Happy Birthday Michael

Even though the kids made Michael's bday presents in March, I waited until this morning to have the kids wrap them and do the cards. Miranda did an outstanding card of our whole family and Parker did a nice one of him and Michael playing golf this past weekend. Michael loved the piggy bank, cat food bowl for Zeke, and butter dish appropriately painted "Butter Place"










Then this evening, we had cake. But since Michael isn't eating cake (or really eating anything), and I shouldn't eat cake, I let the kids pick out a little cake for themselves. Miranda picked chocolate (duh), Parker lemon and Elizabeth picked carrot. They all devoured them after two rounds of Happy Birthday (required since Elizabeth blew out the other's candles and this made them very, very sad.)






Then Michael got my present. A new digital camera since we hate ours. And a funky little printer that makes tiny instant prints. Friday, Ebba is sitting and we are having a date night. A no food date night. Oh joy. Happy Birthday Michael!

No, she's a whore.

Miranda to Elizabeth in the car: My puppy is taking a big poop and I'm helping her.

Elizabeth: Is he doing a good job?

Miranda: No, she's a whore.

Elizabeth: She is?

Miranda: Yes, a whore. A whore.

Rachel: What is she Miranda?

Miranda: A whore.

Rachel: What? A hole?

Miranda: A WHORE!

Rachel: A whore?

Miranda: No, a WHORE!!!!!!!

Rachel: Elizabeth...what is she saying. A hole?

Elizabeth: No a WHORE! Not a hole. You don't understand what she is saying.

Rachel: I don't understand what she is saying.

Miranda: Mom, it's a girl puppy so it's a whore.

Rachel: WHAT?!?!?!

Miranda: Not a him, but a her.

Rachel: Oh, a her! Not a whore.

Miranda: Yeah, mom a her.

Time doesn't fly.

Miranda: It sure is taking a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time for me to grow up.

Me: Yup. It take a long time. Why do you want to grow up so fast?

Miranda: Because I want to have real kids and real babies. And you have to grow up to have them.

TPS: Bad Guys

While sitting near the water at the Jack London Farmer's Market on Sunday, Miranda says that we need to take a boat to San Francisco.

Parker says, "Are their bad guys in San Francisco? I don't think we should go there if there are."

Me: "There are bad guys everywhere. In San Francisco, in Oakland, in Los Angeles. But we'll do a good job of staying away from them.

What not to wear.

I discovered a very disturbing thing recently.

The girls seem to be wanting to dress and look like me.

It started with the mommy pony tail that Miranda requested. I though the label of mommy was a more generic mommy rather than Rachel mommy.

Then I noticed Elizabeth wanted to wear sunglasses on top of her head even when it wasn't sunny outside. Again I didn't really think much of it.

Then I remembered that they both despise skirts and dresses. I figured this was some genetic thing, but didn't actually realize that the girls have probably never seen me in either.

And then today, after Miranda requested "wearing clothes" to bed (for the 4th time in a row), I asked her, "Why do you like wearing clothes to bed?" She said, "I want to be like a mommy. You wear clothes, so I want to wear clothes."

I don't mind the fact that they want to be like me. I just worry about my complete lack of fashion sense, taste, style, awareness of trends or anything else that has to do with looks. Poor girls.

Thank god they have Susan in their lives otherwise, they would be wearing a short black cocktail dress at their wedding.

Trail Run/Walk

I'm doing this race in June where you both run and bike. For 6 miles, you switch off with a partner. One is running and one is biking and then after a mile, you swap. It's called Muddy Buddy since at the end, you have crawl through some kind of giant mud pit. It's basically just an excuse to have fun.

Since I haven't done any trail runs or mountain biking, I thought I should start and joined a group of people doing a 6 mile trail run near my house. It started out fine, but then immediately got incredibly steep. So steep, we had to just walk up it. But then it leveled out and was fine for a while. The fast folks stopped every so often to check the map, so us slow people were able to catch up regularly which was nice.

But apparently, we took one (or two) wrong turns and ended up in some other area with almost no idea how to get unlost. Lucikly we ran into a couple people who pointed us in the right direction and we made it back to our cars only going .34 miles over what we should have gone. We were all tired and thirsty and did a lot of walking.

Basically, I need to do this a lot more in the next 6 weeks. Yuck.

The Fifth Sense

At the lake today, Miranda said, "I think I smell chocolate."

I said, "Really, I don't smell anything and we don't have any chocolate."

She said, "I smell it coming from wayyyyyy over there near the vending machines."

Meet Rainbow

The kids have been wanting to foster a kitten again, but since I'm just not up for the 3 hour wake up calls, I thought another pet might be a better idea. A smaller one, that can feed itself, doesn't crap all over the house, and that can be left alone for long periods of time. It was between a rabbit and hamster, but I didn't think I could give a rabbit the space or attention it would require.

I was just going to head to the local pet store, when I remembered my core beliefs and checked out the hamster supply at the local shelters. None, but SF had some. I picked up the girls at school and drove over the bridge. They were pretty excited about the whole thing even though they thought they were getting a kitten. There was only one hamster available and since I didn't really know much about hamsters or even care if I did, we took it.

