"That's Not Food!"

Here are the people that Andy loves the most.  Mommy.  Emily.  Daddy.  Then there is a long pause in which Andy sets his mouth into a defiant straight line.  "What about Alex?" the astute observer might reply to this list.  "I only love Alex a little bit," Andy will say back.  "He pretends to snore at night and keeps me up.  He's always breaking my Lego buildings.  He bothers me. And he gives me kisses. I DON'T WANT HIS KISSES." Oh, it is hard to be the older sibling.  On one superficial level, I sympathize with my older boy. The plight of an older sibling involves constantly trying to dodge and outwit the peskier younger sibling. It's a war that must be constantly strategized, a battle that can only be won by deflecting the unconditional adoration that emanates like sweet rays of poison from the younger sibling.  It's not easy to be so loved and bothered.  And it is true that Alex bothers Andy.  It is also true that he ...

Reasons Why I Don't Have Time To Blog: 1 .  Emily is waking up most nights, and even though many nights I don't get up out of bed to go get her, I still have to lay there awake and listen to her screaming.  And I would scream back except then there is a distinct possibility that the boys might wake up, which would be bad since Andy was already up once to exchange out his peed in underwear and pajamas for fresh ones.  Clang! went the door to the laundry chute.  Which was originally a selling point to this house (A laundry chute!  How very "Home Alone!") and is now nothing more than one more thing to manage.  Who put a pooped in Pull-Up down the laundry chute??  Who tried to stick a whole comforter down there?  Who didn't empty the basket at the bottom and got the whole thing clogged up with dirty clothes that fell on my head when I tried to de-clog?  Who was clanging the damn little laundry chute door at three in the morning because they wet...

Six Flags?  Well, I haven't been there in fifteen years!  The last time I went, it was with this guy that I had a mild crush on.  Oh and his parents went, too.  The whole thing was very strange.  I called out sick to work and ended up getting in trouble because the manager could tell I was on my cell phone and not my parents' home phone. Imagine!  Your boss thinking you were lying about being sick because you were calling from a cell phone !  As if anybody has any other means of communication these days!  I believe next time I need to call out sick (from the same company, unbelievably fifteen years later with about a decade hiatus in between), I will probably just text. And the time before that?  Well, it was my senior trip!  Or was it my junior trip?  Or, crap, was it my eighth grade trip ??? We took the big old yellow bus and I won a humongous stuffed dolphin from one of the carnie games.  That's about all I can reme...

Andy has been using the baby monitor to play psychological games on Alex.  Andy and I will be up in Emily's room while Alex is downstairs innocently eating breakfast next to the receiver.  Andy will whisper so softly into the transmitter that Alex's only guess will be that the voices are in his head and not aloud in the actual, living world.  "Alex," Andy will intone quietly.  "You smell like a butt, Alex. Alex, you smell like one butt, two feet, and three boogers.  Oh Alex.  You stink." The first time I witnessed this, I thought it was hilarious and brilliant.  By the fourth or fifth time, I was no longer entertained, believing Andy's soft-spoken head games to be gently spouted from the mind of a psychopath.  There are moments when I look at and/or listen to my kids, and I am deeply troubled.  Last night, for instance, we read the book "Babar," the original story.  This is one of those books that I should have pre-read first, as the s...

Alex is obsessed with You-Tube.  One day, I will sit him down and tell him about the prehistoric era/ household in which I grew up, where there was only UHF TV and VHF TV, and in order to watch UHF, there was a bottom knob that needed to be turned and only a parental figure was allowed to turn this knob, which happened about once every month or so.  I spent weeks at a time being able to watch ONLY 32 or ONLY 50, and I certainly couldn't pause, rewind, or speak into the TV and say such search terms as "Batman Motorcycle" or "Surprise Eggs." I've tried to explain to Andy and Alex just how awful it was to grow up in the 1980's.  The only thing Andy seems to understand about my youth was that I once had two grandpas and I voted for George Washington for president.  Some of his facts are a little screwed up, but who am I to correct him.  I've got three kids; I'm too busy to repeatedly explain how old I am.  But they do know that I'm old enoug...

Andy boarded the kindergarten bus without a single glance backwards.  We waved pointlessly in his general direction as the bus rode off, but he was too busy beginning his new life as a big man about campus to bother to look our way.  That's it.  Armed with a bag of Teddy Grahams that I carefully pre-cut open for him (just a little snip to get you started, son) and the confidence of someone who has never truly been told no, he was completely ready to get the day going.  Later, he would act annoyed by my thousand questions, but the answers were so deeply unsatisfying that I could barely stand it. What do you mean, you didn't make any new friends?  How can you not remember what you did all day?  Did you miss me at all?  You didn't miss me AT ALL? People warned me about the first weeks of full day kindergarten.  They said: He will come home and be so very exhausted.  False.  He comes home and begs to go the playground. He will be too ...

I've had a daughter for almost eight weeks now.  As a mother of mostly sons (fully 67% of my spawn), there's been a slight learning curve to the mothering of a (very) young girl. For instance, if you put her in a ducky onesie and cover her up with a truck blankie, people are going to automatically assume you are some poor soul with three sons and treat you thusly.  "Oh, three boys!" they might remark with a better-you-than-me type smirk on their face.  That's when you have to dig around in the car seat looking for that pink bow that you just know is in there somewhere.  One must never forget the gender-defining headband bow.  "Oh no!" you'll have to reassure that nosy stranger.  "Two boys and a girl!"  And then they will go on with a suddenly genuine smile to say how spoiled that little girl is going to be, and before you know it, it's all princess this and princess that. Of course, I have called her "princess" myself.  It...