G & T blog

Tess stole a little paint set from the dollar bin at Target.  I didn’t notice until we were halfway home and she asked me to open it so she could paint her legs “blue, like a kitty cat.”  (?!?)

Just hand me that Mother of the Year trophy right now.  

Ooof, so long with no post!  My apologies.  It has been a wild week.  First, I have a sinus infection along with a condition allegedly called “sinus migraine” that I think my (possibly quack) doctor may have invented for his own personal amusement.  The treatment for “sinus migraine”?  FIVE SHOTS.  And where does the doctor administer those shots?  IN MY NECK.  I am not even kidding about this. 

Adding to the fun of the alleged “sinus migraine,” I am dealing with MAJOR SCHOOL DRAMZ.  Remember my post two weeks ago, about how my lovely neighborhood public school is indeed just as delightful and nurturing and wonderful as advertised?  It turns out a lot of other people got that message too and now there is a possibility that kindergarten will be overcrowded next year.  This means the school might move to a a lottery system for enrollment, with the unlucky 5-year-olds who don’t get a spot being bussed to other local schools, all of which are significantly inferior to our neighborhood school.

To say I am freaking out would be a massive understatement. 

I have spent the past week doing all the reconnaissance I can manage, including Googling the legality of the proposed lottery system, reading articles about various proposed solutions in our local newspaper and website, combing through last fall’s PTA agendas and minutes, staking out this month’s Governance Committee meeting, etc. And, OH YES HOW FUN, doing a round of eleventh hour, panicked applications to private schools, NONE OF WHICH WE CAN LIKELY AFFORD.  The price tag for every single private school that I would even consider for Gabe is between $30,000 and $40,000.  That’s more than my law school tuition, and ten years into my practice I am still trying to crawl out from under the mountain of law school debt.  How do people pay forty grand for kindergarten???

OK, OK, deep breaths, everyone.  Calming down now.  In all likelihood our neighborhood school is going to work out.  We will get a spot there for Gabe, and all will be well.  In the meantime, I am focusing on Tessa’s birthday (!!!) this Friday and looking forward to Gabe’s first basketball game tonight.  Back at you later with nicer, more coherent, less OMFG EVERYONE PANIC news. 

Yesterday we went and bought our pumpkins. 

We’re getting ready for the big day!

(This one dumped vanilla yogurt all down the front of her Halloween shirt right before I started snapping pictures.  Because of course she did.  Hence the Hello Kitty shirt, not on theme.  She also took off her Halloween headband and threw it somewhere, and now I can’t find it.  Sigh.)

Here’s Gabe posing with his special pumpkin, which we took home with us.

And here are the finished jack-o-lanterns!  We’re ready for you, Halloween!

Pictures are being taken at school today, and my best guy decided he wanted to dress “fancy.”

As I’m sure you can guess, he picked out this outfit all by himself. Are you loving the anchor tie?  Because I am.  He also let me brush his hair without complaining. Not pictured: his Spiderman watch, which he added as a last-minute accessory right as it was time to leave for school. Also not pictured: his black socks and black Puma running shoes.  Black socks on his pale, pale chicken legs are something to behold.  You’re going to have to trust me on that.

Tess was successfully manipulated talked into wearing a pretty dress and a matching hairbow!  Although she could not be convinced to pose for a picture at home this morning.  I had to snap one of the back of her head as photo evidence of the half-up, half-down hair style plus hair bow.

The chances of that dress and hairdo actually making it into the school pictures are approximately 4%.  In fact, if I had to bet, I would bet that she has already dumped milk down that dress and been changed by her teachers into backup clothes.  Plus with my luck, pictures won’t happen until after naptime, so she will have yanked out the bow in her sleep and she’ll have crazy bedhead in all the photos.  What I’m saying is, I hope you enjoy the above picture of the back of her head, because that’s as good as it’s likely to get with her. 

Do you like the appearance of the diaper lying on the floor on the right-hand side of the picture?  This blog is nothing if not classy.

Tessa’s current favorite activity is taking my wallet out of my purse and emptying out its contents.  This is hilarious and yet annoying - she keeps rearranging my credit cards, and last week she stole all my cash.  I found a crumpled $5 bill in her room with her dolls, but the rest of my money remains at large.  She also took my insurance card; I have no idea where it is.  Let’s hope I don’t get into any accidents.

And just look how pleased she is with her crimes!

My mom spent the day with my children yesterday, and she managed to persuade Tessa that it would be OK to put her hair in a French twist.  Because my mom is possibly a witch sorceress.  (She does not like the word “witch.”)  Seriously, Tessa won’t even let me put her hair in pigtails, but my mom can get her to sit still for a French twist?  Try and convince me there’s no magic involved.  Grammy also used her sorcery skills to coax BOTH of the children into voluntarily eating VEGETABLES, but that is a tale for another day. 

