I'm.... Not Sure What My Point Was Here

Well, we're off to Lake Huron in approximately five hours! And instead of feverishly packing, or finishing up laundry, or cleaning out the ankle-deep SLUDGE of straw wrappers and ground up Skittles and decaying french fries from the van floor, I am sitting here emptying my Google reader and eating a disturbing number of Chips Ahoy! with Heath bits. Which are a-MAZING. I don't normally buy packaged cookies, in keeping with my only-eating-baked-stuff-if-it's-homemade-and-worth-the-fat rule plus my usual halfhearted attempts to keep the preservative/additive/fructose whatevers to a minimum. I mean it's not like no one in our family is ALLOWED to eat packaged products or fast food (see above as re: french fry detritus;) I just try not to have a lot of it in the house, so at least we're not eating junk twenty-four seven.

Anyways. Tangent. The point was, I did buy a bunch of packaged crap for our trip to the cottage because who the heck wants to spend their vacation stuck inside a tiny hot kitchen while everyone else chills on the beach? NOT ME, that's who. Plus, you know, VACATION, which means rule breaking time. So I bought, and then immediately broke into, these cookies, and my goodness if they aren't heavenly. I didn't know what I was missing. These are in fact just as yummy as any homemade cookie, I must say. I refuse to even look at the nutrition information, though, or I imagine it would spoil my delight. Ignorance is bliss.

Weekend Sugar

Check out all the celebs who've given birth at home! I found some of them pretty surprising, including Pam Anderson!

Spoiler Alerts. Plural.

So I was at the library the other day, officially for the kids to meet Brownie the Amazing Miniature Pony (who turned out to be, I kid you not, no taller than our very own dog... which I think means I win some kind of housekeeping award, considering our home is decent most of the time even while housing an animal who should apparently be living in a STALL) and I quickly grabbed a couple of novels for myself at random, as well as a CD of Elizabeth Berg's newest. I wouldn't ordinarily think to listen to an adult book in the car with the kids, but c'mon, it's Elizabeth Berg. How bad could it get?

Well, apparently I hit the most unsettling topics possible jackpot, because the Elizabeth Berg book unexpectedly led to a girl walking in on her mother swinging from a freaking rope in the garage (fortunately as soon as I realized what was happening I frantically slammed at the volume button until the CD player silenced, while meanwhile chattering loudly to the kids about Brownie the Amazing Miniature Pony.) Then the first book I cracked, Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott, was just relentlessly depressing, what with its basic tailspin of parental delusion and teenage self destruction and drug/substance abuse the likes of which innocent little me has never imagined. (Did you know BLEACH apparently masks certain drugs in a pee test?!)

Finally, after skimming to the end of that one, I moved on to Every Last One by Anna Quindlen. Which is like a sucker punch to the gut if you, you know, have or plan to have a child, or a husband, or anyone you love in your life ever. I am not even kidding, it's like someone presented her with the writing prompt: "every woman's worst nightmare." And while it was admittedly well written and intensely captivating, it was just gut wrenching and miserable and had me staring weepily at my kids for the remainder of the day, hugging them to me so often they started pulling away and looking at me funny. I just... I don't feel I gained anything from reading it, despite it being, in a literary sense, excellent. I wish I could unread it.

So! I think for my next venture into entertainment I'll go rent Sophie's Choice. Might as well get it over with!

The Usual Format

-I am currently eating strawberry rhubarb pie right out of the bakery box. The kids think it's disgusting because of the way the strawberry juice pools in the pie tin, and refuse to even try a bite. More for me, suckers. If there is a better pie, I've yet to encounter it. I swear, when the strawberries are super ripe and the rhubarb is so tart, the mingled juices almost taste boozy. Or maybe it's just me.

