Funny, how a little t.p. can take the sting out of turning 40.
For a close up of the long string of pictures of Doctor Dash in his gold lamé body suit, chimp mask and afro, voila:
Nice touch, guys.
I can’t let June slip through my fingers without bloggishly wishing Devil Baby a happy fourth birthday. Her birthday on June 11th came and went in the midst of my laptop catastrophe and a trip to Michigan to celebrate El Maestro de Bife’s graduation from his surgical residency and Golden’s graduation from med school (well done, lads!). I’m not sure there’s ever been such a hotly anticipated birthday on my part. Her threes were, uh, challenging to say the least and I’m hoping her fours will yield a new era of peace. Yes, fourteen year old Devil Baby who may be reading this someday, you pretty much bossed me around and kicked my ass almost every day of your third year. Now, go clean your room. Just kidding. I love you. No, let me rephrase that: I love you, but you still need to clean your room.
Back to present, my little lass couldn’t have been sweeter. She reveled in all the attention and I saw this sort of sweet, shy, girlie side of her I hadn’t seen before. She got mermaid barbies, sparkly hair clips and pretty sundresses all of which she opened while beaming, coyly. Folks, I think we’ve got a girly girl and we are ready to run with it. My sweet little devil, my headstrong, willful, and now girly girl: if you keep working both of those angles, you, my dear, will be unfreakingstoppable!
I love you. I love you. Here’s to being four years old and fabulous!
I can’t believe I’m married to a 40 year old man. Never mind that he’s more smokin’ now than he was at the age of 20 when we met. Sigh. Damn these men and their flattering aging and crinkly eyed distinguished good looks. Happy Birthday Doctor Dash! Happy happy happy! This little family we’ve created – this little family loves and adores you. This little family is lucky to call you their Papa Bear. And me? Well, I’m damn lucky too.
Besos, mi amor.
A few weeks ago Doctor Dash was reading through some of the earlier nuggets in this blog and he told me that he loved remembering the stuff I had written about. It was a curious statement to me because I’ve only been doing this for a couple years. How much could he have forgotten? The truth is, we forget a lot. We forget most of the little details – the favorite t-shirts, the silly stories, the chatter after the tooth fairy visits, the white lies, the fights, the tears, the giant mosquito bites. We forget the minutiae, and without the minutiae, our memories are flat, colorless, or worse yet, not there at all. I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason to what sticks. And the firsts with our firsts tend to be clearer than the firsts with our seconds and thirds. I can’t remember Supergirl’s first steps, but I remember Saint James’ like they were yesterday. And I actually do remember Devil Baby’s, but that’s just because we were hoping and praying that she would be soothed by her new found locomotion, that some of the energy she spent screaming at us would be redirected to moving her chunky little legs.
This blog started out as a way for me to slow down time, to take notice of the quotidian, to be present. It is only now, after the passage of a couple years, that we’ve discovered that it also helps us remember. I don’t go back and read, but you’d better believe that someday I will. And I think that my kids will too. So, with that in mind, some minutiae:
Supergirl finally lost some teeth. We seem to spawn late teeth getters, hence late teeth losers. With each baby, we would wonder, gazing at their gummy drooly mouths, whether they would ever get teeth. As Saint James’ and Supergirl’s first birthdays approached (yes, we even kinda freaked the second time around), Doctor Dash took to the internet and I put my ear to the ground. I sorely regretted it when my neighbor, in her Texas drawl, said “Well, ah don’t know, but mah cousin had needle teeth.” NEEDLE TEETH! I gasped. I love their tenacious baby teeth, but my kids hate it. In kindergarten and first grade when their classmates are spitting out teeth left and right, my children frustratedly wiggle their tiny pearlies, hoping in vain for some movement. Supergirl was literally one of the last three kids in her grade to lose a tooth. (It’s incredible that I even know this, but I do. How many times did I invoke those other two names in an attempt to cheer her up about her stubborn baby teeth?) We went to Michigan and she managed to lose three teeth in two days, maximizing the attention as Supergirl is wont to do. Her big teeth are already growing in. Her face will change. I only wish she could keep that little Jack-o-lantern smile for a while longer, because as far as I’m concerned, those big chompers are a one way ticket to big kidhood.
When I started this post it was a nothing kind of afternoon. The kids were dressed for soccer with some time to kill and in the rarest and loveliest of moments had started playing a peaceful game of chess, unbidden by me. This is the kind of thing that would make me roll my eyes if I were reading it, so I’ll assure you that they aren’t usually this highbrow and civilized. Normally when they’re bored they turn on the T.V., play Wii, google Justin Bieber or fight. Supergirl also has this move where she lies on the ground and whines about how bored she is while using her legs to spin herself around like a clock hand. But just this once, on a muggy afternoon, with a basket of folded laundry lurking in the corner, they played chess. I grabbed my camera and just like that, minutiae became memory.
I feel like parenting is all about pressing the re-set button. Every day, multiple times a day, fighting your way through the bickering and the rushing around and the whining and the melted popsicle on the counter (grrr) and the muddy footprints on the carpet (double grrr) to the root of how you really feel about your children. We all have our ways of reminding ourselves that we love them, that we are lucky to have them and that every day that they are healthy and happy, is a blessing indeed. A good night’s sleep works wonders. Sitting down to crank out a bit of creative work does too. But the topper for me is yoga. Today, I walked into yoga feeling like Mommy Dearest, sweat out about a gallon of white wine and nitrates, and emerged feeling like June friggin’ Cleaver. After a quick shower, I got to pick up my laptop (yay!) and some new shades (double yay!), stopped to grab a little grub at The Good Earth and ate in my car in blissful silence, save the sound of the pelting rain. This took no more than two and a half hours and I came home feeling like whatchu got, kids? Who wants a bagel? Watermelon? Cookies?! Who wants to play checkers?! Who wants to dance?! Whatchu got, my beautiful babies? Whatchu got for your mama because she’s feeling good!
For the next few hours, anyway.
Hello my pretties. I’ve posted another article at Simple Good and Tasty about road trip food and it includes Tartare’s recipe for granola. Tartare, you gonna be famous!
I’m still here. All is well. I have much to report, much to celebrate and digest, but I have no laptop at the moment. Saint James + intriguing toy wrapped in plastic + coffee cup = no laptop for mama. And since my chitlins are all up in my business all the time, requiring food and rides and sunscreen at all hours, I can’t very well duck into Doctor Dash’s man cave to use the desk top. Night times are simply not an option. I am falling asleep as I type.
I leave you with a question. At what age does a girl begin to notice when her swimsuit is stuck in her butt? I don’t know the answer, but I do know the answer is not four. As if I don’t spend enough of my life sunscreening the porcelain-skinned Devil Baby, now I need to watch out for her adorable, chunkalicious bootay because sister has got a wedgie, like, ninety percent of the time.
G’night.
Hopefully you’ve gotten out to a farmers market this season, or will soon. It’s still early, but the scallions, for one, are giant hunkering beasts and I’ve been working my way through a bunch all week. Read about it here at Simple Good and Tasty. Enjoy, homeys!
