Our little Tom Sawyer

Image via Wikipedia

“Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

The brush continued to move.

“Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” 

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth—stepped back to note the effect—added a touch here and there—criticized the effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:“Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.”    ~ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

R had come home a day early to help out with the aftermath of the accident and to provide some much needed huggles and moral support. He got home around 5:00pm and E was very excited to see him. Especially since Daddy always brings a present.

After we had our hellos and hugs and ate a bit of dinner we settled in to relax on the couch together. E decided he wanted to do his big floor puzzle which is black & white on one side so that it can be colored with crayons.

Does your kid name-call?

Ugh - it finally happened.

I was playing cars with my son one evening last week and discussing how his day at preschool was. He is pretty open to different friends but I have really noticed his personality growing by leaps and bounds since he started at 'big boy school'.

For the most part the changes are all very positive. He's displaying way more imaginative play, his motor skills are improving as a result of having a larger outdoor area to run around in each day and he is getting much more independent. He has made some more friends which, to be fair, was easier due to following around one of his besties who has already attended this school for about a year.

But I'm a Quiet Ninja!

The other night as R and I were relaxing on the couch after putting E to bed we heard the pitter patter, or in E's case, the stomp stomp, of little feet sneaking down the hallway from his bedroom to ours.

Next we heard the squeak of our bed frame and a shuffling of blankets. 

E really wants to sleep in our bed these days. Sometimes I want to let him because I know that soon he won't want to snuggle with me in bed anymore and, like it or not, that will make me sad.

So R got up and went into the bedroom and sure enough, there was E trying to disguise himself as a duvet or pillow. As R picked him up to return E to his own bed he told him, "You have to be quieter than that if you want to sneak into our bed, buddy."

The next night, shortly after putting E down to bed, we again heard a truly quiet little flutter of feet in the hallway which we probably wouldn't even have noticed had the TV been on.

As R plucks E out of our bed again, E says, "But I was a quiet ninja!"

That statement was so cool I damned near let him stay in our bed.

Wordless Wednesday

May your belly button be ever bountiful 

and filled with baked cheeto.

I need some GD Christmas Spirit!

Calling for Christmas Blog Post links!!

Ok, that's it. Christmas is next weekend and and I'm not even freakin' close to being in the spirit.

I haven't listened to any holiday music that has not come from Ender singing. Like Jingle Bells on a loop last night for about 25 minutes and a few rousing renditions of Rudolph, "They never let poor Rudolph *Rudolph* join in any reindeer games *like Monopoly!*".

Word Battle - Potty Accident

Today's word battle is brought to you by the wonderful Ender. 

When I picked Ender up from school yesterday he was conspicuously wearing the spare pants and underwear that had been tucked into his backpack and stored in his classroom cubby.

I was hoping against hope that some pant destroying tragedy such as spilled juice, a knocked over water activity, half a Santa cut-out stuck to his butt from the art table or anything, really, that doesn't involve bodily fluids would turn out to be responsible.

The fact-finding mission went like this:

Me: Hey buddy - how come you're wearing your spare joggies?

E:  I peed in my pants.

Me: How come? 

E: I had an accident.

Me: Ok, honey, I get that, but why?

E: Because I didn't go to the bathroom to pee.

Me: I see where you're going with that. But why did you go in your pants instead of in the potty? 

E: Oh. It was too bright outside.

Pardon?


Me: Too bright out? I don't understand...

E: I was outside playing and I had to pee and when I looked at the door to the classroom, to go inside to go to the potty, the sun was very very bright in my eyes and I could not see the door! So I couldn't go inside the door to pee.

Me: So - you couldn't get inside to pee because the sun was hurting your eyes?

E: Yes, mommy. It was very very bright.

Me: Well. I have to give you points for creativity. But tomorrow, just ask a teacher to help ok?

E: Ok mommy. Maybe they will have sunglasses or something.

Let's hope...

What is the funniest or most creative reason or excuse your little one has given for having an accident? There has to be some good ones out there and I want to hear them!

Why we don't have an Elf on the Shelf this year

It seems like everyone is doing the Elf on the Shelf again this year. The blogosphere and twitter are full of the sightings, antics and locations of local elves who are all delighting their respective child targets. I say targets because while the elves are most definitely there to amuse and provide a bit of Christmas magic, they are also there as overseers in Santa's Army of Naughty or Nice.