The whole adoption process was pretty hilarious. Accordian to the paperwork, I adopted a boy that was grey. But according to the actual hamster, it's sex was unknown and it was orange and white. Ah well.

After a long discussion about names and the gender issue of the hamster, the girls named it Rainbow. I was happy with that since I figured Dora would have been the #1 choice.

Back at home the kids were still pretty excited. As was Zeke. He didn't notice him for a while, but after he did, he pretty much tortured the poor thing for a couple hours. Or maybe the hamster was torturing him. Since Rainbow decided to run a marathon that started about 9pm, we moved it into the pantry to keep the noise level down and to keep Zeke away from it.

So far, Rainbow is pretty cute. He likes to move his food and bedding into the habitrail tubes we got him. He also like to hang out in there. I'm not sure if he is scared or just trying to get comfy.

I'm just crossing my fingers he doesn't croak tomorrow.

Words

How do kids would have never seen the words "enough" and "might" before in a book know how to pronounce them perfectly?

And how do the same kids keep getting the word "says" wrong?

Miranda and Her Drawing

Rhyming

Parker read this story to me tonight from this book.

If I had a hippo, I'd name it Pippo.
If I had a shark, I'd name him Clark.
If I had bunny, I'd name it sunny.
If I had a boa, I'd name it Noah.
Etc.

And then the last page says, But I don't have a hippo, bunny, noah, etc.

But I do have a turtle and I named it Fred.

Parker thought this book was hilarious. Hil.Ar.i.ous.

Fuckin' Man

Yesterday driving in the car, someone cut me off and I said, "Ah Man, come on!"

Miranda said, "Mommy, you should say, "Fuckin' Man!"

I, again, told her that was an adult word and kids shouldn't really say it.

She said, "So when I'm an adult, I can say Fuckin' Man?"

Me: "Yes, Miranda, but until then I don't want to hear it."

Miranda adds in conclusion, "When I have two babies in my belly and I'm in my car and someone is slow in front of me, I can say Fuckin' Man?"

Me: "Yes, Miranda. That will be fine."

Elizabeth Said

"You see mom, I don't always like to eat strawberries the way Grandma Judy taught me how to."

Which was obvious by the half eaten bowl of strawberries she left me.

Changes.

Our school's fundraiser was the other night. I, sadly, was responsible for much of it. The party was an 80's theme so we all were suppose to dress up. I was going to do a sort of madonna meets flashdance thing, but then decided the preppy look was better and more comfortable. So I went to Target and immediately found a nice pink izod type shirt, some argyle socks, silly headband and bermuda shorts. When I went to pick the shorts out, I grabbed a 12. (During my high thyroid time, I was much bigger, but 12 is pretty much where I've been for most of my life.) Then I remembered, that I'm not a 12 anymore. I found the 10 and took those instead. Although I have some 10s (given to me by Ebba's sister via Susan), I hadn't really bought any myself. I sort of didn't believe that they would fit, but I knew a 12 would be too big now.

Thing is...they didn't fit. They were too big. :)

Oh well.

Parker has still been having a tough time in soccer class. He is actually quite good at kicking and moving the ball, but he has huge issues with the competitive aspect of it. Whenever another kid gets the ball, he melts down. He just starts crying and screaming while running around. The coach talks to him about it but he never really can recover.

So after last weeks class, we talked a lot of about things that he is really good at and things that he isn't the best at. We talked about swimming, drumming, bike riding, math, reading, tree climbing, etc as things he was really good at. Then we talked about keeping his hands out of his mouth, eating lots of different kinds of foods, pouring milk, carrying 6 plates (his addition that I didn't understand) and soccer as things that he needs to work on. I told him that when another kid was faster than him or better at kicking the ball quickly, he could just say, "Oh well" and remember everything he was good at. We practiced a bunch and I confirmed all of this again before his class today.

But...almost on cue, when that part of the class started today, he melted down. He's running around with tears, screaming, "I can't do it! I can't do it. It's too hard!" He's a complete mess and I feel just horrible. Then he yells through massive tears, "Oh well. Oh well" and continued crying and running. It was at that point, that I started crying. I'm sitting there in my mom soccer chair, with my latte and People magazine, crying about my poor kid doing his very, very best. It was heartbreaking.

After class, he was still in tears, and came to sit with me. He asked if he did a good job in class. I asked him if he thought he did and he said, "Yes, because I said Oh Well." I agreed and told him that he never had to take soccer class again. He was relieved. We sat together for a good long and then he was ok.

S-T-O-P

Miranda and Elizabeth have figured out what a stop sign says. So now everytime they see one, they yell, "Mom there is a stop sign! Another one! S-T-O-P! S-T-O-P!"

It was cute the first 40 times, but then it got old.

