A topic worthy of the Presidential Debates

QUICKIE: At store, picking out a toy for Abby.  Me: “Vincenzo, what do you think Abby needs for the plane ride?”  Vincenzo: “GUNS!!!”
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Okay, so we’re all agreed, right?  This is just wrong.

 

But I’m confused.  What about this?

Begin moral/ethical discussion now.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Food, with a Possibility of Rock Band

It’s Silent G Week!

QUICKIE: Vincenzo: “I was right and you were wrong!”  Me:  “It’s not very nice to say that.”  Vincenzo, smiling big: “I was right and you were pretend right!”
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Yes, it’s “Silent G Week” as in we didn’t do G week.  Well, we kind of did…we made a couple failed ghost projects and ate a lot of gnocchi (you thought I was making it up about the silent G, didn’t you?).  Here are this week’s glosers (that G is silent, too).

Failed ghost #1: Put blob of paint on black paper, fold paper in half, then squish around.  Open up and feel depressed.

Failed ghost #2: Glue Kleenex to black paper and add googly eyes.  Let dry.  Feel depressed.

Failed ghost #3: Mod Podge a cheesecloth to a balloon (use spoons to make arms); add felt eyes/mouth; let dry overnight.
 
Okay, so that one actually did turn out but I’m not counting it because it won’t fit in the ABC book we’re making from all these projects.

Quick!  Diversion from my G inadequacies! 

Thank you, Vincenzo, for this stunning display of intelligence.

I keep forgetting to thank all y’all for voting for Vincenzo in the Dapper Baby contest.  He WON!!!  Stay tuned as I let his hair grow into long locks, buy him a set of fake teeth, purchase a frilly frock, and enter him in the every beauty pageant I can.  I will do all this while also maintaining my promise to not let this get to my/his head.

And to Trish at Pandora’s Box–congrats on your post on Good Mom/Bad Mom!  I will continue artfully crafting comments on your blog only to be denied the ability to post them.  Scrambled letters, why dost thou hate me so?

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Out @ Friends’

You Know You’re Friends When…

QUICKIE: Vincenzo, choosing a birthday card for Kevin: “Oh!  Look at the cat in a birfday helmet!”
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Abby and her parents came for dinner last night.  Here’s how you know you’ve gotten too comfortable with your friends:

1.  Whenever they visit, at least one person is not wearing pants

2.  The birthday cake for your husband has a candle shaped like the number 4 and no one asks any questions about it

3.  When your guest asks for the recipe you just served them, you are honest.  “First you brown the beef and add chili sauce; then you realize that tastes like crap so you rinse the beef off in the sink and open a can of Manwich…”

4.  Your completely potty trained children lose all control of their bodily functions and pee all over the house, you, and each other

5.  Someone goes home wearing someone else’s underwear

But the real highlight was when we went downstairs to play Rockband.  Vincenzo requested “Wanted Dead or Alive,” and he was on mic with Abby on guitar.  As soon as the song started, Vincenzo began singing, “Byomp byomp byoooommmp.”  Abby turned to him and said with admiration and awe, “He knows this song!”

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Sloppy Joes
Cauliflower Gratin
Squash with Brown Sugar and Butter
Salad with Apples and Blue Cheese
Peppermint Ice Cream Cake

Special Guest Blogger: Mr. Mouthy!

This is Mr. Mouthy here with my very first blog post ever.  I’ve got a question for the mom-o-sphere out there, what should I do in this situation.

So I am at Bellevue Square mall checking out the new kids play area.  I didn’t go alone, the son was with me – there was a creepy guy with a beard who appeared to be sans kid.  He looked kind of like Santa Claus except he had a ZZ top style straight beard, not the curly one, and had a shirt that said “Please save the comets for later” with a picture of (surprise) a comet on it.  I’m used to seeing these type of people at Microsoft but normally they don’t leave their burrows to venture into society.

