Tippy Toes and Tantrums

Oh Yeah, Advent

My goal of moving ahead with my advent stockings does not look attainable without some sort of nervous breakdown. The other day I cut seven stockings out of red felt, but the most annoying part is doing the numbers and finishing the design. Sewing is the easier part. In the meantime, I continue to put up a purple Post-It a day, and Clover runs to the posted spot each morning to read the exciting news. Half of the time, not only is the Post-It not written, but I haven't a clue what to write. As punishment for me, every day Clover asks "How many days left before Christmas?" I want to snap that she should look at the stockings and count, but based on the number of advent stockings we have, Christmas should be coming next week. 

Day two was a small mommy and Clover outing that I'll blog about on Monday, day three they got small trinkets, more like toys...okay, Happy Meal prizes. That's how low this thing has sunk - it now involves McDonald's. The sad thing is I only took Rocket to McDonald's. I ate a Happy Meal for lunch just to have the toy to give to Clover. Day four was screen time - she played on the computer and he played with his Leapster.

Unrelated...There's a passenger van for sale that is parked on a large street not too far from us that has the asking price of $2,500 written in shoe polish or some sort of glass marker on the back window. The owner could use some editorial help because it says in huge letters, dwarfing everything else, "Won't last long!" I assume they mean it won't be around long at that price or else they are being brutally honest about selling a clunker.

(I took out two lines of this post and the formatting went straight to hell. I'm giving up. Typepad and my computer win.)

How Rocket Greets a Sunday Morning

Yesterday, Rocket crept into my bed and whispered, "Daddy likes fruit bits covered in chocolate. He's going to buy them for when he gets married." Kevin's taste for chocolate covered fruit bits was news to me, as were any plans to renew our vows.

"That's great, but daddy's already married...to me."

"HA!" he scoffed, and in a tone implying I should know this myself, Rocket said, "He's getting married again!"

He immediately left the room and quickly got into a scuffle with his sister over some unknown toy. Determine to rain on her day too, he said "Don't you steal that from me!" Then in a lower voice, "If you steal it, I'll call the police and they'll come take you to jail and they'll knock both your eyes out!"

Sometimes, the mind of a three year old boy is a mysterious place.

Clean Cut Tree

Due to tight schedules, we had to cut down our Christmas tree yesterday in the rain. Normally we would have cut it down today, but when we had to move our plans up a day, I thought, "What difference does a day make, really?" Today was bright and sunny, the opposite of yesterday. It turns out, a day makes quite a difference.

We liked one of the trees closest to our car, but I insisted we walk around awhile to make sure we weren't settling because of the rain. After we were all soaked through, we went back to the first tree. Of course.

Blind Sided

This wasn't a day we expected. I mean, certain things in life are guaranteed and this is one of them, but it's still shocking when someone close dies, especially unexpectedly. I feel like I can write about almost anything in my life or the kids' and Kevin is naturally apart of our lives, but when something happens in his life - to his mom - I don't feel I can. It's not my place.

When I signed off an email to a friend earlier, I almost wrote, "Well, this is not the relaxing holiday weekend we'd planned," but I quickly deleted it because it sounded narcissistic and trite, even though that's not how I meant it.

The worst part is going to be telling Clover.

One Moment of Still

Sometime in the late afternoon, I sat back with my boy and took a second to breathe. It's been a long day, I thought, which should end...sometime next Thursday. Sigh...

What in God's Name?

Clover excitedly showed me a ring she got from a vending machine during her soccer team party at a pizza place.

"My friend got it, but we were sharing it [classic Clover mooch move], then she just let me keep it," Clover explained.

"What's in the ring? Is it a picture?" I asked.

I looked at the ring, then showed it to Kevin.

"Oh my god!" he said.

Pretty close.

What's next? Holy Trinity Skee-ball?

Jell-O Shots and Ninjas

The most exciting thing about a birthday party for one of my kids is the pure joy I feel afterward. Total relief from surviving the party, and happiness that I don't need to think about throwing another kid party for six months. (Rocket has already started planning his party, mostly by focusing on what he wants in a cake. "Yellow cake for my birthday," he announced soon after Clover's last guest left.)

We had Mad Science come for the entertainment portion of the party and the kids had a great time. Slime was made and none of it spilled on the floor. Even though our scientist stressed that slime was not for eating, one girl when leaving, held up her slime cup and said to the adult taking her home, "I got Jell-O!"

My Report Card Isn't as Good

My kids are still at the age where I love parent-teacher conferences. I generally spend the first part of the conference wondering if the teacher is really talking about my kid and not someone else, then I'm happy that my children manage to act like totally different people at school. At home, I find myself googling "bipolar" because I can't figure out how it is these kids are such maniacs at home, causing me to pull my hair out in exasperation, yet charming and obedient children at school. Maybe I'm the one who needs medication.

That Doggie Fresh Smell

My eyebrows got a long overdue waxing today, but as the final step, my waxing lady used a different lotion, one that smells exactly like the powder or shampoo universally used by dog groomers. Basically I smell the same way my dog does when she comes home from being groomed. I'm slightly concerned a dog product was used on me, after all what does that say about the pre-wax state of my eyebrows? I felt like a shaggy dog between my bushy eyebrows and my hair, which is starting to feel like it's at a Bon Jovi length. The dog product smell isn't helping my esteem. Not to mention, I've got the clean dog smell without the benefit of a clean dog. Our pug has followed me around all morning, clearly confused about what I do when I leave the house. Rest assured Maddie, I am not spending time with other dogs, just the caterpillars who sometimes live above my eyes.

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?