Things that are put on the high shelf

• All the Nerf guns, one by one, having been confiscated
  
• The TV remote control, because you've had enough TV time for now
  
• The craft project that I really don't want to bring down until you're old enough to read the instructions and do all by yourself
  
• One notebook that was fought over
  
• A packet of highlighter markers, because you have enough markers for now and those aren't even washable
  
• The glockenspiel, until you can make music instead of just hitting each other with the mallets
  
• The lighter for the grill
  
• My tin whistle
  
• The Ikea piggy bank you wouldn't let go of when you were two so I bought it, but then it became a dangerous projectile so it's been up there so long that we've forgotten it even exists
  
• The TV digital antenna, because we're like in the dark ages, man

What's on your high shelf?

Things about me

But first I have to steal one of my husband's points about himself, because it's so wonderful that it deserves a wider audience:

For some period around the age of 7, I became convinced I was actually Orinoco Womble. The Wombles merchandising at the time included chocolate bars, and I would look at my miniature pointy-nosed face in confusion when visiting the newsagents.

For full enjoyment of this fact, you have to know what both parties looked like: 

Stunning resemblance, no? (Also, clearly there's no argument about whose son Dash is.)

Now that there's no topping that, here are some much less interesting random facts about me.

1. I played Miss Prism in selected scenes from The Importance of Being Ernest in high school. I knew everyone's lines.

2. Around the same time that my future husband was posing as a womble, I used to hide behind the sofa when the Daleks appeared.

3. As soon as the weather gets cold, I lose all blood from my fingers and toes, which is very useful when I want to dress up as a corpse for Halloween but otherwise annoying.

4. I had three boyfriends in first grade, but not one more until after I turned 18.

5. I can still recite, phonetically and probably unrecognizably, the "We are now approaching a station; please mind the gap" phrase from the Prague city train system. I can also ask for two beers in Czech.

6. I have not, and never did have, any wisdom teeth. This does not mean that I am less wise than you, but rather that I am more highly evolved, so there.

Tell me a random fact about yourself.

Traveling by air with children: a quick checklist for the concerned parent

• The day before you leave, give everyone a backpack and tell them to pack the toys they want to bring. After they've gone to bed, remove 65% of whatever they stuffed in there. Add a couple of very small new things to generate goodwill and distract from what's missing.
• Everyone with a luggage allowance gets a rolly suitcase. This eliminates a lot of fighting over who gets to pull it; however, make sure you can fit the child one on top of an adult one for when they inevitably tire and have a hard time just carrying themselves.
• If traveling with a stroller, remember that you'll have to empty and fold it to go through security, and again to get on the plane. Do not stuff every last thing in there as if it were the trunk of your car. It is, however, invaluable for holding coats and backpacks once you've checked in. Sometimes you may even opt to let a small child sit in it - but then you'll have to carry the coats.
• Abandon hope of getting people to eat healthy snacks in the airport. Airports are for McDonalds opportunities. Burger King if you're pushing the boat out. If you must bring healthy snacks, save them for the plane when children are trapped and the options are fewer.
• A new coloring book or sticker book for the plane is a nice idea, and might even keep a child occupied. If you give a child under five a sticker book, be prepared to spend much of your journey pushing up the stickers from behind the page so that they can lift them off. Don't forget a nice new pack of crayons or markers for the coloring book. The ones you already have at home will definitely not suffice. A brand-new pack of eight for each child will do nicely.
• Being read aloud to is an option that many children are happy with. Choose a book you're comfortable reading in front of adults as well as children, because all your fellow passengers will be listening. (Alternatively, I believe audiobooks are a thing you can get. I'd look into it, but I think my husband secretly likes the attention.)
• Bring a large backpack for your own carry-on. On the outward journey it should contain 1) Secret new presents, only to be produced at the gate or on the plane, 2) Clean under/outerwear for children and/or adults in a large ziplock bag. 3) Diapers and wipes as needed. More than you think could possibly be needed, just in case. 4) More wipes, in the most easily reached pocket, in case you can't find the other ones. 5) Adult emergency chocolate/granola bar. 6) Book, Kindle, or magazine, if you're an optimist and think you might get a chance to read something.
• On the way back, most of this space will be filled with Christmas presents, birthday presents, large stuffed animals, baby dolls, new boots, or duty free alcohol. The children will manage just fine without extra new airplane presents at this point. Try to remember the baby wipes, though.
• If all else fails, feign ignorance. Those children? No, they're not mine. Perfect your gaze into the middle distance and don't forget the earplugs.

