Couldn’t you have picked a different one?

Magazines. I love magazines. They are one of those things that I think are a luxury, a treat, a non essential.

I purchase them very rarely and when I do I am usually going on a trip or feeling the need to indulge myself.

Today, while at the grocery store with KP tucked into one of those little car carts that the grocery stores now have (if you have never seen one, they are small plastic cars that sit in front of a smaller than regular sized grocery cart and put your child at the perfect height for all the marketers to grab their attention with sugar cereals and also allow your child to reach everything and anything they want while you are a whole cart behind them and can’t stop the onslaught of pasta whipping off the shelves) we picked up all that we needed for tonight’s dinner and headed to the check out lane without incident.

Once it was our turn to check out, the cashier turned the cart around to get all of our goods and put KP staring straight back out into the store. Once he was placed in the ready position, he at once spotted the bags of cookies, the candy and the gum and as he was trying to get out at the wonderful new tasty treats just set before him, he reaches out and grabs hold of the closest things to help him escape…the newest edition of Midwest Living.

Then a loud ripping noise was heard by all 8 lanes of shoppers. Then, as if in slow motion, I pick up the magazine that I would never buy, bypassing O, People, Real Simple, Time, Bon Appetit, and hand it to the cashier and say, “I guess I will buy this now too.”

She just looked at me with a sad little smile on her face and shook her head yes.

33 ¾ inches

KP bonked his head the other day as he was walking down the stairs. As he was crying I walked over, sat on the stairs, kissed his boo-boo and gave him a big hug. While I hugged him I noticed the wall, the portion of the wall that is between the hand rail and the floor. And it was disgusting!

I couldn’t believe I had never noticed it before. It has taken me a good week to get back to that same spot to wipe it down.

And in the process of cleaning it, this is what I found:
• Several young artist pencil renderings
• One long snotty dried booger
• Peanut butter and jelly smudges
• Some sort of other tanish something or other that came right off but I have no idea what the hell it is
• Several dusty hand prints of different sizes
• 14 unidentifiable black dots of varying smallness that won’t come off
• two shoe tread scuff mark (yes on the wall!)
• a circular indentation from the baby gate (that is my doing)
• and a sort of thin dark greasy film that covered almost the whole 33 and ¾ inches

I can only imagine what else I could find around the house if I was three feet tall.

KP’s first ever Kid Quote of the Day

And folks, these are some serious words to live by.

“No eat poopoo…yucky!”

My top sporty summer favorites

1. The perfect running skirt. This little ditty is so comfortable. It has coverage were you need it, technical fabric to keep you cool and dry and it’s a trip to wear.

2. BODYGLIDE. If you decide you still want to wear running shorts instead of a skirt or you have a chafing problem like my friend Erik you will want to wipe on some BODYGLIDE and your skin will be set free.

3. Yankz. You will never have to tie your shoes again. I can’t say enough about these. Once you try them, you will NEVER go back to laces.

4. Headsweats hat. This hat will not only keep your head cool in the summer months, but it keeps the sweat from dripping into your eyes and you can even throw it into the washing machine.

Coffee & Vino

The above mentioned are my two vices or addictions or foibles or loves or “item’s” I don’t ever want to be stranded on a dessert island without.

And my love affair with coffee just got a little stronger.

I’m not even sure what tipped my brain into thinking I wanted to find about how to make cold press coffee. Maybe it was my friend Megan who walks around with her own home made iced coffee in a perpetually reused clear plastic Caribou coffee cup with lid and straw or my constant spending of $3.50 every time I feel like I “deserve” a little something for myself or the horrendous heat or my 3:00 pm extreme dip in glycogen stores.

But thank God something pushed me to do it because now I have my own container of thick, syrupy, tar-black nectar of the god’s sitting in my own refrigerator.

Now you can Cold Press coffee too.

I prefer mine on the rocks with skim milk (about 1/3 coffee to 2/3 milk should do it).

MMMMMMmmmmmm!

On his way to being a Chippendale

All of a sudden KP has realized he is not so fond of a wet diaper on his body or a big load of poop in his britches. He has also learned to take off his shorts and PJ bottoms when he wants to. This, my friends, makes for a bad equation.

Because after the = sign, you get only one of the following answers:

A. A little boy ripping off his urine filled diaper via the Velcro fasteners and chucking it across the room yelling “POO POO”.

B. A little boy ripping off a poop filled diaper via the Velcro fasteners and having the poop fall on the floor and then hearing him yell, “OOOHHHH NOOOOOO POO POO.”

C. Coming up to check on the little boy in his crib late at night, making sure he is fast asleep, giving him one last kiss and realizing he is enjoying a completely naked sleeping experience.

You just do…

My friend Ellen sent me this link last night.

Jody’s words are an amazing reminder to me, after my last post, that you never know what is around the corner. And that you just have to savor life, live it, take it all in with all its craziness and enjoy those you love.

Because you really never know…

How do you live the cliché?

Last night after I had put the kids down, cleaned the kitchen and put all the kids’ toys away, I dropped down on the couch to relax and read in the blissful quiet.

Before I opened my book I found myself staring at the bookshelves with all the books and photos so randomly rearranged by my children. My first thought was to immediately get up and once again organize the shelves. Then it dawned on me…in the not so distant future there will be no undone bookshelves, there will be no small hand prints on the windows, there will be no screens ripped out of the door. Life will not be like living in a tornado of children forever.

They will all too quickly grow up. They will learn to “do” for themselves. And life will change, yet again.

How do I learn to savor this time?

How do I learn to embrace this craziness?

How do I learn to take each and every day and live it to the fullest with three kids that need so much, take so much and crave every single ounce of me?

Laying down the law

Over the past week, PJ has been taking the liberty of running away from me at the pool. Where does she run you ask? Anywhere the hell she wants, I answer. Ok, let’s see…she runs to the bathroom, to get her towel, to the sand, to the other end of the pool, to say hello to the lifeguards, to see floating discarded Band-Aids, get my drift?

Just so you know. Rule number one on our list of three pool rules is, “WE MUST ALL STICK TOGETHER and if you want to go somewhere else you MUST ask permission”.

This morning on the way into the pool I made it very clear to all three children that if anyone, including PJ, ran anywhere without permission we would pick up and leave immediately. Everyone knew what was at stake and on this 90 degree day we all were hoping for the best.

Suddenly, she turns to me and says she wants to go home. I look at the clock, it is only 12:15 and we usually don’t leave for a good hour or so. I tell her it is not time yet but we will leave soon. And then she does it, like a bolt of lightning…gone across the pool to places visually unattainable until I am running with child number three in my arms after her.

Once I nab her little arm, stop her and ask her what she’s doing, she looks me straight in the eye and says, “Well mom, you said we would have to leave if I ran away…so I did.”

AARRRRRRGGUH!!!!

Wondering why I did that

In the past five minutes I have done the following, in this order:
1. vacuumed the TV room
2. started a movie for the kids
3. gave the kids a bowl of popcorn

Does anyone else find that extremely stupid?