Cover of Elf on the Shelf

You're thinking that I am going to go on a big rhetorical discussion of the rights and wrongs of using toys to frighten and trick your children into good behavior. Well you're wrong!  Haha!

I am 100% behind using any ammo a parent can get to teach good from bad, or 'naughty from nice'. Elves are inherently the perfect wingman for parents during a season that tends to bombard our children with sugar, flashing lights, parties, music and joy. Not that there is anything wrong with those things - they just tend to make our kids explode in a dizzying whirlwind of glee and destruction.

However (yep, here it is) the Elf on the Shelf is not part of our arsenal here in the Scribblesaurus house. For we have a tradition of three invisible elves that sit in trees, perch on fences and come in every night after Ender's bedtime for a report on his behavior that day.

E's Christmas wish list hangs in the balance - for a day of good behavior he gets a star on his Santa chart, for every bad day he gets an 'X'. Let's face it, there aren't many actual Xs that make in on the chart. As we get nearer to Christmas the stars must outnumber the Xs if he wants the elves to deliver his list to Santa and recommend fulfillment.

Our elves are named Stinky, Guts and Babybutt. They were first discovered and named by my niece and nephew. Originally it was just Stinky and Guts, but when Ender came along they needed a third cohort to head over to our place to keep an eye on E. And since E was mostly a naked little monkey who refused to wear pants (or should I say 'is' - we're working on that) his elf was christened 'Babybutt'.

This year, since my niece and nephew are older and kind of know that Santa is *gasp* fictional, all three elves have come south for the winter. Needless to say, E is on his best behavior and when he slips I have only to mention the three spies and he shapes right up.

Besides having our own personal squad of tattle-tales there is one more reason why we have no Elf on the Shelf. That reason has a name - it is 'Kyssa'. Kyssa the dog. Kyssa the ninja. Kyssa the force behind a hundred methodically annihilated stuffed toys. Kyssa who can find her victim in the middle of the night from hiding places she should never even imagine.

BEHOLD!
And that's an industrial strength dog toy.
Imagine what she could do to a squishy elf!

The last thing I need is for her to use her super powers to pin down our Elf, pluck out both eyes and his nose and disembowel him with cold precision, leaving his ragged empty sack of a body sprawled in a mountain of sucked on stuffing in the middle of the living room floor for Ender to discover upon waking.

Could you imagine? How would we even begin to explain that? No, the risk is far too great. For this year, while the terror of the night wanders our house and our invisible elf detachment peek through our windows, we will remain one of the few households without the magic of the Elf on the Shelf.

I will enjoy the Elf's antics from afar, through your posts and pictures and tweets. May your Elf make it to Christmas morn.

Related articles

• Why didn't your elf on a shelf move overnight (wiki.answers.com)

How do you cope when your husband travels?

My husband travels for business and every month or two he is gone for anywhere from a few days to a week.

He is currently in Seattle (haha it's raining there) and this time around I zeroed in on the pattern of behavior that I go through each and every time he travels.

Read through my stages of being a temporary single parent after the jump.

Adventures in Rock Painting

I got all up in Esmerelda's face about painting really great words of wisdom on some rocks after seeing a picture of such a thing on Pinterest. So I set about planning what we'd need for materials:

• rocks
• paint
• something to put paint on rocks aka paint brushes

The thing about rocks is that unless you live beside a river there aren't of a useful shape lying around - they need to be fairly flat and round in order to have aesthetic appeal. The search began…

Read about the epic adventures of rock collecting and how brilliant minds are bad at painting after the jump.

The Mission: Acquire Rocks

While planning our paint date over chat with Esmerelda  I suddenly remembered that the house next door has river rocks along the side of their house. Telling her to hold on, I darted outside in my jammies to do some recon and sure enough, river rocks all over! Unfortunately the house has been on the market for a very long time with no yard maintenance, meaning the rocks were super grimy, broken and mildly depressing.

With my hoodie up over my head I grabbed a couple handfuls of decent stones and sauntered back to my own house, trying to appear as if I were merely going for a small walk around the front lawn, 'taking the air' if you will.