Tire Swing

StayCation

This past weekend, we took a short staycation. At the beginning of last week, I came home one evening from a meeting for the preschool and Parker was very excited to show me the calendar. He showed me that we were going to Oahu for 4 days that weekend. I told him he couldn't go and he was devastated. Not like tantrum-y, but truly, just super sad about this news. He just wanted to sit with me and be sad. He couldn't talk or move. He just cried quietly and stayed with me until bedtime. It was all very strange. So Michael and I, who realized we had a weekend without any plans, decided to go somewhere fun, stay in a hotel, use the pool and come back the next day. So I picked this "Fun Center" called Scandia in Fairfield. I booked a cheap hotel that had a pool and hot tub and Saturday morning we took off.

Scandia was everything an 11 year old white trash kid could want. Bumper boats, car racing, arcades, mini golf, batting cages, climbing area, gross food, and a laser tag game. We did most of it and Parker was in heaven. The girls loved parts of it, but got bored and tired at mini golf. The boats where we got to spray eachother were excellent. We had a picnic lunch there and were quite entertained for about 3 hours including Michael who did the batting cages and played 80's video games.

Then we went to the local Marriot. We got a room with a bedroom so we could be separate. The pool was cold, but the hot tub wasn't too hot so we went twice that day and once the next morning.

We had dinner at Denny's and breakfast at the hotel buffet. Waffles with whipcream. Pancakes with Chocolate chips. Endless bacon. It was just perfect.

The trip worked out exactly as I had intended (except for some nighttime screaming by Miranda.) And almost no need to ever return there.

Field Trip

Parker's class took a field trip last week. With all the amazing places and kid friendly things to do in the Bay Area....guess what they did? Museum? Park? Noooooo. They went to Whole Foods. It was some kind of tie in to Earth Day, but basically it was a giant Whole Foods commercial. The one redeeming part of it was that they took the bus. Or I should say, they took the bus one direction. (On the way home the bus passed us all by so three moms went back to school to get the cars and went to pick everyone up. Good thing I normally have 3-4 carseats in my car at any given time.) Most of the kids had never been on a bus before so that was a novelty. Parker, of course, had been one one many times.

They had a tour guide at Whole Foods and she talked to us about locally grown food, colorful meals, different kinds of meats and cheeses (and then gave them string cheese to taste). They all got "goody bags" with all manner of branded Whole Foods stuff in them. Parker was bored most of the time. I don't shop at whole food often, but he has been there many times (once with his class last year). I kinda felt bad for him since he had to stand and behave for 45 minutes listening to organic propaganda. I wanted to buy him a twinkie that he could eat right then. But Whole Foods doesn't sell twinkies.







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Elizabeth Plans for the future

"When I am an adult, I'm going to live in a hotel in Hawaii and my kids are going to go swimming in the hot pool every day. You can come visit."

More on horses and being dead.

Miranda: Mommy, why do you get dead when you eat a horse?

Me: Because the horse it too big.

Miranda: But what if you ate a baby horse? Would you get dead too?

Me: Probably. A baby horse is still pretty big.

Miranda: But you could cut up the horse so you could eat.

Miranda: But I don't think the horse would like that very much.

Miranda: You could pet the horse. Horses like it when you pet them. But not when you cut them up.

Cutting

As has been stated many times here, Elizabeth can do a lot of things that other kids (and even her brother) can't do. For example, she is quite an expert at using scissors. She's been cutting paper for a long time now. Parker just learned last year.

But apparently she is a perfectionist too. For the last few days she has asked me to draw an arrow that she can cut out. But every time she "messes" up the arrow going off the lines and gets hysterical. Today was the 4th day this happened. She gets a little off the line and just melts down. I tried to tell her it didn't matter and it looked good and we could start over, but nothing makes her feel better.

New Soccer Class

The kids all started a soccer class together this week at a local park. Parker had done a session of it before, and the girls had been asking when they could take soccer. I told them they needed to participate for a month in their existing classes (gymnastics, movement, swimming) before I would sign them up for any other classes. And boy, did they. So I signed them up. It was mostly boys Parker's age (class was 3-5 year olds), but there were two other girls (both a little younger) in addition to Elizabeth and Miranda.

They both did great. Each had a little mini melt down in the middle of class, but each recovered. They said it was hard, but they both participated and did better than I thought.

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Big Love

Miranda and Elizabeth call these two little twin babies we have "Sister Baby Mama" and "Brother Baby Mama". It always makes me think they are polygamists.

Word usements

Elizabeth and Miranda are playing dolls with two babies. They are acting out each baby and having a little conversation.

Elizabeth said something that I didn't catch and Miranda yelled as her baby,

"No, you can't do that, said the answer in her eyes."

Chicken soup and rice

Parker has been making lots of movies lately, mostly consisting of shaky handheld camera work and mumbled voice overs following the adventures of Ted & Lion. However, he's also started starring in some of his own movies, which is a nice change of pace. He's been using chairs and the ottoman as a tripod.

Here are two movies he made this weekend, one of him singing Chicken Soup and Rice, and the other of Miranda singing it. The one of him is pretty funny, because you can see Elizabeth and Miranda playing behind him, and he periodically helps them without breaking stride on the song.

If you're not familiar with the song, you can read the lyrics here.