No short stacks here

Around 2 p.m. I realized that I had neglected to take out any meat to thaw the night before and it was also too late to put anything in the crock pot. Yep, you still have ADHD. So I went to the old standby: Breakfast for dinner, aka pancakes and scrambled eggs.

I love pancakes. My dad taught me to make them when I was in elementary school, possibly in a bid to get to sleep later on Saturday mornings, and some of my earliest memories are making them with him on weekends. There's just one little problem. Unlike my father, I can't really cook pancakes well.

Sometimes I put them on too early and have to wait for the pan to warm up, while the batter congeals and does strange things in the meantime. Other times the pan gets too hot and burns the outsides of the pancakes and I proudly announce "tonight it's Cajun pancakes, kids!" Once, in what I can only describe as a Ramona Quimby book moment, my husband told me he didn't think the pancakes were done in the middle. I was pregnant with Lily, tired, and I hollered he had no idea what he was talking about. He cut one. Batter oozed from the crack. I picked it up and threw it against the wall (spoiler: unlike spaghetti, if your pancake sticks to the wall, it's not done yet). Almost a year later and I swear I still see a tiny bit of batter on the neutral colored wallpaper, sticking like spackle and mocking my culinary skills.

 Today stared out well. The first ones were beautiful.  Perfectly golden, cooked through, and the spatula glided under them like a figure skater on ice. (Oh, I also can't seem to get a decent spatula. All of them wind up getting caught on the pancakes eventually.) The pan got momentarily too hot, but I recognized disaster and only some of the pancakes are "Cajun." I give those to Tim because he's learned not to care, or at least not to say anything. It was a Christmas miracle come late. And then, like a culinary Icarus, I flew too close to the sun.

I looked at the stack of pancakes. It seemed kind of...small. I mean, it would probably be fine. But what if Tim came home from work hungry? What if the kids were growth spurting and I didn't know it until one of them wanted to consume her weight in dinner? So I went to mix another batch. The box used to have measurements for just a few pancakes, but they took those away. Being far too tired to do math, I just started mixing, and wound up with about 40 little cakes.

Oops.

I don't think anyone is going hungry in my house tonight.

Four going on fourteen

There were lots of things no one told me about parenting. Sure, everyone warns you about the sleepless nights, the infant crying jags, diaper changes. No one tells you that toddler girls whine like teenage girls, or that there will be days you swear your four year old is suffering from PMS.

Mary loves her hair. She loves that it's blonde and, ever since seeing "Tangled," she loves that it's long. My rule is that she can grow it as long as she wants as long as she lets me take care of it. The minute she fights me about washing, brushing or tying back, we go in for a stylish reverse bob just like the yuppie preschoolers around town. The more her hair grows, the more creative I have to get with keeping it out of her face.

Today Mary patiently let me work on French braids, and in the mid afternoon I attempted a fancier style, a braid that started over her right ear and went across the top of her head. It was really good for keeping her growing-out bangs out of her eyes and it was beautiful.

"Mary, you look so pretty," I gushed, quite proud of my handiwork. "You have princess hair! We can do this for school tomorrow! Go see in the mirror!"

Mary crumpled into a ball on the sofa beside me.

Oookay.

"Mary, what's wrong? Is it pulling?"

"I HATE MY HAIR LIKE THIS! I DON'T WANT TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR! I DON'T WANT IT LIKE THIS AT ALL! I WANT TO BE ALLLLLLOOOOOOONNNNNNEEEE!"

Oh dear lord, okay, five minutes ago we were chattering animatedly about princesses and toys and all kinds of happy things. She dramatically flung herself down the hall and into her room, where she proceeded to sob and sob about her hair. Why she didn't just take the elastic out is beyond me, but we had surpassed logic long ago. She came out of her room.

"Mary, are you done now? It really does look pretty." Cousin Sarah concurred.

"I HATE IT!" Back to her room. Flounce, holler, sob. Repeat several times. Back out of the room. She paused at the living room, waiting for me to talk. The Bad Mother On My Shoulder overcame me.