Back inside, I raced to my laptop to tell Esme what I'd found and she wasn't effing there anymore. Nice friend, had I gotten caught and charged with some archaic NoCal law regarding rock kidnapping I know who would NOT have been available to bail me out.

Anyways, I had 14 decent specimens in hand which Ender helped clean up and then hijack. Ender – 14, Me - 0.

Later that day we drove to Palo Alto for some business of R's and I forced him to cruise neighborhoods with small streets while I eyeballed the walk ups for appealing rocks. The thing about R is that he is in no way shifty. He just pulls up in front of a house and says 'how about there?' Yes, those are great. However I'd like to remain free of a criminal record so I'd rather we don't stop in a wide open area where I can see 9 people without even turning my head. Finally we found a sort of unclaimed sidewalk and I stood outside the car pretending to suffer motion sickness while covertly stuffing stones in my pockets.

Alas, still not enough to supply both Esmerelda and myself along with our kids. So R took me to a craft store where I found two bags of candlescaping rocks shipped here from China, because that makes economic sense, and the brushes. Yay! Let the inspirational juices start flowing!

See the finished product after the jump!

Pure sick, pet & husband hugging, book reading, puddle splashing, pregnant getting, snuggy wearing awesomeness. Or whatever.

I'm not feeling very artsy, rant-like (yes that's a word I just made it up) or coherent today so I thought I'd just post a rundown of random stuff that's happened in the past 24 hours. Read on at your own risk. You should probably grab a coffee or a drink or something first.

Puddle Jumping - Friday afternoon Ender and I went splashing. He loved it and I stood out on the street taking photos and vids of him in the puddle, babbling away at him with my wheezy sick voice. Several people went by, none said a word. They were boring.

Snuggies - I discussed the likelihood of owning multiple snuggies with a stranger on twitter.

Breakdown - Battling strep is really hard when you are single parenting because your husband works all the time and your toddler has absolutely no concept of how close to the breaking point mommy might actually be. So there I sat, crying because I didn't want to get up and switch the milk I already got for E into a new glass that had blue on it. The yellow glass was perfectly fine and I couldn't even really explain it to him because whispering doesn't get through to an insistent preschooler! Then I cried because I'm SICK and frustrated until my little hero put his arms around me and said 'don't cry mommy.... are you fine now?'. Then I felt like a shit for making a 3 year old feel like he had to comfort me. I'm SO winning mommy of the year this time around. Plus I secretly felt a lot better for gaining the empathy of a 3 year old and convinced myself I've done something right in raising him.

Conception - Rich came home late two nights in a row to a sweaty, feverish, lung-hacking mess of a wife waving a positive ovulation test at him. I was super considerate and left my t-shirt on to contain the vapo-rub and kept my filthy strep mouth shut while he squeezed his eyes shut and managed to do his part. Yeah - it was pretty hot. Rich said he hopes we get pregnant so he can always remember how beautiful the moment was. He is such a smartass!

Forced Pet Cuddling - No one else would enter the bedroom last night. My family sort of put me on quarantine. But I was feeling alone and needy so I ordered Kyssa to come up on the bed and cuddle with me for a kind of forced-spooning while I mumbled about how she's the only one who loves me or something. She can't complain though because when I was pregnant with Ender she curled around my tummy every chance she got. Tit for tat, dog.  Tit for tat. (now a bunch of pervs are going to land here through dirty search terms...)

The Art of Being Offensive - I posted a status update on Facebook that said "So boys in the locker room are the new altar boys". Holy tumbleweeds Batman. I expected some sort of debate over that but I think it was SO offensive that everyone just did that cat thing from Puss in Boots.

Borderline Awkward Hugging - This morning I accosted Rich in the kitchen for a hug. He felt sorry for his pathetic whiney wifebot so he wrapped his arms around me in an attempt to make me feel better. So then I just stayed that way. Hugging. For quite a while - waiting to see how long it would be before he felt it would be appropriate to break contact. Did I mention he's quite a trooper?

