01.28.08

oh boy.

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:33 am by Anne

the doll that is taking over the world

Originally uploaded by Dux

I am not a doll person. Never played with them as a girl, never gave them a whole lot of thought…until now.

Yesterday I became a believer. A believer in American Girl. Wow, people. Wow.

My MIL who is responsible to introducing this phenom to my five year old actually shared a college suite with a cousin of the woman who originally started the American Girl doll company, back in the day. I don’t think it is particularly well known that she sold her empire to Mattel but they seem to have kept the ball rolling pretty dang well since then.

We converged on the premises and it was packed full of little girls and moms and dads and brothers. PACKED. Everyone was clutching either 1) a new doll, still in the box or 2) a well loved AG doll. The store is like Petsmart for dogowners but with expensive well dressed and coiffed dollies instead of canines, and rather than shopping for dogfood one goes there for more dolls or doll paraphrenalia or simply for a lunch at the bistro, where one can choose from a variety of delightful victuals with one’s doll perched at the table in a tiny baby chair.

I know, *GAG*, right? But I have to admit, it was pretty damned cute and by the end of the experience, against my will, I was happily planning which AG playsets Lily should have over the next ten years….the baking set (of course!), the flute or the violin (which are remarkable replicas of the real thing, in minature), the horse, really, the list is endless. but expensive. well made, for sure, but expensive.

My MIL gives a doll as a gift to her five year old granddaughters…so Emma and Pipez have a few more years to go before they are able to choose one. Lily knew in the car, after flicking through the catalog, which doll she wanted. And she went right to it in the store.

Wow. I tried to be disgusted but was instead amazed. My transformation into an old woman is now complete.

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01.26.08

You’d think by now i’d have learned how to raise a baby.

Posted in Piper at 11:13 am by Anne

You’d be wrong, unfortunately.

Pipez woke me up around 6 this morning with some intermittent mewling. As I lay in bed, considering her noises, an image of a heavy water balloon plunging from a two story balcony and exploding onto the sidewalk drove me to check on her. Yesterday she drank a bottle with her supper around 5PM. She got another bottle at 8PM and still another around midnight after we got home from a later supper with friends.

If only I had changed her diaper after that last bottle.

There she was. Laying on her belly, with urine saturated jammies and cold clammy skin. The cribsheet had so much pee in it I might have thought it had just come out of the washing machine if not for the fetid smell. And her diaper? Now you understand the water balloon image.

Sorry Pipez. I’ll do better next time.

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01.23.08

bright eyed and bushy tailed

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:22 am by Anne

Sometimes, for no good reason, I come down with freakish insomnia. It’s not the normal kind where one just doesn’t sleep at all but the sneaky, much more insidious type in which I fall asleep like a good old fashioned normal person but then wake up a few hours later wide eyed and full alert…so awake that another person might think, “Hey! It is time to get up after such a nice long rest! I am fully prepared to start the day right with a big breakfast and a huge smile plastered all over my gaping maw!”

So it happened this morning which explains this 4AM blog post.

Does it have anything to do with my girl Cess telling me last night that my blogging sucks ass?
eh, perhaps…I do have rather a strong case of bloggityguilt going on right now.
Does it have anything to do with Piper facilitating my dreamland breach with one of her wet diapered howls?
could be…but how is this any different from any other night?
Does it have anything to do with fretting over the various odds of ends I’ve got planned for the day?
doubtful. What in the hell could I have planned today? Brain surgery?
Who the hell knows. But I had an actual idea for a blog post. So this no-sleeping bullshit is not an entire loss! Yes, dammit, YES!

Those of you who have known me awhile, understand that I am an absolute hedonist when it comes to eating and drinking. This means I enjoy food and it’s equally essential counterpart, the consumption of alcohol, very much. I get tired of such labels as ’soup nazi’ and ‘foodie’ and ‘martha stweart acolyte’ no matter how accurate they may be in sometimes describing my excruciating and tireless inclinations to bake the BEST chocolate cake (with heartwrenching deep, dark ganache filling), in shaking the BEST pomegranate cosmopolitan (with citric acid encrusted and chilled martini glasses), in proofing the BEST sourdough loaf (with a tender inner crumb encased with a crusty, flavorful outer crust and slathered with real unsalted butter churned from the chemically-charged dairy processes of a well cared for bovine lazing away in a french flowerfield…a flowerfield of lavender perhaps.) As such, it has been far too long since I’ve told you about my latest culinary adventure, which is sad because I used to do this all the time.

Bygones, people, bygones. This isn’t a godDAM foodie website anyway now is it?!

