It has officially begun: The Time Of Year That I Do Not Sit Down For One Single Moment Because There Is Too Much To Do. This? Is not an exaggeration. The minute that Thanksgiving is over I know it is coming, it is looming over my head like a big rain cloud about to burst. It all kicks off with Charlie's birthday on the third, followed closely by Ella's birthday on the ninth, followed by a mad dash to complete Christmas shopping, followed by actual Christmas, and then our anniversary, then New Years. There are parties to attend, parties to host, shopping to get done, food to cook. It is all starting tomorrow with not one but two, yes TWO! parties at our house. Ella is having a small party for her friends...she wanted to let everyone make their own ice cream sundaes. After the guests from that party leave I will have approximately fifteen minutes to clean up the aftermath, set out all of the food for the next party, and maybe take a swig (or twelve) of wine before 25 people make their way into our home for a joint birthday party for Ella and Charlie. So we will be partying here in this house from 3pm until...whenever I shoo the last guests out of the house somewhere around 7-ish. At which time I will promptly collapse onto the couch in a heap and sleep until my alarm goes off Monday morning, at 5:15am.

IN other news, Charlie is ONE! ONE YEAR OLD! My God, this year has simultaneously crept by and flown by, if that's possible. The parts that crept by were, um, the entire first four months of his little life in which he made me consider tying my own tubes each night and the crappy parts like teething and sleep training. But the parts that have flown by, oh! the sweet snuggles and the first smiles and the pride I felt watching him learn new things, and at times I swear I could literally SEE him growing up before my eyes. I remember feeling this same way when Ella turned one. On one hand , the really bad parts are over with and gone, hooray! But, on the other hand, the really really great parts are also gone forever, and that is sad. Now we march onward into the land of temper tantrums, walking, talking, and lots more snuggling.

Congratulations, you wonderful little person. We made it! And it only cost Mommy a small portion of her sanity.

Adventures In Stepford Wifery.

So. Ella goes to this school, this school that we LOVE with all of our hearts and to which we will one day send Charlie. Way back in September when the school year started I noticed Hmmm, about 95% of the moms are really dressed up and have perfectly styled hair and makeup, and they all amazingly lack the presence of spit-up or peanut butter on their perfectly put together ensembles. Hmmm. I chalked it up to a First-Week-Let's-Make-A-Good-Impression kinda thing. But now, as we round the bend into the end of November, they are still at it. Still with the hair that has been freshly curled, and the crisply ironed button down shirts, and Oh My God if I see one more pair of jeans tucked into a pair of Uggs I am going to vomit. We got to school a minute early this morning and while we were waiting for the doors to open, I sat in my car and watched a group of these moms stand outside and talk. I was amazed! Not a wrinkle or stain or sweatshirt among them. Which got me to thinking they must all either have A) live-in nannies who entertain the kid(s) while they are primping and preening and shoving those blue jean hems into their Uggs, or B) children who actually sit contentedly by themselves for the three hours it takes them to get ready in the morning. I could possibly understand all of this if we were rolling up to the school at, oh, 10:00 in the morning. But people!!! We get there at 9am, which means we leave the house no later than 8:40am, maybe 8:30 if Mama has had a particularly rough morning and needs to space out in the car with Laurie Berkner blasting from the radio to keep the kiddies quiet. So from wake-up time to 8:30 am, these Made Up Moms need to fit in the following (or at least *I* do): diaper changes (2), breakfast prep, actual feeding of the breakfast, teeth brushing, dressing two wiggly kids, hair brushing, hair putting-up for the girl, one bottle feeding, a shoe reconnaissance mission, lunch packing, backpack finding, breaking-up-of-the-sibling-rivalry squabbles, basic Child Safety measures which include, but are not limited to, making sure Baby does not crawl into the slippery shower, rescuing stray Barbie shoe from the throat of Baby, and protecting all lamps, laptops, fireplace screens, power cords, and dvds from the wrath of Baby. All between the hours of 6ish-o-clock and 8:30. Also noteworthy is that the above list does not, in fact, include anything whatsoever pertaining to ME. Always up for a challenge, I decided to give this whole Stepford Wife look a go. What follows should be read as a How To Not Look Like You Stepped Out Of The Pages Of A Magazine Before 9am kind of a guide. Enjoy.

1. I prepared the night before by packing whatever items could be pre-packed into the lunchbox. Set out clothes for both kids. Picked out my own clothes and set them aside. I. WAS. PREPARED. Piece of cake, this was going to be.

