Monthly Archives: August 2012

It might be time to get my hearing checked

Posted in Embarrassing photos, Friends by

Somehow, I always end up on the phone with my cousin when she’s in the bathroom. It’s not that she’s in the bathroom more than the average woman in her 30s, it just works out that way.

She’s not particularly shy about having a conversation with you in person while she’s on the throne either, come to think of it.

Anyway, I ask her if I’ll be seeing her next week when we head to town.

“Sure,” she says. “My Porsche should be delivered by then.”

“Your what?” I ask, surprised. She’s got high school boys who play sports, and she’s always hauling half the team around. I’m curious as to why she’d try to cram them into a sports car. Maybe she bought it for the oldest, who turned 16?

Surely not. When she was 16, we were driving around in her busted gray hoopty, blasting Snoop Dogg on cassette and feeling pretty fancy, even if the previously flooded car did smell like a sheep’s ass.

“My pole. For my hallway,” she clarifies. Her pole? I mean, I know in our advancing age that exercise is important and all, but pole dancing? In the hallway? That’s a little out there, even for my family.

Maybe it’s a fireman’s pole? To get from the game room upstairs to the bathroom downstairs more quickly? I mean, we’ve already established that she’s in there a lot.

“I’m sorry, your huh?” I ask again.

“My floor,” she says, slightly annoyed. “In the hallway. We’re finally getting it put in.”

Well, that’s logical. They’ve been renovating their house for quite sometime now. Porsches and poles make little sense, but of course you need a floor. Everybody has floors. Whew.

“Ok,” I say, relieved. “Well, I’m going to let you finish your poop and I’m going to work on some stuff online.”

With that, we hang up. My husband, who has been eavesdropping, looks at me curiously.

“Poles and poop huh?” he asks.

“I was talking to Jenny,” I say.

“Ah,” he says. “Well that explains it.”

The nostalgia of clean sheets #iPPP

Posted in #iPPP, Monkey, Parenting by

Growing up, my most and least favorite day was cleaning day. Usually on a Saturday we’d wake up to the sounds of our mom scrubbing either the kitchen or the bathroom. We’d haul our dirty clothes out to the hallway and sort them into piles. We’d dust and vacuum and declutter.

When you’re a kid, cleaning sucks. But there was always something so lovely about resting on the couch under the ceiling fan afterward, surrounded by the smells of Clorox and Pledge. There was a peace to the clean house.

When it came time to strip and remake the beds, my sister and I would play a game with our mother. She would go to spread the new fitted sheet over the mattress and we’d climb underneath before she could get it secured. Then she’d continue to make the bed over us and we’d crawl out one corner, fixing it behind us.

It was silly, really, but it’s one of my favorite memories. The breeze of the snapped sheet over your head, the scent of the detergent it gave off.

The giggles as we lay trapped underneath the bedding for just a moment. The feeling that there wasn’t anything else going on in the world at that moment, just us in the bedroom, being together.

It was all part of the magic of childhood, the magic that fades for awhile but is renewed later when you get to be a parent yourself.

Yesterday I was making the bed when Monkey let out a loud squeal and leapt up onto it. He squirmed his way under the half of the sheet I’d already fitted to the mattress.

“I help,” he insisted.

He wasn’t much help, of course. He’d wrap himself up in the sheets, toss the pillows at me, and yank the comforter away each time I’d try to place it.

I would have gotten exasperated with him, but there was this moment. This moment when he was between the sheets, sitting on top of the fitted one I’d finally gotten tucked in, the flat sheet snapped out above his head, floating down in his face.

His face that was lit up from within with happiness at this moment.

Could he smell it, I wondered? The detergent, would he remember its scent years later? Would the softness of that clean sheet always be a comfort to him?

He had no idea of the bridge to my childhood he’d built in those few seconds, of how quickly I was taken back to those essentially carefree days. How for that moment, there wasn’t anything else going on in the world but us in the bedroom, being together.

