually at BlogHer?) and yell out, “HEY! Are you Guy?”

“Yeah” he says in that there’s-a-Wikipedia-entry-about-me-but-I-still-try-to-act-like-a-regular-“Guy” tone of voice. I explain that although I have no idea who he is, I’d really like to take a picture with him to pass along to my daddy-in-law. He humors me.

Pops - This one's for you!

Tip Tuesday – Please Don’t Bite Them Back

2006-08-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

Aggressive kids.

I don’t really have them, unless you call ripping your brother’s arms off, chewing on them and then beating him over the head with them aggressive. She only really does that sort of thing when he does something really insane like look at her while she’s eating marshmallows, so I wouldn’t exactly call her aggressive. He’s only got a few arms anyway and I think once they’re all gone, the problem will pretty much be solved.

Truly though, this is a major issue that I often hear parents talking about. Either we worry that our own child is too aggressive or we have playdates with kids who gank toys, bite chunks out of other kids’ flesh or show up at your house with a fist fulla steel.

Please leave tips for either circumstance. What do you do to help tame your own child’s out-of-control aggression? How much discipline is too much? Have you found a great way to calm Nina down before she detonates her bomb of toddleric rage on the playground?

On the other hand, how do you deal with other people’s children who you feel are too aggressive towards your own? Do you think it’s acceptable to discipline someone else’s child as a form of protection? Do you think your child should fight their own battles? How do you address the issue with the other parent?

Personally, I think that biting or hitting back are a lazy way to solve the problem and may do more harm than good. A more appropriate way to manage the behavior would be to use a little love and logic parenting. “Oh, that’s such a bummer. Now you have two choices. Either you need to untie Timmy and take the play-doh out of his mouth, or you need to at least ask his mom what color of play-doh he likes being force-fed best.”

When your child is being bullied by someone else and the other parent is present, I think it’s more appropriate to mention it to the other parent than to try to attempt to discipline the child yourself. For the most part, I try to teach my kids to deal with it and stand up for themselves. That’s why I’ve hired my own professional ninja to work with them on technique and help them with their wardrobe.

Now please, tell me what you do. Not everyone has the means to hire their own personal ninja or the patience to parent with the love and the logicality.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner – Especially Not at BlogHer

2006-07-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

Today, I’m catching up on all the things I missed at home, helping my mom move me into the new house. She is a whirlwind of productivity and organization. My Dad is a rock-star of building and home repair. Bob Veela should quake in his presence.

Please head over to parenting.com for my latest post over there.

The conference was a blast. I met amazing, intelligent powerhouse bloggers who have a passion for writing and are working through their blogs to make the world a better place to live. It was so fun, in fact, that Chris and I both “accidentally missed” our flights back home yesterday morning. I’ll be doing at least a couple of posts this week about what went down. I’ll try to focus on the things I learned that could be pertinent to the women bloggers who read my site and shy away from the ephemera of BlogHer, questions like:

Why was our good friend Johnson’s baby repeatedly put in a corner? How did I end up with that tattoo on my arm? Can Kelly-Nelly be trusted to find fabulous cheesecake in the state of California? Why did Mir act as an enabler, allowing Chris and I to miss our flights? When asked on video if we’d been drinking, due to our extremely giddy behavior, did someone respond “I’m a little drunk, she’s Mormon”? (Apparently the two have a similar giggleular response.) Were we informed that this video will appear on the website of a major PR Firm?

If the Right Engine Goes First, All Passengers Shift to the Left Side of the Cabin in an Orderly Crossing Pattern

2006-07-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

So, I’m on the plane, alone except for the totally cute non-couple sitting next to me... and all the other people on this completely full 2-hour-delayed flight from Seattle to San Jose. The couple next to me are wearing matching outfits, which they swear was not planned, neither are they a couple. Hmmm… Who goes on a trip, wearing khaki shorts and black t-shirts without a little advanced planning? When I say they’re not a couple, I know what I’m talking about because they quizzed me on it.

When I sat down, eavesdropped and then burst into their conversation, where they “realized” they were looking like twinners, they asked me to guess if they were related, a “couple” or what their relationship was. I guessed couple. They say “just friends” but they’re going to a garlic festival together this weekend and we all know how an experience like that can change people.

We are convinced (I can say “we” because I am also wearing khaki pants and have a black dress packed in my bag so I’m so totally part of the group now.) that our flight crew fully expects this flight to end in tragedy.

I have never heard a more detailed pre-flight safety presentation in my life. Flotation devices were demonstrated fully, along with instruction on how to partially inflate them if we were to make a water landing but were unable to escape through the standard exists for some reason so we would be able to fit through the windows, after which we should proceed to fully inflate the devices. Let’s just say that if I’ve gotta evacuate this booty out one of those airplane windows, there’s gonna be more than a life vest that needs deflating. They offered no contingency plan for this. Several contingencies were covered and the more detailed it got, the more it began to sound like the flight crew had just a little too much experience with crash water landings.

So, if I make it to California alive, I have officially been invited to a garlic festival by two hilarious people who say “This is the best part” when the engines fire up for take-off and “Engage” as the plane lifts off the ground. Star Trek quotes are fully acceptable when you’re sitting next to someone on their way to a “blogging conference”.

Heard over the intercom as we taxied prior to take-off – “Please keep your seatbelts fastened as we are about to experience a rapid drop in altitude”… Are we traveling to California via underground tunnel? I’m not saying it hasn’t been done before but to my knowledge this is the first time it has been accomplished in a 747.

Update: I have already met several amazing women whom I look up to. Chris has been wonderful and fun to hang out with and within less than an hour of arriving in California, I was able to meet Alice. She is amazingly sweet and down-to-earth. I spent a good portion of the morning stalking Mir. The more I meet these women, the more I want to read what they have to say.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

2006-07-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

And I grow in excitement for my first sollow plane trip in 4 years.

I'll probably be checking in over the weekend so if you care to hear about my solo-adventures, please stop over for a visit. I'll let you in on all the blogging secrets that will change our lives forever. ;-)

Next week I'll be back with a timeline for the book discussion.

Blog out!

Tip Tuesday - Small Talk

2006-07-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Being as I’m surrounded by short people all day, you’d think I’d be really good at “small talk” by now. Truth be told, what I’m actually good at is talking to small people. The other day, I actually asked one of my adult friends if she had to go potty.

Hoping not to make the same type of faux pas at BlogHer this weekend or actually ever again in adult company, I’d love advice on making small talk with strangers or new friends. How do you keep the conversation going? What are some great one-liners to pull out when you have nothing supercalifragilisticexpialidociously wonderful to say?

Here are a few tips for spicing up the usual dinner party conversation:

Instead of – “So, do you have any kids?”
Try catching them off-guard – “Dead chickens’ ghosts are haunting my new house. Do you have any thoughts on how I could wrangle them into the crawl space?”

Instead of – “You look really great tonight!”
Try personalizing the compliment – “You look so much better in person. South Beach Diet? Am I right or am I right or am I right? Right. Right. Right. Bing!”

Instead of – “You’re from Michigan? Do you know Amanda?”
Try drawing it out a little. The “do you know” game is always such a big hit. – “You’re from Michigan? I love Michigan! Start listing every person you know from there and I’ll tell you if they were my cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s college roommate or not. [wait for name] Nope. [wait for name] Nope. [wait for name] Nope”… hours and hours of fun

Instead of – “I’m Kathryn. Nice to meet you.”
Try to work on building an audience as well as a new friendship – “I’m Kathryn, the Daring Young Mom of dub dub dub dot daring young mom dot com, a hilarious little blog about this and that, my kids, yadda yadda page views per day. Nice to meet you.”

Instead of – “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’m a big fan of your work.”
Try to let them know just how much you enjoy their work – “I’m so glad I finally get to meet you. It feels like I’ve been living on your green leather sofa for months and months, right next to you, typing on your laptop, the iBook you just bought. That was such a good choice. I told you that, remember? Commenter #167. Good comment, right? I got like three hits off that comment. I looked up your address online but I’ve been too shy to send you anything? Can I send you anything? Or would that be weird?"

Okay now, what have you guys got for me?

It’s Monday

2006-07-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Most days we have a conversation like this at least twice.

Laylee: What day is it today?
Me: It’s Monday.
Laylee: But what is it TO DO?

I’ll tell you what it’s to do. From now on, Monday is to check out my new blog over at Parenting.com. Please head on over there and check out my new weekly project.

Daring Young Mom readers get a sneak peak of the blog that officially launches this coming Wednesday. Please show the love by going over and checking it out. Four other bloggers join me for what should be a fun weekly read.

In other news, the fun, lovely and talented Chris from Notes From the Trenches, the blog formerly known as The Big Yellow House, has launched a new blog at www.inthetrenchesofmotherhood.com where she talks about the joys and complications of raising seven children. More of Chris can only be a good thing so go take a look, every day, for the rest of your life.

Books, Books, Books

2006-07-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

This fabulous post by Dandelion Mama reminded me that I was going to invite you all to read a book with me this summer. The summer is still scorching hot (It was 107 degrees in Karli’s backyard last week and don't ask me if I'm wearing clothes right now.) but it’s almost over so we’d better get cracking.

Remember when I asked everyone for their favorite book of all time or at least their favorite book at the moment? I’ve made a comprehensive list of them here.

From that list, I selected several books we could choose from to read together during the month of August. And here they are in no particular (besides alphabetical) order:

The Blue Sword – Robin McKinley
A Circle of Quiet – Madeleine L’Engle
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister – Gregory Maguire
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Freak the Mighty – Rodman Philbrick
Hold On To Your Kids – Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
The Known World – Edward P. Jones
The Ladies Auxiliary – Tova Mirvis
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
Obasan – Joy Kogawa
Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson
Watership Down – Richard Adams

Click here to vote (You don't have to sign up for anything. Just close the window when you're done.) for the one you’d be most interested in reading and discussing. Also, please look over the big list of DYM readers’ favorites and leave a comment on this post if you have any fabulous books you’d like to add.

I’m about to embark on my first solo travel in over 4 years and am giddy with glee. Even harder than deciding what to wear is deciding what to read on the trip. I'll leave the voting open until Wednesday morning at 10:00am PST so I can get the book in time to read at the airport.

Dear Unknown Seattle-Area Resident

2006-07-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

At future outdoor family-friendly events, please keep your beer-drinking to the designated “beer garden.” If this is too much to handle, please remember not to leave your “almost” finished beer cup on a chair for my toddler to find. He is the little pumpkin-headed boy who spent a good portion of the day filling a bucket with dirt and pouring it directly into his mouth. I prefer the dirt to your backwashed yeasty sludge.

Thanks. Have a great night.

If Johnny Depp Were a Power-Puff Girl…

2006-07-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

He’d probably live in a Happy-Meal box. Laylee says he’s a girl. We say okay. He can be a girl… a girl with a soul patch.

Is it morning yet? Laylee just asked. Nope. It’s still light leftover from today that hasn’t fallen out of the sky yet. You’ve been talking to yourself in your room and singing songs in strange undiscovered Jujubese languages for 1.5 hours. If you do it for 10 more, then it will be morning.

Our playdate was small but enjoyable, carrying an unexpected pirate theme. Magoo started us all off by falling in the drink and threatening to be lost to Davy Jones’ locker. What happened with him was one of the most frightening moments of my life as a parent so far. We were standing next to a large fountain with a pool about 2 feet deep. Magoo had his back to the pool and I watched him fall backwards into the water. He sank down to the bottom and in the three seconds it took me to pull him out, he was completely submerged with barely an entry splash. As I grabbed him, I could see him flailing, his eyes looking at me in panic, not a sound coming from the water. All I can think is, “what if I had turned my back to get a wipe and then looked back and wondered where he’d gone. As it was, it took him a few seconds to catch his breath. How ironic that only a few days ago, I joked on this blog about how it’s possible to drown in a teaspoon of water. WATCH YOUR KIDS BY EVEN THE SMALLEST WATERSOURCE.

After some enjoyable visiting, the kids got antsy for some vittles and we headed off to Mickey D’s where we also enjoyed some pirate-y fun. Noses and ears were pierced... with cardboard.

Strangely, although the happy-meal boxes claim that pirates like to eat fish, you only get a Pirates of the Caribbean game piece if you order beef. I know. Magoo ordered a fillet ‘o fish and they didn’t give him squat. The beef-eaters of the group all collected the same exact game piece which fit together not at all.

Also, what’s the deal with having happy meals based on a movie that none of the kids will be allowed to watch anyway? Captain Jack Sparrow as a stuffed doll? Next they’ll come out with a Tokyo Drift baby rattle for kids under 3.

Frozen and Feigning Child-Centric Ignore-ance

2006-07-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

I can’t mop the floor because the duck-down curls on the back of Magoo’s head are too kissable. I can’t clean the windows or appliances because Laylee has covered them all in “bominals” (One day I hope she explains why she calls them this. However by the time she has the vocab to explain it, she’ll probably call them something lame like “post-it notes” and think I’ve lost my mind.)

It’s very easy for me to freeze in place and ignore the work piling up around me, in the name of being a good mother and spending time with my children. “Some mothers may have a spotless house, but MY children have an enjoyable childhood.” I really believe I did not choose to be a stay-at-home maid, but rather a stay at home mom and that my kids should come first. That being said, children also deserve a reasonably clean and clutter-free environment and they deserve an example of hard work and responsibility. They also have the right to be taught to work themselves and help create the ideal environment they reside in.

Today I tried to figure out why I’m really stuck here, having trouble plowing through the myriad chores that haunt every minute of my day. I do try but not nearly as hard as I give myself credit for. Like Laylee, I think that coloring “bominals”, chilling on the pool deck, having a dance party or playing Pla-To are much more fun than installing towel-rods and dusting cobwebs off the ceiling.

Here are a few of today’s excuses for my lack of productivity:

1. I cannot do the dishes because my living room is too full. We are resurfacing the garage floor so my living room contains a mixture of all things garage and all the boxes that haven’t been unpacked. It’s a TON of stuff. You see, we Mormons are supposed to store things for emergencies. It’s not so much the FEMA-suggested-year’s-supply-of-duct-tape-and-saran-wrap-to-protect-your-home-from-nuclear-explosions-and-possible-terroristic-invasion kind of storage, but more the large-buckets-of-wheat-and-#10-cans-of-Jell-O-powder-so-you-can-eat-despite-nuclear-explosions-or-jobloss-or-famine-and-terroristical-invasion variety. (Note to self - do a Tip Tuesday about emergency preparedness soon.)

When the end is near and Super Wal Mart’s mighty shelves lay decimated, party at my house, featuring whole-wheat bannock and layered gelatinous salad. Anywho, in honor of your visit during the bird flu pandemic, I have approximately one ton of food and emergency supplies in my front room. (Okay, okay. It’s not ALL food storage. “The Church” did not exactly put a gun to my head at Sam Goody when I was in Junior High, forcing me to buy large volumes of cheesy pop music on cassette which I would still be completely incapable of releasing into the wild at age 27. Those boxes are in there too. And the yarn.)

2. Your piece-of-jerk well-written blogs, your cute kids and your little dog too. Seriously, please stop writing and so help me if anyone else with a great blog leaves a comment here or introduces themselves at BlogHer!

3. Cactus maintenance. I did get them and yes, it is possible to cause their untimely demise. These babies need a tender hand and loving words to really thrive.

4. I cannot do yard work because when I go outside I have to supervise very closely the activities raging on the pool deck. Sometimes I need to plunge myself right into the actual pool to save the children. Did you know you could drown in a teaspoon of water? Yeah. That’s no good.

5. I cannot hang the curtain rods because the cordless drill battery is charging. I am cool because I came into the marriage with our family’s first power tool… the FIRE STORM.

6. Once the battery stops charging, I cannot hang the actual curtains because no one has ironed them, the iron is too high for me to reach and the ladder is upstairs next to the charging battery.

7. I cannot speak clearly because Laylee just stuck a plastic fork in my mouth and I cannot remove the fork because I am typing this entry.

8. I cannot install the new baby gates I ordered because they ain’t arrove yet, and I may never install them because the case-of-bottled-water-reinforced hamper-gate is so attractive sitting in my front entry.

9. I cannot think of a way to finish this post so I will leave you with what I HAVE accomplished.

I managed to hang up the weddage,

the piece of Christmas décor I keep up all year round because I must be some kind of hippy,

the floating book shelf

and the ill-gotten train picture.

I have constructed a slide

and assembled a pool deck.

Now I'm wondering how long "we just moved" is a viable excuse.

Tip Tuesday – What Tip Tuesday?

2006-07-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

It would appear that Laylee has started a blog without telling me. And her subject matter makes mine look like the slow bus of bloggage.

“Mom, I want to blog my Pla-to.”

Oh, really? He’s good, but I prefer Nietzsche.

Today for Tip Tuesday, I’m asking for some creative topics for future Tip Tuesdays. They don’t have to be philosophic masterpiece-type ideas - just things we all have burning questions about.

It's About Time - Seattle Area Bloggers' Playdate

2006-07-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

If you live in or around the Seattle area or feel like making the trek up here, Karli and I are planning a blogging meet-and-greet/playdate for this Thursday morning at an undisclosed location. We've already met some of you, but who couldn't do with a few more internet girlfriends?

Come and find out if I actually have a body attached to that floating head and if Karli ever wears shoes. If you're interested, email me and I will send you the details.

We'll be planning a moms-only dinner for later on in the year so stay tuned.

Not Much to See Here

2006-07-16T20:55:00.000-07:00

Well, I try to cover it up most of the time.

We are really working on our religious punctuality right now. We have been really working on it for… going on 4 years. We improve a little and then we improve not so much at all. Then we slide back to “pathetic” on the scale of on-time-itude.

This morning I’m getting dressed for church, pretty much at the last possible second before we have to leave, and Dan looks at me incredulously and asks, “Are you dressing for church or are you getting ready for BlogHer?”

Well of course I was getting ready for BlogHer but I was getting ready for church at the same time, you know? The multitasking. The poor man thought I was trying on all of my carefully layed out conference clothing items for the fun of it right before we had to leave. This is not unfathomable but today I was not guilty of such a crime against punctuality and reason.

