It's not date night unless somebody calls the cops

This weekend was our 18th anniversary (18 years is the Garnet anniversary--we looked it up. Apparently 11 years is Steel, and if you make it past that you start getting better symbols to work with.) We did the usual thing, got a sitter, went to see a movie, ate dinner.

Except.

Except my mom served as our babysitter. There are distinct differences in our lifestyle and hers, including the fact that we recycle, we have central heat and air, our TVs are controlled by Tivos, we have high speed internet, we live on a cul-de-sac with unique parking implications, and so on. Most of the time the differences in our lifestyles only end up in a diaper in the recycle bin or our neighbor asking us if we'd please move the extra car so he can back out of his driveway. But Saturday, the crazy good luck streak we were unaware we were in, flat ran out.

We left the boys with mom and went to eat at C.C.'s City Broiler. Midway though dinner, Mom called Monte, and after she asked a few questions, he asked to speak to Mason. He then explained to Mason how to put the DVD in the Tivo and watch it. Thinking "crisis averted" we finished our meal and went to see Star Trek. I had already seen it, so in the middle I decided to go to the bathroom. I told Monte that the part coming up was a big plot point, and many things would be explained, and that he should sit tight until I got back.

I came back from the bathroom and found him in the hallway talking on his cell phone. Puzzled, I said "you were supposed to stay in there. You're missing the plot . . . " He told me to "shhhh" and said "I'm on the phone with the Brinks Home Security people." Now, I can't imagine why he's on the phone with Brinks, since we didn't set the alarm before we left, what with four people running in and out of the place, unless maybe something caught fire. So I stand there freaking out, while he finishes his call, and he said "your mom hit the burglar alarm."

We have been using our attic fan because the days haven't been all that hot yet. Before we left on our date I turned on the air conditioning, but I guess it wasn't doing its job, because mom decided she was warm. She called dad, and told him she was warm, and he said "well, just hit the blue button." There were three things vitally wrong with his advice. One, our thermostat is upstairs between the bedrooms, and she was downstairs next to the front door. Two, we have a touch screen thermostat. No blue button. No buttons at all. Three, she had told him she wasn't wearing her glasses and she couldn't read the buttons she was pressing, so she missed the fact that the blue button she was hitting was actually a picture of a blue police shield and the keypad she was hitting it on was marked "Brinks Home Security."

The good news is, if you have a security alarm installed by Brinks, they do call each and every number in an effort to get hold of you, the cops do come right away and it all works just like its supposed to. The bad news is, we have to find a new babysitter option before our neighborhood association writes us a strongly worded letter about our excessive use of law enforcement.

Waiting for the tooth fairy

Stephen lost his first tooth on Monday. We noticed it had gotten really loose over the weekend in Branson, and when we got home, Monte got a bit of string around it and, after three tries, got it out. It was great. Our six year old Kindergartner became a man. Or at least he joined the lost tooth club.

And then that night we forgot to put it under Stephen's pillow.

Utterly completely totally forgot. When Mason FINALLY lost his first tooth at age 8 last summer, you'd have thought we were celebrating his acceptance into Harvard or something. Speeches were made, backs were patted and a huge deal was made out of putting it under his pillow that night. The surprises left the next morning were a sight to behold. A few weeks later we had to come clean about certain facts regarding the Tooth Fairy, (he was about to enter the Third grade after all,) but for a brief moment, teeth were magical. Since then, however, the magic of lost teeth has tarnished a little. Gotten a tad stale. Poor Stephen just had the bad luck of not losing his first tooth before Mason, which frankly, Mason gave him more than ample time and opportunity to do. So anyway, after we completely forgot Stephen had lost his tooth and should get a visit from the TF, we did our best to make up for it the next night. Monte wrapped a pretend tooth in a bit of paper towel (the real tooth is already affixed on a scrapbook page downstairs--don't judge me) and put it carefully under Stephen's pillow, and in the morning, there was a little bucket with stuff to make s'mores in it. Quite a thing, right? Pageantry and all.

Except that he lost another tooth on Wednesday. And again, we forgot to put it under his pillow.

I know, right? Twice? Having three kids has kind of redefined our family limits, especially when it comes to making a big deal out of stuff the second and third time. Or frankly, just remembering it happened. But, after hanging our heads and explaining we could make it right because we have a hotline straight to the Tooth Fairy's booking agent (he's only six, so I have more time before some kid in his class contradicts my carefully constructed reality), we again wrapped a "tooth" in a paper towel, and put him to bed.

And then, around 11 p.m., plans were set in motion in to replace the paper towel with something more substantial. As the covers were lifted, a shaft of light from the hallway illuminated our sweet little spiderman boy . . . and he was clutching the tooth in his sleep.

