mothermayi

Dinner!

Today I am wondering if there is a pheromone that I make while cooking that makes small children crowd around my legs and whine.  It seems like the more dangerous the cookery, the more intense the leg hanging and moaning is.  For example; slicing veggies earns me a small child pelting me with questions while sitting on a stool in the corner, while pulling a dutch oven full of stewed meat out of a hot oven earns me a kid hanging on my arm, just above the oven mitt while screaming at the top of his lungs.  If I could only harness this determination to pester for good, this little blond kid I know and I could solve Venezuela’s energy crisis. 

Sometimes I watch Giada at Home, a cooking show on the Food Network in which this woman with amazingly large teeth cooks Italian-ish meals in her beautiful Malibu home.  The show used to be called Everyday Italian, but then Giada had a baby, so now she cooks at home.  She cooks these loverly dishes, grinning her ginormous grin the whole time.  After the meal is fixed, she goes “to wake up Jane” her small child who we are to presume has been napping.  This is all fine and dandy, but what I wanna see, is some reality.  I want to see her turn out dinner for four, one of whom won’t eat anything “weird” or “icky” while two small children attack her with wants and needs.  Oh, and I want to see her do it night after night after night….

She could demonstrate how to fry thing in hot oil while keeping a rowdy two year old away from the stove.  “Please leave the kitchen sweetie, this is very hot and dangerous.  Honey, please go in the other room.  SWEETIE!”  Then you hear the sound of a small child screaming, then she leaves the shot, then you see smoke, then the sound of a smoke detector.  Or how to grate cheese while a five year old stand on a stool no more than an inch away from her elbow and swipes sneaky cheese snacks, asks questions like “Who made everything?  Where do we go when we die?  What is your period?”and the two year old makes a wall of cans around her feet and chants “I’n hungry!  I’n hungry!” in his most high pitched voice.   That would be a good show.  I would watch that.  I wonder if she would smile the whole freakin’ time she cooked if “Jane” wasn’t “sleeping”?

Big Boy Bed

Tennessee has been sleeping in his Big Boy Bed (if I was in a band, this would be the name of our next album) for four nights now.  After two terrible falling out of bed in the middle of the night incidents with Lucy, Kenneth and I got smart.  Tennessee’s big boy bed is frameless for the moment.  He is rockin’ it First Apartment style with a mattress on the floor.  Tacky, tacky, I know, but try explaining a second (why I didn’t ditch the bed frame after the first time is still a mystery to me) broken clavicle to the pediatrician sometime.  I guarantee you will be dismantling your kids super cute bed frame quicker than you can say Tylenol with Codeine.

I kept putting off the Big Boy Bed, as the containment aspects of the crib are wonderful.   The first morning I woke up at 4:57 AM to little boy breathe in my face whispering “Can I have thome thereal?”  That wasn’t great, but after some explaining and glaring, he has been staying in bed until after 6:00.  (Unfortunately, 6:00 AM is now luxuriously late in the morning to me.)  In general, the B.B.B. is working out just fine.  When I went to check on the kids before I went to bed last night, it kind of broke my heart.  His little blonde head peeping out the top of his zany animal comforter, his little night stand.  The baby days are coming to a close for this mama.

Packaging

Try this:

On any day of the week, make a stir fry of beef, broccoli, and bok choy.  Season it with a little teriyaki sauce and serve it over rice and call it stir fry.  Your children will moan and groan and ask how much they have to eat to get a blueberry juice popsicle for dessert.  When you say that they need to eat seven bites, they will make sounds that would indicate a person being ripped limb from limb by a giant carnivore rather than fed a delicious and nutritious home cooked meal.  Things like; “This is soooo yucky!  Why don’t you cook good things for dinner!”  Or, from the younger and more frank “That’th groth!” 

The following week, cook an identical meal.  This time, upon serving, separate the beef from the vegetables on the plate as though the food represents tiny Islands that can only reach each other by boat.  No matter what you do, don’t get any “juice” on the rice.  Title the dinner, Rice and Meat and serve with a smile.  Get ready for the amazing part.  Now that the rice, veg and meat have been segregated, the EXACT same meal so heartily rejected only seven days before will be gobbled up like a Happy Meal.  This is just the excuse I need to buy those snazzy cafeteria type trays I have had my eye on.

Morning

It is currently 7:35 AM.  There have been too many arguments to count.  There was cat slapping.  There was a giant poopy diaper of the worst sort.  The topper?  It is raining like crazy, so there will be no “go play outside you two wolverines”, just bick bick bickering all day.  Now there is coffee and the peace provided by illicit morning cartoon watching.  I better steel myself and pony up some cash for a trip to the Children’s Museum, or the sound of two little knuckle heads being knocked together will echo down the block.  Now I feel bad for turning on the TV.  Their little vacant stares…peaceful little vacant stares.  Why is TV bad again? 

Crash Landing

Today was our first whole day home in almost a week.  Kenneth went to work and the kids and I got back to the business of living together without the distraction of all day TV in motel rooms and ice cream cones for no reason.  Lucy took it pretty well, she has come home from vacation before.  Tennessee, however, was not ready for the party to be over. 

He yelled when he realized that there wouldn’t be any TV until after dinner.  He yelled when he found out we weren’t going swimming.  He yelled when I told him to put the carton of ice cream back in the freezer.  (I had my head up my A double scribble when I chose the refrigerator with the freezer on the bottom.)  He kicked his sister in the chin when he found out that we were not heading to the beach today.  He threw a cup of water on the floor when he was told that the juice box days of spring break were over.  Poor little guy. 

