The Last Supper

My youngest son spent the first year of his life despising his bottle.

For this reason, it seems unjust and cruel that now that Cameron has finally made a friend, he has to give him up.

"It's time to say good-bye!" chirped his doctors at the end of our last office visit. "It's sippy cup time!"

As grateful as I was, I knew the news would not go over well with the party in question. Because of this, I delayed telling him for over a week.

"It's a cruel world," I told my son as I tossed a handful of bottles into the kitchen trash can under the approving eye of a visiting therapist.

Cameron howled in agony. The therapist congratulated us on our collective strength and courage.

I nodded proudly and smiled. Everyone likes to receive compliments. Especially ones that are true.

After the therapist left my house, I dug one of the bottles out of the trash and prepared it for my son. Then I poured myself a glass of milk.

Everyone deserves a last supper.

The Farm

One of my former students is now a veterinarian at a large farm in the country. Every spring, she pesters me to bring my kids out to see the animals.

"I'm going to be on vacation for the next two weeks, but please come by anyway!" she wrote in an email. "I'll tell them that you're coming."

As luck would have it, I timed this year's visit perfectly. To my boys' delight (my daughter was in school), the barnyard was littered with hundreds of sheep and their lambs.

In the middle of our self-guided tour, a large truck pulled up. A man got out and began loading the animals into its back.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Without looking at me, the man grunted, "Easter."

Upon hearing this, my heart skipped a beat. "People give their kids lambs for Easter?" I asked incredulously.

A pair of fertile bunnies, a plastic swimming pool full of chicks, a pygmy goat: all are appropriate Easter basket fillers. But a real live sheep? The thought struck me as ridiculous.

Nevertheless, I immediately began the challenging task of mentally rearranging the furniture in my house to make room for one, possibly two barnyard animals.

The truck driver looked at me like I had the brain of a sheep.

"They're not for Easter baskets, ma'am," he told me. "They're for Easter dinner."

Somehow in all of the commotion of the barnyard, I had forgotten that when you order "Leg of Lamb" at a restaurant, you are really eating the leg of a lamb.

I gulped and covered my kids' ears, but it was too late. They were already traumatized. Cortlen shrugged his shoulders and went over to another part of the barn to watch the dairy cows urinate. Kellen picked up a couple of kernels of hog feed and put them into his mouth.

"You should try this," he said with outstretched hands. "It's pretty good."

The tension was more than I could stand. I gathered my offspring together and explained the circle of life in great detail. I also drew a diagram of the food chain in the mud with a stick.

My teaching moment was interrupted by a loud honk. The truck driver had finished his business and was ready to go. We were standing in his way.

Although my lecture was far from finished, I took some comfort in the fact that my speech had prepared my sons for this moment.

"Good-bye sheep!" yelled my boys, waving their arms wildly as the truck rumbled down the road. "Have fun eating your prey! See you soon!"

Or not.

Hello! I Need a Hug!

Some people scream, cry, and threaten to run away when they feel persecuted. My seven-year-old daughter does all of these things, plus tapes signs on the front of her bedroom door like this:


Translation:
Do not come in without permission. You may barge in only if you hate me. Send my food upstairs to eat.

Proving our collective dislike for Camber, the rest of our family pushed our way into her room and tackled her in a group hug. We were kicked out almost immediately. Feeling guilty for adding insult to injury, a few minutes later I asked Cortlen to stuff a tube of yogurt under her door. My peace offering was accepted. Reluctantly.

World Record Holder!!!!

One of my life goals has always been to break a world record. After disqualifying several high school track & field relay teams by dropping batons, running around hurdles, and accidentally running in other teams' lanes, I decided that my chances of making the Olympics were very slim. And so I turned to Guinness.
After a failed attempt in my late teens to grow my fingernails into four-foot claws, I set my sights on country line dancing my way into the history books. This horrific experience dampened my self-confidence for several years. Only recently have I mustered the courage to try again. Shortly after the birth of my twins, I became quite convinced of my ability to eat the most Twinkies in an hour. One particularly hideous afternoon, I ate a dozen creme-filled cakes in one sitting. I haven't touched the delicacy since.

