Free to Be

I've been getting a hard time from some of my family members about the fact that I "allow" the Bro to wear tutus, shiny purple beads, tiaras, Snow White costumes...but many of these same people applauded me when I allowed Natalie to wear "little boy" underwear. I don't get it. Why is it ok for her, but not for him? The way I see it, Natalie and I are teaching him very important lessons about accessorizing so that one day, should he fall madly in love with a girl, he will appreciate her femininity - truly valuable. Between Nat and myself, he may end up being the perfect boy, perhaps with a love of the ballet.

When I showed my brother the picture posted above, he immediately responded that he was going to Toys R Us to buy the Bro a GI Joe "action figure."

" Um...is that like a doll?"

"No! NO!" he says. "It's an action figure."

"You know Natalie is going to want to play with it."

"Yah, I know. That's ok," he says.

Harumpf.

Rundown

Hi, remember me? Friend, wife, mother of two, used to be an avid blogger...there are a few things contributing to my absence.

1. The discovery of Dexter. This disturbing, yet highly addictive show easily ate up three hours of my life each night. I had to keep watching. But we caught up on Season 3 and now have to wait until mid-August to get Season 4. So in the meantime, we have started watching Weeds, which is much easier to walk away from to do other things.

2. Camp, swim lessons, painting rainbows, playgrounds, playdates, barbecues, birthday parties, trips to NJ...Last week, I tried to make a date with my dear friend Steve and informed him that I wasn't available until August 9th. AUGUST 9th! And I am pretty sure I went and booked some stuff since then that makes me less available.

3. The destructive force better known as Hurricane Joe. I can't take my eyes off of him for one minute. Not one! Because in that minute, that blue eyed little cherub as dropped no less than five toys in the toilet bowl, plus all the toilet paper and his happy splashing around in there, eaten at least a handful of dog food, dropped no less than three things in the dog's water bowl (including my phone) and is happily splashing around or dumping the water all over the kitchen floor, had at least fifteen cents in his mouth, and is precariously perched on a chair that he will fall off of and ultimately cry about. Not one minute!

Now we are packing up to leave the Bay State for the next two weeks. Poof! Two weeks, gone! Luckily, one of those will be spent fist pumping on the Jersey Shore. Maybe we could record ourselves and sell it to MTV since we are real Italians...I'm just sayin'

So that's the rundown, and I am a little run down.

Natalie No. 5

My baby girl is five. Her aging process seems to be which similar to how a dog ages, becuase one might believe, regardless of her height and lack of permanant teeth, that she is in fact thirteen. But she's not, even though she would like to be. But still, she is one whole hand and that is a super big deal. I have kindly asked her to stop growing, but she gives me a dimpled smile, shrugs her shoulders and says, "Mommy, I can't help it. I have to grow."

Five things everyone should know about Natalie:

1. Her favorite colors are pink, purple, and blue. She likes all the other colors, but those are her most favorite and she tries to incorporate them into all of her outfits.

2. Her favorite princess is Ariel. And she likes to dance around the house singing, "I am the beautful princess, Ariel."

3. She likes a majority of processed breakfast meats - sausage, bacon, taylor ham

4. Cheese is her favorite food, she likes them all, including blue and feta. She refuses to eat melted cheese (ie grilled cheese sandwhich) unless it is in the form of a quesadilla. In this case, she will deepen her voice, and repeat the word quesadilla with five year old enthusiasm.

5. She can complete 300 piece puzzles by herself and is quite the talented builder of blocks and legos.

Summertime

and the livin' is easy...mostly because it is full of hot dogs, hamburgers, sprinklers, a sandy beach, and plenty of ice cream.

Have I mentioned that it is good to be me? 'cause it is :)

Three's Not a Crowd

Three coordinating wallets...

Three matching "Hi Maintenance" manicures...

And at 8am on Sunday morning, when Holly called me to come and snuggle with her and Izzy in Izzy's bed, not only was it a wild fantasy of my husband's, I can assure you, cozied up with my two besties, college roommates, girls with whom I have shared good times and bad, it was more of a divine trinity than a crowd.

xo

K.Rabs on Crabs

Stop me if you heard this...Lisa, this means you.

Just when I thought the hermit crab situation couldn't get any worse, it did. On my recent trip to the Garden State, I arrived to find that I neglected to bring dog food with me nor was there any in the pantry, so I had to head out to a local pet store. And when I say local, I mean super schwa, smelly, dark grossness that I will never be able to erase from my memory...therefore, I must share the experience with all of you.

I wasn't even in the door when Joe PetStore Worker wanted to help. He was an enigma of sorts to me, a little punk, a little petshop, and a whole lotta gay. In writing it doesn't seem so weird, but in person it truly added to the bizarreness of the entire experience. As Joe PetStore Worker led me to the dog food and carried it back to the register for me (the thing weighed all of four pounds), he asked if there was anything else that I needed.

"Well, Joe, what do ya know about hermit crabs?" I proceeded to tell him how Crawlie crawled under the sand over a week ago and has yet to reappear. "Can they go a week without food, Joey?" "Is he dead, Joe?"

"Well," he pondered, "Have you sprayed the tank with water? Hermit crabs like high humidity. Also, you may want to dig the hermit crab up (to make sure he is alive) and spray his 'gills' with water to clean them out."

I politely responded (because those of you who know me, know just how polite I can me), "Everything you just said is gross, and I won't be doing any of it. What else ya got?"

Somehow this conversation quickly left hermit crabs and led to Joe's collection of tarantulas, the female one being poisonous, the crickets he feeds them and how it isn't a problem if they get out because he has a cat, and a friend's hissing cockroaches, that she keeps as both pets and pet food.

Again, I "politely" told him I thought the hermit crabs were the grossest, he trumped that, and that I had to leave to vomit." That isn't a direct quote, but it's close enough.

And Crawlie still hasn't surfaced, just thought you should know, two weeks and counting. Stay tuned for the Crawlie Memorial Blog...

My Life Cast as Willy Wonka

Tonight Dan wanted to convince me that we should go out to dinner. I can cook, but really, I don't need any convincing for someone else to do it for me.

Natalie tried two, not one, two new things at dinner and liked them both. Neither Dan nor I told her that our chicken taquitos came out as steak taquitos; she thought they were awesome. And if she were a kid that ate any and everything, I would have divulged such information, but like her father, she likes what she likes, so we let her to believe they were chicken.

The bro on the other hand, well, that kid will eat any and everything that you put in front of him. Seriously, I don't even think he cares whether or not it is food. Tonight I placed some deliciously marinated pork on a fork and he grabbed the whole thing from me, just as Augustus Gloop does the microphone in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

"How do you feel about that Bro?"

"Very hungry." said in an Austrian accent if he had any words.

This led me to look at my happy little family and cast them in this classic film. Dan, fer sure, is Willy Wonka. He provides each of us with an equivocated sense of happiness. If only he had a giant factory that was actually full of trees that fruited ginormous gummy bears...listen I have a great man, but that, oh, that, would be tremendous.

Natalie is a little piece of all the characters. One part sincere, beloved Charlie Bucket, the apple of Wonka's eye, one part Veruca Salt, the spoiled girl who indeed gets all that her heart desires, one part Violet Beauregard, lover of gum and candy, one part Mike Teevee, does that really need an explanation?

I am torn, I am part Oompa Loompah, aiding Willy Wonka in that nasty realities of day to day, one part Charlie Bucket's mother, stirring laundry with my giant wooden spoon, making mush, and don't think I have sung "Cheer Up, Charlie" in this house on more than one occasion, and four parts all the other enabling parents that accompany their children to the famed chocolate factory.