Say Anything

Valentine's Day when you are dating is much different than what it becomes after you start sharing a bank account, especially when you add kids into the mix. Before, it's very "Oh, roses! How sweet!" and now it's more "You spent $60 on what, exactly? The kids can't eat flowers and the electric bill is due!" (Also, Anna would totally try to eat flowers.) With a preschooler in the house, Valentine's Day is definitely more about the kids at this point, and the excitement started building a couple of weeks back, when Mary's Valentine's Day party was announced.

I mentioned in a previous entry that I would probably wind up getting her cartoon character cards from Target, as opposed to making something gorgeous a la Pinterest, but I couldn't even manage that, and so yesterday I dug up some leftover red glitter, glue and construction paper and spent the morning cutting out enough hearts so that Mary could bestow loving sentiments upon her fellow classmates. (Lest you think I'm Martha Stewart, there are only seven other kids in Mary's class, plus two teachers, and when you see the cards, that'll be even more proof to the contrary.) I did the cutting and glue lines, Mary signed her name and helped glitter those bad boys up. But most importantly, I let her dictate the cards' messages, and I copied them down for her, verbatim.

Some were sweet, simple and to the point (she signed her name on the back):

"To Ava: I like playing with you at school!"

 Others were sweet, if a bit more random:

"To Miss Stacie: Thank you for being my teacher. I want to give you a birdie. You will love it!"

 And others, well...

Dear God. "To Carmine: Vacuum! I know you love those."

In Mary's defense, the kid DOES love vacuum cleaners. This is a four year old who has actually given me a cost analysis of a Dyson vs. a Dirt Devil bagless. No word of a lie. It should also be noted these cards were determined to be not sparkly enough and got another helping of red microglitter later (occupational hazard: red microglitter in your contact lens burns like fire).

I'm not sure how the party itself went, but at 12:15 I collected a four year old positively humming with holiday excitement and enough sugar to fuel an army of hyperactive children. She had crafts, and cards from her friends, and candy to last until Halloween. I don't know how I managed it, but they are all napping. Mary sugar crashed about five seconds after informing me she wasn't tired and didn't need any nap at all. Naturally.

How did her friends like their cards? I'm not sure. Miss Beth and Miss Stacie enjoyed theirs, after confirming with me that I had no plans to foist kitties and birdies upon them. (It's like they know me or something.)

I do know Tim liked his, especially the one from Anna.

"Dear Daddy, Playground. Air. Air again. That's it. Thumbs up. I love you. Love, Anna."

 Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. I'm off to eat my weight in Hershey's Kisses. Potato. Dishwasher. Squirrel.

A little bit fat

My baby is fat. She is soft and round and has dimples where her knees and elbows go. She has a squishy little belly and rolls on her thighs. When she grins, which is often, her eyes crinkle up as they meet her nursing-baby cheeks and you can see her double chin. After my sweet skinny-minnie Anna baby, I had forgotten just how adorably fat babies can get. And it’s often that, when I pick Lily up and bury my nose in her soft tuft of brown hair or snuggle that little roll on her neck, I will exclaim, “You’re such a good, fat baby!”

I promise, I'm not insulting her.

It’s this statement that raises eyebrows more times than I can remember. Not always, mind you, but often enough that I know chances are, when I say something to that effect, a well meaning mom at play group, or friend, or total stranger in the checkout line, will rush to my baby’s aid.

“No!” they exclaim. “Your baby is beautiful.”

At first I was confused. Of course my baby is beautiful, and, if I may brag, not just in an “every mom thinks their baby is gorgeous” way. Lily is a seriously cute kid. But it took me a couple of “corrections” to realize these people actually seemed to think that I was disparaging my daughter by calling her fat. As if my five month old baby was going to think I was insulting her.

It’s no secret that society is, as a whole, fat phobic. Fat people are lazy. Fat people are unhealthy. If all those fatties would just put down the Hostess box and go for a walk, the obesity epidemic wouldn’t be what it is today. Fat bashing is one of the last accepted forms of discrimination, but I had no idea it had gone so far until I realized that people thought I was insulting my baby daughter by exclaiming over her chub.

I am hopelessly out of the loop but it came to my attention that recently, designer Karl Lagerfeld called singer/songwriter Adele “a little bit fat.” I learned of it when I read comedienne Margaret Cho’s beautiful rebuttal (note: link contains strong language that may not be appropriate for work or children). Adele is overweight, but I can bet you she’s healthier than the skinny girl who eats a Snickers bar for breakfast and calls it good. I’m no doctor, but I’m a singer (with about .000009% of Adele’s raw talent) and I know you can’t sing the way she does and be too unhealthy. When I started running, I noticed my vocal control improving, my range expanding, my pitch getting much more spot-on. You cannot be a total sloth and have the ability to sing like she does.