Given my sheer number of failed attempts at greatness, you can understand why I was becoming a bit panicked about the prospect of crossing the threshold into middle age without a trophy or medal or fill-in paper certificate. You can also understand why I jumped at The Great Wolf Lodge's invitation to participate in the resort's attempt to break the Guinness World Record for "longest distance water sliding in 24 hours at multiple venues" held in honor of the opening of their newest water slide, the Double Barrel Drop.

For the story, click HERE

The Speech Therapist

Over the past couple of months, Cameron has had a number of tests to evaluate different aspects of his growth and development. Most of you know that he's had a hard time recovering from his exposure to Fifth Disease in utero. Given the fact that he's 1 1/2 and makes very few sounds, it came as no surprise to find speech therapy added to the list of in-home services recommended by Early Intervention.

Cameron's new speech therapist is a sweet grandmotherly sort of woman who wears a fishing vest to every visit (for unknown reasons), smells like grapefruit, and has long, fluorescent orange fingernails and a red Mustang convertible. In short, she's pretty much what I want to be when I grow up.

Today was only our third therapy session, but I can already tell that it is going to be very successful. Cameron shuts his eyes whenever the therapist talks to him and bats her hands away when she tries to teach him how to sign specific words.

In today's write-up, the speech therapist described my son as "combative" and "resistant to learning."

Fortunately, she gave me a copy of the form for my records.

Definitely scrapbook material.

The Topiary

"I have the winter blues," I whined yesterday on the phone to a friend who lives in California.

It's unconstitutional to still be wearing a wool coat and gloves.

"What you need is a topiary," my friend told me matter-of-factly.

The relationship between a manicured shrub and personal happiness eluded me at first, but the more photographs of topiaries that I viewed online, the more confident that I became in my conviction to have one on my front porch by the end of the day.



I ran into my first big hurdle at the local garden center, where I learned that real topiaries are not available until early spring in Philadelphia (ie. July) and when they are in stock, they cost $300. It took some work, but I found an acceptable substitute at a craft store for $24.99 with a coupon.

When I got home, I planted the bush in a large garden pot. I filled in the gaps with crumpled newspaper and old blankets and then covered everything with a bag of Spanish moss. In the end, I was very proud of myself. As long as one stayed at least 10 feet away from the object and didn't try to touch or smell it, one would never know that its leaves were plastic.

After depositing my ingenious creation on the slab of concrete next to my front door, I went inside and waited to be overwhelmed with happiness. I never was overtaken by joy, but the sight of my beloved topiary the next morning did take my breath away.

"Argh!" I yelled in horror. "What happened?"

Overnight, the wind had uprooted the plant from its secure moorings and deposited it in the middle of my front lawn. Ten dollars worth of Spanish moss was missing. The front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer was wrapped around the base of my neighbor's mailbox.

"You put a fake houseplant outside?" my friend asked incredulously a few hours later.

The way that she asked this question made it seem like my idea was not a good one.

After an afternoon of deep soul-searching and a second trip to the craft store for another bag of Spanish moss, I have decided that I am not a topiary person.

My topiary, in it's new home in the garage.

Hearing Voices

This afternoon, I found Cortlen crying on the sofa.

"What's up?" I asked as I plopped down next to him. While I waited for his reply, I began flipping through a stack of mail.

"I'm hearing voices," he told me.

I put down the mail.

"What kind of voices?" I asked.

"Bad ones."

"What do they say?" I wanted to know.

"They tell me to do something that I don't want to do," he answered.

"Like what?" I prodded. By this point, I was quite concerned.

"They tell me to say the word 'poopie' really loud." He covered his mouth to stifle a giggle.

"All right," I said, standing up. At the same time, my son collapsed on the floor in a fit of hysterics.

"Way to stay strong," I commended, as a symphony of fart sounds emanated from his armpit.

Six-year-old boys rock.

Vacation Awesomeness

Apologies for my abrupt departure last week. My husband has been doing a lot of work in the South as of late. Last Monday afternoon, he called me from Atlanta.

"Hey," he joked, "Why don't you drive down here with the kids and spend a week?"

Forty-five minutes later, I was on the road. I made it as far as Baltimore before the consequences of my impulsive decision-making fully sank in. After pulling off at the next rest stop, I did the following things in the following order:

1. Confiscated what was left (there wasn't much) of the package of Styrofoam cups that I had inadvertently left in the back seat of my car.