Last weekend, while my husband was away hunting betusked wild porcine and well, Bambi’s family, I threw a little cheese tasting party at my house for the usual people. A few days beforehand, I’d made a small tasting menu based lightly on some exquisite cheeses I’d recently tasted at a class for cheese enthusiasts. The strongest cheeses, black diamond extra sharp cheddar (from Canada) was paired with a strong, assertive red wine (blessedly outsourced by one of the party guests; thanks dude!) . A slightly less intense but still boxing our tastebuds around sheep’s milk feta (Valbreso) was cubed into tiny chunks and served atop ice-cold and thin rounds of the crispest, most perfect green cucumbers I have ever had the good fortune to put into my mouth. The feta was presented with a mildly fruity, non-cloying chardonnay that offset the slight tang of the cheese to absolutely sincere orgasmic perfection. Next was presented the best brie (Belletoile) this world has ever produced. It was creamy. And buttery. And with so many multidimensional nuances of flavor that I could do nothing but present it with a crisp sliced baguette and carry it along with a cold, clear, bracingly sweet glass of bubbly to the very gates of heaven. (Thank you Toad Hollow, thank you.)

There were a few other cheeses of note, and my sister brought along additional treats and eats of various concoctions that we wolfed down with edifying impunity, as if we’d not eaten anything but the lint from out bellybuttons for days…but I have to say this to you. If you’ve never planned a cheese tasting party before, or attended one yourself, you are greatly missing out on one of this world’s most delicious pleasures. Do not be afraid. Just do it.

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01.21.08

I don’t generally do this but…

Posted in Uncategorized at 1:04 pm by Anne

Look here. No one pays me to advertise for them and sadly no one sends me free products to review online but I feel it is my duty and obligation to tell you about this particular baby soap I’ve been using on the girls. It is incredible and if it weren’t so prohibitively expensive, I would keep this company in business solely based on this calming baby soap.

It smells better than any other baby soap, it suds nicely, the girls love it (particularly Pipes), and I love how they are smell of lavender after a good scrubbing. The price? I don’t love that and who knows when I will purchase more, if ever, when my bottle runs out but for now, bathtime isn’t dreadful one bit..in fact, I look forward to it. Well, Sorda.

Now back to normal programming.

Dear preschool teachers:
I just want to thank you personally for sending home Lily’s latest ’snow globe’ artwork. It was so clever of you to fill the thing with soap flakes, I mean, wow….where do you even purchase such things, and I have spent the entire weekend enjoying how the soap flakes have flown hither and yon throughout the house. Finding Piper sitting in a small hill of non-edible white particles was the highlight of my morning even today so thanks and many blessings. Perhaps next time you could completely seal the thing before sending it off. Just an idea.

Sheezus.

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01.18.08

keep it moving.

Posted in Uncategorized at 10:56 am by Anne

Wow. I used to be such a good blogger. Reading everyone on time, writing regularly…and now this. Well, I just have to send a late, very late thank you to Sunshine…for the awesome pink ribbon t-shirt. I won a contest of hers months ago, MONTHS ago, and have been meaning to thank her publicly but since I have been sucking wind lately, haven’t done it until now. Sunshine, thank you, I love the rhinestones!

It’s funny how this blogging thing works. I’ve even talked about it to my shrink, how we kind of have an online community, how we give advice, or encouragement, how we plan posts in advance (How many times have you thought to yourself, “Wow…that is totally blogworthy.”), how some of us even wind up breaking through the internet barrier into more substantial friendships.

I also like how even if some of us slip off the WWW vortex for awhile, ya’ll still welcome us back like old times. You rule. You really really do.

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01.16.08

Worst night ever.

Posted in Uncategorized at 8:05 am by Anne

Piper cried. She cried and she cried and she cried. From midnight until daybreak. I think I know why, which makes it my fault but knowing this doesn’t take the edge off my hit-by-a-mac-truck exhaustion one bit. You see, I let my Mom feed her a baby food jar of gerber beef and carrots. Who knew that particular combination could wreak so much havoc on her GI tract?! I learned it the hard messy way last week when she poo’d and poo’d and poo’d following beef and carrot comsumption.

Sometimes you just put two and two together and wind up with twenty-two.

So last night as I was scrambling around in a hunger daze, trying to throw our supper together, I saw my Mom get out that jar of baby food I failed to stop her. I failed. And now I am paying for it. As is Pipes.

Oh good morning babies, good morning.

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01.13.08

the cake

Posted in Uncategorized at 9:56 pm by Anne

the cake

Originally uploaded by Dux

Not the best representation of my girl’s cake but it’s what i can do. The cake itself, is, was, and ever shall be the most kickinest chocolate cakes…deep dark layers of tender chocolate, slathered with a light whipped ganache.

