Tippy Toes and Tantrums

She May Be on the Naughty List

Santa's response when Clover said she wanted a computer and a Nintendo DS for Christmas. Even Rocket looked stunned. I think Clover may be disappointed come Christmas morning.

No Love Bugs

His other love: the tire swing

A note to Rocket's future girlfriends: he'll do anything for cake. All men have their price, his is homemade lemon cake. Lemon cake is such an odd thing for a kid to like anyway, shouldn't cake only have chocolate frosting and sprinkles in the world of a three year old? When I decided to make the cake to use up our lemons, Rocket held my hand while I made the batter. It was a sweet gesture, but also annoying to crack eggs and shift flour while holding the hand of a little person. When I appeared to forget he was there, Rocket stepped up his game. He tenderly kissed my hand over and over, saying soulfully, "I love you so much...(long pause)...cake ready yet?" When he wants something, the kid lays it on thick. He dropped his suave demeanor and started squealing and jumping up and down after the oven beeped. The poor kid was crushed when I told him it was the preheating signal and that the baking was only beginning. "I'm sorry, love bug," I said. "DO NOT call me a love bug!" he barked. His sweetness returned when the cake emerged from the oven. "You are the nicest mommy...I love you so much...is the cake ready for eating now?"

Rocket was forced to be the brave one today when the nurse walked in holding the flu vaccines for the kids. "Who's going first?" Without looking up from her book, Clover pointed to Rocket. She made her little brother go first. He took them both (Flumist up the nose and seasonal flu shot in the arm) like a champ, saying ow, but mostly excited by the bunny on his Band-Aid. Clover started crying...as soon as Rocket's shot was finished. A needle wasn't anywhere near her, but there she was, blubbering away. She cried until she got the shot, then abruptly stopped and said, "That wasn't that bad." But then she started crying again after deciding she liked Rocket's Band-Aid better than hers. I laughed, even though that usually makes her mad, but some days laughter is the only thing saving me from running away to Mexico. (That and my fear of getting Montezuma's revenge...again.)

Goal Oriented

Tell your grandchildren to save the date for a grand re-opening party because the environment will be fully restored by 2088!

The Brownie troop did timelines the other day where one side of the paper was ages one through seven, where the girls wrote the highlights or memories from that age, and the other side was ages 10-80 (by tens) where the girls predicted what they'd be doing then. Clover threw a tantrum at the start of the exercise, partially because she was overtired, but also because she was upset that being the youngest, she was the only girl not yet seven and without something to write on that line. I didn't appear that the tantrum was going to end before her birthday later this month, so I was tempted to write "I cried" under age seven, but we decided to leave it blank.

Clover's future includes owning a wallet and her own phone when she's in her 20s, being a forensic "sientist" by age 30, then becoming a mom and "still a forensic sientest," by 40. Kevin asked me if I thought the "still..." was a dig at me for quitting my job to "only" be a mom. At age 50, Clover will do fun crafts with kids, age 60 "protetect the enviorment," age 70 start being a grandma and spend time with grandchildren, all ending at age 80 when she'll "finesh proteckting envirment."

One of Clover's friends plans to start jogging at 40. The same girl will "probably get the flu" at age 70.

The good news: at least I don't need to worry about buying Clover a cell phone or a wallet for another 13+ years.

A Glowing Halloween

The downside of Halloween falling on a Saturday is that a one day affair turns into two straight days of parties. Today we've got two tired and cranky kids who didn't listen to me when I told them the sole purpose of the time change was so they'd sleep for an extra hour the day after Halloween. I had trouble falling asleep because a light had been left on somewhere in the house, but when Kevin got up to investigate, he found both of Rocket's glow necklaces stacked together as the light nuisance. Later that night Kevin awoke to find Clover using her glow sticks to read books, which gives me an eye strain headache just thinking about it. Possibly thanks to raves, glow stick technology has clearly advanced since my childhood when the necklaces were only yellow green and sometimes you had to cup your hands around them to watch them glow.

Glow necklaces were a great accessory for a ninja, who blended into the dark night without them. Clover was called boy, buddy, guy and various other male names last night by men handing out candy. She took this as a great compliment that they were unable to tell she was a girl under her mask and ninja uniform. My amusement with the ninja costume was that it was less expensive to buy a real ninja uniform online than to buy a ninja costume at Target.

Our neighborhood is not trick or treating friendly, so we headed downhill to a street that goes over the top for Halloween and Christmas. I would love to live in this neighborhood, which is so easy to say because I don't live there and don't need to invest thousands of dollars into outdoor holiday decor. One house had a fire eating woman perform, others had over the top decorations. Once we got back in our car to head home, Rocket sighed and said "I'm safe now." Because he's such a trooper, it's easy to forget how little he is.