Of course I overreacted to the adorableness of Tessa’s hairdo and begged her to let me take a picture, which is a surefire way of getting a two-year-old to declare that you CANNOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, take her picture.

So I tried to be sneaky and take pictures when she wasn’t looking, which didn’t really go that well:

…because she would NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, let me take pictures of her from the front.  And it looked soooooo cute from the front.

But once Gabe noticed the camera, he was more than happy to do a few poses…

…and make some silly faces…

…and then Tess decided to join in after all, and it descended into this:

At least you can kind of see the front of her hairdo in these pictures.  I win.  The end.

I’m just going to dive right in, because there’s no good way to preface this story.  I let Trooper out in the backyard yesterday, and after he peed he didn’t want to come back inside.  Generally speaking it’s fine with me if he hangs out in the backyard, as it is completely fenced in and safe for him.  

He spent several minutes roaming the bushes around the perimeter of the yard, and seemed really intrigued by one area in particular.  This also didn’t bother me; our next-door neighbors have a dog, and I thought he might be looking at her or smelling her or something.  So I left him there, and went back inside to play with Tess. 

Five minutes later I noticed he was still at the same spot, so I came out to check on him.  He was really fascinated with the same area and hadn’t moved away.  I poked around a little bit in the bush, but didn’t see anything.  He’d clearly been digging, but he’s a puppy and puppies like to dig, so that was fine with me too.  I went back inside. 

Five minutes later, I went to check on him again.  And watched him drag a big, fat, DEAD SQUIRREL out of the bush.  

You guys, I screamed like a 16-year-old girl in a horror movie.  I screamed and screamed and screamed.  Matt came running, convinced one of our children had been injured or something, and I just screamed and ran around the backyard in circles as Trooper proudly and excitedly chased me with the squirrel in his mouth.  I am pretty sure he wanted to give it to me, as a trophy or similar.  It was the fattest squirrel I have ever seen, and it smelled bad bad bad.  

Matt - God bless that man - quickly assessed the situation, ordered me inside, and attempted to get the squirrel from Trooper.  The dog, of course, thought this was the BEST GAME EVER and cheerfully tried to wrestle with Matt, using the squirrel like it was a tug-of-war rope toy or something.  

Gabe came running outside, shouting, “I want to see the squirrel!  Can I see it? Is it deaded?”  Tess started crying and demanding that Daddy pick her up.  Matt shouted at me to bring out a treat to try and tempt Trooper away from the squirrel carcass, and also to pick up Tess, whose pleas to be picked up were escalating in volume.  So I came back outside, and Trooper trotted over to me with great enthusiasm, squirrel in mouth. 

This would be the point where I screamed again and ran inside to be violently sick.  

Yes, I know how shameful that sounds.  I am such a wimp. 

Matt eventually managed to get the wretched squirrel away from Trooper, wrap it in a garbage bag, and throw it away.  I managed to collect myself enough to get Trooper into the bathtub and shampoo him four times, including his mouth area.  (I resisted my initial urge to add bleach to the bath water.)  The kids managed to dance around the room like little vikings, demanding to see the “deaded” squirrel.  I cried intermittently for the next hour, because I fail at being a grown-up and could not get my act together.  The next time Trooper needed to be let out to potty he went right back to the squirrel acquisition area of the yard, at which point I freaked out again, dragged a chair over from our patio, and threw it over the bush to act as a kind of blockade.  The chair is still there, and I intend to keep it there for the immediate future.  

And that’s why I started drinking at 10:00 a.m. on a Sunday.  The end. 

(Just kidding about the drinking.  But don’t think I wasn’t tempted.)

Gabe is back to not sleeping so well.  The good news is he’s not getting up at 1:00 a.m. all the time like he used to.  The bad news is he’s up for good at around 5:00 a.m. most mornings. 

5:00 a.m. is unacceptable to his father and me.  It is still FULL DARK at 5:00 a.m.  So we’re now back on the plan where, if he comes into our room before 6:00 a.m., he has to give us one of his toys.  He gets it back the next time he sleeps all the way until he sees a “6” on the clock. 

Two days ago he got up twice during the night, so in the morning he was forced to surrender Finn McMissile.  That night he was quite contrite, and promised to sleep in his bed all night if he could have Finn back the next morning.  Yesterday, however, he came charging into our room at about 5:10 a.m., in a fabulous mood.  As he ran to our bedside, he cried, “Daddy, I changed my mind.  I don’t want Finn anymore, you can keep him!  I just want to play!  Time to wake up!  WAKE UP!  I NEED CEREAL!”

