G's Roar.

It has been entirely too long since I posted, but I've got pretty much nuthin.

So, I present to you, Genevieve's "Roar".  All animals roar, you know.

Ok, so I hate uploading videos and I can only baaaaarely hear this with the sound on the video and on my computer cranked to the max. Blarg. So sorry if I just wasted 15 seconds of your time.

In other news, we now have an enormous cardboard space shuttle in our living area that is the result of my trip to CVS at 10:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Dan and I had a an 11th hour creative disagreement regarding Santa protocol. I was one of those idiots driving around town cruising past all of the closed Targets and Wal Marts.

But, they love it!



Unassociated thoughts and photos.

G has definitely reached the age of the lovie:

Shamelessly mackin' on Creepy Dalmatian Baby.

 

There's a posse now. Creepy Tiger Baby, Creepy Dalmatian Baby, and Creepy Bunnydogwecan'tfigureitout Baby.

 

I fully expect to wake in the middle of the night to the three of them poised over me, just watching me with their flat little eyes.

 

Man, I loved this toy as a kid: 

That whole "play upon the emotions of those entering their 30's and charge twice as much" thing? Totally effective.

 

Her hair is long enough for low pig tails! 

Yes. I dressed her like a human Christmas cookie. 

 

What the hell is this?

I'm in for a good decade of fearing my children's toys, apparently.

 

Payne now uses my spare shades when he wants me to "Frow deh sun away."

 

He has also started classifying cheese. There is "moving cheese" and "not moving cheese". Chips and "moving cheese" are his frequent request. Ha.

 

Yep. He made himself a nice bed in Genevieve's new toy box. 

He also asked me to lock him into his dress up box today. I refused.

 

And he tried to talk me into locking him in the dog kennel.

 

To quote the illustrious Hank Hill "Seven a.m. and already that boy ain't right."

 

 

Dear Fellow Preschool Parents,

Please stop breaking the mother effing curve.

Maybe you're a naturally crafty person, or a good baker, or have a way with small children.  Maybe you naturally wake up at 4 a.m. and need as many projects as possible to fill the time before your offspring awakes.

The fact is, I am none of those things.  I am the person sitting in her car waiting for curbside drop off who mutters "Oh f*ck" when she sees you traipse into the building with an armful of cheerily decorated gifts, one for ALL of the school staff. 

I am the person who sent ice cream cups for her son's birthday, while you hand delivered homemade cookies iced with a perfect likeness of Abby Kadabby or something...

I am the one who turned in her son's first homework assignment (in other words, her first homework assignment) late.

You turn in "getting to know you" photo posters decorated with all scrapbook paraphanalia available, and dot your caligraphered "i"s with little hearts.  I present crookedly cut out snap shots with little cylinders of tape holding them onto the poster board.

Please stop.

Please stop sending your daughter with a perfect Cinderella bouffant (complete with little jewel broach) on Story Time Day, because I forgot about it until 8 p.m. the night before and stapled a paper "mouse tail" to the ass of my son's brown sweatpants.

I'm sure you enjoy doing all of this and it's not difficult or a strain for you, however, I'm not particularly cut out for doing stuff like this and my threshold for youth outside of my own bloodlines stops with the 13th grade.  Teaching community college was dealing with the youngest people I could stomach. I am not a natural young child instructor.

If you stop, then the teachers won't notice I never started, mmk?

Also, if you cease and desist with the birthday party invitations for the whole class involving individually applied hand glued sequins and party details hidden in cleverly worded little poems, then I promise to stop contemplating slashing your tires.

Signed,

The short one that owns the tire swing barfer.

Season's Greetings!

We have passed another mile marker on the highway of parental experiences.

I decided to take Payne to see Santa, since he expressed interest this year, and hell, I had some cute outfits that had yet to be assigned a purpose.

We get to the mall and Payne is all "Oh yeah. Totally see Santa every day. No biggie."

Then it gets to be our turn. I introduce Genevieve to Santa and she starts wailing. Meanwhile, Payne tries to hide behind the velvet rope while wildly announcing "I dohn wike Santa. He not nice!".

