6 posts tagged “noah”

Election 2008

Nov 4, 2008
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My friends, today is a tremendous day in our country's history. Today you are faced with the opportunity to elect a new leader for our country, a leader who will take this country into the future. There is only one candidate who has the record and experience to lead our nation in these uncertain times, a true maverick who is committed to seeking answers no matter what the cost:

Sign

Yes, my friends, if you examine David's record - and I hope you will - you'll see that he has consistently asked the challenging questions that need to be asked. Questions like:

"Have you ever worn a tire on your nose?"

"Can I play MarioKart now?"

"If the sky were orange, why would it be orange? Why wouldn't it be blue?"

"Why don't people have wings?"

"Is it time to play MarioKart yet?"

"How about now?"

"Why can't I eat Halloween candy for breakfast?"

"What would happen if I had feet on my hands and hands on my feet?"

"When will it be time to play MarioKart?"

David's running mate, Noah, may be a political newcomer, but he has a three-year history of opposing the things that need to be opposed, even when he has to cross party lines to do so. Things like bedtime. And baths. And vegetables. His plan to reform healthcare means that citizens will no longer have to get shots.

So, my friends, I think the choice for America is clear. David & Noah '08.

Paid for the Citizens to Send David and Noah to the White House, Or At Least Outside to Play for Half an Hour, Is That So Much to Ask, It's a Beautiful Day, and If I Have to Tell You to Stop Hitting Your Brother One More Time, So Help Me --

Halloweenie

Oct 26, 2008
3 comments

Every year since we've moved back here, Aaron and I celebrate the arrival of fall by having the same conversation:

"Back in my day, we used to go trick-or-treating on Halloween night, even if it was in the middle of the week."

"And none of this five-to-seven-p.m. crap; we trick-or-treated until the last neighbors turned out their porch lights. And then we stayed up all night bingeing on candy."

"And if we were going to trick-or-treat when we were in high school, we at least had the decency to wear costumes."

"Kids these days!"

Then we rub some salve on our arthritis and practice yelling, "You kids get off my lawn!" before we go hit the early bird special at the Golden Corral.

On Wednesday, our local paper ran an announcement that citywide trick-or-treating (they call it "beggar's night" here, which I think I would still dislike even if they corrected it to beggars' - has anyone else heard it called this before? Is this some midwestern phenomenon, like tornadoes and Republicanism?) -- anyway, that citywide trick-or-treating was scheduled for Saturday evening. I assumed, wrongly, that they meant Saturday, November 1, since that was at least Halloween weekend; and it wasn't until Friday night that I thought to verify this on the city's website (where the information was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard.") As it turned out, what they really meant was Saturday, October 25, which was how I found myself at Wal-Mart yesterday morning buying stuff to make the boys' costumes.

I say buying stuff to make instead of just buying their costumes, because something in me rebels against the idea of store-bought costumes. I suppose it's because I was raised by the Susie Homemaker Queen of the Universe, my mother who hand-made our costumes every year using real fabric and patterns and rick-rack and yarn. This opened up a whole realm of costume possibilities far beyond the typical superhero and witch outfits available at the store; which is how I spent various Halloweens as Smurfette, Pippi Longstocking, and an operatic fat lady.

Of course, my mother also knew how to sew - my kids, on the other hand, are relegated to whatever I can piece together with safety pins. Fortunately, this year they asked for easy costumes - a bat for David, and a tiger for Noah. (David's Christian-education preschool class does a Noah's Ark party instead of Halloween, so the kids all dress as animals; I try to get him to pick an animal he'll wear trick-or-treating as well, because I prefer to spend my buckets of spare time eating fine chocolates and watching Grey's Anatomy, not making extra Halloween costumes.) I threw together David's costume using a fleece blanket cut into bat-wing shapes, safety pins, and a black shirt; and I made Noah's with an orange shirt and electrical tape.

costumes

(Noah's tail doesn't really show in this picture, by the way, but I'll have you know I made it from last weekend's Velma tights.)

