12 ibuprofen

• 11 sugar highs
• 10 broken ornaments
• 9 games of bingo
• 8 veiled threats
• 7 seconds to myself
• 6 glasses of wine
• 5 plush puppies
• 4 hours of sleep
• 3 sparkly lip glosses
• 2 princess dresses
• and a christmas afternoon meltdoooooown

holee buckets

suddenly 8 stitches in my baby's head doesn't seem s'bad after hearing about the 2-year-old who drove a screwdriver through her eye socket and into her brain. 

and will recover just fine. 

and any talk of christmas miracles would be redundant at this point.

it's a christmas miracle!

when you move, you expect to lose or misplace a few items, at least for a while. i had pretty much accounted for all of our possessions since our move in july except for...a bra. how do you lose a bra?! just one, not the whole undergarment collection, which would make more sense.

anyway, i've torn this place apart in search of the elusive bra, because 1) it bugged me that i couldn't find it and 2) last year i finally invested in some decent stuff. no more $9 at target; i actually went to nordstrom, got fitted (ugh - still just as bad at 40 as it was at 14), and bought 4 calvin klein petite bras (note to bra makers: hello?! you're just now discovering petites? those of us who are 5'2" and born without shoulders thank you, i guess, you slackers).

i actually LIKE these bras, something i didn't think possible. they fit. the straps stay put. at the end of the day, i don't often feel the need to tear them from my body. and the biggest pisser of all was that i lost 1 of the 2 front-close ones. grrrrrrr.

and then...it happened. 

i was rooting through an old diaper bag, thinking my pregnant sister-in-law might want it. and there it was: my bra, tucked in the front pouch. i sang a little song of joy that we had finally been reunited (and that my husband's brother and his wife had not been the ones to discover it).

now here's really the weird thing: the bra was the only thing in there. so it's not like i used the diaper bag for packing up a bunch of stuff when we moved. maybe one of the kidlets put it in there? maybe i am insane and stashed it there for some "it-made-perfect-sense-at-the-time" reason?

or maybe – just maybe – there really is a santa claus.

tin cup, piece of horehound candy, shiny penny

if memory serves, that's what laura ingalls wilder received one year for christmas, and she was thrilled to pieces. hard to even draw a comparison between that and the tonnage of loot my kids got today. and our holidays are fairly restrained, given the tales i hear from others! 

ye gods.

the ramones best-of disc that the handsome man gave me does rock, though. and now, as the children flame out and pass out, i, too, want to be sedated.

someone's tired and her name is mommy

a partial list of items my toddler requested in her efforts to stall bedtime tonight:

• a bottle
  
• a diaper change
  
• a snack
  
• a sucker
  
• jewelry
  
• elmo
  
• yellow bear
  
• brown bear
  
• blankie
  
• daddy
  

fisher-price, nasa is holding on line 1

let me preface this by saying that fisher-price toys are wonderful:  sturdy, cute, safe and fun.

they are, however, packaged so securely that it is almost impossible to free them from their bonds. i have found through painful experience that i must build considerable "unfetter the toys and swear" time into my holiday wrapping, or else christmas morning will be consumed by unfettering and very, very quiet swearing.

honestly, where does fisher-price think it is shipping these toys – into orbit? the stuff on the mars rover was not restrained as well as the fire truck i spent this morning extricating from cardboard, tape, domed plastic covers, and those damned plastic-coated wire ties that are put around every available protrusion.

perhaps fisher-price could start a sideline business consulting for space agencies, or maybe sex toy manufacturers. bondage will never be so secure, or so cute!

no, wait, don't, stop!

know what's even more fun than having your 2-year-old get stitches in her head? trying to keep her from busting them open until they heal. don't run! don't jump! don't spin, gallop, dance, chase, flop, move, blink! 

keely asked me yesterday, "why you always say 'no?'" i said, "because that's my job." 

and i deserve a big, fat bonus!

oh, there's no place like children's hospital for the holidays

what is it with my people and their skulls? my brother cracked his forehead open with great regularity as a child; he even developed a kind of rhythm: left side, right side, left side, right side.

not surprisingly, he passed the melon-smashing gene down to his progeny (ha ha). but somehow the dna jumped the genetic fence and also firmly implanted itself in both of MY children (wtf?!).

may i present the latest evidence? last night as i was pulling out of the driveway to go work, the handsome man came tearing through the snow in his socks shouting that thing two had just gashed her head. off we flew to the er to get 8 stitches in her tiny skull. and unlike her uncle david, she favored the path right down the middle of her forehead. grow some hair, kid - you'll need the bangs now more than ever.

