The Mom Post

To Mothers Everywhere:

Happy Mother's Day!

may you be treated to whatever you wish... whether it be ...

• burnt pancakes and cold toast both dripping with the love with which they were made :), 
• a day to lie in bed while reading trashy magazines with no interruptions save wiping a few butts and finding the really important missing sock (because moms do those things best), 
• going for a run or other form of exercise when you want to... right after you change the poopy diaper and make sure the snacks are served,
• ... fill in the blank... what is your fantasy Mother's Day? Or what do you think it would be if you were a mom but you aren't.

I spent yesterday evening looking at my kids' baby pictures... more specifically, birth pictures. They made me cry. It always amazes me how in love with my kids I am, how in love with being their mom I am, how I can't imagine my life any other way.

I'm sharing my little trip down Memory Lane.

Big G and me...

where my momming all started :)

Baby Baby X and mommy...

my first little girl!

The Q-Man...

despite the fact that I look pained, it was the the most fun and easiest birth up to that point.

(yes, I said fun)

Miss C was very purplish-grey at birth,

which totally freaked me out as none of the others had been.

I truly thought something was wrong.

But within 20 minutes, she was alert and pink and perfectly amazing :)

I loved having my babies. I love being their mommy. Anything more I would say right now would be redundant and cliché.

And my breakfast was just delivered!  Time to eat :)

happy, happy mother's day 

to all you moms out there!

and to those of you who are waiting for baby wishes to come true... I'll be thinking of you with love and hope in my heart :)

These are tying times...

Learning to tie one's own shoes is such a milestone. And tying in its own right is such a useful skill, isn't it?  It liberates one from a tassle loafers lifestyle, enables one to wrap a present with ribbon, give the ability to tie someone else's shoelaces together... it pretty much opens up whole new worlds of foot-fashion, gift-decoration and practical joking.

My son has been resisting the acquisition of this skill. It has not been entirely clear why. Perhaps it is his perfectionist nature? If he can't just do it perfectly right away, no reason to try. Or maybe sheer laziness? Why learn to tie when you can just velcro? It has been frustrating as his mother...as his parents.

Today, I announced that this would be the day. Shoe-tying Lesson Day. And that I'd be dadblamed if this skill were not acquired by Monday morning. This was, of course, met with histrionics... screaming and whining so shrill and unnerving that I was surprised my eardrums didn't burst and blood didn't start dripping down my neck. After attempting to reason with this freaked out mess of a child for way longer than I should have, I did the Bad Mommy thing... I yelled "Shut. UP." And he did :)

I sat his sniveling, snuffling, still-semi-whining behind down next to me with this awesome education tool:

We have had this book for years. If you click on the image and biggify it, you will see the suggested age range on the lower right, near the corner... "ages 4-7". I got it when he was within that age range... SIX YEARS AGO!!!

There was a lot going on in our lives back then when I bought that book... daddy traveling frequently, a new baby in the house, a difficult kindergarten situation... and that "a lot" morphed into "a ton" within two years. The whole teach-the-kid-to-tie-his-shoes thing just sort of went by the wayside :(  I accept full responsibility. And he didn't have any shoe-tying interest of his own... he was more concerned with his self-imposed reading goal of 100 pages a day.

Today, I shouldered that responsibility, and he put his book down.

Today, my 11-year old son learned to tie his own shoes :)

Master Procrastinator

That is what I could be for Halloween.  I could dress like a rap star or a d.j.  Or a sort of super hero.  Except Halloween is usually about stepping outside of yourself and dressing as something you are not.  So I should go as Miss Punctuality 2010... maybe with a sash and tiara?

Back to my mastery of procrastination...

This year my kids knew pretty far in advance what they wanted to be for Halloween.  They made the decreed-final decision in mid-September.  They had cool, creative ideas that necessitated mom-help and some clever craftiness and the potential for unusual engineering.  I figured that a month plus lead time was perfect and do-able.  You always walk that line teetering on the brink of "stale idea" when you plan ahead for Halloween.

My kids go to a different kind of school.  At their school there are LOTS of days off (which presents the opportunity for a separate blog entry).  They always have a week off right around Halloween and their school parade is the Thursday or Friday before Halloween... so that costume needs to be ready early.  It also allows for the costume-inclined to have an outfit for the parade AND for real Halloween, which is the route my kids have often taken.

Sooooo... with a month's advance notice I, of course, waited until Monday to begin costumes for the parade today.  I finished them.  Grandma helped. And they came out spectacular... in my humble opinion ;-)

Q-man's required no work from me... Harry Potter.  Thank you for being so easy, Q!

Consignment store and hand-downs!


Big G went classic horror.  He wanted to be The Blob.  Here it is:

Big red t-shirt with balloons stapled to it covered by a clear plastic shower curtain with red plastic wrap taped all over it.

The balloons underneath give it that sort of gelatinous jiggle.

Baby X was the show-stopper...  a peacock!  

Poster board, tape, ribbon, and a whole lot of feathers.

Below you can see the beginning of the construction.

Miss C was still in her jammies for the event.  The jury is still out on what she will wear for Halloween.

So given the craftiness and engineering genius and fact that the costumes were completed on time (!) maybe Master Procrastinator gets to be a super hero after all!

Chuthers and darps

The vocabulary of a five-year old includes some very interesting words, some of which the origin can be explained and some of which remain a mystery to this day.

I'll bet you didn't know you had a chuther.  Well, we ALL have chuthers... every single one of us.

A few months ago, my 5-year old, Q-man, was talking at me about something.  I was preoccupied with something else and only partially taking it in.  Something about "my chuther... blah, blah, blah.... his chuther... yada, yada, yada... their chuthers, etc."  I nodded in agreement, wondering what the heck a chuther was.  Then because the thing I was doing was soooooo important (I was probably changing a diaper or opening a package of hot dogs or trying to untangle a wad of Playmobil and Lego grappling hooks mixed with a necklace chain) I simply shrugged my shoulders and forgot about it.

It came up again during what started out as a similarly distracted, semi-one-sided conversation ....

     "We were chasing our chuthers, and he bit me."   (A-ha! I thought. Chuther again!  what is that?)
     "Your chuther bit you?"
     "No, mom!"   (really now, how could I be so stupid?)
     "Who bit you?"
     "Gus, mom.  But I bit him, too. And we said sorry already."
      "Okay..... but..... what's a chuther?"   (the $64,000 question)
     Heavy sigh... rolling eyes....
      "Your chuther is your SELF."

So I am thinking, and pretty sure, this comes from "each other".  Kind of a stretch, but makes some sense...especially in a 5-year old brain.  But where darp came from....

Traveling with young kids can be a blast... a ton of work but a blast nonetheless.  We were in Siena, Italy which is famous for the Palio, an annual horse race that dates back to 1656.  It is a super big deal over there and horses are, too.  We were wandering around and came upon an enormous statue of a horse... a very virile-looking horse, I might add (of course, who on earth would make a statue of an old nag, right?).  Big G was nearly 5 at the time.  He was fascinated by this statue.  He started telling me all about it.

     "He's really big, mommy."
     "He sure is."
     "He has big legs."
     "Yep."
     "He has a fancy saddle."
     "He does."
     "And there's his darp."
     "His what?"
     "His darp."  (now pointing up underneath the horse).

At that age, Big G was familiar with the word "penis" and what it was, so I knew that wasn't what a darp was.  Then he reached up and patted the gigantic balls...

We don't all have a darp.