Five Reasons Why Kids Should Never Ever Be Allowed in Disney

(we're having a ball in disney and universal but these are some loooong days for our minions!)

1. kids think sunscreen is acid and you are trying to melt their face off with it. they hate you and everything you stand for when all you're trying to do is prevent melanoma. (ok. really you're more immediately concerned not about skin cancer but instead about all the tsk tsk noises you're gonna hear from old lady strangers if your baby gets any flavor of brown. fine, old lady strangers, you've won! are you happy! i live and vacation in fear of your reproach!)

2. your kids don't understand how epically great these parks are and they whine just like they would if they were home and tired, hungry, hot, and had to pee. but they're NOT. they're in the MOST MAGICALLY FREAKING AMAZING PLACE ON THE PLANET and tired, hungry, hot and have to pee. they should have some respect! arrgh!

3. also, you're not at your super best when tired, hungry, hot and have to pee. you want to kick all the strangers. their kids are not cute. you are thinking violent things about their short shorts. 

4. you don't get to do any of the awesome stuff you want to do because you have to do the stupid lame stuff your lame kid wants to do. like sleep. even if you have brought a million adult reinforcements and even if your kids are, like, the best versions of lame kids, you still have to be a grown-up and bend to their needs and schedules, even when in your head your full on bottom-lip quivering, throwing yourself on the ground in hysterics over the injustice of it all. because harry potter is amazing and that little ingrate just doesn't get it. AND YOU'RE USING THAT WAND WRONG!!

5. disney jail. this is really what's keeping you scared straight and acting mostly appropriate toward your family and strangers alike. you're certain that if they took you to the underground dungeon you'd never be seen again. they are very efficient here. clean. discrete.

The Zombies Ate Mickey Mouse (Anna is 15 months now)

anna is 15 months now and robb took her to her well-visit appointment last week. 

as expected, she is ginormous (90-95th%) and overall doing really well. she showed off for the doctor and pronounced properly the word "book," making us seem like phenomenally achieved parents. we owe her $5. she won't let us forget. 

she has a few other words, some sign, some english- all yelled loudly. she says APPLE for any food, but ironically will not eat actual apples. (twist!)

she has something like 40 molars coming in right now and she is open-mouth attacking anything/one in her vicinity. and her vicinity is everywhere. she's fast and remarkably, disconcertingly, sure-footed. she's like one of the fast zombies in the zombie films that will fall down a hill and even though its all mangled and its limbs are sticking out at weird angles and such, it just gets back up and keeps running at you. 

you know, in an adorable way. 

she is a force to behold, and she's a ton of fun. i definitely feel like with her i'm more just along for the ride. some of that is probably lazy parenting in contrast with the neurotic parenting of the first child (oh! remind me to tell you a story about how i almost killed both kids at the park the other day. good times), but some of it is just that she's bolder, faster, more determined and wily than monkey butt ever was.

they're awesome. and they are SOOOOOOO excited for disney. well, more henry than anna, but that's just because she hasn't been yet and doesn't yet know how great it will be. 

but because she is such a spirited little ANNAmal, i'm feeling pretty good about the ratio of adults to kids we're taking to florida. my parents, my sister and her fiancé, and our little family-- that puts us at 3:1. there is a chance we can keep an adult on her at every moment. i bought them temporary tattoos that say "IF I AM LOST, PLEASE CALL ____" and you write in your phone number with skin marker. 

if all else fails, i'm so not above child leashes anymore. i judge no one. 

wooooo hoooooo!!!! disney in about 36 hours!!!!

i guess i should start panicking about the flight. but that's an advantage to baby #2, you care a hella lot less about annoying strangers since fucket. 

i'm sure it will be fine. how bad can it be trapped inside a flying metal box with one of those fast zombies? it'll be great. 

I Love Loving Them/Soup is Finger Food

what my kids require me to forfeit in organization or any sense of control in my life, i gain huge in great places to put my love. 

let me not mince words. having 2 kids and jobs and house and other responsibilities and goals...it's a goat rodeo. everything is urgent and loud and sticky all the time. 

someone is having a (relative) emergency always and only you can fix it. now. now. right now. 

it's breathtakingly exhausting and disheartening sometimes. 

but. i'm not over henry's foot yet. 

i guess i should clarify. i am so in love with every square inch of him, that even his now big guy stinky huge foot i find myself cupping and marveling at. 

this is him eating soup on the couch.(best parenting practices. it's in a book. look it up). 

i just couldn't stop staring at him, i felt so in love and amazed that this person lives in my house and even sometimes likes me.

my heart does little flips all the time when around these two. it's that fresh love feeling all the time...coupled with complete chaos and destruction and whining. so much whining.

these are confusing times with all these many feels.

and may this one always care more about what she puts in her head than she does about whatever mess is happening on her head.

