My baby, she's all famous and stuff!

If you can't see the embedded video, here's the old school link: http://shine.yahoo.com/event/momentsofmotherhood/kids-soak-up-sun-sand-and-surf-2511561/

Best part?  I got paid for a video I shot in 2007!

That's my girl!

"If you don't get on the potty right this second ..."

"Hold on, let's try this. Liza, I have to go potty, and so does Daddy. If we bring your potty in the bathroom, you and I can pee at the same time! And Daddy can use the bathroom downstairs! It will be like a joint potty trip!"

"Hooray! You mean, like joint compound?"

"Not exactly, but close enough. Pull down your pants, kid."

****
(Leaning over, shouting into the furnace vent in the floor) "Daddy, I can hear you peeing! Where are you peeing, Daddy?"

"What did you say?"

"You're peeing in the potty! Silly Daddy!" (giggling hysterically)

****
Hey, at least it's one conversation I had today that didn't include one of her two favorite phrases, "Why?" and "Poopy on the poopy!" I don't even know what that second one means, other than she thinks it's hilarious to say it at the top of her lungs any time poop is mentioned for any reason.

It figures that the one think my daughter decides to do early is start using potty humor, which I've been told is usually a 3 1/2 year thing. Yep, she's mine, all right.

Tonight

This, people, is what we're dealing with. Anytime she's the least bit tired, this is what we get to deal with.
*******

"Okay, Liza, are you ready to go stand under the waterfall for a while?"
"Yaaaaaaaaay!"
(bathtub starts running)
"Time to come get in the bathtub and take a shower, Liza."
"I don't wanna take a bath! I don't wanna take my band-aid off! Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"
"Who said anything about band-aids? You can leave it on, I don't care."
"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"



(two minutes later)
"I wanna watch a video."
"You want to watch a video? You can watch this one on the camera of you screaming."
(watches video, giggling occasionally)
"Was that fun to watch? Or did it hurt your ears?"
"That was funny! Now I wanna watch Barney."
(Liza turns on DVD player and settles in)
"It's not time to watch a video, it's time to take a bath. Turn off the DVD player and come to the bathroom."
"No!"
(Jason turns off DVD player)
"I wanna watch a video! Aaaaahhhhhhhh!"



(two minutes later)
"I think I know what this is about. You think we're going to take off your band-aid, and it's going to hurt. Is that right?"
"Yeah."
"You can leave the band-aid on if you want to. How about we make a deal - you go take a bath, and we won't touch your band-aid. Deal?"
"Deal."
(Liza and Gretchen shake hands solemnly; Jason fetches swimsuit and grass skirt)
(Liza giggles maniacally and strips naked as fast as Superman)

Celebrating every March crafty holiday simultaneously

• I don't remember dyed eggs being this bright when I was a kid. Have they improved the dye, or was I just too impatient as a kid to let the suckers sit in the dye for more than 2.5 seconds? These took a good two minutes a piece, I'd say, and I think they were worth it. And Little Miss Likes To Prod And Stir Things was fine with letting them sit in the dye, as long as I let her move them around once in a while.
• Dying raw eggs - totally better than dying hardboiled eggs, especially since nobody in our house eats boiled eggs on anything other than an occasional salad. I didn't even scrub them off, just threw them right from the box into the dye, and I didn't hover over the kid to make sure she didn't stir them too hard. The only one that cracked was the one she tried to use a crayon on, which I don't find surprising given her ability to punch a hole through our dining room table with those waxy little devils.
• When my daughter accidentally cracks an egg, and I decide to use it to make her an egg burrito for lunch, and she's all excited because the egg will be green, and then she's all disappointed because the egg isn't green on the inside, DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, use food coloring to dye the eggs green. At least not on a day when she's got a cold and REALLY wants an egg burrito. After 45 minutes of screaming and crying and rending of garments and hitting and snotting and did I mention the screaming? she finally allowed as how she would eat the rest of her meal if I got the hideous green-filled burrito off of her plate. And then she had trouble getting the peanut butter to stick to her apple slices, which led to another 25 minutes of screaming and crying and hitting and throwing and rending and snotting and screaming, did I mention the screaming? And then she came back and ate the remaining two slices of apple, which I had practically superglued peanut butter onto, and decided that the half of a TastyKake I offered her wasn't sufficient, she had to have the whole one (no matter how much I love her, I will NEVER give her the last TastyKake in the house - there are some lines I will not cross), leading to another 25 minutes of screaming and throwing and hitting and snotting and did I mention the screaming was so bad I called Jason at work so he could experience it firsthand? In case you're counting, I basically had two straight hours of tantrum, during which time I had to eat my lunch, blow the kid's nose 40 times, and attempt to retain both my hearing and my sanity. Apparently my daughter is attempting to cram her entire quotient of Terrible Two-ness into the month remaining in that age. Mom, feel free to send along that bottle of Jim Beam I left on the kitchen counter at your place when we left on Sunday - I think it's going to come in handy.

