Two is Only Terrible on the Third Thursday of Months Ending in R

Posted on May 20, 2007 by The Daring One

Magoo recently turned 2 and I honestly feel that there’s nothing terrible about him.

untitled2He loves blankets ferociously and sleeps with 6 or 8 tucked around him like a little nest. He still has fat in all the right squidging places but is stretching upwards so that he’s beginning to look like a Real Boy.

I have a hard time recognizing him without food on his face and I’m sure he finds me similarly unidentifiable without matching food on my shoulder. He loves hugs. It’s one of his many chants. “A hug, a hug, a hug, A HUG!!!!” The others include but are not limited to:

Mo mo cheece! (more more cheese — it doesn’t matter if his last cheese was 5 minutes or 5 weeks ago, he always begins the discussion as though he had just swallowed his latest bite.)
Wook, wook, wook, wook! (LOOK!)
My BAKE-IT! (blanket)
and
I got it!

Yeah, he’s got it.

He is often very concerned and has highly expressive eyebrows.

His head precedes his feet by at least a foot when he’s running. He is always running. Unless he’s falling down.

He wants to mosh with life. He wants to experience everything.

untitled3He loves his sister greatly. He may love airplanes more. He still prays for shoes several times a day. He begs to use the potty but never goes. He uses his head to catch his fall, afraid of damaging his hands.

Hands are for scooping peanut butter and for smearing… various things.

Each night at bedtime he makes an inventory of his various visible body parts and will not sleep until all of them have been solemnly kiss-ed.

Throughout the day, he peeks behind couches, boxes and piles of laundry, looking and asking for Daddy, sure he’ll pop up at any moment and mourning his absence.

He can eat more than Dan.

He feels things more deeply than me and cries when Laylee is sad.

He is a tender little man, growing up too quickly. I felt a sweetness about him before he was ever born but I never imagined how my soul would light up every time I saw his little round face and chubby knuckles.

I know that even when all the baby fat has melted away, I’ll always be able to look into his blue eyes and see my little buddy.

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Posted in kid stuff | 32 Comments

I Really Like Quoting Myself

Posted on May 18, 2007 by The Daring One

“I like to tell people that Laylee sleeps in until 8 or 9 every morning but to be honest, that’s not the whole truth anymore. It is something but the truth. ” ~Kathryn Thompson

To read the rest of that post and see Magoo’s latest video masterpiece, head over to that one other blog.

Posted in parenting | 5 Comments

Redesigning Cars in My Spare Time

Posted on May 17, 2007 by The Daring One

When I’m not pondering the great questions of the universe like whether to risk getting peanut butter in the jam jar or jam in the peanut butter jar when using one knife to prepare a sandwich, I like to invent things or come up with ways to improve on things that have already been invented.

This week I’ve been thinking about cars. I have two major beefs with Vinny that I think could be remedied in the 2008 Toyota Sienna. Heck, I’d buy a 90’s model Astro if it came with this first feature.

1. Short Pointless Errand Child Care Device (SPECCD) — I came up with this device last Thursday as I was running short pointless errands with my way-past-naptime kids drifting in and out of consciousness in the back seat. Every 3.5 minutes, I would have to stop, take them out of their car seats, corral them into a store or post office, complete a 2 minute task, gather them once more, strap them back in, wait for them to fall asleep and then take them out again for another quick stop. Laylee begged with actual words to be left in the car. Magoo just gave me that look that says, “I don’t know how but at some point in my teenage years I will make you pay for this day of torture and humiliation” and then he bawled like a 2-year-old.

What they don’t realize is that I’d like nothing better than to leave them in the car if I had any assurance that they wouldn’t be kidnapped or nuked to death in the hot summer sun.

There has got to be a way to equip a car with a built in babysitter, possibly a “bot” or “cyborg” of some kind. If it was a kind, nanny-type of cyborg, you could leave it in the car with the kids and a sawed-off shotgun. If it was more of the turn-on-its-master-and-take-over-the-world variety, you could give it your credit card and let it pick up the cilantro for you while you snoozed in the car with the kids. The possibilities are endless.

2. Silent Automatic Locks — I am a door locker. Much to Dan’s chagrin I lock doors constantly, keeping out thieves, solicitors, bad guys of all kinds, and sometimes Dan or myself. But at least the kids are safe… alone… in the house with all the knives and nonorganic shampoos.

I’m pretty serious about this, even in the car but sometimes I forget. Then frequently as I’m driving around, a vagrant, hooliganite-ish teenager, or traveling street performer will walk or unicycle up beside my car and my hand will jump to the automatic lock button. Then comes my dilemma. Do I trigger the loud lock, letting the person know I’m locking them out because I think they look creepy or do I leave us unprotected to save their tender and possibly psychotic feelings?

I tend to think that most people who look creepy already know they look creepy and the last thing their self-esteem needs is for me to rub salt in their wounded egos by giving them the you’re-creepy-door-locking signal.

Tell me. If you’re reading this and you are creepy, do you know you’re creepy? I suspect you do so wouldn’t it just hurt your feelings if someone locked the door whenever you came around? You could be harmlessly creepy. Maybe you just have really bad teeth, large nazi tattoos and a sweet spirit. Who am I to judge?

It’s like someone running away and hiding their infant under a blanket when I come near because they know I’m baby hungry. Maybe I am, and I know I am but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna eat your child. You should just keep one arm over the child for protection, then snatch and lock them up when I get far enough away that I won’t notice.