Did you photograph a special moment with your phone this week? Link up your post with us!



Mamamash
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The case for a daughter

Posted in Parenting by

My husband let me sleep late this morning, which was great since I was up at 2 a.m. wrestling with the ghost of the Papa Johns pizza I ate last night.

That damn garlic sauce will get you every time.

When I dragged my corpse downstairs a little after nine, I found that he’d already fed the toddler and provided him with entertainment. I was feeling pretty grateful, so I decided to make him pancakes.

My friend Denae brags about making perfect pancakes all the time, but I am one of those people who always, always ruins the first one. The dog is appreciative but it never ceases to annoy me that I can’t hit one out of the park on the first try.

So I’m halfway through the bucket of batter I’ve prepared, a stack of hotcakes steaming on a plate and a tray of bacon in the oven. I have the usual conversation about the appropriate “doneness” of bacon – CHEWY! NO! CRUNCHY! CHEWY DAMMIT! – before I declare it done and turn off the oven.

I’m preparing my husband’s plate and I hear him reading to our son in the living room.

“Baa baa black sheep…” he begins.

I hum along in my head. This was one of my favorite nursery rhymes when I was little, who knows why.

He finishes, “One for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”

I throw down my spatula and yell, “AND NONE FOR GRETCHEN WEINERS!”

Crickets.

My sense of humor is clearly not adequately appreciated around here.

This is why we need a daughter. A daughter who will watch Mean Girls 3,752 times with her mother and get all my Glen Coco jokes and maybe not burn the first pancakes on a lazy Friday morning.

State of the uterus address: Week 10 #iPPP

Posted in #iPPP by

The dreaded first trimester is drawing to a close and I’m feeling less like dying on the couch and more like doing some serious nesting.

I’m super pumped about getting the multi-purpose “whatever” room changed into a nursery and the Monkey’s nursery changed into a “Big Boy” room. Paint, curtains, art – all that fun stuff.

Hubs is of course less enthusiastic about redecorating because he abhors change, but I know he’ll put on a happy face and sling that paintbrush anyway because he loves me and our offspring.

We had our first OB appointment last week, something that was causing me much anxiety. I was thrilled with our new practice though.

When I arrived, they whisked me back into an ultrasound room right away. I hopped up on the table and was amazed to see a little humanish blob on the big screen above me. Its heart flickered at an astounding rate and the tech assured me that everything looked great.

The rest of the appointment was the usual “Give us blood! Give us pee!” kind of thing, and I left a little lighter with my bag of literature and my Glucola for next month’s early glucose tolerance test.

The Glucola – fruit punch, yum! – is sitting on the counter mocking me. That crap is nasty and I have a whole month to look forward to chugging it down. I’ve decided that if I fail the one-hour test we’re just gonna call it and I’m refusing the three-hour test. I’ve already done the whole gestational diabetes thing and it wasn’t so bad.

In fact, it was a good thing. I was very aware of nutrition for the second half of that pregnancy and I figure it won’t hurt to do the same this time as well.

We haven’t really explained to Monkey what’s going to happen next year. I don’t think he’d understand it yet anyway.

I did show him the ultrasound picture though. He looked at it while I jabbered away, something about, “Mama and Dada are making you a little brother or sister. Would you like to have a baby next year?”

I think he thought I was joking.

Sigh.

It’s back to school time!

Did you catch an awesome shot of your kiddos getting ready for another year?

Share with us at #iPPP!



Mamamash
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#iPPP: Yeah we were swingin’

Posted in #iPPP, Monkey, Parenting by

Several times a week, we load up and take the toddler to the park. Dadda runs, Mama walks and pushes the stroller, and then we all meet up on the playground for awhile.

Monkey knows this is part of our routine and will frequently prompt us to get ready in the evenings.

“Socks and shoes?” he’ll request. Or sometimes just, “GO! In the car. Go!”