"Mary, your hair looks horrible," I said. "You'd better go take that braid out, it looks awful."

"NOOOOO! I WANT MY PRINCESS HAIR!!!!"

"Well, okay, I guess, if it's what you really want."

"I DO! I WANT TO WEAR IT TO SCHOOL TOMORROW!!! PLEASE, MOMMY, PLEASE!"

"I guess so..."

"Yay!" She's all smiles now. "Want to play princesses?"

Sure, hon, right after Mommy makes herself a coffee and then "makes it Irish."

SingleBeigeRanch seeks Colonial...

Being a stay at home mother can make you crazy, if you let it. It can be seriously easy to stay in pajamas all day, go nowhere, talk to no one over three feet tall, but then it becomes just as easy to be a basket case at the end of the day. That's why God invented the play date.

Tomorrow morning, a friend of mine is coming to my house for the first time, and I am trying not to freak out. She's a very nice person, I've known her for more than a year and our kids love playing together. Until now, all play dates have been at her house as said friend also watches her nephew during the day. And then I got The Text.

"Hey, I'm [nephew] free so let's play date next week!!'

Cue mild panic.

See, play dates are a lot like real dates, except with your house. She already knows what I look like in scrubby clothes with no makeup on (see "fresh hell," "a hot mess," "overtired") but she's never been inside the homestead before. So despite the fact that I know she's coming over so our kids can play and not to judge my housekeeping, I am running a mental inventory tonight. Are the toys clean? Does the cat box smell? Did the kids get out of bed and pull out every stuffed animal and article of clothing before finally falling asleep? Do I have anything to feed these people? I know the yard looks awful, maybe it will snow and cover it all up. And so on.

My living room, which I am procrastinating cleaning. You are so not seeing the kitchen. Or the toy room. Or the bathroom. Someone hold me...

It's a crazy double standard. I don't notice these things when I go to others' homes, but I assume that if the mantle is dusty someone's going to think I'm an unfit parent. And believe me, there are plenty of things that make me an unfit parent, but the dust on the fireplace isn't one of them.

"You need to relax," I'm told. Big surprise, I'm told that about a lot of things. Usually those who know me best learn to stop saying it, 'cause it's probably never going to happen. At least not until I can afford my own housekeeper.

But like I said, parenthood can make you crazy if you let it, and I love adult company, so even if tomorrow morning I wake up and Anna decides to paint the floor with her oatmeal, bring on the play date.

After all, we all need grown up company, for better or worse.

Unseasonably warm

"Anna's got the butter!"

My eyes opened to the dulcet notes of a tattletale four year old, though she was talking to her father, not me. It was morning, and Lily was curled up in the crook of my arm, still sleeping. The other side of the bed was empty.

Mentally, I steeled myself for the visage of Anna, applying butter like stage makeup, bits sticking in her hair and oozing out between her fingers. Tim is really great about letting me get a little extra sleep on the weekends but the Type A in me fights against criticizing the differences in our routine. That is, Monday through Friday I get to basically run the house my way, and Satuday and Sunday I must admit that while I might not agree with the sticky children, toys everywhere, TV blaring approach, I love sleep more and Tim is an excellent father, so who cares if Anna has somehow managed to make off with a stick of butter?

I hear Tim talking and slip away from Lily, into the kitchen, where I find this:

Tim was teaching the girls how to make French toast. Of course, they were loving it. Mary was actually helping and Anna was "helping" and both were very excited about the whole prospect. Not wanting to leave Lily alone when she was sure to be waking up, I slipped back to bed and sure enough, within a few minutes she turned her head and gave me a huge, delighted grin. In the dining room the girls were exclaiming over their good fortune. Breakfast during the week is usually corn flakes and milk, with a banana on the side. Foods that could serve as a vehicle for syrup were, of course, far superior.

A few minutes after that Tim appeared in our room with a plate of French toast, already cut up, and scrambled eggs.

