I resolve

This year, I'm going to be reasonable about resolutions. 

Let's face it, I'm probably not going to start going to the gym in 2013.

I'm probably not going to take the Calcium supplements my obgyn has been telling me to take for ten years

I won't stop cursing though I might be able to cut out the hard stuff, aka "motherf%&^r"

I doubt I'll manage to read books on a regular basis, apart from bedtime fare which frankly, now that Primo's 8, is getting sophisticated enough as to sate much of my adult literature appetite

I'm not going to use the slow cooker I bought 

But that doesn't mean I can't make resolutions. 

I resolve to keep showing up. To life in general. To tap dance recitals and class trips and tumbling shows and informal art galleries set up in the kids' bedroom. To middle-of-the-night wakings. To sick visits at the pediatricians which occur on a bi-weekly basis in the wintertime. To homework help. To bedtime reading. To birthday parties. To the three childhoods I know I am shaping, for better or worse.

I resolve to keep trying to be thoughtful, mindful and premeditated in parenting, and hell, why not, in all that I do.

And I resolve to eat more spinach salads because they taste damn good and they're damn good for you too. 

I think that's about all I can reasonably manage. Probably a good deal more, in fact, but one has to aim high. 

Happy New Year! Here's to much peace, laughter and many a good night of sleep in 2013. 

Wanna laugh your ass off?

I've got a little Christmas gift for you . . . .

Funniest Autcorrects of 2012

I look forward to this list all year. I swear, I laugh 'til I cry.

There are chicken vaginas involved. What more enticement do you need?

Because you could use a pick-me-up

This morning, I was awoken at a very reasonable 7am by the sound of the baby guffawing in the living room. Seriously, she was chortling so hard I thought she was crying at first. Then I heard David say, "Was that funny? Yeah, that was funny."

I rolled out of bed into the living room and asked what he'd done to make her laugh so hard.

"I didn't do anything," he said, "She made herself laugh. She farted so loud that she cracked herself up."

She was still smiling, satisfied with herself.

"Well, we know for sure now that she's a member of this family," he added.

What a wau to wake up.

Brave Mother

There are few events I've found as hard to talk about as the tragedy at Newtown; I think we all feel this way. There's no insights I can make, nothing I can observe, I can't even really find the words to describe the awful sadness and the terrible fear in my heart. But this woman, this mother, has something to say, which I think is insightful and important and eye-opening, and you should read it, if you haven't already:

I am Adam Lanza's Mother 

As a writer, and as a mother I stand awed by the courage this woman. And I thank her too, because in a tremendously powerful way, she's made us look at something we want to ignore, but can't.

Shitty Christmas Gifts For Your Kids

I just died laughing at this blog post by Drew at Deadspin.com on  Shitty Christmas Presents For Your Kids. Died.

My highlights? His description of giving clothes as gifts (someone should clue my mother in because every year she gives clothes to the kids and every year they almost vomit in thier mouth and I have to yell at them for being ingrates and the whole thing is a big pain in my ass) :

"Clothes aren't a gift. Children know full well that you bought them that shirt for your own sake, so that you could treat little Kayleighanna as your own personal American Girl doll. They aren't falling for that."

His riff on the outrageous cost of American Girl dolls (which we, by some act of grace have thus managed to avoid mainly because I tell Sec "Uh huh, don't even think of asking for one - they're too expensive):

"Is she an ACTUAL girl? Can she grow up to help with dishes and whatnot?"

His definition of Duplos:

"giant Legos made for stupid children"

And his tirade at parents that give their kids his own (or, as he puts it "its own") Ipad:

"Screw you. Your child is an entitled little shit and I hope he trips and falls in the mud and his little iPad gets ruined and he cries all the way home in the back of your BMW SUV because you clearly own a BMW SUV."

I think Drew is my ideal match blogger husband. If we raised kids together, our offspring would curse like sailors and have VERY good taste in everything.

Moving makes you hot again?

Our first morning in our new apartment, I was getting dressed and could not find a pair of underwear. After rooting through my suitcases and boxes for a few minutes, I stumbled upon a very lovely pair of lace-trimmed 100 percent silk Mary Green boy-panties. The last time I wore them, I had only one child.

"Ugh," I said, "Where's my REAL underwear?"

But since it was drop-off time, I pulled the fancy panties on and proceeded to look for a pair of pants to wear. David came in the bedroom and saw me bending over my suitcase, donning sexy underwear. It was very disconcerting for him.

"Nice panties," he said.

"They were the only ones I could find," I complained.

"I like moving," he replied. He liked it even more when the only pair of pants I could find were super-tight skinny jeans that are so damn uncomfortable I haven't worn them in half a decade. That's how it's been going all week for me -- being forced to wear the really nice, good-looking apparel I should wear in the first place but am usually too lazy and homely and old to cope with. I've been getting compliments left and right and several people have asked if I lost weight. And those people aren't even privy to the Moulin-Rouge-type baby-blue ruffled thongs I'm wearing underneath.

Moving has made me hot again. But don't worry as soon as I can locate my Park Slope Frump Uniform, i'll be back in it.

What doesn't kill you makes you pissed off and exhausted: or Moving!

So, we moved.

Like how I said that like it was no big deal?

Ha.

The only reason I haven't been blogging about the long, drawn-out home-buying-and-selling nachtmar which has dominated the better part of a year is because it is so unthinkably BORING I wouldn't want to punish you people with any of it.

Of course now that its over, I can punish away.

Here's the short version: The five of us were living in a one bedroom apartment. Before baby came, when it was just four of us, somehow it was OK. Not great. Pretty stinking miserable, but OK. For some crazy reason, during my pregnancy, I thought it would STILL be Ok once Baby came. I blame the hormones. That, and who, given any other alternative, even living with three kids and a husband in a one bedroom apartment, would ever want to tackle the misery of moving?

But as soon as Terza touched down, it became exceedingly clear that we would not be faring well if we stayed in our tiny place. Maybe if all of us, or even any of us, were more low-key, it would work. But all my kids, and David and me most of all are high-maintenance, loud, inflexible people who it is frequently hard to share a room with. And when you only have two rooms, total, and five people to share them, this means unpleasantness. It wasn't even that I minded so much hissing incessantly "Be QUIET! The baby's SLEEPING!" Or that I had to listen to the kids bicker non=stop or play the bongos or sing Phantom of the Opera for two hours straight. I have a high tolerance for stuff like that. It was nighttime that made everything unbearable.

Because my children, despite the fact that they have been doing it every night for 8, and 5 years respectively. STILL DO NOT KNOW HOW TO GO TO SLEEP. Also, they'd don't know how to stay asleep. The entire sleep department needs serious work. And, by the way, its not for lack of my trying. See old blog posts for evidence.

So the kids couldn't manage to quiet down at night, and thier ruckus threatened to wake the baby, and me, who -- deranged from sleep deprivation with my newborn -- wanted to turn in before 11 occasionally. Then, in the middle of the night, the baby would, of course wake, since she was a newborn and all, and then often, she'd wake one or both of the others, or they'd wake first nd get her up.  The first person to wake up in all these different scenarios was me, of course. It was a three ring circus. A shitty, cranky circus no one would ever pay to see with no tricks at all and just lots of screaming and under-eye bags.

It was so bad, in fact, that it made selling our apartment, finding a bigger one we would afford, buying it and then moving palatable. That's how bad we're talking.

Of course, we're here now and all's well that ends well. I got my Christmas present early this year and its called Deliverance from Moving or Return to (relative) Sanity.