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I’m a sucker for infomercials.  They have an alarmingly high success rate of leaving me feeling like my life would be 110% improved by the acquirement of their item.  I believe this stems from bad habits in my teenage years.  My older brother Scott and I would stay up late (very late) in the summer, and it turns out if you insist on watching TV at three in the morning the only thing that’s going to be on is infomercials.  Watching them repeat over and over while half awake seems to have induced a kind of brainwashing or hypnotic effect in me.  Why we did this – no idea.  It seemed like fun at the time? *shrug*

Truth be told, I kind of love them.  Everyone’s so positive and happy, and all the “people” using the inferior products are so dumb, yet fun to watch.  I dunno.  Don’t judge me.

Luckily for me (and my husband’s wallet) this driving need to buy things from the TV is considerably hindered by the equal if not greater strength of my laziness.  Stand up and walk across the room to get my wallet and phone?  Not gonna happen.  Plus I have a natural distrust of giving my credit card information over the phone.  People sit in vans with special listening devices, just waiting for unsuspecting people on cell phones to give up all their personal information including, but not limited to, their mother’s maiden name while making Shamwow purchases.  Then they spend all your money and charge RV’s and furniture and vacations to you and your credit score will be in ruins for forever!  It’s true.  You saw it on the news.

Anyways, the point I was really trying to get to today was that after all the years of watching infomercials I finally bought something from the TV: ABC Mouse.  It’s a computer program or App you can download with tons of games designed to help your 2-6 year old learn to read and count and stuff.  It’s a pretty nifty little program and my kids were enamored with it from the word go. 

They’ve only just started playing with it recently, so I can’t give any reviews on whether or not it does what it’s supposed to, but I can say I’ve already seen one major area of improvement: their understanding of money.

For each game they play they earn a number of tickets.  These tickets can be used in a store area where they can buy anything from pets to clothes to furniture to decorate their little fake bedrooms.  They love this!  Evee picked out a fancy bed she wanted – and she wanted it something fierce.  She tapped the ‘Buy Now’ button and to her confusion it told her she didn’t have enough tickets.  She pursed her lips, thought about it, and then tried to hand the ipad a handful of pretend money. 

It was not accepted. 

To get her bed she had to ‘work’ for it and earn it, which she did after a lot of me explaining about what ‘earning it’ means.  I’ve gotta admit it was fun to watch her puzzle her way through her problem and see how proud she was once she accomplished her goal.  It makes me really look forward to the future when she’ll be accomplishing things of much greater merit.

The only real problem with this is now I've seen that what they promise on the TV is absolutely totally true and so I must buy all the things!  Everything I see will bring me the greatest of joy happiness!  

Will my lazy-bum nature be enough to counteract this newly heightened need to purchase?  Only time will tell...

Suck It Up, Mom

We’ve been driving past a lot of Tutor-Times lately, it seems.  My children are enamored with these places.  The buildings are huge and friendly looking, and they have these awesome play areas outside that are always covered in happy children. 

Yesterday as we drove past one Sarah asked me what this Mecca-of-Happiness was.  I explained to her that in a lot of families the daddy and mommy both have to go to work every day, and when they’re both gone they leave their kids there so they can be safe. 

A place where you get to go play all day and not have your parents around to tell you what to do and get you in trouble?  Sarah loved the idea.  A lot. 

She’s been telling me ever since that I need to go and get a job.  More than just a couple times. 

I know that she doesn’t understand the message she’s sending with this – doesn’t see that what I hear her saying is: “we don’t care about everything you do all day and night for us – we’d rather be with strangers than you.”  I know that’s it’s normal for kids to say stuff like this, and that there isn’t a deeper meaning to it more than ‘hey, that looks like fun.’   But --- it still sucks. 

It grips all those feelings of guilt and inadequacy that all parents carry with them, yanks them through your chest so you have to take a good hard look at them, and then pours salt and lemon juice all over your gaping, dripping wounds. 

