He fought McDonald's, and McDonald's won.

This is the face of a thoroughly knackered child.

(too bad the ketchup smear battle scars aren't visible in this picture)

Thank you gaggle of little boys who sucked my son into an inane and nonsensical game of bouncing off of play equipment only to fall over "dead" while giggling uncontrollably.

Thank you fast food for your oh so relaxing combination of fat and salt.

Thank you management for having Wi-Fi in a play area, so I could entertain myself for the nearly two hours I let Payne run like a wild animal through your carefully designed cage, er, I mean play room.

As I sit relaxing into the third hour of my not so great napper's nap, I can safely say:

McDonald's, you earned that nine dollars I spent in your establishment today. Bless you.

The Wonky Toe.

Feet phobics beware!

Now those are toes only a Mother could love.

He's not splaying out his foot weird here. This is how his foot actually looks when he's standing. His pinkie toe lays completely sideways on both feet. I keep waiting for his pediatrician to notice and tell me he needs toe braces or something, but so far we've been spared.

These mutant toes actually interfere with our daily life (heavy sigh). I have to shop very carefully for sandals, because most have a slot or hole in the near vicinity of the pinkie toe. That's fine if your kid's toe doesn't have the propensity to shoot sideways out of the hole! Payne had a pair of sandals last year that he barely wore because when he did so I spent all of my time tucking his pinkie toes back into his shoes. I think it's possible to understand my dedication to this activity when you think about how freaky his toes sticking sideways out of his sandals actually looked.

Maybe I should should have toned down the aspartame consumption when I was pregnant with him...

No pictures this time...

I don't want to get reported to the authorities.

Tonight, for the second time in recent history, my son got down on all fours after his bath, yelled "Mine Frog!" (I'm a frog) and then frog hopped and ribbited around the house. His "ribbit" is impressively accurate and raspy.

All of this was done stark naked.

He is always nude when struck with the inspiration to be a frog.

My Morning.

As I hover in front of the coffee pot willing the damn thing to drip faster, I look over and realize someone is staring at me from the kitchen bar.



What are you looking at? It's decaf, ALRIGHT?

Shortly thereafter, I'm summoned by "Mommeeeee! I got Cocs!" and am greeted with this:



Note the duckling look I mentioned yesterday. Classic!

The boy loves his "Cocs".

Yes, you read that right.

(stares innocently)

What? Ohhhh, you're waiting for an explanation? I suppose I could oblige.

Payne was gifted some Crocs, of which I'm normally not a fan, but these are pretty cute as far as rubber gardening shoes go. I added them to his shoe lineup with the intention of occasional use.

Boy met Crocs. Boy put on Crocs himself. Boy fell in looooove.

He begs for them, his precious, precious "Cocs" (that's not embarrassing in public at all!). He loves to put them on, often backwards, which creates a charming duckling look. He loves to talk about them.

"MY Cocs....my NEW Cocs!....Cocs Mommy!.....Go get Cocs!"

All other shoes have been pushed by the wayside. I'll even hide the Crocs and try to pull out another pair for the day, and Payne just looks concerned and asks "I find Cocs?".

No really, he took a nap with them the other day.

This face says "Take them off and I cut someone...".

"What's so funny?"

"You act like this isn't a normal way to lounge..."

Baby Sitter.

We just found out yesterday that Payne is going to have a baby sister. Hurrah! Naturally, after our last experience, we were a bit gun shy about finding out the sex, but we got some very convincing (or perhaps offensive?) pictures of girl parts.

So my Mom was watching Payne during the appointment, and I had this adorable (in my mind) idea to get him to tell her the sex of the baby when we went to pick him up.

We get there, I drag him outside and say "Let's tell Granny you're going to have a baby sister! When we go in, yell "Baby Sister!" at Granny, ok? Remember..."Baby sister!"". Payne looks psyched.

We re-enter the house, Payne looks at my Mom and says "Imgummarwarbumbrillumabababysitter..."

My Mom: (blink...blink)

Me: "Say it again buddy!"

Payne: "Imgumma...um...(noises uninterpretable as English characters)babysitter."

My Mom: "Baby Sister?!"

Payne: (blink...blink)

Me: (feeling the need to save the moment) "Yes! Yaaaay!"