But even so, why say it? What's with the fat shaming? (Lagerfeld, who has in the past said things like "no one wants to see curvy women" has since apologized and says his statement was taken out of context.) I am “a little bit fat.” I am 5’8”, wear a size 12 or 14 and, despite a regular exercise regimen that includes three mile runs, Jillian Michaels and extra abdominal work, despite a reasonable diet, the number on the scale hasn’t budged in months. I’ve lost some inches, but nothing remarkable, and that wasn’t exactly the goal. 

Ten years ago, the number on the scale might have triggered a major emotional meltdown, possibly an eating disorder. Five years ago, the number on the tag in my jeans, the ones that make my butt look fabulous and my legs look a mile long, would have sent me into a tailspin. It’s only now, after having three kids, that I can look at my body and be amazed at what it can do, what it has done. My body has surpassed my every expectation of it and continues to surprise me. It also continues to be larger than the standard of "beauty" that's pushed at us on a daily basis, and I’d be lying if I said I was at peace with that every day. But it is no longer the end-all, be-all. The number on the scale no longer influences if I feel beautiful that day. I know I am, and not just because I’ve got “a pretty face.” The size of my skirt no longer tells me if I am a worthy member of society. My body has brought three children into the world and nursed them into the fat and skinny babies they were, beautiful, all.

My daughters will never hear me say I am fat in a disparaging way. Regardless of how I look, they will see me be healthy. Mary has asked why I run and I tell her it’s because our bodies need exercise to work their best. I tell her we eat vegetables and fruit and good proteins because those are things that make our bodies strong and healthy. Mary, I will note, was also a roly-poly baby who grew into a perfectly proportionate, healthy toddler and preschooler, with the same chubby baby cheeks her father had until he was 17. (Kid, you will be carded for beer until you’re 40. Enjoy that.)

But kids are mean. Kids try to hurt each other. I know that chances are, one day, no matter what body type they turn out to have, one of my girls will probably come to me, upset that “so-and-so said I’m fat!” It happened to me and I wasn’t a big kid. I used it as an insult myself when I was a kid and hurting and looking to make someone feel bad, so I’m not going to pretend I’m some innocent party in the whole “fat is bad” propaganda campaign. But I hope that, if and when that day comes, my first reaction will not be to decry to accusation, as if being called fat is the worst thing that someone can be called. I hope that I will be able to make my daughters see that they are, now and always, so much more than the sum of their parts, that whether they are a size 0, 8 or 18, they are creative, intelligent, compassionate beings, with their father’s cheeks, mother’s eyes and, God willing, someone else’s attention span.

“You are beautiful.”

What, really?

I'm going to step out of the box on this one, as this blog will contain very few kid anecdotes and instead is going to touch on something that completely baffled me today. The kids and I drove to my husband's home town to spend the day with my mother in law and had a nice morning and afternoon. We left around 2:30 so I could miss as much Boston traffic as possible.

As I prepared to pull out of the driveway, Mary called out that she hadn't buckled the last part of her car seat yet. I gritted my teeth, not because I was annoyed with her but because I had to wait for the yellow school bus chugging down the road to go past and everyone knows how annoying it can be be to get stuck behind a bus. Fortunately, the thing looked mostly empty.

It stopped at the corner, where a woman was waiting at a stop sign with a puppy on a leash. A few boys got off. I'm not sure how old they were but one had an instrument case so I'm guessing fourth or fifth grade. Then the bus took a left, and so did I. There was less than an eighth of a mile before the main road.

In that short space, the bus stopped twice. Once was less than a house's length away from the stop sign where it originally stopped. Two kids got off. Then the bus moved down literally two houses and stopped again, letting one more kid off the bus before continuing to the main road, where it traveled past my exit and I lost track of it.

This is going to be very "you kids get off my lawn!" but really? Really? When I was a kid the only bus stop in the neighborhood was up the road and around the corner, on the main road. It was easily a several minute walk from home and while parents usually accompanied the little kids, by upper elementary, certainly middle school, you were on your own. Certainly no buses were traveling down the residential roads to pick up each kid door to door. And when I called my mother in law to express my amazement at what I had just seen, she confirmed that the elementary aged version of my husband had to hoof it to catch the bus in his day, too.