Acclimatization

Things your child will want to do when they come home from school for the first few days of the new term:

• Fight with siblings
• Fight with you
• Ignore your pleas to sit down and do their homework
• Eat a lot of snacks
• Complain about the quality of the snacks
• Not eat dinner because they're full of snacks
• Demand a sandwich at bedtime because now they're starving
• Watch TV
• Jump off the coffee table, repeatedly
• Jump from the sofa onto the coffee table, repeatedly
• Fall off the coffee table because you told them to take their socks off, but did they listen?
• Languish on the floor, too exhausted to place one piece of lego on another, calling you to come and do it for them
• Drop their backpack on the floor and then claim that it's lost forever
• Leave their backpack in the car and claim it's lost forever and that it's your fault
• Well obviously

Things you will want to do when your child comes home from school for the first few days of the new term:

• Tear your hair out
• Cry
• Drink heavily

Remember, it's a phase. Things will settle down. Everything will be okay. Eventually, they will move out and allegedly then you'll miss them.

How to blog in the summer vacation

• Send the children on a treasure hunt. Forget to bury the treasure.
• Start a game of hide and seek. Don't seek.
• Blog one sentence at a time.
• Actually, just turn your whole blog over to your Twitter account.
• Recycle old posts from when nobody used to read your blog. Pretend you just had that baby last week.
• Send the children out to forage for food instead of going to the supermarket.
• Make the children cook your dinner.
• Drunkblog.
• Send them to camp.
• Send yourself to camp.
• Hire a mother's helper.
• Hire a ghost writer.
• Get all your friends to write guest posts.
• Ask famous people to contribute guest posts. (This entry actually written by the Dalai Lama.)
• Sacrifice your half hour of TV a night to a noble cause. 
• Or use that time to blog.
• Blog while watching TV. You won't be Jon Stewart's so funny distracted at all.
• Stop doing Sporcle quizes.
• Stop playing GeoGuessr.
• Embrace the chaos. Liveblog the children's fights.
• Photo entries. Lots of photo entries.

Things I may be doing tomorrow

• Panicking, because Wednesday is Mabel's last day of school and Friday is Dash's.
• Going to Target and panic-buying ALL THE THINGS.
• Doing all my grocery shopping for the summer so that I don't have to bring two children to the supermarket twice a week.
• Painting my toenails.
• Paying someone else to paint my toenails while I relax. 
• Not being able to relax while someone else paints my toenails because of all the other things I could be doing with this very precious morning.
• Giving myself a home a facial and dying my hair, which sorely needs it.
• Cleaning the house, which sorely needs it.
• Reading a book, because when else will I get the chance?
• Writing a bunch of blog posts and scheduling them in advance so that you don't all wander off and leave me during the summer when posting dips below acceptable levels.
• Surfing the Internet.
• Telling Facebook how it's my second-last morning of freedom.
• Telling Twitter ditto.
• Compiling lists of things we can do during the summer.
• Compiling lists of things I should do but won't get done till September.
• Going to the post office to mail my mother's birthday present.
• (I should probably definitely do that last one. Remind me in the morning, 'kay?)

Summer: QED

Reasons to hate the pool:

• My swimsuit
• My swimsuit with me in it
• My thighs
• The sun
• Sunscreen
• Splashes on my glasses
• Cold water
• Wet towels
• Bad hair

Reasons to love the pool:

• Happy children
• Hungry children
• Tired children

The pool wins.

Happy camper

I'm filling in summer camp forms for the children. I want them to take Mabel as well as her brother, so I'm just going to leave some sections of hers blank, I think.

You can figure out for yourselves which parts of this I'm not really submitting.

