1. If this baby doesn’t stop stomping on my bladder and/or cervix on a regular basis we are going to have WORDS.
2. How is it possible that I have a gajillion cookbooks and yet none of them has a recipe for red velvet cake? Even the southern ones? Thank Maude for the internets.
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Posted in holidays
Tonight we were too tired to cook, so we went to a local diner for a quick meal as part of our comprehensive socialize-the-Hatchling-to-behave-in-public-spaces campaign. She did pretty well (for a 2.5 year old), but what was truly impressive was the dinner she ate, which was a nutritious combination of:
a) french fries
b) ketchup
c) apple juice
d) ginormous chocolate chip cookie
After which, she went home and was bouncing off the walls from her sugar + carb high. There was dancing, there was singing, there was a lot of random spastic movement. THAT, my friends = good damn parenting.
Comments Off on June Cleaver and Donna Reed would be SHOCKED.
Posted in parenting highlights
Tagged Two years
Ah, Thanksgiving: the publicly sanctioned celebration of gluttony. We will be going up to my parents’ house as early as we can get ourselves going tomorrow, so I can help with the prep and the Hatchling can have quality time with the grandparents. We will be having:
Turkey
Dressing (cornbread, not that Yankee whitebread crap)
Gravy
Sweet potato casserole
Garlic mashed potatoes
Cranberry relish
Cream cheese corn
Salad
Chocolate chess pie
Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
So yes: we will be stuffed good and proper. What are you having? What are you most looking forward to?
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Posted in Comestibles, holidays
1. I have officially entered the waddling and stretchy-clothes-only stage of pregnancy. That’s about two months earlier than last time, for those of you keeping track.
2. Nine disturbingly misogynistic old print ads – can I just say: Whoa. The first one, in particular, I don’t even UNDERSTAND.
3. It’s official – atheist countries are nicer than we are.
Is it wrong that, at two-and-a-half years old, the Hatchling can unplug Mr. Squab’s iPhone from the charger, turn it on, unlock it, open her favorite application and start to play?
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
This has always bothered me, too!
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Posted in Funny Stuff, linkage
Did you miss me? I had a great time in Knoxville; for one thing, the weather was what November is SUPPOSED to be like (40s and 50s, damp, rainy) as opposed to the pre-winter crap we get in this godforsaken state. And for another thing, that baby is CUTE. Hoo. Plus my mom was there, too, so she basically catered to our every need. It was a good trip, and I sure do wish I lived closer to my sis, but it was really, really good to get home. I can’t think of a better way to be greeted at the airport than by an ecstatic tow-headed two-year old running toward you with a mile-wide grin yelling “Mama!! Hi, Mama!! I so gwappa SEE you!” and then giving you a hugey-ginormous hug. That’s just plain good stuff. Mr. Squab had even fixed her hair in a pony tail with barrettes. (Little girl hair-dos are not his strong point. He characterized his first attempt at a pony tail as an “epic fail.”) He’d also done a bunch of laundry, hung the outdoor Christmas lights, cleaned out the back porch, and put insulating plastic on the windows while I was gone. This sort of pisses me off, because hell if *I* have the time or energy to tackle those kinds of projects when I’m singlehandedly responsible for the Hatchling. Where does he get off? But then, I also benefit from his industriousness, so, you know: I keep my mouth shut.
Hope y’all had a good week.
Whew, the Hatchling has definitely been testing her limits the last couple of days. Everything is a fight. This morning, we needed to make a simple run to Target so I could pick up some prescriptions, and it took us approximately FOUR HOURS to get out of the house. Why? Because there were major tantrums about:
– going downstairs
– eating breakfast
– going back upstairs to get dressed
– getting dressed
– going back downstairs to get ready to go
– putting on shoes
– brushing and fixing hair
– putting on the jacket (oh, lord! putting on the jacket!)
Christ on a crutch. Of course, as soon as we were out of the house, she perked right up, which is exactly what I knew would happen. She was making friends in Target left and right, saying hi and bye to everyone she passed in the aisles and charming the pants off of the cashier, to whom she sang the alphabet song. I got a lot of smiles and “she’s so cute” and I was all, sure, she’s cute HERE, but do not be fooled by the niceties of Dr. Hatchling Jekyll! Mr. Hatchling Hyde is just around the corner!
Fortunately for her, she juxtaposes the tantrums with just enough total cuteness to avoid sending her Mama to the loony bin. Like how, right now, whenever she sees one of us after an extended absence, she runs over to give us a hug and says “I’m so glad to see you!” (Well, she actually says “I so gwappa seeyoo” but you get the gist.) Or how she kept saying “wonderful, wonderful baby” when we went to visit our friends who just had a little boy. Or how she yells, “there’s Kramer! Crazy Kramer” when we’re watching Seinfeld. (Which, OK, that’s maybe not the most appropriate show for a two-year-old, but that’s another post.)
So, anyway, what I’m saying is, I love her more than anything, but I’m also not totally bummed to be getting a little break from her this weekend. I leave tomorrow morning to go down south for a visit with my sister and her brand new baby boy. Might not be the most restful vacation I’ve ever had, but there will be no ornery toddlers bossing me around and throwing fits every ten minutes, and that will be a pleasant change of pace, I have to admit.
Awesome:
Having your mother, who is basically Martha Stewart, come for a visit and cook and clean like a true maniac. She cleaned my room, y’all. She is the ONLY person other than myself whom I would allow to even witness my room in its usual state of chaotic decrepitude, and not only did she witness it, in three hours she cleaned that sucker from top to bottom. I can only assume that she’ll dine out on the horror of it for weeks to come, but so far she’s been very pleasant about it to my face. We have also been eating like royalty, including fried chicken with hawaiian rice, pork chops with garlic mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, and fresh green beans, and tonight’s meal of sauerbraten with poppyseed noodles and red cabbage. That’s not even including the chocolate chip cookies, pound cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting, and banana bread. Mr. Squab thinks he died and went to heaven. She also does all the dishes, and has been helping me sort through all the Hatchling’s baby clothes and clean out the Hatchling’s room – oh, and then today she went out and bought the Hatchling a new twin bed because she has already outgrown the toddler bed we just set up for her about a month ago. (No, really: as in breaking the slats that hold up the mattress. She’s the size of a four year old.) We also went out today and got supplies for her to knit the Hatchling a purple and green cardigan with dragonfly buttons. A clean house, good food, new clothes and furniture: these are the building blocks of a peaceful Squabby mind. We will be very sad to see her go, and she’ll probably collapse from exhaustion the minute she steps onto the plane.
Not Awesome:
Having a reaction to the flu shot I got on Thursday that makes me feel … well … kind of like I’m getting the flu. So I’m spacey and really tired and not much good for anything. I woke up this morning at five o’clock with what I thought was an allergy attack, but it didn’t go away and I’ve felt increasingly blech as the day progressed. (And if you ever need evidence that I am not a morning person, just try talking to me when I’ve been forced out of bed at 5 AM by nasal difficulties. It’s not pretty, y’all. Not pretty at all.) It had BETTER be a reaction to the shot and not some actual disease coming on, because I’m supposed to fly out to see my sister and her new baby this coming weekend, and I refuse to be waylaid. Take that, contagion.
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Posted in Best Thing Ever, la famiglia, sleep, trials and tribulations