"We wanted to give you a nice morning," he said.

Indeed.

That afternoon it was almost 60 degrees and the girls were absolutely not napping, so I took the older two to the playground, which was swarming with kids, all enjoying a reprieve before winter set back in.

The rest is really better told with pictures.

A woman was at the playground with a duck in some kind of walker for its "balance issues." Mary's expression pretty much mirrors my initial reaction to the whole scene.

But we had fun:

And, well, I don't know exactly what Tim and Lily got up to, but she apparently also had a fun afternoon, because she is worn.out.

Your presence is formally requested...

Last night at 9:45 p.m. my phone alerted me to an incoming text message.It was a text asking if Mary and Anna were going to be at art class in the morning, and that's when I realized once and for all that my children have a better social life than I do.

It's not just that someone wanted to know if they would be in class. It's that I had to respond back with their regrets: "Sorry, Mary and Anna have a play date with the neighbors in the morning." My kids had a prior engagement at 9:30 a.m. on a weekday. I've had years to make friends in this state and I don't even have firm plans for Saturday night that don't involve an insomniac four month old.

We headed out early this morning, the girls in their finest casual wear sweat suits, spent a couple of hours playing with little people of both the toddler and Fisher Price variety, then left to meet Tim at work for lunch. Then Mary had to go inside and say hello to the principal of the school, the man who puts the fear of God in his his high schoolers but with whom my four year old is on a first-name basis. Leave work, make it to ballet with a few minutes to spare, then head home for late power naps and eventually dinner.  Monday  it's another whirlwind of play dates, play and learn classes and a visit from Tim's cousin, who adores my daughters about as much as they love getting attention from a super cool 20 year old in college.

Mary is cool. It boggles my mind. Where did they get the genetics to be so socially adept? I have many memories of my school years, and not many of them depict me being suave, particularly popular or anything but a music and theater geek long before shows like Glee made such a thing cool. But no one makes friends faster than a preschooler. Mary walks in to any situation and immediately has a new best friend. They hug goodbye after a five minute interaction, ask for play dates. Mary, like every other four year old out there, automatically assumes everyone thinks she's fabulous.

And she is. She might not always be the coolest kid on the block. In fact, given her parentage, that's pretty much a certainty. But that's not what it's about. She's self assured. Sure, she talks too loud, and too much sometimes (mommy's girl!) and is blunt and sarcastic (again, those genes are powerful). Someone once informed me that I had to be careful."Those traits she has today will only be magnified when she's a teenager."

Probably. But if they stay that way into adulthood, she'll also be incredibly confident, and you can't put a price on that.

Hang onto it, kid. 

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned...

It has been seven days since my last confession. Okay, this is a total cop out entry because my mind is not working in short, witty paragraphs at the moment. So instead you get bullets.

I confess...

• I know darn well that it is going to be impossible to go from my dark brown natural color to Marcia Cross red outside of an expensive salon trip, but that doesn't stop me from trying via Loreal. Every attempt that doesn't burn my scalp or cause my hair to fall out only serves as encouragement. (Bonus confession: the noxious fumes emitting from my head as I type this may be why I can't write in paragraphs. That, and I'm working on a 25 minute timeline before it's time to cool rinse! Ah, the glamour.)

• That while the pic to your right looks adorable and sweet, Anna had been walking around with that pacifier in her mouth all afternoon and I still allowed her to do it. Anna hasn't had a pacifier since she was under a year old.

• That this morning, lacking a nutritious snack and any kind of motivation to load three kids into the car for a 15 minute trip to Shaw's in freezing weather, I let the older girls eat dry Marshmallow Mateys (that's Lucky Charms for the poor budget conscious) like popcorn.

• That I have totally convinced Mary that carrots are a dessert. I don't even have to buy the expensive little baby carrots because she latched on to the word "baby" and insists on "big girl carrots" now, which are about $2 a bag cheaper.

