Late Happy Memorial Day!

Because my son pestered us to death and because we wanted to see it anyway, we went to see the new Indiana Jones. I won’t reveal any pertinent details (shhhh…everyone explodes at the end), but I enjoyed it. It is not Raiders (what is?), but it is good. Go into it with no expectations other than having a good time and rooting for Indy, and you’ll have as much fun as we did. Also…Shia Lebeauf…pitch perfect. Karen Allen…rocks the Casbah.

That said, I got some “bad mommy” looks. The movie isn’t really for five year old girls (about five swear words, tons of violence…and skeletons…plus she thinks it’s called Kingdom of the Crystal Scones). I have one of those (a five year old girl…not a scone). She went. It is what it is. Rest assured, snooty people in the front row, she completely understands that it’s not okay to say dammit or punch Communists in the face (sadly though, she has witnessed her mother do one out of two, I’ll never say which) . I promise. Plus, her brother had a rip roaring good time and she gets to pick the next one (translation: Her brother and Dad better plan on bucking up for Beverly Hills Chihuahua).

Also, she laid this on me when we got home.

She: Mom, do we have a lot of money?

Me: Uh…er…why do you ask?

She: Well, I was thinking about that pony, Butterscotch.

Me: (Crikey…I thought we were over that). Mmm  hmm?

She: I was thinking I know how you can get enough money to buy me Butterscotch.

Me: Er…uh…

She: You just have to enter a Beauty Contest. You will win and then you can buy me Butterscotch with the money.

Solid plan!

Ok, so I wasn’t really kicked out. Mostly just sneered at….ok, so not exactly sneered at, but in my head that is totally what happened.

I went in there with my daughter to get stuff for a non-crafty project. I do not craft. Ok, not true…I can’t craft. It always turns ugly and messy. But, I immediately understood the look in my little girl’s eyes as we walked past rows of material festooned with unicorns, horses, rainbows, lolli-pops etc. She was literally spinning with possibilities. New blankets, new curtains, new couch covers (our living room sofa would ROCK if we re-upholstered in rainbow unicorns).

“Sorry babe, I’m not that kind of mom. I wish I were. We’re here to get some glitter and sharper scissors.”

I could tell she was a little sad.

I, of course, am about as lost at the fabric store as I am in the tool department of home depot (luckily, I’ve got connections for the latter). All of the cashiers knew it. I swear they could sense my non-craftiness a mile away. If it was Studio 54 in 1977, they never would have let me past the velvet rope.

But…I found the glitter (after asking 3 people).

My daughter is starting to get totally annoyed with my “befrazzledness.” She decided yesterday to take issue with my purse. I am organized in some aspects of my life, but not there (and not the interior of my car, or my drawers, or my office desk, or my shoes…or…erm…never mind). Anyway, she was annoyed because I couldn’t find my keys as we were running late to school (we DID make it on time!). When we got in the car, I started rummaging for a cough drop. Exasperated, my daughter said this:

She: Mom {sigh} You need to get an over-the-shoulder-organizer!

Me: Huh?
She: {sigh} As seen on TV!

Me: Huh?

She proceeded to crawl out of her seat (the car was still in the garage and not moving…no keys yet remember :)  ) She picked up my purse and pulled out a wad of bandaids, cough drops (thanks!) a loose library card and a Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends happy meal toy.

She: This. It has compartments for all this. You just reach down and get your keys and you don’t even have to look with your eyes.

 Me: {blink} {blink}

Sure enough, later that night, the commercial she must have seen came on. Apparently, this is my daughter’s idea of high fashion meshed with practicality.

All righty!

Meanwhile, maybe I’d better do what she says.  She’s got an older brother and six uncles. She’s fierce!

Ugh. I didn’t want to leave my last post. Truly, I wanted to leave it up forever, but it’s time to move on. There will be more stories of my grandparents to come. For today, I’m going in a “whole nother” direction.

My daughter….bored on a rainy Sunday asked if she could draw me some pretty pictures. It sounded like a marvelous plan to me. I gave her her tablet of colored paper, pencils and crayons and busied myself with laundry.

A few minutes later. She gave me her latest masterpiece and asked me to hang it on the fridge. This is what she drew.

   What does it look like to you?

