Charade

This weekend Frink lost his voice.  Communication with him was reduced to pointing and motioning for this or that. 

During a trip to Target, I had to introduce him to the notes feature on his phone.  When he wanted to say something, we had to wait patiently while he typed it out.  Bunny can read so he was able to communicate with her but I had to translate for Lion.  "Daddy said we are not buying any toys."  "Daddy said to watch where you are walking."  "Daddy said ..." well you get the picture.

As we were wandering the aisles, he held up two bags of M&Ms with a questioning look on his face. "Should we buy these?"  Dude, do you not know me?  Of course we should buy those.  Carry on.

After a successful trip, I opened the bag of white chocolate peppermint M&Ms so everyone could have a snack.  (Quick aside: Run, do not walk, to your nearest store and buy some.  They are amazing.)  Frink looked very excited when he tasted the candy.  He made some gestures, one of  which looked like pouring M&Ms into a bowl.  The other was more difficult.  He slid his hand into the imaginary bowl with a scooping motion.

I had no idea.  He repeated the gestures. Again, nothing.  Another round of gestures.  "You want to eat the M&Ms with a shovel?"

My response was met with a stare that said, "no, you idiot." 

One last time he poured the imaginary M&Ms into a bowl, scooped with his hand and flipped.  Oh. Ohhhh!  "You want to make pancakes with these?  That would be awesome."

Vigorous nodding.  Success!  This was followed by 5 minutes of laughing at anyone wanting to eat M&Ms with a shovel.  That is just crazy, handfuls shoved into your mouth are much faster.

Bugging Out

On Sunday we went to Bug Day at a local park. Bunny was in heaven. She loves her creepy crawlies.

Tarantula


Hissing Cockroach


Millipede


She is one brave girl. The nearest I got to those things was behind the camera lens.

Wanna Bet?

I love my husband. He is a wonderful man, a doting father and a loving husband. You can't ask for anyone better than him.

But he is also completely nuts.

He recently ordered some books. Everyday he'd come home from work and ask "Did my books come yet?" He looked just like a little boy waiting for Santa to come. Everyday I'd have to tell him that his books did not arrive. His face fell and he looked like I'd run over his pet.

But then his books arrived. He ran to the box, ripped it open, and hugged the books. He stared lovingly at their covers. "Look at these, aren't they wonderful?" Umm, honestly no. Then he opened one of the books and began to read "It says this guy has a WHIP of X and a . . ." I'm sure he continued talking but I blacked out for a moment because he was reading me baseball statistics.

Yes the books he ordered were for his upcoming fantasy baseball leagues. Leagues plural because there are two. Sigh.

Coupled with his strange obsession with fantasy sports is his extreme competitive nature. He pours over the stats looking for an advantage. He must win. He must beat his friends, especially Martin and David.

But apparently that is not enough for him. He also likes to challenge me. We bet on all sorts of things. Whose alma mater is going to beat the other's in football and basketball. (Usually its me but unfortunately this was a bad year for the Badgers). Who can correctly pick the most football games. Tonight we will see who gets the most Oscar winners. And so on.

He likes to make up games to compete at too: "I'm going to give you a hint and you have to guess the answer". My answer is usually I don't know or care, why don't you just tell me. Which, by the way, is not the correct answer.

One day he came home with one of those facebook notes on how well do you know your spouse. He said "Wouldn't it be fun if we wrote down what our answers would be and then the other had to guess what we wrote? We could see who got the most right. It be like the Newlywed Game." Sure, fun for you.

The only upside to this behavior is there is usually a prize involved - dinner or date night of the winner's choice. And the dinner or date is usually attended by the loving husband, not the crazy one. So I put up with it and I even try to win now and then.

Just Shoot Me Right Now

If I ever invite you to a party at my house, please suggest that you hold the party at your house or better yet a bar.

If I tell you not to bring anything, please for the love of all that is good and holy bring lots of wine and preferrably an IV so the wine can go directly into my blood stream.

