I have a blog?!?!

Sort of skipped past Easter and then some... the fam has been busy lately, I guess, well, just sort of adjusting to Grandma moving back to Michigan. We were all so used to her gentle, sweet ways and kind guidance and fight intervention. And the fact that she always kept the litter boxes clean. We are all grieving. So we're going to totally have to crash her pad this summer!!!

This weekend has been grey and semi-wet, the time of year when it's struggling to be spring but hasn't quite got there yet, though there are some hella fat buds on the daphs just waiting to pop. I am rubbing my knuckles together in glee!

Above is a pic of my homemade, poorly rendered Goldbug and Maniacbug hiding in the ferns. Fletch has become fixated with an ancient Richard Scary book, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, and finding Goldbug and Maniacbug hiding in oh-so-many clever hiding spots on each and every page. So since we were homebound and bored this afternoon I decided to make our own Goldbug and Maniacbug and hide them around the house for Fletch to find.

This was fun for, oh, say five minutes. The game quickly digressed to Goldbug looking for Maniacbug, finding him, and kicking his ass karate-style. Why is everything all star wrestling with little boys?? Anyhow, we read a book, did a craft and then engaged in active play all centered around one subject. Sounds like kindergarden readiness to me!!

And Gwen? Gwen was surly. Oh so surly. But she did make some delish chocolate pudding for us. And we love her.

Fried egg Fletcher

Last night Fletcher, who I was trying to get ready for bed, invented a new game: He was an egg and I had to "crack" him into a frying pan while daddy was the spatula and had to flip him over. I know this sounds weird, but it turned out to be so hilarious we all couldn't stop laughing (and we certainly didn't get calmed down and ready for bed for quite awhile).

So this is how it worked: We were all on me and Matt's king sized bed. Fletcher, sitting on his bottom, tucked up his legs and arms into his oversized Dolphins jersey and bent his head down inside the neck hole. I rolled him forward, "cracking" him into the 'pan' at which point he unfolded his body flat and then Matt (the spatula) picked him up and flipped him over a few times till he was "done" and then we "ate" him all up by tickling him all over. It was even more fun when I decided I wanted my egg scrambled, which led to crazy havoc with the spatula.

Man, that was just a really great family memory, and one I really want to remember. It is one of those times when taking a photo wouldn't have counted. There were no real eggs or pans, and it was all just make believe, nothing to photograph, but I want to keep that mental snapshot in my heart's wallet always.

And then there's Gwendolyn, moody, sulky, so full of emotional turmoil and angst. I hesitate to write about her here so as not to embarrass her. She is full of private inklings and cranky inclinations and tumult; she reminds me of the breaking of the bay from my Michigan childhood. In the spring when the ice cracks up on Lake Michigan there are these booms, loud as thunder, while the surface is still smooth and flat as ever then soon there are three and four foot thick walls of blue-green ice colliding and spiking and arching and banging and diving up from the water like deformed frozen trick dolphins and the scene is so calamitous and terrifying you want to run away screaming and stay there transfixed by the insane process of nature! But soon the ice floe is out to 'sea' and warmer weather arrives and there's the beach and the blue-green waves and the gorgeous lake is back to same-old-same-old. I guess it's just adolescence but it is MY daughter's adolescence and it is intense and scary and lovely and I just yearn for the days of same-old-same-old that lay somewhere in the foggy future. If you have a teen, I feel for you...

I must have it!!!

I was wandering the web and look what I found...

Rarely am I moved to stare slack-jawed and drooling at a piece of artwork but this, this is everything I have ever wanted in a print! It's cheap! It's gorgeous! It's a tree! Somebody slap me! I must have it for my bedroom!!! There is also another print there that made me instantly think of Gwen, and I must have it for her but I will save that as a surprise, so no post of it today! Thank you NiceBunny for making me a crazed shopaholic!

Check out Sockdrawer's website

Sockdrawer, a.k.a. my daughter Gwen, has an interesting website which you can visit by visiting the link below. Sockdrawer says, "Go here or else the evil parrot that shoots acid toothpaste will find you." ^_^
http://www.freewebs.com/asdflovesjkl

Mini misogynist or majorly mommy maintained monster?

So Fletcher, 4, has taken to ordering me around a bit and I'm not liking it. Really, it started last year when I was doing laundry in the basement and he was hanging out on the steps with the some Hotwheels and surveying the scene. Gazing at my husband's multiple-project-induced mess, he said, "Mommy, why don't you clean this up?" Huh? "Well, that's daddy's mess," I responded. "Yeah, but you should clean it up," he said. I asked him why I should clean it up when DADDY made the mess and he said, "Because that's your job, you clean things up."