Well, I'm off to work on the taxes and stab myself in the eyeballs with lemon-pepper-encrusted sharp sticks because, you know, I need to do something fun after this morning.

First photos

Yesterday morning:

I want to use your camera, Mom! I want to take a picture! No, I do it by myself!

Now I take your picture, Mom. You stand there. You say, "Cheese, please!"

You look beautiful, Mommy! Now I want to eat a cookie, will you go get me one, please?

See why I love this woman?

http://www.askmoxie.org/2008/03/the-right-way.html

I'm going to get this post tattooed on my forehead, or at least made into a t-shirt for myself.

Because I had nothing better to do while driving in a raging snowstorm in the Wal-Mart parking lot

"Mommy, are you still sick?"

"What? I don't remember telling you I was sick. Why do you think I am sick?"

"Because ... because ... because yesterday you had blood in your panties."

sigh. "Oh, sweetie, that doesn't mean Mommy is sick."

****

Ever try to explain menstruation to a 2-year-old? While driving? In a snowstorm? On a day when you're short on both sleep and caffeine?

Yeah, let's not do that again.

3:45 playtime

When she's nap-free, Liza's afternoon play sort of degenerates into "let's lay around on the floor and whine and refuse to even entertain the idea of laying in a bed."

I love the fact that the construction of the doll gives it massive cellulite deposits on the backs of its thighs. Who says dolls don't portray realistic representations of average women?

A peek at my day

This morning the waste removal company came to pick up the dumpster from our kitchen renovation. It's been parked in our driveway for more than a month now, collecting scraps from our job and several other jobs our contractors are working, as well as random stuff I think our neighbors have contributed (a Christmas tree stand? Why couldn't you wait and put that out with the regular trash?).

It had also collected a relatively large amount of rain, sleet, snow, ice, and pretty much every other form of precipitation you can come up with. If you had asked me this morning what state all this moisture would be in, I would have thought that the days of single-digit temperatures would have frozen everything up nicely. I would have been wrong.

When the truck driver tipped the dumpster at a sharp angle to pull it up onto the bed of the hauler, a huge flood of dumpster soup came rolling out the gaps at the back. I'd say we probably had 20 gallons of sludgy water spill out onto the driveway ... the driveway that was 18 degrees F.

When I went out to use the snowblower tonight, not only did I get to fight my way through the several inches of snow that had accumulated since this morning, I also got to slog through an inch-and-a-half-thick layer of tea-colored sludge where the dumpster used to be. The snowblower sucked up a decent amount of it, flinging it off into our yard, which now looks like we have a troupe of the world's most incontinent squirrels living in the trees overhead.

While I was snowblowing, Liza was playing with her toy broom, trying to sweep the snow off the front porch. She was hampered by the fact that it had started raining shortly before we went out, so everything was glued down with a sixteenth of an inch of ice. Did I let that stop me? No, sir! I blowed and scraped and swept until I was at least within sight of the actual concrete ... all the better to ice up as the rain kept falling.

After Liza went to bed, I went back outside to move the car back into our driveway so the overzealous local police wouldn't give me a ticket for being parked in the driveway of the vacant house next door. Needless to say, my nicely cleared sidewalk and driveway were a total skating rink - I'll have to post a photo tomorrow of the sun glinting off of our glasslike driveway.