I have to wonder what purpose this serves. If the kid in question is too young to be home alone, then he's not going to get dropped at home unless someone is there to meet him. If someone is there to meet him, why can't said someone meet him at a communal bus stop? If this is too much of an issue, why can't parents/sitters/whoever in the neighborhood take turns waiting for the bus at a stop?

I look at schools plagued by budget cuts, lack of funding, losses of resources, and then I see a bus taking three times as long as it could otherwise take driving kids home. We already take away gym class and limit recess, now we're sticking kids on a bus for longer than they should be and refusing them the chance to walk even the length of a city block. And this isn't a high crime town by any stretch of the imagination. Who asked for this? Parents? The schools? I can't imagine it was the kids or the bus drivers. What purpose does it serve?

I never thought I would feel grateful that my kids live within walking distance of a school. I probably won't feel grateful when it's cold and snowing and I'm trying to convince a three year old to walk along as I take her older sisters to class. But I honestly can't see the point of valet service to and from school. My mother didn't even drive us to the bus stop unless it was dangerously cold. "By the time I got the car warmed up you'd be on the bus," she would say. "We all have coats and boots. You're young! You're supposed to love the cold."

Back then I would have loved a bus to get me at my door. But I knew that was crazy. Even at seven I knew I would be on the bus for hours if every kid got picked up at their door and living in a somewhat rural town, I was already on that thing for a half an hour after school.

I know, I know. And here's where I tell you I walked uphill both ways to that bus stop and the snow was three feet deep, and we shot our own dinner or starved. But either I'm getting older or society is getting ridiculous.

It's probably both.

The body of Cat

Spring is on the verge of springing in New England (as it has been for the past two months, really) and the cat has celebrated by yowling, roaming the house, trying to escape, trying to mark and doing really inappropriate things to various household objects. This would be par for the course if I hadn’t ponied up the cash to have her spayed last summer.

So I called the vet’s office, where someone tried to tell me there had to be some other reason she was acting that way but who finally agreed to see her this morning. They informed me that if it was an “incomplete spay” they would cover the exam and resulting surgery costs but if the problem was “behavioral” I was on my own.

“Yeah, that behavioral menstruation’s a real pain in the butt,” I said dryly. “Maybe she’s got a stigmata.” 

So I loaded three kids and a yowling cat into the car and drove into the city where our vet is located and proceeded to hurry up and wait for a full half hour. Just as an FYI, when you are a last minute free appointment, your children are going to come of age in that waiting room. Fortunately, there was a basket of magazines and children’s books. Mary handed me one that featured a drawing of a cute black and white cat.

“I want the kitty story,” she said. I noted that gold letters on the front cover heralded the news that the Humane Society of the United States had sponsored the book and turned to the first page, where I found a twee, A/B/A/B four line poem about how Jasmine was a city cat, an indoor cat, a people cat…and I realized this was going nowhere good. I soldiered on for a few more pages until I leafed ahead realized that I was about to narrate to my rapt children that Jasmine’s owners were going to move out, lock her in their old apartment and NEVER COME BACK FOR HER. No lie, the book continued, in graphic imagery, to detail how she damn near starved to death. There was a particularly disturbing picture of an emaciated, terrified cat undergoing a vet exam once she was rescued. I slammed the book shut.

“No way,” I said. “Pick another one.” So Anna handed me one about a dog. The first page talked about how so-and-so was really a nice dog but his owners didn’t love him anymore and abandoned him by a telephone pole on the freeway. Seriously. A third started out, “My first owners had a baby and didn’t want me anymore. My second owners didn’t have time for me. My third owner died.” At that point I stuck the offending books behind the magazines and informed my kids story time was over. Mary grabbed the cat book.

“I want to read this one.”

“Honey, no way. You’ll get upset.” I put it back. She freaked out. She tried to tantrum. I held her on my lap. Lily objected and started squirming and fussing. I put Lily back in her carrier. Lily tried to squirm out of that. Mary tried to squirm out of my arms. Anna started rolling on the waiting room floor. The size two 18 year old with her teacup Yorkie across from me was probably mentally ordering up a lifetime supply of the Pill. Finally, she calmed down. We continued without major incident until the vet and vet tech came out for one miserable Pamina.

“We’re going to do a thorough examination in the back,” the vet said. “We have to look for a number of things, it’s better to do it that way.” Loathe to somehow wrangle baby, carrier, cat in carrier and two kids into an exam room, I agreed. The vet picked up the cat carrier. Mary’s eyes grew as big as saucers.