• That even though I have a Keurig, when my friend offered to drop me off a coffee from Dunkin Donuts, my immediate response was "absolutely!" Because I have problems. But so does everyone else in the state, as evidenced by the fact that there are forty-six locations within a five mile radius of my ZIP code. Eight of them are open 24 hours.

• That some days, I start counting the hours until bedtime right after nap time ends.

• That I am ridiculously excited to start rehearsals for a musical next week. It's going to be tough, and time consuming, and the last time I did a show was five years ago and I turned into a zombie and I CAN'T WAIT.

• That I play "if I had a million dollars" whenever the Pottery Barn catalog comes in the mail. If it's wrong to want themed tablecloths for every holiday, I don't want to be right. Then Tim reminds me it's borderline insane to want to spend $60 on a tablecloth when I make him take an extra trip to the corner store after a supermarket run in order to save $1.50 a gallon on milk, but I don't see how the two are related at all.

What do you have to confess?

Zombies on the braaaaaain

I consider myself lucky that my kids will be teenagers in nine years at the earliest, and therefore we should be able to avoid the literary abomination that is “Twilight” and its accompanying hysteria.* However, a new supernatural obsession has taken our household by storm.

Zombies.**

I have no idea how it started, exactly. Perhaps it was our friends suggesting that babies already make zombie-like noises, which prompted us to try and teach an infant Mary to growl “braaaaains” at unsuspecting people (it didn’t take). Maybe it was my brief but all encompassing video game love affair with Plants vs. Zombies, which started on the PC but quickly moved to Xbox format for ease of play. I have no idea, but suddenly, Anna was chasing Figaro down the hall with her arms raised, calling for him in a zombie voice. Except she wasn’t saying “brains.”

“Puuuuuddddddinggggg…”

It got to the point where Figaro, already Cat of A Thousand Nickname (Figs and Wigs, Fatty, Pavarotti, Hey Stupid, etc.) was being called Pudding more often than his given name, and in true Pavlovian response would immediately bolt down the hall when you started. That was about six months ago, and after that Zombie Fever slowly died down.

In October, I got my iPhone. By November, I was completely in love with the stupid thing. I had had a smart phone before, but it was a Palm Pre, and less than a year in I was so frustrated with it (which, if we are talking smarts, was decidedly stupid) that I switched back to a regular phone and the only thing I missed was a QWERTY keyboard.  But the iPhone! I swear, Apple isn’t paying me a dime but oh my word do I love my phone. I love free apps. I love the fact that phone allowed me to download a Couch to 5K program which got me off my butt and running for the first time in, well, ever, and I love the fact that my music and my phone and my GPS are suddenly wrapped up in a neat purple Otterbox. 

And then two days ago I discovered Zombie Farm. It’s a free download and it’s basically Farmville but in addition to crops, you get to grow zombies and attack neighboring farms for the chance to win money, decorations and of course, brains. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it but I haven’t let my kids see it because if I let one of them so much as touch my phone, the dam’s going to break and I’ll never get a chance to hold it pester-free again.

Today the kids were napping and I was harvesting virtual tomatoes and potato head zombies (I know!!) and waiting for the kids’ snack to set in the fridge so I could sneak some before they woke up. We all love some chocolate pudding in this house. I heard her stirring so I went in to give her a quick cuddle before she was running at 85 miles an hour again.

“Mary, do you want to wake up?”

“No, Mama.” (I am only ever “Mama” anymore when she is very sleepy.)

“Are you sure? Do you want to get up and have some chocolate pudding for a snack?”

Through half-closed eyes she smiled up at me.

“Puuuuddddingggg.”

*It could have been a really good story. But when it’s written by a woman who informs everyone in the DVD bonus footage that she couldn’t wait for the film because movies can show things that books can’t describe, well, there aren’t enough desks upon which I can hit my head. I can’t find the quote online but if you’re in possession of the DVD you can find it for yourself. I can’t make stuff like this up.

** I should note that none of the girls know what a zombie is in the undead sense of the word but they still think they are hilarious.