Saturday, June 30, 2007

Young man, you are grounded until I can tell this story without busting up laughing.

Tonight, over dinner, I was dealing with the usual frustrations of trying to get my children to eat... not to mention keeping elbows off the table, full mouths closed, and the bodily-function jokes to the bare minimum. To make matters worse, Maddy had a friend over, and my baby broher Tyger, and my sister and her best friend were all there too. Mealtime was hectic, and I was getting frustrated with how much policing I had to do to get them to eat. It's not like I was forcing them to eat liver and onions or anything, I made their favorite- Mac & Cheese- from scratch.

My three year old was in rare form tonight, especially because he had an audiance, and I had to keep pestering him to quit the comedy routine and eat. Raising my voice slightly, I said, "FINISH YOUR DINNER!" to which he looked at me, wide-eyed, looked back down at his plate, stabbed a forkful of Mac and said, "MACARONI! You are going in my belly to marry my lunch! And then you will kiss each other! Nakey! AND IT WILL BE SEXY! They'll be like 'Oooooh la la!'"

I almost spit out an entire mouthful of salad. I could not fathom what had just come out of my baby boy's mouth... let alone begin to process how to counteract the situation. While the six other people at the table howled with laughter, I tried not to choke on my mouthful of food. I could feel my face blush with mortification. And then, after asphyxiation was no longer a concern, I couldn't help but laugh. And trying to reprimand a three year old while you're laughing doesn't help much.

"The Talk" happened after dinner, when it was just the two of us, and I still had to turn my head away a few times when I was about to break character. I'm not sure where he picked the term up, but according to my daughter, he had used it at least twice before. It got me thinking about how, even though my kids cross the line occasionally, they do it with hilarious pizazz. Hey, it could be worse- as long as cracking a really inappropriate joke is the most trouble they get it, I can handle that.

It got me thinking, though, about how hard it is to repremand a child when they do something funny. My all-time favorite example of this was when my family went out for dinner once. My mom, two brothers, sister and myself were in the middle of a busy restaurant on a busy night, at a table surrounded by other diners. My brother Tyger had to have been only about 3 or 4 years old at the time. In the middle of dinner, Tyger lets out the most enourmous, resonant, bellowing belch I have ever heard in my entire life. My entire family is dumbstruck for a moment, in awe of the fact that a noise like that came from a three year old and not a lumberjack. Apparently, the other diners heard it too, because it seemed like for a split second, a hush fell over the restaurant and all eyes were on our table. And then, my baby brother, with a look of shock and disgust on his face, turned to our mother and said, accusingly, "MOOOOOOOOOOM!"

Almost ten years later, I can't even type that story out without laughing out loud...

But enough about me and my family's bad manners- anyone have a story to share about a kid getting out of trouble (if only momentarily) because of a keen use of comedy? Sharing is caring.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

delish...

pizza

Last night's dinner...
The Tabasco sauce is for Chris, who liberally applies it to everything edible. I've got mad Tabasco aversion thanks to one fateful lunch shift where an entire bottle spilled in my apron and I had to smell it all day long. (In case you were wondering. I'm a huge fan of Cholula, though.)

So, there you a go, a picture of dinner in lieu of an actual post. Eat up!

If Tabasco and Cholula got in a street brawl, who would win?

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Why put something off until tomorrow when you can do it the day after that?

So, I'm gonna level with you here. I'm not really a motivated person. Especially with this whole "(insert any verb here)-ing for two" that I have going on lately, sometimes it takes me a whole half hour to motivate myself to rise from a reclined position to go get a brownie from the kitchen. If it takes that much for chocolate, people, you can only imagine the struggle I'm having with housework.

It's not just that I'm lazy. It truly is difficult for me to move around. I'm trying my best! Yesterday, I did a few loads of laundry, some light housekeeping, played with my son, grocery shopped, and cooked two dinners from scratch. Seems like an easy day off, right? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? By the end of the day, I felt like I got run over by a truck.

Today, I still feel miserable- a theme I've been battling for the last week or so now. (I'm thinking about starting a fund to bribe Dr. Jacome to expedite this whole childbirth thing, donations gladly accepted.) I'm taking it easy today, although I'm bored out of my mind. Already cleared my TiVo of everything I have been saving to watch when Chris wasn't around (he disapproves of my addiction to The Ex Wives Club). I had to get out of the house before I went stir crazy- seriously, nothing makes me grumpier than feeling like I wasted a perfectly good day off by staying in my house and not contributing to the economy in any way. Since we're trying to save money, I decided against going anywhere that provides you with a shopping cart, and instead decided to visit my other therapeutic outlet, Golden Spoon. Life feels so much better with an empty cup of frozen yogurt in front of you, especially when it's Strawberry and Orange 50/50 Bar Swirl with fresh strawberries on top. Or maybe that's just me. But I sat outside of the the yogurt shop, reading a book and basking in the sun until I was scraping the bottom of my Styrofoam cup and the metal rivets in my maternity jeans had absorbed so much heat that they were literally burning my skin, and now I feel like a new woman.

Or, at least, I will...after my nap.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

I've returned physically, but not mentally.



Our two-day vacation was perfect... except for the fact that it was way too short. Depressingly short. Almost-threw-a-tantrum-when-we-had-to-leave short. As a matter of fact, I may appear to be back, but it's just a clever illusion. Really, I'm still in the VIP cabana at the Viceroy Santa Monica, sipping Voss water and eating food I can't pronounce. You're reading this because I've gotten mighty good at telepathy.

In reality, I'm glad we could sneak away from the desert, even if it was for 24 hours. Timing was perfect- I was maxed out mentally, and still kind of am, to be honest. A proper post is in the works, but I'm having a hell of a time stringing words together to form sentences so it might take me a little while to get caught up.

In other news, can I please have this baby? I'm literally losing what little sanity I had left.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

I'll take a Jehovah's Witness any day.

One would think that living two decades in a city with the word "Desert" in the name would make one accustomed to desert-y things. I absolutely adore my desert city, with the palm trees, the sand dunes, the tumble weeds the size of SUVs, the mountain ranges hugging our valley from all sides, the unrelenting sun- even wild coyotes, bighorn sheep, roadrunners and scorpions lose their novelty after a while. What I will never get used to? The fact that because I do, indeed, live in a desert, sometimes I might need to be prepared to come home from the hardware store to find a four-foot snake on my doorstep.

Luckily, Snakey the Snake was first spotted by Chris, who's "WHOA!" was reason enough for me to stay pretty far back. I did get a peek at the serpent, from a good 15-20 feet away, and it was enough to creep me the F out. I could not, do not even want to try to imagine what would have happened if I had stumbled across the thing on my own. Only one of us would have been able to walk away from the situation without going into cardiac arrest... or, more appropriately, I should say "slither away."
My money? It's on the huge scary scaled thing.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Sit back, relax, enjoy the slide show.

Sarah G. sent me some pics she took at the wedding- hopefully this will hold you over until the professional ones are ready...

What weekends are for:


I'm sure everyone's had a hard week. Go splash around a bit!