Today I wore the black dress I bought for BlogHer to church to test it out for any possible “wardrobe malfunctions.” I am a recently weaned nurser and… well… these things need to be tested when little black dresses enter the picture.

I know what you’re thinking – you test dresses for wardrobe malfunctions by wearing them to church? Yeah. It sounds strange to me too, now that I see it on the computer screen. Never fear. Everything stayed where it was supposed to stay, even with the mega-weaner doing his best to free the entrapped victuals from their black shackles.

Shapes in the Clouds

2006-07-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a fat woman dancing ballet with her eyes closed in the textured ceiling above my bed. I blinked and she was gone.

Can’t Touch This

2006-07-12T22:32:00.000-07:00

I like to get down, especially when I’m driving alone in my car. For that reason, I have not yet burned to the ground the radio broadcasting corporation that took away my favorite Seattle mix station and replaced it with a station called “Movin our-commercials-show-multiple-people’s-butts-shaking-and-bobbing-around-in-circles 92.5-FM.”

The station is REALLY hit or miss. One minute you’ve got some Nelly crap (no, not that Nelly) and the next, you get some sweet eighties dance tune.

On the way to Target this evening, they were playing some steaming-pile song, degrading women in general, yet glorifying those who walk around in daisy dukes and bikini tops… and they couldn’t even turn a rhyme… HELLO!! If you’re gonna rap over a bad generic Hip-Hop track about all kinds of skanky skeez, at least do it with some style. I still won’t listen to you, but at least I won’t call you out publicly on my blog.

So I ended up with Delila who instructed me to “slow down and love someone.” I personally like to love people very quickly because then I have more time to love more people. Please do not connect this paragraph with the skeez mentioned above.

In the parking lot, two girls were standing by their car, huddled up together and looking nervous. One mentioned to the other how fast her heart was beating and I thought, “I wonder if they’re meeting up with their internet boyfriends for the first time tonight. How exciting and scary. Does their mother know?” This line of thought brought to you by my viewing of the movie “Drive me Crazy”, starring that teenage witch girl, a movie which I attended in disguise, lest I be discovered by one of my film friends and mocked for the rest of my college career. Incidentally, this film also started a chain of events which landed me at a Backstreet Boys concert with sparkles on my chest and corn-rows in my hair.

On the way home from Target, I was lucky enough to catch MC Hammer doing his stunning rendition of his original classic You Cannot Touch This on the posterior-shaking radio station. I car-danced like it was my job, and at 9:00 at night, it basically is.

On my post yesterday, creatively entitled “Dude.,” Anonymous said “You get a lot of comments, so what exactly are you insecure about?”

I think it’s time I come out with the truth. I am insecure about the fact that although, like the great MC Hammer I am “dope” “on” “the” “floor”, I am not, however, “ma”-“gic” “on” “the” “mic”. There you have it. My rap skills have been slipping lately. We have yet to christen the new house with a real, no holds barred, Daring Family Freestyle Rap Battle.

I feel your collective gasp before it escapes your keyboards and I am ashamed. If I ever find the Karaoke machine in the 6’ high stack of boxes that is my living room, I will remedy the situation. Then? Once I’ve brushed up on my skeelz on the microphonizzle, insecurity… she will be gone. Until then, it doesn’t matter how many comments I get or how many times Laylee bolster’s my confidence with questions like, “Mommy, can you please use some covering-up makeup? You have some red spots on your face,” I will remain insecure.

Dude.

2006-07-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

After reading some of your comments, I asked myself out loud, “Did I ask everyone to come out and tell me how much they like me? Did I sound like I was whining and trying to figure out a way to get more comments?”

Dan says “Yes.”

Apparently this – “It didn’t exactly work that way for me. I’m currently having a hard time getting more weekly hits than Chris’s old blog archives,” sounds very whiny. Reading it over this morning I’d have to agree. What I meant as I was blogging late last night was that my mind is boggled by Chris’s ability to keep readers on an old blog that she hasn’t posted to for weeks. She is a force to be reckoned with.

Um, sorry about that. I usually pick Tip Tuesdays based on things I think we can all relate to or would like advice about. I have gotten several emails from newer bloggers asking me for tips on how to increase traffic to their blogs. I’ve also read several entries from great bloggers who are threatening to quit due to lulls in traffic.

I was hoping we could brainstorm and all learn from each other. Truth be told, I’m continually in shock at how many people read and comment here on a regular basis. I get more feedback from smart funny women than I ever imaged when I started blogging 11 months ago.

Carrie mentioned that it is a good idea “to NOT DEMAND COMMENTS. If you blog to get comments but don't get any, something's wrong with what you're writing. It's not comment-able.” She’s right. I often read great posts that ARE comment-able but I'm just too lazy to comment or don't have anything useful to say. I am a major lurker and I think that's fine.

I’m sorry if I annoyed you guys by asking for comments today. I really thought that having people tell how they got here would be sort of fun and instructive. You are more than welcome to read any time and not worry about commenting. I can take it.

Angela left a comment about bacon, which of course caught my attention immediately. She is a major blogging guru of mine so I’ll repeat here what she said:

“I honestly believe the blog thing is SO hit and miss. When I write about bacon and brown sugar, I get a ton of hits and comments. When I write about my life? Not so much. It's a strange world out there. (I'm still coming to grips with the fact that people love bacon more than they love me. I smell good too, damnit!)

Then again, I don't think the traffic and comments are as important as the actual exercise. I've made this analogy many times before, but I think it bears repeating: It's a crime for children to participate in poetry contests. The important thing is that poetry is being written. And some of it is completely amazing. The gold medals and certificates don't mean a thing, and if a lack of recognition makes one child stop creating, well, it's a travesty.”

That really struck a chord with me. The exercise really is what’s important, getting my thoughts out there, having a creative outlet and feeling good about what I’ve written. It makes sense and it’s true but it really is hard for me not to wonder or care about readership.

Part of that stems from the fact that I’m working to transition to a professional writing career. If people aren’t reading or commenting, what chance do I have of successfully finding someone to pay me to write?

The past several months I’ve been working on not taking personal validation from how many people are reading and commenting. It’s similar to a struggle I had early on as a mother, where I found myself defining my self worth by how often others told me how cute or polite Laylee was. They’re both roller coaster rides not worth taking.

So what are your motives for blogging? What got you started? (Please feel no pressure to answer these questions. :) )

Tip Tuesday – If You Blog it, They Will Come

2006-07-11T22:07:00.000-07:00

That’s the theory, right? You set up a blog, type out the deep secrets of your family-life, the inner-workings of your soul and thousands of people around the globe will flock to read your wit and wisdom.

It didn’t exactly work that way for me. I’m currently having a hard time getting more weekly hits than Chris’s old blog archives. So how do the Finslippys, Dooces, Fluid Puddings and Very Moms of the blog world do it? Where do all the readers come from?

First, every one of those women is a fabulous writer, with great insight and often amazing humor. So, start writing like an amazing professional and you may eventually be able to quit your job and blog for a living. Um… if I can’t even take my own advice, I’d better come up with some better tips than that.

Here are a few ways that I’ve met the awesome readers/friends that I’ve found through my blog.

1. Blog on a semi-regular basis. The more consistently I post, the more my readership grows. There is a certain level of awesomeness which you can attain where people will keep coming back every day or keep you on their bloglines just waiting and hoping for a morsel of your dulcet prose but I’m definitely not there yet. Whenever I take a break, it takes me a while to remind people that I exist.

2. At least once a week write a post that doesn’t consist of whining about how much your life sucks, how gross your kids’ bodily functions are, how insensitive your husband is and how all your friends are jerks. Sorry. Pet peeve.

3. Unwittingly create a scandal. If you don’t remember this, I’m not linking to it here. (Oh, and it only works if you create the scandal by accident so good luck with that.)

4. Read and actively comment on other blogs. I found one of my favorite blogs when I left a comment for Alice and Surcie followed the comment link to my site.

5. Register with various blog listings and directories. (Okay, I don’t believe this really gets you any readers but it’s a good time waster and they look so pretty all in a row on your sidebar.)

6. Make the summer end so the internet comes alive again. (Please don't do this until after August is over.)

If you have any great ideas to get more readers, please leave them.

Also, please delurk and let me know how you first found my blog. I think this will give us all a good idea of how in the wide web we REALLY find each other.

Getting to Know You

2006-07-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

This is the best meme ever, which I discovered over at Catez’s website a while back. It’s a great one to get to know new people. Please feel free to email your answers directly to me.

What is your full name?
Kathryn Miranda Octavius Magooly Daring

What is your date of birth?
I could be a reincarnation of Elvis.

What four cities have you lived in?
Enchilada Town
Pizza-ville
I cannot count.

What four TV shows do you love?
The Office
So You Think You Can Paint My Garage – new reality show where slackers get voted ON to do more paint duty, rather than voted off
The West Wing
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

What four credit cards do you currently use?
Enchilada Town (Bean Miles Visa Rewards Card)
Canadian Express
Dude. We just moved into a new house. I use anything Home Depot will accept.

What are four credit account numbers assigned you, and when (month/year) do they expire?
Does it count as “expiring” if your Magoo sucks on them and then tosses them over the side of the cart?

Do you have four credit card pin numbers, and if so, what are they?
1111
1111
1111
1111

What does your mother's maiden name look like if you type it four times in a row? Frankenthandler
Frankenthandler
Jones
Frankenthandler

What are the first four digits of your social security number?
0039

What are the last four digits of your social security number?
7691

What number did you leave out of your nine-digit social security number? (That's your lucky number!)
0 – what a stupid lucky number. This meme is getting way DUMB!

What are the first four lines of your mailing address?
Daring Manor
57993 West Darrington Circle
Seattle Suburarina, WA
98888

What are your four favorite banks?
My piggy bank
The banks of the Puget Sound
Secret Agent Cody
I’ll have whatever Dan’s having.

What are your four favorite bean dishes?
White Chicken Cilantro Chili
Uncle Brent’s Baked Beans
Refried Beans by Grammy
Papa’s Famous Fiendish Bean-Dish

What four people do you wish to tag with this meme?
Why stop at four? I would like all of my readers to fill this out as soon as may be. I would especially encourage those who make a combined annual income of over $300,000 to complete it, as they are richer and will therefore have more fun playing this game.

This information will be collected and used in any way deemed appropriate by aforementioned Daring Young Mom or her subsidiaries.

Enchiladas = Hospitality

2006-07-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

All restaurants are called “towns” in our household. When we leave our little corner of suburbia and head to where the shopping is, I tell the kids, “We’re going to town.” Eventually that transformed into, “Hey, let’s go eat at town,” and finally last month as we walked through the airport, Laylee pointed out the food court by saying, “Hey! They’ve got a BUNCH of LITTLE TOWNS here!”

One of our favorite towns is “Enchilada Town,” Laylee’s name for any Mexican restaurant, most specifically the one down the street where everybody knows your name because your name is always Niña or Niño if you’re under the age of 23.

For a long time I wondered why so many Hispanic kids were named Niña. I was also horrified that anyone could name their daughter Hermana when I saw the list of “sister” missionaries in our church bulletin and it included a girl who’d gone to El Salvador. Hermana Leslie Pennington. I mean, Leslie’s a good enough middle name, but Hermana? That’s just cruel.

I am not so good with the Spanish but we love Enchilada Town because they’re so warm and inviting there. (Never mind that every time I say Enchilada Town, I'm reminded of this video.)

My husband’s parents and three sisters came up this weekend to help us move in and fix things around the house. We have worked them HARD. My goal this afternoon when they get home from church is to fabricate some semblance of hospitality to lull them into a sense of vacation-esque security before I hand them paint rollers tomorrow morning at early-o’clock in the AM.

My plan is to make chicken enchiladas for dinner this evening, despite the fact that I had to stay home with “sick” kids. Laylee had a fairly high fever last night and is now medicating with a healthy dose of animation therapy and play doh, not ingested, just “tasted” repeatedly.

Magoo’s not so much “sick” as he is “sick of” sitting still (yeah, right) for 3 hours at church every Sunday. 5 months till he’s old enough to attend the children’s nursery and we’re counting down the days. That kid is an adorable wreaker of havoc. Most women like to have the contents of their purse emptied out but there are always those select few who don’t enjoy sitting through Sunday school with a lap-full of tampons and chewing gum. To each her own, I guess.

So this afternoon, there will be food, fun, and everyone will be called something with an enyay. Tomorrow, it’s back to work!

The Lake House – Not a Horror Movie

2006-07-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

In the past I’ve reviewed books on this site but I don’t remember doing a full-on movie review. Since I’ve shared my English majorness with you, I think it’s time I whipped out my Film majorly skeelz.

Over-run with boxes, expecting company tomorrow to come help us get some serious work done, I decided the best course of action was to ditch my responsibilities and head out for a latenight movie with Karlita.

We decided on The Lake House, although every time we hear the title we both think it’s a horror movie masquerading as a Nicholas-Sparks-style chick flick. There was no horror. A bad cream turtleneck sweater on the ever-so well-postured Mr. Reeves, but no real horror to speak of.

We had our concerns about Keanu but he was not nearly as wooden as Al Gore in this role and even managed to relax his neck for two or three scenes. More disturbing to me was how Christopher Plummer begins to look more and more like Old Mrs. Harris from the Anne of Green Gables movies as he ages. And he seems to die a lot. In fact, he’s died so much in movies that I was surprised to see him in this one and playing a jerk too, not something I like to see done by Captain von Trapp.

There were a ton of people pretending to be a pirate (at the theatre, not on The Lake House – Arrrr). I know that sounds strange and it was. Several people were pretending to be one pirate. One guy was the eye patch, another one the pock-marked nose, while 5 other guys dressed up as the remaining toes. Okay, it’s late. But there were many many pirates at the theatre. For fear of having my deck swabbed or something, I restrained myself from taking pictures of them but I guess they were all lined up to see Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest triumph.

Can you think of any other producer who gets top billing above the director? Me neither. He smells of money so people show up. And he’s got The Depp, Legolas, and that really popular British girl with the long skinny neck who looks like Natalie Portman.

Anyway, we were not seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Revenge of the Guy With Worms for a Beard at 12:01am so we did not have to stand in a line stretching to the Karate Dojo, nor were we required to superglue a parrot to our shoulder.

We were required to buy matching “gourmet” pretzels with “cheese” sauce.

So, the movie is about Keanu Reeves dressing in Shabby Scruffy Lumberjack Chic style (which I find highly attractive until the turtlenecks begin to surface for the anti-climactic climax) and Sandra Bullock trying to convince us that she’s a very sad and haunted young doctor, the kind who went to medical school.

That’s basically the plot in a nutshell. The long version includes a time portal mailbox where they send letters back and forth across a 2 year time gap, sort of like that Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, The Love Letter, only in miniature. It ends with her doing something that would have stopped the whole movie from happening in the first place, except instead it brings Keanu Reeves back to her so they can kiss peckishly and walk off arm-in-turtle-necked-arm.

The final kisses are just not very satisfying. Never Been Kissed – great kissing. However that movie had the word “kiss” in the title. This movie was not called “Kiss at the Lake House” or even “Lovin’ at the Lake House.” I should be lucky there was any romance at all, since the word romance was also conspicuously absent from the title. I have to give credit where credit is due. The move most certainly did contain a Lake House.

It also contained great lines, just lame enough for Keanu to deliver perfectly, like “She’s more real to me than any of that stuff.” The stuff, yes, the stuff. If she’s more real than the stuff, you’ve definitely got a keeper on your hands, Ted. You should probably plant a stolen tree outside her luxury apartment complex in downtown Chicago. No one will ever notice it’s there… except the girl… and then she’ll be in love with you, ba-da-bing!

Now the writing in this movie wasn’t nearly as bad as Star Wars Episode II, which coincidentally starred that girl who looks like Natalie Portman, or was it HER look-alike? Anywho, the worst romantic line of all time occurred there, something akin to, “I hate sand. Sand is rough and coarse. But you are not rough and coarse. You (stroking her skin) are soft and smooth.” At least that’s the way Dan says it to me when we’re re-enacting and doing scene-work.

Speaking of posers, there was one good passionate moment in the movie. Never mind that it made no sense for Sandra Bullock to be making out with Keanu Reeves, whom she’d never met before, at her birthday party, being held at her boyfriend’s house, which she later denied, saying that only Junior High kids “make out.” Um, sorry, NU-UH. I make out all the time and Junior High? I was too busy collecting key chains and playing in the band to make out with anyone. Duh! Wasn’t everybody? I mean besides sad-for-no-real-reason-haunted-by-their-unexplained-tragic-past doctor-types.

Anyway, the passion, the slow dancing, the nuzzling = good, the kind of scene we look for in an escapist mom’s-night-out kind of movie. They were dancing to a song that Karli and I decided we liked. I said I liked it except for the fact that the guy singing it sounded like he was trying to sound like that one not-dead Beatle. You mean, Paul McCartney? Yes, him, not the train conductor drummer guy.

So it turns out the song is by Paul McCartney who is apparently so pathetic that he can’t even do a good impersonation of himself. But we like it and will probably buy the CD to recapture the moment, not the nose-nuzzling moment, but the moment in the theatre when we discovered who was singing and almost laughed ourselves into a seizure.

It may not be his fault. He could have recorded it 2 years from now… in the future. Everything sounds different in the future. He could be doing an impression of the 2006 version of himself. Karli figures if they have the time travel technology available to use in the movie, why not use it in the recording studio too, see if any of the audience members are ept enough to pick up on it.

I would definitely lift my left pinky toe for this movie. Thumbs? Not so much.

The Unbearable Finality of Parental Momentum…

2006-07-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

…to a child who knows the order of things.

We’re big on schedules at our house. The bedtime ritual is so set in stone that our kids know once things are set in motion, there’s no escaping it. You are on your way to ~~the cage of torture and endless night~~ dreamland the moment the first step of bedtime begins and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.