I felt awful about their substandard, makeshift costumes, but the boys thought they were terrific; and a junior-high-aged boy who was handing out candy at one of the houses saw their outfits and breathed, "Are those made??" with such reverent amazement that I began to suspect I may be the only mother left who doesn't buy her children highly-flammable nylon character costumes with plastic masks. (This is probably good news; without other kids to compare to, my kids can keep their standards nice and low.)

As for trick-or-treat - it seems I'm not the only person who didn't know it was last night; there were hardly any kids out, and candy only at every fifth house or so. I felt bad for the boys, but they were so excited to be dressed up and on the prowl, they didn't even seem to notice the sorry turn-out. Way to keep those expectations low, kids!

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Fun Games to Play with Your Two-Year-Old!

Aug 27, 2008
2 comments

1. Don't Talk to Me!, 2 players:

Two-year-old: "Hey, Mom?"

Mom: "Yes?"

Two-year-old: "NO! DON'T TALK TO ME!"

[pause]

Two-year-old: "Hey, Mom?" &c.

2. Go Away!, 2 or more players:

Two-year-old: "Hey, can you come here?"

Other players: [nearing two-year-old]

Two-year-old: "NO! GO AWAY!"

[repeat]

3. I Hate Juice!, 2 players:

Mom: "Would you like some juice?"

Two-year-old: "Yes, please."

Mom: [handing cup of juice to two-year-old]

Two-year-old: [throwing cup] "NO! I HATE JUICE!"

This has been Fun Games to Play with Your Two-Year-Old! Join us next time when we play such favorites as I Won't Take a Bath!, I Don't Eat Anything But Peanut Butter!, and Mommy Finds the Dusty Bottle of Peppermint Schnapps on Top of the Refrigerator and Drinks It Straight!

A mighty whump

Jan 28, 2008
1 comment

I am officially a pregnant doofus: After two weeks of tempting fate in my slightly-too-large (but extremely cute!) slippers, I fell down the stairs yesterday evening. Not the full flight, just six steps or so; and I landed hard on the well-cushioned landing pad God gave me for just such a situation. I spent the rest of last night resting with my feet up, bruised in tush and in pride, with a pulled muscle in my abdomen but plenty of reassuring baby kicks to allay my fears; and this morning I'm sore but none the worse for wear; bummed that I'll have to retire these slippers, alas.

***

Noah has an obsession with transportation vehicles, and two of his favorite DVDs are the "All About Trains / All About Airplanes" and "All About Big Red Fire Engines / All About Construction Trucks" videos we bought for $4 apiece at Wal-Mart. The production quality of these movies is awful, really appalling, a lot of grainy single-camera footage pieced together with cheesy transitions and early-'90s synthesizer music; but Noah loves them, so we added "All About Trucks / All About Monster Trucks" to his collection this Christmas.

David is fascinated by the segment on monster trucks, in which the narrator repeatedly refers to them as the biggest, MEANEST, SMASHINGEST trucks ever! as they roll over a lot of hapless cars and do wheelies in the mud and flip over and fling testosterone around. Over the weekend David latched on to this video with a hunger that seems to say, So THIS is what boys like. No more of this boring "really useful engine" crap, I had no idea trucks could SMASH things!

(Vaguely Related Tangent: Aaron was reminiscing to me yesterday - quite fondly - of when he and his brother used to play a game they called "Speed Bump." This game involved one of them stretching out on the living room floor while the other log-rolled across the room, up, and over him. Given that Aaron and his brother are not small people, and they were still doing this when they were in high school, it's a wonder Aaron's childhood home is still standing.)

So it was sheer luck that I overheard David yesterday when he informed Noah: "You're a car. And I'm a big, mean monster truck. And I am going to smash you!" I intervened quickly and helped David arrange a layer of pillows and stuffed animals on the playroom floor, which he and Noah took turns rolling across while they made "VROOM!" noises. "I'M SMASHING ALL THE CARS!" David shouted gleefully.

"You realize what this means, don't you?" Aaron asked me. "It means he's a little boy."

I get this, I do. And I know it's only a matter of time before he and Noah are wrestling and smashing and doing all those things brothers do. I am just hoping for a few more years of diverting him to pillows and stuffed animals before he and Noah start rolling over each other's prone bodies - is this too much to ask?