2. Made the compulsive seat kicker switch seats so he was no longer sitting in directly in back of me and was instead, sitting behind his twin brother.

3. Told the compulsive urinator that he would be deprived of any further beverages until we reached Richmond.

4. Temporarily relinquished my I-Pod to my daughter on the condition that she not criticize any occupant of the car for at least one hour.

5. Spent a small fortune booking my husband a last minute one-way airline ticket.

"Get to the airport quick!" I told him. "I'm picking you up in Raleigh in four hours."

My unplanned vacation was filled with magical moments, most of which took place between the hours of 7-9pm in my husband's 400 square-foot studio apartment.

"Be quiet and go to sleep!" I screeched at least a million times to my squirming, giggling offspring. "There are people all around us!" I pointed to the ceiling, floor, and walls.

I learned the hard way that apartment living is an abstract construct to children who grow up in houses.

The most memorable experience of the week by far, however, occurred not in a high-rise apartment building, but in a high-end eatery known as Burger King. I was there eating lunch with my kids one day when I noticed a woman at a nearby table wrinkle her nose at us and turn away in disgust.

I assumed the woman's reaction to my family had something to do either with the 52 paper cups of ketchup that sat on the table before us or the fact that my eighteen-month-old was systematically dipping his french fries into each of them, or maybe both. I too, am sometimes repulsed by my kids' love of condiments.

After a few minutes of glaring and sneering, the woman couldn't take it anymore and approached our table.

"Excuse me," she said to me. "Did you spill something?"

I looked around, suspiciously. Miraculously, all of my kids' cups were in their upright positions.

"I don't think so," I replied.

"Did your baby spill something?" the woman clarified. By this point, her hands were on her hips.

I glanced under Cameron's high chair and saw the puddle on the floor. Then I felt his diaper.

Faced with such overwhelming physical evidence, I was only left with one option: to lie through my teeth.

"My baby is totally dry," I told the woman, shrugging my shoulders. "I don't know what to say."

The woman stomped back to her table and gave a report to her husband.

"She says her baby is dry!" she shrieked indignantly.

I went back to eating my french fries. I waited until the woman and her husband left the restaurant before asking the manager for a mop.

Vacation!

I haven't taken a blog vacation in over a year...I'm long overdue! My kids are out of school and I'm going on break too!!! I'll see you in a couple of days.

I don't say this nearly enough: Thanks for reading my blog. It's super fun to write. I'm having a blast.

* Lice
* A U.S. Airlines telephone operator
* Inspector Hector Plaque Detector


* A three-legged dog not on a leash
* Two hard to open Taco Bell sauce packets

I had run-ins with all of the above today.

"My teacher says that we have to wash everything in our whole house!" my daughter told me as she handed me a decontamination checklist.

Nothing excites me more than the task that awaits.

The Born Again Mom

On Monday, my daughter "forgot" to put her homework folder in her backpack at the end of the school day.

On Tuesday, she brought the folder home, but it was empty.

"I forgot!" she insisted.

On Wednesday morning, I tied a piece of red yarn around her pointer finger.

When she came home from school on the third consecutive day without any busy work, I emailed her teacher.

Today, the homework folder made it home, its contents intact.

"Praise the Lord!" I shouted.

My daughter dumped her backpack on the floor and locked herself in the bathroom.

"I'm not doing my homework!" she proclaimed.

"Open up!"I said. Gentle taps gradually gave way to soft pounding.

After a few minutes, I forgot the overall objective of my actions. Did I have to use the bathroom? Did I need to wash my hands? Why was I knocking on the door? Confused, I retired to the sofa, where my eighteen-month-old was waiting with a picture book that I've read to him no fewer than 500 times.

Several minutes later, my daughter emerged from the bathroom and sauntered over to where I was sitting.

"Why did you stop knocking on the door?" she asked, hands on her hips. "Isn't that what a mom is supposed to do?"

"Huh?" I asked, looking up from the book.

She tapped her foot. "You're supposed to beg me to do my homework," she continued.

Her presence jogged my memory. I shrugged my shoulders and looked disinterested. "I don't do that anymore," I replied. "I've been born again."