I allow the group behind us in line (who I'm sure were THRILLED at my kids example of Santa behavior protocol) to go while I deliver a quick boot camp style motivational speech.  We can go play after Santa, yes! And Santa won't know what to bring you if you don't tell him.  And Santa is nice, see? Look, that little girl likes Santa!  You just have to stand next to Santa. It'll be fiiiiine.

So Payne hops over there all business. Genevieve revs up wail intensity as she nears Santa like a geiger counter approaching Chernobyl, so I decide to see if the boy can fly solo for the first shot:

 

 

Oh My God. The Elf had better luck in 30 seconds than our family photographer had in two hours.

 

It's a Christmas Miracle!

 

He told Santa he wants "cwaws" (claws), so now after such an excellent performance I have to go procure something sharp looking for his hands. Hmmm...

 

Feeling more confident (and Genevieve had a cute dress on, damnit) I tossed her onto Santa and ran away as if I'd just thrown a grenade...a very, very angry grenade.

 

I knew this would result in one of those "Ha ha! Look at the screaming baby on Santa!" photos but I had no idea it would come out this perfect:

 

 

 

I LOVE IT. 

 

The Elf kept asking me if I realized Payne's eyes were closed as I was buying it.  I was all "Oh I know! I figured I should buy either a home run or a complete disaster."

 

She was honesly looking at me as if she expected my handlers to come around the corner and escort me back to the nut house at any moment.

Best $20 I ever spent.

I'm wracking my brain for more vampire humour.

My dad made Genevieve a toy box for Christmas:

 

 

(insert some joke about blood banks or bats or Trannsylvania here)

 

His weirdness has outlasted my otherworldly vocabulary.

 

Payne wins the day.

Attack of the redistributors.

 

 

My children. They are little beasts of disorganization.

 

I cannot tell you how many things they have lost.

 

The items that are currently at the top of my list:

 

- The remote control. For two years. (I think I already whined about this one though)

 

- The baby monitor speaker. I slept with Genevieve's door open for a week, which was a miserable experiment with a light sleeper.  Then she pulled it out of the "washing machine" in her play kitchen, along with a dirty diaper (fortunately, it was bagged).

 

- I search for and occasionally locate sippy cups at least five times daily. They are always found top down, in a puddle of their own liquidy contents.

 

-I find things like this:

(They messed with the coffee maker. They are dead to me.)

 

- I lost a pair of Paynes flip flops for four months. They were found at the bottom of the wrapping paper organizer thingie.  Now that he has pretty much grown out of them, of course.

 

- I thought one of the dogs had peed in Payne's room in a spot I couldn't find...for months.  Then I opened up a rarely used drawer in his dresser and found a used Pull Up. Yeah, I know....

 

It's gotten to the point where we know most of their hiding places.  If something goes missing we immediately check just outside of the doggy door on the patio, the cutting board cabinet, the ottoman with built in storage, the battery drawer, the play washing machine,  behind the glass doors in the entertainment center, etc.

 

I still missed the entire cup of blueberries that lived (and I mean lived) inside of a plastic barn shaped lunch box in Payne's closet....for 6 months.

 

And with that lovely mental image, I shall leave you for the day.

I am thisclose to locking my bedroom door at night.

I walk into the office to talk to Dan about something.

Empty Christmas tree box is in my peripheral vision.

"Empty" box twitches:

Excuse me. I have a crucifix collection that I believe could use a good polishing.

That's my boy!

When I picked Payne up from preschool this morning, he emerged from the building wearing a different shirt than the one he'd worn in. 

When questioned about this mystery, he responded only with "I got frow up orn it."

Oh my.

I was confused that I hadn't gotten a call that he was ill, so I dug through his back pack and found this informative note:

 

 

I must say, I'm almost proud. My little daredevil...

I am, however, drawing an emphatic line through "Go to Six Flags" on my mental Future Family Fun list.

The Mother of an infant says....