Anyway, I’m getting off topic.  Vincenzo spent most of the time sitting in the speedboat giving the evil eye to anyone attempting to get in the boat with him.  Fortunately he’s been conditioned such that he’ll sit there quietly until they go away and resume the guarding of his property.  He was in there with a small-ish (I’d say 4 years old – we’ll call him “Jimmy” for discussion purposes) Asian boy when a very blond larger kid (“Biff” – witnesses have him at 5 years) comes over and sits on the front of the boat.  They all exchange glances with each other, and then Jimmy makes his move.

Jimmy starts gently pushing Biff who just sits there with a blank look on his face.  Jimmy, who isn’t making much progress in his quest to push Biff off the boat keeps escalating the violence over the course of about a minute until he whacks Biff in the face.  Biff now grabs Jimmy and they start an all out brawl in the boat.  The battle eventually spills out of the boat and the kids are rolling around on the ground.  Kids can be very innovative when it comes to wrestling moves and I saw everything from groin kicking to hair pulling and everything in between.

Now I’m standing there watching this develop – occasionally looking around to see if I could figure out who owns these two kids.  Being the only adult nearby, parents are now giving me looks as if I own one of both of them as they both were screeching like cats in heat.  This probably went on for a good two or three minutes before Biff’s dad put down his iPhone and pulled his son out of there.  The whole time I just stood there trying to look cool.

Should I have done something here (like join the brawl myself, they’d probably be a good match for me)?  Or did I do the right thing and stay out of it?

Comment please!

Crazier than Me!

QUICKIE: Vincenzo has been pretending to be a dog for about a week straight now.  Today he looked up at me (with puppy dog eyes, of course) and asked, “Mom, when am I going to be a real dog?”
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People.  You know I love me a pair of shoes.  After US Weekly showed Madonna’s gun-heel shoes, though, I’m feeling rather dated.  I mean, I don’t have a single pair of gun-heel shoes in my closet.

I think I’d rather be seen in heel-less shoes than in those.

Oh.  Thanks for illustrating, Victoria Beckham, but I was just being fascetious.  I’m just not sure where to go from here.  Sword heels?  Sole-less shoes?  Naw.  I know!  I’ll go on-line!

Hm.  Not crazy enough.

Too crazy!  Too crazy!

Ooo!  Do those schnauzers come in half-sizes?

Basement cat approves

Ahhh, just right.  Now if only I can jimmy off the heels…

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Beef Stew Thing
Chicken Stew Thing
Salad with Candied Things
Broccoli with Parmesan and Things

Next Time I’ll Just Walk to Chicago

QUICKIE: Vincenzo, after watching the emergency landing video on the airplane: “Oh! That’s exciting!  I didn’t know we were going to land on water!”
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Oh man I’m sooooooooooo tired.  I think it has less to do with changing time zones than from being on constant vigilance at the airport yesterday.  A guy at my gate, for example, scratched his face a few times and I freaked out that he was signaling to some other face-scratch interpreter also involved in his twisted plot to kill us all.  A guy on the other side of the chairs tapped his feet the entire hour.  What kind of people tap their feet?  Nervous ones.  What might make someone nervous?  Their plan to hijack a plane and kill us all.  Etc.

Once we actually boarded the plane, these fears were mixed in with my regular fear of flying.  Every time the captain came on I’d brace myself for this kind of message: “I don’t mean to scare you folks but that last bout of turbulence we just felt was caused by an engine completely falling out of the wing.  And no matter what the flight attendants told you, that  minor change in altitude you just felt actually was something to be scared about as it was the beginning of our freefall to Earth.  And don’t worry about all that water landing information you learned in our safety video because our trajectory should bring our plane right on top of a nuclear plant.  The good news is it looks we’ll be landing three hours before estimated arrival time.  Thank you for flying with us today we hope your experience was a pleasant one.”

The other passengers on the plane might have noticed a paranoid lady lady with shifty eyes who took like 10 bathroom breaks and ate like 10 mini Twix bars.  I might have made them nervous, too, except for the giveaway clue that I wasn’t a terrorist: my bottle of diet Coke.  Because seriously, if you have plans to off yourself in a few hours, are you really going to be worrying about those last five pounds?