But yesterday he came out of the bathroom with his father, looked me seriously square in the eye and demanded, “I want to go to the park!”

I felt like crap yesterday, thanks to the adorable, olive-sized fetus in my womb, and I did not want to go to the park. But my son is cute, and well, he has dimples y’all.

Dimples.

You cannot say no to the dimples. Just try.

So we got dressed and went to the park. While Dadda ran, Monkey and I just hung out on the playground. He went up and down the slides a few times, made friends with a wiser, older woman (she was four) while exploring the big-kid equipment and stared longingly at the merry go round as it spun at breakneck speeds, piled with grade schoolers.

He’s generally a fan of all the playground apparatuses, save one. The swings. He hates the swings.

We’ve tried putting him in several types of baby swings with no success. He screams and thrashes and insists, “Get out! Get down! Get up!”

So we quit. But then he saw me sit on the regular swing and something must have clicked. He made me put him on every swing on the swing set, sitting for about 15 seconds before hopping up to get on another one.

Finally, he settled on the swing at the end. I gave him a little push. He held on tight to the chains. I pushed harder. He giggled.

And for twenty solid minutes, that kid was swinging. I would periodically ask him, “Do you want to get up?” to which he’d reply, “Nope.”

He was still swinging when Dadda finished his run. Still swinging after we’d chatted a bit. Still clinging desperately to the swing as we tried to pry him off to get home before dark.

Driving home, I was so glad I’d agreed to go the park. It’s so special to get to see your kid do something, anything, for the first time. That sense of wonder and accomplishment in their eyes is a better high than any drug could provide.

What’s going on in your world this week?

Did you snag a great photo you want to share?

Link up with us!



Mamamash
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Pursued

Posted in How was YOUR day?, Monkey, Parenting by

She wasn’t sure she was going to make it.

The split second she needed to gauge the footsteps – the leaps that would take her further from her pursuer and closer to an escape – that fraction of time might have made the difference.

Her pulse was throbbing in her ears. Could he hear it?

He would catch her again, this she knew.

She could hear his short, shallow breaths just feet away. He wasn’t watching. Not yet. But if she moved, if she made any effort to change her position, he’d be there in a flash.

She decided to go for it.

Uncrossing her legs, she leaned quickly to the left and sprinted up the stairs. Three, four, five steps to make it on the landing, then a quick juke to the left. Through the doorway – there it was! Freedom!

A door slam away.

She twirled around, grabbed the handle. Began to propel the door forward, but too late. Too late.

He was with her, grinning maniacally. He knew he’d beaten her, he knew she was caught.

As did she, so she sat down to pee, defeated, and handed the toddler a roll of toilet paper to unravel, resigned to her fate.

If I could turn back time – 18 Again!

Posted in Guest Posts, I'm Still Learning by

*Last year, Jamie at Chosen Chaos asked me to write a letter to my 18-year-old self as part of her weekly feature. It was a hard letter to write, mostly because it’s hard to look back on your life and see the mistakes you’ve made, and know you can’t get that time back. But it’s also great to be able to look forward and say that you’ve learned your lesson and will do better. 

Jamie has asked all of us who’ve participated in the feature to re-publish our pieces on our own blogs if we’d like to, and link up here together with all of our letters. I’m looking forward to reading the letters this weekend, and I hope you have a chance to look at them all too.

Dear 18-​​year-​​old Julie,

Happy Birth­day! You’re going to grad­u­ate high school tomor­row. This sum­mer, while you’re wait­ing to leave this small town you hate so much and head off to col­lege, remem­ber to spend lots of qual­ity time with your fam­ily. Don’t fight with them, because when you get to that dorm room, you’re going to want one more chance to say your good­byes the right way.

In fact, you’re going to spend the next 14 years of your life really suck­ing at good­byes. In order to pre­vent your­self from being hurt, you’re going to try to make your exits ugly.

Stop try­ing to set every bridge on fire.