• Child's likes and dislikes: Likes: active play, imaginary play. Dislikes: You, probably.
• Enjoys these physical activities: Climbing (trees, onto the top of the car), bike riding (barefoot), balancing precariously and swinging upside down over concrete surfaces.
• My child has difficulty with these activities: Cleaning up, being polite to authority figures.
• Things my child might need help with: Drying/dressing after swimming.
• Fears and concerns of the participant: That you might not operate entirely according to her wishes.
• Specific behavioural concerns: That she might be horrible to everyone.
• Triggers of the specific behavioural concerns: Crossing her in any way, thwarting her will, etc.
• What behavioural techniques have been successful that can be maintained during the program? Flagrant bribery with new dolls, Barbies, trips to Target, ice cream. 

I tell myself that she's perfectly fine (mostly) at school and camp is just like school only more fun (probably). She'll be a model camper.

Right?

(And I'll get two weeks of six blessed hours' peace Every Day.)

Do they have s'mores at camp?

Word Girl

I know I'm biased, but I think Mabel is pretty witty for a four-year-old. She has always enjoyed words and sought out the big ones, but nowadays she finds rhymes and double meanings and asks why things are called what they are and why they aren't called something else.

If she doesn't become a lawyer (given her love of argument and her pathological need to have the last word) or an actress (given her flair for the dramatic and love of storytelling) or an author (obviously), she'll be a linguist or an etymologist. She might be all of those things.

She employs puns to their fullest:

• Watching DangerMouse - DM and Penfold land on top of the Toad and announce, "You're under arrest."
  Mabel: He is, because he's lying down so he's resting, and he's under them!

• Me, starting the car again after a quick return home for something it turned out we hadn't actually left behind: "To the pool, take two."
  Mabel: "But you're taking three."

She toys with idioms:

• The day after we saw our friend and her new(ish) baby: "I remember meeting Baby V like it was yesterday."

She plays with homonyms:

• "Can you compare a pear?"

She finds words within words:

• Europe! That's like syrup! Do they eat syrup in Europe? And watch the movie Up? 

She knowingly amuses me with hyperbole:

• In a grump, casting around for things to hate: "I don't like Miss P's bike. I don't like the colour of your glasses. I don't like the shape of our car. ... I don't like the colour of seethrough."

And now she's working the similes:

• "It's as dark as a bedroom."

or, to insult my cooking

• "It's as yummy as bum." 

Possibly a little yummier than bum

Boom! Spring

And then, with barely a day's grace, it was not so much spring as a full-blown dress rehearsal for summer.

At least, I hope it's just a dress rehearsal, because I'm not ready for leg-baring and constant sunscreen just yet. I demand that we have some days in the 60s and lower 70s, because taking us straight from 50s to 80s is not helpful.

Now all my Irish readers are putting their best sarcastic faces on and saying "Pity about ya" because their best chance of seeing 83 degrees all year is inside a mug of tea; but it has its drawbacks, this weather.

And now in best Irish tradition, I will proceed to find things to complain about:

1. I've had to start hanging the washing on the line again, because my tiny shred of environmental consciousness won't let me use the dryer in this weather. Though I did cheat by putting the socks and underwear in the dryer because hanging up 265 individual socks with clothes pegs drains my will to live and uses up all my good Facebooking time.

1b. You know what's a little annoying? When you spend all that time hanging out the washing and taking in the washing and find that out of a huge big load there are no more than five items that actually belong to you. And three of those are socks.

2. It's too hot. I'm getting sweaty. I haven't been sweaty since October, and I like it that way. Ugh. Armpits. Yuck.

3. Sunshine. It's giving me a headache.

3b. Sunscreen. Children. Sigh.

4. Birds. Damn birds, singing chirpily all over the gaff. I don't mind, mostly, except that I left Mabel's window open last night because it was so mild/stuffy, and she woke up at 1am, 2am, and 5am, and I'm blaming at least one of those on the deafening dawn chorus.

5. Water. I have to start bringing water everywhere for the children, or - preferably - making them carry their own. But they can't reach the filter jug in the fridge, so I'm still the one constantly refilling it and pouring the water and washing the water bottles with their annoying multiple straw parts and why can't they just be dehydrated and like it, like we did? (Do Irish mothers tote water everywhere for their children in the summer nowadays? I think not.)