It was so precious I can't even tell you. He probably wanted to catch the tooth fairy making the switch, so he could get a good look at her. Or him. Whatever, you know what I mean. So I took his picture, because these are the moments I live for, while I'm cleaning up dried urine from behind the back of the toilet.

Unfortunately, Stephen never got to catch the Tooth Fairy. He is afflicted with his mother's ability to sleep though gale force winds and category F5 tornadoes and nuclear testing and such. Tragic, really. Adorable, but tragic.

PS And his index finger isn't broken. It's double jointed. THAT he inherited from his dad's freaky side of the family.

Branson Landing

We went down to Branson Landing on Saturday night, to eat at Shorty Smalls. There was a 30 minute wait, so we went down to look at the water, and as we did, fog rolled in. Like, within ten minutes, there was fog where there had been no fog before. Speedy acting insta-fog, the kind Americans would make if they commercially produced fog, and the kind Europeans would sneer at in some sort of accented snobbery, as if to say, "fog made zhat quickly is inferior! You ridiculous Americans and your microwaves and drive thrus and immediate fog. You know noth-zing. NOTH-ZING!"

Anyway.

It was cool. Neat foggy type fog, and it accented the area perfectly, and made for such a pretty picture, and it would all have been just right.

Except.

The water smelled really really fishy. Pee-yew!

Run out of town on a rail

This is a true story of four men and one woman, living in a hotel room in Branson, Missouri, who are having their lives photographed, to see what happens when people stop being polite and start being real. The REAL world, Branson! (It wouldn't last a whole season.)

Here are my four guys on the Branson Senic Railway trip. We traveled an hour south into Arkansas, and then stopped on this very very very high train tresle, sat there a minute to let the fact that we were very very very high up sink in (I have a fear of heights and bridges and open windows and so on), and then the train reversed itself and we traveled back the way we came, to Branson Landing. All in all it was around a 2 hour trip, which wasn't too bad, although if it had been much longer, Peyton would have registered several complaints, or pooped on something. Or someone.

I gave the boys some disposible cameras to see what they would take pictures of. Stephen took lots of grainy underexposed pictures of price tags and knick knacks at the Branson IMAX Mall. Mason took lots of pictures of himself and his brothers doing dorky stuff. I paid to have these things developed. You see the fly in the ointment, don't you?

I think now that we're home and eveyrone has had a good night's sleep, I should be kinder and gentler in my Branson vacation review. I mean, it was full of nice stuff, and the sleep loss and rough housing and perpetual motion and constant complaining are things we put up with at home . . . it's just that, at home, I can send perpetual motion complainers off to different parts of the house so that they can fine tune their argument, leaving me to do my job of not hearing them or seeing them. So, next vacation, we're just going to have to rent a house to stay in. Or a department store. Or the Mall of America.

Labor and pain

I planned a trip for my family in Branson, MO, this past Memorial Day weekend. We saw the Irish Tenors, which was nice, and rode the Senic Railway, also nice. Unfortunately, I learned many many lessons during this trip, including:

1. Peyton is too little and the other two are too rowdy to share a hotel room with. This means no meaningful family vacation until 2015.
2. by 2015, none of us will be speaking to each other.
3. I must never ever plan a vacation, as I get a little emotionally imvolved when it doesn't go as planned.

It was a tough weekend.

Stephen Ells, MD

Stephen was covered with poision ivy (again) and I was putting some medicine on it, when he said, "Mom, I think I'm allergic to all these bug bites." I said, "Oh, really? You're allergic to bug bites?" He said, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

Then there was this long pause

And then he said, "Or maybe cheese."

Stephen is not allergic to cheese. He's allergic to being serious.

Kaleidoscope, Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, Earth

The four Fairview Third Grade classes (all 100 kids) enjoyed a trip to Crown Center, and Kaleidoscope, in Kansas City. Monte and I went, along with other parents and teacher helpers, to herd the herd. It was a pretty good time. Mason made several things, although I didn't get to see him much, since I had to man the "gold and silver paper on a roll" station. I had to cut the paper off for each kid, because the scissors chained to the station for cutting purposes were dull and didn't work very well. Monte didn't fare much better--he was in charge of the "glue a bunch of stuff together your parents would consider trash, and then call it art" station. There were empty tape spools, all sorts of plastic pieces and parts, and crazy ribbon. He looked so bewildered, like he was thinking, "but I just threw a bunch of stuff just like this away at work, and now you are all climbing over me to get to it, and glue it together. Maybe later you can get my hamburger wrapper from lunch out of the garbage and make a hat out of it."