Because I'm a perfect mother who has never once screwed things up.

Jan 5, 2008
4 comments

[Update: If you want to feel better about yourself (or at least less alone!) as a parent, or just as a person who sometimes isn't completely perfect, you should go read the stories Alice's readers posted - or, if you don't have time to page through 200-plus comments, at least read her recap. You won't regret it, unless you're the sort of person who is easily disgusted with humankind.]

One of my biggest fears as a parent - one of every parent's biggest fears, I think - is the one that goes Oh crap, I just scarred my child for life. I have had quite a few of these moments, some of them very recently, and I've thanked my lucky stars that my kids probably aren't old enough to remember these moments, at least not in enough detail to recount to their therapists someday; and then I get about the business of repressing all memories of the event very, very deeply so I never have to think about it again.

But today, Alice has opened the floodgates, with a post that begs readers for their worst parenting stories:

I need to know that you can be a good parent and still deeply, deeply suck at it, at times. Today, for instance. When I yelled so loudly at my son that my throat still hurts. (Did you know that mittens are an instrument of torture? That socks are painful? Neither did I, until I met Henry.) Thank god I don't have a deadline tonight because I need this glass of wine. And I need to go to bed before 8. And wake up in a few years, when he's able to dress himself.

I left one story in her comments box, but there are so, so, so many more I had to reject in order to keep my comment down to a reasonable length. Like the time I let David, then 15 months old, topple down the (non-carpeted!) stairs and land nosefirst on the (linoleum-covered concrete!) living room floor, because I was reading a book instead of paying attention.

Or the time when David was 2 and I was (extremely) pregnant with Noah and I came home from work to discover that David had found a black permanent marker while he was supposed to be taking a nap and spent the next three hours using it to redecorate his room. (I lost my temper more at Aaron than at David for that one; Aaron had put David to bed and then went to take a nap - something I've done myself a million times, but that was enough for me to place the guilt squarely on Aaron's shoulders. Never mind that I was the one who left the marker in David's room, and never mind that I've never actually admitted my own culpability for that incident to Aaron, or apologized for all the shrieking. Sorry, honey!)

And what about the time, not too long after we'd moved into this house, that we put 3-year-old David down for a nap in his second-story bedroom, with the door closed and his windows open, and went to watch TV - only to be interrupted by a neighbor's frantic knock at the front door, telling us that David had taken out his screen and was in the process of climbing out onto the roof? That was a proud day.

Lately, thanks to the patience-shredding combination of pregnancy, exhaustion, and being off my meds, I've been losing my temper in new, exciting ways. Most of my huffy impatience ends up directed at David (because, come on, how much time does he really need to put on his frigging shoes??), but when I have a spectacular tantrum, it's usually Noah-induced, because the boy is immune to parental discipline, immune. Giggles at spankings, nonchalantly endures time-outs, leaps tall "No!"s with a single bound. The more worked up and frustrated I get, the more he thinks it's a game. There are days that his laid-back, life's-a-party attitude makes me want to shake him. Do you think THIS is funny? Huh?? How about NOW??

Last night's meltdown was memorable. Noah is only recently out of his crib and in a big boy bed, and now that the novelty of the new bed has worn off, he has realized: FREEDOM! We installed a child-proof latch on the inside of his bedroom door, so he can't leave the room; but even so, all the child wants to do is pop out of bed every four seconds, like some sort of human jack-in-the-box. (A jack-in-the-box who is coming perilously close to finding himself listed on ebay.) It doesn't help that he thinks our admonitions to Get back in that bed! Right now! or spanks on the back of his hand are just part of this exciting new game; and last night, when Aaron had to work late and I was putting the kids to bed singlehandedly, I did a lot of screaming myself hoarse and - oh, I am so proud of this - holding him down by his shoulders to make him stay in his bed. Worked like a charm, of course. When Aaron finally got home at 10:30, I was a weeping ball of shame and frustration on the couch downstairs, and Noah was still wandering around his bedroom.

Ugh. I am going to go eat a cookie, and then I am going to call Child Protective Services and turn myself in.