The ritual imbibing of the water

 6. My feet. Aaaghhhh the state of my feet. I've put on the ritual first coat of toenail polish, but they're still crying out for a pedicure. Or just your basic amputation, that might make them look better.

6b. Sandals. I have sandals, actually. I bought the same pair that I loved last year when I found them on sale in February. How's that for forward planning? Of course, I'm still wearing the old ones because I want to keep the new ones nice and new-looking. Maybe I need more sandals.

7. The annual putting on of clothes I haven't worn for six months and discovering that, well, they pretty much still fit. But not as well as when I bought them. On the other hand, now that I'm not brewing a pot of tea every five minutes to keep me warm, maybe my muffin consumption will slow down. Just as soon as I get this loaf of banana bread and chocolate bunny out of the way.

New nails, old sandals. (Stupid toes.)

But I suppose we'll just soldier on and make the best of it, until proper spring comes back and we can complain about something else for a while.

A very parenthetical list

So I thought if I put my to-do list here maybe it would shame me into getting something done. Something other than drinking cups of coffee and convincing myself that pie is a perfectly valid mid-morning snack. (It was apple pie. That's fruit.)

(We have an apple pie because I went to a bloggers' meetup last night and I felt so guilty about leaving B to get Mabel to sleep while simultaneously getting Dash to shut up and stay in his room and go to sleep that I made him a pie. Also because I'd intended to make it on Sunday but then I went shopping instead and bought lots of tops for me on clearance, and didn't even look at children's clothes, which is a thing of which I am very proud.)

(I have to give a shoutout to all the lovely DCMoms bloggers I met last night at the Mellow Mushroom in Adams Morgan where Jennifer and I went to break out of our comfort zones and meet new people and put not so much faces to names as heads on bodies. When you know people as a series of square headshots, it's always surprising to find that they're not all on the same level in real life - they're tall and short and narrow and wide and simultaneously older looking and younger looking and more gorgeous and more approachable and more real in real life than you could possibly imagine from photos. I met Sandie and Allison and Rebecca and Jessica and Jean and Aimee and Elaine and Michelle and Robin and other people too, who I am not managing to remember just now, sorry.  And we ate delicious pizza and the people at the restaurant were really nice to us because they're lovely people and you should check it out if you're downtown.)

So without further ado here is my to-do list:

• Make D's dentist appointment
• Fill in application to vote
• Make appointment at post office for passport application
• Make shopping list for the weekend's baking extravaganza*
• Clean house (but not too soon) (only downstairs)
• Get B a birthday present of some sort
• Bake something and freeze it to get a jump on the aforementioned baking extravaganza? 
• Make pumpkin bread or black-bean brownies for school-lunch desserts
• Bake bread for my insatiable carb-loving family
• Sort out that big pile of papers over there

*I have to explain about the baking extravaganza, and for that matter, why I only need to clean downstairs. It's not that upstairs stays magically sparkly all by itself, but more that nobody will be seeing it so it doesn't matter right now. We somehow have managed to schedule all our social events for the spring into this weekend - on Friday there's a block party potluck thingy, for which I have to make something (it'll be my old faithful kale and quinoa salad, because it's yummy, vegetarian (even vegan), and can be eaten at any temperature). Then on Saturday there's a house-party fundraiser for the nursery school, to which I said I'd bring a dessert - as yet undecided; what goes with delicious white sangria made by a real Spaniard? Something fruity . . . jello shots, maybe? And then on Sunday we're having a party here, hence the house-cleaning part.

Not a kids' party either. An honest-to-goodness real grown-up party, although it will essentially end up being like all the kids' parties with grownups that we've thrown in the past. But my my adored and much-put-upon husband is turning a significant multiple of ten (hint: more than 30, less than 50) on the 25th, and since I have no idea what to give him, I'm baking him a Guinness cake and making other things he likes and inviting over some of his friends and their children and hoping everyone will have a pretty nice time.

So I have to get plenty of sleep and not have any hangovers and be on top of my game for all that. Yup, that'll happen. Tell you what, you bribe Mabel to stay asleep all night, and I'll bake a cake for you as well.