While today was one of those days when I understand why women used to choose a convent over married life with children, I do really feel for Tennessee.  One day you are sitting on a sofa watching a never ending marathon of motel cable, drinking a juice box in your swim suit, the world is your oyster.  The next, your mom is making you wear socks and pick up your own LEGO.  Tomorrow is another day.

Bacon

Home.  From.  Vacation.  Laundry.

The source of the weird smell in my car, an old sad looking banana and his little friend the slice of bacon that got away.  Baconana.  Not as good as one would thing.

Laundry.  Wine.  Sleeping in my own bed.

More later.

Laudry.

On the Road

We drove from Cannon Beach to Eugene today.  It was a good trip.  I drove and Kenneth played Air Hostess.  The kids giggled, hooted and napped.  KP and I chatted and enjoyed a glorious sunny spring day.  When grousing broke out, Kenneth handed out a round of Fig Newman’s to quiet the passengers. We were able to keep from putting on the horrible kid music CD until the last fifteen miles. 

 In between there and here, we stopped at the Tillamook County History Museum.  I kind of love that place.  There are kerosene lamps, pictures of pioneers, a collection of rocks, old cars that crank start, several tea sets, logging implements of old, and a giant heap of taxidermies.  Everything dead under the sun stuffed and posed in their most natural of poses.  The collection includes salmon (but of course), birds of all sorts, musk ox, eagles, a polar bear, and a set of fawns, among many, many other things.

The deuce of dead baby deer only mildly tarnished my love of the place.  One of the volunteers picked Tennessee up over his head so that he could pet the nose of a hundred year old mountain lion rug donated by some descendants of pioneers.  Now that I am writing this I realize just how resplendent in dead things that place is.  Well, pioneering is rough business I guess.

The Nose

Tennessee’s nose has taken a bit of a beating this Spring Break.  There was the fist fight with the skeazy dude that was trying to take a picture of me while I did body shots….oh I forgot, that is somebody else’s life.  He did, however, fall into the crevasse between the bed and the night stand of our hotel room.

What kind of negligent mother puts a floppy, wriggly sleeping almost three year old into a strange bed bordered by a pointy night stand?  This kind, this kind right here.  He was just so excited to try sleeping in the big kid bed with Lucy.  In my mind they would snuggle and sleep tight.  Not so much.  Mostly he pissed his sister off by doing his go to sleep dance.  He whispers little songs to himself and waves his arms around until he falls asleep.  Very cute, unless you are trying to fall asleep next to him.

After the monkeys finally, finally fell asleep, Kenneth and I were having one of those airing of grievances discussions we like to save for vacations.  Just as we were about to unlock the secret to all marital strife, I heard a muffled cry from the kids room.  I went to investigate and saw through the dim light, two little jammied feet waving upside-down from betwixt the bed and night stand.  I pulled.  Nothing.  I yelled for KP and pulled again.  Out popped the little guy, his lip was bloody and his poor little nose was all squished and red. 

The next day it was kind of bruised and green looking.  Not too bad, until he did a tricky move while we waited in line to see the saddest seal exhibit ever (small and cramped with tourists flinging chopped up smelt at them).  He landed right on The Nose.  No blood, just more bruising.  From the side, it isn’t so bad.  Kind of gives his Norman Rockwell blonde kid thing an edge.  Spring break is rough. 

Ahhhh.

Kenneth, the kids and I hot footed it out of Puddle Town today for the balmy Oregon Coast.  Anyone who has ever been anywhere near the chunk of rain pelted sand that abuts the state of Oregon will be laughing so hard that the beverage of their choosing will be shooting out of their noses right now. I don’t know how it happened.  Maybe the end times are near.  Maybe I accidentally did something nice.  Really nice, but the weather is amazing.  It was warm and breezy on the beach earlier.  Yeah you heard me suckers!  Warm and breezy.  I got just the touch of sunburn through the spf 500,000 I carefully smeared over my translucent skin. 

This is the first time Tennessee has been big enough to really get into the whole beach experience.  He flung handfuls of sand at the ocean.  He bunped along singing “I’n runnin’ I’n runnin’” over and over as he trotted down the beach.  After a post beach snackie-doo, he is one happy guy.   Lucy got right back to where she left off with the big old dirty Pacific.  She runs right at the ocean screaming until it covers her feet.  Then she squeals a mighty squeal and heads for higher ground.  Rinse, repeat. 

At this very moment, I am sitting outside in a mere sweatshirt and flip flops typing while I look at haystack rock.  I feel like a little solar panel, sucking up the good stuff.  I may just make it through the rest of the rainy season without having to do my Sylvia Plath impression after all.

zzzzz

Allergy....medication....zzzzz.  I have been galumphing along on marshmallow shoes today.  Moving from one task to another with my handy To Do list by my side, all the while aching for a soft place to curl up.  I am not sure that this is better than sneezing my itchy face off.  Maybe I will try itchy face tomorrow and take notes. 

Tennessee and I were sitting in the "hair cutter plathe" waiting for his turn in the chair.  He was pointing out the finer points of getting your hair washed while sitting up, when I think I drifted off to negligent mother land.  The smell of hair dye, the latest issue of People and a cozy vinyl chair.  I am not sure, but I think I drooled a little.