mamapants

I made a patio today

For real, y'all! Our deck is lovely to eat and play on, but not so good for keeping the grill on. (It could be the size of a hockey rink - let's go 'Canes, by the way, you take that cup, boys - and not be big enough for the grill, since someone small and squirrely has a tendency to race to whatever's currently on fire and clutch it like a life ring.) So today Mom and I made a 5'x5' pavered patio space between the two big old trees in our backyard. We are feeling delightfully accomplished and utterly crippled. Thank God for the remote and delivery pizza.

At Lowe's, Norah was hamming like she's never hammed before. She was wearing the John Deere outfit that goes with her green hat (although she generally is only willing to wear the hat when she's otherwise unclothed, don't ask me why) and everyone in the garden section had something to say about That Cute Little Boy. Gender issues notwithstanding, the princess flirted and fluttered and slid sly sideways smiles at the old men buying geraniums with their old wives. I now have proof that she is my child - she must be the center of attention at all times, and God help anyone who dares to put her in her car seat and leave her there while trying to load 125 bricks into the back of a Toyota.

Kate is gone, off to visit my dad in Indiana before heading back to Boston. It's quieter here, and remarkably less entertaining. And my mom is leaving for good on Saturday. As some of you know, the 'rents have been trying to sell their house and move here, and my mom has been with us for the last year while my dad waited and waited and waited... and waited... for someone to go ahead and buy the place. It never happened, so my mom is headed home. We're getting our house back. And I am sad.

Hence the patio, hence our pizza (we said it was because we were too sore to cook, but it was a big old lie and we should not kid ourselves). We're cramming as much fun as we can into the next five days, calories and backaches be damned. Tomorrow we may do something completely nuts, like go rock climbing, if I can just get Norah to quit eating the caribeners. Carribeeners. Carribean-ers. Oh, you know.

Posted in: on 6/04/2006 at at 7:56 PM 0 comments

Saving this for her senior slideshow

For real! A post! Woo!

Hello, blogsters, how you is these days? It's hot as you-know-what down here, and while we de-sweat from the dog park I thought, hey, I'll blog something.

Sadly, that something is nothing exciting, just more daily doin's. Today we discovered three things:

1. Norah is finally, finally, FINALLY THANK YOU GOD getting her top teeth. I am so sick of people commenting on the bottom two and then going straight for my underachieving mother jugular with "Isn't she getting any more? And is she walking? And writing your thesis, because clearly YOUR lazy ass will never get it done!"

What makes me get so defensive about that kind of thing? Like getting teeth (or in Norah's case, not getting them) is some kind of skill, a learned behavior that she's picked up that indicates her geniushood? Yes, she's getting teeth, and later I will get her to demonstrate her impressive speed in healing her black eyes!

Item 2: Norah has learned to express questions without using actual English words. She'll scoot over to her beloved dinosaur, hunt for a ball to feed it, be unable to find one, turn to me, and say "Daaaahr?" in this chirpy little bird voice. Or she'll stretch up and grab her highchair, beat on the tray with whatever dropped utensil is closest, and hit me with a cute little "Moooh-tah?" Or she'll bite my cheek and say "Paaaapapapa?" which obviously means "Rabies? Did I give you my rabies? Ha! Success!"

And three: she likes to swim! Here, internet - a photo of my daughter's naked ass. Hide this for me, in case she finds all my copies and burns them.

Posted in: on 5/31/2006 at at 3:56 PM 2 comments

Quoth my sister, "What is up?"

Yeah, so I guess I'm bad at posting these days. Somehow I've let this blog become an obligation, and as anyone who knows me can tell you, the odds of me completing something that I'm required to do, for whatever reason, are about as good as finding 99-cent gas. I am a sucktastic follower-through, and for that I apologize, oh blogworld. I loves you bunches, though.