2. Wake up a smidge earlier than my normal 5:15am to give me time to take a full-on shower, rather than the usual Oh, crap, there's still a little bit of shampoo left in my hair because the Baby was going to chew on the bottle of Pine Sol so I had to jump out of the shower early. Accomplish task #1, hooray! Both legs fully shaved with no prickly stripes left behind. Actual facial exfoliation went on in there, people. And moisturizing afterward! I felt like a new woman. Was smug and beginning to think that this was actually do-able. Was about to get knocked on my ass (literally) as a reward for smugishness. Throw hair in wet ponytail and get on with this charade.

3. Aaand, Go Time. The natives wake up, and the race is on. Bottle feeding: check. Coffee refill #3: check. Breakfast prep, fresh pot of coffee made, diaper change: check. Bonus points for me that breakfast included actual scrambled eggs cooked by me, because you just wouldn't be a TRUE Stepford Wife if you slapped a pop tart and juice box in front of the kids. Mad dash to finish lunch packing. Is 7:15.

4. Downstairs we go, to get everyone dressed and presentable. Tugging and crying commence. Time spent on kids: 782. Time spent on me: big fat pajama-wearing ZERO. Is 7:45.

5. Into the bathroom I go, armed with a make-up bag, blow dryer, and straightening iron. Step One: blow dry hair as straight as possible while keeping one eye on the Baby who is crawling dangerously close to the toilet. Stop blow drying nineteen times to remove him from a situation including the toilet brush and his mouth. Notice that as a result of Stop And Go Blow Drying, hair has dried in a style not unlike Carrot Top's. Sigh and move on to the straightening portion of this bullshit. Like a good Stepford Wife, actually TRY to get it right, meaning clipping tiny chunks of hair up on top of your head while straightening minuscule amounts of hair at one time. Get through three pencil-thin sections before actual toilet-brush-to-mouth contact is made and calls for a thorough wiping down of the baby with Wet Ones. Back to the hair. While flipping hair around to cool it off from scorching heat of the iron, Baby somehow crawls between me and the cabinets, somehow culminating in a fantastical flailing arms and hair brushes dance that ends with my foot tangled in the cord to the blow dryer, and me on my ass. And Baby screaming because I almost fell on him and oh yeah, there are fifty clips in my hair and I probably look like Medusa to him. Comfort screaming child. Is 8:15.

6. Throw on pre-selected clothes. Massive Pooping Up The Back occurs (Baby, not me), screaming and a bath are necessitated. Clothes are ruined, clothes are changed, Preschooler is crying because I don't have time to build a block castle for the Barbies with her. Vodka on the rocks is looking good right now. Is 8:25.

7. Definitely one of the previously discussed Zone Out In The Car mornings. Load up both kids in the car, throw in lunchbox, backpack, blankies and pacis and a very large coffee for me. And we're off.

Stepford Wife status: Jeans (and NOT the cute ones that now have poop on the leg), a tshirt, and SURPRISE! a sweatshirt and Birkenstock clog-y things in lieu of the cute brown suede loafers that would have been soooo Stepford of me if I had been able to wear the shirt I had planned on. Halfway straightened hair, with the leftovers twisted into a knot on top of my head. No makeup made its way onto this here face.

So in other words? I looked just like I do every other morning at 8:30am, except I may have suffered a stroke or two. And my kids had no playtime with mom like they usually do, which made them crabbier. Which did not help with my need to iron and bursh and lacquer myself beyond recognition.

Hats off to you, Oh Wearer Of The Stain-Free Button Down Shirt, Perfectly Curled Hair At 8am Lady, and Holy Hell Did She IRON HER JEANS? Woman. You are better women than I. Either that, or you wake up at 3am to accomplish these ungodly feats. And in that case? No thank you.

I'm Suprised He Didn't Come Out Holding a PBR And Watching Nascar.