He's Got the Whole World in His Hands...Including the Whore of Babylon, I Think

OLD MCDONALD HAD A FARM 

EE AY EE AY OH

AND ON THAT FARM HE HAD A TREE

EE AY EE AY OH

WITH GROWING LEAVES HERE

(this kid is surely a genius! i just love his mind)

AND GROWING LEAVES THERE

(and his heart. his heart is so good)

AND STINKY FACE HERE, STINKY FACE THERE, EVERYWHERE A POOPYFACE....(dissolves into giggles)

yep. 

---------------------------------------

so, henry is a very curious person. and because he's three, and hasn't yet discovered the art of pretending to know what the hell he's doing to save face, he just asks if he doesn't totally understand something. WHAT DOES THAT WORD MEAN? or HOW DOES IT WORK? it's awesome. so refreshing.

 

it's also totally intimidating. i find myself doing a lot of wikipedia quick searches on my phone for stuff that, really, anyone who went to a little overkill warm fuzzy fifth grade graduation ceremony once upon a time should probably know. 

like embarrassing stuff. like i totally botched the order of the planets the other day and before it rained, you could see my shameful error drawn in chalk all over our driveway. (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing--Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupitor, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (not Pluto. it got demoted, remember?). 

or, like, what kind of animal a lizard is. shit, i don't know! a reptile? an amphibian? are they slimy? no....are there, ummm....eggs?? which house do they live in at the zoo? with the frogs or the snakes? argh! wiki search! (answer: reptile. think new dinosaur and you'll get it right next time)

and then there's the questions about God. oh, my. 

IS GOD GOING TO DESTROY THE BAD GUYS? 

WHEN I AM A VERY OLD MAN IN 50 (uses hands to show 10 fingers here) DAYS AND I DIE, I WILL GET TO MEET GOD IN HEAVEN? AND THE ANGELS WILL RIDE BIKES THAT FLY?

i'm not really sure how to introduce God and the bible stories to my kids. i have faith and a relationship with God is something that i work on for me....and in time i think that my kids will be better off getting that God loves them and made them, but beyond that, i have so many questions about God and huge concerns about religion and all kinds of anxiety over identifiyng with Christians because so many of them suck SO much and are not people i want henry to look up to at all....so it gets murky for me and i stumble my way through any introduction or discussion on the topic.  

no, we can't see God. He's always with you, but no, not in a creepy way. He loves you and protects you and keeps you safe...because you were born into a well-off white family. and bonus, you're a male person! 

ARGH. you see? maybe i'm too cynical to teach anyone about faith. or maybe that's not bad? no idea. i didn't even know what a lizard was. (also, are those telephone poles or electical poles all over the place? what are the red things hanging off some parts of them? i said "it's for safety" and kind of let it go. but i'm just thinking to myself, 'girl, you dumb' all the time when he asks about the world around us that i've stopped noticing).

plus, i think little kids repeating scripture or memorizing prayers they don't understand is all kind of creepy and cultish and 'children of the corn.' 

so anyway, i mention all that because we've been reading some bible-y stories lately and it's promoting lots of awkward discussion. for some reason at henry's last birthday i got a wild hair and decided he needed the LEGO version of the New Testament. it's pretty much a comic book version of the bible with pictures of LEGO's illustrating the stories. but, like, not the watered down versions of the stories. the real deal. sacrifices, wars, pillaging, babies being slaughtered...in LEGO's.

so, naturally, his favorite part is Revelation. CAN WE READ THE STORY ABOUT THE BEAST WITH THE 10 HEADS AND THE GIRL? (what girl would that be, you ask? yeah. the whore of babylon. that's the one). 

and so.....we've put that world's worst bedtime story away for a while and watched a lot of 'veggie tales' to try to cleanse his palate. and then i found a nice 'my first bible' someone had given us that just tells the lovely part of the stories (oh! daniel was NOT eaten by lions! super! oh, lovely. all those nice animals and the few people made if off the arc. lalalala. de-lightful). 

sigh. i won't ever be a believer who doesn't worry and question. and i don't want my kids to be, either. so for now i will keep telling them why i love God and the little bit that i understand about Him and i guess we'll figure out the rest together as we go?

ps- i just love wikipedia's main picture of God. i guess i'm surprised that the supreme being would suffer from male pattern baldness. 

