"That's Not Food!"

Emily is turning one on Friday!  This is where I lament the speedy passing of time, as I utter aloud a disbelief in the time space continuum.  Her birthday follows Andy's last day of kindergarten and Alex's last day of three year old preschool.  It's going to be an emotional 48 hours (followed by a long summer of splitting up fighting children). Who is this Emily girl at twelve months old?  Well, her likes include Italian food, wood chips, banging at my computer keyboard, patty-cake, and waving hello and good-bye backwards. She walked earlier than her two brothers, starting off her 11 month birthday by taking a few tentative steps and almost running just under a month later.  She is attracted to danger and will eagerly climb the stairs and express an ill-placed confidence in being able to navigate going down the stairs (or up the bunk bed ladder). Emily adores her big brothers.  She is perfectly content just to be near them, and she seems to save her bi...

"When I'm wiggling, I'm happy."  If Alex had a car, this would be his bumper sticker.  He'd probably have a lot of bumper stickers, actually, all carefully but crookedly affixed.  "I Brake For Egg Videos," perhaps.  "My Monkey Is On The Honor Roll at Bunk Bed University."  "Honk If You Love Fruit Snacks."  And then "John Kerry For President" because obviously Alex couldn't afford a brand new car. We're not made of money over here. But what does "When I'm wiggling, I'm happy" mean?  Well, that's Alex's go to reply when I see him writhing and shaking and jumping and squirming all over the place.  These jerky motions are a clear indication to the casual observer that Alex desperately needs to pee.  That his bladder has gone past the point of being comfortably full and is now completely stretched out like a water balloon ready to explode and soak everything within a five yard radius.  Grab you...

I was flying down the water slide in a double inner tube, holding tenuously on to Alex with my feet. "Hang on, Alex!" I yelled as we rushed into a pitch black tunnel, rocking and slipping forward, left, right.  Frankly, I was mildly terrified.  I couldn't see anything, we were going fast, I had very little faith in Alex not flopping out of his half of the inner tube, and water was getting in my eyes.  I hate water in my eyes.  Alas, we splashed down somewhat safely into the awaiting pool at the water slide's conclusion.  "Can we go again?"  Alex squealed instantly, before I had a chance to blink my contact lenses back into place.  Stupid water in the eyes.  How come grown-ups wear goggles to go scuba diving but not to play in some slide sprinklers and four feet of water?  The struggle is still real no matter what the depth. Alex and I (and Andy and I) hit the mildly terrifying water slides over a dozen times.  Andy, strapped snug into ...

Emily has grown distrustful of me, bursting into tears when I set her on the floor of the playroom and begin to tiptoe out the door backwards.   Just like Andy has FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) whenever he gets on that bus to go to school and Alex and I set off on whatever adventure I have planned for the day (Library!  Target!  A day of indoor yelling and spankings!), Emily has her own version of FOMO. Fear of Mommy OUT.  Surely, this is partly developmental separation anxiety, but this is also, I'm sure, partly because sometimes when I do leave the room... I truly don't show up again until the next morning.  Her fears are not unfounded baby fears. She is not an idiot.  Mommy regularly goes missing for entire days or evenings. Ah, the guilt-ridden life of the ever-so-blessed part-time working mother.  Actually, I lie- I'm barely guilt-ridden at all, except when I see a Dr. Sears post on my Facebook page suggesting that I'm doing irreversible psychologi...

The boys went to Monster Jam today.  I remember last year when they went to Monster Jam, or at least when Andy went and little Alex got a conciliatory ice cream cone.  I remember this day, specifically, because we had been house hunting that morning, in a tailspin to figure out where we were going to live as we were shockingly under contract to sell our home.  The very last house we looked at that day, a couple hours before Monster Jam would start, was the house that I sit in now.  I am typing three feet away from where Chris, our realtor (whose catch phrase seemed to be "Just relax."), and myself agreed that this was the house for us.  This house.  The one tucked into the tree lined cul-de-sac one block from the playground, the one with five perfect bedrooms plus a playroom plus a dream kitchen out of a design magazine, plus four bathrooms, a sprawling family room, and a lovely living room and dining room.  That house sounds perfect, don't you agree? ...

The PTO at Andy's school sends a new fundraiser item home nearly every day.  The PTO, or "Parents Tapped Out," as I believe the acronym stands for, is trying to bleed us moms and dads dry- but for a very good reason.  Our schools need money!  Especially Andy's school, which I believe has a bit of a cash flow problem.  It's the MC Hammer of Lake County elementaries.  And so of course I support the PTO, believing that my extra dollars here and there will perhaps help magically boost its average state rating.  "We bumped up from "okay" to "awesome" overnight," I imagine the president of the PTO saying at next year's Back To School night.  "Thanks in part to Mrs. Berger, who diligently purchased only from Smile.Amazon.Com and, without fail, bought into every half-cockneyed money grab we could throw at her!  Also, she paid close to $9,000 in property taxes.  But she also bought tickets to dances and pencils for Valentine's Day...

My fine motor skills are incredible.  They would blow your mind if you were to witness them in action.  I can attach a tiny nosepad into an eyeglass frame using a screw the size of a poppy seed.  I can expertly scoop a booger out of a sleeping baby's nose with nary a disturbance.  I can peel an entire sheet of Minion stickers in under two seconds.  Of course, my gross motor skills are simply awful.  I do not run, jump, and I frequently find myself alarmingly close to tumbling down the stairs.  The worst time was when I was doing some angry cleaning, lugging the vacuum cleaner down from the bedroom to the living room with the cord haphazardly hanging loose.  I stuck my foot in a loop formed by the cord and stumbled down a step, somehow catching myself before going all the way down, with vacuum cleaner, to certain death and drywall damage.  Only Alex, Emily, and I were home that day.  I would have had to use my last few breaths to tell Ale...