I think we can conclude from the incident above that: (a) he has too many toys, so the loss of any one toy is not particularly troubling to him; (b) he is incredibly stubborn (he is a Taurus, after all) and refuses to play by the rules we are attempting to set and enforce, or (c) he is possibly some sort of vampire who doesn’t need sleep like a standard-issue, non-vampire preschooler.  I’m currently leaning towards (c), because as you can see for yourself, he is ridiculously good-looking, just like all the vampires in Twilight. 

I’ll take him out to play in the sunlight today and let you know if I see any sign of sparkly vampire skin or super vampire strength or anything. 

I cannot possibly sum up the chaos that was our annual Greenwich Mean Time New Year’s Eve Party (so titled because we try to do the countdown at about 8:00 p.m. so all the wee folk can go home to bed; we send the parents home with cupcakes and splits of champagne).  

I am not sure exactly what went wrong or where I lost the thread, but the entire party - which consisted of only 9 children and their parents, a fairly reasonable number - was totally out of control. 

And I mean Out. Of. Control.  Here is a sampler platter of the evening’s activities:

1. Despite the fact that we own approximately eleventy billion Crayola washable markers, a baby somehow got her hands on a permanent marker and sucked on it.  For about five minutes.  Until the red was everywhere and it would NOT WASH OFF.  For all I know, that baby may still be bearing red marker stains on her hands and mouth and cheeks.
2. One kid quickly and systematically ate an entire container of blueberries, then puked them up about five minutes later.  The kid’s mom saw the puke and freaked out, screaming, “Is he throwing up blood?!?“  I explained that I was pretty sure it was all the blueberries he’d just eaten, and everyone calmed down, but it was a pretty dramatic moment. 
3. Someone pooped in the training potty in our bathroom and walked away.  The poop was not discovered until several hours later. 
4. While eating dinner, one child managed to fall out of her chair four times, eventually overturning the chair on the last, most spectacular fall.
5. Every single one of the 9 kids cried at least once.  

All that being said, we had a great time.  Gabe gave Tess a kiss on her cheek at “midnight” (aka 7:48 p.m.), the kids loved the party hats and streamers, and copious amounts of food and drink were enjoyed by all. 

But next year I’m going to have to hire bouncers or professional babysitters or a clean up crew or something. 

Before we get to today’s real story, let’s enjoy a picture of my children.  Gabe prefers to wear the Han Solo boots over his Star Wars LEGO pajamas, for that really authentic Jedi feel. Adorable, right?

OK, onto the main event.  Like an idiot I spent (gulp!) $45 for this Star Wars LEGO 2011 Limited Edition Advent Calendar:

That’s right, every day for 24 days Gabe gets a Star Wars LEGO item.  It’s limited edition.  You might have noticed that it comes with an exclusive Santa Yoda minifigure, which makes it extra-Christmasy.  This makes me the best mom ever, am I right?  (My mother could not have been more horrified when she saw this thing.  Last year she bought the kids a beautiful vintage advent calendar depicting snowmen and snowflakes, and I replaced it (for Gabe at least) with this plastic abomination that has a picture on the back of the Death Star wrapped in a red bow.  Ho ho ho!)

Let me tell you, there’s a real chance this advent calendar is going to end my marriage.  Our kids are 3 and 1, which means we usually play with the big fat LEGO Duplo blocks.  I hadn’t seen a non-Duplo, regular-sized LEGO brick in about a decade before I bought this thing.  When Gabe pulled the first item from the advent calendar yesterday morning (each day’s item is individually packaged unassembled in its own little plastic bag, so environmentally friendly, too!) I thought, “Hmmmm.  Those pieces definitely look smaller than I remember.”

Have you ever tried putting together a miniature Republic Gunship at 6:02 a.m. before you have had any coffee?  And when the only instructions are a eensy-weensy cartoonish picture of the fully assembled item?  And when a preschooler is impatiently bouncing up and down on the bed next to you, demanding to know when it will be ready at five-second intervals?  Well, HAVE YOU? 

I do not recommend it. 

I think only the fact that yesterday was my birthday prevented my husband from murdering me as he attempted to put together this tiny nightmare.  When Matt was finally done we had pieces left over.  I told him I was sure they were extras included on purpose.  He nodded grimly, despair in his eyes, 23 more days of this exact same fun stretched before him.

And it gets better.  After yesterday’s Republic Gunship adventure I decided I had better do a little research to figure out what I had gotten us into, and with the help of Google I found a picture of all of the items included in the calendar.  Day 7 is a itsy-bitsy storage case that contains an axe, a crossbow, and what appears to be a miniature scythe.  Day 5 is a SLAVE SHIP.  Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like a tiny, well-stocked weaponry and accompanying slave ship!