Increasingly long-winded thoughts on Twitter, which is why I'm not very good on Twitter

Thoughts on Twitter, from the perspective of one who came from Facebook.

• It's very good for my editing, trying to get what I want to say down to 140 characters.
• But it's a terrible way to have an actual conversation.
• The people, myself included, are more fickle. Because there's no mutuality, you can follow and unfollow guilt-free. I follow someone famous for a while, their too-frequent, or too-boring tweets annoy me, I unfollow them. I suppose in FB we just hide the status updates; unfriending is a lot more drastic.
• The people are more willing to listen to total strangers. On FB, generally speaking, I won't friend someone I haven't met unless I know exactly who they are and feel I have some sort of connection with them on a message board or through blogging. On Twitter a whole bunch of total strangers follow me. I don't even know why, but it's all very ego-stroking. (I mean, I don't know why they follow me. I do know why it strokes the ego.)
• And then, even more surprisingly, total strangers seem willing to engage with me in some sort of exchange. A usually frustrating one if I'm trying to actually impart information (see point 2 above) but not a bad one if we're just tossing quips back and forth. Or insults. Whatever.
• I've had a Facebook page for the blog for a couple of years now and it's just creaking up to 73 likes. I've been on Twitter since January of this year and already I have 80 followers. How does that work? And then some of my followers are corporate-type things that, what, think I'll just blindly follow them back? Does anyone do that? How is that good for business?
• And then, I don't understand how people can follow thousands of others. The Bloggess, to take a "famous" blogger, for example, has 320,000 followers. Lucky her. But she follows 19,000 herself. She can't read 19,000 people's tweets. Even if some of them don't tweet much. I doubt if she even clicked the "Follow" button 19,000 times, for that matter. So how does this happen, and what's the point? Do people just follow people to be nice, and then ignore them? I follow people whose tweets I want to see, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.

In summary, I'm finding Twitter surprisingly nice. It connects me with old and new people in the blogging community in an oddly different way from Facebook, in Ireland and the US (and elsewhere too for all I know). I thought it would just be covering the same ground again, but it's complementary rather than duplicatory. So, um, go click the button over there and follow me.

What to do when you don't know what to do

Where is the hilarity, you might ask? Where have all the funny conversations gone? Where's the real stuff of life? (Wait, it was just Jimmy Durante asking that one.) I dunno, really.

Mabel has calmed down, a bit, but Dash has ramped up the anger management issues, and it's not so funny when he goes all hulk smash on me, because I can't just hold him at arm's length and let his not-so-little legs windmill around without connecting. They get my kneecaps every time.

This boy has never been physically violent in his life before. Even as a two-year-old, he'd throw things and rip up books but not hit people. So I'm hopeful that this is a phase; I just hope it burns out soon, before somebody gets hurt. And the rage is always directed at us, the parents: at school he's doing wonderfully; everyone else thinks he's the "easy" child - but right now, not so much.

However. As threatened, I took How to Talk so Kids will Listen out of the library, and I think it might just be saving my bacon. I even got B to read the first few chapters, though he's still not as convinced as I am by it - he feels they're presenting a one-sided argument, while I've been totally brainwashed and have decided this is the One True Way. It certainly offers a parenting technique that fits my style and personality, and even now that the initial Come-To-Jesus-ness of it has worn off for me, I'm trying my best to use it, and it's working often enough for me to remain convinced.

If you don't know the book, its basic message is empathetic parenting. That sounds all wishy-washy and lovey-dovey, but they give some examples of how you would feel when things aren't going your way, and people in authority talk down to you, try to coerce you, or ignore you, and I found they really rung true. If I want to teach my children to respect other people and think of their feelings, then I have to start by parenting them that way. The book helps. It gives me tools that I can pass on to them. It tells me what to do when I don't know what to do. I don't know about you, but I really like that in a parenting book.

For instance. At least three times lately I've been faced with a boy who is determined not to give in. Whatever the original issue was, it has come down each time to a refusal to get ready for bed. There is no way to force this with him, and it's very hard to get a graceful exit. Or any exit, come to think of it.