If I suggest that you bring your children to the party, please hire a babysitter and then come to my house and take my child to your home with the babysitter.

Today we had Bunny's 3rd birthday party and holy shit it was a nightmare, for me. Everyone else had a lovely time. Me, not so much.

The party fell on a weekend right after my husband was out of town for work. Even though he was only gone for one night, it seemed like days. I decided to do all the heavy cleaning on Thursday night after Greys. I moved furniture, I washed the floor, I cleaned all the cobwebs. Heck I even cleaned the heating vents. I cleaned like a crazy person until 12:30 am. And there are two things you should know about me: 1. I hate to clean and 2. I need to be in bed by 10 in order to function.

Then Friday morning I cleaned some more. I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the bathroom floor. What!? Who the heck am I?! (Luckily for me Bubs came home in time to clean the kitchen. Thank goodness.)

And then I got the bright idea that I would make Bunny's cake from scratch. All of a sudden I've turned into Martha Freaking Stewart with all this happy homemaking stuff. Now don't get me wrong the cake was the best darn tootin' cake I have ever tasted. I mean seriously it was awesome.

But I made it too late in the day. It didn't have time to fully cool before I had to frost it. So the cake fell apart. I had to spackle the darn thing together with the most awesome frosting ever. Seriously it rocked. So the cake was all crumbly and wonky. I was afraid it would fall apart when we put the little horses on it.

Horses you say? Why would you put horses on a dinosaur obessed girl's cake? Because that is what she wanted. She did not want dinos on her cake. She wanted horses because now apparently they are her most favoritest animal ever.

So the party rolls around and the family arrives. Oh man I have never wished that my basement was fixed more that that moment. We had 7 adults and 4 kids (a 7 yr old, 2 3 yr olds and a 1 yr old) in our living room and dining room. It was mass chaos. I thought to myself, I want to have another kid? Why?!

All the toys were brought out. Even the ones that Bunny never, ever plays with. Towers were built with the cardboard blocks and then promplty knocked over. My nerves were shot, I was exhausted. They were screaming and running and jumping and . . . And I seriously contemplated going up to my bedroom with my wine and my cake and locking the door.

And then the boy cat noticed the balloons. He loves balloons because they are attached to ribbon. Which he loves to eat. So we spent the entire party chasing him out of the room and closing the door. But with that many people, you can't keep the door closed. So he got in and sure enough he ate some damn ribbon.

Do you know what happens when cats eat ribbon or string? They poop it out. Only sometimes it doesn't come all the way out and you have to remove it. By hand (preferrably while wearing gloves). But the cats don't like it when you try remove it so they run away with the ribbon hanging out of their butt. (Now some of you are wondering why I own this stupid ribbon eating, puking and peeing cat and right now I don't really have an answer for you).

So now the party is over. Bunny is on her way to bed. I am about to pour a glass of wine and head to bed myself. And I vow with the internets as my witness never to have another party at my house again (until the next time).

Definintion

decheese
dee - cheez
verb

To remove cheese from a person or object. (After Bunny fed baby T-Rex a snack, mommy had to decheese him.)

In Dreams

Sometimes I wake up (am woken up by a cat) early in the morning. Its too early to get up so I try to fall back asleep. I've been using this deep breathing method that really seems to do the trick.

But rather than falling back in to a normal sleep pattern, I feel like I'm in this half dream/half reality world. Sounds from the waking world, like a cat's meow or a car driving on the street weave their way in to my dreams. Dream conversations feel so real that I am convinced they actually happened.

In my dreams Bubs and I had a conversation about new park I discovered with a wading pool. He told me he took Bunny and ran into our neighbors. Bunny and Elvis ran splashing through the pool while Bubs and Michael had a conversation about pre-school. It was so real it had to have happened. Right? But when I asked Bubs about when he would have gone since we just went for the first time yesterday, he looked at me like I was nuts.

In this dream/reality world, I also find that real events or conversations are re-imagined. An Obama campaign meeting now takes place with a dinosaur, my third grade teacher and Brett Farve. It didn't happen, but I wish it had. It would have been more interesting that way.