My daughter was not interested in knowing more about what that meant. She only wanted to drive home the point that I had failed her.

"You don't even care!" she wailed.

"I do care," I replied. By this time, I was in the bathroom, washing my hands in preparation for making dinner. On my way out, I closed the door. Camber and I both heard the dreaded click.

"You didn't unlock the door after your freak out," I said matter-of-factly.

Without any prompting, Camber decided that it was a good time to abandon her lamentations and start doing her homework.

I spent the next thirty minutes trying to pick the lock from the outside.

"I need to get in there," my daughter told me in the middle of my labors. She was holding her crotch. "Can you hurry up and open the door?"

"Use another bathroom," I said through gritted teeth. My husband can open locked doors in 5 seconds; I lack the magic touch.

My daughter groaned and stomped off. Walking up a flight of stairs is sooooo inconvenient.

The Sleepover Party

With three kids born so close together, one of my concerns has always been about developing individual relationships. It's important for my kids to do things in pairs, as well as in groups.

Today, Camber and Cortlen fought so much with each other that they earned their own private sleepover party.

"No fair!" yelled Kellen, crossing his arms.

The odd man out felt better when I assured him that there would be no popcorn or soda at this get together.

"You two are sleeping down here tonight," I told Camber and Cortlen at bedtime, tossing their blankets and pillows on the family room floor. "Together."

The screams of torture could be heard in Antarctica.

"Watch it," I warned, "Or next you'll be sharing a room."

This was one party that I didn't have to supervise. The muffled screams of indignation assured me that the event was a big success.

"MOM! TELL HIM/HER TO STOP LOOKING AT/KICKING/PINCHING/THREATENING TO PINCH/HITTING/SNIFFING/FLICKING/GROWLING AT ME!"

The incessant pleas for intervention lasted (and when unanswered) for almost two hours, during which time I remained cautiously optimistic that I would not lose my temper.

It has been quiet now for 15 minutes.

I'm not sure who feels more punished--my kids or me.

In Like a Lion

The snow is still knee deep on my front lawn, but don't tell that to my daughter. Believing that dressing for springtime will actually hasten its arrival, she has taken to wearing shorts and flip flops around town.

"I want to get out of here right now!" she cried, burrowing her head into my shoulder. Freezing temperatures and a mall food court closed for renovations forced us into the toy department of a large discount super center... for the third day in a row.

"Everyone is staring at me!" she hissed. I looked up from a display of robot action figures to find three women with pursed lips and raised eyebrows standing at the end of the aisle.

One of the women actually clucked at me.

I sighed and patted my daughter on the back. She was shivering and covered with goose bumps.

"They're not looking at you," I assured her and smiled. "They're judging me."

Better Than the Bank

Everyone has a special place where they hide cash.

Some stuff their money under mattresses. Others stash bills in cookie jars, in sock drawers, or between the pages of old books. A guy in The New Testament buried his savings in his backyard. I know a few people who use banks.

Most members of my family store their money in my home's air vents.


"What are doing over there?" I asked my six-year-old son this afternoon.

Kellen was hovered over the vent in the corner of my kitchen. He jumped in surprise when I called his name.

"Not much," he replied. In his right hand, he clutched several quarters which he had removed from my cup holder in the car.

As I was putting two and two together, Cameron scooted over and attempted to insert a dollar bill into the vent. Cortlen stood behind him, holding an empty piggy bank, clapping.

"Good job!" he praised.

"How much money is down there?" I asked as I frantically looked for a flashlight.

My conservative estimate is $13.00, mostly in dimes and nickels.

I went into the bathroom to take a breather. When I returned, Kellen asked if I could help him dig out a dollar or two. The rest of the coins were to go untouched. "When we go to the store tomorrow," he told me, "I think I want to buy something."

****
Where is the craziest place where your kids have stashed something?

Double Joy

In early December, my daughter and I went to the store. I bought her a pair of sneakers. Her choice.

"You're sure that's what you want?" I asked before pulling out my credit card.
My then six-year-old assured me that she loved the shoes and would probably get married in them.

The next morning, my daughter put on her new shoes and ran around our yard for three minutes. When she returned, she tossed the shoes on the kitchen counter.

