Author Archives: metamegan

>April Fools

>A few weeks ago, when Dave caught Luke and I whispering about April Fools Day, he put in a polite request that I not make meatloaf and mashed potato cupcakes again. I was happy to oblige.

I had read about a trick that I wanted to play on Luke, and then he flipped through my magazine and saw the trick and he wanted to play it on Dave. I figured Luke would forget, and he did, so I tricked him and then he and I tricked Dave. The trick: Put a drop of food coloring in the bottom of a cereal bowl. Add cereal. Then when you add the milk, it turns a crazy color. I went with blue for Luke and red for Dave:

From April Fools

Then, after school, we made a spaghetti dinner and a spaghetti and meatball dessert:

From April Fools
From April Fools

Luke insisted on having both types of spaghetti on his plate at the same time and he wanted to eat the spaghetti cupcakes first, but we managed to talk some sense into him.

From April Fools

After dinner I had to run out to the school for the school improvement team meeting. Before I left I whispered into Dave’s ear, “I short-sheeted Luke’s bed. So make sure he doesn’t just get under the comforter.” I wish I had a picture of the look that Dave gave me. I was something along the lines of, “What the heck is wrong with you?” But about 2 seconds later, Luke said, “Mom! Remember that you were going to play more tricks on me. When are you going to do that? You have more tricks planned, right?” That continued right up to until he couldn’t straighten out his legs once he got into bed. Ha! Got him.

In other news, here is Luke’s leaning tower of snowman right before we got another 4 inches of snow:

From April Fools

>Bye-Bye March!

>We were happy to see January go, so I feel weird saying the same thing about March. We actually had some pretty good times this month, but we have also had a lot of sniffles, coughing, sneezing, fevers and headaches. I have this idea that tomorrow, when it’s April, we will all be magically cured!

From March

>Staycation Sledding

>You never really want your sledding videos to be America’s Funniest Home Videos quality, but I think some of these could at least qualify for a medley. A sledly, if you will. I don’t know what it was about Luke and Maisey and Lili, but they really just couldn’t seem to avoid each other.

With the time change and the warm weather,

From March

it was suddenly 6:00 pm. Time to bike home from the hill and make dinner!

From March

>Staycation Photo Essay

>Phew – what started as a few hours off here and there turned into 3 days of skiing and snowboarding and two days of sledding and snowman building. And there was some laying around, too. But not a lot of working or computer time. Yea! We all really needed a break, and mother nature was happy to oblige with 16.8 inches of snow for a snow day on Thursday. We had already played hooky on Wednesday for a ski day at Copper, so when the daycare just didn’t open, and then Luke’s camp started sending kids home after an hour, and then my work closed due to the blizzard, we did what we do best: Packed up the car and headed to the slopes. (This is where I would link to “state of emergency 1994” when we hit the closed roads and made our way to Seven Springs in Pennsylvania after classes were canceled for the rest of the week. But that was a long time ago and I did not have a blog.)

Start of the storm:

From March

When our friends called to say they were headed to Eldora for the day, and planning to spend the night in a hotel in Nederland, I secretly thought they were crazy. But when my work closed for the day, I started packing. Dave put the chains on the van and we got ready to caravan up there, Eurosled style. It was mildly harrowing.

** Here is where I need the picture that Andrea took of the Fire Department telling us we needed to turn around because a bus was sideways across the canyon and an SUV was in the creek and the road was closed. We were probably 45 minutes into a 45 minute drive, and we were about halfway there. Fast forward another hour or so, and we made it there via an alternate route. ***

The snow was amazing. Wow, we had a great day! Jack’s first Powder Day!

From March

The best part was that the kids didn’t really want to ski, so the adults got to take a bunch of turns without them. (Shh, don’t tell them that.)

From March

Then we went out to dinner, hit the hot tub, and went to Eldora again the next day.

From March
From March

Did I mention that in our haste, we left without Luke’s ski jacket, ski pants, and gloves? Fortunately he had his playground jacket on when we left, and I was able to borrow some tourquise and yellow snowpants from the lost and found. We bought gloves.

From March

We tried to make it home after 3 days of skiing and snowboarding in time for a nap, but time sort of slips away sometimes when it’s been snowing and then the sun comes out. But we made it home eventually. While Jack and Dave finally got their naps in, Luke was busy helping to build an igloo.

From March

The deer were hanging out too:

From March

To be continued…

Next up: Adventures in Sledding

>Marking His Territory

>Is everyone sick of the whole thing where I talk about how Jack is possessed by Bean? Are you like, “We know, we know. Your baby barks. Quit beating it with a dead horse (as my friend Holly was known to say)”?

