Wherewithal

Evil Fairy

This pretty much says it all. Click here
for more pix. Write soon, I will.

Parroting

I may have to use drugs soon.

Not on me; on my wards. I'm thinking something used for nighttime relief of colds and flus. Some parents joke they swear by Benadryl, and now, I'm pretty sure the jokes they made at dinner parties were really secret code phrases, a shout out, if you will, to other like-minded breeders, and a bit of advice to those who may be persuaded.

And oh, can I be persuaded. Sure, it's endearing to hear my son tell me how he wants me to stay with him while he falls asleep. Sure, I love it when my daughter asks me to read her another story before I go. But after a twelve-hour day as bimla and clown for hire - with no fifteen-minute breaks, never mind an hour lunch - I am not so enamored of the cuteness of, well, anything.

That doesn't mean Im not entertained when my son comes to find me to usher me back into his room, where he proceeds to gaze sorrowfully at me, reproaching me for my departure and the subsequent onslaught of nightmares. I have to cover my mouth to keep from smiling when he tells me he dreamt of "Frank (a cartoon combine who is, I gotta say, scary), a T-Rex, and a duck (Oh, the (literally) inexplicable horrors of a duck. Really. A duck? C'mon, kid, what happened at the park when I wasn't looking?)." I ask him what was this unholy trinity doing in his dream, and he says: "They were chasing me and I dropped my book about dinosaurs in the water and then a stick was pinching me when I tried to use it to get the book out of the water, and then the T-Rex and Frank and the duck were chasing me, and the stick had bugs on it, and the bugs started to chase me, and I tried to come and find you to tell you the bugs were chasing me, and I couldn't FIND YOU!!!"

You try not laughing at that, particularly when it comes at you in ten seconds.

The girl, I love her, but her little outbursts, not so much. Oh, I can watch her in a trance for a goodly amount of time as she prances around, help us, in a princess dress given to her by her god mother and her mother's friend. But, the kicking me for fun while I change her diaper (there's no malice; she's just experimenting, despite my having made good on my threats to give her time outs for such actions), the screaming FOR NO REASON in my ear at random moments, and the flailing of her head as she gives sway to the inner hippie in her little being, right before she crashes into any number of hard surfaces and then cries out in pain -- all these, I can do without. EVERY DAY. If I didn't see how engaged she was with other people and little kids throughout the day, I'd swear she was autistic. But, from what I hear, she's just two. I just don't realize what's happening, because, according to the smug "They," Kane was a great two-year-old.

(He has interrupted me writing this entry now three times. People ask me what I'm doing and always look a little disappointed and a little distainful whenever I tell them I am just looking to get to Thursday of any given week. This is why. I cannot even finish an entry in peace.)

Also, the girl's fascination with flushing paper - any kind of paper - in the toilet; this, I can gladly leave behind in the long journey towards maturity. Any of the three toilets can be heard flushing throughout the day, though I know nobody but me knows how to use the toilet unaided. Tissue boxes will mysteriously empty, whole rolls of toilet paper will vanish, and all I'll see is a flash of pink tulle and a trail of toilet paper hanging on the heel of a small right foot and it rounds a corner. When I try to talk to her, I'll use simple, declarative sentences, which she'll only partially parrot, which makes me wonder whether she got the jist of it, which makes me repeat myself, which makes her partially parrot again, though I know she KNOWS what I am saying, and she knows how to respond in complete sentences. It'll sound something like this:

"Carly, did you flush these tissues down the potty?"
"Yes."
"Honey, you can't flush tissues down the toilet."
I get nothing in response, save a hippie dance. She laughs delightedly at a successful bid to make herself dizzy.
"Carly --"
"Mommy!"
"Carly, tissues are not okay in the potty."
"Tissues. Okay mommy."
"Tissues, what, Carly."
"Tissues, okay, Mommy."
"No, tissues NOT okay in the potty."
"Not okay potty mommy."
"No, the potty is okay, but tissues in the -- you know what? Give me that box."

Fur Slippers

RIP, you effing rodents.

