"That's Not Food!"

Alex got his first library card this week.  I told him that he had to be able to sign his name before he could get one, and he's only been writing his name consistently well for the past month or so.  I've been worried about Alex, since I know he's starting kindergarten in the fall.  Is he as prepared as Andy was?  Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that he doesn't know any of the letters of the alphabet?  Maybe I should sit down and work with him while Emily is napping... or maybe since he seems content to play Batman on the Nintendo DS, I should just let sleeping dogs lie while I get in some of my own quiet time.  Yeah, we'll work on letters tomorrow. Alex took the task of signing up for his first library card very seriously.  He signed his name on the back of the card as directed, and then, later, I compared his signature to Andy's, the one Andy wrote out when he was basically Alex's exact age.  Here are the two of them for your own perusal...

These are the foods I loved eating when I was growing up.  Rice-A-Roni.  Nothing was better than a big heaping salty side of Rice-A-Roni; it even sounded vaguely international since it was the San Francisco treat (yes, I am aware that San Francisco is in THIS country- that's why I said "vaguely.") Tater tots.  Oh man, were tater tots delicious.  I had a ritualistic way of smashing each individual tot into a small patty and then dressing with a little ketchup before eating.  White bread.  We didn't buy white bread very often, but when we did it was a treat, and I would savor toasted slices slathered with margarine. I had a steady love affair with ramen noodles and condensed chicken noodle soups.  Once I got old enough, I was in charge of making the instant mashed potatoes, another weeknight staple. We ate a lot of refrigerated biscuits, too.  You know the kind- you have to peel the cardboard cylinder and wait for it to "pop."  I still wince ev...

This morning, I walked into Andy's bathroom to find him brushing his teeth while wedged into a corner, facing out semi-bravely while scanning the tiny room and both doorways to check for predators.  "What's going on in here?"  I asked, strolling in and still managing to startle my six year old despite his stature of high alert.  "Are you... are you scared?" "You know I don't like being up here by myself," he replied, dislodging the glob of toothpaste that had become stuck fearfully in his throat.  It's true that Andy has developed a fear of being upstairs alone.  Emily, however, at 18 months, relishes the thought of getting upstairs alone, as she will clamber up the stairs, into the boys' bedroom, and straight up the bunk bed ladder onto the top bunk at the very first opportunity of parental neglect.  Alex, he's always been pretty fearless, but I guess I can understand how Andy feels, since my heart pounds at the thought of going ...

The Cubs won the World Series.  Donald Trump is our president-elect.  I keep waiting to hear the sound of snorts and fluttering pig wings go past my open window.  Or at least the galloping hooves of the four horses of the apocalypse. My kids (at least the ones that can talk) were pretty interested in both events.  I'll start with the presidential election and just get that out of the way since it's an ugly topic even in civil conversation. If you voted for him, I totally respect that.  It's the beauty of democracy, et cetera, et cetera.  I, however, did not vote for him.  Not only did I not vote for him, but I spoke about him to my six year with the kind of candor and confidence of one who fully believes the accuracy of polling data and the correctness of my own convictions.  And now this guy- the one who I basically told my six year old to fear, the one that I said is an asshat, is mean to girls, disrespectful to people of different cultures, a...

"But I hate story time," Alex declared as we backed out of the driveway.  "Let's just go to Wal-Mart instead and buy three toys.  Three isn't a big number, right, Mommy?" "We're going to story time," I replied.  "It's Emily's story time.  It's literally the only thing that Emily has just for her.  Andy has school and baseball.  You have preschool and trips to the Dollar Store.  All Emily has is a lousy half hour story time once a week.  That's it!  That's all she has." A lie, of course, since Emily has everything.  Emily's world, although filled with activities primarily for her brothers, is rich in secondary events that she finds just as thrilling, if not more so.  She loves waiting at the bus stop!  She relishes in banging her feet on the bleachers at baseball games.  She ADORES trying to rip off the preschool art hanging in the common area outside Alex's class.  I often look at Emily and think, ...

Sep 12, 2008 It wasn’t long before they decided to close the mall. We’d been listening to the radio since we’d arrived- the little, plastic radio normally reserved for Sunday football games and FM rock. In the laboratory where we made the glasses, we all hunched around the tinny speakers, and nobody but Margie, the eighty year old part- time optician, had anything to say. We were all in shock, each of us having found out in our own separate flashbulb moments. There was talk that the terrorists might target Chicago next, and the gorgeously ethereal skyscrapers were in the midst of emergency evacuations, their well-dressed occupants running out in the streets with cell phones attached to their face. That the Metra trains had abandoned their schedules and were all running out, not in, at top capacity. “Chicago,” Margie had murmured in her shaky, old lady voice. “That’s not far from here!” And it was funny, hearing her say this about the city that was the nucleus to our suburban...

"Daddy, I dropped a ball into the toilet and then flushed it, and now the toilet's broken, so we can't use it anymore, okay?" At least Andy had the sense to tell a grown up what he had done.  You'll notice that the grown up was laid-back Daddy, not HOW MUCH IS THIS GOING TO COST ME Mommy.  The answer to that question was $93.  The ball "fell" into the toilet, Andy decided to flush it (WHY!??), and the water came up and swirled around like it was waiting for Noah's ark.  Since we couldn't plunge the ball out, we figured some guy would have to come over, detach the toilet, flip it upside down, and pluck the ball out like a cherry from a kiddie cocktail.  Turns out, the guy comes over with his super plunger / snaking tool (three hours late) and just shoves it further down into the house pipes.  I fully expect to see that ball float up to my drain during a future shower.  Followed by an explosion for some reason. Andy "broke" the toilet...