One of the problem-solving techniques in the book is to make a list of options. Even with a non-reader, you say "I'm going to make a list of the things we could do to work this out" and you sit down with a piece of paper and start writing. You list what the child wants, and what you want, and any number of options in between and around about and totally unrelated. Somehow, the act of doing this, giving his plight the weight that a written list denotes, and appearing to (yes, you're allowed pretend) seriously consider what he wants to do, helps ground the crazed beast and draw him into the process. With a little luck, you'll even think of some totally ridiculous options to inject a little levity into the situation.

Then you go through the options together and cross out the ones that aren't acceptable to you, and the ones he doesn't agree with. And eventually, magically, something appears that is not remotely related to the matter at hand, and you write it down and draw a big circle around it and he does it and then the whole thing goes away.

I know. It sounds as if it couldn't possibly work every time. I'm not saying it will. But I am saying that several times now this has got me out of a totally boxed-in corner with Dash. Today I spent an hour asking him to sit down and do his homework. He never did. I told him that he could do double on Thursday (the week's homework is due on Friday; we don't have time for more than one day's worth on Wednesdays), or he could find out what happens when you don't hand in any homework. But either way, he wasn't getting to watch his favourite TV show today, because he didn't do it. He went outside to play after dinner, and when he came in he was under the impression that he could still do his homework and watch his show (on the Internet).

Dash tends to think that time is elastic and that the evening will stretch to fit all the things he wants to do, but bedtime is not so forgiving. When I told him the window on homework, and therefore TV shows, had closed, he had a total meltdown. It wasn't pretty, but he still thought that his will would prevail. Now, I'm a pushover, but not that much of a pushover, and his way was not an option tonight. We were utterly stuck.

I got out my trusty notebook and a pen, and wrote:

How to get Dash to bed

Then I listed some options, like "Watch his show," "Watch a 2-minute snippet of his show," "Go straight to toothbrushing and bedtime stories." I asked for more suggestions: "Watch ten episodes," he said. "Watch 16 episodes." I wrote it all down. "We sit on him until he falls asleep," I added, for good measure. And "Run naked around the house five times," since he was refusing to put on his pyjamas.

We started crossing things out. I had no idea where this was going, because we hadn't yet hit on anything both of us liked. He grabbed my notebook and ran away. I sighed.

Then, out of nowhere, he came up with a new one. "I put on a puppet show of my TV program, and you make a movie out of it [with my camera] and I watch the movie."

"Oookay," I said, "but it has to be all done in five minutes, because we're right up to bedtime now."

"Okay," he agreed. We got the camera. His father set the timer for five minutes. Dash picked up two random objects to be the puppets and started making them talk before I'd even found the movie setting. I filmed until (luckily) the camera memory was full. He watched it play back. And then he put on his pyjamas, brushed his teeth, had two very short bedtime stories, and was done.

It took time and dedication, but we resolved the stalemate without violence, without shouting, without tears. I don't know exactly why it works, but it works. It might just save our sanity.

Summer numbers

Things I left the supermarket with this morning that I would not have expected to buy:

• One pink piggy spatula
• Two miniature American flags

Things I left the supermarket with this morning that I would have rather left behind, or not brought with me in the first place:

• Two children 

People who have been bitten by their sister twice in the past two days:

• Dash

People who have been driven to the last resort by their brother who just will not listen to any other sort of dissuasion:

• Mabel

People who have to decide whom to be more annoyed with first:

• Maud

Number of bites of baby carrot Dash has had since yesterday:

• 2 (actual honest-to-god bites that were swallowed; this is huge)

Temperature, in degrees farenheit, that it is outside my house just now:

• 95

Expected high:

• 100

Heat index; that is, what it will feel like when you factor in the humidity:

• 107

Amount I hope we will go to the pool this afternoon:

• A lot.

So how was your Memorial Day?