But now it's November, which means National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I've got a girl who needs to turn seven and insists on a party at our house. I practically offered to fly her friends to Bali just to avoid an in home birthday party, but Clover insisted. I've also got to complete a craft project that has gone unfinished for two years, nagging and depressing me the whole time. November: I own you.

Please Save Me, November

I need this picture to remind me that the kids have their moments of awesome.

I'm drinking a very large cup of coffee, which should make for an interesting day. I'm sensitive to caffeine, meaning that I have to watch when and what I drink, and I've found when I go back to regular espresso, it feels like I'm having heart palpitations and I go a little stir crazy. That seems preferable to another day dragging myself around, bone tired, so here we go with full strength coffee. Whee!

Rocket is finally well enough to return to school tomorrow after doing some sort of flu dance for the past week. He was sick last Thursday, so I kept him home Friday, even though he was well. His wellness lasted until Sunday afternoon when the flu came back, meaning I had to keep him home again Monday. When he only goes to school Monday-Wednesday-Friday, missing two days in a row is painful. Sure, he's sad, but I mope the most. Yesterday was spent working on his rock collection in the backyard and listening to his three million theories about life's minutia, usually followed by questions, then corrections when he's unhappy with my answer. I found myself begging him to watch TV. I even lent him my iPhone to play games. Anything for two consecutive minutes of quiet. In the meantime, I spend all of my free time washing my hands with soap.

Clover's problem is that she isn't sleeping. She goes to sleep for what is more like a nap, then she's up all night. This is a post in itself, but the bottom line is that we need more rest...and these kids cannot even give me a break during the night.

Kevin has a project at work, keeping him there long hours and weekends, but we got a small break Saturday night when the two of us went out to dinner. Even that had to be spoiled when we got a call from our bank's fraud protection division at 8 a.m. Sunday - as Kevin was walking out the door to work - to let us know the restaurant charged us five or six times for dinner, at slightly varying amounts and processed at different times. What I love about the bank is that they went with keeping the smallest amount and refusing the others. Kevin seemed bothered by this because the smallest amount was our pre-tip bill total and he was concerned our waiter was losing his tip. Um, the guy charged us a few hundred dollars for a simple tapas meal. I'm willing to say the additional charges were an error and not malicious, but he gave us a Sunday morning of stress, so I'm not shedding a tear over it.

I'm feeling jittery - the coffee is working.

November will be better. I'm willing it to be better.

The Red Chair Wars

Things feel like they're moving along here, despite the fact that our house looks like a tornado ripped through. I've been reading and crafting, both of which are a sign that the little Rocketship is getting older. He doesn't need me to be with him every second of the day, which is beyond liberating, even though he tends to spend a good deal of the day tethered to a red armchair, afraid to get up lest his sister grab his seat. I don't know why the red chair is special (maybe because a la Archie Bunker, it's my chair and whenever I want to sit down that chair better be vacated) because it usually sits unoccupied all day long, but suddenly both kids silently agreed to make it ground zero in their sibling rivalry war.

On the way home from his school at noon:

Rocket: "Mom, when we get home, I want to get a drink."

Me: (focusing on the odd driver in front of me) "um hmm."

Rocket: "And I want to sit on the chair."

Me: (still thinking about the driver not looking before entering intersections in his old Datsun truck, the same model my dad had in the 1970s. The truck has stalled twice and he's almost hit three cars.) "um, sure."

Rocket: "The RED chair."

Me: (now thinking Rocket is odd for reserving a chair) "Fine. Whatever."

Rocket: "And Clo can't have it. Just me, right mom?"

Clover is at school for the afternoon, so he has no competition for the chair, but when she does arrive, they will fight it out like wild boars. There are days when we arrive home and they both race to be the first to the front door, which once the door is unlocked, allows that person the best position to race to the back of the house, where the chair lives. The other day Rocket had the chair secured, with his little body sitting in the center and his arms stretched out on each armrest, managing to make his tiny frame take up the whole, oversized chair.  "Don't you want your Bluies?" Clover asked him, knowing his lovies were in his bedroom. He stood up to get them, but stopped before stepping away when he realized this would leave the chair open. Clover's next ploy was to get his Bluies, but she placed them on another chair a few feet away. Finally, after a lot of thought, Rocket made a break for the Bluies. He was fast and by the time Clover jumped for the chair, Rocket was already on his way back. He leapt from a few feet away and they both crashed into the chair screaming. Him at her for stealing the chair, her at him for hurting her (although this began before they collided).