The cats are not dead, no, but they are dead to this house. We had to give them back after one showed up at our threshhold with a highly contagious intestinal parasite that sprayed out into our living space each time it decided to crap on our carpet, our bedclothes, and our closet floors. Adding insult to the injury of the foulest odor you can imagine emanating from such a teeny, tiny creature, the breeder kept insisting he had no idea how this little puffball got this disease, despite all the docs saying it has a seven-day incubation period.

I might have felt more sorry for the thing, had it done something proper like suffer in silence, but the thing never. shut. up. I understand it was likely in constant pain, but, after being told by Vet One and Vet Two to cut out any carpet he shat upon -- because the parasite, encased in an armored shell, never dies, you see -- and after averaging about three hours of sleep a night for a week, due to his insistent, and, for his size, his surpisingly powerful meow, I lost most of my compassion. And returned little Heisenberg to the breeder. And got my money back.

Titus Pullo was fine until H. left. Sort of. He contracted the parasite, but rid himself of it quickly, because we caught it right at the onset. His problem was that, once he bacame head of the house (for, though he was fully a third bigger than H., he was Scardey Cat around the little tyrant), he decided the world was his litter box. Oh, he used his litter box. He knew how. He just thought he could use this corner over here. And here. And here, too. The bed was the final straw. He went back to the cat foundation he came from. He was cute, but not that cute.

H. left June 30. Pullo took a hike on July 6. We have two gaping holes in our carpet, plus one enormous swath cut out and replaced with a reading bench built by Spouse. We've spent hundreds in vet bills and medicine for the vanished beasts.

Kids haven't asked about them once.

What Are A Couple of Extra Butts To Wipe?

Oh, they look cute, alright, just like kids do in pictures. They both stink, though, in the most literal sense. At least my children don't have the habit of sidling up to me and sticking their rear ends in my face after they do what they done do. Plus, to the best of my knowledge, my kids don't drink toilet water.

Oh yeah, so we got two kittens Sunday. The hub and I talked about the possibility of getting a couple, once the kids were old enough. Since our children are maturing at the rate of a tsetse fly, or so we convinced ourselves for this particular case, we decided that time was now. Not, say, when they may be old enough to help with things like feeding, changing litter boxes, that sort of thing. Because that would be practical. And helpful to Me, since Spouse never changes litter boxes, and I DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE AGGREIVED BY THAT LINE, SPOUSE, BECAUSE, THOUGH I LOVE YOU, WTF?

Maybe the idea of a couple of kittens sounded very entertaining indeed, particularly since we didn't exactly sketch out the cons, versus the cuddly and endearingly clumsy pros. We spent the day stretching underneath beds, chasing furballs around the house, trying to flush the beasties out of hiding. That, and the purebred that Phil insisted he wanted ended up being sick from every orifice (except the nose, and do count the eyes as orifices that ooze, my friends). This resulted in a lot of extra clean-up duty. Rescued cat fared much better, health-wise, but lived like a rat under our bed for the first 48 hours, scuttling out only after everyone else went to bed to scarf down the food Sick Cat wouldn't eat.

Ah, whatever, every day has gotten better, in terms of them adjusting and getting healthy. They're even showing an interest in one another that doesn't involve hissing. They are both sweet and playful and like attention.

The best part is that the kids LOOOOVE them, and they, in turn, are learning to like the kids. The first day, everyone was shell shocked, but Monday, Sick Cat (Heisenberg) was well enough to run around the house with the kids, to the kids' squealing delight. Kane got many minutes of bliss from just getting face to face with Heisenberg and letting H. sniff his face. When Carly finally got a chance to pet H. Monday afternoon, she decided she loved him well enough to show him the ropes of the Tagami household, which meant she brought him objects and said (with her binkie in her mouth), "Look, Heisenberg, this is a clock." "Look, Heisenberg, this is my Hello Kitty. That's my pink binkie."

Today, the kids got a chance to say hello to Titus Pullo (Scaredy Cat), and now, the two kittens (H. is 9 weeks old, and P. is about 11 weeks) are sniffing each other out and running up and down the hall.

This is the only full-fledged cat entry you will get from me. I already feel like the weird old lady whose house smells funny. Two words: kitten breath.