Things I would have done differently yesterday if I had an ounce of sense:

• Looked at the forecast, noticed the number 93 beside the letter F, stayed home.
• On exiting the metro in downtown DC, set off towards the Capitol, where there was allegedly some free music happening, rather than in the opposite direction, because after one and a half monuments, and not even the one I wanted to see (the new Martin Luther King memorial) we were drooping from the heat and the kids were demanding lunch.
• Brought a packed lunch instead of a snack which was devoured in five minutes as soon as we stepped off the train, because all the food in Washington DC is on the other side of the Mall and even if you know where the cheap food court is so you don't have to pay museum-cafe prices, (we do; it's in the Old Post Office) Dash still won't eat anything except bare nachos, otherwise known as tortilla chips, and then whine for the next twenty minutes because he didn't get an ice cream for "dessert". 
• Explained up front that tortilla chips don't count as lunch, so dessert is not merited. It's not like anyone else had ice cream either.
• Made a bigger effort to get Mabel to use the bathroom at the last place we were, so that she wouldn't spend the  entire metro journey home spinning around a pole and almost firing herself off - head exactly level with chair arms - because she couldn't sit still because she desperately needed to pee.

Things at least I did do:

• Wear sunscreen, put it on the kids. 
• Wear a hat.
• Bring water.
• Bring a stroller.
• Not have to watch helplessly as my child peed her pants on the train, because she held it all the way home.

Then we got home, collapsed in a heap, and made the kids watch Star Wars so they would shut up and leave us in peace. That was a good move too, but in all I can't help thinking the day would have been better spent at the pool.

A quick run down

• Time Mabel went to sleep last night: 9.30 pm
• Time Mabel woke up last night: 2.30 am (that's actually quite good, you know)
• Time it felt like it took to get her back to sleep: 2 hours, give or take (that's not good)
• Time somebody decided to ring our phone before changing their mind: 5.15 am
• Time I actually got up: 6.45 am
• Amount I felt like running a race: Not even a little bit
• Time I left the house: 7.10 am
• Time spent loitering around once I'd attached my number to my t-shirt with safety pins and my chip to my shoe: 30 minutes
• Time the race started: 8 am
• Number of runners who streaked ahead of me very quickly: Most of them
• Number of walkers still behind me: A few, I hope
• Number of runners who passed me clearly already on their second lap while I was still completing my first: About 6
• Number of times we went around the lake: 2
• Number of fluffy ducklings I saw: 6
• Number of chipmunks who dashed across my path: 1
• Number of toddlers who mistakenly thought I might be their mama: 1
• Number of times I did not stop running: Any
• That is, because the former seems ambiguous, amount I walked: 0 cm, inches, meters, rods, poles or perches
• Number of family members I was delighted to see as I rounded the final bend: All 3 lovelies
• Amount I was surprised to find I could speed up to make a big finish: Quite a bit
• Number of kilometers I ran: 5, Baby

This is me approaching my waiting supporters
(I don't know what the guy in the grey is doing, but he's going the wrong way.)

Wild child

On afternoons when Mabel has not taken a nap but really should have, you have to watch her like a hawk, because whenever she decides that she's not getting enough attention, or just because she's a menace, bad things can happen.

In no way exhaustive list of things Mabel might do when she hasn't taken a nap:

• Find some beloved piece of Dash's artwork and take a bite out of it.
• Eat some toothpaste - the minty kind that she likes the taste of but isn't allowed use because she can't spit yet.
• Pick flowers out of the neighbours' gardens, the most prominent and pretty ones that will definitely be missed, and then present them to me with a butter-wouldn't-melt declaration that she wanted to give it to me because she loves me.
• Grab Dash's sandwich before he gets to it and take a bite, or just maul it enough to make him demand a new one, thus enraging both him and me.
• Unroll the entire roll of toilet paper.
• Eat some toilet paper.
• Declare that she doesn't like any of her toys and wants to give them all to the thrift store.
• Take all her clothes off and run down the street.
• Bang the TV remote on the floor until the back pops open and the batteries fly out; then stuff the batteries in her mouth and come to show me, if I haven't noticed already, what a bad thing she's doing.
• Demand food; eat none of it.
• Tip an entire tub of cooked pasta that I was about to put in the fridge onto the floor.
• Laugh a little too hysterically at things that aren't all that funny.
• When bedtime finally comes, fall asleep in five minutes flat.