I got the car moved without incident, and as I went back inside I noticed the contractors had left the light on in the garage. I unlocked the side door, flipped off the light and closed the door, not remembering that this door is the best lubricated on the planet, so it requires a tiny push to slam shut with an earshattering thud. Which is exactly what it did ... 10 feet from the head of my daughter's bed.

When I went inside, Liza was screaming her head off, so I shucked off my coat and went upstairs, wet boots and all. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, obviously still mostly asleep, yelling, "I want some more carrots! I have to have another carrot! More carrots!"

The artist's early years: prolific, yet monochromatic

The artist's early years were marked by a willingness to experiment with technique but not color. Despite the ready availability of multiple colors, she chose to work primarily in a custom-mixed blue-green shade now known as "a-LIZA-rin blue."

Fingers, hands, stamps, and a variety of paintbrushes were all used, sometimes within the same work. Of particular interest are the larger masses of color in many works, which are washes the artist applied over top of previously stamped animal figures.

The artist was also open to collaboration, as shown in this twelve-piece installation. The work in the upper left of the photograph was produced in cooperation with another artist, who painted the "Z" and "A," as well as the series of dots in the lower right of the paper.

Fingerpaint and tempera paint on paper, February 2008.

The artist's output was prodigious, at times outpacing her supply of traditional art paper. You may be surprised to see that the smaller, deeper green prints in this installation were actually painted on the backs of recycled office paper.

Focus for a moment on the piece in the lower left of the photograph above. Here we can see the beginnings of the artist's signature "four colors on one brush" style.

Tempera paint on paper, February 2008.

Often imitated, this style requires a delicate touch to keep the colors from melding together into an earthy (but undesired) brown color.

Oh fu....dge

This is the third time in four days that Her Royal Highness won't take a nap.

Crap crap crappity crap. I do NOT want her to give up her nap now, even if it means we can push bedtime an hour earlier. I need that sanity-saving toddler-free hour every afternoon. NEED. IT. BADLY.

cabin fever

Liza has been getting the crazies every evening just about the time I need to start fixing dinner, and they last pretty much until we hit her on the head with a hammer to make her "sleep" around 9pm. They only got worse once we started packing up the living room and dining room stuff, to the point where she's been running around like a maniac, bouncing off of walls, especially right after dinner.

Last week we got in the habit of having Jason take care of the dishes while I devoted my full attention to keeping the kid from ending up in the ER. Her favorite games at the time was jumping in and out (and in and out and in and out) of the "swimming pool" made inside my legs when I sat on the floor with the soles of my feet together, and "riding the train." At some point she told me she wanted to dive into the pool, and she would have done it, too, if I hadn't tackled and redirected.

So introducing "cliff diving" was the logical next step, right? Because there are worse ways to burn off energy than doing somersaults off a side chair onto some sofa cushions.

And then, of course, we had to go for distance.

And height.

Jumping over sofa cushions - the game the whole family can play!

So remember when Liza was little and screamed 24/7 and I would occasionally refer to her as evil or possessed? Well, you be the judge. I'd say the comparison is pretty good.

(Couldn't find a shot of her on top of the building at the end of the movie with her hair blowing around her. Trust me, it's the same as Liza's, only brown and more moussey).

The train bound for hell in a handbag

Okay, who switched the "play imagination games" switch in my daughter to "on"?



Because I'd like them to be the one to have to come ride the train of sofa cushions for 30 seconds (hardly enough time to even work up a good chugga chugga, much less a choooochoooo), then hop up ("stand up faster, Mama!") and visit the awe-inspiring destinations of "the trashcan!" and "the recycle basket!" and "that thing! You mean the lamp? The Lamp!" Every. Single. Afternoon. For at least 30 minutes straight.

You ever try getting up off the floor every 30 seconds for half an hour straight? Screw pilates, I've got the newest workout craze right here, baby.


On the other hand, the sight of my sparkles-and-tulle-clad daughter with the World's Ugliest Handbag slung over her arm pushing a shopping cart loaded full of gyoza and plastic Easter eggs is one of the cutest things I've ever seen. And I got in trouble last night because every time she turned her back, I threw a stuffed tomato at her head, and she told me tomatoes were for eating, not throwing, so I had to go in timeout. That was so cute I could just keel over ... with the added bonus that I got to turn throwing stuffed fruit at my daughter into one of her favorite games! Hooray for lazy parenting!

