Easter morning bedhead

If you're looking for charming Easter pictures of my shiny-haired children (and why would you be unless you are my mother), move along. They both had the rattiest, sticky-uppiest, messiest cases of bedhead this morning. Jo's was reasonably decent by the time we went to church, but Opie's ... forget it.

It actually reminded me of the day of my grandmother's funeral. My brother was in the middle of one of his months-long bike trips and for whatever reason had decided not to cut his hair or shave his beard until he completed the trip. Just try to picture the result of the combination of bike helmet, sweat, and longer and longer hair, day in and day out. Trying to whip him into shape for the funeral, my sister and I each took a huge handful of hair gel and attacked the wiry mop on top of his head. It worked about as well as my attempt to flatten Opie's locks this morning.

And it's still cold here. Which inspired a haiku.

Breath visible on
sunny Easter morn -- want a
nice cool Eggsicle?

"Spring" break ahoy this week (finally). In a few days we're off to visit my brother, who these days has hair so short that hair product is entirely unnecessary.

Incoming: Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day always catches me off-guard. I always feel I deserve a longer break after all the giftiness in December. Then along comes February 14 and suddenly I need dozens of teeny tiny cards for the kids' classmates and oh yeah, maybe I should get cards for the kids from me too, and I guess one for my husband while I'm at it. I was shocked the first time my kids got not just those cards with the see-through envelopes, but little bags of candy and other goodies. I missed the memo on that one (and I still resist).

So. If you want to be more prepared than I usually am, please to visit The Full Mommy's Valentine Gift Guide. It features goodies galore for kids, spouses, and even a little something for your favorite dog. Thank you to Leighann and Amy for tons of great reviews.

Wait a minute, Christmas is over?

Writing wrap-up posts gives me hives, so I'll just say the following about the past week. These are the moments that I wish I could capture in a snow globe and revisit in the coming months and years:

• Christmas Eve, Jo had to be dragged to church kicking and screaming (almost literally). She spent the first half of the service on my lap or huddled on the floor with the hood of her jacket up. Then, suddenly, she was captivated by "Angels We Have Heard on High." She wanted to sing along and asked me to help her follow along in the hymnal. This continued for the remainder of the hour.
  
  
• Christmas morning, the kids sleep later than they have in weeks. When Opie finally gets up, we go into Jo's room to wake her up. Her first words are "You could have let me sleep a little longer, Opie!"
  
  
• My dad didn't pack his Christmas pants. My siblings and I scolded him soundly, then turned on our mother for allowing such an oversight. We suggested he turn around and drive nine hours back home to get them. He said "No." Can you believe it?
  
  
• He did, however, bring and wear his 7 jeans. Which looked great on him. Here is how it went down (let me note for the record that my dad is 71 and I haven't seen him wear jeans in years, but he does work out like two hours a day). He came into the kitchen wearing these stylish, dark, skinnyish jeans. Me: "Wow, nice jeans!" Dad: "Pretty nice huh?" Mom: "They're '7 for all' ... nations, or countries or something." Me: "7 For All Mankind??!?" Dad (shows off label): "Yeah, 7 For All Mankind. I got them at the Saks outlet."
  
  
• My mom could not get enough Wii bowling. She was constantly begging someone to play against her.
  
  
• After everyone left, Jeff noted that Opie's behavior had been very good, except for a few subpar moments, including that last morning. His response: "I was a little naughty because I didn't want everyone to leave." Little scam artist!
  
  
• The family construction project (Playmobil airline terminal, with approx 1 beeellion pieces):

I played Santa today

I felt very Santa-ish this morning as I lugged two bags and a box through the snow to help make a child's Christmas special (never mind the fact that yes, my belly shakes like a bowl full of jelly with every step I take).

A few months ago, the folks from Learning Curve gave me a Caring Corners dollhouse to review, with a special condition: I'd get one dollhouse for my kids and I to try out and keep, but I'd also get a second one to give away to a needy child or charity. Part of the toy's charm is its effort to teach kids about sharing, caring, and good deeds, hence the charitable twist on a product review.

I started corresponding with the house manager of a shelter for abused women in a town near Mayberry. It's part of a nonprofit group that manages an array of domestic abuse programs benefiting women and children. The shelter has 44 beds (not counting cribs), and right now every one is full; a mother and child are sleeping in the shelter's library this week because it's the safest place for them to be.

Unfortunately, because it took a while to coordinate the drop-off (note to self: When someone is clearly a bad emailer, pick up the phone), I couldn't bring the kids with me. Still, just having the extra dollhouse in our house for all this time gave us plenty of opportunity to talk about why we had it and what we'd be doing with it.