fortunately, we knew the drill from the time thing one sliced her skull open when she was 2. thing one's cut was on the back of her head, so they sewed her up while she sat suctioned to a baby einstein dvd. not so with thing two; since she could see them a-comin' at her, she had to be immobilized and strapped to a board. 2-year-olds enjoy that. i'm already looking forward to her getting the stitches out on monday. (and yes, that will be christmas eve. because of course it would have to be christmas eve.)

again, what is it with my family and their noggins? why are my children's heads irresistibly drawn to every door frame they encounter? i've traced the tendency through my brother back to my mom, who falls on and crashes into things with pretty good frequency. and apparently her mother, my grandmother, once closed the garage door ON HER HEAD while bidding my grandfather goodbye as he drove to work.

i take after my father's clan: cautious, fear-based people who sustain few injuries. not exactly the most fun way to live compared to the head-long, woo-hoo, leap-first-look-second crowd, but i can say that i am intact after nearly 43 years on the planet, whereas i believe my brother still has a metal support rod or two in his body.

anyway. thing two seems no worse for wear today, bounding around the house as usual (no running!  NO RUNNING!). once again, my compliments to children's hospital in minneapolis, the best place to take sick or injured kiddies (we've been there on several occasions, each taking about a year off of my life). and big, big love to pegga for rushing over to stay with thing one while we took thing two to the hospital - i wish i had a thousand martha stewart magazines and a bushel of dried hydrangeas for you, my friend!

math was never my strong suit

if each of my knees is 42 years old, is that why i feel like i'm about 80 when i wake up in the morning?

do you hear what i hear?

silence. blessed, blessed silence. my in-laws and thing two are on their way to pick up thing one from preschool so i can attend a christmas party. but before i leave, i've had 15 - count 'em, 15! - minutes of absolute quiet in my own house. i can almost hear myself think again.

it's on!

i love my new neighbors. looooooove them. because every night, this is what they display right across the street. and every night, my kids are as enthralled as if it were the first time.

and the magic starts at 5 p.m., right when the little buggers are really starting to get to me.

it was the same at halloween - the lawn of largesse. for thanksgiving, there was an enormous turkey with a top hat (albeit in their backyard - shy, perhaps?).

but nothing yet has rivaled this extravangza. really, how could anything compete with a train driven by santa and featuring a penguin that pops up and down in the caboose?

oh, and the display sings, too. frank and lon, i LOVE you guys!

oh my word

i think i just invented some new holiday cheer:  kahlua and milk...and egg nog. 

try some. now.

s.w.a.k.

angelina jolie's got nothing on my girls. we are ALL about the lips here, thanks to the barbie make-up set thing one and thing two just received from the ladies at the company where i used to work. it's lip gloss-a-go-go in the kitchen right now.

and - oh dear god - they are painting each other's nails...

times my children woke me up last night

• 11:42 p.m.
• 1:30 a.m.
• 2:21 a.m.
• 4:29 a.m.
• and sometime after 6 a.m. (too tired to lift my head and see exactly)

i'd say that's about an average night.

we are descended from idiots

and by we, i mean all us folks in the extreme northern climes. what the HELL were our ancestors thinking when they stopped their covered wagons?

ancestor: "golly, i'd like to live here, where the temperatures fall below zero, in a sod house heated by a fire, having to walk through a blizzard hanging onto a rope just to find the john and relieve myself. super!"

if i had lived through just one winter with no central heat and no polar fleece, i would have been on the first stagecoach to albuquerque. i remember re-reading the laura ingalls wilder books as an adult and being struck not by the fun of making maple syrup snow candy and getting a shiny penny for christmas, but by the homesteader whose wife tried to knife him in the middle of the night for bringing her to such a godforsaken place. that would soooo have been me.

clearly, the demented genes were passed on to me in full force, because i still live here. in fact, asshole that i am, i keep moving further into the igloo: from detroit to chicago to minneapolis. perhaps i've frozen my synapses as well as my butt off.

at least i can take comfort in the fact that there are people dumber than me, viz: the dad who drops his kid off every day at preschool BY BIKE. even today, when it's 5 degrees outside. poor little boy was encased in some sort of yellow rubber suit that looked like a dishwashing glove on steroids, topped off with face mask, boots and – of course – bike helmet. because we need to be safe when we're FREEZING TO DEATH.

shots for tots

thank you, thank you to everyone who made our annual "shots for tots" coffee morning so much fun!  