What’re you gonna do big boy, cry for you mom? MWAHAHAHA!

Magoo has become so sensitive to it that when I pick him up in the evening and say, “Okay…” his bottom lip curls down and he starts the piteous wail that is his futile attempt to stay up late and watch me blog, a highly enjoyable activity around these parts. Really, people come from miles around to watch me type, mostly small children trying to avoid being put in the clink for 10-12 hours.

Alas, resistance is futile and the little dudes are snoring away upstairs while I attend to all things geeky and internetly.

And in recent Laylee lingo we get, “Mom, I love you, but I’m gonna put my shoes on,” and “I just don’t feel very special today.”
Me: Laylee, you are so special. Come here for a snuggle.
Laylee: Well, I don’t feel very special. I haven’t felt special for a couple of weeks now.

It would be heartbreaking if it weren’t so funny. I’m not quite sure what to do about that one, except squidge her until she feels somethin’, special or otherwise.

Modern Times

2006-07-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

New House = New Address = Address Changes

Credit Card Recording: Para español, oprima número dos (that's what I heard anyway)
Me [oprima-ing nothing]
CCR: Hello. Welcome to Credit Card Central. I now have the ability to understand your vocal commands.
Me: Hm.
CCR: I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that. I’ll try that again. Please choose from the following menu options. To cancel your credit card, say “cancel.” To change your account information, say “change account.”
Me: Change account.
CCR: You’d like to change your account information? Okay.
Magoo [blowing into cardboard tube]: OOOwwwwoooooooooooooo
CCR: I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. Please select one of the following-
Laylee: Isn’t that chicken hat HILARIOUS??!!
CCR: I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. Please sel-
Magoo [blamming his head]: AAAHHHH. Waahhhhh!!!!
CCR: I’m sorry. I’m having trouble understanding you. Please-
Laylee [clapping her hands loudly right next to my head]
CCR: I’m sorry. I didn’t –
Magoo [opening the dvd player and attempting to snap the tray off]: Abagabagwakkawakkablabala aaaaooooooo
CCR: I’ll get someone to help you.

Thanks. I’d like that. Can she cook? Change diapers? Explain why Doc is the only “dwar-av” whose name is not an adjective?

This Post is For Me

2006-07-02T21:39:00.000-07:00

It’s been a year and a month since the initial crash, the day when the harsh realities of despair and evil in the world became the only realities I could conjure up.

That means it’s been almost a year since I was patched, since a dam went up in my brain to stop the hemorrhage of anxiety, since the walls went up around my family to block out anything frightening, anything that would trigger an attack, since I became fragile.

And I do so well.

And occasionally I do so not.

And whenever I have a moment like I did this evening, a reason-I-bought-the-waterproof-mascara-even-though-I-can’t-get-any-solvent-to-completely-remove-it-and-if-I-wear-it-more-than-twice-a-week-it-looks-like-caterpillars-curled-up-and-died-on-my-eyelids kind of moment, I am more upset about the existence of the anxiety and panic attacks than I am anxious or panicky.

And I scare my daughter when I cry for “no reason.”

And after a year, I ask myself if I will ever be the same again… and I realize that’s a stupid question because when are we ever the same?

We move houses, we have children, we lose people we love, we walk down the street, we stay in the sun too long, we go to the bathroom, we live life for 3 minutes and we’re not the same.

I really wonder when I will ever be as good again, when I’ll ever be whole and I wonder what that means for a mother, a wife. In truth it seems that part of me leaves the room whenever Dan, Laylee or Magoo are not there. And I’m scared for them and I’m afraid of being afraid.

The more I have to love, the more I have to fear and this seems wrong. And I know I am not alone and I know how to bring peace into my life again after it barges out the door but I don’t want to have to restore it. I want it ever-present. I want what I made fun of Wayne Dyer for suggesting. I want the free-ride.

Then I look at the positive changes in myself over the last year and I would never wish them away. How do you learn to walk, run or eventually fly without first biffing it hundreds of times?

I’m tired of being sculpted; I just want a fairy godmother to poof me into perfection.

The Good

2006-06-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided that buying a house is a lot like having kids. When you decide to do it, everyone tells you what a big fat hairy adjustment it is, how much work and added responsibility it will require but that it’s totally worth it.

You think, “I’m sure it was a big adjustment for you because you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into. I, on the other hand, have read What to Expect the first 10 Years For Every Personality Type, Secrets of a Woman Who Talks Very Softly to Small Children, Logical Love, and On Being Midget-Knowledgeable from cover to cover. I KNOW what I’m doing. I’ll actually get more done once the baby’s born because she’ll sleep all the time and I’ll have so much more energy once I’m not pregnant anymore.”

Then they’re born and you feel like you’ve been run over by a truck. What!? This was NOT what I expected. Yes, there are the sublime moments but those people were right. It is a TON of work. The work seems never to end. Your life will never be the same again and you have moments where you ask yourself, “Why did we do this to ourselves again?” The answer quickly comes and you know you would never go back on your decision, but you’d be lying to yourself if you said it wasn’t hard.

That is so much the way it’s been with this house so far. We’ve been here a week, spent thousands of dollars repairing things, buying new appliances, and lawn equipment. Add to all this the heat and the fact that a gelatinous blob of goob has taken over the upper third of my body and you’ve got a pretty rough week. (I’m really starting to wonder how I can blow my nose this many times. Where do I store all the goob? Is my brain so small that I can fit that much junk in my head?)

Then Karli came over a couple of days ago and helped me rediscover the things I love about my yard and house. She’s the kind of friend you need when you move into a new home. I will lend her out to you for a small fee. She pointed out every good thing about the floorplan and finishes. Then she took me on a tour of our wild backyard that I haven’t had time to explore.

Little Miss Horticulture discovered ripe strawberries, raspberries and blackberry vines. She found several rose bushes in full bloom, hidden behind the overgrown bamboo. I have an herb garden with dill and rosemary. There are morning glories, lilacs, lavender and a billion other gorgeous flowers.

This is the view from my bed in the morning.

This is what I see from my back fence.

Here is my hearth.

Where the cactuses will live.

The red doors.

And I’m glad we bought it. And I’m tired. And I’d love ideas for how to de-goob my head and lungs.

Tip Tuesday – Cool It

2006-06-27T00:27:00.000-07:00

Monday was another scorching hot day in rural Seattle with highs reaching into the low 90s.

Thou darest to call me a wuss?

Ha HA! Well it may seem a bit more scorcherific if you picture unpacking boxes all day in a house with no window screens that backs onto a lovely bug and Bambi infested forest. Seeing as we don’t want Bambi or the killer flies to enter our domicile, we kept the windows closed most of the day and let the sun bake us to a crisp.

Two weeks until the window screen maker guys can come out. We may try to make some of our own tomorrow. The Home Depot home improvement specialist did indicate that a hacksaw would be involved so I’ll keep you updated on the status of my appendages… not those ones!

And now for another installment of Conversations with Laylee:

Driving in the car
Laylee: AAAAHHHH!!!!!
Me: What!?
Laylee: That guy’s head is blowing all around in the wind!
Me [frantically looking, expecting to see some guy’s head hanging out the window, bobbing around like a balloon on a string in a wind-tunnel]: Where?

Just then, an older gentleman passed me on the left, driving a vintage convertible, his silver hair gently rustling in the breeze, like he was posing for a Vogue for Old Guys in Convertibles cover-shoot.

Laylee: That’s so FUNNY. His car has no lid on top of it!

Today please give tips for keeping cool this summer. First, I would suggest taking the lid off your van or at the very least cranking the air conditioning and blasting Bob Marley on your stereo. Also, don’t move (at all… just remain seated) if it’s hot where you live and try not to wear any clothes.

Man I wish I could still run around like a little muffin-bum in a diaper and a onesie.

And I Never Got to Say Goodbye

2006-06-26T01:27:00.000-07:00

This doesn’t smell like my house. There are new weeds growing since we got the keys on Thursday and there are no condo association “guys” to come and obliterate them. We are the guys.

We’re also the guys who need to replace the refrigerator tomorrow. Crazy thing about us, we like freezers that FREEZE food. We also like outlets that provide power. Hence a call has been made to the electrician.

I have discovered that I have a “bum-leg”. It is my right leg and it doesn’t look like a bum. If I’m using that expression properly, I think it means that it just hurts a lot when I threaten to do something that smells of work. What a weird expression. I guess I could also say I have a “bum-finger” and a “bum-back”. But I wouldn’t risk saying “bum” anything to Laylee.

Yesterday I told her I was “pooped” and you can only imagine the hilarity that ensued. It was somewhat close to the Chaucerian 12-year-old-boyish delight I experienced when I found a typo online a couple of years ago about a disabled man who had been confined to a wheelchair after he was tragically “shat”. I can imagine that would do the body some damage.

The backyard is wonderful. Bamboo is taking over the world.

I actually packed dirty dishes and dirty laundry and I’m pretty sure I haven’t found them yet. I think they’re in a garbage bag somewhere with my brain… and possibly my digital camera. It may be a while before I post pictures of the house. I haven’t seen it since we got home from Houston (the camera, not the house).

I still feel like we made the right decision and this will be “home” someday, the home where our kids will spend a good portion of their growing-up years. But at this very moment it feels like some interlopers are about to honeymoon in my home and as I went to say goodbye to the old pad, I realized I had locked myself out with “their” keys to “their” new condo on the counter inside with a note welcoming them.

Yeah…”welcome”… and so help me if you don’t treat her well.

Good News

2006-06-23T01:28:00.000-07:00

We have more cupboards than I remembered from our original viewing of the house. I just spent almost 5 hours putting shelf paper down in the kitchen.

Dog food and spaghetti sauce spills in the cupboards. Yick!

On a sadder note, we may all be kicking the bucket at any moment.

I was talking to Laylee about how, starting this weekend, we will live in the new house forever. She replied, "Except we all get to die sometime."

Me: Yep, but then we can get resurrected.
Laylee: YEAH! And then our bodies and our spirits will get STUCK together.
Me: That's pretty special.
Laylee: Yeah, cause we need our bodies to dance... and clap our hands... and eat food. When we die, all the food goes out of us but then when we get all stuck together again the food goes BACK in our bodies.

I was thinking of asking her to explain what exactly happens physiologically when all the stuckage occurs but by the time I got around to asking, she had moved on to a discussion of how exciting it was that the clouds were moving in the same direction as our car. "Aren't we so LUCKY!?"

She got a little lucky herself this afternoon, holding hands with a boy for the first time.

Be a dear, would you?

2006-06-18T22:46:00.000-07:00

Pick me up some apple boxes while you're at the grocer. We're moving, you see...

Deet Lips are Not for Kissing

2006-06-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago, my mom put her arm around me and said quietly, “The pool is perfect. There’s a romantic full moon out and I’m going to bed now with my blinds shut and my door closed. Goodnii-iight.”

“Hm,” says I. “Who am I to argue with a parentally endorsed late night swimming smooch-fest? This must be pursued… if Dan would care to participate.”

IF… ha ha ha.

So I strut past my fine and lovely computer-hacking husband in my super-hot $15 Wal-Merto bathing suit with a raise of the eyebrows that can only mean one thing:

"Care to join me for a mysterious and enchanted evening of mystery and mysterious romance where we pretend that we’ve just met poolside at an exotic resort, that we do not spend our days reminding midgets to say please, our evenings pretending to like mushrooms as not to turn the midgets into picky eaters and our nights typing side-by-side on our laptops or sleeping and that you haven’t watched me give birth to 2 children, one the size of a smallish adult manatee?"

You know the eyebrow raise I’m talking about, right ladies? Word.

So, I lounge by the side of the pool, tossing my hair from side to side and trying to decide which is my “good leg.” Should I cross right over left or left over right? I look up at the enchanted moon when, WHAT THE FLYING HECK??!!

That’s right, a piece of flying heck had attached itself to my arm and was sucking the blood from my body – and he’d brought friends. I was suddenly in a swarm. I made a very unladylike leap into the water just as Dan came out to join me, all be-swimming-trunked and manly.

So he didn’t get to see me lounging in the moonlight. Ah well. At least we could go for a romantic swim… except OUCH! I was itching all over. I had several bites all over my body and the mosquitoes were still flying around my head trying to attack. Every time Dan would come near, I’d flail my arm up to fight off another blood-sucking insurgent.

I got out of the pool, retrieved the Deep Woods Mega Deet spray and covered both our heads with it, paying close attention to my face. Too close.

Do you know what happens when you kiss someone with deet on your lips? Deet gets on their lips and seeps into their mouth so that each time they kiss you, they pull away in disgust and spit spastically into the pool. The kissing somehow activates the deet, making your lips go numb and possibly swell up to Angelina-like proportions. You fear death is imminent, so you then rethink your plans for the evening.

Dan: You up for eating some more mushrooms?
Me: Please?
Dan: Oh yeah, sorry. Please.
Me: Sounds good. [SMACK] AAAH!! They’re eating me alive!
Dan: You know how much I LOVE mushrooms!
Me: I can’t feel my lips.
Dan: I’ll get the laptops.
Me: Okay, don’t forget the extra pillow for under my knees.
Dan: Please?
Me: Oh yeah, sorry. Please.

More Doom, Sleepy Teeth and the Careening Psychobot

2006-06-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Everywhere we go, Laylee begs for “more doom please.” Sadly, she’s not tall enough to experience anything but the most juvenile form of doom. At the Houston Aquarium they have a miniature Drop of Doom with some pansy name like “The Magic Lighthouse” or something else equally inane. Luckily the girl can’t read so I introduced it to her as “The Drop of Doom” and to the protestations of Dan and Grammy I took her for a ride.

Why they would be concerned about her dropping in 2 story freefall repeatedly, I’ll never know. She almost didn’t have a meltdown on the seahorse merry-go-round so I thought she was certainly ready to try out something a little more adventurous. As per usual, I was correct.

Her commentary as we rode the ride one billion times consisted of 2 phrases repeated over and over again. “Hold tight to me Mommy” and “Again Please.”

Now everywhere we go, she’s on the lookout. “More doom PLEASE!” I’ll see what I can conjure up for you, sweet pea.

Due to the fact that Grammy and Papa are much smarter than Mom and Dad, sweet pea Laylee has developed some added creativity in her parental manipulation techniques.

After over an hour of swimming:
Papa: Okay kiddo, I think it’s time to get out.
Laylee: I don’t think so.
Papa: Oh really? Come on.
Laylee: No, my clock says it’s not time to get out.
Papa: You don’t have a clock.
Laylee: Yes I do.
Papa: Where is it?
Laylee: It’s right here. (pointing to a wet spot on the pool deck)
Papa: Oh really, and what does it say?
Laylee: It says it’s not time to get out yet.

Then last night at dinner, Laylee informed us that she needed to spit out the green bean in her mouth because her teeth were too tired to chew it. “My teeth are SO sleepy.” Yah-huh? Well, my uvula’s practically been in a coma for 3 weeks now and you don’t see me complaining. Chew the darn green bean.

Being out here in the Bible belt, Magoo’s picked up some added religiosity. Since we’ve been in Texas with Grammy and Papa, he’s not only learned to fold his arms for prayer but he has also been healed. Yes folks, he who was lame can now walk, or at least careen around like a flailing psychobot.

Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

Tip Tuesday – Vacation Planning

2006-06-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

It’s the summer. I’m on vacation. It appears that many of you are on vacation now or are soon to head out on your own adventures. What are your tried and true methods for making sure things go smoothly in your travels? HA HA! We all know that’s not possible. So, how do you at least minimize the chaos? (Laylee calls the sunscreen "frosting")

Here are a few tips from the DYM:

1. Always refer to yourself in the third person, hopefully in acronym form, while on vacation.

2. Pack a separate bag for each person, regardless of the size (of the person or the bag). This way you’ll have less chance of your three year old wearing your infant’s full-length jeans as capri pants.

3. If you’re staying for longer than 5 days, unpack your clothes and organize them if storage is available.

4. Don’t forget your swimsuit if your parents have a pool in their backyard and end up buying the least nappy suit left on the picked-over racks at Wal-Merto.

5. Make the lists. First do a master list of items each person will need (ex. Pez Dispensers). Then create a list of items specific to the individuals (ex. Snow white attire). Make a list of group-use items (ex. Squeegee). List items for carry-on luggage. Lastly, make a list of things you will need to grab last minute as you leave the house.

6. Bring all pertinent house-selling and buying info with you, if you plan to close on two house deals the week you get back in town.

7. For the plane ride, pack a bag with lots of easily accessible pockets. Memorize the contents of the pockets so you can reach down and grab a wipe, a headset, or a goldfish (I choose the cracker variety) in 2 seconds or less. Mary Poppins’s bag may look cool, holding all that stuff, but think how long it took her to find anything in there. What seatmate, including your child, is gonna put up with a pole lamp on their lap while you dig around for the duct tape?

8. Have fun and share your secrets here.

“I’m so lucky that my timeout is not in a box.”

2006-06-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

Lessons learned from watching the Stanley Cup finals with Daddy and Papa.

Next up - the finer points of cross-checking.

The Meme’n Weekend

2006-06-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

When I downloaded the photos from the trip so far, I found this little piece of artwork, created by Daniel to make me swoon. It worked. It also reminded me of the shmoopy meme JD tagged me for a while back:

Two for Togetherness
Two things you compliment your husband on while in his presence:
1. His eyes.
2. His sweetness.
Two compliments you make about your spouse to your friends:
1. He is a genius.
2. He is amazingly patient with me.
Two traits you married him/her for:
1. His amazing white T-shirt collection
2. He remembered my name
3. His amazing human-spell-checker skills
Two days you cherished the most with your husband being together:
1. The day I looked like a piece of cheese.
2. The night we decided to get married. We were kneeling across from each other holding hands late at night. I didn’t want him to leave my apartment and go home. “What are we going to do about this?” I asked. He had a good answer
(Of course our wedding day and the birth of our children were kind of nice too.)
Two material things you could give your husband if you just inherited a fortune:
1. The saxophone of his dreams, complete with personal recording studio
2. All the photography equipment he could ever dream of, complete with Mac G-5 to edit the photos.
Two things you would miss the most if she/he left for two weeks:
1. His calming influence. I know it’s hard to imagine, but I’m a bit of a spaz.
2. His toes in bed with me
Two thoughts that crossed your mind when you first met/saw your spouse:
1. “This skinny white guy speaks Chinese? This, I must see.”
2. “I could marry him.” This is true. I have documented proof.
Two favorite dates:
1. Valentine’s Day lunch at the Space Needle
2. Trip to the local Pottery Painting shop to make the You Are Special plate
Two funny odd things you love:
1. Seriously, none of it seems odd anymore.
Two places you have lived with your spouse:
1. Provo, UT
2. Puget Sound, WA
Two favorite vacations:
1. Cape May, NJ – beach vacation/family reunion
2. Christmas 2005 when we got to see everyone from both of our families

While I'm at it, I think I'll play along with Cheerios on My Butt over at Children and Cheerios on the Loose.

