Mother’s Day

Yesterday, my sweet four-year-old ran into my room while I was getting dressed and presented me with this:

 

 

There’s nothing quite like receiving gifts while you’re naked.

 

I love it, and I’m so glad that Tony has finally come around to understanding that what I want on Mother’s Day (and my birthday, and Christmas), more than anything, is a gift.  Pretty gifts are excellent.  Thoughtful gifts are great.  Funny gifts are wonderful.  The actual expense is not important.

 

In addition to the bracelet, I only had to prepare two meals (instead of the usual Sunday three), we got to have a nice little jaunt to Bellingham to visit with friends and eat burgers (and possibly pretend to eat their beautiful girl-children’s chubby cheeks) and shop for books, my dad and brother came to dinner (homemade pizza, which Jamie adorably calls “pee-paa!”), and Tony suffered through watching Pitch Perfect with me.

 

It was just about the best Mother’s Day ever, but there was one sad note.  This guy got a fever and is home from school today:

 

 

He sure is miserable.

Wait Five Minutes

You know that stupid joke, “Don’t like the weather in (city of choice)?  Just wait five minutes!”  Har-har.  Well, how about this: Don’t like your kids’ attitudes/behavior/eating habits/(insert frustrating conduct here)?  Wait five minutes!

 

A month or so ago, this was my life.  And this.  And although EVERY terrible thing about mothering my two children has proven to be temporary (waking at all hours of the night!  Teething!  Potty accidents!), when I’m in the shit, I feel like I’m never going to get out.  I fail to learn the “this, too, shall pass” lesson that my mother repeats to me All. The. Time.  Seriously, stop it mom, I know it’s temporary, but it still sucks right now.

 

But it did pass.  For the past month-ish, Charles has had a complete attitude adjustment.  Like a switch was flipped, his behavior is now much more reasonable and calm.  He still gets upset, he still cries, but he isn’t kicking and screaming without end.  I haven’t had to walk out the door in anger and frustration in a long time.  I don’t dread the nights that Tony has late softball games and I have to go through the bedtime routine alone. 

 

Did I do something to affect this change?  No.  This has, I believe, nothing to do with me.  It’s just time.  It’s just the neurons in Charles’s brain developing, his faculties changing.  He’s growing, and it’s hard, and I have to do my best to nurture growth and not strangle him in the process.  Some days, I just have to do my best to survive.

 

But then, five minutes later, everything has changed.  Jamie is still stubbornly working on two teeth that have been fighting their way through his top gums for a month and he’s on a bit of a hunger strike (I’m reminded that at this age, Charles ate primarily canned ravioli and PBJs), while Charles declared at last night’s meal, “Mommy, I LOVE this dinner!  It’s my favorite dinner!”  You see?  Everything changes.

 

I had thought that maybe I was gaining weight during the terrible, trying months of the Fucking Fours from stress eating and drinking.  But I continue to gain weight, so maybe now it’s just happy eating and drinking, or relaxed and relieved eating and drinking.  Either way, I have got to stop this madness, or people will wonder if I’m pregnant (I’m not).

Worth the Traffic to Get There

We are a family that loves a parade.  And our hometown puts on a monstrous one.  120+ entrants, including military, high school and middle school bands (must have been 15 of them), drill teams, horses, clowns, tractors, fire trucks, hot rods, princesses… it’s really just the best.  And it’s all part of a tradition called Loyalty Days, an invention by the US Government in response, according to Wikipedia, to the first Red Scare in 1921.  So it’s a giant middle finger to the former Soviet regime.  Which is worth celebrating, I guess.

 

Also worth celebrating?  A kiddie parade, blessing of the fleet, and 85+ degree weather all weekend long.

 

Grandma has toys.  Better toys than can be found anywhere else in the universe.

 

Like a funnel!  That’s a great toy.

 

You’re damn right Lightning McQueen rode a bike in the parade!  Happy as a clam, even though he was wearing a long-sleeved costume.

 

Blessing the fleet.  The boys went with Tony, who drove the boat, and Grandma Loris and great-Grandpa Gene and maybe also Grandpa Joe, but I don’t really know because unless the fleet wants to be blessed with vomit, I don’t do boats. 

 

That’s Murf.  He’s a bit scary.

 

Fire Truck rides are the BEST.  At least Charles thought so – he was so excited and moving so quickly, we hardly got a photo of him.

 

This is how Jamie felt about all the sirens.

 

This is how I felt about all the Jamie snuggles.

 

I tell you, Jamie could not have been cuter during the parade. 

 

Charles, on the other hand, only seemed to come alive when he was pointing out tractors for Jamie.