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Hamburgers
Poached Broccoli
Canned Peaches

F is for E Week

QUICKIE: At the moment, Vincenzo’s mermaid tricycle keeps asking, “Hi!  Can I help you?” and he keeps answering, “Yes, I’m having problems with my steering,” to which she politely asks, “Hi!  Can I help you?” to which he answers, “Yes, I’m having problems with my steering…”
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Last week we talked about how F is for fall and we did leaf projects, which I’m sure will be fondly remembered as “F is for leaves week.”  But anyway, here’s what we did:

Leaf rubbings–can’t beat an old classic, although I almost cried when I took the wrappers off some brand new crayons and broke them in half for the project.  (In my house, we lose crayons before they have a chance to get old.)

Then we traced Vincenzo’s hand, shoe and various items from around the house and looked for leaves that were shaped like them.  I helped give Vincenzo language to talk about leaves–this one has teeth on its edges, this one has fingers, this one is THE RIGHT ONE TO USE IN THIS EXACT SPOT, etc.  Then we glued the leaves down and set a phone books on top so they would dry flat.  In an incredible display of self-restraint, I didn’t once make Vincenzo repeat “f is for fffffone book.”

You know me, though–we didn’t stop there.  After the fall art, we FLEW to Kevin’s FATHER’S FOR a FILIPINO wedding with FOUR FLOWERGIRLS FOLLOWED by FANCY FINGERFOOD and FIRST dances.  F is everywhere you look, and while I’m constantly aware of it I just don’t FEEL like pointing it all out to Vincenzo and planning activities around it.  So while I have further solidified my own understanding of the letter F, Vincenzo has spent all week pretending to be an unhatched egg under a blanket.  He played with his new elephant stuffed animal.  We watchd eggs hatch on YouTube.  (As a side note, when the mother robin carried off part of the shell, Vincenzo guessed that she was taking it somewhere to do a project.) 

In summary, F is for leaves and F is for eggs and F is possibly for fone books and I guess that means F is for FAIL.  Anyway, do what I did for your child.  Book a flight, eat some fancy fingerfood, turn on a football game, and have an effing week.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:b
Still at the hands of MIL

Time for Change!

QUICKIE: Vincenzo, in bathtub: “Daddy’s penis is so big compared to mine, Mommy.”
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No, this isn’t one of fifty billion political blog posts out there.  I’m just giving you a head’s up that in the next couple days I will (hopefully) be switching over to a wordpress blog.  What does this mean to you?  Absolutely nothing, except that it will be easier to comment and there will be no more freaky blue people representing you in the comment section anymore.  Now it will be up to you to represent your own freaky selves.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Wedding Fare

White on White

QUICKIE: Grandpa to Vincenzo: “Are you going to vote for McCain or Obama?”  Vincenzo: “I’m going to vote for Mama!”
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My husband’s grandparents are very dear and cherished in the family.  I’ll never forget the first time I met Grandma B and she lured me away from everyone else to show me two porcelain frogs.  She asked if I knew how to tell a girl frog from a boy frog and when I said I didn’t, she turned them over to reveal, yes, one frog sporting a pair of hoo-has and the other with some serious frog sausage.  We got her back last year when we sent her a coconut-carved monkey that was, let’s say, VERY happy to see her.

Grandma B had only one son but wishes she could have had more children.  The reason she didn’t is because after she gave birth the doctor told her she should wait awhile before having her second.  She is STILL waiting for him to call back.

She has been known to wrap up rolls of TP, single rubber gloves, and packets of “snowman poop” for Christmas gifts in order to make sure everyone has an equal amount of gifts to unwrap come Christmas morn’.

Even though we know what to expect when Grandma B comes around, we still NEVER know what to expect.  Today when asked who she was voting for, Grandma answered with this incredibly patriotic speech: “Oh, you know, the white guy.  McCain?  I don’t want to vote for the Black because he’s friends with Oprah and in four years she’d be in office with him and after that she’d be running for president and I don’t like Oprah and don’t want her for president.”

I think I’ve got a little tear in my eye.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Ask MIL!

n00bie pants

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