Author Archives: metamegan

>I’m All Better

>Jack’s new thing is to throw a kicking, screaming, thrashing-about fit until he suddenly takes a deep breath and says, “I’m all better.” Sometimes we get, “I feel better now, Mommy.” I really admire his ability to switch gears and pull it together. What is particularly interesting though, is when I am carrying him under my arm to his room because he hit or kicked someone. Usually at this time he is remorseless and unconcerned. When I set him down on the floor he just looks at me and says, “I feel better.” as if that’s his free pass to get out of his room. It’s at times like these that I say ridiculous parenting jargony things like, “You aren’t in time out for how you FEEL you are in time out for what you DID. Do we hit people?” Then he says, “Yes.” And I say, “No we don’t. Is it OK to hit?” And he says, “Yes.” And so on.
Fortunately for everyone, Jack’s adorable, cute, sweet moments are outweighing the tantrumy ones.

>Parenting, Glamorously

>You may be wondering why I am getting parenting advice from Glamour magazine. I wasn’t actually so sure myself when I wrote that post yesterday. But as all MetaMegan readers know, I have a magazine addiction. Sadly, Blueprint, Domino, Wondertime, and Cookie have all gone out of business in the last year or so. And as each one went out of business while I still had a lifetime left on my subscription, they converted into Glamour subscriptions. So now I am subscribed to Glamour for 4 lifetimes.

Why am I not getting parenting advice from Parents? Because that subscription has lapsed. It was with a tinge of regret that I recycled 6 months of issues without ever making fun of a single one. But faithful reader, and good friend Laura made sure to rip out an article for me about the dangers of the cocktail playdate. I am just going to assume that was geared towards stay at home moms who start drinking at 10am and not for the “glass of wine at little league” types. I think the gist of the article was getting drunk while you watch your children is bad!!! Sorry to say that when I tried to refer to the article today, (aka read if for the first time) it appeared to have been stolen with my wallet a few months ago. Google was no help either – just a bunch of people who have already written about how stupid the article was or else how having one drink will cause your kids to stick their finger in an electric socket.

So, we are stuck with Glamour, where I can learn to embrace the chaos as well as um, whatever else in is that magazine.

>Bookin’ All Over Town

>You can thank me later about the many times I started this blog post only to realize that the extremely long intro about the thousand things that were stressing me out yesterday and the many different plans I came up with to deal with them were actually quite boring and made me look crazy.

Suffice it to say, I felt stressed, and instead of taking the dumb, complicated, stressful path through my evening, I decided to take the easy, simple, stress free way. This is pretty much a first for me. In fact, I was recently reading Glamour magazines tips on not being a stressed out working mother and one of them was to embrace the chaos. So I was trying to embrace chaos while simultaneously not creating more chaos when things got chaotic yesterday.

Baseball season is upon us, and Dave picked up Luke for practice and the game. I figured I had time to pick up Jack, go to the library, pick up a few things at the grocery store and make it in time for the first pitch. (And yes, this was the simple version of my evening.)

Jack was adorable at the library. A mom to a teenager was just looking at Jack and I with fond memories spilling out of her smile and all over the books. We picked up my two books, and Jack picked out two books for himself. We checked out, got in the car, I handed Jack one of the books, then headed to the grocery store on the other side of the divided road. There was a loud noise, and Jack said, “What dat noise?” He doesn’t like loud noises. I said, “It’s just that water bottle rolling around in the back of the car.”

Jack: Nope. Dem books.
Me: No, water bottle.
Jack: Books
Me: Did you drop your book honey?
Jack: Nope.
Me: THE BOOKS WERE ON TOP OF THE CAR! Did you see them fall off?
Jack: Yes.

Then I tried to figure out what to do. Make a u-turn, then another u-turn to get back to where it happened? How long will that take? Pull over right here? Nowhere to park! Pull over on this side street? Too late I am about to make a u-turn! The books! Pull over, and park! Go back! MY god! U-turn!

I finally decided my best option was to just part at the next side street and walk back. This was dumb, because if I had driven back via the 2 u-turns, I could have parked at the library, and the books would have been in the street right in front of the parking lot. Instead I had to walk/run two frantic blocks with Jack on my hip. As we got closer, I could see the books repeatedly getting run over. But they seemed fine when the traffic cleared and we picked them up. Both of them. Of course, there were three missing books. So on the walk back, there was a lot of, “We lost one book? It gone? It on toppa car still? It gone?”

The third book was still on top of the car. I guess all the frantic swerving I did while trying to decide which way to go kept it sort of centered.

We got in the car and headed to the grocery and I took some cleansing breaths. Jack didn’t like the sound of that. He said, “You scared to me.” Which either means I was scaring him, or I am scared of him, or I sounded scared to him.”

We finally made it to baseball about half an hour into an hour game, and I got to see Luke play catcher and make a nice hit before Jack and I needed to head to the playground. I also got to enjoy a delicious glass of wine from a plastic cup, which I then stashed in my purse pocket. While I socialized with the other moms I tried to share the Glamour tidbit about embracing the chaos. This question was asked: HOW? I’ll need to go back to the article, but I don’t think it said how.

Jack and I were “driving” at the top of the playground structure when the cup fell out of my purse and all the way to the ground. Jack said, “Momma! Why you pourin’ your wine out on the ground?” Maybe you heard him, he said it really loudly.

I may have made a lot of mistakes yesterday, but spilling wine was not one of them. Maybe that’s how it’s done. Embracing chaos: One plastic cup of wine at a time.

>Maybe We Should Have Gotten A Pure Bred?

