Play dates

I hosted a play date this morning, I think it was 20 kids though half were infants. About a year ago a play date with this crowd was half as many kids. Fertile bunch. Would you like to know the highlights? Please, learn from my mistakes.

1. Realized that a new rule for play dates is "HIDE ALL THE PAINT" and oh yes, that includes the sidewalk paint. I caught three children with paint. Another child was caught by a mother moments before they took a swig of it (don't worry it's non-toxic according to the packaging) but not before they smeared it all over their brand new Elmo t-shirt and the patio. The child's mother was hiding from the child who kept insisting on swinging. For like an hour. Um, yes, that was MY child, thank you for asking.
2. Questioned why in the hell I vacuum and mop the floor BEFORE play dates? Might as well just start out dirty instead of wasting that energy because I will be spending quite a bit of time vacuuming play-doh and crushed goldfish crackers and mopping up what I really hope was a smashed brownie on the kitchen floor.
3. I think the whole morning could be best summed up by the fact that when I was cleaning up I realized I had some leftover lemonade (home made thank you very much) and my first thought was "oh that'd be awesome with vodka."

I will leave you with cuteness. As people were leaving my daughter waved and said "goodbye friends." It was so sweet I nearly dropped my vodka.

I'd be worried right about now

If I were a celebrity. This is apparently, the week that everybody died. I think we all need to take a good hard look at Vince the Shamwow guy when investigating the untimely death of Billy Mays. If you'll beat up a hooker, you'll knock off the Oxyclean guy that's for sure.

I am happy to report someone who is still very much alive and kickin', Eric Carle. He just turned 80. Seriously, check out his blog. He is exactly who you would expect would write the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I don't really remember his books from my childhood but we have several of them for Ellie and we both love reading them. So that's your thing/person that doesn't suck today.

I dare you

Bet you can't get through all of this without wanting to poke your eyes out or take a shower. Don't worry, it's safe for work and contains no graphic imagery. It is disturbing though.

http://www.findingmygoddess.com/

Trickery

Today I was getting lunch ready and was trying to keep my daughter occupied for a few minutes so I (gasp) offered up Sesame Street. We've got a few of them on the DVR for just such an occasion. I turned on the Bookaneers episode with Tina Fey (one of my faves) but before the episode started they said "stick around" for Sesame Street. My daughter heard that and got convinced that "stick around" was some sort of awesome show and oh my god, she wanted to watch it. When the bookaneers came on she kept saying "stick around! stick around!" and at that point I was trying to explain, to no avail, what they meant by stick around. Finally it dawned on me. I am the one with the superior intellect here (well, theoretically) so I dug around and found a DVD and said "oh look, it's the stick around DVD, let's watch this." Amazingly, problem solved.

Here's something that doesn't suck today. The book McDuff Comes Home. We like it because McDuff is a little white dog just like ours. McDuff doesn't seem to have an obsessive licking habit though and that makes him eminently more appealing. It occurred to me just this week that the the author of the McDuff books is also the author of the Max and Ruby books as well. We were talking about Max and Ruby the other day at a playdate. Because where are their parents as they take the bus downtown and blow all their money and have to call grandma to pick them up? One of the moms says that a "theory she heard" was that Max and Ruby's adventures are imaginary. And I'm thinking a theory you heard? Are there scholarly journals delving into this literary mystery? If so then I'm really quite relieved as I'm nowhere near that obsessed in my deconstruction of children's books. But really, isn't Ruby super bossy?

The cheese stands alone

The other day when the Wall Street Journal ran an article about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford being "missing" I had a few thoughts. First, the guy sounds like a total flake. His wife didn't sound all that concerned so I guess being a flake is his personality. Then I thought, why is the guy so stressed at least he has a job, it's not like he has to worry about getting fired or anything. Unless he oh, flies to Argentina to visit his mistress with whom he's been having an affair for over a year. So glad his wife didn't accompany him to his rambling god invoking press conference to fess up and apologize. You only need to watch Cops, Snapped, and any Lifetime Original movies and you will learn everything you need to know about life: You can't get away with cheating, murdering your spouse, or running away from the police when your pants are at your ankles. You especially cannot pull off any sort of infidelity and/or crime if you are a DUMBASS. Even if you claim you spent the 5 days with your lover "crying" - in Argentina. Who are you trying to win the sympathy vote from by evoking Evita Peron? Madonna? Well, she is single.

Big Gosselin news

So apparently Jon and Kate have a big announcement on their show on Monday. I've been wracking my brain all day - I've been letting the toddler survive on pixie sticks and juice boxes all day while I ruminate over WHAT that darn announcement could be. My leading theories:

1. Jon and Kate are turning their kids over to the Duggars who are quoted as saying "18 kids, 26 kids, it's all the same to us" and they all jump into the RV and head off to Dollywood.
2. In a freakish turn of events, Iran's ruling religious panel discloses that the vote recount reveals that Jon is in fact the new president of Iran. Sadly Kate cannot accompany him to his new job because her razor sharp spikes of hair in the back keep piercing the requisite head scarf.
3. Jon and Kate divorce. Kate remarries a man with 8 children of his own whose wife left him to star in a traveling cabaret act. They have a new reality show starring all 16 kids. Hilarity ensues on the wedding day when the family dogs knock over the wedding cake.
4. Jon and Kate are leaving their show. New reality show starring me will begin airing. First riveting episode will follow me over the last two nights when I am awakened by random night-time beeping and replace all smoke detector batteries only to finally discover that it's the carbon monoxide detector. Which is plugged in so, really, must you wake me in the middle of the night to tell me your BACKUP power source is in danger when the primary is just fine?

What is going on in these books?

I've written before about one of our favorite bedtime books, Bedtime for Frances. The other night we started reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Side note: my mother tells me that this book was somewhat controversial because the police in the book are represented as pigs (the title character is a donkey). I'm noticing an odd trend in these books. In both books the characters are animals - in Frances they are badgers in Sylvester they are donkeys. And in both books the parents are wearing clothes but the child is not. What's up with that? Is it only offensive for adult animals to be naked in books? Not that a naked badger is offensive, I'm just trying to figure out the rationale.

Oh and we have had this book called No No Yes Yes forever and my daughter just discovered it on the book shelf. I guess it's supposed to teach kids right and wrong - like the NO NO page shows a kid coloring on the wall and the dog and the corresponding YES YES page shows the kid coloring on paper. Well all this book has done is give my daughter the bright idea to walk around with her finger up her nose (something she never did before) and throw things in the toilet. So uh, good consumer testing whoever published that book.

Speaking of toilets that reminds me of a funny story about when my brother and I were little. We lived in a house that had an unfinished basement but had a 1/2 bath in the basement. Many of you probably know the kind - sort of scary and one you'd only use out of necessity. One day we were in the basement with my mom while she did laundry - I was 3 and he was 2. My mother noticed that the toilet in the 1/2 bath wouldn't flush and was starting to overflow. So she asked us "did somebody put something in the toilet?" My brother replied "not nails."