“They’re taking my kitty away!” she gasped and started wailing.

Oh God no.

“They. Will. Bring. Her. Back,” I said through clenched teeth, trying to sound like a good, soothing mother while every inch of me wanted to start crying myself. 

“THEY TOOK HER AWAY!”

“THEY WILL BRING. HER. BACK,” I said, putting as much force behind my low decibel voice as possible. “We will not leave without her. Mommy couldn’t get that lucky.”

Someone walked by. 

“Three girls!” she cooed.

“WHICH ONE WOULD YOU LIKE?” I said, grinning like a rictus.

At this point Mary continued to cry and I acknowledged to myself that I had a cat in heat and a preschooler with PMS. The woman across from me with the overweight chihuahua started laughing. I guess I said that aloud. Oops. The vet tech came back out and let me know it would be a few more minutes.

“Oh, honey, don’t cry,” the tech said to Mary. “Your cat is going to be okay, she’s doing great. Here, why don’t you read this book about a kitty?”

SERIOUSLY.

“Okay,” Mary said, as I said, “No!” and intercepted the book. The tech looked at me like I had an extra head. I flipped open to Dr. Mengele’s Pet Exam. The tech’s eyes got wide.

“I never looked at it before,” she said. “Wow.” Yeah, wow.

Pamina was returned to us, looking none the worse for the wear. The vet came out and said the cat was, in fact, showing signs of heat and would need to come back for surgery the next day.

“You can drop her off and leave her in the morning,” she said. She took note of the kids. Mary was done crying. Lily was tolerant of her surroundings. Anna was still rolling on the floor and I was still trying very hard to pretend we weren’t in a waiting room full of dogs as she did so. 

“Can I drop the kids off, too?” I asked. 

She laughed. 

“They really are very good,” the vet informed me. “Very good girls.” Of course, she also informed me the cat had been “very good” so maybe she was just worried I was going to Safe Haven the lot of them on the way home.

Well, at least it’s not stigmata.

Super Bowl Monday

Go, Pats! ...Next year.

Considering the facts that my kids' bedtime is about a half an hour after kick off was scheduled, and that we don't actually have a cable package, Mary and Anna were a day late and a dollar short on wearing the jerseys my father in law procured for them, but they don't care.(See right.)

Now it's Monday and back to your regularly scheduled programming and my eldest two seem content to fight about every little thing under the sun. I try not to play referee too much because I feel like that will only encourage them to come to me with every perceived slight (and really, who has a great sense of injustice than a preschooler whose sister has taken the last Little People giraffe?) but sometimes you wish there was a fix-all just so there would be a little bit of quiet.

I have several friends with kids older than mine and as some of them are apt to tell me, "they don't come with manuals." I know this sentiment is engineered to remind me that we're all flying blind on this parenthood course, but all I think lately is, "but dammit, they should." The car seat comes with a manual. The oven comes with a manual. The phone that could probably stage a coup followed by a takeover of my home has a manual thicker than the Bible. But my kids don't.

I imagine a different world, an alternate universe where each child is born with its own unique troubleshooting guide. And that way, when Mary comes running in, sobbing like her arm's been cut off in the Little People combine, I can tell her, "Just ask Anna if you can play with ObnoxiousToyIHate when she's done," and Mary will dry her eyes, walk back into the playroom, and make the request of her sister, who will sweetly say "sure, Mary," and hand over said toy (current toy in question is something electronic that needs new batteries and as a result sounds somewhat demonic, which only adds to the atmosphere).

Instead, it goes like this.

*Imagine me peering blearily into my nth cup of coffee, the baby having not napped sufficiently thanks to the cat who is lucky I love her, when Mary comes screaming into the room.*

Me: WHAT NOW?! (My nth cup of coffee, someone's nth screaming trip into the room. It's a cycle.)
Mary: *heave, sob* AAAAAAAAAAnna took the toy I was looking at! I was going to play with it fiiiiirrrrrst!
Me: So you weren't even playing with it? Go play with something else. (Logic + preschool? Is there crack in your K cup, Mommy?)
Mary: BUT I WANTED IT!
Me: Go ask her if you can use it. Nicely.
Mary: I don't WANNA ASK NICELY!
Me: Well then I don't know what to tell you. Go back to the play room.
*Mary goes back, announces loudly to Anna she will NOT ASK NICELY for WhateverItIs, and surprisingly, Anna does not surrender the toy. So Mary switches tactics.*
Mary: Anna...*words change, tone becomes wounded*can I please use that toy now?