Turn On's and Off's

What is your favorite word?
Cheese

What is your least favorite word?
That I can say on this blog? MOMMY! – when said with a shrieking whine

What turns you on spiritually,creatively,emotionally?
spiritually – music or silence
creatively – clean and organized space
emotionally – service, music, my children

What turns you off?
WHINING and rudeness

What's your favorite curse word?
For the LOVE!

What sound or noise do you love to hear?
Dan’s key in the front door lock as he comes home from work.

What sound or noise do you hate?
Okay, I think I’ll get in trouble if I say WHINING one more time. So… um… persistent whining, accompanied by pulling on the hem of my clothes.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Documentary film director or museum designer/curator.

What profession would you not like to do?
Massage therapist

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say at the pearly gates?
SWEET! Welcome. Well done.

Blog-a-Book-Along About Why-I-Haven’t-Blogged-This-Book-Along

2006-06-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

So a while back I signed on to read a child-rearing book along with Krista. I was pumped. I was literate. I was attempting to rear the children. No big deal, right?

The book is What Do You Really Want for Your Children? by Wayne Dyer.

Well, I’ve had the worst time keeping up with the reading so I haven’t wanted to blog anything until I was completely caught up. Then I went a step further and decided not to read Krista’s book discussion until I was caught up so I wouldn’t “spoil it.”

I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters of the book, all the idealism, some of the guilt. His premise is that we should be raising “no limits” kids, kids who believe they can do anything, kids who sail smoothly through life’s stormiest seas because their parents are perfect (okay, that’s not exactly what he said, but he really emphasizes the need to teach by example, to be healthy, thin, confident, calm, freakishly happy, etc). The nice thing is, he gives parents hope that we can become the kind of parents our no-limits seedlings deserve, sort of.

Last week I realized that this book is made up of chapters, each with a separate topic and I could skip to where the rest of the bloggers were reading and join them. Each chapter covers one thing we really want for our children. Of course it was my bad timing that I chose to read last week’s topic. I told Krista that I did not have very nice things to say about the chapter but she encouraged me to blog it anyway. She hasn't exactly agreed with every word he's written either.

I Want My Children to Be Free from Stress and Anxiety. Nice thought, right? Well, here are the opening paragraphs from the chapter:

The world is perfect; there is no anxiety in it… anyplace. There are only people thinking anxiously. - Eykis

Every day you hear about people having anxiety attacks. You have seen the statistics on the phenomenal increases in the use of tranquilizers, uppers, downers, sleeping pills, anti-stress tablets, antidepressants, and drugs for every kind of so-called anxiety attack. We are relying more and more on external elixirs to rid ourselves of something that does not even exist.

Anxiety does not attack! People choose to think anxiously about their world and then look for a pill to rid themselves of this mysterious thing called anxiety.

Yes, Wayne, it is mysterious and imaginary, all at the same time. [Swift kick to the gut.] Are you kidding me?! I know that we live in an over-medicated culture, that people are looking for an easy solution to their problems and that doctors over-prescribe when medication is not necessarily the answer, but can you really say that anxiety doesn’t exist?

Can you look me in the face with my dark hollow eyes the month after Magoo was born and tell me that my post-partum trauma was all in my head, that a week after my son was born, the hot and cold flashes that wracked my body and the crippling anxiety that woke me from a dead sleep, if I could sleep at all, were imagined because I was not a strong enough person?

Tell my mother and husband who babysat me night and day for 5 weeks when I was suddenly transformed into a completely different person that they should have encouraged me to do more positive self-talk and that would have caused my body to become capable of eating food or keeping down water when I attempted to drink.

Maybe talk to my doctor who explained that a certain part of my brain was over-actively pumping my body full of adrenaline, making me unable to keep food down or sleep. At all, which is why I had to be taken to the emergency room.

Another quote from the book:

Children can be guaranteed a lifetime without anxiety, provided you are prepared to encourage them to believe that they have a large measure of control about what they carry around inside themselves.

Wow, my parents must have sucked. All this time, I thought they did a great job but I found myself with no guaranteed anxiety-free life. Not only did I grow up to be a post-partum woman with “anxiety attacks” which required medical attention, I also experienced anxiety when my dog died, when I auditioned for the school play, when I went through the fire safety class in 3rd grade, when a kid in junior high flicked boogers on me in the hall and called me filthy names, and when I spent months interviewing survivors of rape for a documentary I directed in college.

If only my parents had taught me that I had a large measure of control about what I carried around inside myself, I would have been able to deal with all of this, anxiety-free.

I think what I dislike the most about Dyer’s blanket statements is the same thing I dislike about phrases like “rape prevention” or “protect yourself against rape” which imply that if you are raped, you didn’t work hard enough to prevent it or you didn’t do a good enough job protecting yourself.

Of course doing certain things can reduce your risk of being raped, just as certain patterns of thinking can reduce your risk of feeling anxiety, but you can’t PREVENT it, short of living in an isolated bubble.

And as far as anxiety goes, you can’t prevent it even in an isolated bubble if you have a chemical or hormonal imbalance. The brain is a complex organ and there are real, true medically-sound ailments that can befall it. Even if you’re not suffering from a chemical imbalance, being anxious does not mean you’re a loser or a failure.

I spent a good portion of my life thinking that people with mental illness were somehow less, some way weaker than me. What happened after Magoo’s birth caught me completely off guard and made me realize for the first time that you truly do not have complete control of your brain, there are some things you can’t pray your way out of and medical treatment was invented for a reason.

Now to give Dyer the benefit of the doubt, I think he is referring to people who he thinks are popping pills like candy to deal with every little problem that crosses their path. Of course that’s not a desirable way to live, just as alcoholism, chocolate fudge sundae addiction or any other mind-numbing mechanisms are not positive solutions to a bad day at work.

However, I think it’s irresponsible to make blanket statements about mental health and leave no room for mercy for people in situations he seems to know nothing about.

Of course I want my children to live as stress-free and anxiety-free as they can, but I also want them to know that if they have a health or other problem, they can come to me or to a trusted advisor and seek help, not placing further anxiety on themselves because I have taught them that anxiety doesn’t exist and that they are weak for feeling it.

Now, I will keep reading and try to post something positive about the book next time. For every one thing that’s annoyed me about this book, there have been approximately 1.74 other things that I’ve found insightful. This means that in the realm of parenting books, I’d have to classify it as a success. You can’t agree with everything, right?

It seems fitting to direct you to an amazing post Misha wrote about depression a few days ago that is definitely worth the read.

Houston We Have a Problem

2006-06-07T01:17:00.000-07:00

Dan, Papa and I spent a fabulous day at NASA, yes, that NASA, where the astronauts are.

My mom took one for the team and spent the day watching the grandkids, yes those grandkids.

To make it up to her, we brought home a NASA shot glass that she can use to take her “medicine.” That’s what SHE calls it.

Now I will take you on a guided photo tour of this top secret facility and its many top secrety secrets.

The massive security gates at the entrance to the compound are manned by women who mask their pitch black martial arts skills with petite smiling faces, pleasant conversation and laughter. You see, they don’t want the terrorists to know they're being screened. They even trick you into paying for this initial shakedown by disguising it as a “parking booth.” Yeah, right.

There was some kind of hold up in the line. The delta level security agent told us it was caused by the woman in the car in front of us “taking a few minutes to come to grips with the fact that the ‘parking attendant’ could not speak Vietnamese.” I guess she still harbors some bad feelings from her experiences in Nam. The woman must have required "special attention".

After paying admission, we went through the second sophisticated level of security. They had a box… with instructions, no masking their intentions this time. They wanted our guns and they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

All of the employees throughout the museum, from the ticket takers to the trash receptacle collectors were actual astronauts, wearing official blue jumpsuits.

They had a MickeyD’s-style play place on crack.

It came complete with projectiles, a gauntlet and video screens so the parents could watch their kids getting the hud kicked out of them and loving it.

We had to line up against a wall so this guy could take our picture for our “file”. No fingerprints, urine samples or retinal scans were taken at this juncture.

As we went through the metal detectors and boarded the tram, they continuously reminded us that we were not at a theme park but were in fact entering a highly sensitive government agency. I was confused by this. The security guards at Disneyland have much bigger guns than this sorry excuse for a firearm.

My dad wore a Dick Tracy-style gangster hat, causing us no end of grief from the feds. Couldn’t he have worn a bandana like a normal person?

Dan, on the other hand, wore a hat bearing Chinese symbols, which can roughly be translated to mean, “I Come in Peace.”

Everything was designed to give the feeling that we were really in outer space. I find it problematic that it costs a dollar less to buy a soda in outer space than at my high school reunion.

Apparently astronauts like pink flowers. My dad says they are called Crepe Myrtles. Apparently secure Canadian males like pink flowers too and have the ability to identify them when called upon.

Since we had only one adult and two children in our party, we found it difficult to follow all of the complex instructions laid out before us. Instead we chose to link arms and pray we would not be hurled from the tram as it took off at super-sonic speeds of up to 10 miles per hour.

We passed the space cows, Texas longhorns. Go figure.

97 steps took us up to historic mission control, a place that made us all tingly thinking about how Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton almost didn’t make it back alive. I hear that if Tommy had died in that shuttle disaster, Keanu Reeves was slated to play Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code.

The orange chairs were surprisingly comfortable.

We saw a bunch of stuff with acronyms. I think there are more acronyms at NASA than in a teen chat room on MySpace. It’s all classified of course, unless you’ve got the 20 bucks or the daddy with 20 bucks to get you into this not-theme-park.

Please don’t let the Russians get ahold of this technology. Space station, smace station.

I think this may be one of the best quotes I’ve ever read. Right now I think we’re in a sort of semi-friendly cold war. That is WAY better than the unfriendly kind.

Here is the first watch worn on the moon. My dad wondered how Neil fit aboard his ship. I don’t care how strong his arm was, that is the biggest fetchin’ watch I’ve ever seen.

Rescue me please. Dan was no help, locked down in the cargo bay. At least there weren’t Snakes on this Plane. (We recently saw a preview for Snakes on a Plane and almost had a heart attack from laughter.)

We saw the mockups. We lived space.

This guy, suspended above our heads when we weren’t expecting it, freaked me out to an almost thumb-sucking degree.

We took almost 200 pictures. Dan liked the buttons.

We had a blast and now I’m thinking of becoming a SAHM-turned-astronaut. Yes, I’m serious. What’s a little Master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering, really? A couple years of my life… big fat hairy deal. I wanna go to the moon. They have caramel sundaes on the moon, right?

Tip Tuesday – Father’s Day

2006-06-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’m a bit late but better late than never. I’ve been too busy hanging out with my pappy to stop and write about him. Alas, it’s only a week and a half until Fathers’ Day and we’d better plan something to make up for the fact that we did practically nothing for Dan’s birthday last month.

Oh? You did something for Dan’s birthday last month? Well, isn’t that special. You can relax then. Or maybe you could do something for your father or the father of your children on the 17th. I’m planning to focus on the big D.

Have you done something really cool in the past that you feel like sharing so the rest of us can steal it? Personally I have a really hard time coming up with gifts for the man-types in my life. Sure it’s fun to give multiple CDs every single occasion every year of our life, but I’d like to boost the surprise factor a little.

NOTE TO DAN. PLEASE STOP READING NOW.

I’ll share something fun we did for Fathers’ Day if you tell me what the chicken to do for Dan…Oh, and how about my father and father-in-law as well?

NOTE TO MY FATHER AND FATHER IN LAW. PLEASE STOP READING NOW.

One year I was looking for the dude equivalent of the Mothers’ Day corsage. I came up with a Daddy necklace. Sounds cool, huh? It actually was. Laylee and I got a bunch of wooden letter beads and colored beads and spelled out various names Dan carries as a father.

Pops
Dad
Father
Friend
Shugy-Puddin-Daddy-Pie
Etc.

Dan loves to wear it to church and then all day long on Sunday. Many of my friends said their husbands were not secure enough in their manhood to wear such an item. If your husband/father* is a manly man, he will love this gift.

On Fathers’ Day the Pater Familias gets to be free of all chores, nap in the afternoon and we make his favorite dinner, served on the “You are Special” plate.

*I am not insinuating that your husband and father are the same person. In this instance, the slash means “or.”

Beef and Cheese

2006-06-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

I love the line from Elf where Will Ferrell accuses the department store Santa of not being the real deal because he doesn’t smell like Santa, he smells like beef and cheese.

Well I’m not the real Santa either because I definitely smell like beef and cheese…beef, cheese and chlorine (we are LOVING my parents' pool). Yesterday was my high school reunion and I kid you not, the buffet consisted of mounds of cheese, a few hors d'oeuvres and a giant side of beef under a hot lamp. Now I was certainly not there for the food, but beef and cheese? Seriously.

Some other random side notes include the fact that our class officers hired the reunion planning out to a random company who put on the most generic reunion I could have imagined. Not one yearbook was handy, not a single high school logo or mascot was seen. We all got a T-shirt that said our high school name and “Class of ‘96” in boring sans serif font. There wasn’t even a mustang on it. Now I bet 1/3 of the high schools in America have a mustang as their school mascot. How hard would it have been to download a picture of a horse and put it on the shirts? I guess it was much harder than putting the name of the reunion planning company in HUGE print across the back with their web address and phone number in GINORMOUS letters.

A policeman was on duty in case we got out of control. He also posed us for our reunion picture while the photographer stood mutely watching.

They played music videos of songs that were popular while we were in high school. An old-school Backstreet Boys video came on, a video in which they were still boys and they had just made their American debut after becoming wildly popular with girls across Asia.

It made me wonder again how long I’ll be able to go by the name Daring “Young” Mom. At what point do I become the Backstreet-Old-Married-Men-With-Kids-Who-Refuse-to-Change-the-Name-of-Their-Group of the blog world?

I somehow conned my two best high school girlfriends into flying to Houston for the weekend to go to a reunion we swore we’d never attend and we had a great time seeing each other again. There were very few other people there that I recognized and even fewer who recognized me.

There wasn’t a great turnout and it seemed that the group largely consisted of the “popular” kids who intimidated the cheese out of me when I was 17. When chatting it up with people, we tried to find some sort of connection and the conversation tended to turn towards extra curricular activities.

Graduate: What did you do in high school?
Me: Besides eat beef and cheese? Um… homework.
Graduate: No, I mean extra-curriculars. Were you on dance team?
Me: Um…no. You weren’t a member of the Business Professionals of America club, were you? NHS? Theatre?
Graduate (blank stare): Were you there all 4 years?
Me: Nope. I moved to Texas from Canada Junior year. I was the Canadian Girl.
Graduate: Yeeeeaaahh… (moving on)

Truth be told, I actually met several really nice people and reconnected with a few old friends. The best part of the evening, besides the beef and cheese and the fact that after paying $120 to get in the door I was asked to pay $3 for a coke, was realizing that I am no longer intimidated by these people. I’m actually hardly intimidated by anyone anymore. I look back now and see that we all made different choices in our lives and became who we are and I’m happy with the way things turned out for me. Some people aren’t happy but for the most part we all became some form of the person we envisioned being in high school.

Sadly, I did not get the chance to confront the girl who “complimented” me senior year on my “sense of style” and my “bravery” to wear jeans every day to school. She even went so far as to tell me I should design my own clothing line and call it Katie’s Canadian Comfy Wear. She thought it would be so nice not to be burdened by fashion and to be able to wear whatever felt comfortable the way I could. Yes she carried the burden of driving the hot car her daddy bought her and wearing a different designer pants-suit every day to school, while I remain haunted to this day by a career in denim design that may never come to pass. Alas, we all must bear these little hardships as best we can.

Cirque de Sooo….

2006-06-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

…I need to work on my flexibility. Seriously. Last night we went to Cirque de Soleil and there’s this part of me that thinks, “Hey, I should work on my backbends so I can do that someday.”

I mean, I could almost - sort of - do that when I was in elementary school, the contortionism. As for today, I am far from being an athlete. I’m suffering from the post-nursing extra poundage. When I stop nursing, it takes me a few months to get used to eating for one again so I put on weight.

It comes just in time for my high school reunion this weekend. Yippee! I was looking in the mirror a couple of days ago, sizing myself up for the big fun and I realized I look much the same as I did 10 years ago.

Talking to Jen last week, (She was nice enough to fly across the country and then walk 3 miles to meet me for fish and chips. We had a great time getting acquainted and her daughter J – what a cutie!) it struck me what the main difference in my appearance is. I look like someone stuck a small hose in my mouth and puffed me up a few inches bigger, like an over-inflated tire.

I'm comforted by the fact that people will likely be too concerned about the way THEY look to notice the increase in my PSI.

Sweetness

2006-05-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

This morning I was awakened by Laylee. She crept down the hall to my room and slowly opened the door. Hoping she’d go back to bed, I pretended to be asleep. With much effort, she hoisted herself up to stand on the box spring so her little face was level with mine.

Then she did what I do every night after she falls asleep. She kissed me on the forehead and whispered in my ear very softly, “Mommy, I love you. Have a nice dream.”

She then climbed down, crept down the hall and flooded the bathroom.