Give up?

Here is the answer key:

Yeah. That’s what I thought too.

Also, yesterday, I overheard the following exchange between my children:

Daughter (to her brother): I’m hungry, I want a banana. Will you go get me one?

Son: Uh. No. I’m not your slave.

Daughter: (whines) I’m not trying to treat you like a slave. I just want you to go get it!

Um, according to my husband, I use the same logic on him all the time. I think he is mistaken.

As a parent with smallish children, I’m always looking for ways to entertain them that don’t involve huge outlays of cash or substances that will stain the carpet. Not so easy. Well, yesterday–being a snow day–required me to work for it! As I said, I’m not crafty, but that doesn’t mean I’m not creative. Also, I’ve long since learned that everyone in my household is better off if we simply just do whatever my daughter tells us to.

She asks a lot of questions. “What does ‘usual’ mean? What does ’popular’ mean?” Eh. Stuff that generally requires me to dig deep in to the recesses of my cerebral cortex and come up with a five-year-old friendly answer. Luckily, lots of the time, she just wants to see pictures of stuff. Sooo…long story short, she likes to “youtube.” (Yes, it’s now a verb in our household.) 

We’ll sit in front of my laptop, fire up youtube and she’ll tell me what she wants to see. If I let her, she’d sit and do this w/ me for an hour or more. She’ll ask for things like hamsters running in a wheel, baby foals taking their first steps, jumping frogs (my son’s go-to request), baby elephants, really cute puppies. A caveat: you MUST closely supervise what pulls up when running any search on youtube with your five year old. A surprising number of people will upload videos tagged as “really cute puppies” that… in fact…have disturbingly nothing to do with puppies!

Well, today it was all about the Groundhogs in honor of Groundhog’s Day. She asked me to find her a groundhog looking at its shadow. Lo and behold, look here. These little guys are so cute, I want ‘em to get in mah belly!!

Then we found this one. We both thought it was a bit disturbing and yet strangely compelling (kind of like driving by a car wreck….no worries though, it’s safe to click, this is a family blog!) After this one, frankly, I hope never to have to seek medical treatment in Pennsylvania.

Go G-Hog! Go G-Hog!

Yesterday was a 1/2 day of school, which in our house meant my daughter got to go to school w/ the Big Kids. It’s kind of funny to listen to “life” dawning on her. Our morning went something like this:

 Me: Time to get up! School, remember?

She: Wha–bu–what? It’s sooooo early!

Me: Yup.

She: Mr. Golden Sun is still sleeeeeeping!

Me: Uh huh.

Then, her excitement got the best of her and she was sweetness and light. Her brother was getting protectively in to it as well. He was giving her the business about how to wait at the bus stop. She was rolling her eyes, but listened.

I thought, maybe this won’t be so bad next year.  They were cooperative and happy…chirpy even. Until breakfast. Still haven’t completely made it to the grocery store yet. My daughter wanted the last “parp tart.” After a mild skirmish, she got her way. I had to bribe them though. I reminded them that I was going to be at work when they got home and that my mother (Busia) would be here. Now, I promise I have not let the boy watch this movie, but I swear my son raised his hand and said “High Five,” just like Borat. Ugh. All I’m sayin’ is that if I see him walking around with his underwear hiked up to his shoulders, I’m going to make some phone calls!

Holy mackerel it’s cold out there!

We’ve been busy trying to squeeze out all of the X-mas fun we can around here.

First, there was the zoo. Frankly, I think it’s one of THEE best family-oriented X-mas events this area has to offer (and wait a minute…family-oriented and X-mas event must be mutually exclusive…I would hope).

The back story is my daughter is usually afraid of Santa. Well, not so much afraid, but she’s never been down with sitting on the lap of a stranger in a red suit.

But…her quandary this year is her desire to get Butterscotch. Butterscotch is a Fur Real Friends, robotic horse. It’s about as tall as her five year old self and retails for about $250.00 ($200 at Costco…if you can even find it). Bottom line…it’s not happening. I think we’re heading for her “A Christmas Story” moment. It is her Red Rider be-be gun, that horse. Again. Not. Happening. She tried though. In the car on the way to the zoo I talked her down and convinced her she should ask for a horse “like” Butterscotch. Ergo, I schlepped to two Toys-R-Us’ today to get her a 40 inch plush horse that is “similar” to Butterscotch without the (IMHO) creepy animatronics or the price tag. I am secure in my belief that she will like it just as much. I am also certain that she will let me know if she doesn’t.