So yeah, not exactly what I had in mind. heh heh. I've been working with him about "Baby sister" ever since, and he'll definitely say it, but it always comes out "Baby sitter".

"Mine have baby sitter!" is just a little anticlimactic for me! Harumph.

And all of her ultrasound photos (besides the, um, personal one) look like this:



Isn't she adorable? (Nervous smile) I think i learned the hard way to request a face profile photo of a baby in-utero. The head on ones look a bit, how shall I say...terrifying.

Sorry Nugget! You're simply gorgeous to us anyway, and we already love you so much!

Camouflage.

"Doo dee doo dee doo. Nothing to see here, just picking up the family room. I'm impressed Payne ate his whole breakfast, since he's been on a banana strike lately. Gosh I love this cowboy hat my Dad got for Payne at the rodeo. It's so BAAAAH! WHAT IS THIS GOOEY COWBOY HAT COLORED CYLINDER?!.........Oh, you're kidding. Freaking gross..."




An attempt at a well balanced meal foiled once again.

My closeted obsession.

I might be addicted to matching Payne to Dan.

I'm not sure if this is hideously cheesy or not.

See, my conflict comes in because I pretty much run screaming from "Mommy and Me" looks for mothers and daughters. I'm assuming this is because little girls clothes are so very different from women's clothes. In order for a mother to successfully match her little girl, she inevitably ends up looking sort of like a cast member of Barney and Friends. And obviously you can't get clothes for little girls that match normal women's clothes. I mean, little Emma can't strut around the playground in her skinny jeans and stilettos....I hope.

But the beauty of men's and boys' clothing is that in many cases they're virtually identical! This seems to be the case with semi-formal clothing in particular. I may or may not wait until Dan is dressed for church some Sundays to see what he's chosen, just so I can try to replicate the polo shirt color or style of button down or whatever for Payne.

I tried to find Payne a pair of cowboy boots that matched Dan's, but couldn't get the color combo right. Very frustrating.

And then my newest thing (as illustrated above) was maybe spending a little too much on flip flops for a 2 year old, who has yet to fully grasp flip flop wearing technique, simply because they resemble Daddy's. And of course, as soon as I see Dan toss on his sandals, I pull out Payne's and hope people notice.

This may be an illness of sorts. If you ever see Dan in a t-shirt with a giant "Big Truck!" graphic on the stomach, please tell him to inform me I've simply gone too far.

Discipline fail.

I generally put Payne in time out when he is disobedient. We have the "ottoman of shame" set up in the dining room, and he sits there for two minutes whenever he crosses me. Heh heh.

Well, I thought I was doing pretty well with the whole idea, and threats of time out were actually stopping him from continuing bad behaviors, until recently.

Now, after he gets a time out I go in to talk to him and he's sitting there grinning at me, he pretends to listen to my "we don't hit/throw spaghetti at the wall/force feed the dogs bananas" talk and then rushes to hug me, because he knows once we hug he can run away. AND THEN he will go pretend to go into time out. He pushes the ottoman near the couch off away from everything else, chirps "Time out!" and sits there nicely by himself. Once we were outside and he decided he needed a time out and just plopped his little booty down on the exterior window sill.

I'm not sure what to do with a child that finds staring into space in isolation recreational.

The culinary creativity continues.

Payne has discovered the art of "cooking". And by cooking I mean combining everything served to him during a meal and stirring it all together. The disturbing part is that he eats his creations happily.



I served him mac and cheese with canned carrots (he inexplicably loves canned carrots even though they're pretty much the most disgusting canned vegetable available...inferior in grossness only to canned asparagus) and he tossed in his sliced grapes. This bothered me so greatly that I hand picked all of the grape slices out. Of course, he just did it again, and scarfed down the casserole of nasty with relish.

Operation de-stink.

Every now and then Stella and Ethel start to get a little funky. They never really get that dog smell, but they start to smell sort of like sour fritos, because, you know, we all know what sour fritos smell like?

In short, they needed a bath yesterday. A bath is a serious event in this house, because my little "rat dogs" as I lovingly refer to them, love to burrow into blankets, beds, furniture, or anything they can fit into. I've found both of them curled up in pillow cases before...that were already housing pillows.

When we bathe them, we not only have to wash them but also wash every scrap of material they've been marinating in for the last couple of months. Otherwise they simply make a run for the nearest burrowing area and hide there until they've absorbed all of their stale dachshund stink. Blech.