Ah, childhood!

You are so beautiful to me

You can't see it, because I can't make this picture big enough on blogger, but Mason's eyes are simply stunning in this shot. What a precious little man I have. Ah, he's a heart breaker.

Things you may not know about Mason:
1. Besides video games, he loves the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. We're on the last book, "The Last Olympian" right now. He also enjoys the Harry Potter series, although not quite as much.
2. He asks very mature questions.
3. He loves the Lakers. A lot. He practices his jump shot in hallways, theater bathrooms, restaurant lobbys, EVERYWHERE. Kobe Bryant is his favorite player, but he's starting to branch out and enjoy other players as well.
4. He is beginning to rebel a little, but in his heart he wants very much to please his parents.
5. He is 4 feet 9 inches tall. His mother is 5 feet 5 inches tall. His feet are about an inch shorter than his mother's feet. His mother is 30 years older than he is. I'll save you the graphs and trend charts, and just say, he's gonna be taller than his mother in about a minute and a half.
6. He loves Coldstone ice cream, especially mint with chocolate sprinkles, but hates frozen custard.
7. He likes to go on walks/jogs with his mom and or his dad, and when we're jogging up Chapel Hill, he chants "You can do it! I'm so proud of you! You can beat this hill!" And you know what? It helps a gal get up and over the hill, without too many rest breaks!

There's probably a joke in there about him helping me get "over the hill" but I'll leave it to the reader to craft it.

I'm sooooo sorry!

For anyone who attended yesterday's worship service at Fairview Road Church of Christ in Columbia, MO, I would like to publicly say I'm so so very sorry for forcing Monte to lead "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" as the closing song. I take 100% of the blame. Totally my fault. Rookie mistake. You know it's bad when your friends look at you and say "Oh, wow. You didn't think this through, did you." Like, when they look at your 80s prom dress choice or your wedding hair.

Nope. I didn't. Thought it would be fine. Figured it would be cool. Like the day we went to Johnson Shut-ins with baby Mason, and I thought a regular diaper would act just like a swim diaper, for a short period of time.

It wont. It'll blow up to 10 times its regular size and then explode in a gelatinous crystallized mess. And all the way back to the car, in the woods, with no real recourse but to carry the bewildered gelatin covered baby, you think to yourself, "I'm going back, not to a real bathroom, but a tent and a campsite." (The baby, although 9 now, still acts as though his parents have no idea what they're doing. I suspect it started right there at Johnson Shut-ins.)

Upside though, I now know what a vocal train wreck that song is! Lesson learned--only three billion more just like it to go! (I'm a simpleton.)

Ahhhhhh-men.

P.S. This afternoon, to get the sound of that closing song out of my ears, I went to the new Star Trek movie. Ooooo, it was soooo good. I give it six stars out of five. Dang it, Chris Pine is cute. Holy cow! I don't get a sitter, like EVER, and I would leave my kids with a street corner hobo to see this sucker twice, and happily pay the eight bucks for the privilege. It. is. So. So. Good. Christmas dinner at grandma's good. Ethel M's chocolate good. Two hour massage good. Free luxury hotel accommodations good. IT'S GOOD! GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

Just don't sing. They don't take kindly to that on Vulcan.

Rock the vote

I just ran a few of my Mother's Day gift actions from MCPActions.com on this picture, and I have to say, I like it better. You can't see it, since I have to upload these within Blogger parameters, which means small, but after darkening the lighter background and lightening Pepe's face a little, especially his eyes, it seems to enhance the overall look and accent the depth of field to me. I dunno. I just wish he hadn't been wearing a dang dark brown shirt. and sitting next to the black piano bench. But the mess was where and when it was, which prompted the picture in the first place. It's all about location.

I know I'm going to look back on these pictures in five years and think how utterly clueless I was about retouching in Photoshop. They'll be embarrassing first tries, like a fifth grade art project that your mom shows all your adult friends. "My, she certainly was a fan of, uh, color, wasn't she?" Ack.

You'll have to be the judges. Which picture is better, the first one (the one in the last post, not quite straight out of the camera, but close) or the above computer-enhanced second one?

I eagerly await your opinions!

Boys for sale, gently used, cheap!

This one is cute, and he takes an occasional nap, but in the interest of full disclosure, he tears up anything set in any kind of order. Order in general makes him angry.
Also, be aware he has a knack for turning on and off computer components. And lights. And small appliances. CD Players, vacuums, TVs, Tivos, DVD players . . .
This one is nice too, and very low miles, but is consistently covered in ticks and Poison Ivy, Oak, Sumac, etc.
Also, he has many many criticisms for his care givers, as they attempt to counteract the work of the ticks and Poison Ivy, Oak, Sumac, etc.
This one mainly just sits in one spot and plays video games. I would suggest you start here if you're looking for a low maintenance boy. Just remember to triple your present grocery expenses when calculating the household budget.

