Lemon Tree

I see the new Lorax movie has spawned some product tie ins.
In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss: "I laughed at the Lorax, "you poor stupid guy. You never can tell what some people will buy."
Someone's missing the point here. We're supposed to be on the side of the Lorax.
Right?

song: Lemon Tree • artist: Peter, Paul & Mary

People Get Ready

There are three pair of skates, an archery set, skis, and a soccer ball in the back of the van.
We are ready for anything.

song: People Get Ready • artist: Curtis Mayfield

1999

Tried to pull a Little Prince on the twins the other night.
The boys are in the habit of asking me to draw stuff. Cats, dogs, bears, Santa Claus - that kind of stuff.
The other night, as I was putting them to bed, I was handed a pad of paper and summoned: "draw me a giraffe." The request reminded me of the Little Prince, except that he wanted a sheep.
Instead of a giraffe, I drew a box with air holes in it.
I said, "the giraffe that you want is in the box."
It worked! Both of the boys grinned at the drawing of a box and looked pleased.
Then S handed it back to me and said, "now draw a giraffe not in a box."

song: 1999 • artist: Prince

Shout

Tonight I did not yell at the twin who dropped his entire dinner plate on the floor, but this morning I did lay into the one who pulled my draw of threads all the way out of the desk, spilling them all over the bedroom floor.
Guess I am one for two.
In both cases the other twin came to his brother's rescue and helped with the clean up.

song: Shout • artist: Tears for Fears

cumulus couplet

Clouds in the sky
watch them waft by

End of the Line

What I learned from my kids today:
That it's possible to spray paint a dirt road.

song: End of the Line • artist: Travelling Wilburys

Peace Train

The cat killed my peace lily.
Insert ironic comment here: ____________

song: Peace Train • artist: Cat Stevens

Big Shot

S & N had appointments to get the shots they missed last month when they had ear infections at their well-child visit to the pediatrician.
"I not sick," protested S when I told him.
"Right," I tried to explain, "these are the shots you didn't get the day you went to the doctor's when you were well because you were, as it turned out, too sick to get them."
I didn't make any sense to me either.
No wonder they cried.

song: Big Shot • artist: Billy Joel

The Sweetest Thing

It's making me nauseous just smelling all the candy my kids brought home from school today.
I know I've griped about the excess of Halloween candy and how I'm forced to initiate a buy back program in order to dissuade my kids from gorging themselves; but at least Halloween candy is good candy, not so with Valentine candy: Skittles, Starbursts, and that gross Wonka dip stuff - yeeesh.
Parents should just cut to the quick and instead of buying bad candy give each kid a quarter of a cup of sugar pourred into a zip lock baggie. Maybe throw in some red food coloring to make it more festive.
Or pressure the supermarkets to start stocking marshmallow peeps a few days earlier.
I'd buy back marshmallow peeps.

 song: The Sweetest Thing • artist: U2

Anagram (For Mongo)

Just finished making and addressing 72 valentines for preschool.
And discovered that "love, Silas" is an anagram for Elvis Laos.
Cool.

song: Anagram (for Mongo) • artist: Rush 

Come Dancing

 Support the Sultan's Ball
We can't put on a show using just our coin belts now can we?

song: Come Dancing • artist: the Kinks

I'm Too Sexy

Doesn't the woman in the middle know she's in an ad with a teddy bear?

song:  I'm Too Sexy  • artist: Right Said Fred

Seven Year Ache

As I'm sure you recall, I dubbed 2012 the year of living in the present.
The thing about living in the present is, the more you worry about living in the present, the less you are able to do it.
There is of course no easier way to live in the present than to take yourself out of your comfort zone.
Today, in my case, that meant skiing in Vermont with my big boys. Not only was I totally in the present while on the mountain, now I'm totally in the present with my achy fingers, neck, arms, collar bone, legs and toes.

 song: Seven Year Ache   • artist: Rosanne Cash

Light My Fire

The Dork Family on the way home from the library:

H: "Mom! Can I turn on my light?"
M: "Sure."
C: "Mom! I need to turn on MY light!"
M: "Your brother asked first."
C: "SO. The type in my book is smaller. It's harder to read."
M: "Don't you have a book light back there?"
C: "Nooooo! The book light casts a big shadow across the page."
M: "Well. I can't have both the back seat lights on at once."
C: general moaning and groaning
M: "You know when I was a kid cars only had one interior light, right in the middle of the roof. And we never turned it on. If you wanted to read while you riding in the car at night you just had to wait until the car passed under a street light to have some light roll across your page and you got to maybe read one sentence before the light faded to black and you had to wait some more. And you had to keep your finger on the page so you could find your spot again quickly otherwise you'd end up reading the same line over and over again. And we never complained."

song: Light My Fire • artist: The Doors

Wake Me Up Before you Go Go

Why do they call them training pants?
What are they training for? The bedwetting olympics?
They should call them enabler pants.

song: Wake Me Up Before you Go Go • Artist: Wham!