The coordinator who received the dollhouse was just thrilled, and noted that a dollhouse is an especially useful and therapeutic toy for a child who's experienced abuse. It breaks my heart clean in two to think of a child spending Christmas in a shelter, but I hope this dollhouse helps one little girl dream of the safe, welcoming home she'll live in one day.

*

I also donated a few other reviewed products: the Positive Spin holiday books, and an I Can Do That! game (since that company had also offered two toys, one to review and one to donate). Thank you, Whitney, for coordinating these efforts. It's been a pleasure to participate.

*

Also at the Full Mommy, I 've reviewed theater productions that may be coming to your area soon. Check them out: Magic Tree House, the musical and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

*

And have a very merry Christmas, if you're celebrating. Our guests arrive today, so I'll be busy chopping vegetables and serving salads for the next few days. See you next week!

These kids are smokin'

Jeff's mom sent us a box of Omaha steaks for Christmas, which was very generous but also unintentionally funny, because let's review the guest list* for our holiday festivities:

• 2 vegans
• 2 low-fat/low-carb dieters
• 2 small children
• 1 vegetarian
• 1 diabetic
• 1 pregnant woman whose stomach has a mind of its own (not a rational mind either)

But just like the box can often be the best part of a gift, the OS packaging brought a half an hour of pure glee:

*P.S. My husband (the special-occasion chef in the MM household) has a whole spreadsheet of the meals he is preparing for this crew. If you have need of any festive vegan recipe suggestions, we stand ready to assist.

P.P.S. Re my last post, it looks like I probably overreacted to the NT measurement I (thought I) saw. The result was normal (although at the upper edge of the accepted range). I feel much better now. And pledge not to abuse Google any further.

Christmas in Mayberry

So the Santa Float came by a couple of days ago. It's a fire truck fully decked out in Christmas lights and it ferries SANTA! around our whole town, street by street, over the course of a week until he passes every single house. Here's us watching with our neighbors (at the end you can see my husband is holding the neighbor kid, who ran out of his house so fast he forgot to put on shoes).

Christmas in June

Last Christmas Eve my husband and I had one of the most profound conversations of our then decade-long relationship. Conducted entirely in whispers (we were staying at his mother's and Opie was sleeping just inches away in a travel crib), our talk touched on the experiences we valued from our childhoods, what we wanted for our own kids, and so much more. At one point, Jeff said he was sad that Jo and Opie are not growing up with lots of cousins around. They only have a few, and see them only once or twice a year.

Without even thinking about it--certainly without thinking he would ever take me seriously--I said, "We could have another baby."

I was astonished when he said, "Yes, we could." And for the first time ever, he really meant it.

And that's how it came to be that the best present of Christmas 2007 will, if all goes well, be delivered sometime in June, 2009.

The busiest travel day of the year

And I am always one of the ones traveling, every year of the *ahem*twenty*ahem* since I graduated from high school. As a kid, I spent every single holiday at home, not just in my hometown but in our house. My mother was the designated hostess for every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, birthday, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July and regular old Sunday meal, and the guests were always my grandmother (who lived a few blocks away) and my aunt, uncle, and cousin (who lived around the corner). In the usual kid grass-is-always-greener way, I envied my friends who got to go somewhere and do something for holidays instead of staying home which is so boring.

Be careful what you wish for, as they say. Since I turned 18, I've never been in my own home for Thanksgiving. Not that I ever wanted to cook a turkey in my dorm room or my Manhattan studio apartment, but you see what I mean. It feels a bit Peter Pan-ish to always be the guest and never the host. Like I'm not a Real Mom (hi, Motrin!) until I've stuffed the turkey and mashed the potatoes my own self.

(The reality is that my husband cooks the turkeys around here anyway.)

Truthfully, I can deal with Thanksgiving travel, even when it's on a crazy day like today and even with two travel companions under 7 years old. They may be young, but they are experienced. Thanksgiving doesn't have quite the baggage Christmas does (in the form of gifts, for one, and more firmly entrenched traditions, for two) and I'm above all thankful that we have families who love us and with whom we will enjoy sharing a meal.

I'm thankful for all of you, too, and hope you have a wonderful day and weekend, wherever you spend it and whatever you eat.

Good enough for Grandma and Grandpa

Except for my mom, the rest of the grandparents (my dad, mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and oh god, mother-in-law's gentleman friend) are very very very hard to shop for. I mean, I adore Great-Grandma Nonnie but she just turned 90 and pretty much never leaves the house. The same house she's lived in for about 65 years.