Anyway! Here are some fun things that happened this week:

My sister showed up yesterday with Max the Righteous Airedale and a month's worth of Aveda hair gunk crammed in her Mini Cooper. I am tickled. Not only has she promised to share the knowledge gleaned (gleaned, I say) at her cooking class*, she also managed to comment on my new snack-sized ass** the minute she walked in the door. She'll be here for a couple of weeks and then move on to Indiana, where she has a job painting someone's house. In a perfect world, that job would pay her $21,600, as that is the exact amount of her yearly rent in Boston. Or possibly she will be paid in hours of sunshine and get a bitchin' tan. You guess what's more likely.

* Her current boyfriend signed them up for a couples cooking class for Valentine's Day. This came shortly after the pasta machine for Christmas - Kate loves pasta beyond all things, so such a gift was absolutely inspired. And he's got a mop of curly brown hair that he never really combs and yet usually looks like an Abercrombie ad. Don't ask, he doesn't have an older brother. I totally checked.

** Re: my ass. I have returned to the size I was in college. COLLEGE! I haven't talked much about this particular diet, because then if it had failed I would have had to admit it to my thousands of internet worshipers, and my self-esteem couldn't have handled a smacking like that. But I will admit to my success, just this one time, and then I'll shut up about it. Those people that go on and on about how hot they look in jeans, and how buying a swimsuit this year didn't give them a panic attack (unlike last year) and all that, those people make me want to... oh.

Ein photo of the princess in her best ever Easter outfit, purchased by my mom and dad at the same store where they got my dad's new weed whacker:

Yes, that is the John Deere logo on her belly. And it is also on her coordinating hat, which she opted to forgo in favor of a crown of dandelions. My baby, future president of FFA.

Posted in: on 5/18/2006 at at 6:46 PM 2 comments

Insert appropriate livestock disease joke here

Apparently, "hand, foot and mouth disease" is not the same as "hoof and mouth disease," as much as I wanted it to be (because who doesn't want her kid to have a cow disease? If she has to be sick, it could at least be something I've heard about on Dateline, something that could cause a national panic and spawn really bad TV movies.) Norah has the former, and for the last three days my poor baby has been battling 103-degree fevers and blisters on her lips and tongue. She's much better today, but I swear if I didn't have a sense of humor (and a mega-sized bottle of baby Motrin) I would have killed myself from the pain of watching her sad, sad little face.

For a while there, I was pretty convinced that she was just teething - the fever was low, she kept biting her fingers, etc. Then she got what I thought was a zit, which is pretty stupid in retrospect. Babies don't get real zits, they get those cute little white zits, because everything related to babies is somehow cute. (And if you believe that, I'd like to talk to you about a Nigerian lottery you've just won.)

When her fever hit 103 on Tuesday afternoon, I decided that it was definitely time to be concerned, so I called her pediatrician, who directed us to the Urgent Care clinic. There we met Dr. Shepherd, who was incredibly, unbelievably hot. HOT! What kind of hot guy spends his days taking babies' temperatures the Uncomfortable Way? A SUPER-hot one, because he can do that and still be cool! I am ashamed to admit that that totally helped.

He checked her over, during which time she was laughing and dare I say flirting with Dr. Hot, and did a little hot diagnosing. He referred to her illness as "Coxsackie virus" a few times, and just to illustrate how emotionally shaky I was at the time, I will confess that every time he said "coxsackie" I snorted. He advised us on our Motrin and our sleeping and our freedom to lounge around in underwear and watch too much TV, and sent us home. And sure enough, the underwear lounging did the trick - she's sleeping like a log, and I'm about to be.

So that's where I been at - what's new with you?

Posted in: on 5/11/2006 at at 9:46 PM 2 comments

Mondayism, vol. 2

This afternoon in the van, coming back from the mall.

Kid1: Let's be princesses. Our whole family.
Me: Would daddy and your brother be princesses?
Kid 1: Noooo. Daddy is the king and my brother is the prince and Mommy is the queen and I am the princess.
Kid 2: What will I be?
Kid 1 (mulls it over): Hey! You can be the CAT!
Me, preparing to lecture about how Everyone Can Be Princesses If They Want To: Now, maybe we could all--
Kid 2: HECK, yes!