For the first three years of my career in parenting, life was all about a girl. A dresses-nail polish-Barbies-playing beauty salon-sweet powdery smelling girl. That is all I knew of parenthood, the endless hours playing dress up and letting her put makeup on me until I resembled a car accident survivor. I marveled at how this girl seemed to be born with the innate knowledge of what to do with a blush brush and how to spin around and make her skirt twirl like a fairy and how to find the most glittery, pink item in a toy store. So, too, do boys. Apparently. As Charlie rapidly moves from Baby to Boy, I am in awe of how much like a little MAN he is. There are no gentle caresses for a baby doll. Baby Doll gets thrown across the room or gets her head smashed into the wall repeatedly. As a member of The Gentler Sex, Ella was content to sit and play with her shape sorter for an hour, actually trying to figure out where the pieces fit. Charlie? Holds said shape sorter over his head and bounces up and down, bangs the pieces into another toy, and then grunts and yells like Tarzan. I knew going into this that boys and girls are different from one another, but I don't think I was fully prepared for just how different they can be. I give you Exhibits A-E to display how little boys are just tiny little men.

A. He is obsessed with The Junk. I believe Ella was a few days shy of her third birthday before she realized, hey! there is something down there! Charlie grabs incessantly at the bits during every diaper change.

B. He doesn't pay attention to one thing for more than three seconds. One minute he's playing with his car, the next he's all "Hey! Let's go knock some crap over!" It is vaguely reminiscent of my conversations with the hubs: "Hon, could you take the trash to the curb, it's..." "Yeah, sure...WHOA! Golf is on! Score."

C. He wants a woman (ie. ME) to do everything for him. Why make the effort to lift that Cheerio to your own mouth when there's a woman to do it for you? Holding your own bottle? Psssh, Mom's got that covered. Any day now he'll start leaving the new toilet paper roll propped up ON TOP OF THE OLD, EMPTY CARDBOARD ROLL.

D. His feet stink. I'm not sure what this is all about, as he doesn't wear shoes yet, and they stink first thing in the morning, when the last thing they have touched is sweet smelling bath water the night before. I now firmly believe that men are born with a stink gene that makes this possible.

E. He grunts and yells and is about three seconds away from pounding on his chest and yelling "MORE POWER!" a la Tim Taylor The Tool Guy.

But he sure is cute, and there truly is nothing else like the snuggles that he reserves for only me.




It might look like he is playing in the yard, but he was actually about to crawl inside to get on the couch, scratch his crotch, burp, and then watch football.

Like Cats and Dogs.

Like cats and Dogs, my kids are. On so many levels, in so many ways.

The fighting. Has gotten ridiculous here. Charlie will be holding a toy and magically, all of the sudden, Ella NEEEEEDS it NOW. She will absolutely cease to exist if she cannot have the green alligator-shaped baby rattle this very instant. She doesn't know how she has survived up to this point without this rattle. And Charlie? He feels the exact same way. I got a scary glimpse into the next, oh, four years this weekend. Ella was playing with her Magna Doodle, drawing and writing and having fun. Charlie decided he needed the magnet pen part thingy right that second. He grabbed at it and got it. Mommy told him no, and took it away from him to give back to Ella. Again. And again. Repeat twelve times. Finally, after the thirteenth time of being reprimanded and shot down in his attempts to steal the magnet pen, Charlie got a look of resolve on his face. Stuck out his bottom lip, knitted his brow, and crawled over behind Ella. And bit her on the ass. Yes, at a few days shy of eleven months old, Charlie has become A Biter, the most dreaded of playground playmates. I didn't know what to do first: laugh hysterically (which I did), tell Chrlie NO, or tend to the now hysterical victim of his drive-by biting.I was doing the Trying To Hide It Because It Is SOOO Not Funny But, Hey, It Kinda Is laugh, Charlie started laughing because I was laughing, and Ella was sobbing because in addition to just having been bit on her butt cheek, she thought we were laughing at her.

It's gonna be a loooong four years.

We're heading into Fall as a family of four for the first time. Crap, that sentence had a lot of Fs in it. Anyway, there is no shortage of Fall activities to keep us busy, and busy we are. Halloween parties, visits to the pumpkin patch, Fall bonfire parties to attend, and the list goes on and on. All of this on top of our everyday nonsense...school, cleaning, playing short order cook to two kids on a daily basis, laundry and laundry and laundry that never ends. So until things slow down a bit, here are some photos of what we've been up to lately.

Finger painting outside on one of our old moving boxes and leaves and anything else Ella could find. ***I take no credit for the outfit she is wearing here. She came home from my mom's house in it. And I promptly declared it Messy Arts And Crafts Day! Hooray!***







Halloween Party.