Dear Parents of My Daughter's Classmates:

Your kid is two. You, of all people, should know that what my two-year-old daughter needs around the holidays is NOT more sugar, especially when it comes in a form that is both chocolatey and stain-inducing. I already have to use a spatula to pry her off the ceiling to lay down for naps, and let's not even discuss bedtime, and I have to answer "Can I have a cookie? One cookie? Just one? How about two? Later? Now? Right now? Can I have a cookie?" at least 45 times a day.

Thanks to your choice of Token Christmas Gift for Your Child's Preschool Classmates, I now get to answer "Can I have some candy? Pleeeeeeeeeeeese can I have just one piece? One piece? Two pieces? Right now? I want some candy riiiiiiiight nooooooooow!" 1000 times ... and that's just since we got home from school at noon.

Enough already with the candy-stuffed Cute Commemorative Stuffed Character Christmas Stockings. After two years in preschool, Liza already has about 10 of them, and the combined weight of the stockings and candy is threatening to make the mantle collapse and burst into flames. You don't really want to leave us homeless and destitute for the holidays, do you?

For the same money, you could have bought books for everyone in the class, or stickers, or coloring books, or Hot Wheels. Those are cute, and age-appropriate, and festive. But no, you had to provide her with yet another sugar high.

You're on warning, parents - next time I see you bringing a candy-filled stocking near my daughter, I'm going to tell you exactly where you can stuff it. Either that, or I'm making you babysit AND clean my carpet.

Sincerely,

Ungrateful and proud of it

Oh, and thanks for this, too:

Brings new meaning to the phrase, "Bah, humbug!"

PTA Christmas Party

Friday evening was the early childhood PTA Christmas party, and Liza was so excited about the idea of going to a party (where she was assured there would be cupcakes and juice boxes) that she kept hounding me about it all day. "Potty? Potty? Can we go to the potty NOW?" Shame those two words sound so much alike, at least coming out of a two-year-old's mouth.

She only had about 45 minutes of nap that day, and I knew this party was going to be packed (80 families, most with several children), so I was fully prepared to bail at the first sign of meltdown. Predictably enough, we got there, the place was packed, the DJ had the Christmas music blaring, and Liza wanted nothing to do with crafts or anything that didn't involve clinging to me with both hands, both legs, and a couple other bits I'm not sure I can even identify.

And then we got her a snack and a juice box, and suddenly all was right with the world and she could go out and act like a normal kid. She was one giant cupcake-fueled blur for the next two hours.

One of the party organizers had brought a whole bunch of toddler toys from home, and Liza was determined to make the most of the opportunity.

The flurry of running ceaselessly from one toy to the next was interrupted only by a trip to see Santa, who had a cheap costume and a bad beard, but nonetheless managed to scare the crap out of my kid.

"Santa give Liza a gift. That nice man."

"No, you stay over there, Santa."

All three of us are looking at the camera, and we're close enough that Santa is actually in the shot with us, so that counts as a success, right?

I still can't believe how well it went. She had a great time, managed to not screw up her expensive dress (although it's going to take some doing to get the grey scunge off the feet of her tights from running around without shoes on for two hours in a middle school cafeteria), and handled the crowd and the other kids well. She took turns, moved out of the way so the babies could get to the slide, and whined very little.

Of course, since Jason and I know absolutely no one in the PTA, we got to stand around like dorks for two hours while the kid played ... but at least we got pizza and soda out of it.

In the car the other night

"So, Liza, what do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas?"

"I want Santa to bring me a ... a ... a pink dress to wear on the tightrope."

"Oh, that's neat. What does a pink tightrope dress look like?"

"It's pink, with sparkles, with a big poofy skirt, and poofy sleeves, and a wand, and a crown, and pink ballet shoes that will make me dance like a beautiful princess ... on a tightrope."

"Is there anything else you want Santa to bring?"

"Ummmm, maybe a lollipop."

"Is Santa going to bring anything for Daddy? What do you think Daddy would want?"

"Santa is going to bring Daddy a burger with a hot dog on it. And sauce."

