Category: Uncategorized

It's been so nice lately that the kids are just begging to go outdoors.

Today I let Shep spend part of his quiet time outside. I really needed to get some work done, so I asked him to stay on the patio where I could keep an eye on him.

After about 20 minutes he came bursting inside yelling, "Mom! I've made something! DOG POOP!"

And then for ten minutes I listened to him explain that when you combine sand, dirt, and water, you can, in fact, make the most amazing version of dog poop, you know, ever.

And that is how we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in these here parts.

We're stuck in the doldrums of February. All that pretty white snow has melted and turned the ground into mush. The grey clouds have rolled in and unpacked their furniture—they're clearly here to stay a while. And it's been just cold enough to make being outside (should you find a not-so-muddy patch of ground) a bit uncomfortable.

But life just keeps thumping along, so I'm trying to keep up. The car was due for the 60,000 mile service. When I called to inquire about it I said, "So what am I looking at here?" The nice man in service gave me a price, which caused me to chuckle. Although the price is important, it is also unavoidable, so why even bother to put much thought into it? What I'm interested in is HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE? Three hours, my friends. Needless to say, I've been avoiding this appointment.

So today, faced with an empty schedule, I got all crazy and called to see if they could squeeze me in. And they could. And I went. With two mobile children under four. And you know what? It wasn't too bad.

I freely admit that sometimes stuff like this stinks no matter how hard you try. But sometimes, I think if you can will it to go well, it does. Today was one of the latter.

After we dropped off the car, I popped everyone in the stroller, and we walked about a mile to the mall where there's an indoor play area. We played. We walked. We took a bathroom break. We bundled up and walked to Panera for bagels and then settled into Chipotle for the rest of lunch. Why not go two places? We have three hours to kill.

Over lunch, as Shep surveyed his bagel, fruit cup, and quesadilla, he looked up with a big smile and said, "This is the best lunch ever. Way better than lunch at home."

From there we walked to Target and then headed back to the dealership 15 minutes later than our car was due to be finished. Which, you know, is probably good since it was another 45 minutes before our car was ready. Which, bless them, the kids hung in there for.

It didn't pour buckets. There were no (big) tantrums. We checked a big "to do" off the list. And I think we actually had more fun than we would have staying at home.

A good day. But, now that I think about it, how could it not be when you start the day with a certificate of commendation for making the bed?

School was canceled. I wasn't surprised, as it required three people to push me up a hill on my way home from picking up Neko from school yesterday. What a mess.

Anyway, it's a snow day today.

I've often said that my countertops are an indicator of my general state of mind. The countertops are filled to the edges. There are pieces of pipe cleaners all over the place because did you know kids can spend nearly 45 minutes cutting pipe cleaners into small pieces? Awesome.

However, the worst moment of the morning happened when I noticed I hadn't seen Shep in a while. He'd scurried off about fifteen minutes earlier to the bathroom, looking like things were pretty urgent. So I wandered into the bathroom to discover an awful scene. I actually documented it, but in my snow day frenzy I somehow deleted the photos off the memory card. Shep, you lucked out on that.

Anyway, first of all, he didn't make it to the toilet. So there's that. And then he discovered that if you get toilet paper wet, and then throw it at the wall, it sticks. And he discovered this over and over until he'd filled a good part of two walls of the bathroom with wet toilet paper (thankfully, he used water).

So I cleaned up poop and pulled toilet paper off walls and then put Shep's stock pot in time out for 24 hours.

Thankfully, my parents and Bonnie took the kids for a few hours while I pulled the house back together. The countertops are once again clean-ish.

I still can't believe I deleted that photo.

I should know by now, life with Neko does not go as planned.

My plan was to get up, grab breakfast, and go to the Natural History Museum. Which, I think, would have been a perfect plan.

However, Neko's plan involved ice skating at Rockefeller Center first thing in the morning, which I had originally slated for Monday. The key to a short wait is to go early. It begins at 8:30am, which I assumed would be no problem to achieve, since Neko regularly wakes up at 6am at our house. Fine…quick skating, then off to the museum!

Well, we woke up at 8:15am. This is unheard of. And it meant we threw on clothes and sped off to Rockefeller in record time. When we arrived the first round of skaters was already on the ice. Neko insisted we stay, and we did indeed make it on the ice by 9:15am, but were back off by 9:45am at her request. I think we're spoiled by the conditions at our local rink, which is meticulously groomed. The ice was choppy and the rink was small, but Neko was delirious that we were really doing it, right next to that fantastic tree.

Great! Time for the museum! Not quite. I won't go into it but…ugh…earmuffs. There goes another hour and a half. (But we did get to pass by the Saks window, which had a great display based on their A Flake Like Mike book.)

Finally, we arrived at the museum. And I was right—that was the perfect outing. We clocked in at over five hours, and I'm not sure we saw even half of what was there.

Our first stop was the lizard and snake exhibit, which, omigosh, was perfect for my lizard-loving child. We spent a long time watching the burmese python, which was quite happy and content with Neko watching it, but when two other rowdy kids came over, it was not pleased. I have omitted the photo of its reaction on behalf of my snake-timid friends, but if you'd like to see it, click here.

Then we stumbled on the children's Discovery Room, which was nearly empty. I nearly burst when I discovered the life-sized skeleton of a Prestosuchus (a 14-foot long reptile from the late Triassic Period) which kids can assemble. There are drawers of bones, and you can put the whole thing together. Neko was fascinated, and if she had been one year older, I think we would have spent the next hour assembling. One of the people running the room noticed her interest, and pulled out an excavation activity that she "reserves only for very interested paleontologists". The picture of Neko kneeling by the box is her hard at work at her task. Another jackpot in the Discovery Room was the large lizard that was available for petting. Did I mention we're into lizards?

Other highlights included an IMAX movie (with no babies to make us vacate mid-way), dinosaurs of all kinds and varieties, a life-size replica of a blue whale, and a live butterfly exhibit.

The butterfly exhibit was both breathtaking and heartbreaking all rolled into one. Neko desperately wanted to hold every butterfly, and she is so gentle with them. She knows to place your hand close to their legs and then ease them on without touching the wings. The catch? You're not supposed to do that. You're only supposed to hold them if they land on you. I let her scoop up one or two, and then noticed us getting the eye from one of the staff. From that point on she tried so hard to follow the rules, which is excruciating when you are five and all these butterflies that would willingly sit on your hand are there for the scooping. She could have stayed there for hours, and I only managed to get her out the door by using every parenting skill in the book. And perhaps a little bribery.

As I fall asleep tonight, I'm going to see if I can figure out how to fit the whole museum in our suitcase, since I suspect it will be years before we return. It might be possible…

Before I was a parent, I probably never would have thought that one day a show called “Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks” would be playing on my television. But here we are, and my children are enraptured by tales of characters named things like Big Wheelie and Junkboy.

It’s really not a bad show. Kind of like Thomas and Cars, cute little monster trucks run around and learn to share and treat each other nicely. Which is really rather ironic if you think about monster trucks as a genre in our culture, but, whatever.

So Neko and Shep get out their big plastic trucks from Target and zoom around the house at rather dangerous speeds and pretend they are the characters. During quiet time, Neko drew this picture and asked that I replace the “N my name is Neko” portion of her door sign with this drawing of Meteor. Which is, I imagine, probably not the aesthetic the original artist was going for. You know, daisies and queens and rainbows and VROOOM MASSIVE MONSTER TRUCKS.