Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
This week at Parenting.com I’m taking my kids on a virtual tour of our house, introducing them to all the excellent features it has to offer.
Dresser – Kids. Meet your dresser. Your clothes live inside. I know you’re aware that the drawers open but did you know that they can also close?
Laylee just said, “Mom, you’re amazing! You can copy any voice and sound exactly like the person you’re imitating.”
“Yes,” I said, “If that person is a member of the Lollipop Guild.” I am known for my munchkin impressions.
“Also French people,” she added.
Ah yes. French people. Ziss I cannot deny. Ahn-han-han.
I’ve been enjoying The Prudent Homemaker, a website dedicated to feeding your family well on a tight budget, among other things. Today I tried out her French bread recipe which worked beautifully the first time around. I was so proud of myself that I started speaking like the chef from The Little Mermaid… badly. Apparently, it was extremely impressive. I now have a reputation as a master of vocal disguise.
I am also a master of short cuts so if you decide to make this simple bread, I found that you can make it even simpler by kneading the dough in your Kitchen Aid rather than by hand. It still rose quite nicely after 8-10 minutes in the machine. It wasn’t as blissfully domestic, but I was able to check email while the bread was kneading so I’m totally okay with that. Maybe next time I’ll wear a frilly apron while checking email and that will even the domestical score.
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.
There are days when I’m not the greatest mom, at least not on paper. Now, I’m not necessarily a bad mom on these days but I sure look less than stellar. These are the days when my kids tell their friends that I yell at them ALL the time when I only yell at them one or two of the times. These are the days when they somehow slip past my watchful eye and end up at church wearing muddy tennis shoes with their baptism dress or to a formal occasion wearing a dress shirt, tie and sweatpants. These are the days when they say I never read to them or tell their teacher I don’t feed them breakfast. I had one of these days last week.
I’d been up late the night before so when Wanda went down for her nap, I went down with her. I turned off the ringers on all the phones because there was only an hour and a half until Magoo got home from kindergarten and I wanted the nap to count. I don’t nap often and when I do, I rarely turn the ringers off. But this day, I was exhausted.
With ten minutes left in my nap, I heard a loud knock at the door. I ignored it. Whenever I get up from a nap to answer the door, I find a package left on the doorstep and I regret having missed out on my sleep. The knock came again, only louder. On the third insistent knock, I made my way downstairs to see who was so desperate to see me. It was a friend of mine who Magoo’s school office staff had asked to come and find me. He was barfy sick and they’d been calling me for the last hour.
They didn’t want to send him home on the bus in his condition so he was sitting in the health room, miserable, waiting for me. All of my emergency contacts were either not answering or their numbers had been disconnected. So I raced to change out of my pajamas, grabbed the baby in her ratty play clothes and sleep-disheveled hair, and headed to the school, unshowered and un-made-up.
I explained to the staff that I hadn’t heard their calls because I’d been napping with the ringer off. I think they were very impressed by my stay-at-home mom attentiveness to my children’s needs. I pulled my baseball cap further down on my nappy hair. My friend in the office said Magoo might just be hungry since he’d told his teacher that I hadn’t fed him breakfast that morning. Of course I’d fed him breakfast that morning. In fact, I’d made him a spinach smoothie for variety and extra nutrition but he didn’t count it as breakfast because it was drinkable.
So I took my sick boy and my poor hygiene and headed home, where Magoo told me about how they’d been working on a clay project at school that day. The CLAY PROJECT! I was supposed to have sent in money for the clay project. I’d even gotten a reminder notice from the teacher saying he could not participate if I didn’t send in money. And I’d forgotten. And she’d let him participate anyway because she is simply awesome like that.
His teacher? Awesome. Me? I have my moments.
It’s time to break out the die cuts and vibrating-uvula-shaped punches because Wanda just had her first full-scale grocery store melt down and I’d like to capture this special moment properly.
We stopped by Safeway yesterday afternoon and I got her buckled into the plastic car on the front of my cart. Magoo was at school so she positioned herself in the middle of the seat, working both steering wheels simultaneously with frantic intensity and waving to people as we passed. It was a good day to be a baby in the Thompson family.
But then, as she was shoulder-checking, halfway through our trip, she noticed that nestled against the police car-style wire cage behind her was a ripe, luscious baby loaf of Tillamook cheddar cheese. It was close enough to be mouth-watering but completely inaccessible. Her heart reached the breaking point. “Sheece! Sheece! OHHHHH! Shee-SHEECE!” she wailed.
Three of Wanda’s favorite words are “Sh-z” (shoes), “Sheece” (cheese), and “Shee-Sheece” (Jesus). So you can see how it was hard for me to tell if she was simply calling me out for putting sheece so close, yet so far away, or if she was calling for divine intervention to deliver the sheece unto her waiting arms. Either way, she was seriously ticked off.
I was able to distract her and we moved on with our shopping, going over bumps as often as possible, because what’s more fun than being unexpectedly jostled so that your brains rattle around inside your head? The answer is – nothing.
But then we reached the checkout aisle and the long arms of Wanda have grown ever longer. With those arms she was able to reach out her chubby little fists and grab hold of wonderful treats, Skittles in each hand, only to have me wrench them from her grasp. Oh, the weeping and wailing that then ensued.