Of course, we turn to the kid-crafted gift whenever we possibly can. Framed photos, paint-your-own-pottery--the classics. A couple of years ago my dad wanted a bathrobe. (Another staple on his wish list is always "seamless socks." Thrilling!) I found one that met his specifications (he had several) but it was still such a boring present. So I thought the kids could doctor it up with little handprints on the pockets. Can you picture it, like I did, kind of subtle and oh-so-cute? Right! And can you also imagine how ugly the finished product was? So ugly I pitched it into the dress-up bin and started over with a brand-new robe.

It was such an obvious demonstration of how Not Crafty I am. The paint I bought was wrong, or my technique sucked, or something; anyway instead of cute kiddie handprints, we just had big blobs of paint. It looked like a dropcloth instead of a bathrobe. Fail! This is also what happens every time I try to follow a recipe for something that is supposed to be attractive-looking. The end result never looks like what it does in the instructions. NEV-ER.

Bathrobe 2.0 was slightly more successful. I traced the kids' hands onto felt, cut them out and glued them on to the pockets of the new robe. They probably fell off the first time it went into the laundry but my dad has graciously refrained from telling me that.

This year, he's getting plain seamless socks.

This crafty confession brought to you by Parent Bloggers Network and Klutz, publishers of very fun craft books and kits for kids. Fun because kids can play with them all by themselves. Seriously, I love them and not just because I used to work for Klutz's parent company or because they are sponsoring a blog blast with darn good prizes. See for yourself.

Halloweeners

That is what my husband calls the characters I would call "trick-or-treaters." And a few stopped by our house tonight. We gave away about 10 bags' worth of candy and were down to our last three tiny boxes of Dots (I didn't buy those!) when time was up. Our favorite Halloweener was dressed as a "killer banana." He wore a banana suit with a bloody hockey mask and carried a big scary knife. One of our friends' kids came by dressed as a ninja. My husband disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a slice of sweet potato carved into a throwing star. He so crafty!

Look out! Killer bananas!

Boo haiku

Four hundred ninety-
ninth post. How scary is that?
Happy Halloween!

Costume pictures to follow later, but here's 2007 and 2002 through 2006. I'm coming to terms with the fact that this year's storebought race car driver costume doesn't hold a candle to last year's "stick guy." He could have gone as the naked chef, I guess.

Here's a Blair-Witch style video of the outdoor decorations I tweeted about. (None of the stills came out.) At about 30 secs you can see the whole thing and then turn it off.

Happy Halloween. May your pillowcases be full!

Buck you, Gym

We made a pilgrimage to the mall yesterday to exchange all our ill-fitting/disdained ("I don't like turtlenecks, Mommy. I will never wear those ever") stuff. We came out pretty much even at Macy's but somehow at Gymboree I exchanged three old items for four new items and ending up spending $50! (Time for another WTF haiku.)

Now here's the thing -- because all the gift receipts went missing in the Christmas frenzy, my mother-in-law just gave me all the regular Gymboree receipts. I have three of them and each one is about a foot and a half long, because she was buying for three kids on behalf of four different adults.

It's also GymBucks time. I have an insane number of GymBucks now: 250. That means I could buy $500 worth of overpriced clothes for the low price of $250.

My kids don't need $250 worth of clothes. They don't need 25 cents worth of clothes. I am no good at shopping ahead for upcoming seasons either (I rarely buy them clothes, period--their grandmas are so very generous). I know the sane thing would be to just throw the coupons out but it feels too much like throwing away actual money. I also know this is quite possibly the most bourgeois problem I could describe. But, what should I do ... can I sell these things on eBay? Donate them somewhere? Would it be worth buying a bunch of stuff then reselling it online or at a consignment store? Do you want them? Halp.

Damn straight, Dorothy

I'm back from our Christmas odyssey and I have to say, it kind of sucked. Although I didn't face lost loved ones, illness, major family dysfunction, or insane travel snafus, the small annoyances piled up until I couldn't pick out which one was worst.

Was it the 15-hour outbound journey, including a six-and-a-half-hour layover in Detroit?

Or was it the snide comments about my children's hygiene/my parenting? (what? no daily baths? wearing pajamas MORE THAN ONCE?)

Was it having to wrap all the Santa gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve because all the cousin's presents were wrapped, and would it make sense for hers to be wrapped and our kids' to be unwrapped? Of course not.

Was it our niece getting two of the items on Jo's wish list and Jo getting none (because they were too heavy to be shipped halfway across the country and then back, just so they could be under the right tree on the right day)?