Mother

The Tao of My Twins: Lesson #12

You know you're a mom when your son has a runny nose and instead of going to the bathroom for a tissue he reaches into your pocket.
And pulls one out.

song: Mother • artist: John Lennon

Throw the Football

First let me say that although I'm not much of a sport's fan, if the home team happens to make it to the final competition - of course I want to see them win.
That said, I wasn't a fan of the elementary school proclaiming it Patriot's Day twice, once before the AFC playoff and again this past Friday.
When I was a kid football was something to be endured while you waited for the clock to run out so your dad would stop watching so you could finally leave to get to where you were going. It wasn't, as far as I can remember, something we embraced in school.
It's ironic that we wring our hands over our children emulating major league sports stars as their heros and yet we encourage fandom at school.
But forget that for a moment and about how it might make some kids feel like losers, my own included, because they don't have any team-specific t-shirts, sweatshirts or hats to don on Patriot's Day and let's present the opportunity that's lost - that there could be a real learning component to super bowl build up. Instead of having it be about clothing and eye grease, it could be about history (Why do they call it football here in the United States when they call soccer football in England?), it could be about math (The length of a football field is 360 feet, the width is 160. Find the area.), it could be about science (Why is a football shaped that way?), it could be about ancient history (XLVI = 46), it could be about sociology (How come all the women in the ads are wearing bikinis while the men are fully clothed?). Okay forget that one. But the point is, they're already excited about the game, why not use that excitement to fuel some learning?

song: Throw the Football • musical: Wonderful Town

Like A Prayer

OMG, Madonna is the half time show for tomorrow's game?
It's like it's 1986 all over again.
And surely you remember how well that super bowl went for the Patriots.

song: Like A Prayer • artist: Madonna

Make You Feel My Love

I see how it is. I can have 30 house plants, or one kitten.
So in addition to spraying the cat with water when she's caught on top of the mouse cage, I draped a towel over the top of the cage so the mice would be less visible and therefore less inticing.
And what's the thanks I get?
The mice chewed up the edge of the towel.

song: Make You Feel My Love • artist: Bob Dylan

Don't Stop

"Mom! He's putting those peels in the trash!"
I look and it's true. C was peeling a tangerine and his four-year-old brother was dutifully taking the peels and putting them in the trash bucket.
My older son was not, as you may think, praising his younger brother for his helpfulness, he was in fact pointing out his faux pas. Tangerine peels belong in the compost bucket, not in the trash.
I asses the situation. Yes. It's true. But for my preschooler, the compost bucket is up on the counter and out of reach, while the trash can is close at hand. Given the choice between having a helpful, if somewhat misguided, four year old or having to deal with the mess myself, I choose to let the transgression pass.
How often are other parents faced with similar dilemmas?
As parents we want to save the world for our children, but sometimes they don't make it easy.
There's the obvious problem of children: all the stuff they come with and accumulate, from diapers and wipes to the collection of plastic crap handed out at birthday parties, all the way up to the e-trash they will presumably leave in their wake as teens when they begin moving fluidly from one techno gadget to another.
Those environmental infractions aside, what I'm thinking about are the lapses I condone and even sometimes instigate myself, like driving over-tired toddlers around and around the block in hopes that they will fall asleep before the car runs out of gas.
Or, as someone who goes so far as to stick a bucket in the sink when washing vegetables and saving the water for the house plants, how do I justify letting my twins play in the bathroom sink, filling and emptying it over and over on a cold, January day?
Then there's the illusion that leads you to believe your kids will embrace a tiny LED night light in their bedroom but they want the big guns - the closet light - on all night. At least you've installed CFLs.
In these situations it's plain that the possibility of some quiet mommy time is more valuable than wasting a little non-renewable petroleum or even gallon after gallon of perfectly good drinking water.
What's more, I could lure the twins out of the bathroom and away from the running water by offering up a DVD. Given the option though I'd prefer to have them actively, rather than passively, engaged, even if what they're actively engaged in is wasting water. What this confession reveals is that I'm guilty of caring more about the cognitive development of my kids than about saving precious natural resources.
Yes, in the case of the faucet example I could just stick them in the bath tub which would, in the long run, waste less water but often there's a time constraint as in not enough time for a tubby before heading out to the bus stop to meet older siblings. At least most days we walk to the bus stop.
Is Mommy's sanity worth more than the health of the environment? There's the old saying that if Mommy's not happy, nobody's happy, and I suppose if I'm not catching a break here and there I'll be too mentally exhausted to dry our laundry on the clothes line or tend my plot at the community garden.
How about you? What environmental infractions do you allow your kids to partake of in the name of sanity or getting dinner (vegetarian I'm sure) cooked.

song: Don't Stop • artist: Fleetwood Mac