The One Where She Hallucinates About Butts and Compares Her Breasts to Really Terrible Things

i sat for a while in my car debating hard whether the hour i got away from the chaos at home would be better spent on my brain by blogging or on my body with yoga. 

a girl who can go ahead and wear those yoga pants proudly walked by in front of me holding her yoga mat and i thought, 'do i want a cute butt? yes. yes, i do want a cute butt. but i want some inner peace and purge more.'

and so here we are. 

so what is new? oh, yeah! so, i totally cheated on robb last weekend! it was great. i had a getaway long weekend and i had the juiciest romantic entangelement with my long lost lover, Sleep. we stared longingly into each others' forgotten eyes, Sleep and I, and then, well didn't exactly 'roll' in the hay, more like 'lied still like a corpse for 10 hours' in the hay. 

it was hot. 

and robb is a rockstar for staying with the minions. his parents came and helped and they all did fabulously.

and now i'm back to reality and i'll have to just write love poems and send dirty texts to Sleep until we meet again.  

anna was up from about 2am-4:30am last night. so getting up at 5:20am to shower and go to work was a little rough. being friendly and useful and professional and decisive all day at work and then being available and patient and brave for my kids at night....it's hard on no sleep. i went to the library before the whole car deliberation thing and as i was driving around the parking lot, my dark thoughts lined up into something like, 'if i don't find a parking spot in this lot i'm just going to go drive into a river.' 

eesh. really? a river?! holy dramatic, batman. this is what no sleep does to a person. 

so, yeah. she doesn't sleep. i can't make her sleep. i have no boob to offer her anymore since i'm reclaiming them and now i have nothing to offer her. i don't know how to fix this for her. i fail FAIL fail at getting her to fix it for herself. i'm as inconsistent as they come as far as letting her cry for a while and then racing in there to guiltily rock her until i get frustrated and then putting her back down and....i feel totally inept. i want to give up. 

and then river. and yoga butt. 

but still. she's a feisty kid. she runs hard at life. it's exciting and a little scary. she's more and more like 'stitch' from 'lilo and stitch.' see this cute picture? yeah, that's her playing behind the table where she doesn't belong, trying to pull the lamp down on herself for head trauma/electrocution purposes. smh. and today she pretty much ran into the street because we are now in that phase of cat and mouse where the cat is trying to prevent the mouse from offing itself all the time. 

cute. 

but now she also likes to read. a lot. same book 40 times in a row. we're ALWAYS going on a bear hunt. and you got me how she is still surprised to find jemima puddleduck behind the gait. jemima lives behind that freaking gait, man. 

i need some sleep. 

we most def went through all this with henry. he didn't sleep all night until she came along (his age 2.5 yrs at that time if you're counting), so reasonably we can expect that unless we change tactics, middle of the night game on for another 16 months? something like that. 

i'll get back to thinking properly in 2016 some time, i guess. 

but being done nursing is a relief. so much time i have now. 

oh, but ...i tried on bras last night. i'm trying to think of an apt metaphor for the post-nursing/pregnancy breast tissue that is left behind....it's like....you know those things you can buy in the gag gift shops? pretend cans of nuts that contain a pile of long, thin, kind of shapeless snakes? 

yeah. like that. the nut can is the bra and the unweildly snakes that fall all over the floor are the boobs. 

or....take a piece of bazooka gum, right? so it starts all hard and tough and then it gets chewed and chewed and pulled apart and stuck to a shoe and scraped off with a stick and then ends up under a movie theater seat or park bench or something. 

right. they're like that. before and after. 

hot. 

(next post i'll whine less and i'll actually mention the other kid. he continues to be funny and awesome. this phase with henry is most definitely easier than the current phase with anna, so at least in my blog rants, she gets the most attention. but i'll tackle his goofy sweetness soon). 

'night. (for now)