Tip Tuesday – Soft Favorites

2006-05-30T00:49:00.000-07:00

We recently celebrated Magoo’s birthday in the classic style by allowing him to saturate his nostrils with soft water-insoluble man-made chocolate “product”. For a gift, we gave him some age-appropriate furniture and commended him for his many one-ish talents and skills, none more heartily applauded than his ability to walk 5 steps out into the middle of the room and then fall in slow-motion, stunt-man style.

Magoo’s main problem now is that he’s supposed to get his nutrition from actual food. I’m still breast feeding a bit (just the hat and the nose) but he mostly eats man-food now. Today I’d love suggestions for soft, nutritionally dense foods for the dentally-impaired.

My favorites are hyper-blanched baby carrot sticks (boiled to death and then refrigerated for future consumption), noodles and cheese worms (melted cheese on toast, sliced into strips sounds so unappealing, but “cheese worms”? That’s a meal you really wanna sink your teeth/tooth into).

Hit me with the soft stuff. What are your ideas?

Real Estate Moguls

2006-05-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

Move over Donny T cause there are new real estate moguls in town and we don’t need no steenkeen apprentice. We’ve already got two of our own. We just need a robo-realtor (played by “Nadine”), a disco-dancing family of marshmallow-eating bird wranglers to stay with for the weekend (played by “Lynn” and “Steffon”), a brilliant inspirational mastermind (played by Heavenly Father) and an opera-professor-turned-mortgage-broker in a pear tree (played by “Henry”).

So it’s hard to blog about things like home buying and selling homes without giving away too much personal information. I will say this, we are blessed!

Just over two weeks ago we decided to start seriously looking for a new home. By Sunday we were really discouraged and felt that there was no way we could find something in our price range that was worth buying.

The next morning, the first property we went to was priced well below the others we had looked at and it instantly felt like the right one. It had been sitting on the market for a “while” (take that with a grain of salt in this crazy market) and so we were able to get it for below their asking price. Within minutes of their counter-offer, another full price offer was made which they were unable to take because they had already signed with us.

The inspection turned out very clean. The house has a lot of “potential” (meaning we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us) but is in really good condition and move-in ready. It has a big back yard, 4 bedrooms, a tiled eating area (No more scraping macaroni off the dining room rug? Be still my heart!), and a family/play room on the main floor besides the formal living room (To become the music room/office. Who needs a formal living room, I ask you?). It is exactly what we were looking for.

Then this rainy weekend we put our house on the market and left to stay with Lynn and Steffon, with whom we had a great vacation. They are so fun and great to take us in when we didn’t want to be anywhere near the realtors and potential buyers milling around our home. And "milling" they were, I'm told. Our realtor did a fabulous job.

Within two days we had multiple offers on the table with the price escalating well above our asking price. Not only did the winning bidder pay more for our condo than we did for our new place, but they had no “out clauses” attached, no neighborhood review, no inspection required, no financial contingency. A completely clean deal, with a large amount of earnest money down.

We moved back into our home to pack with no showings to do, no realtors to talk to, done, done duh done done done. They are willing to close whenever we want to so we will be able to use the proceeds from the sale to buy the new home.

I’m kind of in shock and so grateful. Things could not have worked out more perfectly. We will be moving in a few weeks and then I’ll be more able to tell you how much “potential” the new home really has and how much slave labor it requires.

What it means to me is that we now have a home big enough to raise a fairly large family (no, still not an announcement) and even if the prices continue to skyrocket to insanity, we will be able to stay in an area we love and with a job Dan really enjoys and not be forced out for financial reasons. Yippee! Now to work with us all. I plan to pay Laylee one penny for every rock she picks out of the grass in the back yard.

I’m not posting pictures because it would be too easy to identify it on the MLS but I will say, it has a red front door and a face that looks like an owl with massive slanting eyebrows.

Motherhood Changes You

2006-05-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

When I see a sign like this, I don’t think of great furniture deals. Instead, I reach frantically for the wipes and pray that I’ve got a spare change of clothes in the car.

STOREWIDE? Are you kidding me? How many wipes do you think that would take?

Wild Times in I-Dee-Hoe

2006-05-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

Much has been said about the Idaho Bloggirls get-together last weekend. The other attendees' narrations of the evening are a lot of fun but a bit exaggerated to make it sound like THE BEST NIGHT EVER!!!!

I'm worried people are getting jealous so I think it's time I share my version of the events. Basically all we did was sit around, eat potatoes and surf the web. A few people talked via instant messenger across the table on their laptops.

The truth is, we’re all so socially inept, it’s become increasingly hard to speak with our voices or look at someone without a computer screen as a shield. Thank goodness Karen was able to find a restaurant with wireless internet AND killer french fries. Sadly, most of the girls forgot their webcams so I didn’t actually get to see them speak or move.

Man, those mashed potatoes were creamy.

I was able to pass my camera around the table and have everyone take pictures of themselves, which I then photoshopped together to make it look like we actually interacted.

Karli, Stephanie and "Elizabeth", the girl Stephanie brought to trick us into thinking she has friends in real life

Mary, April, Beth

Heather and Taffi

Emily, Alicia, Moi (yes, I do have a body to go with the floating head), and Brooke

It’s been said by many people that we were all afraid someone would turn out to be an old hairy man. No one was old, I was the only one that sounded like a man (it was a cold, I swear) and none but Alicia was plagued with facial hair.

Karen and Heather are both lovely girls, AND no one ever said they don't have freakishly long tongues. They made us proud.

Erin, my longtime "real" friend and new blogging friend looks exactly like Natalie Portman. Feel free to check out her site and encourage her.

Honestly, to quote Mr. Bingley, “Upon my honour I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life, as I [did that] evening; and there [were] several of them, you see, uncommonly pretty." We had a blast and I hope to meet many more of you, my internet girlfriends.

A girl in every “port”, ya know?

Also - Did anyone else see David Hasselhoff crying at the end of American Idol? Yeah… me too.

The Insanity

2006-05-24T01:02:00.000-07:00

Um... buying a house while selling a house is WAY more complicated than just buying a house.

That is all.

P.S. Thanks for all the great tips. If I live through this week, I may get the chance to use them.

Tip Tuesday – Moving Tips

2006-05-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

So we’re a-movin’. I’m not an experienced mover or a shaker. Okay, that’s a lie. I can shake a little boo-tay when called upon. I’ve also moved a lot but this is my first experience moving with kids or into a single-family home. I am stinkin’ excited but also scared and I have an insane amount of stuff to get done… and here I blog.

It does help that we’ve hired Robo-Realtor. This woman has been cleaning my kitchen, putting in laundry loads, rearranging things and bringing in all kinds of furniture and home décor items that she thinks I’ll give back to her after she sells my house. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

The house is starting to look so great, I may not want to leave it after all. I’ll just live here with Robo-Realtor’s belongings and maybe she’ll use her laser eye beams to demolish the unit next-door and then plant us a lovely lawn. She is working so hard for us and is so sweet with the kids. She is an amazing advisor.

Please give me moving and packing advice today. How do I stay sane while showing the house? What do I do? How do I organize? Help please.

Exciting BlogHer News

2006-05-22T15:37:00.000-07:00

The three wonderful ladies at MommyBloggers have gotten together to send a fellow breeding cyber pontificator to BlogHer this summer.

I’m shocked and more than way excited to be the one they chose to send. I’m guessing in the end they picked the applicant who could benefit most from meeting all the amazing women there and basking in their wise bloggishness. I am seriously so grateful and so nervous. Chris has graciously offered to take me in off the street so we can be hotel roomies. Now all I have left to take care of is airfare…

Any takers? If you have airmiles or Benjamins you’d like to donate to send me from Seattle to San Jose, you can expect to receive your very own Daring-Young-Hand-Crafted Disney princess dress or other costume of your choice in time for Halloween this year. Here are some samples of my work:

What? You don’t usually spend $250 on Halloween costumes for your kids? I weep for them.

I also weep for Alicia who will be paying dearly for the unflattering pictures she posted of me on her blog today. I have PhotoShop and I’m not afraid to use it. As I repeatedly tell Laylee, there will be consequences… and they will happen on approximately Wednesday. Tomorrow I’m gonna be asking for moving tips.

Magoo took his first unassisted steps while I was out of town and Laylee greeted me this morning by telling me that she had goobies in her eyes last night. It’s okay because she took them out of her eyes and fed them to the monsters. Hmm…okay. Welcome home to me. The trip was great (details to follow) but I sure missed these crazy kids… and Dan, don’t get me started. That man is sweetness personified.

The Trip Begins

2006-05-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

Karli and I are off on our crazy adventure to meet the ladies.

She wore a cheese hat following our cheese tour in Washington.

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We were checked out by teenaged boys in low-rise jeans and "wife-beaters"* who apparently ~~thought~~ knew we were hot.

A woman in Albertsons called Karli and I "girls," setting us up for a weekend of giddy glee.

We ate lunch in a dark restaurant when the power went out in Oregon.

Our gas was pumped by others.

We sang the entire Les Miserables soundrack at the top of our lungs.

We met up with the coolest girls around!

Dinner was raucous in a corner booth in DOWN TOWN BOISE. WOOT!

Wild dancing has occurred.

Our hotel rooms are in the middle of a massive group of prom celebrators.

The talking, the gabbing, the hugging, the interrupting, the LOVE! More to come.

The big group gets together tomorrow. Yippee.

P.S. WE GOT THE HOUSE. Cross your fingers that the inspector finds anything wrong if it is wrong. And cross your fingers that there's nothing wrong.

*Beth says they're called "K-Feds" now.

Tomorrow the Return of the Loving Dictator (That would be me.)

2006-05-16T23:08:00.000-07:00

Today has been like a mini parenting seminar unfolding of its own volition in my very home. We started the day out by going to look one more time at “the property.” We wanna-be land-holders like to call it that. After a thorough inspection by Dan (don’t worry, we’ll be using a professional inspector too), we decided to make an offer.

Now the waiting… which turns into gabbing on the phone and then magically into lots and lots and lots of work. We’re waiting right now to hear back from the seller who we’re told will be giving a counter-offer.

I feel far less stressed than I should be. Perhaps I’m channeling all of my nervous energy onto Laylee because she has gone absolutely nutso freakazoid insane today. She started by scattering the little blue shoe covers throughout the aforementioned “property,” spilling water all over the floor and then traipsing around the “property,” using the velvet beaded throw as a cape.

Honestly, I could not fault her for that one. It was a cape just waiting to be worn. Throughout the day she repeatedly abused Magoo, scraping his head with her toothbrush, writing on his head with a pointy piece of sidewalk chalk, hitting him over the head with a baby stroller…I could go on and on. She is not normally like this and I do not normally use the word “head” that many times in one sentence.

Whenever I’d stop her from what she was doing, she’d defend herself by saying, “He’s not crying yet.” Ooooohhh….he’s not crying yet? Is that the new criteria for acceptable behavior in our family?

It’s okay to wipe boogers on Mommy’s clean pants, flood the bathroom, scratch the new paint off the walls and scatter every piece of clean silverware we own throughout the house because Mommy’s not crying yet? I see. If Laylee were queen…

Actually, Laylee has become enamored with the wicked queen on Snow White. She loves her laugh, her apples, her magic powers and her fancy box with the heart in it. Laylee promises that if I give her magic powers and a fancy box, she will never use the box to kill people. I feel comforted by that. Maybe I will let her become queen someday.

When Dan got home, I pulled him aside and discretely told him all the crazy things she’d been up to, asking him to take over because I was DONE. He simply asked me, “So, what did you do about all that?”

Um…some time in her room…disapproving glances…said “no” weakly…kept talking on the phone. Yeah, I pretty much did nothing.

Dan calmly went to Laylee, sternly talked to her about her behavior and walked her around giving her instructions on how to clean things up… and it worked and they ended up cuddling on the couch reading stories with her happier than she’d been all day in my house of chaos.

Moral: Children need limits and are happier with them in place. I was freaking her out because I was letting her rule the roost and she didn’t know what had happened to her mommy. I normally don’t let her poke me with pointy red chopsticks. But sometimes on the day you’re trying to buy a house, it’s easy to turn into a slacker mom. And then they make you pay, and I ain’t talkin’ about the realtors. Luckily I have a husband who reminds me that you don’t have to be an evil villain to keep your kids in line and happy.

Tip Tuesday – First Impressions

2006-05-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression."
~Them, those one people~

I think that is one the dumbest phrases in the English language. Of course you do. If that pharse were true, Dan never would have married me. It’s not that I made a bad impression on him. I just didn’t make one at all. We knew each other for several moths before he remembered my name.

When he finally did, he asked me out every day until we got married. It was very sweet, really. There have been many times when I have misjudged someone the first time I’ve met them and found out later that they were actually very nice, regardless of how pretty or talented they were.

This weekend, many of us will be making first impressions with babes we’ve been chatting with online for months. I know first impressions can be overcome with time, but time…she ain’t what we’ve got this weekend. One dinner. That’s it. I make an impression over salad and then I only have until the last bite of pasta and exchange of marvelous wit to leave a lasting impression on my internet idols.

My suggestions for myself for this specific occasion are:
-Don’t tell anyone, “Wow, your picture online is really really flattering! I hardly recognize you.”
-Don’t spill food, spew on anyone, or horkle soda out your nose when laughing at some funny thing Karen says.
-Say at least one sentence that does not involve computers or small people.
-Stop talking.

Please share your words of wisdom on how to make a good first impression or at least not come across as a total goober in front of new acquaintances. This does not have to be specific to meeting people you know from the internet. You may not be “that kind” of person. I’d also be happy to hear about ways you’ve completely embarrassed yourself when meeting someone for the first time. Those are always fun… in retrospect.

P.S. The house hunting is progressing. I even think we’ve found a winner. Keep your fingers, toes and nostrils crossed for us.

Because I am a DORK

2006-05-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

I got the dates wrong, even though I totally know them. The Idaho dinner is on SATURDAY night. I will be on the road Friday if you'd like to join my in a truckstop corndog somewhere in Oregon.*

*Disclaimer - you will not be allowed to pump your own gas and you'll have to drive 60mph.

Shhh….We’re Hunting Houses - Updated

2006-05-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry I’ve been a blogging deadbeat for a few days. Interest rates are rising, house prices show no sign of stopping their insane rise in the Seattle area and we’re feeling an itch to move from our condo to a single-family home before the price gap get’s too wide to ever cross. Having learned from Jeana, the intercontinental traveler, to “mind the gap” last week, I decided to take her advice.

It’s been enlightening so far and yes, mostly in a depressing sort of way. There are thousands of Microsoft employees, and young retired millionaire former employees, who are helping drive up house prices. Our condo has shot up 50% in value in the last 2 years and other houses in the area are doing the same.

The problem is - everyone who likes their spouse wants to live close to the city to avoid a long commute so houses in decent school districts, close to the office are too rich for our blood. We’re talking $500k for a 2000sqft, 30-year-old home with very little yard.

Before we started looking, I told myself 3 things:
1. In order to move up, we have to move down.
2. I am spoiled in our luxury condo and should be prepared to move into a “fixer-upper” that I won’t be able to fix up for the next 10 years due to the staggering new mortgage payment.
3. I am totally fine with this.

Now, number three is where I start to come unhinged. I am in fact not okay paying $450K for a small dark split-level with almost no back yard that needs a ton of renovation. I will say that the home I’m referring to had a lovely patio with a great view of the potbellied neighbor guy sitting in an old lawn chair, wearing a wife-beater and smoking while the thousands of dogs across the street yapped their heads off.

Dan said that half of you are probably potbellied middle-aged sweaty male smokers, wearing wife-beaters and posing as mommy bloggers so I should be careful what I say. Sorry if I offended anyone.

The most disturbing thing about the house was actually the hearse parked on the street two houses down because they had too many beat-up cars in the driveway.

In many of the neighborhoods we visited, people didn’t park their old cars or hearses on the street. The lawn was just fine. What is the deal with parking multiple old junkers on you front lawn? Why, I ask you, WHY?

Saturday started with all 4 of us suffering from a yucky cold, getting a cavity filled and being told by a friend that the schools in the areas we were planning on looking were “scary.” We then looked at the homes with the “scary” schools and hearse-driving, yappy-dog-owning, hoopty-collecting neighbors, started getting used to it and thinking it might be okay, but decided just to take a peek at a neighborhood WAY out, so far out that I would likely never see Dan again, so far out that we actually fell in love with a couple of homes in our price range and realized that we were not at all satisfied with the things we’d seen closer in. Then by the time we drove all the way back to our condo, we realized that we were not okay with a commute that long.

So, we’re back where we started.

AARRRG! But it’s fun…right?

FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT – Several of us are meeting together for dinner this coming SATURDAY night in Boise, ID. If you plan on attending, please email me and I will send you the information. The deadline for getting our final numbers to the restaurant is Wednesday so if you’re bringing someone, please let me know that too. I’m really excited. There will be some wonderful bloggers there. I hope you’ll be one of them.

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day.

Oh, and I am so TICKED that the West Wing is over. The 10 other remaining viewers and I should get together for a bawl fest sometime.

Oh, and does anyone want to buy a really sweet 2-year-old condo across the street from a Bambi forest and backing onto a duck pond with actual bulrushes? Moses could be in there! ...or a frog or something.

To Clarify

2006-05-10T22:46:00.000-07:00

When I read about Piglet being blown away, I wonder what gauge weapon will be used and who will be wielding it. Eyeore seems the most unstable mentally, although Rabbit has shown himself capable of physical aggression in the past. Kanga is right out, but Roo wants so badly to fit in. Who's to say that he's not planning the job, maybe earn him some respect from the whole gang? They all made nice at the end of The Heffalump Movie but I think that book

is pretty solid evidence of the rising tide of violence in their little world. Christo-Robinizzle is too high up in the food chain to take anyone out himself. He'd undoubtedly use one of his henchmen. I don't think it would be too hard to convince T-I-double-Guh-ER to "bounce" little pink, if you knowahmsayin'. After that whole forgery of documents and posing as a member of his long lost Tigger posse, in The Tigger Movie, our boy is not exactly right with Mr. T. At least the Pooh’s got his back… for now.