Preschoolers can outsmart you. All the time - I've been trying to read this book called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faver & Elaine Mazlish. I got to a section this morning about a woman who puts a sign up on the entrance to her kitchen to keep her little ones out so she can make dinner. I decided to solicit Ender's opinion and said "Hey E, if I put up a sign that says 'Kitchen Closed Until Dinner' will you stay out of the kitchen?". He laughed and sort of regarded me with that expression that people get when they look at retarded kittens and said "No mommy, but I can make a sign that says 'Kitchen Open' for you.".  From the mouths of babes.

A bunch of other crap happened but that's all I have time for right now. Uber-awesome Rich took E to a motorcycle show today so I can drug myself with Nyquil and sleep. Oh sweet elusive sleep. For all our faults, I think I married well :)

Kiddie Toes & Ding Ding

My son lets me paint his toenails. And put nail stickers on them. No this is not a problem.

Me teaching him to shake the pee droplets off his *ahem* after going potty by singing "ding ding ding ding ding ding" is also awesome and that's what happens when daddies let mommies do all the potty training.

W4E5XCZ4UHGY

I search so you don't have to!

I'm so sick that I could literally just crawl under the table and sleep for the day. E started a new preschool a few weeks ago and brought home his first 'new' cold/flu bug. So he's now home sick for the third day in a row since I'm super anal about not sending my kid to school to spread the germs. I don't need those dirty looks!

Unfortunately I think it hit me way harder than it did him - which is just more fodder for my conspiracy theory that toddlers are experimenting on us. I can't string more than one sentence together right now so I decided to do a little bit of link loving this morning.

Enjoy!!

Because your biggest worry when having relations with animals should be the risk of cancer. HuffPo

We totally should have done this to Ender. And my dog. Reddit

If pizza is a vegetable then I quit. I just quit. Boston.com

Ridiculous. Everyone knows that babies can handle a good solid stabbing. MSNBC

Just wait a sec before you cut that cord! BBC

Hey Robert Pattinson! I think someone liiiikes you ;P  Twihard Delight

The Duggars make it an even 20

If you haven't already heard, the Duggars (of 19 Kids and Counting fame) have announced that they are expecting a 20th child.

(PEOPLE.com) "The kids were all asking, 'Are you joking or are you serious?' " says Michelle. "It was a big surprise. The little ones started jumping up and down when they realized he was serious." 

Really kids?  You were surprised? Because your mother hasn't been knocked up 20 of the past 24 years?


Today you can find several news stories on the subject ranging from feel-good articles on People.com to opinion pieces on Technorati. There is heated discussion on the subject of the Duggars' faith based reasons to reject forms of birth control or, more to the point, to use the womb for it's intended purpose which admittedly is to bear children.

I'm in no position to debate the religious aspects at play here and frankly Scribblesaurus Me isn't that type of blog. But what we can do is some damned good advocacy work. That's right. I am tossing my hat in the ring on behalf of Michelle Duggar's uterus.

Photo courtesy of People.com

Pregnancy, childbirth, raising children - all wonderful things. Any parent will (or should!) agree that having a child was one of, if not the, most important and amazing things they've ever done. I'll also accept that it is likely just as great the 20th time around which I'm basing on the fact that I'm pretty sure my parents loved my older brother and I equally and I think they were still stoked when they got pregnant with me. Right Mom? Mommy?  Right?  She'll probably get back to me later...

Where was I? Right - the uterus. Regardless of any medical reasons that might suggest many successive near to full-term pregnancies and deliveries (and a quick google search on '20th pregnancy uterus' didn't produce any readily available research) it's got to get a bit old for a poor uterus to keep doing this! Can it get a frickin' break already? Maybe that 19th baby coming out at just over 1lb at 25 weeks was its way of saying 'eff this, I am so OVER it!'

(TODAY.com) “There’s no information out there about somebody having this many babies. That, I think, makes us nervous,” says Macones, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis, who’d never heard of the Duggars until TODAY.com contacted him.

Anyways - the only thought-provoking part of this whole story for me is to wonder what their reasons for continuing to have children really are. If it's because they love their children all so dearly (and I'm sure they do) that they can't even fathom not having more and they are able to provide for them, then ok. If it's because they like 'doing it' (and who doesn't?) but refuse to use birth control or maybe Michelle has a hankering to figure out a tater tot casserole recipe for 25, then I'm not convinced of the validity of their reasons.

