Mini Van/Mega Fun

I've had several friends purchase mini-vans over the few months and with every purchase came a decree. E-mails circulated with subject lines that rang of "The Swagger Wagon in our driveway? I don't know anything about it." I expect more of these e-mails in the years to come. It's just the chapter they're writing right now, wee little mouths and car seat totals expanding incrementally. My friends have come to grips with what this says about them, but I've only awakened to it all...

Because when you drive a mini-van, when you purchase or lease an honest to goodness space-pod on four wheels, you are reluctantly saying I SURRENDER. I surrender to the fact that what I transport is more important than my vanity. You might also be saying I can no longer masquerade as anything else. I can be a businessperson, a postal worker, a Jenny Craig model, a balloon animal artist, a diamond miner, or a carney. But first and foremost, I drive a mini-van. Orange slices and juiceboxes and whole weekends on the soccer sidelines? Yo. That's MY m.o.

I'm not there yet. But I am comfortable with a small orchard of raisins on the floor of my vehicle, because you can't fight every battle and a box of the Sun-Maid goodness is the perfect peace offering. And my li'l SUV is bigger than my kitchen at home, anyways, so it feels appropos.

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Baby Girl drew this picture of me. Do you see the resemblance? Uncanny, really....

4 month marker

Four months marked the time in which Baby Girl ceased observing the nightly witching hour from 7-9 p.m. "Okay, you bumbling parents," said she, "You seem to have suffered enough. I will decline your bribes of hot pink Vespas, but will concede to this early evening siesta of which you speak so highly." Imagine the ecstasy that Loverpants and I enjoyed as newbie parents. Watching the sleeping cherub doze while we ate macaroni dinner that had not taken on the consistency of something you would buy in the $.25 vending machine at KMart, but which was still PIPING HOT! In a queer twist of fate, Little Man, who has, up until now, slept in intervals of 5 and 6 hours at night, has passed the 4 month mark and has decreed that he will now wake up every 2-3 hours with a voracious hunger and a diaper that feels like a frat boy's wifebeater after a day of sand volleyball in the sun. This has resulted in his mother being so beatdown that even the magic of Mary Kay cosmetics cannot touch these puffy undereye bags full of soot and ash. Seriously.

But who am I, this blithe, whiny parent? I'm only a combined total of 33 months deep into the throes of parenthood. What about in twelve years when my kids bring home friends that ask why our house is so small, and what it's like to have a Chinese dad. What about when my kids give me their essays to proofread and I write whole new essays in the margin because I am my father's daughter? And then the alliance of Little Man/Baby Girl will inevitably join forces with Lovey Loverpants -- who will still look like he is in undergrad when both of our children are taking driver's ed -- and the triumvirate will spend whole weekends doing awesome things that I am not invited to do, because I have to take the mini-van for a tune-up and probably re-write their essays on Great British Imperialism for which they will resent me, wholeheartedly.

Yeah, so anyway, did I tell you that while my children are still portable and not full of vitriol toward me, we went to an awesome farm with splendid pumpkins and playgrounds and possibly CIDER DONUTS???

What it Looks Like

My lifeAny day of the week Right about that time of morning when I'm Trying to push past the temptation to let Nick Jr. babysit my children. This is what it looks like if we have to stay inside:

This is what it looks like if we get to go outside:

I know what you're thinking. Who is this woman and where does she get her ideas? Why...she must be the first woman to come down from the mountain carrying bubbles and a picnic blanket! How much does this woman get paid to do what she does every day? However much it is, it cannot be enough!

Well. One of those statements is true....