And…lest anyone think we are all about the commercial aspect of X-mas. We spent our blustery afternoon doing one of the other best X-mas themed events in our area. The Mt. Carmel living nativity. Do go see it if you get the chance. The animals are adorable. We heard the real Christmas story from Mary herself with Father Dan Nicholas looking on. The kids made ornaments with their near-frozen fingers and had a really wonderful time. Those guys are Christmas heroes for  braving the elements and are much appreciated!

And I’m sooo not kidding about this horse situation. Here’s my daughter after she scaled the nativity wall. They were so sweet to let her, but man, there was a PONY in there. She had to go kiss it!

“The only reason I’m doing this is for my children to see that Mommy was a pop star.”

             - Posh Spice, in an interview to Entertainment Weekly.

 Uh…yeah. I say that all the time. Just said it two minutes ago to my five year old, as a matter of fact. Which leads me to today’s topic….Sentences I never thought I’d utter, let alone mean.

1.)     “Quit eating that Halloween candy, we’re on our way to McDonald’s!”

2.)    “Hey, quit whipping that snake around!” (My son got a cheap plastic snake from the Dollar store and he’s been using it like bull whip, usually within two inches of his sister’s head)

3.)  “Would you just sit still and eat your spaghetti sandwich the regular way, with two hands?” (What can I say, putting said spaghetti between two slices of bread was the only way I could get my son to eat it the other night. Ya do what ya gotta do. Besides, how would YOU eat it?)

4.)   Get baby Jesus out of your mouth!

That’s just this week. Hmmm, I’d love to hear yours (and Posh’s).

Robin

Yesterday morning, as you all know, the power went out at about 9:30. I was at home with my 5 year old daughter. She was playing in her room with her horses (she’s a freak about horses…big time). Lights go off.

 She: What are we gonna do!!!????

Me: Well, let’s wait a minute and see if it comes back on.

She: Oh no!!! This is a disaster. (she preceeded to run around the house flipping all of the switches and flushing the toilets…she was happy to report the toilets were unaffected)

Me: Well, let’s just call Beepa (her name for my Dad) and go over there.

The real crisis, little did she know, was that if my blow dryer wasn’t working, we were in deep trouble.  Well, we stopped at the school on the way to see if they had power. They did not. The kids were fine though and I could hear some of them in the hall yelling, “This is the best day of school ever!!!” I asked if anyone there knew what was going on. There was some talk that maybe a squirrel got in a transformer. Meanwhile, my daughter was getting more worried. It was her turn for show and tell later in the day and if there was no power, no one would be able to see her Webkinz (more on them later).

Me: Hon, it’s going to be fine. We’ll just get in the car and go over to Beepa’s.

She: But the stop lights aren’t working, how are you not going to crash?

Me: Trust me. (though admittedly, she kind of had a point)

I decided to take another tact because she was clearly getting REALLY worried about this power situation and also had NO faith that I was going to be able to deal. (er…meanwhile…we were now in the CAR on the way to my Dad’s). I went for “teachable moment.”

Me: Listen, this is just like that story we were reading last summer. Remember, Mary and Laura on the prairie (Um…forgive the creative license. I don’t recall the Ingalls family ever driving in a Mercury Villager down Jackman Rd.)

She: Oh no!!!! OH NO!!!

Me: What now??

She: (near tears) Are you going to make me play with that pig’s guts? I don’t want to play with that pig’s guts!

Me: Huh?

Then it dawned on me. Yes, in Little House in the Big Woods, there is a chapter where Pa shoots a wild pig and after doing other things to it, he fashions a ball by blowing air into the dried pig’s bladder and gives it to the girls. It’s a real treat. Luckily for all, there was power at my parents’ house. She got to have a 21st century Kid Cuisine and I got to blow dry my hair. There was light for show and tell, people. There was light.

Of course, later I overheard her explaining everything to her brother.

She: You know! There was a squirrel. It turned into a transformer and took out all the power!