>The Subject came up and I choked. For real.

Luke and I were riding the lift at Eldora on Sunday and talking about Lucy. He said something about how she’s a Cocker Spaniel, and I said I wasn’t so sure about that any more, but that she was some sort of Spaniel mix.

Luke: I don’t get it. What’s a mix?
Me: Well, you know, like if someone had a Chinese mom and an African dad, they’d be half
Luke: (interrupting) Why wouldn’t they just be like THE MOM. What does the DAD have TO DO WITH IT?
Me: (choke, cough, cough, choke) Do you mind stopping at the top to get some water? I can’t stop coughing.

Take note, that’s a good parenting maneuver right there. Fake coughing fit.

>WWDD

>
I haven’t been able to come up with a blog post since I posted about Dodd’s death. I didn’t feel like it would be appropriate to do one of the like-omg-usbank-is-so-annoying-they-screwed-up-3-check-orders-in-a-row!!! type posts. (Even though they ARE annoying.) I want to do a bunch of Dodd tribute posts, but thinking about those stories makes me cry.

We have answered a lot of questions by asking, WWDD, or What Would Dodd Do? Fly across the country to a funeral, knowing you may have to drive back? Yes. Have that beer with lunch? Yes. Start blogging again about that third check charge and the mean letter I wrote and how USbank doesn’t really care how terrible they are? Maybe?

I have to start somewhere though. So here is a picture of the boys, about 10 hours into our second 11 hour driving day. They took a nice nap at the end of the trip. I still feel tired over a week later. It’s nice to be alive though.

>Best Man

>
From Dodd

We leave today for Dodd’s funeral in Ohio. He was a college friend, roommate, and the best man at our wedding.

Dave and I have been sharing Dodd stories for days, and it always goes the same way, laughter at the memory and tears when the realization hits that there won’t be anymore Dodd stories. I shared this one with some friends a few days ago:

One time we went to see The Allman Brothers at Red Rocks, and when I woke up the next morning I walked past our futon and Dodd was asleep face down, still holding the glow stick that had brought us so much joy the night before. He reminded me of a child who had just had the best day of his life and fallen into the kind of nap you can only have after your first trip to the zoo, still holding a balloon. In fact, when my own kids have fallen asleep holding balloons, I remember that morning.

And that reminds me of his wedding toast which I think, and I am going to use quotes here because I am pretty sure I’ll get it right, “mumble, mumble, Just remember, Have fun. That’s what it’s all about.”

I anticipate that the journey may have some challenges, and I could go into why, but I’ll just say this: plane ride + possible 22 hour drive home + Jack= challenging. I am going to experiment with twitter at least for the drive home, so feel free to follow our progress here: http://twitter.com/metamegan.

>Call the Wah-mbulance, I am Sick Again

>For the second time in less than a month, I have a fever, along with some sort of cold.

Yesterday, I was taking my temperature (100.4) and Jack was cracking up. “Dat doesn’t go der! Dat doesn’t go der!”

Dave and Luke were looking at each other quizzically because they had no idea what he was saying. I took the thermometer out of my mouth to say, “He is saying, That doesn’t go there. About the thermometer”

Luke asked, “Where does it go?”

Jack replied with a huge smile, not able to believe the collective silliness of his family members. Who doesn’t know where a thermometer goes? “It goes in your ELBOW!”

>More Luke

>Yesterday I received a request for more Luke stories, so I’ll share this one, even though my facebook friends already know it.

Luke, what did you learn at school today?
Nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing.
You didn’t learn one new thing today?
No, they haven’t teached me anything.

I posted that on facebook, and I was trying to get the dialog right, so I asked Luke for clarification.

Was it, “they don’t teach me anything or they haven’t teached me anything?”
He said, It’s “they haven’t teached” me anything. Because they still could teach me something in the future.

So there you have the conjugation of the past imperfect verb: teached.

(Luke’s school of 268 students, will have between $30,000 and $113,000 cut from their budget for next year.)

Now, I could tell another story about how Luke had a friend over, which is very stressful for me these days because most kids don’t like a puppy jumping on them, but I told Luke that after I yelled at him for what happened, I wouldn’t talk about it anymore. So, I should stop there with the story.

See, I either have to have kids in the yard, and puppy in the house, but then the puppy whines to go outside, or kids in the basement and puppy upstairs, which is perfect for me, but kids don’t necessarily like to be in the basement on 70 degree March days. We had tried some of both, which occasional jumpiness during the transition between one set up and another. Then the kids were outside and Lucy was on my lap when Luke walked through the house alone. I asked where he was going and what he was doing, and he didn’t answer. I got suspicious as he went into the basement, and still didn’t answer me. Why did he leave his friend in the yard? What was he getting in the basement? Then I heard 2 voices down there and as I was trying to figure out how the friend had gotten past me, Luke came upstairs and asked me to replace the screen in his window that had come out when he let his friend in through the window well/egress window. Oops! I talked about it. Well, I wrote about it – so I suppose that’s a loophole.

We’ve agreed to use the door from now on.

>Other Batman

>A few weeks ago, Jack was freaking out before his nap, because he desperately needed “Other Batman”. I managed to find at least five different batman action figures to no avail. I think I finally just sort of backed out of his room as his pleas for “other batman, otheeeeer baaaatmaaaaaan” got quieter and he fell asleep.

And then today as Jack and I were playing in his room, guess who we found! Other Batman! Too bad I made the Dash costume out of construction paper and safety pins. I bet Jack would love to dress up as Other Batman if the costume hadn’t disintegrated.