I am in love with the Yarn Harlot

If only for the following sentences:

Sam was a toddler and everyone with kids has been that mother who had to remove her kid from the gym because they threw a fit when you insisted that it was the Choir leaders turn to play the piano and they really didn't need any help and your toddler, barely holding it together after the piano disappointment, decided the secondary activity should be lying on the floor licking the road salt off of the boots of strangers, and when you saw them doing that you threw up in your mouth a bit and then had to leave with your thrashing, wailing kid under your arm because it turns out that LITERAL boot licking is the only thing that they want to do, and when you picked them up off the floor and gently tried to distract them from that unspeakable activity, the kid had a meltdown that made a failed nuclear reactor look like a small problem, so you flee to the hall way. Then you're there. Sitting in the hall outside the gym, listening to the concert going on without you and you think "Wow. Nobody else is in the hall with a boot licking toddler" and suddenly it hits you...this mothering thing is not going to work out because you suck and your kids a freak? I know you have had that day. My day was Tuesday December 17th, 1996. I will never forget it.

Find the rest of the post here.

Sorry, Susan

But I gave up and had to take Elmo back for a trade. And, thanks to the SOBs who designed the Macy's girls' department with the Disney dress-up clothes right up front, we are now the proud owners of one Sleeping Beauty Princess Aurora gown, original price $60 (but we got it on sale, so you can stop hyperventilating now, Mom).

At the store:

"Liza, these sleeves are made of scratchy netting. Are you sure they won't itch you when you wear the dress?"

"Not scratchy! Liza looooooooves this dress!"

At home:

"This dress is a little bit scratchy, Mommy. Oh, well - I just won't wear it to bed."

Well, you can't argue with that, I guess. In order to preserve the dress a little longer than her previous dress-up clothes (may most of them rest in peace, er, pieces), she can't wear it outside, or when she eats, or to bed ... at least until after Christmas. I'm not THAT much of a hard-ass ... it's just that it IS nice to see her wear regular clothing at least once a day. That's not asking much, is it? And if I don't set some sort of limits, I'm going to be trying to fit her winter coat over the damn fairy wings so we can go to the grocery store, and I'm just not willing to go there yet.

Oh, and who replaced my toddler with a pre-teen? Because, my god, will you look at her?

She looks like she's ready to go to prom or something. Gahhhhhhhhhh. Jason, where'd you put the phone numbers for the convents?

Clothing I finally got my daughter to wear

Have I mentioned that pants apparently are the work of the devil, and skirts are the only thing allowed to touch the legs of Her Royal Danciness With The Dancing All The Time? And pink, well, pink is where it's at, unless it's floral, in which case it's doubly where it's at. And that blue dress my mother made for my daughter this summer, which is too small to the point where one of these days a button is going to pop off the bodice and take out somebody's eye, is just about the best non-pink thing on the planet.

So you'd think that a replica of the dress, made by Grandma from denim with embroidered pink flowers and green sequins, would be a hit. Not so much, unless you count "screams and cries and hides naked in a corner whenever you suggest wearing it" as a hit.

I'm willing to tolerate this for a while - I used to hate it when I was forced to wear something I didn't like - but eventually I draw the line at not even trying the thing on. If you try it on and it itches or is too tight or looks dorky, fine, we'll scrap it. If you scream your head off at the idea of putting it on for the first time, you're just being Two.

I finally took the gloves off this week, pulling out that dress and one she hates even worse (Dora the Explorer denim cowgirl dress, in case you care) and telling her that she WAS going to wear one of these dresses. I didn't even have to dangle her beloved tights over the trashcan or anything - she just said she'd wear the Grandma Dress.

And then she spent 15 minutes twirling in the sunlight, watching the sequins refract the light onto the walls in little dancing dots. It was pronounced a "pretty dress." Thank god.

Now, if we can just convince her that the track pants and shirt that go with this gift from Aunt Susan are the EXACT SAME PANTS that Elmo wears in one of the Sesame Street online games we play, we may even get THOSE on her.

Sorry, Susan, but we may be using that gift receipt.