For a few pix of the kids, click here. Sorry about the lapse in writing. Thanks for checking in. Come back soon; I've returned, despite initial misgivings generated by an unwelcome visitor.

... How 'Bout Now? Now? Now?

Child,

Sweet, sweet love.

If you insist, once again, on asking me 20 times for the same thing within the space of one minute, I shall have to duct tape your adorable little mouth up.

I'm not kidding.

SQUAWK!

If I am giving Carly a little verbal lesson, or am verbally reprimanding her, Kane must parrot me, but he must do so as though he were auditioning for a very, very, very bad soap opera for the hearing impaired.

We were driving in the car yesterday morning. Carly wanted to wear her pink and white-striped conductor's hat, which was on the floor in front of her. Since she was strapped in her seat, she did what she always does in these situations - she screeched. She said "hat" seventeen times in a row, wiggled her nose, widened her eyes, and pointed at me, as if to say: "Woman, what are you waiting for?"

I looked at her in the rear-view mirror and said: "Carly, I know you want your hat, but you have to wait until we stop the car."

And then, a soprano voice from behind me warbled on a crescendo: "Car-leeee, you HAVE to WAIT until we stop the caaaaaarrrrrrr!"

"Thank you Kane," I said. And then I remembered that sarcasm is rather wasted on the very young.

"Okay, Mommy," he said. Carly looked at him with bottom lip jutting out, as if to say, "Kiss my bum, you."

K-kkk-Kane and the Jets

Yeah, you tell me he doesn't look like a rock star. A rock star ... with no pants.
The girl, however, looks like a Lisa Loeb-type just waiting for her chance to write poetry about immature boys.

They both got goggles today after weeks of pitiful mewls each time we walked past the glass display brimming with these things. I figure, we are trying to teach them to swim in 50-degree weather, why not give them an incentive? Click here for a few more snaps of them in all their googly-eyed glory.

So, Kane wouldn't take his off most of the day, claiming to everyone in the supermarket that he was Spiderman. In my OB/GYN office, later that day, he said he was a doctor using safety glasses (thanks for the vote of confidence, kid).

Lies and Other Necessities

Did I just lie to you by pretending to ask the "restaurant with the trains" whether they were open for lunch?

Oh, yes, I did. I talked into an inactivated cell phone while driving through the Caldecott Tunnel, because I couldn't bear the thought of letting you down with a flat-out "no," not while you were all sick and tired in my back seat, oh, Sir Three Year Old.

But you gotta know, your eye is disconcerting. No one wants to see it, particularly people at an eating establishment. It's not goopy, but the eye is red and swollen, a pugilistic badge of your bacterial infection.

Plus, once you heard me tell you the restaurant owner told me that they weren't open (sorry, Montclair Egg Shop, the boy wanted to give you business, but I did not. Not today), you made a small wail, then promptly fell asleep in the back seat.

I feel not at all bad about my transgression.

A Little Bit of Present Repeating

What the hell am I supposed to do with a blog when there are so many other seemingly "like" creatures out there blabbing about the same sorts of things? And all of them write like they think they just invented (or invented the best way to describe) the object/feeling/action they are writing about. How effing boring is that?

I can't even get all sarcastic and give air time about the inanity that is the Passover Ten Plagues Finger Puppets - a task I was incredibly excited to tackle, seconds after my brother informed me of the existence of said item (though he found his set in a Tucson Bed, Bath and Beyond store, so he gets extra points). My enthusiasm deflated as soon as I looked online for a link to the toy, because I found scores of hipster moms and dads who had to throw in a blogging shout-out on the boils and the blood and the pesitlence and whatnot, and all of them wrote like they alone had found the Fun Box of Jewish Har Har, and little Jackson/Sophie/Milo just LOVED it.

I think I'm just pissed because I discovered I am a) not as funny or original as I think I am, and b) that I may be categorized with these poseurs. Oy.

Namaste, Yo

Phil teaching a little meditation to the mite.

I got nothing, today. It was a glorious Saturday, and there was much frolicking in the park, as you can see here.
Of course, there was also a little downtime in the 'hood, and a celebration of Kane's first soccer class session coming to an end. Enjoy. I'm a little too brain dead to write much, tonight. More tomorrow.