I am totally winning at Christmas this year.

We sent Tess to school without a jacket today, because (a) the weather report called for 78 degrees, and (b) she has had some kind of crazy growth spurt over the past few weeks and the only jacket that fits properly is in her dirty laundry basket.  Then the weather turned out to be 68 degrees and hazy.  That is some grade-A parenting right there. 

Anyhow, her teacher messaged me to ask me to please bring in more back-up clothes, including a sweatshirt, and I apologized and told her I was going to Baby Gap/Target/etc. this weekend to stock up on a new (correctly fitting) wardrobe for Tess.  The teacher responded:

Don’t worry!!! She is happy with the jacket that I got for her [from the loaner clothes]!!! She had a blast during the buggy ride!!! She is in a great mood today, a little bossy but that is normal for her. Have a great day:)

This is the lovely teacher’s way of telling me that Tessa bosses her around ALL DAY EVERY DAY. 

Now that I think about it, maybe she’s just bossy because her mother left her to suffer from hypothermia and she feels the need to exert some measure of control over her toddler life.  Maybe?

You may have noticed that Gabe is wearing black gloves in the photo I posted a few days ago.  In case you are curious, those are his batting gloves.  Why does he have batting gloves, considering he is only three years old and doesn’t play baseball?  That is a valid question, friends.

In the grand tradition of children everywhere, Gabe has batting gloves because his good buddy B started wearing batting gloves to school most days, and then Gabe was tortured by a deep, unrelenting need for batting gloves.  He wasn’t tortured for long though, because pushover Mommy broke down and bought them pretty quickly. 

The batting gloves have become an item of much controversy over the past week, though.  Gabe hasn’t been sleeping well recently, and to my utter dismay, has returned to his pattern of waking up sometime between midnight and 2:00 a.m., wandering into our room, and randomly demanding something (he has to go potty, he’s thirsty and needs a drink, he can’t find his teddy bear, he needs mommy to come rest with him in his bed, he put two of his astronaut guys into his shoe and now he can’t find them, etc.  The excuses are varied and plentiful.).  Not only is this hard on me and Matt, it’s hard on Gabe.  In the mornings following his late-night roamings, he is cranky, hot-tempered, and doesn’t eat well.   His little body needs rest!

In an attempt to reverse this awful pattern, Matt and I tried a new strategy suggested by an important sounding but probably worthless child rearing book: if Gabe doesn’t sleep through the night, he is required to surrender one of his toys to us for the next day.  He gets the toy back when he sleeps through the night again.

After a few days of this strategy completely and utterly failing, with Gabe roaming around our house in the pitch black like a miniature night stalker and then cheerfully handing over a toy the following morning, Matt pulled out the big guns: if Gabe didn’t sleep in his bed all night, he had to surrender the batting gloves. The BELOVED batting gloves. 

This did not go over well, and Gabe tried bargaining with us, offering several different items instead: his talking Lightning McQueen, his light sabre, his Buzz Lightyear guy.  “Nope,” said Matt firmly.  “If you don’t sleep in your bed all night, you have to give us your batting gloves.”  That was the final word on the matter.

Perhaps predictably, Gabe woke up around 2:00 a.m., and when we claimed the gloves the next morning, there was much crying and wailing and wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth.  After a fairly wretched morning he went off to preschool forlornly, sad to face his friend B without his batting gloves.  Matt and I didn’t like seeing him so sad, but we hoped he would start to understand that there are consequences for not staying in his bed all night, and that he needed to learn to rest his body.  We quietly patted each other on the back for our skilled parenting. 

Except when I picked him up from school that afternoon, he was wearing one batting glove on his hand!  When he saw me from across the play yard a guilty smile crept over his face, and he tried to hide the gloved hand behind his back.

“Where did you get that?” I cried, pointing at the single glove.  How did this excellent strategy backfire?  I thought to myself.  Surely Matt didn’t give in and let him have that!

“My friend B let me wear it since I forgot mine at home,” replied Gabe calmly, with the same guilty smile on his face.  “I asked him if he would share his gloves with me and he said yes.  So we each wore one of his today.  I’ll give it back now,” he added.  “Hey B, here’s your glove!  Thanks for letting me use it!”  Then he skipped off to get his backpack.  And indeed, his teacher confirmed to me that Gabe talked B into handing over one glove early in the day.

This is one of those parenting moments where I sort of wanted to cry, really wanted to laugh, and had to force myself to keep it together so he wouldn’t see my reaction.  Because, come on!  My child totally outsmarted me and my husband and the parenting book and our brilliant plan!  And he’s THREE!  What on earth is he going to get away with when he’s TEN?  Or SIXTEEN? 

Gloveless in this picture, and still adorable.