Maybe it was the ridiculously archaic ideas about hospitality and etiquette that resulted in my being offered food every 10 minutes, like it or not; to the point where I maturely respond by refusing to accept anything, then sneak into the kitchen later to help my own damn self. And that also result in far more discomfort among the part of guests than if you would just stop TRYING SO HARD.

Or! Was it spending literally hours every night putting one or the other child to bed, a parenting chore I loathe anywhere, but especially away from home. Waiting for them to fall asleep is like watching paint dry. In a white room. With no windows.

Hmm ... Maybe the worst was counting the minutes until we could go home, only to be delayed a full 24 hours by a snowstorm. At that point I -- who rarely cries, unless watching a particularly sappy TV commercial -- shed several fat salty tears.

Actually, I know what was the worst. It was knowing how childish I was being. That while I was being facetious with my list of rules, deep down I still have a very hard time letting go of those childhood traditions and realizing that Christmas can go on without them. It might not be the same Christmas, but it can still be a good one. After all, I still got to share it with the ones who are at the very tip-top of my list.

Yep, this one's a keeper

These two are, actually.



Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! See you next week.

Christmas rules and regulations.

NB: I will be checking this list twice.

1. The tree: must be live, with delicate lights and non-generic ornaments. See details.
   


2. The outdoor decorations: must be composed of white lights and natural materials only. Nothing that requires a motor.
   
   
3. The cards: must show at least some small effort beyond stuffing, licking, and stamping.



4. The wish list: must contain ideas and suggestions, but not be so specific as to stifle all creativity on the part of the gift-giver.
   


5. The cookies: Must include thumbprints with frosting. Never jelly.
   


6. The schedule: Gifts must be opened on Christmas morning. Not Christmas Eve. Except one or two just to take the edge off.
   


7. The stockings: Must contain an orange. What can I say? It's a rule.
   


8. The gift-opening: Must occur in sequence from youngest opener to oldest, one gift at a time so all can be properly displayed and admired.
   


9. The traveling: Must be of the grandparents to the grandchildren, and not the other way around.
   a. Exception 1: presence of great-grandparents over the age of 85.
   b. Exception 2: Hawaii.
   


10. The menu: Must not include turkey. What do you think this is, Thanksgiving or something?
    


11. The clothing: Must not be thematic, unless worn by a small child.
    


12. The songs: Must be sung loudly and with gusto, preferably while seated alongside Harry Connick, Jr., at the piano.
    


13. The weather: Must be white. Sparkly, even.

Nothing says Christmas like a big frosty mug

Jo did a worksheet at school about the five senses, with a Christmas theme. "At Christmas I see...", "At Christmas I hear...", and so on. My favorite was "At Christmas I taste... rut biey." Mmm! I know I always enjoy a nice A&W with my roast beast.

And now: The 2007 Holiday Photo Outtakes Post.

Merry Christmas from your friends at the Headbangers' Ball!

When I'm done with this candy cane, I'm coming for you, Blondie

What he doesn't realize is that I've rigged up my extra super strong vacuum cleaner inside that fireplace. Perfect for sucking up little brothers.

As soon as he loosens his grip on that candy wrapper, he's out of here.

And then he was gone, leaving behind only a cheap ukulele. Happy holidays!

Decorating: check

The stockings have been hung by the chimney. With care, even! So I'm feeling (a little) better about this whole Christmas thing. On Saturday we acquired and decorated the tree and put Santa in his rightful place. On Sunday we dragged the whole fam damily to the mall for a gift shopping blitz and accomplished quite a bit.

Jo picked out a really elegant nightgown for my mom. She had her little change purse with her, containing her entire life savings, and wanted to buy the bright red socks that matched the night-shirt. "How do I make fifteen dollars?" she asked. "You'd need sixty quarters," I said. She consulted her purse. "How else do I make fifteen dollars?" I hated to break it to her: "Well ... you would have to have one hundred and fifty dimes." As her other grandma would say, the poor lamb. Fifteen dollars might as well have been a million. I offered to buy the socks and all was well.

...until we returned home that evening, and realized the little pink change purse was gone. Cue waterworks. We checked all our pockets and bags -- nothing. We distracted Jo, coaxed her and Opie into the bathtub and then into bed. But more than an hour and a half after she'd fallen asleep (when I was deep into my online shopping session, getting everything I hadn't picked up at the mall) she woke up and burst into tears, brokenhearted at her loss. I couldn't do anything to calm her and she eventually cried herself to sleep.

But! Happy ending! It only took two phone calls the next day to locate the precious purse, carefully stowed in a locked drawer at Williams-Sonoma. Jeff picked it up and couldn't resist buying this as well. So much for present overload.

Unrelated (well, draw your own conclusions): Care to comment?