Please direct inquiries to Mom. All sales are final.

Okay, just kidding. They're not really for sale. Who would keep me warm in the middle of the night when they come in and want to chat at 3 a.m.?

Unless somebody makes me a really really really good offer.

Salon Adair and Spa is just NOT that into me

So I'm feeling pretty cranky right now. I just sat for 30 minutes in the waiting room at Salon Adair and Spa, across from Hy-vee in Columbia, hoping for a haircut. I didn't need a style, or even sparkling conversation. Just a haircut that brings the ends of my hair back in alignment with each other. I called on Saturday to make an appointment for sometime pretty quick, and after stifling a yawn, the terse and sleep deprived receptionist with barely veiled disdain, told me they had a six o'clock on Monday, and did I want it? Okay, I said, and gave her my name. Mason had a baseball game at seven-thirty, so I reasoned that, surely, an hour would give me enough time to get a haircut, drive the two miles back to our house, and leave an extra fifteen minutes of organization time before we had to leave for the game. Surely. I mean, in this economy, nobody turns down business, right? Right? Is this thing on?

Not so at Salon Adair and Spa. They apparently have so much ridiculous business coming out of their amazingly coiffed ears, that they have no problem treating customers like they were something unpleasant on the bottom of a manolo blahnik. I walked in at six on the dot, and checked in. The receptionist (a new one this time) reacted to my presence like she would extend her help only out of sheer boredom and lack of anything better to do, which didn't bother me too much early on. It was only after fifteen minutes of sitting on their overstuffed couches reading boring hair and bride magazines that I realized I had been utterly forgotten. I walked up to the receptionist and explained I had a six o'clock appointment, and it was now quite a bit past that. She stared at me like she couldn't decide what to do next, and then after a protracted pause, told me she'd go check with the stylist. The stylist, it seemed, was still working on the person ahead of me, but she was just finishing up. I assented, but asserted I had to be finished by seven. The receptionist then said the most amazing thing. She said, "Well, it takes about an hour for a haircut." Hadn't I scheduled an hour? Wasn't six to seven exactly an hour? Ignoring the fact that this obvious point was lost on everybody but me, I said "Well, maybe she can just cut it and not style it or anything." At this point the receptionist and I agreed everything that could be said on the subject had been, and I sat back down.

At six twenty-five, I realized I was not important in any way to the entire staff of Salon Adair and Spa. Neither the receptionist nor the stylist had initiated any contact with me. I had to ask why my appointment was off schedule. (I never saw the stylist at all.) Finally, I stood up. The receptionist, realizing I might be upset, for the first time, said "I'm sorry." To her credit, she actually used a tone that implied she was being sincere. Unfortunately, it was too little too late. I said, "Thanks anyway" and "It is what it is" (in response to her apology), and left.

Nobody up there cares I left. In fact they're probably celebrating getting to go home early. And they really didn't lose a lot of business. I have my slow growing hair cut, maybe five times a year. But if the subject comes up, I wont hesitate to share my experience. Like I'm doing now with you good people out there. See, it's very hard for someone who takes care of a baby all day to get a second to herself for a haircut. Once you carve out the time, it just seems too precious to spend on waiting rooms and rude treatment.

My apologies to anyone from out of town who reads this . . . sometimes a gal's gotta vent.

Something I wish I'd written

You get a lot of good stuff off http://thepioneerwoman.com/. For example, there are the photography tips, hints, tricks and free photoshop actions, which have really helped prod my picture taking evolution. There are the fabulous recipes that I will never ever ever attempt, but that still look amazing in pictures that make the food look piping hot and delicious, like you could smell it cooking right through the internet. There's the smartypants quizzes, the homeschooling info (that, I'll be honest, isn't of much use to me) and the harlequin romance novel story of Pioneer Woman's courtship with Marlboro Man (her husband). All of which is extremely valuable and worthwhile information . . . but today, in a post about her mom and grandma, Pioneer Woman published the attached poem which really touched me. It was in there because her mom forwarded the poem, which is just like her mom to do (it was a mother's day post, after all). But I read it and thought, "this is how I feel when I stand out on my back deck alone and stare into the city-fied woods, and remember growing up on the farm near real woods, and real fields and real hog smell. Hog smell aside, a powerful bond exists between me and God's creation, and my small but solid place in it, and frankly, I just liked the poem's words.
------------------------------
“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
-------------------------
Yeah, Mary, I'll try. I'll try.