Got any theories, yo?

Of Piglet and Prophecy

2006-05-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

I remember a while back Angela’s daughter was freaking her out a wee bit by telling her morbid things about her future. The past few days Laylee has been telling me what we should do when our house falls down. Has anyone told her that Seattle is expecting a major earthquake any day now or do we just read too much about the three little pork chops? I promise our house is not made of straw.

However, Laylee is fairly certain that it will be falling down soon. When it does, we are to evacuate immediately and go live at Grammy’s house until our house gets put back up again.

Then today she told me that tomorrow we are all going to die. Um, thanks for the warning. I asked her if tomorrow was the day the house was gonna fall down. She said "no". We’re just gonna die. So if I don’t post…

Now I will share with you something else that’s been disturbing me into hysterical laughter:

So Piglet’s gonna get blown away, huh? What kind of hood is this Hundred Acre Wood?

Tip Tuesday – Put them To Work

2006-05-09T00:29:00.000-07:00

How do you get your kids to work FOR you, not against you? Last night we gave Laylee her first allowance so we could teach her about saving money and paying tithing. She was pretty much stoked that 5 of the shiny monies (dimes) went into her pink pig’s belly.

I’m not sure if she understands the tithing thing but she did keep saying that her savings box was for college. We gave her several options for the use of her 40 large, but she insisted that her savings were for college. Nice. At this rate, she will have her bachelor’s in approximately... never.

When I explained what allowance was, I told her that she would also be expected to do more “responsibilities” around the house. She was very excited about this plan. Responsibilities = big-girlness. Big-girlness = eating as many peeps as you can fit in your mouth because you’re tall enough to reach the cupboard of coma-inducing refined sugar products.

Currently she helps me set the table, clear her place, “make the bed” (cackle), and “dust.” Not bad for a three year old, but I still don’t think she’s earning her keep.

When we were young, my mom made chores fun by having us “play vacuum cleaner” (Dealers were exempt.). Yes, she trained us all to be dealers. We also tried various chore charts. These were more fun when we were younger and not as able - To Deal. (Isn't that the name of a Mandy Moore flick?)

Some were not so much fun, such as the “15 minute blitz.” This involved my mom running around like crazy, talking really fast and peppily urging us on like a cheerleader as we tried to make it look like our limbs were moving quickly to clean the house, while making sure that we were cleaning less than our siblings. I HATED the 15 minute blitz with all of my soul. I am SO using it on my kids. I will also be singing the “Good Morning To You” song as I flip on their light and sing tales of orange juice and “get out of bed you lazy bum.” They will LOVE it.

How do you get your sweet little freeloaders to start earning* their 25 cents per week, not to mention all the food and toilet paper they consume? (Yes, I do mean eating toilet paper. Another day, another story about my kids finding ways to be absolutely disgusting at lightning speed. If I’d just been two seconds faster, I could have stopped it. Two seconds slower and I wouldn’t have had to witness it. But hey, I dip my Oreos. I guess TP ain’t the only thing that tastes better when wet.)

*I don’t think chores should be directly linked to allowance. I’d love your opinions on that issue too.

Speaking the Lingo

2006-05-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Laylee’s speech seems to be regressing this weekend. She’s picked up this really annoying version of baby talk that sounds more like a 23-year-old imitating a baby for a Saturday Night Live sketch or an idiot Munchkin that was too mentally slow to be allowed to welcome Dorothy to Munchkin Land in song.

I’m not sure if she thinks linguistically-deficient-demented munchkins are cute or if she just hopes this new way of speaking will scare us into giving her what she wants. It is rather scary. I had trouble explaining to her what “annoying” means but I do think she caught my stop-talking-like-that drift. She told me that she wasn’t doing it. It was actually her little yellow clip talking. Also scary.

Language is important.

I found that my doctor took me much more seriously this week when I used words like “concerned”, “acute”, and “localized”, rather than my previous visit where I said things more along the lines of “freaked out”, “it kills”, and “seems weird to me.”

I remember leaving the previous visit feeling invalidated and disappointed that she hadn’t taken my concerns seriously. I was ticked, dude.

This time around tests were done, recommendations were made and I have to say, BTW, it still kills, but I have a follow-up scheduled.

So, the moral of this post is, you get more from people when you speak their language. My doctor’s language of choice is not freaked-out-new-moma-ese. My language of choice is not developmentally-delayed-munchkin-ish. And I know the yellow clip is not culpable.

If I Weren’t Laughing, I’d be Crying

2006-05-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

This has been sort of a motto (sometimes excuse) I’ve used throughout my life for my desire to see the humor in nearly any situation. At times it’s served me well, lightening the mood at a crucial moment, and at other times it’s gotten me into trouble.

This blog, often categorized as a ‘humor’ blog, was created as an outlet when I was going through the hardest period of my life to date. I was in so much physical and emotional pain. What could be more natural than writing about my life in a way that would crack other people up?

The first time I remember this concept being discussed was at my grandpa’s funeral. He had died suddenly and it was traumatic for all the grandkids. On the way to the funeral, we stopped for some fast food. As we were loading the drinks into the van, my mom started it up and it immediately lurched forward, drinks exploding everywhere. Every surface of the van was drenched in soda, not conducive to a long car ride. We drove all the way back home, cleaned out the van, put tarps on all of the seats and started out again. Along the way we saw a rainbow and I remember my mom producing giggles by telling us it must be a sign from God that he would never flood the van with soda again.

At the internment, we found humor in the fact that Grandpa’s next door grave neighbor was named James Kirk. How cool to be laid to rest next to the captain.

After the family dinner, out of a clear blue sky came a large dark cloud that rested right over the house where we were staying. Down poured an amazing deluge of hail. All of the grandkids went nuts, running, screaming and laughing through the pelting storm, as sun shone all around the dark cloud. It was an amazing emotional release at the end of a dreadful day. We felt sure that Grandpa had requested the storm for us personally, sick of seeing his grandkids looking so forlorn.

At Aunt J’s funeral service, the tears were near constant. She is a woman almost impossible to hyperbolize. She really IS that wonderful, not in a “perfect” way but in a perfectly real and loving way. When my mother-in-law was discussing her talk for the funeral, Aunt J stopped her at one point in her list of attributes, semi-annoyed, and said, “DON’T LIE.” I love that about her.

At every step of the two-day funeral process, Laylee would ask us, “Is this the part where her body and spirit get stuck back together and she can move again?” Sadly, no, it never was. At one point, frustrated, she asked, “Okay. Then can she please PLEASE get resurrected tomorrow?”

Soon. Soon. Not soon enough for my taste, but I guess “soon” is relative.

Laylee had everyone around her cracking up during the funeral service. She got so bored halfway through when it became apparent that no Beauty-and-the-Beast-style fireworks would be coming from the “Snow White bed” where J’s body was lying, that she started distributing goldfish crackers up and down the church pew to friends, family members and complete strangers. On her second pass, she grabbed a handful so large, it was obvious she would be spilling them all over the place. Dan whispered to her, “Laylee. That’s too many.” She sighed, rolled her eyes, took ONE cracker from her bulging fist, put it back in the bag and continued on her mission. It took a lot of control for everyone who witnessed it not to bust out laughing.

We definitely watch too many movies on long roadtrips but it keeps us sane and it makes for some really good jokes.

At a rest stop, I washed the windows of the car and Laylee (having just watched Aladdin) asked, “Did you squeege these windows? Did you bring me here?”

At a restaurant in Sumpter, where a model train circles around several times per hour, Laylee got impatient for the train to make its next pass. She laid down in mock exasperation and began to sing the famous Snow White ballad, “Some day my TRAIN will come.”

Overall, the trip was a good one. The kids did really well. Heather took some gorgeous portraits of them in her new studio. We got to see friends and family and say “See you soon” to a woman we will never stop loving.

Give me a Minute

2006-05-02T20:41:00.000-07:00

I'm funeraling and the family's all together. I'll be back in a couple of days. I don't have much coherent to say about what's been going on. Tons of emotion, very little sleep, much of driving, a few fun moments, mostly overwhelming.

Blog out.

Tip Tuesday – Children’s Books

2006-05-02T01:53:00.000-07:00

Think Fast! It’s another Tuesday where I will require that you think fast or don’t think at all. I want your favorite or current favorite children’s book of all time. Don’t think too hard, just suggest one. Just one.

Okay, just this once, in my grand beneficence, I will allow you to give two suggestions. Here are mine:

1. Big Bad Bruce by Bill Peet – This is a favorite from when I was a child. I could not get enough of this book.

2. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault – We use this book as a warm up for our Daring Family freestyle rap battles. We wore out the copy Grammy sent us and I bought a new one… at a real bookstore… at full price. I know. I am insane. It was worth it.

As you can see, I only like books by people named Bill.

Your suggestions can be by people with other names… I guess… if they’re REALLY good. You can include anything from board books to Young Adult reads. Go!

The Supertaster – Hero or Handicapped

2006-04-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

Dan does not like to eat certain things, things that contain flavors, or as he calls them “tongue scorching flavonoids of misery and possible death.” (He has never actually said that with his lips. It’s more in the facial region of expressivity.)

I grew up having jalapeno-eating contests with my dad and drinking Tabasco sauce by the spoonful, like any normal child. Dan, on the other hand, shies away from many of the simple culinary pleasures of life.

Besides bypassing “cranky” foods (Laylee’s word for anything from Altoids to salsa), he also gives the thumbs down on squash, mushrooms, several sea-foods, pig’s feet and anything low-fat.

Until recently I have thought he was a bit of a wimp in the eating department, a strange departure from his usual manly, Rambo-like nature. Then I heard about Supertasters.

Supertasters are people with an unusually large number of taste buds on their tongue. They truly, physiologically “can’t take the heat.” He has not been officially diagnosed with this… disorder?... but I feel confident that if I blew up that picture and a picture of my tongue, he’d have a veritable gold-mine of the little buds in comparison to me.

The word Supertaster sounds like a heroic power, like he should be able to taste and enjoy food more fully than the average citizen. But in reality, it causes him to miss out on so much of life. He is literally crippled by his over-active taste buds, unable to perform even the most basic nutritional tasks, such as feeding himself Brussels sprouts. We weep for him.

But now the question arises – is he a super hero or just a poor handicapped guy forever doomed to eat bland versions of Thai food that could have been scrumptious, given the proper peppers and spices?

If he’s a super hero, hooray! Having a plethora of extra body parts beats the ability to eat scores of malted milk balls any day (until now, he considered this to be his only claim to super-herodom).

If he’s simply handicapped, then we should get one of those blue stickers for our car so that my super-power will grow to the point that parking spaces really can become the complete focus of this blog. How nice it would be if I never had to think of anything to write again. Every day I'd just post a picture of Vinny, parked in the special wife-to-the-severely-tongue-impaired parking spot at Fred Meyer and call it good.

Tinker-Bell Princess

2006-04-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had another hair-cutting extravaganza, my first since the mullet incident. At this point the layers have grown out to a length I am more comfortable with and I have learned to listen to my stylist when she tells me a particular cut might end up looking like a mullet. She KNOWS.

I just got a trim but Laylee got the real fun. We decided to give her a fun summer hair-cut. We went with a Julia Roberts in Hook pixie-cut. She was amazingly calm through the razor cut and very excited to tell daddy that she looked like a pixie-fairy-princess girl.

I love the way it turned out but considering her age and lack of womanly curvage, it’s a given that she will be mistaken for a boy at times. I spent the afternoon talking about how she looks like Tinker-bell and what a cute fairy she is.

Then Dad gets home.

Dan: Wow. You got a new hair-do!
Laylee: Yeah!
Dan: What kind of hair-do is it?
Laylee (very excited): It’s a BOY haircut!

At which point, Magoo waved his sweet little girly-finger-wiggling wave from the high chair and I busted up laughing. So our daughter is excited that she could pass for a boy and our son waves "hello" like Paris Hilton. Yippee!

And then in a moment of uncanny timing, a gift arrived in the mail today for Laylee from Peter and Heidi of the Tutu Boutique. Our little princess fairy pixie Tinker-bell got to wear the poofiest, most gorgeous dress-up item she’s ever had on her body and remind herself that she's still a girly girl.

A while back I mentioned their business on the site because I like them, expecting nothing in return. Then they sent this “poof” and a fun princess crown and shirt to thank me for the mention. How sweet is that?

Take that High-End-Children’s-Clothes-Store-Employee-Who-Thought-Laylee-Was-A-Boy-Today. Heads up: if you want to earn a big sales commission from me, upon finding out that my child is female, please do not ask me if she cut her hair herself.

Policy note – I have recently been getting offers of free products or discounts to promote things on my blog. I want to make it clear that I would be happy to do reviews but I will be totally honest, even if you send me free stuff, so be warned. You may not like what I have to say. I don’t want people wondering if I’m getting something free in return when I mention a book or product so I promise to always let you know. And again… the honesty.

One last thing. I thought you’d like to see this. Taken this afternoon. Yes, the force is still strong with me.

Show and Tell

2006-04-27T10:28:00.000-07:00

Today Blackbird is asking to see the street where we live. So here we go. This is one of my favorite shots of our street:

Then there's this:

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This is technically across the street from my house, a little walking trail. Laylee calls it the Bambi forest because we’ve seen deer there. One of our friends lives on the other side of the Bambi forest, so this is the way we walk to play dates.

I never want to move from this location. Hopefully by the time we outgrow our condo, we will be able to pass a city ordinance, allowing us to demolish it and build a bigger house in its place… assuming the neighbors don't mind.

On Waiting

2006-04-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of my time waiting. I wait for Laylee to go to the bathroom, for the water to boil, for the doctor to “see me now.” I wait.

My grandma spent 20 years waiting, waiting to die, waiting to be with her Joseph again. His name was constantly in her mind and on her lips. She sure loved and adored him. Especially in her later years of dementia, she called for him constantly and begged to go herself and be with him. She waited.

For the past few days our family has been waiting. We’ve been waiting for our aunt and dear friend J to leave this world so we could all start waiting to see her again. As of a couple of hours ago, the waiting is over and now it begins again.

Her husband can wait to learn what “normal” is without her. Her children, including a son still in grade school, can wait for the urge to call out for their mother to subside. Her granddaughter doesn’t know she’s waiting yet. She will learn.

Now I wait for someone to find a cure for cancer. My mother-in-law refused to wait. From the minute Aunt J was diagnosed, Pam has been searching tirelessly for some little-know cure, calling specialists all over the country.

I wait for understanding. Every person I have loved who has been diagnosed with this disease has been taken by it. Every one was a wife, a mother and a much-needed friend. In a way I feel like I’m just waiting for the next person to go.

When I tried to explain death to Laylee, who is still waiting for me to stop crying, I told her that we knew Aunt J’s spirit had left her body but that she is with Heavenly Father now. She is no longer in pain and she is happy. I told her we were still sad because many of us on earth will miss her.

People always talk about the deceased person being happier where they are. I wonder, does their heart ache for their loved ones the way we ache for them?

Laylee asked if we could please please go see Heavenly Father too. She did specify that if she goes, she wants Dad, Mom and Magoo to go with her.

No waiting for any of us. It sounds like a plan.

Before the Blog - Part 2

2006-04-25T22:32:00.000-07:00

While I was busy predicting the outcomes of hockey games, teasing my younger brother and worrying about the competence of my mom’s obstetrician, Dan had weightier matters on his mind, like food, kick soccer and how glue works.

Dan shared this with me after we were married and I found it so hilarious that I had him read it to me in the hospital when I was giving birth to Laylee. Here is a small sampling from his elementary school journal:

September 14, 1988
Today I had a pretty good day today. At recess I played kick soccer. My team won. Yesterday i[n] the lunchroom some girls partly unscrewed it so if someone used it, it would spill. Then a kid from another lunch table came and took the ketchup to use it. He came back with ketchup all over his hand!

September 15, 1988
Today, I had a pretty good day. We played kick soccer again and Tony argued with everything…We had spaghetti for lunch today.

September 23, 1988
Today we changed the day around. Math was first… Today at lunch we had coco milk rolls, fruit and some kind of pasta thing with lettuce. We played kick soccer again today. Last night we made bread and peach pie filling. It was good!

September 27, 1988
Today everything went pretty normal. Today we had burritos for lunch.

October 4, 1988
Today we had chicken nuggets for lunch… Kickball was boring at lunch.

November 8, 1988
Last night I figured out why things stick (I think). First of all why does wood fibers or anything for that matter? Of course we all know that it’s all the atomic energy acting upon themselves and others. They (atoms) also work with magnetic forces. Now, I think glue works because it is neutral or else it’s energy can adapt so that it sticks to other particles. So that’s all about particles and whatnot. By the way, we moved our desks into twos. I think Bush will win.

“Today was a pretty good day today” is now a common phrase around our house. I think we should also end all conversations with the phrase, “So that’s all about particles and whatnot.” Yes, I would have married him just for the journals. Do you know how much it hurts to laugh when you’re having a major contraction? Yeah, me too.

Tip Tuesday – Birthday Parties

2006-04-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

I keep getting spam email that says they have “just the thing to make your girl happy.” I almost want to click on the link. Maybe they have a good deal on My Little Ponies or Popsicles or people who push swings REALLY HIGH.

Another thing that makes my girl Laylee happy is a good birthday celebration. She throws several a week for various friends, real and imaginary. Every day used to be Ducky’s birthday but now the celebrations are spread between Laylee, Babs, “The Other Snow White,” and any of her other favorite friends. Somehow, it never gets to be my birthday. Hmmm… I may have to look into this. Perhaps the Daring Family has also stumbled upon the elixir of life and ageless beauty. I will keep you informed.

Besides me, it seems that nearly everyone has a birthday sometime or other. What are your great suggests for birthday celebrations? These can be kids’ birthday parties or you can branch out to include us older folks.

