Wheels, Candy Dates, Patches

Had the turbo-pukes Friday night. Stood up and thought, Huh. I think my body wants to purge everything it has eaten this week. And it did. To be honest, the volcanic interlude was actually a really welcome little reminder to slow this lady down. This last week, our whole crew was pretty hardcore. I mean, even Little Man was showing signs of chronic fatigue. Oh wait...multiple naps are still his normal. Right. So anyway, last week was tuff stuff. With our beloved Green Bus on its last wheels, we stubborn Honda-philes are just in denial that ol' Greenie is begging to be euthanised but we just keep resuscitating the old girl. What all that amounts to is that Greenie is living at the car repair shop while our tax return that we haven't even processed has already been spent...and...we now either take the double stroller to all parts of our neighborhood, including the pockets that are ONLY vacant lots masquerading as car repair establishments, or we take Zipcar if a speedier set of wheels is required. If you want to know the definition of irony, it's my straight-edge Loverpants scoring the Zipcar that reeked so bad of weed that he was fearful of getting pulled over for an OUI. But we thought driving high is the new black, right, Officer? What've you been up to all weekend and what will you do with your day off tomorrow if you have one?

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Amphibibooty

A good turbaned woman is hard to find

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I smuggled Baby Girl into her room when I was still feeling under the weather and gave her strict orders to ask her daddy if he would take her on a Candy Date. Evidently I am a skilled puppeteer with my toddler and subsequently of my husband because in about an hour, these two were suiting up and heading out for a train ride and a trip to the mall where I heard there were french fries, smoothies, yum tasty salads, and a trip to the candy shoppe to boot.

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The only thing I accomplished this weekend thus far is applying these pretty appliques that I ordered from here. I know that puff paint went out with the NKOTB oversized T-shirts tied in a knot around the waist, but I'm not a skilled seamstress and the directions said it was an acceptable alternative :) My kids are such whirling dervishes. They stain everything they own, so I feel these were a sound investment. Cute, hey?

Candy Land

When you imagine Saturday afternoons spent hangin' at home with the fam, you think plush carpet, you think barefooted kids sitting criss-cross applesauce, you think CANDYLAND. Hours and hours of drawing from that stack of cards rife with mystery: Will it be one square of blue, a single orange, maybe a double red!! or maybe even an express pass to Queen Frostine?!?!?

You don't think Guilt, Shame, Remorse, Haunted for Life, do you?

Erhem.

My mom gave us a wicked awesome Candyland game for Christmas. The set came in a big clear backpack and the gameboard is actually a rug, the gamepieces are big jolly gingerbread men, and the cards are perfect for my wee non-readers. So far, we've been making progress in piquing Baby Girl's interest in the game. And by that I mean she has successfully ripped the card box in half, scattered the color cards all across the board, and decided her gamepiece was going to live permanently on the purple square in the middle of the board. Gingerbread squatter.

But no matter.

I'm not going to feel all sore that our little lady is outright rejecting Candylandia. She'll learn the magic of advancing in the same direction as other players along the board soon enough.

I just hope she doesn't learn the crafty ways of an older sister who once upon a time would rig the cards, such that if the turns of a two player game were carefully calculated, a certain unsuspecting little sister would advance to a position of nearly tasting Hansel and Gretel-like the King Kandy nirvana and then, upon that last draw, produced a one-way ticket way on back to PLUMPY.

I can still see her lip start to quiver. I got P-p-p-p-plumpy.

Schadenfreude at its best.

I was such an evil, mean-spirited sister.

I am going to have to let my kids win every time to hedge this guilt.

In the meantime, I'll be hangin' on the Candy Land rug with these little plumpsters:

SoCal is a drug

Southern California is a drug, and this past weekend I got more than a contact high off of it. Now let's not be all dropping buzzwords, calling it The Gateway Drug. (Ever notice how peeps be saying that these days and don't even specify, like, into which gate the inferior drug is ushering us?) I don't know much about drugs and that sort of paraphernalia, but I do know that it took me thirty years to try SoCal, and now that I've gotten completely intoxicated by miles of palm trees and Yogurtland and the magnificent, freezing Pacific Ocean, I have to say that I'm glad a six hour plane ride separates us, because, Dear Los Angeles, I could get mightily addicted to you. ***

We spent Baby Girl's birthday weekend visiting Auntie ShaSha and Uncle JoJo, who are pretty much the best people ever, I'm not even sure if anyone is more generous or lovely, not even Ina Garten and she seems pretty fantastic. They totally let us build pillow forts on their couch and eat all their food and play lemon bowling with the lemons in their backyard. (Also: We're sorry to have traumatized their dogs, and by sorry I mean that I was sorry and by traumatize I meant Baby Girl should know better by now.)

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I have a lot of thoughts about Baby Girl turning three. I remember when my sister was three. She was mostly a ween. She could turn on the tears at the drop of a Mrs. Potatohead earring. But dang if she wasn't cute. Emerging from the twos with Baby Girl is tricky because I knew more or less what to expect with the twos. I always thought of them as the Training Twos. I was training Baby Girl to be a functional member of our family, she was training me to be a more longsuffering patient and communicative mother. The threes, however, now they're a whole other ball of wax. I'm a little daunted, to be honest, but yesterday my daughter made tremendous efforts not to chew her boogers by handing one to me, all dangling it precariously from her pointer finger, "Here, Mom, I don't want it." Which is to say I've got my tissues ready for the threes. They can be picky.

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Memorable travelogue things that we did in SoCal: - In-n-Out Burger: grilled cheese, animal-style, please and thank you - Stalking the In-n-Out Burgergirl Dianna: if you are reading this, your eye make-up really is amazing - Highway One! >Malibu!!> Palisades!!!>Sunset Strip!!!> Beverly Hills!!!!! OMG So Entourage! - Sweet tamales, shweet delish - Santa Monica Pier (Minnie Mouse has a Spanish accent, who knew?) - Meeting all the pups in the 'hood - Steel cut oats from...wait for it...Jamba Juice (amazing!) - Upper Room Fellowship in Temple City - Bandying about in Pasadena, dinner at Quadrupel, dessert at Creme de la Creme - Visiting the school where Uncle JoJo cracks the whip - Cartwheeling around the Rose Bowl. That sounds fun, doesn't it? Dizzzzehhhh! - Tofu Hot Pot Korean - Yogurtland - Yes, my vacations always revolve around food

Thanks, Pastry Chef Angie Park!! (This cake was truly bananas. I mean, it even TASTED like bananas!)

I know you were all waiting for the photo of me Mommin' it up with my fanny pack. Presto!