It's imperative to wash Ethel first. Stella completely panics when bathed, and if she goes first she works Ethel into a lather of "I'll save you!" hysteria that makes for a second chaotic sink scrub. So, I plop Ethel into the kitchen sink and she just sort of becomes paralyzed; very handy. She gets washed and dried, and I plop her down and race her to the doggy door to lock it. If I lose she runs outside and rubs all over what microscopic bits of filth she can find immediately. Then I race her to the bedroom to close the door so she can't do a nosedive into her smelly bed. Fortunately I've got about 20 inches of leg on her. (Evil cackle)

Then it's Stella's turn. The first step is to locate and withdraw her from her chosen hiding place. She doesn't seem possessed with the same obligation to help a fallen friend that Ethel is overcome with when Stella is the victim. She prefers to make a run for it and let Ethel face her demons alone. Once the coward is in hand, down she goes into the sink. Whenever possible she grasps the edges of the sink with her paws to try to avoid going in (the good old mammalian umbrella trick). Once I'm done I try to dry her and she insists on burrowing through the towel and drying herself. I guess I can understand her telling me to eff off.

Ethel is greatly relieved when Stella is returned to her, and the two of them celebrate by ripping around the house in a display of energy completely uncharacteristic of them (barring the invasion of a Girl Scout cookie peddler or a Meter Man) while I scurry around the house and pick up every bed, quilt, towel, or pillow they've claimed as their own. I then lock all of the contraband into the laundry room. I spend the rest of the day holding my breath as I shove unbelievably stinky linens into my washer.

In the evening, the clean dogs are reunited with their clean linens. Oh, the joy of this moment! I pull in the still warm dog bed and comforter (yes, they have their own comforter) and Stella leaps into the air in bliss. Ethel roots around to see if she can locate a dryer sheet. If she strikes gold she'll rub her face in it like the freak that she is. They both cavort about the bedroom as I reassemble their ridiculously elaborate sleeping place and as soon as I step away they dive in (No really. They catch a good bit of air.) and snort happily about until their snorting converts to snoring.

So, if you want to smell a "spring breeze" fresh dachshund, come over to my house in the next 48 hours. I make no promises after that!

What the heck?!

This keeps happening! I take my clean presentable child somewhere, I get to the somewhere, take him in, look down after awhile and see that he is mysteriously smeared in filth.

I'm fairly certain he went into a hospital with me like this today.


(No, your monitor isn't dirty. There's silty grey stuff all over his face)

The other day I took him into Payless shoes, and after a good 5 minutes I glance at him and he has a black smeared hand print running down his entire face. I'd just been standing there all nonchalant while people stared at my grime covered kid. He looked like a Native American warrior, or a street urchin.

"Oh, don't worry folks. I just found him on the corner and thought I'd take him home, scrub him up, and pass him off as my own for the next 20 years or so. Then I can tell him about his past and the trauma of the incident will inspire him to become a great novelist and I can live off of his royalties for the rest of my life."

What were we talking about? Oh right. I was mortified. Plus, I didn't have any wipes with me so I was pulling his t-shirt up practically over his head in order to wipe his face off. Classy Mother of the Year right here.

After some serious bewilderment and detective work, I've hypothesized that he's running his hands along cars in parking lots while we're walking into places. Then, when he touches his face the grime from the cars gets transferred. That, or he's pilfering coal from an unknown location and keeping it in his pockets to apply as war paint in order to intimidate all we encounter. Who knows.

"What are you lookin at?"

"Y'all act like you've never seen an Ewok shirt and a cowboy hat on the same person at the same time before."

"Clearly you aren't running in the right social circles. There's a whole network of George Lucas enthusiast cowboys out there. I could totally link you to some forums."

"Alright, that's it. If you paparazzi don't go find another person to skulk around I'm going to take MY photos to local law enforcement."

(He does this whenever I take his picture now. He also yells "cheese!" as he holds up his "camera".)

Fast Food Nation.

Oh my gosh! Did my son actually eat his whole "buddist"?



No such luck. He just took it to-go.




Dan took some photos of Payne's great culinary accomplishment on Monday night.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you strawberry, teriyaki pork chop, and barbeque sauce hash:



And folks, he ate it...with a smile. Watch out Food Network!