and no, we don't give the kids booze.  or shoot them.  what we do is ply our guests with coffee laced with their choice of holiday cheer (kaluha, anyone? bailey's? scotch?) and a bunch o' baked goods.  we get to see our friends, family and neighbors, and they get to see each other.  

and folks bring new, unwrapped toys, which we gather up and drop off at toys for tots.  we got a major haul this year, and my girls were quite enamored of the ginormous stuffed leopard a certain lovely and kickass realtor brought. we did manage to pry it from their sticky little clutches, though. ho, ho, ho!

oh do you know the muffin top, the muffin top, the muffin top?

ugh.  can no longer ignore truth - have eaten myself into quite the muffin top since halloween. bulgy belly over top of jeans soooo not pretty.

too bad my mother-in-law sent over pinwheels and russian teacakes today.  self-restraint or sweat pants?  self-restraint?  sweat pants?

atwitter about glitter

i know it's pretty, sparkly, magical fun when you're four. but when you're forty-two, it becomes the devil's own gimcrackery. and it's everywhere in my house, leaping off of preschool art projects, christmas decorations, and the myriad toys we've received courtesy of the disney princess cartel.

stop the madness, teachers and grandparents everywhere! i beg you, stop the madness!

it's beginning to taste a lot like christmas

now that i've found a vegan gingerbread cookie recipe. i must send linky love to the post-punk kitchen and isa, goddess of cupcakes; thanks to her, my baby just decorated and devoured cookies, like i did as a child (and 10 minutes ago).

of course, my kitchen now looks like the wonka factory after some drunken oompa-loompa holiday party, but it was worth it.

i blog, therefore i think

the best part of starting a blog has been that it allows me to actually think my thoughts. doing the mom thing means there's not a whole lot of time for that. which is quite a shock to the system after the self-absorbed single years (me!), the courting, getting married and being absorbed by our luv years (him!), and the first pregnancy (me again!).

now my thoughts are mainly about the kidlets, and rightly so. but it's nice to carve a few minutes out of a day to think about other things, too, or at least to process what i am thinking about the kids/the mommying (hard to do when you're making dinner with a crying 2-year-old clinging to your legs).

and, like pretty much every blog post i've written, this one just got interrupted: this time by a warm, pink, snuggly bundle of questions waking up. adios.

soy sorry

i have tried to get on the non-dairy boat, really i have. because of allergy baby, i have embraced soy milk. (it's good, really! except for drinking.) i like soy yogurt. and soy ice cream from izzy's in st. paul is un-freaking-believably good.

but i am sorry: soy cheese is nasty. naaaaaasty.

fortunately, allergy baby has not had real cheese, only had the soy stuff, so she doesn't know what she's missing. if she outgrows her dairy allergy and finds out what cheese (milk, ice cream, butter) really taste like, she's going to be pissed.

oh, eff - the smoke alarm is going off again! effing soy cheese pizza!

working in a coal mine, going down down down

i am sick of smug parenting (and since when did parenting become a verb?) magazines, books and newspaper articles with smug 40-something mommies rhapsodizing about how they're so glad they waited until they were "financially secure" before they popped out their kidlets.

i, too, am an old broad: 42 at last count. my husband is slightly younger, but still over the 4-0 marker. we are not smug (well, about our financial situation, anyway).

we're not in dire straits by any means, or else i would not be a stay-at-home-mom-slash-freelance-writer-and-editor. but from where i sit today, it seems as though we're probably going to have to work until we die (whee! hi, honey!). right now, we're facing the early stage, chicken-and-egg conundrum common to many families: we moved from a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom mortgage to a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom mortgage because we need more room for the kids...right at the same time i took a powder from the work force to stay home with the kids.

when the kids are both in school, i'll be able to work more to pay for the unholy expenses of child rearing i see my friends grappling with: camps, sports, etc.

and then, when we hit our 60's, we'll pack the girls off to college.

so i don't quite know who these financially secure 40ish new mommies and daddies are. frankly, i don't know a whole lot of parents of any age for whom money is not at least a niggling concern, if not cause for a full-blown panic attack. we're all gonna be working til we die.

sweetening the pot

ok, it's been suggested that i add an inducement to the offer of two female offspring: maybe some free computer troubleshooting by the handsome man, or gratis editing work by yours truly. perhaps a small cash payment would generate some interest?

like i said, make me an offer. it's too cold to put them in a cardboard box on the curb with a sign saying "free." (though the thought might have crossed my mind once. or twice.)