This Tip Tuesday was inspired by Lei and Mir. Lei posted about a great party a while back and Mir got me thinking about alternative birthday ideas. I love her perspective and the thoughtful way she teaches her children about charity and service, even on a day that’s traditionally all about the birth-ed one.

For the most part, I am a huge fan of a home party with a theme. One I’m thinking of doing comes from my Post Partum Dr who, when we got sick of talking about my brain chemistry, gave me some advice about child rearing. He’s a big proponent of make believe and allowing children to have a magical childhood where they are encouraged to believe in things that they can’t see that just might be true.

He told me about a fairy birthday party he had for his tween daughter. (No, as far as I know they didn’t eat any beef at the party, but I do want to point out that I am now listed as the 2nd result on google when you search for the words “beef” and “tweens.” My wildest dreams are coming true through this very blog.) They went out into the forest and found sticks and twigs to make tiny fairy houses in the woods. They told fairy stories from American folklore and even the most cynical in the bunch left with a spark of magic in their imaginations. I love that idea.

Another great idea that seems even greater now that I have kids is to send your mother a gift on your birthday. She's the one who really deserves it.

Now you go.

Sleepy Little Chauvinist

2006-04-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

Until recently, Magoo has woken up every night of his life at least once to nurse. Sheesh! What a BABY! When I couldn’t nurse him for a few days, we decided that Dan should be the one to get up with him in the night and offer a bottle.

The first night Dan was supposed to get up with him, Magoo slept 13 hours through the night with nary a peep. He has not woken up since. Well, that didn’t sound right. He wakes up every morning. He just doesn’t wake up in the night anymore.

On the one hand, it makes me think that he must really like me and only wants to get up if he thinks I’ll be there for some cuddlin’. On the other hand, I wonder if I’m raising a little chauvinist who thinks men should not be troubled with unmanly things such as child-care and feeding.

Further evidence of this theory is found here. When Dan tries to feed him, he falls instantly into a narcoleptic state.

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I let Chris in on my little secret for getting your baby to drop the late night feeding and it appears to have worked for her too. I’m thinking of conducting a seminar or writing a book on the subject.

********

After reading this, Dan informed me that Magoo HAS woken up a few times in the night since Daddy took over the graveyard shift. How was I supposed to know? I was asleep.

If You're Happy...

2006-04-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

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Simple Pleasures of a Saturday

2006-04-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

I keep another blog on the website of a local newspaper. The paper requires commenters to register with their site in order to leave comments. I haven’t been writing there for long and let’s just say I get very few comments… pretty much zilch.

I was excited to see that I’d gotten a comment on yesterday’s post, a repost from my DYM archives, entitled “Conversating.”

The commenter had this to say:
"conversating" is not a word. perhaps you meant "conversing."

I retorted wittily:
Perhaps I make up words on my blog at all times.

So, I’ma guessin’ when yer a “citizen journalist” for a major noozlepaper, yer not appost to be amakin’ up yerz own wordslies. I’ll keep that in mind. Strangely, I’m still happy to have received the comment.

Other highlights of my weekend so far:

Heavy Drinking
Since Magoo’s intervention at Miss Karli’s house a couple of weeks ago to confront him about his serious drinking problem, he’s made great strides and has fallen back off the wagon as we’d hoped. He’s back in the sauce, so to speak, guzzling mommy-milk, water, diluted juice and his new favorite – soy milk, or as Laylee calls it – sorry milk.

Dealing
The semi-annual community garage sale was this weekend and I scored a few sweet deals, including several $1 pairs of Stride Rite sneakers for Magoo (I shouldn’t even be typing this. I think the people at Stride Rite are militantly opposed to this kind of podia-pediatric travesty. You must never, never reuse a pair of children’s shoes, lest your child end up with gimpy-malformed-stepatitis.), a VHS copy of Snow White which Laylee has never seen before (Funny, eh? Since she thinks that’s her name and the name of her 16 year-old imaginary sister) and a whole ton of “bestselling” books to trade in for the ones I really want on Frugal Reader. Yippee!

The Undead
The potted plant Dan brought me on my day of sadness, rage and attempted sewing machinicide is still alive and there are even a few baby gerbers popping up for some extra spring sunshine.

A Debt Repaid
Forgiveness and healing can now begin. Today I received, via the United States Postal Service, a long awaited note of apology and a check to repay me for a night out on the town with my friend Ceci 7 years ago. The bitterness was so very very hard for me to bear and I am so glad that she decided to come clean and send me the money she owed me for taking her out to dinner when she drove down from Canada to visit me for the weekend when I was a college student SEVEN YEARS AGO. Are you kidding me? Dude! I bought you a burrito. You drove down from CANADA to see me! I laughed out loud when I read her note of apology. Ceci – if you’re reading this, you make me smile. If you’re not reading this:
ARE.
YOU.
KIDDING.
ME?
(In case you’re wondering, I’m keeping the money. It’s going into my “Send Daring to Blogher Blog-a-thon Fund.” More on the SDBBF to come.)

Square Waffles
Dad and Laylee made dinner tonight and we learned two things:
1. I buy too many Eggos – Laylee is so impressed at the sight of SQUARE waffles.
2. Sugar TASTES JUST LIKE CANDY.

Pinkish
It takes two drops of red food coloring to make bath-time a magical experience.

Supper Swapping

2006-04-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I am part of a dinner co-op. I love cooking…once a week… and I love free stuff. So when Susan Thacker asked to send me a copy of her cookbook Supper Swapping so that I could review it on my blog, I was excited and a little nervous. I knew it was my bloggeristic duty to give it an honest review, whether I liked the book or not.

The book gives tips and instructions for trading dinners with friends and neighbors, something I could give a testimonial about any day of the week. I’ve been trading dinners for over a year and if I had to go back to cooking every single day, I think I’d have some sort of breakdown. Besides saving us time and money, sharing meals gives our families a real sense of community.

In Supper Swapping, Susan lays out the basics for trading dinners and also includes fun little suggestions to make cooking more enjoyable, like choosing theme music to go with the style of food you’re preparing. She also gives tips on how to save money on your shopping and stock your pantry.

Most of this information was not revolutionary to me at this point in my “supper swapping” career, although I think it would have been helpful back when I was just getting started. I also have to admit that I’m really excited to play music from "La Traviata" next time I make spaghetti and meatballs.

What I love about Supper Swapping is that it’s a little book packed with amazing recipes. Thacker contacted dozens of top-notch chefs and sorted through their best recipes, choosing those that would be easy enough to be reproduced by the masses (read this: daring-young-wanna-be-master-chefs) but still restaurant quality, delicio-so and nutritionally dense. I have made seven of the 100+ recipes from the book, all either for company or for my dinner co-op, and each one was met with overwhelming approval by everyone. This is definitely a book I would choose for my collection.

If you'd like to learn more about her book, you can check it out on the Supper Swapping website. Recipes we loved and will make again include:

-Creole Sauce served over rice (from Charleston Restaurant, named by Zagat as 2003's most popular Baltimore restaurant)
-California Spinach Salad with homemade Vinaigrette Dressing
-Corn and Black Bean Salsa (delicious and healthful, more like a salad than a salsa)
-Chicken Enchiladas (the best recipe for these I've found)
-Chicken or Salmon with Buttery Cilantro Ginger Sauce (We've tried both and people have begged for the recipe.)
-Amazing Chocolate Pudding (heaven in a glass cup)

*************************

Now a few notes on how my dinner co-op works:

-Four families are members of the group, each with 1 or 2 children.
-We consider 3 adult-sized servings of a main course to be a complete dinner.
-Each family makes their own vegetables, desserts, and sides (unless the sides are semi-mandatory. Ex. We would never just bring over 3 pieces of meat or fish. A side dish is required for things like pot roast, BBQ chicken or grilled salmon.)
-Each family has 4 square pyrex pans with rubber lids and 4 large disposable tupperwares. This way, we never worry about who has which dishes. They just rotate through the group.
-Mondays through Thursdays are our cooking days. Since our children are small, we often have leftovers for lunch the next day and often for Friday night dinner as well.
-We each have a set dinner night so I can plan to always have Wednesday as my cooking day.
-Everyone sends 6 meal choices at the beginning of a cycle and I work them into a 6-week calendar so we all know what meal is coming each day and can plan vegetables to go along with it.
-On my day to cook, I have to have the food ready and delivered with re-heating instructions by 5:00pm. On my nights off, the food magically appears on my doorstep.
-You are not required to be home for the drop-off but can leave a milk-box or cooler out for the food to be kept in until you get home.
-This is one of the best time and money saving decisions I’ve ever made for my family.
-We eat better every night because the person cooking has to do it so rarely that they make something really special when it’s their night to cook.

Well, good luck and happy Supper Swapping. I hope you’ll join us.

The Black Pathers of Suburbia

2006-04-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person who thinks it's hilarious that the white 2-3 year old soccer team in my neighborhood just named themselves "The Black Panthers"?

Every time I think about it, I can't help laughing.

They like panthers... and they like black... and power.

Cool 2 B Real

2006-04-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

The title of this post is inspired by my second favorite website marketing beef to tweens as a hot commodity. Okay, it’s really my first favorite website hawking beef to tweens. Okay, I think it’s the only one. But that doesn’t matter. All I’m hoping for with this intro is to become the number one google search result for “beef and tweens.” That would be really… something.

Today I want to say "it’s cool to be real." It’s okay to experience “negative” emotions, to feel hurt, betrayed, alone, abandoned, afraid or even angry. I hear so many women (myself included) expressing raw, heartfelt emotions and then apologizing for them or brushing them aside as a product of weakness, hormones, or some flaw of personality.

As a new mom, I became friends with an amazing girl. She is beautiful, kind, loving, positive and strong. We had children close in age and got together quite often for playdates, even when our first-borns were too young to drool in unison, let alone play together. During these times we would talk about our lives, share pleasant stories about mutual acquaintances and talk about how wonderful and glorious motherhood was.

After countless visits with this friend, there remained a wall between us that I felt could not be penetrated. I enjoyed our excursions together and came to the conclusion that for some inexplicable reason, we would never be truly close. Then one day, she confided in me that the past several months had been extremely hard for her. Although our children were almost a year old, her daughter was still rarely sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time without waking up. She was worn out and fed up and very cautiously expressed her feelings of frustration.

I was stunned and felt suddenly closer to her than I had ever felt. I finally saw past her perfect veneer to someone with doubts, fears and frustrations.

She quickly apologized for speaking negatively of her child. She thought it was inappropriate to express those feelings out loud, while I was thinking how refreshing it was to know that I wasn’t the only one who was struggling. I now see that conversation as a turning point in our friendship, a moment that has allowed us to grow closer and form a more solid connection.

I have friends who have been betrayed but apologize for feelings of resentment, friends who have suffered real loss but apologize for feelings of sadness, friends who have been marginalized or berated by someone they trusted but apologize for feeling angry or confused.

I’m not advocating wallowing in pools of self-pity or refusing to take control of your life. What I’m suggesting is that it's okay to just feel and be, to linger for a moment and experience emotions that are real and poignant before we pshaw them away, fix our mascara and put on our “happy face.”

Repressing feelings, discrediting them or imagining them into oblivion to avoid the appearance of weakness does nothing but magnify the emotions and cause problems down the line.

I learned early on in my mothering that I did not want to marginalize my children’s feelings. I would catch myself saying, “You’re not sad!” when I felt that Laylee was crying “for no reason.” It took a while to realize that if she’s feeling it, it’s a real emotion, whether I can personally identify with it or not. Some of the things her little heart breaks over seem downright silly to me, but if I tell her she has no right to be sad or afraid, will she feel that she can confide in me as she grows up to be one of those beef-eating, junior-high-struggling tweens?

Answer=No

Our relationships grow stronger when we allow each other to see inside our quiet hurts and to “bear one another’s burdens that they may be light.” It’s cool to be real, and hey – beef has a lot of protein and whatnot.

Tip Tuesday – Growing Family Logistics

2006-04-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

So our family is growing. Now that the supply of Cadbury mini-eggs has been exhausted, we should be shrinking back down to our normal sizes in a couple of weeks. But we’re not talking about the size of individual family members today and no, I’m not pregnant Mom. I promise never to announce an impending grandchild via my blog.

We have two wonderful kids and although we’re not sure how far down this road of parentude we’re gonna travel, or at what speed, we know that there are more children in our future. When we got married, people were constantly asking us how many kids we wanted to have. Dan and I started to routinely answer, “Fourteen,” just to shut them up. We really do love kids though and want to have “as many as we can handle.”

Originally I think that meant, “as many as we can afford,” but now it’s come to mean so much more. How many kids can we care for emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally? We’re not sure. Somewhere between 3 and 100. After Laylee, the number was closer to 100. After Magoo and the trauma my body experienced, that number began to dip.

One of my readers, who doesn’t have a blog, is having her second child and lives in a 2-bedroom home. She asked me for tips on logistics for raising multiple children at the same time. She specifically wanted to know what to do for sleeping arrangements.

My tips for raising several children at the same time (2 counts as several, right? And let’s not forget the millions of tiny children within my ovaries that make their presence known monthly.) are these:

-Try to use the right name with the right kid. I’ve heard that it helps them feel loved or something. If you can’t do this, at least try to use a name appropriate for their gender. If you can’t remember that much, all children can be called “little dude” in a pinch.

-On a more serious note, I will address the sleep issue. I would suggest having the baby bunk in with Mom and Dad (in a separate bed or cradle if you’re a non-co-sleeper like myself) for the first several months until Little Dude Senior is old enough to sleep in a “big-boy bed.” Then put the two kids in the same room but put down the one who has the hardest time falling asleep first.

Someone who has actually done this and made it work, please help me out here.

What other tips do you have for big families, meaning families with more than one child? How do you work meal times, chores, the morning rush, driving them around, homework, etc? Do you have any tips for us new moms?

If you’re a newbie like me and a know-it-all who thinks they’ve got it all figured out, we’d love to hear your theories too. We may laugh at your glib inexperienced neonate hypotheses but at least we’ll be entertained, and isn’t that what this blog is all about – learning, sharing and opening ourselves to ridicule in a public forum? That’s why I come here every day.

Happy Easter - With a Strobe Light

2006-04-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Well, not much to say here. Easter was far less bitter than the days leading up to it. This is remarkable since I decided to take a second whack at creating a lovely gown for myself which also ended up in miserable failure. Dan says Laylee will love using it as a dress-up dress, so some good came out of it. I ended up wearing a skirt I made last summer and the world is still spinning.

Laylee’s dress turned out cute, as dresses sewn for adorable children often do. The bunny-man was good to us, bringing me a book of Shel Silverstein poems which Laylee has claimed as her own.

“You hafta SHARE! Please.”

The church service was beautiful, the beauty exaggerated by the fact that I was sitting on the stand with the choir and actually had the chance to pay attention for once…and the fact that it was not my three-year-old who pulled the fire alarm during the choir’s stirring rendition of the closing song, “I Know that My Redeemer Lives.” It was much more exciting with the strobe lights and sirens.

We all love the song so much that we just kept singing away while the congregation mumbled nervously, trying to decide whether it would be rude to flee the building when the choir wouldn’t shut the heck up.

When we found out who the culprit was, I was not surprised. That’s just the kind of thing you’d expect from a child raised by parents who grew up in a nudist colony. *wink*

In other news, the weird things meme is circulating again and although I have been tagged before, I have to mention my recent tag by Peter, a man who’s blog, like his business is called The Tutu Boutique and who listed crying during reality TV shows as one of his weird qualities. Dude. His blog is pink. He sells tutus and princess things. Check him out. He cracks me up.

Rage Against the Machine

2006-04-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

Rally ‘round your family,
With a pocket fulla shells.
And something about a FIST FULLA STEEL!

Not Rage fans? Okay. Never mind. Me neither. We’re more into Raffi now. Rally round your family with a Robin in the Rain. But Robin in the Rain and Baby Beluga won’t make very good background music for my next project.

I’ve decided to smash my sewing machine and serger with a large rusty mallet, cremate their remains and sprinkle the ashes all over the desks of the good people at Butterick!

Who makes a pattern that doesn’t give measurements for sizing?
Who makes a pattern with pleats, a full lining, and an invisible zipper that suggests using sheer fabric?
Who makes a pattern for a butt-ugly sausage wrapper and markets it as instructions for a beautiful dress?
Who thinks that the average woman has breasts that sit above her armpits?

I have never claimed to have a perfect body but I am not:
A) Morbidly obese…yet. (I am currently self-medicating with the Cadbury Mini-Eggs Dan brought home to me along with beautiful I’m-sorry-you-are-a-sewing-failure potted Gerber Daisies.)
B) Freakishly tall (5’6” doesn’t count, does it?).
C) Sagging to the point of needing reality-TV-worthy plastic surgery.
D)10 sizes larger in dresses than I am in pants and shirts.
E)Ever sewing for myself again.

Today has been my sewing nightmare, the likes of which I have not seen since I started sewing 20 years ago. Today is a day that would have junior high HomeEc teachers running for their lives. I swear I ripped out more seams than I sewed. I’m not sure how that’s possible but I’d advise you not to question my logic at this moment. I am currently holding a large rusty mallet, okay?

Today is a day in which I pulled a major pectoral muscle just trying to get out of the straight-jacket I like to call “my Easter dress.” Karli advised me to try icing it before I go into the ER again.

All of its lovely pieces are going into a baggie in the garage where they will await the day that I lose half my body weight , chop several inches off my staggering circus-freak height and get one of those crazy bras that bring my cleavage up to chin-level.

Now I have some demolition* to take care of. Peace out.

*Disclaimer – No equipment will actually be harmed in the process of rage and destruction I am about to embark upon. I love my Babylock and old-school sewing machine with a great love.

Since People at My Church are so Square…

2006-04-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

…They don’t want us to go naked on Easter Sunday and our dresses currently look like this:

I may not be blogging for a couple of days.

Have a great Good Friday!

