Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
This is by far the best road sign between our house and Billings. It’s possibly the best road sign anywhere ever. Who wouldn’t pull over at an exit that promises an Anaconda Opportunity? No one. That’s who.
Today I’m offering some travel tips for road-tripping with kids over at Parenting.com. Come over and share some of yours.
It’s time to introduce a new game on the blog. I like to call it, “Guess What I Ordered – No Really – Guess.” The way it works is I order something in the mail and slowly reveal what I found inside the package and you get to guess what I ordered. You can only look at one picture at a time and no skipping to the end. If you can guess what I ordered before looking at the final picture, you win… your mind-reader’s license. This is a good one. Ready? Okay.
Picture number one:
If you guessed that I ordered something from Misikko, you’re RIGHT! But that’s not specific enough. Try again.
Picture number two:
If you guessed bubble wrap or a box full of pink and monkeys, you are incorrect.
Picture number three:
Mid-grade false flower in eggshell? Nope.
Picture number four:
Did you guess pink soap flowers in a recyclable recepticle with a pink bow? Incorrect!
Picture number five:
Gorilla with convenient velcro hands? So very wrong. Both you and the gorilla.
Picture number six:
Pink satin bag or pink satin bag full of emery boards with their own individual ball chains? Uh-uh.
Picture number seven:
Bargain brand hand sanitizer? Not a bit.
Picture number eight:
Purple satin clutch? This was a free gift.
Picture number nine:
White satin bag nesting inside the purple satin bag? We’re getting close.
Picture number ten:
TA-DA! If you guessed Hana Shine Shield Advanced Heat Styling Therapy, you’re a winner!
I’m excited to try it out. It comes as a recommendation from Abby, my hair guru, who has a blog that I lurk on and then spend hours trying to copy her hair… because I am creepy like that. If things don’t work out with me and Hana, there’s always the velcro monkey. What a haul!
We were on vacation at grandma’s house last month and the kids had been outfitted with about all the candy and treats their bodies could handle. They were enjoying life immensely.
One night, after brushing his teeth, Magoo asked if he could eat more candy, specifically Nerds.
“But Buddy,” I explained, “You already brushed your teeth.”
“I know. It’s okay because I have a plan. I don’t even need to chew or suck on them. I’ll just swallow them down. Then they won’t get on my teeth.”
“But then you wouldn’t even enjoy them.”
“That’s okay,” he said.
Dan and I laughed about this and suggested that maybe we should just inject sugar directly into his veins, bypassing his digestive system altogether.
A couple of weeks later we were back home from vacation and I was multi-tasking when Dan arrived home from work. I was cleaning the kitchen like mad with my laptop on the stove, playing So You Think You Can Dance. It’s my favorite show but I wasn’t watching it, not even really listening to the music. I was checking it off my to-do list.
“What are you doing?” Dan asked.
With a sheepish grin, I responded, “I think I’m swallowing my Nerds.”
If you’re gonna eat something yummy, eat it. If you’re gonna watch a show, watch it. If you’re gonna spend time with your kids, be present. Make sure you at least taste the candy on its way down.
Please take a moment and shed a tear for the thousands who gave their lives on our windshield as we drove accross the country these past two weeks.
“My five-year-old is struggling with writing. Well, he’s not so much struggling as he just hates it and thinks it’s a waste of time because it is in no way related to video games.”
Read more about how I’ve convinced him that writing can be fun on the Mom Congress blog at Parenting.com
“If your kids fully know that you’re completely unwilling to follow through on your threats, there’s no way they’ll trust you or do what you ask. I know this with my head but my heart and my laziness sometimes have a hard time laying down the smack. I give too many “chances” and then get frustrated when they whine and beg for ‘one more chance, just one more chance.'”
If you observe my children, you’ll start to think we have a series of very interesting rules in place in our home.
#8. Refuse to eat food that is more than five minutes old because it is “leftovers” unless it’s more than two days old and you find it on the floor.
I saw a woman in the line at the grocery store today who was a dead ringer for Dame Judy Dench. It made sense to me because Dame Judy seems to pop up in all kinds of places. But then I thought, “Why would an older woman with a British accent be required to play ‘woman buying avocadoes at Safeway’?” No, they could have gotten anybody for that role. Heck, I’ve played it before.
Judy Dench should be kept available for playing roles like: persnickety housekeeper, or snobby aristocrat, or hard-bitten head of British intelligence, or The Queen.
In his Easter basket, or rather under it, Magoo got a gigantic illustrated Lego Star Wars encyclopedia. In a plastic sleeve on the bottom corner of the book was a tiny Lego Luke Skywalker. So Sunday night he’s talking to some friends of ours about his Easter and he says, “You wanna see the awesome thing the Easter Bunny brought me?”
“Sure,” they say. What else can they say? The entire evening’s been a frantic show and tell, the likes of which only a second child with a captive audience can pull off. I am a second child. I would know. They know that he’s gonna show them the present whether they say, “Sure,” or, “Why don’t you take your pathetic Easter present and shove it where the sun don’t shine?” so they might as well be gracious.
At this point they’ve already seen his gaping tooth orifice and the way his tongue can slide through it, heard all of his jokes, learned how you can amputate the legs from multiple Lego guys to make stilts for one lucky Lego guy, and been subjected to detailed descriptions of multiple video games. What’s one more exhibit? Besides, we’re holding them hostage and if they want pie, they need to play along. Also. He is adorable.
So he brings out the tiny Lego guy and goes off about all of its many amazing properties (hair, moving limbs, painted-on medallion, relation to Star Wars) and its deficiencies (lack of light saber or weapon of any kind, representation of a part of the movie that involves kissing). He loves this Lego guy and is so glad that he got him for Easter.
“Oh, yeah,” he adds as an afterthought, “And he comes with a book.”
I’ve spent the last 4 days in D.C. at the Mom Congress conference and I’m inspired and exhausted.
Click here to read how I stayed close to Dan and the kids while hanging out on the opposite coast.