She says:

"My baby will not wear cheap, loud clothing."

"No T.V. characters or goofy animals will adorn his/her lovely person."

"He/she will play with classic wodden toys only, bearing no resemblance to any commercially distributed figure from children's programing."

"Licensed clothing is trashy and consumerist."

"Nothing but 100% cotton is good enough for MY precious."

"He/she will look like a Nordstrom children's department model at all times."

 

The Mother of a Child says:


"F*ck it."

 

"I'll just concentrate on keeping 'em from running into traffic."

I believe I am the anti-mompetitor.

Mompetitor = Mom competitor.

Damn. It loses all humour once explained.

Annnyway, what I'm saying is I have ZERO Mom pride. Heh heh.

Exhibit A:

 

 

- Hair bow ripped out as usual.

 

- Standing in a booth

 

- Booth is located within a McDonalds within a Wal-Mart (somehow that strikes me as extra bad, like Wal-Mart nuggets have a second helping of preservatives or something)

 

- Drinking chocolate milk

 

- Eating nuggets and fries.

 

Oh, and while I was taking this photo Payne was telling me he had to go potty and I was saying "You can go potty after you finish your nuggets".

 

We were sort of camping within Wal-Mart while my car was having the tires balanced.  Ok, you could live for awhile in Wal-Mart. Rip a few of the display play equipment thingies off of the walls in the toy section and my kids would be happy for a minimum of three days.

 

So Payne turned four.

And I'm such an exceptional parent that all I have to remember the day by are grainy cell phone pics:

Posing with his birthday gift from us.

 

Post mortem pic of the cake. Oops.

 

I think four is going to be totally awesome: 

 

He is so big. So big.

 

He can follow directions and has opinions and plays with his toys using little made up voices and personal plot lines....I love it.

 

He says socially appropriate things like "No 'dank you" and "Ahwiiiight. 'Dat's fiiiiine" in perfect mimicry of a certain person who sometimes get's exasperated with her offspring.

 

He loves his sister. In that special "No one can hit her but me." brother way.  They laugh hysterically at one another daily.

 

Oh, and he goes to two schools; Preschool and Sunday school. However, he insists that they are Thursday school and Sunday school.  Preschool on Tuesdays is still Thursday school, and don't try to tell him otherwise.

 

He completely sabotaged 80% of our family photos the other day, though. It was bad. I mean, he was outperformed by a 15 month old.... He has developed the dreaded young child "cheese face".

 

I love him so much.  This is going to be a good year!

 

 

 

 

I'm at a bit of a loss.

I walked into Payne's room to get him up from a nap.

The room was empty.

I looked left. I looked right.

I looked up. I looked down.

I looked in all of the corners.

No Payne.

I called out his name and got no answer.

As I was beginning to panic and think that it might possibly have been wise to take a gander at one of those "bad people in your area" maps, I thought to check one more place:

Yes. I found him in his freaking toy box. (Note the pillow for comfort)

 He was very relaxed.

 He said he took his nap in there.

 Gosh, guys. I just noticed I'm SUPER low on garlic. Gotta go get a couple of cartfuls at good old H.E.B. And maybe I'll lift a gallon or two of holy water from mass this week.

 No reason. Why do you ask?

No wonder my dogs are so fat.

What is this? A normal female infant, you say?

Wrong.

It's a human bento box.

(google it, grandparents)

And guess what small house mammals use their pointy noses to comb through the laundry with the avid focus of an old man armed with a metal detector on the beach?

You guessed it.

One can't accidentally stash pancakes in a polar bear print hood.  The children and canines must be in cahoots.

My kids are weirdos.

-I don't know why all of my offspring have been inexhaustible in their search for creative cart sitting solutions:

A rebel, that one.

 

-So Dan does this thing with the kids where he leans in and they touch forehead to forehead, and then nose to nose.  It's adorable and sweet:

And they do it to each other, which is also adorable and sweet....and a little more, um, life threatening. 

 

So far no noses have been broken, so I just sit back and admire the family love fest.