Ok, so there might be a few bridges that should burn. Just be sure you’re done before you light that match is all I’m ask­ing.

When you get to col­lege, don’t worry so much about hav­ing a social life. You didn’t work so hard to get here just to throw it away for a few par­ties. Go to class. Even the 8 a.m. ones.

Actu­ally, just don’t sched­ule any 8 a.m. ones. That’s prob­a­bly smarter.

Don’t be afraid that you don’t belong or that you’re not good enough to be what you really want to be. You were blessed with a big brain in that mas­sive melon of yours, and it needs to be put to work. It doesn’t func­tion well with fail­ure.

Even­tu­ally, you’ll grad­u­ate col­lege, some­thing you can’t even imag­ine at this point. Do not panic and marry the guy you’re dat­ing at that time just because it’s what you think comes next. Divorce is expen­sive.

Be nicer to your mom. She did the best she could. Later, when you’re a mom – oh, and you do get to be a mom; I know the mis­car­riages will freak you out, but just wait, you will have the most awe­some son one day – you’ll real­ize that par­ent­ing is hard and there is a lot of pres­sure to be per­fect.

Be more judi­cious when choos­ing friends. Just because you’re in a new place and don’t know any­one does not mean you should trust the first smil­ing face that comes your way. But don’t shut every­one out, because there are truly good peo­ple in this world, just some­times it takes awhile to find them.

Don’t wait until you’re 32 to learn how to con­trol your tem­per. Yes, it’s part of who you are, this fiery atti­tude, but your words carry great power and can cause great pain. You’re not the type that wants peo­ple to be hurt, so even when you’re angry, take a time­out before evis­cer­at­ing some­one with them.

Also, you’re going to date a lot of losers. Holy cow, can you ever pick ‘em. And I’d say to avoid that, but I think it will make you appre­ci­ate the man you do end up with even more. He’s a prince among men for sure, and he’ll love you through all your issues and tantrums and fears – until one day you don’t even strug­gle with them any­more.

OH! One more thing. When Hur­ri­cane Ike comes through in 2008, pack up all your stuff in a mov­ing truck. Some things can never be replaced.

Love,
Your 33-​​year-​​old, ridicu­lously happy, ever-​​so-​​blessed self.

Random recipe: Copycat 54th Street Gringo Dip

Posted in #iPPP, Noms by

One of my favorite appetizers here in Kansas City is 54th Street’s Gringo Dip – a white cheese dip loaded with veggies and spice. They serve it with chips or waffle fries and it’s so good that when my sister comes to visit, we have to go eat there at least twice.

I’ve been wanting to make it at home for awhile, but never got around to it until the other day when my husband begged me to.

I peeked around the Internet for awhile and found a couple of efforts to replicate the dip, with one sit actually claiming to have the “recipe from the corporate cookbook.”

Haha, yeah. Right.

None of them were exactly what I was envisioned, mostly because they had too many ingredients or were too complicated in prep.

Anyway, this is my version. It’s not authentic, of course, but close, real close. It makes a lot bigger serving that you’d get at the restaurant, so it’s perfect for the upcoming football season. It requires almost no prep, since you buy everything prepackaged. Also, it has veggies. Sneaky, sneaky.

Gringo-ish Dip

1 lb Velveeta Queso Blanco, cubed
1 cup pepper jack cheese, shredded
½ cup shredded parmesan
16 oz container pico de gallo
1 cup milk
1 tsp cayenne
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained

In a saucepan, warm the cheeses, pico, milk and cayenne. Stir well until completely melted.

Add the spinach, taking care to separate the leaves.

Serve with chips, on nachos, or with waffle fries.

*Welcome Pinteresters!  For more tasty noms, try my Chicken Spaghetti. It’s a failproof kid pleaser. Or my Cheesy Chicken and Spinach Lasagna, guaranteed to get as much cheese in your mouth as possible. Wash it all down with my Mama’s Amaretto Slush for a frosty adult treat. Thanks for visiting!