Is this going to be the item they fight for in my will? Should I use that over them? "If you're good, I'll leave the red chair to you, but if you're bad, it's going to your sister." I can imagine my grandchild hauling the red chair into an Antiques Roadshow, hoping that despite many stains, the authentic Pottery Barn armchair circa 2005 will be worth a small fortune. Of course this assumes the chair withstands their rivalry and that is highly unlikely.

Trick or Treat, Give Me Something Other Than Gingerbread to Eat

Poor Rocket is completely confused by Halloween. He gets the trick or treat part and the costumes, but he doesn't understand that this is really only a one day affair. Every time he sees a house particularly well decorated for the holiday, he demands I pull the car over so we can ask them for candy. Or maybe he just knows that people organized enough to do really elaborate decorations probably already bought their candy weeks ago, and like Rocket, they're ready to go.

 

The annual pilgrimage to the pumpkin patch has been crossed off my list. Taking little kids to the pumpkin patch should be great fun, especially as they get older and better able to handle themselves, but now they have opinions, which include not wanting to humor me with our annual photo on the tractor or they argue about which one of them has a bigger pumpkin. The trip to the farm where we buy our pumpkins wasn't all that bad, even when a large tour bus pulled up and scores of old people piled out. We were the only other customers at the farm, which seemed to draw all of the old people too us, as if watching kids picking out pumpkins was part of the experience. This would have been fine, but almost every man in the group came up to my kids and made a grandfatherly comment like, "Got some big pumpkins there!" Rocket talked to the first person who approached us, then they smiled at the second person, but by the third old person, my kids ignored them or looked bothered by the interruption. I tried to be nice the whole time until one old guy tried to take their picture. That's when I blocked the kids and pushed them into the corn. I don't care how old you are, a man taking pictures of kids he doesn't know is a little creepy. Actually, that's not always true. Once at Stanford we encountered a bus full of Japanese tourists, all snapping wildly with their cameras strapped around their necks who took photos of Rocket at the Rodin sculpture garden. Somehow that seemed less threatening, probably because one tour member indicated to me through pointing that they wanted to include him in their photos and once I said yes, it looked like a paparazzi attack with bulbs flashing and cameras clicking away. I imagined Rocket's picture being shown in horribly boring slide shows to their families back home.

After we left the farm, we headed into downtown Half Moon Bay for hot chocolate and cookies. The kids scouted out the glass case and Clover finally pointed to the largest cookie there - bigger than my hand - shaped like a gingerbread pumpkin man. "You know it's gingerbread, right?" I asked. She said she knew in a tone that implied gingerbread was her favorite and I should have known that. Without question, Rocket followed suit, as he usually picks whatever Clover has deemed best. After we sat down, they nibbled a corner of their cookies, then just picked the sugar parts off. Neither of them ate the cookies because...they were gingerbread. Clover refused to concede the point, insisting she wasn't that hungry, yet she didn't want to bring the cookie home for later. Next time, just get the ghost sugar cookie like I suggested, okay kids?

A Sick Day, Santa and Candy Corn

Rocketman's room. He asked me to take this photo.

I'm back to that preschool stage where it feels like a rip off when my child gets sick on a school day. Clover goes to school five days a week, making a day off not really a huge deal, but Rocket only goes three mornings a week, turning a day off into a major disappointment over the loss of quiet time.

Yesterday I kept Rocket home with a cold (three "ah-choo's" from the "cold in my mouth," he says). Technically he can go to school with a small cold, but I figured that this is how (and where) he got the cold, so I'll do the other parents a favor (you're welcome!) by keeping him out. It was the right decision because he was pretty sedate, proving he wasn't operating at 100%, and he watched TV and played quietly with Legos while I made the Fall change over in our house. The Halloween decorations are up, long sleeve shirts and pants are out and our bedding has changed from summer quilt to the cold weather down comforter that feels like a giant bear hug. As a result, our living room is full of giant plastic boxes awaiting their return to the attic, this time full of summer clothes. Almost on cue, this is when the girls next door come by with their school fundraisers. I swear every time those girls come by something messy is happening in our living room and as they stand in our doorway, I need to explain that no, we aren't moving and really, truly, our house doesn't always look like this.

To secure an uninterrupted block of minutes - maybe even 15 minutes free, if I was lucky - I let Rocket watch live TV instead of DVR'd PBS shows. This was a life altering experience for both of us. I forgot about commercials and the crap that is marketed to kids during the day. Rocket keeps repeating, "helicopter, cars, dinosaur and Backpack," like a mantra. Can I get him Diego's Backpack with the stuff inside to save animals? Can I? Huh? Huh? Puhleez! My response after years with his sister is simply "add it to your Christmas list," which when I think about it is exactly what the marketers want. Now Rocket wants to talk about Santa, how "sweet" Santa is and this magical list of dreams. When Clover heard the Santa talk, she assured me that she had her list down to one easy to get item: a computer. A laptop computer like mine. "You'll be lucky to get a Dell, forget about a Mac!" I snorted. Or at least that's what I thought when I really gently told her she may want to add a few other things to her list because the laptop request was like a Hail Mary pass with one second left on the clock.