Normally I don't remember my dreams which is why these dreams have such an impact on me. What about you? Have you had dreams that felt so real you were convinced they actually happened.

Further Proof I Need My Head Examined

Just a few days ago I wrote a post about being overwhelmed. I was tired, cranky (hormonal) and I just didn't think I could deal with having a toddler who didn't nap. So my mom took Bunny for a few hours on Wednesday and then again on Thursdays like she normally does. This gave me a chance to recharge my batteries, to get some things done without a toddler hanging all over me and apparently to lose my ever-loving mind.

It all happened so simply. On Wednesday after dropping Bunny at my mom's, I went and had coffee. Then I went to get the oil changed on my car. I waited in line for a while and by the time I got in, I was bored. I sat there playing Tetris on my phone when all of a sudden the phone rang. It was my friend Janet.

We hadn't talked in a while so we caught up. She works for the Alliance Francaies and was telling me all about the Bastille Days festival she had helped work on. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. And then she hit me. She said they were putting together a committee for their Beaujolais Nouveau release party in November and she wanted to know if I'd be on it. There'd be meetings, planning, organizing, finding donors for the auction and helping get new people to the event.

It sounded like fun. Something I totally would have done pre-Bunny. So I said yes and then immediately regretted it. How can I give up my time? I don't have any time. But then I talked myself back into it, I'd be meeting new people, spending time away from Bunny with adults, there was wine involved. So it was a good thing. Right?

Which lead me to my second and slightly larger problem. I had already decided to do some volunteerinig for the Obama campaign. I used to be involved in politics right after college and loved it. I feel passionately about Obama and wanted to do something about it. So on Saturday I went out on a voter registration canvass. At first I didn't want to do it but ended up having so much fun.

When I got back to the office, they asked me if I would become involved in a team. The team would be responsible for one aldermanic ward, canvassing, phoning and general organizing. The ward was in my neighborhood so I said yes.

Yesterday I went in to the office to find out further details. It would be about 10 hours a week starting in late August. The time would be flexible around your schedule. The more we talked, the more I thought I can do this. And then he asked if I would be the team leader. He said you are a mom, you're used to dealing with "difficult" people, I think you can do this. By the way it would be an extra 15 hours a week. I almost said yes. But then I thought better of it and said I'd think about it.

So in 4 days I went from feeling like I had no time to get anything done to volunteering my non-existant time to two organizations. I need to get my head examined.

She's Got Questions, Do I Have Answers?

When you live with a two year old you get a lot, and I mean a lot of questions. Most of them are fairly simple. What's that? Where's parrot? Where's minmi? What are you eating?

Then there are the tougher, more philosophical questions, the why questions. And the questions about nature and her surroundings can also be tricky. What do ants eat? What kind of clouds are those? These questions may require a basic understanding of grade school science.

Now I am a relatively intelligent person, a former lawyer. And I know realize that none of my schooling beyond grade school has prepared me to be a question answerer (is answerer even a word?) to a toddler. So like any good (former) lawyer, I make an educated guess, research it further and give a more fully formed answer later.

Take for example the cloud question. When faced with determining the type of clouds in the sky, I was pretty sure that the fluffy white ones were cumulus so that was my answer. A quick check of Wikipedia confirmed it. I also looked at the other types of clouds for a refresher, just in case.

Her questions about ants have posed tougher. She will spend hours examining ants, and ant hills. And then the questions start:

What to they eat? Grass (I think).
Where do they live? In the ground.
What are they doing? Looking for food.
Why are some little and some big? Um, they are different kinds of ants.
What kind of ants? I don't know. Let me check on that and get back to you. Would you like me to brief it or would a simple answer suffice?

So I found myself at the bookstore looking at books on ants. Hey guess what they do eat grass. Well some of them do. Do you know their are ants that grow their own food? Farmer ants do, in case you cared. I armed myself with some basic knowledge and answered her questions.