Which last, of course, almost makes up for all that may have gone before. Almost.

Rules for co-sleeping*

*if you are under six and want me to continue sleeping with you, at least some of the time; rules for Daddy are somewhat different.**

1. Do not kick off the covers. I am cold. I need that duvet. Especially, do not lie on half the duvet and kick off the rest, so there's nothing at all left for me.  
2. Do not stick your foot down my pyjama bottoms.
3. Do not have sharp, pointy toenails.
4. Do not demand a waffle at 3am.
5. Do not barf. Ever.
6. Do not touch the other nipple. At all.
7. Do not hog the bed so that the smaller person takes up 80% of the space, leaving me to wake up perched on one shoulder, wedged against the wall, with my head on your unicorn pillow pet.

Thank you,
the Management

**Actually, come to think of it, rules for Daddy are mostly the same, except perhaps for number six. Ahem.

Things to do

Things I am not doing right now though I'd really like to:

Buying these boots (black) online or in person, even though they're reduced and I waaant them like zombies waaaant braaains, but I tried them on and they're too narrow for me and I'm not sure I want to gamble that much on the possibility that they might stretch to fit my freaky feet.

Buying these other boots (brown) which are clearly too expensive as they're the same price the first ones were before they were reduced, but these are also beautiful and I don't know yet that they don't fit me.

Rushing off to the mall where I saw it two weeks ago and buying a down jacket that was more reduced in real life than it is online, because it's too far to go and it wouldn't still be there and I'm not sure about the colour and I don't really need a down jacket except it would be nice to have something warm that was light and had a hood.

Booking tickets to go to a family wedding in Italy this summer, because the prices are just insanely crazy, and we're already going to Ireland in March because we didn't go at Christmas. But this is good, because we might finally get to have a beach holiday at the Outer Banks, which is something I've wanted to do ever since I saw the Outer Banks on a map. I imagine us looking like one of those beautiful families in one of those beachside houses in a Land's End catalogue. The truth may be sandier and more sunburned, but I'm willing to risk it.

Making oatmeal raisin cookies.

Things I am not doing right now even though I should, because I have no desire to:

Cleaning any part of my filthy house.

Sorting and filing all the papers that are ranged on the shelf where I keep my computer.

Finding the hole punch so I can file the notes from last night's committee meeting.



Most of these things are beyond my control, or my budget, but I suppose I could get cracking on the cookies.

Like I said the last time*, Ted: Aim low

Things we did not manage to do on our weekend in *New York:

• See any sights, basically, at all.
• Go up any tall buildings, not counting the modest 8-storey apartment block we were staying in.
• Keep the children to their regular nap and bedtime schedules, as we do at home.
• Feed the children a wide variety of healthy foods, as we do at ... oh, wait.
• Have birthday cake for Mabel on her birthday - but we had it for breakfast the next morning instead, before rushing out to a playground to run off the sugar.
• Go into any shops on Fifth Avenue, or any shops at all, come to that, other than the giant toystore, FAO Schwartz.
• Get any closer to Central Park than the bottom right-hand corner, where FAO Schwartz just happens to be located.
• Leave FAO Schwartz without spending more than we'd bargained for.
• Avoid acquiring baby no. 15.
• Lose any children, so that's good.
• Spend more than ten minutes in MOMA before Mabel dissolved in a puddle of misery and starvation, with me not far behind her on both counts.
• Spot B running the marathon at either mile 8 in Brooklyn, where we first looked for him, or mile 22 in Harlem, where we looked second.
• See Dooce running the marathon at a somewhat slower pace than B.
• Get irretreivably sucked into what I'm sure is an infinite loop of elevators and platforms from which our train is not leaving in the Atlantic Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. 
• Find an elevator at the 14th St/Union Square subway station, though it was clearly marked as accessible on the maps. 
• Leave the city before 4pm on Sunday, though the marathon runner was back with us by 2.00.
• Not get snarled up in the perma-traffic exiting Manhattan by the Holland Tunnel.
• Not have a pretty good time, in spite of it all.

When we got back, I remarked to a temporarily awake Dash that sometimes one of the nicest parts about going away is coming home again. The older I get, the truer it is.