I heard Ella SCREAMING from the bathroom a few days ago, yelling, "OH MY GOSH Mom, we have NEVER seen this kind of animal in here before!" You can imagine how quickly I ran in to the bathroom to see what she was talking about. A squirrel? A snake? Or was this merely one of Ella's overactive imagination scenarios in which there is perhaps a unicorn in the shower that is her new best friend? Nope. There was an actual, slimy Lizard Thing in the toilet. I screamed, and then flushed the sucker. Ella cried because in the 2.6 seconds it took me to run in there, she had apparently named it. Steve.



Charlie, being cute. And planning on swiping some candy from another kid at the Halloween party.



Playing outside and taking as many photos as I can before Ella crosses her arms and storms away because she's "Mommy always just take pictures and NEVER EVER plays with her". Dramatic much.





I got these of Charlie:






And then he gave me this look:



And I knew it was time to stop.

And one more for good measure.

Breathtaking Stupidity.

I cannot believe I am about to share this with the five people who read this blog. But hey, things have been kinda ho-hum around here lately, so I figured "Why not give the ol' blog a kick in the pants by sharing a story that will make me look like a complete and total moron?".

Our electricity went out last week during a thunderstorm, so I had to reset all of the digital clocks in the house, including my coffee maker's clock. And when I went to reprogram the "delay brew" time (usually set to 5:00 every morning), I thought "Why not set it for 5:15am instead, so it will be that much fresher when I get up at 5:20 every morning?". So I did. And let me tell you, I was pretty proud of myself. Fresher! Hotter! COFFEE!!! Fast forward to the next morning, 5:20am on the dot. I stagger out of the bedroom in my pjs, feeling my way to the kitchen to gulp down that first cup of (much fresher now) coffee. About two steps into my walk down the hallway to the kitchen, I froze. Grabbed the wall to steady myself. What was that I heard? OH DEAR GOD, someone has broken into our house in the early morning hours and is rifling through our things downstairs. My heart raced like I had just taken speed, I panicked like I have never panicked before. The noises got louder and louder as I wondered what the hell the intruder(s) were DOING down there. WHAT could they possibly be looking for? Barbies and baby wipes are about the extent of the jackpot in this house. My mind was racing, I broke out in a cold sweat. What to do?!?! Tip toe as quietly as I could back to our room, wake up the husband and let him handle this horrific situation? Gather up my babies and jump out a window to safety, thunderstorm be damned? No, I couldn't do that, as there is a floorboard in the hallway that creaks and the intruders would surely hear me padding around upstairs and come looking for the person who has now foiled their plans to rob us blind. And likely, kill me. I couldn't call the police, as my cell phone was downstairs probably sitting right next to the ten masked men who had just broken into my home, I had now convinced myself of this. So in the dark, at 5:20am, I crouched in the hallway alone, and cried. Silent, panicky tears, because we were all going to DIE. We've lived here for not even three weeks, and we are going to die in this house. I shouldn't have written that blog entry titled "I Will Die In This House If It's The Last Thing I Do", is what I told myself. I thought briefly about running down the stairs at full force and beating them all over the head with Charlie's Drop 'n' Roar Dinosaur toy that was sitting nearby, but the thought better of it. So I sat in the hallway and....wait, what was that sound? Oh, God help me, they're HISSING now. HISSING! What kind of psychopaths have come into my home?!? Oh God Oh God Oh God, please help me. And then? THEN. THEN! I heard bubbling steam noises. From the coffee pot. Turns out I was used to waking up to a completely silent, coffee-has-already-completed-its-brew-cycle house. And the coffee maker almost made me pee my pants.

A Boy And His Blankie: A Love Story.

Well, I guess there's not much of a "story" to it: Charlie is in love. With The Blankie. I remember when Ella first got attached to her Blankie, and she really only wanted it when she was ready for a nap. When it was countdown to nap time, I would frantically rush around trying to find Blankie so that she could sleep. But Charlie's Blankie? Never leaves his side, ever. So at least I always know where the damn thing is. A lovely side effect of this is that, yes, it smells as fantastic as you would imagine it smells, since I can NEVER EVER ever wash it EVERRRR. The hour and a half it would take to put Blankie through the wash cycle and then dry it would just lead to Level Four Meltdowns Of Ginormous Proportions. He bites it, he rubs his whole face with it, he drags it all around the floor and he wants it while he's in his high chair eating. All of the above leads to: snot, drool, dog hair, and baby food. Covering Blankie. So if you get within ten feet of me when I'm out and about with my kids, and you are asking yourself "WHAT is that smell? Does someone have body rot?". It's Blankie.