Only time will tell, likely generations down the road, how their children are being affected by their decisions. Just like it will for my family and yours.

I want to hear from you. What do you think? What is your ideal family size? Is your uterus hurting just reading about this?

Ender, Ender, how does your garden grow?

Water it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

The Hierarchy of the Playground - Part One

The park is the place to go if you want to see all types of parenting and children from all walks of life smooshed together in one giant heap. It's like a cold war on the playground sometimes. All the mommies trying to be friendly while keeping one nervous eye on their little ones to make sure that their own kid isn't the one who pushes little Suzie down the slide today. At the same time, they are all trying to posture to see who can come out on top of  the 'Mommy With Best Behaved Toddler' category.

Ender is actually quite mild mannered when it comes to his interactions with other kids so I don't generally have to worry that he's going to physically harm anyone at the playground. He is not slappy or pushy now (he used to straight-arm kids to the ground to claim a firetruck) but he can get very attached to certain toys and very loud when he thinks someone has taken it from him. And by 'taken' I mean started to play with it while Ender was neither using it nor aware of its existence. We're working on that :/

So we run into all kinds at the park next door and I thought it would be fun to try to define them in some way. To get started, here are some of the sub-groups that I could come up with:

1. The Aged Toddler.  Seasoned, world weary four year olds who don't like any kids less than four years old. They tend to tell the little ones to bug off whenever one strays near.
2. The Clinger.  Kids who have invisible parents. Once they spot you actively playing with your own kid they smell the compassion on you and adopt you as their own. They will talk your ear off, insist that you look at cool stuff and beg for pushes on the swings.
3. The Screamer.  These are the kids that scream so loud over random shit that their voices crack and warble. Like yelling 'THERE IS A ROCK BY THE SWING! OH MY GOD!' before taking another sip of their Big Gulp. They howl and run and smash into stationary structures with all the grace of an tiny wino.
4. The Girl Pack.  Girls who will never play by herself if there is another female child within a 40 foot radius. The girl packs will converge on a play structure and none shall enter without their permission (which is rarely granted without parental intervention).
5. The Loner.  The kids who just want to climb around by themselves or with mommy/daddy, offering up a meek smile to any random passers by and might just participate in a short, to-the-point 'look what I can do' conversation if they are feeling particularly engaging that day. Usually the two and three year old set. Ender fits in this category.
6. The Playdater.  Includes kids from any of the above categories who have arrived at the park with prior acquaintances. These kids play quite well among themselves, chatting and running and generally giving those Playdate Mommies over there on the park bench a 5 minute window to chat with another adult and drink 1/3 of a latte unfettered by tyrannical demands. Lucky bitches.

There are many variations on the above list but I just wanted to cover the groups I see the most. Feel free to comment if I've left out a major subset and I'll add it in.

In the essence of fairness I will extrapolate on the major groups of parents in The Hierarchy - Part Two (coming soon!).

Singing in the rain!
My little loner - Mickey umbrella and a bit of rain and he's good to go.

Wicked Awesome Bath Time!

I got this idea over at Ashley...Plus 3 and Ender loved it! Great way to use up those leftover glow sticks from Halloween.

Ender was already in the tub when I snuck in with the camera and handed it to Rich to get ready. Then I flipped off the lights, threw in the glow sticks and Rich caught the moment of impact on E's face!

HOLY BALLS!

This is how dark it actually was.

Well, that face says it all.

Soccer Camp & Swimming Lessons?

Ender started swimming lessons when he was just an infant for two reasons: (1) he has loved the water since he was born and (2) I believe that every kid needs to know how to swim as early as possible.  No, I did not think that he would be able to save himself from drowning at 8 months old but I wanted him to get used to the idea very early on.

1 year old in the wading pool at Grammy's.

He loved his swimming lessons as long as the pool was warm enough. It was generally daddy's job to go in the water with him and it was a really nice bonding time for the two of them. Once E was old enough to go in on his own he very much enjoyed his first round of lessons with the coach he had but after we had to change his time-slot and got a new instructor his enthusiasm quickly fizzled to nothing. We couldn't even get him in the water anymore and it had nothing to do with his joy for swimming - it was something about the new setup that bothered him. So instead of fighting him every weekend we pulled him out of the lessons and coached him on our own.