Now, here's where according to the Manual in my Alternate Universe, Anna smiles sweetly and abandons the toy. Because in all probability she isn't even using it, just holding it hostage because for a toddler, absolute power is absolutely wonderful. Of course, this isn't my Alternate Universe and the principles of logic do not apply.

Anna: No.
Mary: PLEASE I SAID PLEASE SO YOU HAVE TO.
Anna: No.
*Mary comes screaming into the room again and we repeat ad nauseam until someone falls asleep, finds a snack or agrees to share. I brew another cup of coffee and tell myself that ulcers from coffee are better than ulcers from stress*

On a long day, this scenario repeats with both children in the starring role of She Who Hath Been Wronged, in case you think I'm picking on Mary. But since at the moment she is dramatically flopping on the couch a few feet away and announcing she doesn't want to go in the play room/play with Anna/do anything except glare in my general direction, well, I use what material I have on hand at the moment.

And coffee. God, so much coffee. 

Other things my troubleshooting manual will include:
*You asked for seconds last week and now you hate it - A mom's guide to WTF.
*Area 51 - a guide to disappearing symptoms the second you actually meet with the doctor
*We sure watch a lot of TV - getting the "in front of grandparents" statements you want, instead of the ones they're inclined to say (see also: Mommy uses grown up words, I eat a lot of Mac and Cheese, and Daddy plays a lot of Portal!)
*My sister is Baby Jesus - getting them to behave in church
*Go the *&!@ to bed - what to do when your bleary eyed child is standing on her bed and hysterically singing in an effort to avoid involuntary sleep.

And finally:

Laugh or cry: What to do when, after a solid hour of Thunderdome, play room style, your two kids are hugging and announcing "we're best friends!"

Best friends, indeed.

I'm not that crazy yet.

Today we walked into dance class and were greeted by the sight of a very small Pit bull puppy in a Louis Vuitton purse. (What, your animals don't travel couture?)  It was maybe eight weeks old, brindle spotted and white, and was taken in as a rescue by one of the moms who has much more patience than I do, and is either a whole lot more sane or a whole lot crazier, I haven't decided which.

Mary and Anna were in love, of course. It wasn't hard to see why: puppy dog was maybe two pounds, all wrinkles and big paws and floppy ears. They saw that dog and saw perfection. I saw him and had visions of one hundred pounds of jaws eating my sofa, land mines in the back yard and vet bills to rival my car payment. I could smell wet dog on a rainy day, feel the kibbles crunch under my bare feet at two in the morning as I woke to let a dog into the yard. I tried to smile. It was hard.

I don't hate animals. I don't even dislike dogs. I really like dogs. But we've tried the dog thing before. When I was just pregnant with Mary, we were in the final stages of adopting a greyhound from a rescue. I had had a greyhound mix growing up so I knew I liked the breed. One of my best friends' families had adopted from another rescue and I knew rescues were the unselfish, kind way to adopt an animal. And we did get a lovely dog, but he was completely unsuited for our family, and that's when I learned the hard way that some rescues aren't rescues at all but shady groups of people who take your money, lie to you about animals that love children (he is kind to the girls but completely unnerved by them and that causes him to freak out and scatter trash everywhere) and, when you try to contact them about medical issues they didn't properly disclose, get told you are out of luck, and then they change their number. Literally.

Most rescues are great. Most rescues are full of altruistic people who love animals. Unfortunately that didn't seem to be the case, and as a result we wound up completely stressed out and fed up with a dog that had a lot of psychological issues and the poor dog wound up having a near nervous breakdown from too much stress, too many kids and poor socialization. Which was a damned shame because he's a great dog. His story has a happy ending: Tim's nana agreed to take him for "a few weeks" after Anna was born so he could calm down and we could get settled and it turned out he loved the quiet house and she loved the company, and soul mates were found. He is a completely different dog. But I feel for other dogs who may not have had such a great outcome.

That was a couple of years ago now but I still can't look at a puppy and see anything but piles and piles of work. Because as the stay at home parent, we all know who's job it's going to be to wrestle a leaping pile of fur into the car along with three kids and hit the vet's office. We all know who's going to be "cleaning" the back yard so the kids can play in summer without also playing Biohazard. We had a dog growing up and my mom must have been Superwoman because not only did most of the care fall to her, but she treated that dog like the third kid she never had and Lady was one of the happiest dogs I've ever met.