So much for the small victory of having Halloween costumes purchased by Oct. 1; my kids are already counting down until Christmas morning. This morning I was thinking that just when I feel everything is back on track, the dog barfs. At least it was seasonally appropriate candy corn.

It's Been a Long September

Hippie school graffiti

This month is never ending. It's been pretty hellish - or as I explained to my doctor, "I can't handle the transition month!" - going from summer's relaxed schedule to the regimented school schedule with extra curriculars and all of the meetings that seem to accompany a new school year. Tomorrow is my last crammed-full day for a few weeks and then I'll spend Wednesday updating my October calendar while being thankful September is coming to an end.

Someone had the nerve to remind me this morning that we are 90 days away from Christmas. I love Christmas as much as the next guy, but really? I don't need this, especially because Clover is telling everyone that she's getting a laptop for Christmas. As she excitedly explained it to me, she can't get on the computer without bothering me, therefore the clear solution is for her to get her own computer. She sees Santa as a Make a Wish ambassador, so he'll make sure she gets the computer. I've got 90 days to redirect her or Christmas morning may be full of tears around here.

We had a ladies day out yesterday, going into San Francisco to see Wicked and have an early dinner. Despite not being a fan of musicals, it was fun to take Clover along. Even more educational was the Folsom Street Fair going on nearby. There's nothing that says "Welcome to San Francisco" more than mostly naked guys in leather straps. Clover rolled with it, as if it's something one sees every day, but the older generation - my mom and aunt - were constantly surprised. "Oh!" they'd say after each group of men would pass wearing almost identical S&M uniforms. One gasp was followed with "Don't turn around," which is an invitation to turn around immediately, only to see a man's bare ass. I think my mom grew up a little that day too.

After dinner we stopped for a few minutes at the playground across from City Hall. When I worked there in college, everyone bolted to their car or bus when it started to get dark and we'd always take the elevator down one floor to the garage because the stairwell was the most dangerous place of all. This doesn't seem the ideal spot for a playground, but it's better than the open grass where people would camp out. Plus, Clover had fun, despite our pulling her along as the evening grew darker. I had trouble imagining that this is the park where Montana Newsom will hang out, but then, things change because when I was in college, I never would have thought I'd willingly bring my child here to play during dusk either.

We Were All Over Family Game Night Like Flies on...

Oh my god, is this what I think it is? That was my first thought as I picked up my first card. My second thought was are the Garbage Pail Kids back? I decided to roll with it, which was the thing to do because we ended up having a lot of fun.

A package from Hasbro arrived Tuesday, the day before National Family Game Night, sending my kids into orbit. They were thrilled. Christmas had come early. We received Bop It!, Monopoly City and Boggle, games I'd shown interest in while at a cocktail reception at BlogHer in Chicago, which illustrates what a single Midori Sour does to my head. My kids pulled the games out of the box with great enthusiasm, while I grabbed the Advil because each of these games makes a ton of noise. Even Monopoly City requires batteries (according to Kevin, I haven't looked into it).

National Family Game Night happened to be on Weekly Family Soccer Night, limiting our time. We sat down to dinner as soon as we returned home from soccer. After a few minutes of eating, Rocket pushed his plate aside and asked to go to bed. "BUT! You're going to miss," Clover shouted until I hushed her. She couldn't hold back. "DON'T YOU WANT TO PLAY GAMES?!" I found out her biggest worry wasn't that her brother would miss out on some fun, but that he was the element that made us a family and if the family was gone, so was the game night. Once I reassured her we'd still play, she didn't think about Rocket again.

Because Rocket was sleeping, I opted for a quieter card game, pulling out Pictureka! that I'd received at BlogHer. We'd never played before, so it took a few minutes to figure out the point of the game, but once we got going, we had great fun. Even though young kids can play, it wasn't a boring kids game. We played three rounds - the final round was pretty heated as Kevin was fighting off a shut out. He came back to win the final game, ending the night with a win for everyone, literally and figuratively. Clover made us promise to play again tonight, possibly even Bop It! I'm going to be out tonight, so I agreed with her that yes, tonight is a great time for Bop It!

Disclaimer: The games were given to me for free from Hasbro. And Clover thanks them for it!