Well I have just one more story.

Today I was trying to change a diaper when I realized I did not have a diaper within arms reach. Because I was in the living room. I said, “Luke, please run and grab a diaper. Jack, don’t pee.”

But then Jack got a glint in his eye, and a set in his jaw, and there was a little something about his stance, so I said, “LUKE! Please hurry with that diaper! Jack, don’t pee, don’t pee, don’t pee!”

Luke sauntered in with the diaper some time after Jack had taken 3 steps back and peed on the tiny 5×8 rug, the only area on the main floor where the wood floor is covered.

I was shaking my fist at the heavens. No! No! No!

Luke said, resignedly, “Mom, Jack only peed there because that is where Bean used to pee.”

(In other news, it may be time for potty training.)

>You Might Be A Mom If…

>If I were to rip off Jeff Foxworthy and start a comedy act about being a mom, I might use a lame line like this one:

If the highlight of your week is finding Tension Tamer tea on sale (buy one get one) at the grocery… You might be a mom.

Of course, that isn’t really true. Luke has had some major milestones in the fine motor department. He’s learning to tie his shoes and how to buckle a belt. It’s big. See, he has holes in almost every pair of pants and I couldn’t bring myself to buy a bunch more size 5 pants when he’ll grow out of them immediately. But 6 is way too big. I almost cracked and bought some pants at Target, but then that same week the snap broke on a practically new pair. So Dave picked up 5 pairs of pants for a $12.00 total at Savers. Unfortunately they don’t all have the adjustable waist so they are too big. At first I thought, “great, what a waste.” Then I realized that there are things that could be done about this problem! I could sew elastic into the waste! In these hard economic times, I could salvage the $2.00 pants with a little seamstressing. Good, old fashioned do-it-yourselfedness. I was sharing this revelation to Dave and he said, “Or he could just wear a belt.” Apparently that is how men keep their pants up.

Also big! His picture was in the paper. So cute. I rarely have time for the paper in the morning, but this must have been the one day this week where everyone’s alarm went off on time. So I glanced at the paper and there he was!

Jack has an ear infection, poor little guy. He’s been pretty uncomfortable. And I stayed home with him Wednesday and a half day today. I am so lucky I can work from home. Otherwise, I would have used 4.5 out of my 6 sick days for the year this month already. Good times!

On the bright side, Jack has gotten really good with signs since he has been in the toddler room and his vocabulary seems to be exploding. He can sign more, please, thank you. And he sort of says more please and thank you. And basketball. It sounds like “boy-guh-ball”. And he says, “Eh uh. Eh uh. Eh uh.” Which means, “may I please have that?”

So that is all the rambling for now. Time for some tension tamer.

>Bus Language

>Growing up in Dave’s household there were certain words that fell under the category of bus language because the first time you heard them was on the bus to school. I was a walker, so I never took the bus, but I did acquire quite a colorful vocabulary somehow, and I have been silently or not so silently swearing since a tender age. In fact, the only way I got through the stress of Sr. Joan of Arc’s fourth grade class was to open my desktop, stick my head in as far as it would go and let the expletives fly. But I have cleaned up my act and I am happy to say, that Luke has yet to say one actual swear word. (He has certainly never said anything to rival a certain child I know, that said, in front of her grandma, “Get the hell out of here you stupid-ass cat.”)

In fact, when Dave accidentally referred to himself as a dumbass, Luke said, “Daddy, you’re not the dumbess.” Then he looked a little confused and corrected himself, “Daddy, you’re not the dumbest.”

So it was very surprising this past weekend when Luke was playing star wars legos on the wii and he yelled out, “Take that you shin head!”

“What did you say?”

“Take that you shin head!”

“Ahh! That’s not nice! Where did you hear that? Who says that? Never say that again!?” That was Dave’s reaction. I would have tried to get answers to one question at a time, but what was done was done. And we both managed not to laugh at all.

While the first near swear was mildly horrifying, I am happy to have a new phrase for my repertoire!

>Luke, Luke, Does Not Like Puke

>Luke and Jack and I were playing hot wheels in Luke’s room on Sunday. It was a really fun time! Until Jack sort of threw up on Luke’s carpeting. Luke jumped up, screamed, ran in some circles, and then ran screaming out of the room and continued carrying on elsewhere in the house. I grabbed a kleenex and wiped up the tiny mess while Jack and I snickered at Luke.