Bye bye baby

As inevitable as death, taxes and TV show dry spells, the day of Peyton's first haircut was coming and it was getting to be just a question of when. Monte had had enough of strangers commenting on how pretty his sweet little girl is (dang it, he IS pretty), and the other boys needed haircuts, so after the intervention, off we went on Friday to SportsClips. Peyton's hair was a little long, I'll admit, but it's basically cotton candy air fluff, and there really isn't much there when you get right down to it. Besides, he's so pretty and it's not THAT long. However, I am a reasonable person, and when threatened with being excluded from the first haircut and just finding out it happened later, I was motivated to go ahead and get on the haircut bandwagon that everyone else was already aboard. Here are some before and after pictures from the big day.

See, nobody but me gets that now that his hair's been cut, he's a little boy. He was a baby until Friday at 4:30, and after that he became a boy. It's the Christian version of a bar mitzvah--my son is a man, without the reading from the torah and the obligatory band. He no longer needs his mom in the same way as he did before. You think I'm being melodramatic, but later that night, he used a fork successfully, and he now says the words "fla" (flower) "Maah" (more) and "guh" (juice/drink). If he sees the floor he reaches for it, and once there he's off like a shot, in whatever direction I'm not in. I mean, give him a driver's license and a bank account, and suddenly he's calling me "mother" and shaking my hand in greeting. Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

God may be in the details, but Kindergarteners are NOT

I'm reading Stephen the second Harry Potter book. If you've never read it (and really, this explanation is for all five of you out there who haven't), there's a school called Hogwarts and in it are four houses the kids are sorted into: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Stephen was engrossed in the chapter, which discussed Harry's interaction with some Hufflepuff kids and some Slytherin kids. When we finished reading, we had this conversation:

MOM: So, what did you think of tonight's chapter?
STEPHEN: Good.
MOM: What was your favorite part?
STEPHEN: I don't know. Which kid was Ernie? Was Ernie a Sucklepuppy?
MOM: A Sucklepuppy?
STEPHEN: Yeah, you know, a Sucklepuppy or a Hidden Door?
MOM: You mean a Hufflepuff or a Gryffindor?
STEPHEN: Yeah, that's what I said.
MOM: Oh. He's a Sucklepuppy.
STEPHEN: That's what I thought.

It's not about the details with boys. It's about how wacky you can get when you mangle the details. I think I'll write to J.K. Rowling and tell her she needs to rewrite the books using Sucklepuppy and Hidden Door, because from now on, that's what I'll be thinking when I come across Hufflepuff and Gryffindor.

Are you making fun of my mullet?

My daddy's hair looks just like this in his and mom's wedding album. Seriously.

This movement needs more allegro, fortissimo . . . and DiMaggio!

Having a little brother can be difficult at times. Especially when you've got two. Mason seems to be coping better than most, and for the most part, his payback has been the adulation of little bit and even littler bit.

But sometimes, a man's got a job to do and having little brothers can get in the way. For example, let's just say a man's got to practice his piano. Although Mason has one recital under his belt (last Sunday) he's still got more to do in piano learnin'. But how can you play with a little brother all up in your business?

I guess it's time to embrace the fact that little brothers aren't going anywhere, and you just have to deal with it!

When Peyton closes a door, he does NOT open a window

Oh, hello Mom. I'm sorry, but we're not interested in anything you're selling.

Yes, thank you, good-bye now. That's right, I'm closing the door.

See how much fun it is, when Mom is outside and Peyton is INSIDE? Now shoo or I'll set the dogs on you! (We don't have any dogs, but the door seems to be doing it's job.)

Parole Hearing

All five of us were sitting around a table at Red Lobster, eating dinner. In silence. It almost never happens, and when it does it never lasts. However, it was actually lasting for once, when suddenly, Stephen breaks the silence with . . .

STEPHEN: "Dad, what would happen if Mom went to jail?"

MONTE: "Uh, I'd be sad. What would she go to jail for?"

STEPHEN: "Well, what if she forgets to feed me?"

MONTE: "When has she ever forgotten to feed you?"

MOM: "Well, what do you do when you are hungry and you need something to eat? Wouldn't you just go to the kitchen and find something to eat?"

STEPHEN: "No, I would go to a restaurant, but how would I get there and who would drive me?"

MOM: "What about our kitchen in our house?"

STEPHEN: "No, I can't go there, there's nothing in there but muffin tops [eggo waffles] and yogurt."

Niiiiiice. The only reason I'm not in jail is that I know where all the restaurants are in Columbia.