I know that this is just the beginning. I'm going to have to learn enough about what she is interested in so I can answer her questions. For example I just looked up whether a Parasaurolophus is a meat eating dinosaur or a plant eater. And the answer is plant eater.

What do you do when faced with these types of questions? What kinds of questions have you answered?

Things Overheard This Weekend

"Where is my nose jimmie."

Okay maybe this is funny only to me in one of those you had to be there kinda ways. But trust me it was freakin' hilarious.

Yesterday we took Bunny to the Cedarburg Strawberry Festival. You've never been? You really should, its all the rage. Street festival/ art fair, townie/ suburban all at the same time. If I had to describe it in one scene it would be this: a middle aged man pushing an empty baby stroller with a half-drunk bottle of Strawberry Blush wine in the cup holder at noon (and no it wasn't Bubs).

So there we were, enjoying the cheesy goodness that is a Sconnie festival. We happend across a decorate your own cookie stand for the kiddos. Bunny likes cookies, we decided to let her decorate one. So we slapped on some red frosting and some blue and white jimmies (or sprinkles if you will) and let her have at it.

Of course she doesn't eat the cookie like a normal child. No she decides she has to lick the frosting off. So there was red frosting and jimmies everywhere. We'd have to stop every minute or so to wipe her down but it didn't really help. She had frosting on her eyebrows and jimmies up her nose.

The jimmies up her nose thing really killed me. I had to sit down on the side of the road because I was afraid I'd fall down laughing. Then I had to take a baby wipe and surgically remove said jimmies from her nose. I'm not sure what sort of damage they would do if she inhaled them but I didn't really want to find out.

So I was recounting the story for my parents later at Sunday dinner, when Bunny very soberly asks "Where is my nose jimmie?" Where indeed Bunny, where indeed.

Please Stop It, Please for Mommy's Sake

So Bunny and I were at the park. She was running around like a crazy girl generally having a great time.

All was right with the world until . . . she spotted the pole underneath the big slide. She ran right to it and started swinging on it. "Look at me Mommy. I'm swinging in circles." No! No! No! You're only 2.

So it was time to start diversionary tactics, look Bunny a swing. Look Bunny the monkey bars. Look the sandbox.

She immediatly stopped what she was doing and ran to the sandbox. Crisis averted.

Honey You're Yelling at the TV Again

Let's get this out there: Bunny watches TV. Oh the horrors!

She doesn't watch it all the time but there are three shows that she likes, Little Einsteins, Word World and Ni Hao Kai-Lan. All of them are educational and she enjoys them.

But because she watches them, I watch them too. And I apparently have some issues with them. Well really just with Little Einsteins. The premise is 4 little kids fly around in their rocket ship having adventures.

My first problem is where are their parents? I mean they are flying all over the world and sometimes outerspace and they never have to call home or worry about making dinner. Curious. They spent Christmas at Rocket's house and then went to Mount Everest looking for a present. Where are your parents kids? Why isn't anyone looking for you? Do we need to call Child Protective Services? Okay, maybe they are just imaginary adventures, but still.

Another problem is their approach to problem solving. Take for example the episode where they are visiting a mother cello whose babies are about to hatch (out of little cello cases). Okay. The nest was built right on the river (which isn't a good place for a nest) and one of the cases is washed into the river. The kids hop in to Rocket to rescue the baby cello. When they get him, rather than taking him directly back to his mother, they let the baby cello walk around Italy looking for his mother. Not very responsible. The kids know where mommy cello is and the baby doesn't even know what his mother looks like. He confuses a kid, a giraffe, a plate of pasta and a bridge for his mother. But they mindlessly follow the cello where ever he goes. Really?

Then there is Big Jet. Big Jet is a blue plane that is always causing trouble for Rocket and the kids. He steals stuff, he breaks stuff and is generally bad news. Now Rocket is a rocket ship, he should have phasers and lasers and other weapons. I'm waiting for the day that Rocket just gets fed up with Big Jet and just blasts him with his big guns. But alas, I know that will never happen.