 

Apparently, making sure that your little brother is well aware of oncoming tractors is the only thing important enough to make my little sloth move in this kind of scorching heat.  (Awww!)

 

And then Charles got to drive (well, steer) the tractor all the way around the house.  Jamie cried, because tractors are only cool from a distance, don’t you know.

 

If you’ve never been to the Long Beach Peninsula, I highly recommend it.  What a great place to vacation with your family!

How Long Does the Brain Damage Last?

Bill Cosby was right: children are brain-damaged.

 

I was doing my hair the other morning and I heard mysterious splashing sounds coming from the boys’ bathroom.  And giggling.  You just know there’s going to be trouble when giggling is involved.  I slyly, silently made my way along the hall to peek in the bathroom and immediately shrieked in horror, “Put that DOWN!  No touch!  NO TOUCH!”  Jamie was dipping his toothbrush and a cup in the toilet, then splashing the water from the cup back in the toilet and sucking the toilet-water from the toothbrush.  The toilet at which we had both yelled, “Bye-bye poop!” not ten minutes before when I dumped the contents of a particularly foul diaper into the bowl and flushed.

 

Oh, gag me with a spoon, this kid has no sense of self-preservation.  I was terrified that within the next few days he would spike a fever and come down with some sort of horrible infection and then I’d take him to the ER where they would culture his throat and find some disgusting poop bacteria and then arrest me for feeding my child feces.

 

Another amazing thing about children?  Their resiliency.  My kids could eat anything and not get sick.  And they frequently do.  Charles cannot resist candy or gum, no matter what sidewalk he finds some on, and Jamie will drink out of any body of water, no matter how stagnant or scummy.  Frankly, it’s exhausting trying to keep them from ingesting foul substances.  In our family’s case, genetics has provided for a strong constitution to counter the very clear BRAIN DAMAGE.

 

I think the brain damage must extend to their auditory processing system because I swear that these children do not understand me when I am speaking.  I am like the adults on Charlie Brown, a cacophony of “whomp-whomps” that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.  The only thing either of my children understood last night of all the things I said to them was “ice cream.”  They had ice cream, but they did not get numerous bedtime stories because they behaved like Tasmanian Devils in the bath and did not respond AT ALL when I shouted at them to “Stop splashing!  Now, you’ve lost one bedtime story!  Now another!  Only one story left!  Stop splashing!”  When they were finally ready for bed after swirling and twirling all the water out of the bathtub and onto the walls and floor, neither of them could understand why they didn’t get to have more than one bedtime story (which, for Jamie, was a story that doesn’t have words, just different kinds of dog barks [“Woof!  Yap!  Yap!  Ruff-ruff-ruff-ruff!”] – BRAIN DAMAGE).  It’s like I wasn’t even there during bath time.  They didn’t hear me and thought that they were being punished for no reason.

 

It is no mystery why I choose to send my children to preschool and go to work every day: adults.  Who have stories that don’t involve the themes of “Garbage truck!” or “Batman was flying but then he got stuck and had to call Superman and the dragon shot fire out of his MOUTH but then Wonder Woman talked to him and he was a good dragon again and I’m going to wear my Lighting McQueen costume today but I’m not going to take a nap because I love gum.”

I Don’t Get It

I’ve determined that there’s a group of people in the world whom I do not understand AT ALL.  And I think I’m a pretty understanding person!  I give people the benefit of the doubt, I try to see things from their perspective, I preach love and acceptance to my children (someday I’ll rant to you about how “tolerance” is a troublesome word that should not have a place in talks about equality, but that’s a discussion for another day), and I try to extend grace to others because I know how much I need it myself.

 

But there appears to be a percentage of the population that is either obliviously or purposefully annoying, and I don’t understand.  Person who doesn’t use his/her turn signal, I’m talking about you.  Sure, some people might forget to use their turn signals once in a while, but not always.  And I guess I don’t even understand the “once in a while” thing, either (see how I just talked myself out of that bit of grace I was willing to extend to those offenders?  No more!).  You see, driving, in many ways, is a series of memorized actions.  When you reverse, you crank your head and scan all your mirrors.  When you shift, you depress the clutch, let off the gas, change gears, press the gas, and lift off the clutch.  You don’t have to think about it every time you do it.  Same goes for turning.  When you are going to turn, you use your signal.  It’s rote, I tell you!  So WHY do some people not use their turn signals?  It’s ANNOYING to the rest of us!  Not to mention that by not using a turn signal, you are compromising safety by not signaling your intentions to other drivers in advance.  I just don’t get it.  They are either terrible, oblivious drivers or they are annoying others deliberately.