Lame, lame, lame

1. Jason's grandmother's husband's health is worsening, with an episode last week that involved things like fainting in a restaurant, not having a pulse, being resuscitated, staying in the hospital for three days, hallucinating, losing control of some functions, etc. He's not a blood relation, but he's a really nice guy - the kind who is always the first to give little kids high-fives at Thanksgiving - and it's awful to hear he's hurting. We're thinking of you, Bill.
2. The kitchen renovation estimate we received on Monday was only a couple thousand more than our target, and it was just barely within the realm of reasonable justification ("yes, we could get it down to the target, but then we'd have to live with no tiled backsplash and no Corian ... and I think the kitchen is going to look kinda cheap without those."). As we're about to sign the contract, Jason notices that the estimate doesn't include the cost of the cabinets, which we'll be purchasing ourselves through Ikea. Add the roughly $3500 for the cabinets, and we're getting into "seriously over-budget" territory. I got to spend my free time last night totalling up all of our liquid assets to see how much money we actually have to throw at this thing, and totalling our income and expenses for each of the last four months to see how quickly we're burning through our savings right now. Good news - breaking even (ish) each month, and even with the higher pricetag, we'll still have a reasonable amoung leftover for emergency funds. Now we just have to decide whether we really want to dump this much money into the house, given that we've already got one of the higher-priced houses in the neighborhood. Keep your fingers crossed that we don't need a new furnace, roof, and car all in the next year :\ Oh, and they can't start work until January. Gah!
3. Zach and I both had medical appointments today, and both of us had to fast for them. So not only was I ravenous, I got to clean up about 10 spots of Bella's "oh-my-god-there's-no-food-what-are-we-going-to-do" stress-provoked cat puke out of the carpet. And the kid had two accidents. I spent a good portion of today up to my armpits in paper towels soaked in other animals' bodily fluids. Yay.
4. The napalm-conquering recurring crotch rot? Now thought to be contact dermatitis. Throwing out dryer sheets, changing toilet paper, changing soap, applying hydrocortisone, taking antihistamine. Fun. And they never did do the "you might have diabetes" test, so I starved all morning long for nothing. I'm all, wait, don't I need to pee in a cup, and they're all, not unless you really want a souvenir.
5. Zach needed to go to the vet to get his shots and to get a peanut-sized lump on his noggin checked out. It's been there for about two weeks, and given the placement and the occasional crustiness of it, I assumed he had gotten hooked by Bella and just had a mild infection or something. Vet thought the same thing based on phone conversation, and he asked me to bring him in fasted so they could possibly sedate him and drain the thing. Only when I brought him in, they started using words like "biopsy" and "possible melanoma" and "$500." I brought him home tonight so he could be in comfortable surroundings, but he has to fast again overnight (eat fast, buddy, I'm storing the food away as soon as I hit "publish") and go in first thing tomorrow to remove the lump. I think it's funny that the vet sits down with you with an estimate of what it's going to cost to do the procedure to discuss whether you want to do it ... you never see that in a regular doctor's office. "So, Mr. Brown, your son may have skin cancer. It's going to cost $500 to remove it and find out - should we go ahead with that or just let him die a slow painful death of unknown causes? Hmmm?" Zach can be an annoying little puker whose bad habits way outweigh his good traits, but I got all choked up thinking about him possibly having cancer. He may be annoying, but we've got a long, annoying history together, and I'm not in a hurry to end that (or have to explain it to the kid).
6. I posted the most hilarious description for my ugliest item in my etsy store yesterday. Over the course of less than 24 hours and with only minor plugging by me, it got 450 views, eight "favorites" and three pages of comments in the forums about how funny the description was, how cheap the price was, and how it was going to sell so fast. Sucker's still sitting there gathering dust in my shop. Come on, doesn't anyone want to be seriously unattractive buy really warm?
7. Jason ordered three things for me from various etsy shops for my birthday. Thanks to the wonders of business trips where Jason can't access etsy from his company computer, postal holidays, and the vagueries of shipping, I've received one of them. And my birthday was last Thursday. On the positive side of things, it's a really nice present, which will look really nice in my hideously over-improved kitchen. People who feel sorry for me can feel free to buy me any other items from this store that include that turquoise color in them somewhere ... it may not make me feel better, but at least I'll be well accessorized while miserable.
8. Oh, and apparently today is "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" day, at least on the Toddler calendar. We do not have nearly enough chocolate in the house for me to deal with this.