I am not that saint. Not even close. And as such, there will be no dogs. I can handle cats. And we have two ferrets. I feel kind of like a quitter admitting that a dog, any dog, is so far beyond my area of expertise that we will likely never have one again.

I've explained this to my husband. I've explained it to Mary. I'm sure I will have to have the same talk with Anna soon, and then Lily. Tim understands. Mary wishes for a puppy like crazy but until lately contented herself with visiting Orlin, the aforementioned greyhound, whenever we visit my in laws and Nana.

Until today. Until the puppy and the little warm ball of cute that does not have the same ramifications for a besotted four year old.


So she came up with a substitute.

(Notice that Lily is making the same face as Mary did when she met a crippled duck. I anticipate this lasting another couple of months, then she's going to have to buy Anna off or something.)

Thank God it's (almost) Friday

Like the last half mile of a run, the end is in sight and I am pushing for it. Aside from rehearsal and some football game that apparently is pretty important and is either going to make or break my father in law's day, I have nothing due or to do this weekend. I don't count rehearsal because it's fun and I don't count the Superbowl because I am the world's worst sports fan and honestly don't follow anyone until they're doing something cool like going to something that ends in -offs, Series or Bowl. And even then I'll probably mess up the details. I caught the last quarter of the Pats vs. Ravens game in a local bar and it was so crazy I wasn't even sure who was cheering for who. Fortunately, I was in good company:

*My former co-worker, The Very Fabulous Ronnie, is cheering*

Me: Ronnie, do you even know who you're cheering for?
Ronnie: The Pats, of course! This is a very important game. Do you know why?
Me: ...No... (Yes, I know, I know, and it was a totally honest answer.)
Ronnie: Whoever wins goes to the Superbowl!
Me: Don't even pretend you knew that before showing up at The Bar today.

And we laughed, because it was true, and I watched the game because when I get an attention span I actually do find football interesting, and all was well until I tried to make some innocuous comment about the game to a friend of mine later. He launched into a full spiel about how the Pats really didn't deserve their win and all the technical things they screwed up on and I got entirely lost and started re-organizing my pantry in my head because dammit, I'm good like that.

Seriously, I'm a lost cause. If you want me to appreciate men in tight clothing jumping about, tickets to the ballet are always in fashion.

Holy digression, Batman. Is anyone even still reading?

This weekend. I cannot wait. Not only because I get to go to rehearsal and block (which, I reiterate, will be the only form of blocking I will pretend to understand on Sunday) but because that means The Week of Sick is over. Mary was well enough to go to pre-school today, I was able to get a couple of needed errands done, and we're still pretty much out of groceries but I can improvise until Tim is able to watch the kids. I am a woman of many talents but I'm no masochist and I draw the line at bringing the entire flea circus into Stop and Shop, especially since Mary and Anna invariably want the cart with the big, ugly, impossible to maneuver plastic car on the front of it and then I spend the shopping trip keeping Anna from selecting and trying to open various snacks, Mary from trying to get out of the cart entirely and the cart from ramming into little old Italian ladies who throw elbows. And then I pay almost $2 a gallon too much for milk because it's $4.99 a gallon at the supermarket and $2.99 at the corner store (no, I have no idea why) but there is no way in hell I am performing an additional three-in, three-out car seat bucking extravaganza for $2. My time, it is worth more than that. Just ask the people at the bank who used to pay me so well.

Lily celebrated the Return of Relative Wellness by attempting to go mobile, and I do not mean creating her own sputum-fueled app for my phone. The child is army crawling and rocking back and forth on her hands and knees and I do not need this yet. First of all, my baby, my last baby, is growing up way too fast, and second, my baby, my last baby, does not need to be getting into all the crap her older sisters already get into.

Mary was just thrilled to go back to school today. She came home with a paper of all her classmates' names so that she could provide them with valentines at the Feb. 14 party. My head immediately filled with imagery: My eldest and I sitting at the dining room table after the other two had gone to bed, lovingly cutting out red paper hearts, gluing doilies and sticking sparkly stickers, painstakingly writing friends' names with pink and red markers, cutting out appropriately themed pictures from magazines like Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens. And then I realized that except for the markers and construction paper, we have absolutely none of those things on hand, which means I'd have to go to Target and purchase them. And I know the second I try to do that, kids in tow (because what mom doesn't let her kids pick out their own art supplies?) I'm going to say "screw it" and pick up a box of pre-punched Hello Kitty cards and call it good.

I'm an awesome mom.