Food helps You Grow and Gives You Energy

2006-04-12T09:16:00.001-07:00

Unless you are a car or an imaginary sister friend named “The Other Snow White.” If you are a car, you can eat gas for energy but you will never grow any bigger. If you are an imaginary sister friend named “The Other Snow White” you will always stay too small to go on play dates and your job will be to stay home and keep the house safe from Monsters, except the nice monsters because they’re allowed to come in the house and stay in it if they WANT!

I just thought you’d like to know a little bit about how food works.

Food goes down and down and down your throat and then says “AAAHHHHH! I’m going down!” and then it turns into pee and comes out your BUM.

If I eat my food all gone, I will grow up into a Grammy.

If Laylee eats her food all gone, she will grow up into a Mom and a Kathryn.

If Magoo eats all his food all gone, he will grow up into a Laylee.

What will Daddy grow into? Apparently like the car and “The Other Snow White, and the Beast if he lets the last petal fall, he will be doomed to remain a Daddy for all time.

When I become a Grammy and Laylee becomes a Kathryn, she would like a new Mommy because she wants to always always have a Mommy. She is accepting applications. Only apply if you’re willing to stop eating so you will NEVER grow big like a Grammy.

I have explained that I will always always be her mom, even when I become a Grammy, but she wants a backup plan.

Side-note: If your Magoo bobs around like a human bobble-head while you're trying to feed him this morning and you accidentally jam a spoonful of YoBaby organic banana flavored whole milk yogurt into his right eye, it will not give him energy or increased growth potential. It will just make him turn red, smear the yogurt deeper into his eye socket and cry, hypothetically speaking.

Tip Tuesday Bonus – Keeping Easter

2006-04-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Karen was asking for suggestions of how to teach your kids the real meaning of Easter.

When we were little, my mom taught us the Easter story using scriptures from the New Testament, along with visual aids inside plastic Easter eggs. Gabriela details it on her blog.

I always make “hot cross buns” on Good Friday. They are actually two Rhodes Rolls, dipped in melted butter and rolled in cinnamon sugar, baked and then painted with a cross of cream cheese frosting. True hot cross buns don’t seem remotely appealing to me and the ones I make give us the chance to eat something yummy, while teaching the kids about the crucifixion and atonement.

Nettie from Singing a Verse of My Song has some cute suggestions too.

What have you got for us?

Tip Tuesday – Potty Training

2006-04-11T06:20:00.000-07:00

No, this is not about getting your post-pregnancy body back in shape. Today we’re talking about a little training for the kidlets.

I’m pretty excited that I shan’t be needing this advice again for another year and a half or so. In fact, I may decide not to potty train Magoo at all. When he turns 6 or 7, I’m sure his friends will make fun of him until he figures out what’s up.

For me, potty training Laylee has been a wild ride. It’s taken us over a year and she is finally about 90% trained during the day. Pull-ups are worn at night, except when they’re not.

Our main problem was that we tried to force it before she was ready. We got the book, courtesy of Grammy. We did all the steps but she just couldn’t make it happen. She really had no idea when the pee was coming.

Me: So, where do we do our pee pee?
Laylee: IN THE POTTY!
Me: That’s right. Are you dry?
Laylee: YES!
Me: Great.
Laylee: Oh NO! WAHHHHH!

Big puddle.

So my main advice is - don’t attempt it before they’re ready and don’t turn it into a battle. Go at their pace and have patience that they’ll figure it out sometime before Junior High.

One of my favorite young mom friends told me that she just made it a game. Let’s see how long we can keep a pull-up dry today. When it got wet, oh well, the diaper came back out. Eventually when they could keep it dry for a good chunk of the day, they got to try it with real underwear. She said this worked great and they had very few accidents by the time they transitioned to the real deal.

My main regrets come from the times I made Laylee feel guilt or shame for her accidents. She was little and she was learning how her body worked. Once I stopped chastising and started commiserating with her and cheering her on to do better next time, we started to see real progress.

I’d love to hear any fabulous suggestions you have.

The Updated Weaner

2006-04-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your great suggestions and encouragement over the last couple of days.

My main concern right now is not that Magoo stay hydrated, although that would be nice. I’m just really worried about him getting all the right baby nutrients found in breast milk and formula. I know breast is supposed to be best, but even formula cans claim to contain all sorts of lipids, proteins, and prilohuktazines to promote brain, eye and armpit development and who knows what else.

DHA, ARA and NRA – I’m pretty sure those are not contained in the watered down cranberry juice we’ve managed to get him to drink. Dan says, “Who needs special brain-developing formula? I’m playing BEETHOVEN for him whilst feeding him goldfish crackers. What more could his brain need?”

I do see his point, especially since “fish” are so high in those Omega-3s, right?

Anywho… Magoo has started licking and even drinking occasionally from a valveless sippy cup (a suggestion from momof3busyboys and Maine Mom), although all he’ll take is juice. His neck, chest and stomach are VERY hydrated and his body seems moderately so. I consulted with our pediatric nurse about how much "special milk" he still needs and we are getting the pumped breast milk in him by liquiding down all of his baby food.

I even created a breast milk fruit smoothie yesterday that he drank with much glee. Tomorrow, Karli has offered to have him over to her house for a change of scenery and something she calls “Operation: Drink Something Please.”

We’re hoping that he’ll discover that drinking is cool at a friend’s house…now…not so much when he gets to high school…

Tales of an Emergency Weaner

2006-04-07T15:52:00.000-07:00

Alternate title, courtesy of Magoo: WAAAHHH!!!!!! (English translation: It’s Hard out Here for a Starving Melon-Head)

Dude, my appendages cannot take it anymore. If breasts were bike tires, these puppies would already be in a landfill somewhere or hanging up in some hippy commune as an art project, they’re so full of puncture wounds.

At least if a rubber tire is punctured repeatedly, the worst that can happen is a spectacular bike wreck. The tires won’t become diseased and spread up through the spokes, killing the entire BMX.

Well, enough about me. How’s your anatomy doing today? Good? Okay great. Back to me.

This is the second round of major damage the sweet little piranha has caused to my person and I’m in moderate to serious pain. This pain turns to annoyance. This annoyance makes everything seem more annoying and that makes me a very lame mama to two small people who deserve better.

Magoo will be one in just over a month and this morning when I woke up hurting again, Dan and I decided it was time to wean – today.

There are a couple of problems with this scenario. First, Magoo fell down and blammed his eye about 10 minutes after we made the decision to wean him. He now has a growing black eye which makes his crying and reaching for me all the more pathetic. Laylee took this picture of him, her first photographic effort. Quite impressive, no?

Secondly, the little muffin-head does not drink any liquid, including breast milk, if he’s not drinking it directly from my body. He’s sort of like an albino vampire in that respect. We’re worried he’ll shrivel up like a little black-eyed-peasin (like a Craisin - what Ocean Spray would market him as, if he dried up completely and were packaged and sold on grocery store shelves).

Thirdly, I love nursing. With Laylee, weaning was a very gradual process until at 14 months she just didn’t wake up in the night for her one remaining feeding and we were done. I cried. I think if I didn’t know we would have more children, I would have cried for weeks.

Breastfeeding is not always easy. I had to pump and bottle feed for the first 4 months of Laylee’s life because nursing hurt so bad. After I saw a good lactation consultant and was able to heal, it was smooth sailing for the next 10 months. With Magoo, it started easy as pie (with the help of a good lactation consultant) but has become increasingly difficult with each little spike that sprouts from his gums.

So now I cry when I do nurse him and I cry when I think about stopping. I’m just a big boob. (no pun intended)

Circumlocution and a Chicken Popsicle

2006-04-06T17:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all your great parenting advice and encouragement on my “Bumps” post.

Since typing that, we’ve made a few changes, including adding small morning chores, keeping our parental cools a bit cooler and letting her make “becisions” more frequently when the outcome doesn’t really matter in the long run.

Example: Yesterday she started to throw a complete cow when she noticed I had put a “princess panty” (pull-up) in her “underwear door.”

Laylee: Ahh. PRINCESS PANTIES DO NOT GO IN THE PANTY UNDERWEAR DOOR!
Me (feeling defensive, like I needed to show her who was boss): That’s where they go because I put them there.
Laylee: AHHHH!!! WAHHH!!! (real tears emerge) BUT PRINCESS PANTIES CAN’T TOUCH REAL PANTIES!!
Me (realizing that this is a stupid argument, it appears to be a core value issue to my child, and there is no need to get all all “Brown vs. the Board of Education” about segregation in the “panty door”): Okay. Let’s talk about this. What things do you think should go in the panty drawer?
Laylee (sniffing): Only REAL panties can go in the panty door. They can’t touch the princess panties!
Me: Okay, let’s find a place for the princess panties.
Laylee (smiling): O-KAY!

We are continuing to make it clear that it’s not okay to be disrespectful to your parents, including but not limited to dancing around naked with the lights on at 11:00pm and then making a big mess on the floor when you’ve removed your own pull-ups.

Example: The new rule is that if she removes her pull-ups in the night, she has to wear them all day the next day, even (gasp!) if she’s going over to a friend’s house. Pull-ups at a play date?! The horror! We’ve gone two nights accident-free.

We’re also “encouraging” her to take a more active role in things like getting herself dressed and using the potty so she can feel a sense of accomplishment. At this point she seems to feel more angry than accomplished some of the time but she’s totally capable of doing these things.

Example: I told Laylee to find some real panties when she woke up.
Laylee: No. I can’t FIND them!
Me: I think you can. They’re in your drawer.
Laylee (in a super-whiney voice): But I want the ones with the pointy pointy things on the top (This means lace. This is where the post title comes from. When I told Dan this story, he said, “There is nothing cuter than a three-year-old circumlocuting," which I know is a lie. Me in giant fleece footy pajamas is at least that cute.)
Me: You can do it. I’m sure you can.
Laylee: No, I CAN’T!
Me: Try.
After much whining and slamming of drawers, she emerged with the coveted underclothes. She was grinning from ear to ear.
Me: You found them yourself?! How does that make you feel?
Laylee: PROUD!

As far as the food battles go, we did stop fighting them, according to Dr. Nelsen’s suggestions. For breakfast and lunch I give Laylee two choices and she picks once but if she “becides” she doesn’t like it half-way through, then she’s done.

For dinner, I decide what we’re having and then let her choose which food items she’ll eat. The first night she ate only bread and got hungry later. We said, “You should have eaten more dinner.” The second night, she ate TWO HELPINGS of the green (spinach) mashed potatoes on her own, and then she ate some chicken when I explained how cool it was to stick it on the end of your fork like a popsicle and bite chunks out of it.

Things like “advanced” table manners and forced vegetables (of the non-concealed variety) will come after she’s turned 5, I think…

On Target

2006-04-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

Two things:

1. My special powers are still strong and vital. I had a bit of a lapse there for a while but recently pulled off THIS:

and THIS:

The second one may not look that great, but at the historic first Costco ever built in the world, during rush hour, this is an AMAZING spot. Cower before my staggering awesome-nossity.

2. If you have recently misplaced a pair of black leather boots, please contact the Daring Young Family Search and Rescue Team at 1-800-SORRY-ABOUT-YOUR-TOES.

(Please do not call that number. I just tried it and it's a real phone number of some company. That's what I get for trying to be hilarious! :))

Some Bumps in the Road

2006-04-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, Dawg. I’m watching American Idol as I type this. I think this is the 7th episode I’ve watched this season. I’m sort of an “idle” Idol fan. If I happen to be avoiding certain growing mounds of festering house chores on any given Tuesday night or I’ve spent so much time “parenting” my 3-year-old that my brain is rattling around loose in my head, I turn on the tube.

Maybe it’s just cathartic to watch someone else get ripped on. I don’t know. We’ve been having a few parenting “issues” lately. Every time we think we’ve got things pretty much figured out, Laylee throws us another curve ball. If nothing else, parenting is making us humble.

Okay. American Idol is over and there’s nothing not-icky on TV so I can continue to type this. First, I must say that Katharine McPhee was hands down the best performer tonight. I don’t know what type of crazy corned-beef hash-pipe they’re passing around at that judges table.

So, the parenting. Laylee’s been getting more confident in her ability to exert her own authority and only do something if SHE “becides” it’s a good idea. Our instincts are to get all authoritarian-I’m-the-boss-of-you on her and verbalize her into submission.

However, our advanced verbal skills are no match for her lungs, stubbornness and flailing appendages. How do you “make” someone go to sleep (in a “they”-won’t-take-your-kids-away-from-you sort of way)?

I spoke with a family therapist who is a follower of Adlerian parenting philosophies and he suggests not fighting back unless what they’re doing is a real hazard, thus taking the “sails out of their wind” when they have nothing to push against.

So two nights ago when she was dancing naked in the hall with the light on and a washcloth on her head at 11:00pm, we ignored her. At 5:00am, Dan found her out of her pull-ups with a big mess on the floor. I consider that a hazard. She had also stacked up several containers, forming a precarious tower with which to scale her tall dresser. Also a hazard.

Yesterday I started madly reading the first of four books our therapist friend had suggested, Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen. I was seriously nervous that it would be one of those hippy-dippy, positive-at-all-costs, feel-the-love method books. “You just kicked Mommy in the head, darling. What did I do to make you feel that way? Please stop causing Mommy blunt head trauma, sweet little muffin-bum, child of the earth.” I really annoy myself when I speak in third person.

We’re not major authoritarians but we definitely believe that children need limits and we serve them better acting as parents than pretending we’re all just buddies, hanging out in this little frat-condo we’re so lucky to cohabitate.

So far I really like the book, shockingly so. Dr Nelsen talks a lot about showing respect for your children and expecting it in return. She also talks about natural and logical consequences, kindness and firmness at the same time, mutual respect, encouragement, and the role of chores and responsibility from an early age.

One good point she brings up is that traditional “punishment” just makes a child feel resentment, desire for revenge, rebelliousness or retreating with a possible reduction in self-esteem. How do you feel when someone corrects or berates you, showing no kindness or respect? Children feel the same way. They’re human too...well, most of them. SURPRISE!

I also like her because she says that if any of her suggestions go against your parental instincts, don’t do them. I love a parenting book that takes into account that I am a fully developed adult-type person with a brain who has actually met my children and might know what they need. I will keep reading and let you know what I make of it all.

As for this moment, I should probably attempt to clean up some of the dresser drawers and their contents that are currently strewn about my home. I removed the hazardous dresser and tall bookshelf from Laylee’s room and have been shuffling furniture around for the safety of all concerned.

Every surface in my house is covered in books, clothing, the personal effects of several Disney princesses and Desitin…which brings me to a point – American Idol. Isn’t there ANYTHING else on TV right now?

(For a little fun, I’ve included a picture of the outfit she “becided” to wear to her playdate today. It’s a little too WWF for my personal taste but it did look fairly smashing when she added her bouncy pink Airwalks.)

Tip Tuesday – Family Films

2006-04-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Today’s subject is close to my heart. I love families and I love great films. What I don’t like are huge marketing giants that tell our kids what to watch.

“This is my favorite movie because its main character is on the front of my Cheerios box, my flickering-light running shoes, and tattooed on My Little Pony’s butt,” drone the thousands of mind-numbed media-consuming children-bots.

Today I would love suggestions of hidden treasures, quality children’s or family films that teach, uplift and entertain and have not been marketed down our throats ad nauseam.

When I worked in the media department of a large public library with an amazing film collection, we’d often get questions like – “I’m getting a group together for a family gathering with people from ages 2-80 with various backgrounds and tastes. What movie could we all enjoy together?”

During my job interview, I was asked this question and I think I answered “Babe.” I got the job (Because who doesn’t like a good pig/sheepdog movie with singing mice?), but the truth is, if I knew the real answer to that question, I’d be making way too much money right now to be typing this myself. I’d have “people” to do that for me.

Here are some movies I’ve enjoyed that you may have heard of, but they’re definitely not in the same marketing universe as Finding Nemo or Chronicles of Narnia:

-Silent Films:
Bustor Keaton, some Chaplin, EARLY silent films like the Lumiere Brothers’ Actualities or Trip to the Moon by Méliès

-Animated short films from the National Film Board of Canada:
You do have to be careful and pick those that are appropriate for children, if that’s who'll be watching them. Animated does not equal G-rated. Some favorites are The Man Who Planted Trees, The Sand Castle, The Cat Came Back, The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin, Getting Started.

-Animal documentaries that take you right into the world of the animals:
Winged Migration (Perrin 2001) and MicroCosmos (Nuridsany/Pérennou 1996) come to mind.
-Family-friendly foreign films for when your kids are old enough to read (I even have one friend who watches foreign films with her 5-year-old and reads the subtitles to her, although most of these would be more appropriate for older children and teens.):
Not One less (Zhang 1999), Children of Heaven (Majidi 1999), Beauty and the beast (Cocteau 1946), Wings of Desire (Wenders 1987)

-English Language:
The Winslow Boy (Mamet 1999), Whale Rider (Caro 2002), Babe: Pig in the City (Miller 1998), You Can’t Take it with You (Capra 1938), The Secret of Roan Inish (Sayles 1994), Secondhand Lions (McCanlies 2003), Marx Brothers Films(1930's)

What great films have you seen that have not received crazy media attention, or at least not recently? (I’d love to be reminded of great family films from years past.)

You’re Invited

2006-04-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

This has been going on long enough. I think it’s time that we should meet. You didn’t show up at the top of the Space Needle on Valentine’s Day like I’d hoped so Beth, Karen, Karli, Heather and I have been plotting something a little more exotic in hopes of enticing you out of your little computer rooms and nursing loungers.

None of us are gonna be able to make it to the “big show” this summer but we’d still like to get together with a few of our bloggin’ homies. So, if you plan to be in Boise, ID on the evening of Saturday, May 20th and you’d like to join us for some dinner and child-free girl time "Bloggirl" style, email me and let me know so we can reserve a seat for you.

“Idaho?!” you ask. “It can’t be! I LOVE Idaho! I’ve been searching for the perfect opportunity to abandon my family for an evening and spend some quality time in the potato capitol of the US.” Well, call me your fairy-ever-lovin’-godmother. Bring me four mice and a pumpkin because May 20th is your lucky day.