 

Or what about people who walk along the sidewalk in a big group that spreads out and takes up the whole sidewalk so that no one else can get past?  This frustrates every other normal, sane sidewalk user out there!  How do you, group of six people walking along and talking to each other, not notice that the people around you would like some space to walk, too?  And not just the people behind you!  No!  There are usually people walking toward you, people whom you SEE, and for whom you do not move or bunch up to let by until the very last second when it becomes apparent that the oncoming person does not choose to step off of the sidewalk and into traffic to let you continue to monopolize the whole sidewalk!  It’s preposterous that people behave this way, and yet they DO.  I just don’t get it.  Are they rude in nature?  Totally unaware of their surroundings?  Or, as Tony believes, just so sure of their own importance and everyone else’s inferior agendas?

 

Oh!  Here’s another (that is annoying to most everyone I know but that doesn’t so much affect me or have direct consequences to my life): young men who wear their pants waist under their butt cheeks.  And then walk funny to keep those pants from sliding down their legs.  I do not understand this at all and I really don’t think (or I choose not to believe) that it’s a generational thing.  After all, boys did this when I was in high school, too.  It was called “sagging” back then, though I’m not sure there’s even a term for it now.  It would appear that it is just how the majority of teenage boys wear their pants.  Based on my time as a teenager, kids that age are more concerned with looking good than with anything else.  Has no one explained to these young men that they look truly ridiculous with their pants like that?  What’s more, it is the opposite of attractive.  Ladies, even teenage girls, would rather see a guy’s butt encased in a pair of well-fitting jeans than with a saggy pair of diaper-like pants falling off of him (Justin Bieber, I’m talking about YOU).  You don’t see male models or movie stars sagging their pants, do you?  You don’t see them walking like they’ve soiled themselves just to keep their pants from falling off, do you?  Sheesh, get a clue.

 

You might have specific pet peeves – maybe you are annoyed by loud chewing, or the fact that I allow my children to maintain top running speed at all times, everywhere we go – but I think we can agree that some annoyances are nearly universal.  So what in the world is wrong with the people who perpetrate them?

Weekend Reflections

Last night, as the kids drifted off to sleep for the second night in a row of exhausted, early bedtimes, I snuggled into Tony on the couch and a wave of contentment washed over me.  “This,” I thought, “this is what it’s like to love one’s life.”

 

 

It’s human nature, I suppose, to constantly want better.  I know I do.  I work hard to improve my life every day.  I do my best to be the best: the best mom, the best wife, the best me.  But in striving to be the best in the future, sometimes I miss the fact that everything is the best right now, too.

 

 

That might not make much sense, but it’s the truth: everything is perfect, even if nothing is.  This weekend was full of love, happiness, and accomplishment.  I might want to make more money, buy a bigger house, sleep more, and be able to do a pull-up, but without those things, there is still laughter, there are still household projects, there are still new bikes and bubbles and fresh strawberries.

 

 

I ran 6.4 miles on Saturday.  The dog ran 5.3.  Tony ran 4.2, and Charles biked 4.2.  Jamie rode 4.2.  It was the perfect way to start Saturday.  I made flourless chocolate cookies and Shaksouka for dinner (you MUST try it, it was delicious). 

 

 

We worked in the garden all weekend and on furniture refinishing and rearranging.  We danced and sang and jumped and tickled and read and drew.

 

 

 

It was just ordinary life, and yet it was wonderful.

Time to Giggle Uncontrollably

The internet is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?  Yesterday was my sister-in-law’s birthday and since she lives in Japan, I didn’t get to take her out for frozen yogurt or mimosas with brunch or a pedicures, but I did send her an email with lots and lots of links that make me laugh.  I have a real gift for her, too, but even though she’s already sent me my birthday gift a month early, she won’t get hers until a month late, when they move back to the US.

 

I think you need a laugh, too, internet friends.  Here are some of my favorite funny things on the internet:

 

The Anti-Joke (for terrible people, which my sister-in-law is not, so I didn’t send this to her)

 

Emergency Compliment (in case you need one)

 

Texts from Dog (My dog is not this intelligent – his texts would all be along the lines of “uuuuhhh, food? walk? squirrel?”)

 

Pinterest, You Are Drunk

 

Animals Talking in All Caps (exactly what it sounds like)

 

Texts From Last Night (these are horrible/awesome)

 

32 of the Greatest Things That Have Ever Happened on Tumblr

 

Jack Sparrow (easily the best music video of all time)

 

Do you know Best of Craigslist?  I find a new funny one each day!

 

Lazer Tits

 

Passive-Aggressive Notes

 

 

Happy Friday, y’all!