"I've decided I don't like these shoes," she told me. "I want you to take them back."

My explanation of why that was not an option was not well received.
"So what if there's mud all over them?" she cried. "Someone will wear them!"

She never did fully accept the idea that that person was her.

Shortly after this episode, the shoes disappeared from the shoe racks in the garage. Countless hours of searching failed to turn up the despised foot coverings.

"Oh well!" my daughter said when I announced that I had given up looking for them.

You can imagine my daughter's excitement when she came home from school the next day to find a pair of the exact same sneakers sitting on her bed.

"Surprise!" I shouted. "I bought you another pair!"
My daughter's joy was palpable.

Today, my daughter has two reasons to rejoice. My clothes dryer is about ready to give up the ghost. When I moved the appliance away from the wall to perform its last rites, the missing shoes came into view.




"

Door-to-Door Fundraiser Sales

In my neighborhood, there is a girl named Jody who plays the clarinet in the high school marching band. Last summer, she climbed a neighbor's tree and couldn't get down. The fire department had to rescue her. What Jody lacks in common sense, she more than makes up for in well-roundedness. In addition to being a musician, she is also a Girl Scout, 4-H member, and the scorekeeper for the girls' junior varsity basketball team.

I know all of this because every two weeks Jody rings my doorbell.

"I'm selling this to raise money for a band trip/sleepover at the aquarium/herd of miniature goats/monogrammed t-shirt."

Jody will say this as she holds up a laminated picture of a frozen pizza/tub of refrigerated cookie dough/coupon book.

I've purchased a couple of things from Jody over the past year. Jody's visits to my house have decreased significantly in number, however, ever since I hinted that I would be more likely to buy something that I don't need from someone who helped me shovel the driveway after it snows.

Yesterday, it was desperation that brought Jody to my door.

"I need to sell 23 more of these if I want to go to a band competition in Newark next month," she told me. She held out a box of chocolate bars.

If I were her, I would sell 23 chocolate bars to avoid going anywhere near Newark, but I kept my opinions about that part of New Jersey to myself.

"Hmmm,"I said, scratching my head. "I don't know. I have a hard time with chocolate on account of my Crohn's Disease," I told her.

Jody looked confused, but shrugged it off. She asked me flat out if I would buy her remaining supply.

I told her I would consider it if she would agree to watch my kids this Friday night so my husband and I can go out to dinner.

Jody ran down my driveway.

Suddenly Newark seemed less desirable.

Boy v. Food

A few weeks ago, my husband showed my boys an episode of Man v. Food. Over the course of an hour, the host ate a pizza the size of a side table.

Later that night, I caught Cortlen and Kellen in front of the mirror. They were measuring the width of their mouths with rulers.

"Do you think a 48-ounce steak would fit in here?" Cortlen asked his brother, opening his mouth as wide as he could.

"I could eat 77 doughnuts if Mom would let me," Kellen bragged.

Needless to say, every meal has the potential to turn into an eating contest.

"I'll have 17 bean burritos please," Cortlen told the cashier at Taco Bell yesterday.

"Minus sixteen," I corrected.

I was charged for 17 burritos.

By the time the accounting error was fixed, Cortlen and Kellen were gagging. They each had half of a burrito hanging from their lips.

"That is totally nasty," I told them. "Not to mention really bad manners."

Kellen tried to correct me. What he and his brother were doing was not rude or repulsive, but necessary in order to meet the basic requisites of manhood.

Three words into his manifesto, the burrito got the best of him. A large wad of partially chewed food tumbled out of his mouth...and landed on my taco.

"I think I'm going to cry," I announced to the occupants of my table.

My son snatched the burrito off my lunch and shoved it into his mouth. He had come too far to be disqualified by such misfortune.

"You're going to cry?" he asked, genuinely perplexed. "Why?"

Ski Bunny

I'm pretty much over winter. Philadelphia has other plans.

Thanks to last week's storm, my front yard looks like Mount Everest. The snow accumulation is easily waist high.

"That's not melting until June," predicted one of my neighbors, a very nice man in his early seventies.

I asked him if he would make snow angels with me on Memorial Day. I would be wearing my very sexy plaid mom tankini of course.

He shuddered and went inside.