After reading this, Bubs reminded me of yet another problem I have with this show. Rather than flying to the top of a mountain, Rocket will transform and climb the mountain on treads. Have to cross an ocean? Do you fly over it? No, you transform into a boat or submarine. Are their train tracks? Let's stop flying and turn into a train, that's much faster. You have a rocket ship, you should be flying everywhere. Its called the path of least resistance people.

Okay I know its just kids' TV and I should just chill out. Apparently, logic and the rules of physics don't apply here. But it still bugs me.

But you know what doesn't bug me? Lulu the Rhino from Ni Hao Kai-lan. She's a pink rhino that flys around with the help of a red balloon tied to her horn. That I can buy.

Thank You Nice Day Have Dinner

Have you ever been so tired where you break into peals of laughter for no reason? In college we called it being punchy. When you stayed up all night studying or just generally didn't get enough sleep you would get punchy.

When you are punchy you laugh an almost hysterical laughter that can turn in to tears at any moment. For no reason. Its just your emotions being pushed to the edge and your overtired body can't do anything about it. We've all been there.

And last night so was Bunny. For whatever reason she decided not to nap, yet again. But she needs a nap, if she doesn't she gets punchy.

We had dinner with my parents last night. When we are there she is always "on", the consumate entertainer, making everyone laugh. Round about 6:30 she started in on the hysterical laughter. She found a Thomas the Train song book where if you press a button it will play a song. When she'd press the button she'd start dancing and laughing and laughing. Things that weren't really funny became hilarious.

At about 7 we figured we should leave so we could get Bunny to bed at a reasonable time. All the way home she would point at a car and yell "Red Car" and laugh. Then she would cry and say "I want Daddy". I explained Daddy had his own car because he came from work. Well that worked for a while before she saw a "Blue Car". Then it was "I want Ama and Baca." Oh look "Green Car"

On and on it went. Laughter and tears, tears and laughter. Meanwhile I was channel surfing on the radio and came across "The Break Up Song" by The Greg Kinn Band. I don't know why but I always have to sing it really loud when I hear it. So I did. Well that was pretty much it. Bunny dissolved into hysterics at every "Bumpa bump bumpa bump bump bump" She'd yell "sing it again mommy." She sang it all the way home, laughing all the way.

So it looks like Greg Kinn got himself a new fan.

Be Careful What You Wish For - A Cautionary Tale

The internet is a powerful force. It is a fountain of information, both useful and not. It contains wonderful sites that enable you to waste an entire day with out accomplishing anything useful. (hello You Tube!) It allows people like myself to publish randomness to thousands of readers. Okay maybe not thousands, more like dozens. Ok 5 (hi Mom!).

But did you know that the internet also has the power to make your wishes come true. It does. Or at least it did in my case.

Here is my story. Last October when I was still an employed worker bee, I posted on a message board I frequent that I was going to quit my job at the end of the year. It was part venting about how much I disliked my job, and part wishful thinking.

Well three weeks to the day that I sent that thought out into the wilds of the internet, my wish was granted. Against my will. You see my boss decided to "restructure" our office and let everyone go. Man was I mad. How dare he! I was going to quit! I wanted that satisfaction. But no.

I went back into my office and asked the internet how it could do this to me. The internet just laughed and laughed. "You got what you wanted sister. You would never have had the guts to do it on your own. So I made it happen. How do you like me now? What?"

Well truth be told, I did not like the internet one bit at that point. But I really couldn't be mad at it for too long. There was another new video on You Tube I had to check out, so we made up.

But I began to wonder, is the internet really all powerful? It made one dream happen, could it make another? So I cautiously posted another dream, "I want to win $1,000,000." I didn't want to go overboard, $1,000,000 was a reasonable number. I waited and waited. I checked the mail every day, no one sent me money. Publisher's Clearing House never rang my doorbell.

So I angrily asked the internet "What's up with that? Where's my $1,000,000?"

"Stupid girl. That's not how I roll. Now shut up and check your Myspace page, you have three new friend requests."

So I did, and my crazy mixed up love affair with the internet continues.