When you can get that excited about being assigned the role of the housepet in a game where everyone else is royalty, you're either insane or three. Or both. Happy Monday!

Posted in: on 5/08/2006 at at 1:24 PM 0 comments

The wearin' o' the hat

A couple of weeks ago, my uncle the playboy pilot and his girlfriend* went up to my parents' hometown, ostensibly to take my dad out for his birthday. They flew up in one of Uncle Dick's buddy's planes, an RV8 with naked ladies painted on its sides. I guess they're not completely naked; they have little ribbons painted across their hooties. My dad, who had trouble keeping his cool when Norah was born because that meant I had had sex at some point, was nearly apopleptic when they landed, so it was probably best that they took him out for a very large drink.

* I should note here that his girlfriend is a) his own age, a pleasant change considering the last girl he dated was MY own age, and b) remarkably tolerant of his midlife crisis. He gets a huge kick out of the naked lady plane, something that really surprises me since I always thought he was somewhat classier than that; she, meanwhile, just rolls her eyes and says "Oh, Dick, you goofball," and reads Vogue or perhaps Us Weekly. I would love her, but she's thinner than me and dresses way WAY better, so I'm taking out a hit on her later. Back to my dad and the hat.

Unfortunately, the three of them went out in town, which never really works because there are exactly three places to go. The three of them ended up at the Key West Shrimp House, a seafood restaurant that's been in town since my mom was drinking on a fake ID. Apparently, at the Shrimp House, the thing to do is to have your picture taken on your birthday wearing the lobster hat. My dad's done this before; however, it seems that the lobster hat has been seriously upgraded. It used to be a blue trucker's hat with a plastic lobster glued to the top... and now, you can see that it is in fact a lobster that also happens to be a hat. The glory! The wonder! The beady black plastic eyes!

Dad, wherever you are right now, happy birthday. And mind the claws.

Posted in: on 5/01/2006 at at 8:44 PM 1 comments

Better days

Apparently, someone said something to Mr. Drunkyface, because Roxie hasn't been loose since I wrote that post, nor has she been put outside early in the morning to serve as the neighborhood's barking alarm clock. Which is good, because hitting her snooze button was going to involve a solidly thrown shoe.

And a side note to Anonymous: yep, that's North Carolina for you. It's also Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Nebraska, and every other place in the world, because in case you hadn't noticed, there are trashy people in the country, the ghetto, and even the so-called best neighborhoods in the most Charming Cities. So no dogging (har har har) my state, you big poopy.

Anyway. Today we hit the Cary Spring Daze festival, which was absolutely adorable. It was really just like any spring fair, with a heavy emphasis on sterling silver jewelry and photographs of giant daylilies, but the earthy section was informative (we're going to get a rain barrel from the city so we don't get busted watering during the current drought!) and the street performers were a fun touch. The best part was that we went on a day when the weather was great, and not once did I get chawed upon by a mosquito. This is probably because they're all building their mosquito condos under our deck and sharpening their probosciseseses to insert more efficiently into my flesh.

So! Photos! Here is a photo of Norah ignoring the swarthy pirates swordfighting before her, and instead focusing intensely on a leaf:

And here is a photo of the closest Rob will be in the forseeable future to piloting his own plane:

And here is a photo of Norah's very first black eye, which she earned by not shettin' up and lettin' Mama watch her stories!

(Actually, she wiped out while holding on to my desk chair and jabbed herself with the seat-lifty lever. Oh, man, did I cry - the guilt invoked by your mom is NOTHING compared to the guilt you feel when your kid does something appropriately kidlike and gets a booboo. It wasn't my fault, and yet OH YES IT WAS.)

And because you didn't go awwwww in a good way yet, here is Norah posing in front of our swanky new mulch yard - her swing hangs from the tree behind her:

Wait... wait... NOW. Awwwww.

I love the spring.

Posted in: on 4/29/2006 at at 7:42 PM 3 comments