-I took a belly dancing class Tuesday night, you guys! It was so, so fun, and now I'm all sore in my side muscles. I really want to do it again, though. It felt very graceful and sensual, such a departure from the usual Western exercise classes- it felt like something you maybe already knew how to do, and just needed to tap back in and remember it, if that makes sense. And actually, some of the moves reminded me of laboring (friends and family: what doesn't remind you of birth?) So much of the work of labor is moving the baby down into your pelvis, so a lot of the shifting and circling movements we were making with our hips in the class felt similar to what childbirth educators refer to as the baby dance. (Yes, har har, the baby dance that comes forty weeks after doing the original "baby dance.") I decided to take at least a few more classes and learn some of the main moves to keep in my bag of tricks as a doula someday. Maybe saying, "Try this cool belly dance move I know!" might sound more appealing and fun than just "Try rolling your hips."

-Good Lord I am turning into such a hippie.

-Jameson is in such a delicious stage right now. Eating everything in sight, or trying; sitting up and playing with his siblings; screeching with delight about baths and the swimming pool and the sight of someone he recognizes. When he's happy to see me, he buries his face into my shoulder and just nuzzles around like a baby chimp or something, sometimes chuckling with happiness. Oh, I will miss him so much. I'm so ridiculously sentimental that I start to miss things before they're even over. The last few days of a vacation are always half torture because, oh, soon we'll have to go home.

-Speaking of vacation, we're going to Canada next weekend with the fam, and I'm so excited! Jameson's not been there yet, and I know he is going to love the sand and water so very much. How well he'll love sleeping in his pack and play remains to be seen.

-This means I have to schlep down to the health department today and finally get a copy of his official birth certificate so that we can cross the border legally. How have I not done this yet? Get the birth certificate, I mean. I have legally crossed the border before.

-Tonight we're filming a commercial for the family coffee house. Apparently I have been given a speaking part. This is the kind of thing I would have been frothing at the mouth in excitement about as a kid. Now I'm all: is it too late to whiten my teeth and lose ten pounds? Do I need to get my hair professionally blown out for this? Ahhck!

Dad's Day

Happy Father's Day to the man who taught my kids to love Rolling Stones and Smashing Pumpkins (even if they sometimes get confused and refer to them collectively as "The Rolling Pumpkins",) Star Wars (which I personally could live without,) bacon (taught me to love it too, sadly,) and all things sports related. The same man patiently read "Arthur's Underwear" to them tonight when I was tired and grumpy and said no more stories, is helping Eli learn to pee standing up, and started a soccer class using our church's gym just so Eli would get to play this year, too. He is very laid back about all the things I fret about (baths, nail trimming, clean sheets, safety before fun, not jumping on the furniture FTLOG) but his kids love him for it, and seem none the worse for it. Maybe even better.

Jim, you are a fun loving, wise, patient and unselfish father, and I hope you know how lucky your kids and I feel to have you. Every morning after you leaves, one or both of them inquire, "Will Daddy be home soon?" And you always are, but never soon enough for their taste. I can't imagine what we would do without you, and I hope we never have to find out. We love you!

The Livin' Is Easy

Oh dear, where to begin? I am still planning on making that move to my own site, yes I am, but holy heck things have been busy and crazy around here. Good busy, but still. See, all last summer while I was hot and pregnant and contracting and semi-bed resting and then total bed resting, I was all, "Next summer is going to be the BOMB! I am going to be super mom and we are going to do Fun!Stuff! and Be!Outside! all the time!"

I am keeping my little vow to myself, but I realize it doesn't leave a lot of time for, um, anything else. We have road tripped to the zoo multiple times already, got a membership at the kiddie spray park/pool, been on neighborhood walks and playground adventures and ice cream trips and picnic play dates and gone to nature exhibits and summer library programs and blah blah blah bestmomever. We are having a ton of fun, myself included, but yeah... I am falling into bed exhausted most days, just after I finish scraping the nastiness out of Jameson's high chair. He is at long last joining the world of food eaters, and while I am super happy about this since his weight was slipping down the charts there for awhile, I forgot how time consuming and messy and what a lot of extra work it is to have a baby eating with you at mealtimes.

Additional bits of stuff:

-We got viruses on both our computers last week, so half the time my internet is not available to me anyways. Grr. Sorry if you've had an email waiting forever for a reply. I shall check it today!