And after cutting it up for the 20 kids and additional adults, there remained only two leftover slices. And they looked like hell. Did we eat them later that night after a few drinks? Yes and yes.

But enough about the cake, let me fill you in about the party at pizza world. Mom and I got there first with the three girls in tow. Lily and emma were very into it and immediately got to playing video games and or climbing on the jungle gym. A manager walked up to tell me he would be in charge of Lily’s party and that my job was to relax and enjoy. He would do it all.

I was cynical about his abilities. How hard would it be to shepard all the kids around? To feed them pizza? To take drink orders? To get them to play nice? etc?

Well…to sum it up, let’s just say I am superfreakingglad we didn’t have this party at home. It would have been too much for me to handle, even with my friends and family closeby to give a helping hand…

Kids ate, adults chatted, kids played, adults ate, kids stampeded, adults made things right, and an hour and a half later the party was over. The manager, totally super cool all this time, showed me where to pay while he helped my husband load gifts into our car. As they rang up my credit card, the other manager on duty asked, “Would you like to add in a tip?” And I was totally taken off guard. FLUMMOXED even. A tip? It hadn’t even occurred to me. In a bluster, I replied, “What do people usually tip?” and he just kinda shrugged at me. So I threw out a number. “Just add in fifteen dollars,” I said…without making any calculations. Then I went back to my friends and told them about it.

My pal who had a party there before commented,” I usually tip 20%”. oh crap. Then my husband told me I should have tipped the guy forty. So I got to looking through my wallet and there was…no cash. Yay! Next I bummed 23 dollars off one friend and two dollars off another and went in search of the manager. But I was too late. He had already gone home, probably cursing me and my daughter on his way. The other manager took the money and told me he’d get it to him, so I handed it over a little queasily. Surely he wouldn’t keep it for himself, right?

Right?!

A little bit later as we were all ready to head home, the manager caught me on the way out and said, “Hey I called so and so and he turned around in his car and picked up the money!”

Nice. Wow.

Nothing like that feeling of being a cheap bastard, is there?

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01.10.08

Dance Dance Revolution

Posted in Lily, Parenting at 6:12 pm by Anne

We had a few good friends up last weekend. Maybe a year ago, they brought with them a version of Dance Dance Revolution that plugged into our TV, and all the kids went wild playing it. Lily adored it. Emma adored it because Lily did but neither one of them were coordinated enough to play as the game is supposed to be played. At the time there was a gaggle of older kids, including a few teenagers, also hanging out. You might say a veritable danceFEST went down. Arms and legs flying out every-which-way, hiphop-trippy music burning itself into everyone’s brains, laughter, and righteous joy suffused every inch of the house. or, this is how it was remembered.

Our friends, the poor things, made a terrible (ie diametrically evil) mistake by not bringing DDR with them on their recent trip here. “Steven, why didn’t you bring DanceDanceRevolution?” Lily asked more than once, and “Steven, why did you forget to bring DanceDanceRevolution?”…it became a somewhat annoying and childish mantra which could only be forgiven because the tiny voice behind it was so damned cute.

I didn’t know until yesterday that there is a new version of DDR for the XBOX 360. Look out, Lily, your soon to be five-year-old birthday dreams just might be coming true at last.

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01.07.08

milestone missed

Posted in Parenting, Piper at 11:10 am by Anne

Wow. Sorry that you are the third baby, Pipes. Not only do you not even have a baby book yet but you took your first step a few days ago and I didn’t even record it. Does it really matter that I don’t recall the exact day? (Don’t answer that. I’ll teach you about rhetorical questions soon enough.)

So about four days ago, that would be the 3rd of January, you took a step. Go baby! Then last night you took two steps around your Dad and he crowed about it until, sadly, I had to admit that you’d already shared that magical moment with me. I am the bubble-buster.

Then, this morning, you kinda turned your little nose up after only nursing on one side. I guess my lactating days are behind me for sure now. (fingers crossed) Remember hon, once it’s gone, it’s really gone.

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01.06.08

Too much information for the average reader.

Posted in Uncategorized at 5:48 pm by Anne

So I remembered, today, one of the best things about being pregnant. Much of those 9 months are just plain unpleasant, the weight gain, the indigestion, the waddling around…but I tell you what, not having to deal with tampons and maxi pads once a month was such a relief.

Game Over.

Just two days after Piper’s 11 month birthday, my sad little friend came to visit. I thought it was with a vengeance but after a few hours of musing about this predicament, I have come to the conclusion that this bout is normal. Welcome back, my crimson tide, welcome back.

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