So for now that’s what I do. I keep one finger on the trigger as they walk by and when I think they’re far enough away (this distance varies based on their apparent hearing loss or iPod volume) before giving them the big creepy repellent click.

I would not have this problem if my locks were silent.

What features would you add?

the reasons: Band-Aids, sun in the Pacific Northwest, reconciliations, samples at Costco

Posted in all about me, around town, aspirations, driving | 29 Comments

Saving the World, One Piece of Living Slime at a Time

Posted on May 16, 2007 by The Daring One

creatures1Sometimes I like to play a game called “If I Were A Rodent, Where Would I Build A Nest For My Babies?” This game gets boring because the answer is always the same — out in the bamboo pile in the corner of the Daring Yard, where the garden is supposed to be.

I keep telling Dan this and he laughs and tousles my hair. “No vermin are building a summer home in our… vermin summer home.”

So, this weekend when I went to clear the pile and plant a garden, I asked Dan to first take a pitchfork and ram and twist it around in Hotel Rodentia. He swore he did this but I happen to know he doesn’t even own a pitchfork.

Today when I went to move the bamboo, I saw several worms crawl away and then a couple of tiny grey blobs with snouts and large pink feet waved at me from under a leaf! I am a rodent-phobe. I have been known to shake and cry after seeing a dead mouse within a mile of my house because a dead mouse within a mile of my house meant that a living mouse could be living under my bed and eating my brains through my ears one bite at a time while I slept.

creatures2I started to have a panic attack at the sight of these mutants but for the sake of my children, I did some breathing and positive self-talk, scooped them up onto my shovel, let the kids look at the “cute, cute adorable wittle mousies,” and then hucked them over the fence into forest.

Laylee was crushed. She said they were her pets, that she loved them and she made me promise not to throw any more into the forest so that they wouldn’t get stomped by a Bambi-deer or eaten by a tiger.

creaturesShe befriended many other beasties today. A week ago she wouldn’t touch dirt without gloves on. Today she was scooping up piles of slimy worms and sorting them into family groups. She told me how much she liked helping “udders” and saving the worms by laying them out flat on the dry hot deck with their new parents and siblings to happily become worm-jerky. I gently explained that they might like it better in a bucket with water and dirt so now each family of worms is in a different cup of dirt, scattered around the yard where Magoo can never never find them.

She even brought me a slug in a cup. “He is my friend. I like him. I put him in this bucket so he can have everlasting life. That means he lives forever.”

After the rodent incident (Wikipedia thinks they’re moles), I continued to clear and rake and plant until we had a nice little garden of dirt out back. Laylee helped water the garden and then stuck the spray nozzle in my running shoe until it was completely saturated while I changed laundry loads. “I wasn’t trying to get your shoe wet. I was trying to get the ground under it wet and it must have gotten in the way.” Ya-huh? Would you like help unwedging the nozzle?

When Dan got home, she told him about ALL the pets, including the future moles we are bound to find if we ever clear out the rest of that bamboo. “Mom is not throwing any more into the forest because they are very tender to ME. They are my pets and I love them.”

Posted in blick, domesticality, family fun | 27 Comments

Mudder’s Day and a Sack of Frogs

Posted on May 15, 2007 by The Daring One

I can safely say the best part of the weekend was listening to Laylee say “Mudder’s Day” around 400 times. Happy Mudder’s Day. I’m so glad it’s Mudder’s Day. Did you know I get to sing in church because it’s MUDDER’S DAY??!!! You are a wonderful mudder!

Ah. I hope she’s still pronouncing it that way when she’s 15. By age 16 the other kids might start making fun of her.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve watched the 4-12 year-old kids at church go up to the front and sing to their mothers on Mudder’s Day. I cry every time. This year Laylee was finally old enough to go up and sing. She was almost ¾ as excited as I was.

She stood in front of the group of kids, her chin resting on her folded arms up against the short wall next to the podium. Luckily her jaw is strongly hinged (she gets that from Dan) so her face didn’t actually split in two from the gigantical grin. As the other kids started to sing, she jumped a few inches and looked back with furrowed brows, like “what is all that RACKET?”

sack-of-frogsAs far as I could tell, she didn’t sing a word, just stood there grinning and waving at me. It was truly one of the best moments of my life. She had asked me to bring my Mudder’s Day card and wave it while they were singing so she could tell which one was her mudder. I forgot. But I’m pretty sure she could tell. Her eyes stayed locked on me for the few minutes they were up there… and when they finished singing… and when the other hundred and thirty kids had left the stage… and a teacher had to lift her up by her elbows and point her towards the exit.

She ran to me for a hug and drew me this picture. I chose not to guess what it was so she told me. It’s a WHOLE sack of frogs!

Posted in family fun, parenting | 31 Comments

Monday Business

Posted on May 14, 2007 by The Daring One

Erin and I have booked our flights and rooms for BlogHer. Some other fun people will likely be joining us. I’m already taking notes on what I want to learn and picking out shoes. Are you going? Would you like to go? The women at Mommybloggers are generously paying for someone’s conference pass and entry is easy this year. The deadline is Friday May 18th so go check it out if you’d like to share a Diet Sprite poolside with me this July in Chicago.

Some kind and obviously blind people have nominated me for a couple of Blogger’s Choice Awards. I’m only about 3 billion votes behind the other nominees so if you’d like to help soften my defeat, vote away. If I get at least 3 total votes, I will likely write a quality blog post sometime this month in your honor.


Posted in aspirations, Blogging, blogher | 11 Comments