Now that it's been a nice break from any extra curricular activities (don't even get me started on soccer :/) we're thinking of signing him up for swimming again at a new location. He's got his afternoons off now as he only attends preschool in the mornings so we need something a little more structured than just winging around next door at the park or going on random sight-seeing tours of museums.

3 years old in our hot tub.

I've also been considering enrolling him for weekly gymnastics, sports, art classes or any of the other myriad of options here in San Carlos or Belmont. The problem is that these things are not cheap! Not that we wouldn't pay for any number of them IF HE WOULD GO EVERY TIME! I'm frustrated with the lack of drop-in activities out there. I don't want to pay ~$150 for a three month weekly class that he is going to hate after two visits. He's fickle like his momma even though he is a trusty Leo and I'm a flighty Gemini. (NOTE: You can blame a LOT of shit on being a Gemini. I highly recommend being one and advocate against giving birth to one).

So what to do? Anyone have any recommendations for classes in the Bay Area that your preschoolers love that aren't a three month commitment? Please comment here or send me an email or tweet with your ideas. Thanks :)

Friday Positives & Negatives

Tricia started a thing on Facebook this morning about having to be nice to win a prize or a bet or something. Good luck!  hahaha Anyways - it got me to thinking about positives and negatives. So here is what I came up with today:

Positive:  I managed to shower this morning.
Negative:  I put my sick jammy pants back on because they were already 'broken in'.

Positive:  I washed my hair!
Negative:  I shed a big hairball from my head.
Positive:  I refrained from posting a picture of the hairball here.

Positive:  There will be new Handy Mannys on all next week.
Negative:  I care that there will be new Handy Mannys on all next week.

Positive:  Biggest traffic day yet on Scribblesaurus.
Negative:  You bastards only like me when I'm sick and have a messy house.

Negative:  It's probably going to rain.
Positive:  I will  Ender will get to stomp puddles in his rain boots!

Storytime at the Park

Ender and I were heading home from the park yesterday to have lunch and grab his nap. He has this thing where he needs to hold my hand and walk along the top of a rock/brick retainer wall that runs along the edge of the baseball field. It's about half a block long and ranges from ground level to about 3.5' high as it follows the slope of the sidewalk. We usually go from the end starting by the playground, down the half block and then backtrack it to our driveway.

This is how it goes every day as we leave the park.

Yesterday, for the first time in Ender history, he decides he is freaked out by it and needs to get down part way to the end, at the highest point of the wall. We were just hoopy dooping along and all of a sudden he starts to scream while doing a sort of Michael Flatley thing with his feet. I'm like 'holy shit!' and try to back up to him to piggy-back him off the wall, like usual, and he is all "NO WAY!  LET ME OFF!". Well, I'd love to but he won't let me frickin' touch him!

On top of it, he decided to do this right beside a parked car. The ONLY parked car on the block. And there is a dude sitting in the passenger seat, window half down and he's on his cell phone talking through his bluetooth. Current coordinates:  2.5 feet east of my shrieking child.

I realize that he is on a business call, can't hang up and can't roll the window up since he clearly doesn't have the keys or control of vehicle, while my kid continues to yell things like "LET GO OF ME!  I DON'T WANT YOU TO TOUCH ME!  I WANT TO GO HOME." All my best efforts to calm him have gone awry and now I'm laughing because I'm imagining the person on the other end of that phone call is writing a note that says "Call 911!  Kidnapped child!" and emphatically waving it at his assistant.

My laughing upsets Ender more, I still have no idea what caused him to freak out in the first place and decide to just throw him over my shoulder and carry him to our house.  As we near our front door he stops crying and asks if we can bake cookies. I wonder if that guy's deal went through..... /shrug

FREEDOM!!

For so long I've had to lift Ender up on a knee while awkwardly leaning over to press the water button, simultaneously trying to hit the water stream with his face.

Today - for the first time ever - he was tall enough to get a drink himself.

I swear on my mother's life - the theme song from Chariots of Fire ran through my head as I watched him.

Team Fountain - Fuck Yeah!