Luke finally came back and asked, “Is it over? Is he done puking? Is the mess cleaned up? Ugh! My carpet! Jack puked on my carpet!”

Then Jack looked at me, leaned over and pretended to throw up, but in actuality, just spit onto the carpet. Luke ran screaming from the room and Jack just looked at me and started snickering again.

>The Dummening Family Roundup

>I’ll start with a dummening story in which I am not the main character:

I was driving through the post office mail box area and the young lady in front of me had her car parked and she was standing outside of it studying each of the mailboxes for clues. After she noticed me, she sort of gave up and decided to go inside the post office for help. But on the way she passed my friendly face and turned to me for advice.

“Do you know if you can put letters to any zip code in there?”

“Yes, yes you can. Any zip code.”

“Thanks!”

***Moving on to Luke ***

Luke has been getting a different Spiderman comic book every week for about 8 weeks running. Just today I said, “Wow, are they any other types of books at the library?” And he said, “I don’t even want to read this one because Peter Parker has big earrings and looks like a girl.” Well, Luke, that is because you checked out Spidergirl.

*** Dave ***

OK, Dave is practically perfect in every way, but he got Dora the Explorer yogurt at the grocery. Dora. The. Explorer. A six year old boy cannot be caught dead with Dora yogurt. Unless that boy is faced with the option of a yogurtless lunch. I told him just to say his Dad was a big Dora fan, and he accidentally switched the yogurt. Still, packing that lunch made for a rough morning.

***Ok – I saved the best for last ***

A loaf of bread, sweet potato french fries, and corn bread have all resulted in burns to my hand, fingers and hand again, respectively. I had to take the day off from baking yesterday just to preserve my delicate skin. I guess it isn’t that funny that I can’t take something out of the oven without burning myself, so I’ll share the other dummening story.

I was bathing suit shopping on Sunday and I could mine that adventure for a weeks worth of stories, but I’ll just pick the one. I was specifically looking for tankinis and nothing was fitting right. Then I tried on one that that seemed promising because it was a little tighter. Hmm, really tight. Wouldn’t it be funny if I needed the Target changing room attendant to help me out of this thing? And by funny, I mean ohmygodiamstuckinthistankiniIcantgetitoff!!! And by tankini, I mean one piece. Hmm, I guess that explains why I couldn’t find the matching bottoms.

>15 Month Checkup

>Luke recently had his 15 month check up and the milestone checklist went like this:

Q.How many words does he know?
A.10
Q. Has he put two words together?
A. Yes. (This isn’t really true, it just sounded true to me at the time. Unless “Ruff, Gwirl” counts.)
Q. Can he stack blocks?
A. Yes.
Q. 4 blocks?
A. No
Q. Two blocks?
A. Yes
Q. If you put a crayon in his hand does he scribble?
A. Yes
Q. etc. etc. etc
A. Yes. Yes. Yes
Q. Does he imitate you doing housework?
A. ? (queue crickets chirping.)

OK. of course I said yes. As you can see above, I assume that Jack is a borderline genius, or at least on track, so the answer to all questions must be yes, so I don’t have to think about them very hard. I was obsessed with Luke’s milestones, and I know he was behind on the block stacking, so I was surprised when I saw Jack stack a block and I made a mental note of it for the checkup. But as usual, I answered yes to everything and then came home and ran through the list with Dave and friends to see where I had exaggerated. We agreed that he isn’t really putting two words together. And that, “does he imitate you doing housework?” seems to be a question left over from an earlier era.

He imitates me working on my laptop. He imitates me talking on the phone. He takes knives out of the dishwasher. But that is probably less about imitating and more about augmenting his weapons cache that I can only imagine is somewhere behind some curtains, with his emergency food supplies. Also, when Aunt Suzy said, “Come here kitty” and patted her knees, Jack patted his knees. So clearly, he can imitate people… But hmm, housework?

Now I could go two ways with this:
1.) How sexist! Why ask if he can imitate me doing housework? Why not ask about the million other things I do? Why not just ask if he imitates me?
2.) Ha ha ha, I never do housework, so how could he even know how to imitate me?

But the more I think about it, the more I think that it would be great if Jack was imitating me doing housework. While it’s true that I am not the best housekeeper in the world, and it’s also true that I outsource a lot of the housekeeping, I still do a lot of housekeeping, and so does Dave. But a lot of it happens after kids are in bed, during nap time, and before they wake up in the morning. And maybe if more of that happened when the kids were awake, then there would be more imitating. And by imitating I mean, I can’t believe I have two little indentured servants in the house and I haven’t been making them work for their keep!