With my first child, the grocery store meltdown was embarrassing. With my second, it was annoying. With my third, I find it sort of fascinating to watch. It’s a definite milestone when they go from sweet compliant baby, smiling at you while you point out the colors of different fruits to a wailing, whirling banshee of auditory destruction. Wanda knows what she wants now and she will spare no ear drum getting her message across.
She’s secure enough in her rightness to throw a face-shattering hissy fit. And I’m secure enough as a parent to pry the candy from her fingers, explain briefly why she can’t have it and then ignore her as I buy my groceries.
When they got home from school, the kids found a soccer ball on the front lawn and got into a game that involved Laylee and Magoo kicking the ball back and forth while Wanda screamed and tried to intercept it from them.
It was cool and cloudy with lots of mud.
When they finally decided to include Wanda in the game and pass her the ball, she picked it up and ran. She’s no fool. She knew she likely wouldn’t get the ball again.
And we have a new camera, thanks to tax return season. Hopefully there will be many more pictures to share and many more soccer balls to not share.
The SOTU always sounds so pretty. Giving all kids the chance to succeed in their education, helping build businesses, constructing new roads, expanding light rail, which in some cases is faster than taking an airplane and doesn’t require pat-downs. (President Obama didn’t have many good one liners last night so little moments like that packed a big punch.)
I liked all of these things. I liked the Chilean miner stuff, the Allen Brothers’ Solar Panel stuff, lots of good things, things that make me happy to ponder upon, things that make me think, “I want to live there. That sounds like a dad-gum awesome country.”
And as much as there have been snickers about Members of Congress sitting together, purposefully integrating the two parties as an ineffectual symbolic gesture, I liked it. I like symbolic gestures. I think they’re a good starting place. When I’m sick and Dan buys me flowers, I know they won’t cure me, unless they’re some stinkin’ special Tangled-style magic flowers, but knowing that he wants to help (or even that he’s willing to help when asked – sometimes I ask for flowers) is comforting to me.
So I say, “Good Job Members of Congress! Thanks for playing a bit nicer last night. Let’s take that ball and run with it. Pretty soon you’ll be giving each other mani-pedis and fixing Social Security together.”
I think my favorite line from President Obama’s speech last night was near the end when he said forcefully, “If a bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it.”
I turned to Dan and said, “REALLY?!? That is awesome. The President is going to veto all bills with earmarks. Really?!? Doesn’t that mean he’ll veto all bills?” I hope he does and I hope things change but this has the ring of “Read my lips. No new taxes,” to me.
Earmarks and crazy amendments to bills are just the way business is done in Washington. They’re the reason I am very reticent to join a campaign in favor of any bill. It doesn’t matter how awesome the bill looks on the surface, I rarely come out strongly in favor of one because who knows what’s swimming down below?
It may be a bill for better education funding… that also buys a congressman a fleet of ponies, and outlaws the polio vaccine in favor of an over-the-counter polio remedy that some pharmaceutical lobbyist thinks we should be selling more of, and sends all McDonald’s Franchise owners to Disneyland where they will learn how to infuse Big Macs with methamphetamines.
I wish the process could be simplified. For all the talk about helping the average American, they sure make it hard for us to figure out exactly how we’re being helped.
Also, I don’t think we have the money for any of this. I’ll rephrase. I know we don’t have the money for any of this. Did the President just say he was going to find extra money by doing a massive re-org/layoff of departments of the federal government because that’s what it sounded like. That is a good starting place.
Whenever I suggest to Dan that we buy a fleet of ponies or plan a trip to Disneyland (with or without illicit drugs), he asks me if we have the money for that. And I check and then we usually don’t do the thing, although ponies are SOOOO awesome, because we’d have to go into debt.
Going into debt isn’t even the issue right now in our country. We’re trying to slightly lower the amount by which we get deeper in debt every month by a few billion dollars here and there. I can’t even wrap my brain around the immensity of the problem.
I want to plug the entire federal budget into YNAB and then start slashing things, things I like, things I use, things I care about. We don’t have the money for that.
I recently got a call from a political pollster who asked me questions like, “Do you favor a massive increase in taxes or would you rather kill old people?” and “Are you a democrat or do you hate children?” Eventually I just stopped the survey because the options were so ridiculous.
Maybe we just need to wipe out the entire budget and start from scratch. A certain amount of money for old people, a whole bunch for children, throw some money at education, health care, job creation, road construction. Heck, I don’t even mind if you spend a little something to defend our country. But I don’t need a pony until the deficit is gone. I can wait.
I got a wicked blister this week from peeling too many potatoes and carrots. Dan says I must have soft delicate computer programmer hands like him. And that’s funny.
The problem is – I am not a computer programmer. I am a mom. Shouldn’t a mom have calloused hands, worn tough from performing good mom-ish works?
This reminds me. It’s about that time of year anyway. I should check to see if the bathrooms need cleaning… and then add that to Laylee’s chore chart.
Magoo went missing yesterday and I nearly lost it. Has this ever happened to you? Did you freeze? Panic? Or look for them with a singleness of purpose?