But, don't worry about it mom.  Just keep doing what you're doing, knowing that these feelings will never go away and that as your children grow they will only grow more eloquent in describing your many failings to you.  

Super.

Someday in, like, thirty years they'll gaze into the eyes of their own little hellions, look up at you, and realize a part of all the crap you put up with.  They might even apologize.  If you're lucky, they'll buy you chocolate.

Sarah - this is my notice to you in the future:

You owe me a whole lot of chocolate.  Like, I might get diabetes from all the chocolate you owe me.

Of Fairy Doors and Magic

Last week Sarah was just about ready to lose her first tooth.  Her first two teeth, actually.  I’ve been told it’s rare to lose two teeth at once, especially two right next to each other.  Sarah’s loss, though spectacular, is made somewhat less singular when you take into account that the only reason they were both loose at once was because she ran into a wall while racing Evee through the house.

This is right after the first one came out.  The second one fell a few hours later.

She’s happy about it, though.  For the last six months at least she’s come to me from time to time announcing gleefully that one of her teeth is finally loose and as soon as it comes out the Tooth Fairy will come and bring her presents!  To her dismay, the teeth were never actually loose, and we had to have a talk with her about how the Tooth Fairy doesn’t take lists of requests a la Santa.

It did make me start to wonder what exactly the Tooth Fairy should bring, though.  And how to do it?  As soon as her teeth waxed loose for real she began telling us all that she was going to catch the Tooth Fairy.  For those of you not acquainted with my eldest, she has a bit of a sneaky streak in her.  I wouldn’t put it past her to hold the tooth in her fist all night, or hide it elsewhere in her bed, or tie it to a string connected to her finger, etc.  I’ll be the first to admit her determination to catch the Tooth Fairy intimidated me.  What kind of mystical creature would I be if I were caught on my very first night on the job?

In hindsight I could have just made Jack do it.  Then, at least, the weight of the disillusionment of our child wouldn’t have been on my shoulders. 

Instead, I came up with a different solution, aided by the lovely people on Pinterest who think up everything better than you could ever do on your own.  A fairy door!  They’re cute, easy to obtain, and massively simplify the ‘searching under your sleeping child’s pillow for a tooth that may or may not be there’ problem. 

I drug the kids down to the Hobby Lobby and let them help me pick one out, along with all the paint colors.  I wanted it to look nice, so when we got home I painted the front and the kids did the back (where the fairy comes in from, so it’s the side she sees).

The fairy door sits on the floor just inside the kid’s room.  The tooth is placed on the front porch where is it traded for a dollar in the darkness of the cold, still night.

My childrens are delighted and I’m starting to wonder what other fairies could visit our house through our oh-so-convenient door. 

How did your parents instill a sense of magical wonderment into your childhood? What do you do for your kids?

Dishes are the enemy of my soul

I hate doing the dishes more than just about anything.  A more tedious chore never has been invented by mankind.

Conversely, I enjoy cooking.  I think its fun and is oftentimes (to my family’s dismay) a creative outlet for me.  This, obviously, leads to much of that thing I despise.

I share this deep-seated abhorrence with my beloved husband.  In most things we are extremely compatible; the ying to the other’s yang.  But when the sink is overflowing with a disheartening amount of food preparation materials we glance at each other and the stand off begins.  I can’t be quite sure what goes on in his head as we size each other up, but my thought process goes something along the lines of, ‘I bet he gets grossed out and caves before I do.’ 

I invariably lose this battle 95% of the time (It’s true.  I’ve kept stats.) because beloved husband has that convenient excuse to get out of the house known as “work” and eventually I run out of things to serve the kids lunch on.

 Paper plates and plastic cups held some appeal as an easy solution for a while.  I discovered that they’re not my main focus of rage, though.  It’s those freaking pots and pans.  Especially anything that needs hand washing.  Actually, I’ve gotten rid of most anything that can’t be put in a dishwasher.  There’s a simple test for finding out which instruments of pain these are: you put everything in the dishwasher and if it doesn’t survive it didn’t deserve to live in the first place.