 

-Today I was sitting at the table eating my lunch while the kids played quietly in the family room.

 

Too quietly.

 

Mmmhmm:

Caught him red handed.

 

He stole my frozen tube of ground beef right off of the counter and was smashing/beating it on the floor in a manner so stealthy I was truly impressed. 

 

If our meatballs and garlic bread are a little sub-par tonight, it's all on him, man.

 

 

 

Buddies.

I love that they're old enough to play (and fight) together now.

Dress up is huge around here. Payne is very invested in Genevieve having a costume.

(Notice the dragon cap can't be fastened under the chin anymore, and Mr. Dragon totally has a bit of a perma-wedgie these days. His "feet" also hover several inches above the floor. I can tell you that I will be made to RUE the DAY that I get rid of that costume, though.)

 

Playing Various Beasts of Prey in the car: 

Not sure who's the beast and who's the prey over on Genevieve's side, there.

 

They were both "Rhhoooaaaarrrrh"ing at me today.  Genevieve makes an excellent roar.  I suppose one on one instruction in "Terrifying Noises: A Broad Range Study" is a definite benefit to having an older brother. 

 

Yes, her shark was going something like "wwwwhhhoooooaaaaarrrrGGGHHH" on the way to the grocery store.  It was a little creepy. I like my sharks appropriately silent.

 

Entropy is real, folks.

Genevieve on a typical Sunday morning:

 

 

Genevieve on a typical Sunday evening: 

 

A friendly message from your local chapter of Closet Monsters Incorporated:

 "RAAAAAAAAARGH!"

 

 

Translation:  Happy Halloween!

 

Rompers, how I love thee...

Let me count the ways.

 

I love the First Romper...

 

The awesome four snap diaper change.

 

The hooded romper.

 

The utility.

 

The comfort.

 

The adorableness.

 

The very babyness of a one piece outfit.

 

The cuteness!

 

I love rompers so much that as Genevieve gets closer to the maximum size they make them in, I more and more desperately seek them out.

 

However, I'm beginning to realize that it might not be the best look for a bipedal girl...

 

It's all cute from the front, but

Things are looking a little "Kim Jong Il" in the back, if you know what I'm sayin'.

 

Just as long as I don't put her in grey, right?

 

Oh crap. She totally has a grey one.

 

 

Kids are cute.

As evidence, I submit:

- Last night at dinner, Payne had the good fortune of possessing the attention of both sets of grandparents at once.  He took this opportunity to inform us that we were a team. Then he told us "bend your neck!", which we quickly figured out was an order to get us in a football style huddle...in the lobby of the crowded restaurant. And yeah, we did it. He gave us the following speech: "Hey guys, we're team Cwacker Barrels. Now, let's eat!." We were then allowed to break formation.

And then, there's this, of course:

 

Genevieve and her nap slaves.

Zoo Boo

There is little in a parent's life that is more gratifying than dressing one's wee people up in goofy outfits not of their own choosing and taking pictures of them.

 

Well, except maybe putting said pictures up on the internet afterwards.

 

I maintain that any parent who says otherwise is a dirty liar.

 

Personally, I find making my kids wear themed costumes even more satisfying.  Like, it's possible that my life is now complete:

 

 

I was inordinately thrilled that the weather was cool today. We were actually able to break out the fleece costumes that I bought in a moment of complete idiocy.

 

Also, they miiiight have a different set of matching costumes for Halloween night.

 

I may need to look into some new hobbies, or ask Dan to freeze my debit card before all major holidays.

 

Heeeeeeh heh heh heh!

 

Checking out the sea lions:

"Man, Genevieve, I don't know about you, but suddenly I'm absolutely ravenous."

 

"I love being meeeee!"

 

Oh, and the Gods of fall recreation smiled down upon us today:

That's right. Dino, Tiger, Shark, Fish. All under four years old. Four sets of eyes open. Nobody crying.

 

"I don't know what it is, but I feel so at peace here. It's like I belong..."

 

I feel like Jacques Cousteau should be narrating this very moment...