I explained at the time that people are responsible for their own messes and that daddy would have to clean up after himself when he was done with his 'projects.' I'm not sure if it sunk in or not as he took off up the steps to look for more Hotwheels to roll down the stairs.

Fletcher has always been more inclined to ask for feminine help than masculine. And it's really no surprise. Though Matt is a hands-on-dad, he is more about extreme fun tickle fighting, building insanely labor intensive Lego structures, Hotwheel races that last for three hours, trips to McDonalds and Home Depot and Auto Zone, etc., than doing the laundry or cooking dinner. Not that he doesn't do this stuff, too, but he's mainly the entertainment and I'm more like, well, mom. A woman (an awesome one!) takes care of him at daycare, his big sister is like another (bossy) mom, and gramma is the go-to lady for snacks, treats and late-night story sessions. So maybe it's just that he relies on women for nourishment, clean clothing and gentle loving. Or maybe he thinks we all live to serve him.

Last night he told me, "Mom, go make me a sandwich." I told him it would be nice if he asked me politely. He replied, "Mom, it's your job to make me a sandwich and my job to wait for it." Geez, have I done this to myself? I took him to the kitchen and had him make it himself, which really honked him off. Of course, Matt thought it was hilarious. Well he'll just be laughing his butt off when he gets to cook supper for himself tonight, right :) I think I'll send Fletcher to 'help' him out.

But honestly, it's not just those couple of incidents. It's every day stuff, like cleaning his room, laying out his clothes for the next day, etc., etc. Maybe I over-baby him. Maybe I'm the one turning him into a demanding little Nazi. Maybe he's, like, FOUR and is reliant on his mom for most stuff? What do you guys think?

Noooooo!!!! My green and gold heart is broken!

I cannot describe the sadness, the end of an era *sniff* Matt had to wait till he got home from work to tell me so he could console me while I cried and denied. Deep down in his Minnesota Vikings loving heart I KNOW he is jumping for joy but he is a smart boy and knows when to shut his cake hole and bring on the lovin'.

Like sand through the hourglass...

So for some reason today I decided to tackle this enormous obstacle that has taken over a corner of my bedroom for the last couple of years and has grown so large it has started to avalanche past the bedside table and onto my pile of shoes, in the way, being trampled, and annoying me daily by reminding me of the things I let slip in the name of "no time to deal with this." It is a pile of artwork by my son and daily updates from his daycare provider that I have dutifully placed (thrown) into a GIANT Old Navy sack in the corner to be dealt with later.

I mean, I never wanted to throw this stuff out. It is priceless - all the gems of glitter and glue and crayon, every dot-to-dot and pre-school number and letter worksheet! All there! All of it! Since he was eight months old and began daycare (he's now four) with Ms. Nikki, the saint who enables me to go to work every morning without feeling like the crappiest mom on the planet for leaving her kid at daycare and going to work! Actually, I mostly think his life has been enriched 10-fold by his time with Nikki, but I'll save that for another post.

So anyhow, this pile 'o stuff also included every note Ms. Nikki has ever written about Fletch. Every diaper change when he was still in didies, every meal, every snack, every toddler snit with friends, every field trip, ride on the four-wheeler and deer encounter. Priceless! How could I have thrown this stuff in a corner for like, a few years? Well, you know how it is... "I'll get to it later" becomes a mantra and later turns into many milestones down the road. This bag of pre-school jewels has turned into our cat, Melee's, favorite bed (yes, it was all full of cat hair and several dead fleas) and like I said had turned into an avalanche so I couldn't ignore it anymore.

I got the hugest binders I could possibly find and lugged them home thinking, "This'll be a piece of cake!" What-eveh. What a mess. I am ashamed of myself!!! Like 3 hours later and after I exhausted the help of my poor tired husband, who kept creeping away when I wasn't looking and finally got away for good when I was shuffling through a mess of crayoned valentines, and daughter Gwendolyn, who collapsed into fits of laughter over the weird menus Nikki offers (donuts, pancakes and toast all in the same breakfast, for example) I finished. Sorting art from updates, that is. And nothing is in dated order except for the one, count em, 1 month (may 2007) that Matt sifted through. And I think I need like 20 more binders. And did I say I was ashamed of myself?

I did, however, discover in the pile: Golden curls, in a plastic bag, from Fletcher's first haircut; several stones from me and Matt's honeymoon to Yellowstone and the best surprise of all (for Fletcher) - two Hotwheels he had been missing for well over a year! Huzzah! Anyhow, I'll let you know how it all turns out...