-I feel frustrated right now, because in the last week or so I had so many post ideas drift through my head. I tried really hard to sort of tack them in there so I could go back and gather them up, but of course as I sit combing my brain right now all I can think of is, "Do we need more sunscreen?"

-I think I spend approximately an hour a day just sun screening kids and then scrubbing them down at bath time. No wonder summer flies by so fast.

-Our landscaping actually looks kind of nice this year. We also put shutters on our giant front window, and it looks so nice I can't believe it took us six years to get around to it.

-I am in the process of finishing all of my required reading for doula training. It's great but it's so hard for me to simultaneously read and be engaged in real life. I get so lost in books.

-Speaking of, while at the library checking out my required books, I also grabbed a few novels. I absolutely loved "My Name Is Memory" by Anne Brashares. She also wrote "The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants," but oh dear, don't judge by that alone. I mean, I never even read that book, I'm sure it's good; what I'm saying is she's much more than YA fiction and even though this book does deal mainly with fairly youthful characters, it is in no way exclusive to them as an audience. My teaser will be that it deals with the concept of reincarnation, which found me completely engaged despite the fact that I was raised in Judeo-Christian tradition and never once gave reincarnation a serious thought.

I loved the idea of time being only a minor constraint, a movable, shifting element rather than the most finite and concrete aspect of any of our lives from the second we are born and the exact time is recorded on our birth certificate. If you liked "The Time Traveler's Wife," you'll LOVE "My Name Is Memory." (As soon as that sentence entered my mind, I saw it written out on the side of some drug store imitation cologne bottle.)

-I am running out of ideas and motivation for dinners. I just want to make salad ever night, but the kids won't eat it and anyways, we aren't rabbits, after all. But other than cook out stuff, which gets old pretty quickly, I never know what to make in the summer. Can't we just exist on watermelon and Popsicles? And, um, wine?

Location, Location, Location

Dear Blogger/Google Reader,

You are killing me. I can't mark-as-read, I can't comment on half of my peep's posts, and I can only occasionally even get into my own account to post the last week or so. I think this might just push me to finally USE that domain name I've owned for a year now and move my blog to my own site. (Though that won't help at all with the mark-as-read problem.) I do appreciate your free services and ease of blog set up, though, dear Blogger, and will always think of you fondly.

Love,

A no longer QUITE so desperate housewife

P.S.
You guys WILL bear with me if I'm MIA for a few (more) days as the hubs helps me set up a new local, right? Also! Blog design ideas/recommendations, anyone?

Getting There Is Half The Fun

Highlights from yesterday's road trip to the zoo:

-woman in front of us on the highway steering car with her elbow while applying eyeliner, curling her eyelashes, doing all sorts of things with powder and brushes, and styling her hair. Now, I've certainly done the swipe of lip gloss and/or mascara at the stop light routine a time or two, but I have never seen this level of inattention to one's driving. At seventy miles per hour. I have to say though, despite watching her in fascination/horror for almost half an hour, she never did swerve too dangerously. I've certainly seen worse drivers. So clearly, she's had some practice at applying a full face of makeup during her commute. Scary, or impressive?

-Eli, tearfully, after I hushed him from talking to me until after I got off the phone: "You hurt my feelings, Mommy! You hurt my heart!"

-Addy, after pulling over to use a rest area bathroom (a whopping half an hour after using the McDonalds bathroom): "Oh my, this soap smells heavenly! Like cherries! I can't stop smelling it!"

Awkward Birth

I know most of you probably check Awkward Family Photos at least periodically; if you don't, you are really missing out on some visual treats. Puts your last family reunion in perspective, guaranteed. Anyways, the recent Memorial Day Special was so wonderful I had to share. And after you've blinked and done double-takes, come back and tell me what you think.

Teaser: if you've had a water birth, did your PARTNER also jump in pants-less?

Best Face Forward

Our little ray of sunshine, or, Mom sure is looking forward to three more months of this, this being "They splashed me!/There's a BUG!/I'm too HOOOTTT!"


Jamers is at last warming to the idea of solid food. As a mother I'm delighted. As the maid, I demand a raise.