There is an exception of this rule for children and pets.  These qualify as definitely ‘Hand Wash Only.’  Won’t make that mistake twice.

A Public Service Announcement

So… if you don’t know me very well you may not know that I have a history of passing out.  Not from any real, medical-type reason.  Not even for any good reason.  I don’t pass out when I see massive amounts of blood and gore, I pass out when I hear people talking about blood and gore, not even in massive amounts.  Or I pass out over extraordinarily small injuries.  Equally ridiculous. 

This little quirk began when I was in fifth grade.  I considered myself a bit of a tomboy, and when my teacher announced we would be dissecting a cow eye in class I was unbelievably excited.  Real life, non-censored blood and guts.  Rock awesome.

The day came and my fellow classmates and I crowded around a table to watch the proceedings.  A few friends and I sat up on desks for a better look.  About thirty seconds in to the ordeal a cut was made into the eye, some kind of juice squirted into the crowd, and I was a goner.  I have to say, it was extremely surprising. 

Most memorable is my friend April crying because she thought I’d died. 

Passing out in public for very odd reasons has given me, at least, a number of amusing anecdotes to share, such as that one time my future mother-in-law made me pass out the first time we met. 

What I wish to convey with this story, as well as with any future anecdotes I may share, is the importance of knowing your audience.  I am not alone in my ridiculous condition, and you need to be aware that we are out there being subjected to your nasty stories. 

When people hear someone tell one of these stories about passing out over nothing they naturally like to share a similar story in return.  As in, “That reminds me!  I saw the grossest thing ever yesterday – wait ‘til I tell you!”  Do not do this.  It is a colossal mistake.  Especially when you hear that person say things like,

“Please stop talking.  No really.  You’re making me woozy.  Oh, dear.  I think I need a glass of water.  I’m going down.”

Many a passing-out-over-nothinger has gone down this way.  Myself included.  

Protect your friends: Stop Sharing Gross Stories.

Thank you.

How To Fall In Love...

…with Dogs. So cute and fluffy and loving and perfect – how could you not love them anyway?

I can tell you.  My lovely in-laws have two Goldendoodle (Golden Retriever/Poodle mix) puppies.  Seriously some of the most adorable examples of canines I have ever laid eyes on.  By the age of six months these little scragglemuffin furballs were huge – way bigger than my three year old and closing in on my five year old.  They’re not quite trained yet, either.

So what do you get when you mix two gigantic, excitable baby dogs and small children?  A whole lot of crying, that’s what. 

The dogs take a certain amount of delight in knocking down the three year old and biting her ponytails.  The baby (9 mo) they seem to see as one of their own; whenever he’s crawling around they lie on him, or lie next to him and give him a kind of hug with their bear-sized paws.  It’s a bit unnerving to watch two forty-pound dogs tackle your baby.  He’s a good sport about it, but once they have him properly pinned they nic his binky and run off to chew it to bits. 

The oldest can hold her own, sometimes a bit too well.  She likes to carry/force them up the stairs of the playhouse out back and then force them down the slide.  They do not like this.

As I hope you’ve surmised by now, we don’t get along very well with these dogs, nor them us.  This left us less than excited when the beloved in-laws needed us to housesit for them for a week.  Seven days of so much tackling and crying?  Good gracious.

I am so glad we did it.  The first day or two were a struggle; lots of jumping and tackling.  But then something wonderful happened: the little baby dogs were so worn out by being played with so much they started taking naps – lots of naps.  Or maybe they were fake-sleeping so my eldest would stop chucking them down the slide.  Either way, all that crazy little kid energy + all that crazy dog energy = a whole lot of bodies that want to sleep all afternoon.  Love. 

I grew up with a dog, and have always gotten on well with dogs in general, but watching my kids lying on the floor intertwined with a bunch of furry love fills my heart with happy feelings.  I can’t wait until we can live in a place where we can get a few scragglemuffin furballs of our own.

Magnus being "hugged" by Louie