On Getting 611 Comments On The Huffington Post

A few weeks ago, the lovely and talented Lisa Belkin asked if she could republish my "20 Things Nobody Told Me About Little Boys" entry on The Huffington Post. I said sure! And damn! I probably should have spent more than 20 minutes on it. Another 10 minutes and I could have come up with at least 10 more Things Related To Pee, surely. 

Anyway. I said yes and then promptly forgot all about it. Occasionally I'd remember and go look for it, and eventually assumed it had perhaps appeared briefly and been met with a deafening army of crickets, then promptly pushed back into the morass of the HuffPo archives by the approximately 14 million things that get published there on a daily basis. 

Not so much. 

It actually didn't go live until Monday, and Lisa was kind enough to make sure it was treated nicely and highly visible. BOOM!

I checked in on my little listicle right after it went live and had a weird reaction of being completely embarrassed, like OMG DON'T LOOK AT IT, NOBODY LOOK AT IT. OR ME. I closed the browser window and basically hid from my own damn blog post all week. 

I finally felt brave enough to venture back last night, figuring that it had probably dropped off the main parenting page by then, and decided that I was also brave enough to read the three or four confused-type "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN" comments it had probably collected. 

That's when I saw that it had over 600 comments and fell off my chair. Then I got back on my chair and rubbed my grubby little paws together, because gurrrrl, you just know this is gonna be good. A number that high was oddly liberating, proof that at some point the conversation had surely derailed away from any meaningfulo critique of my writing or how weird my hair looks rendered HuffPo-style in my headshot, but had fully entered a batshit zone of wankariffic crazy.

Indeed it had. Here are some of my favorites.

YOUR CUTESY LITTLE LISTICLE IS A SHINING EXAMPLE OF EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA:

Cute, quaint, observant but totally irrelevant! While parents dwell on the stupid and cute the things they should know about parenting remains an unknown. Parents parent the way their parents in most cases and if the parents were bad, guess what. That's why we still see child abuse. All it takes to produce a child is to successfully screw once! If our society really cared about children they would require that every male and female who wanted to have a child take at least one year of college level courses in how to parent. They would have to take a child development course that would teach them that children learn certain things in stages. Worrying about sex or nudity, bad words at someone who hasn't reached a certain stage of development is ridiculous and a waste of time. When I took my course in child development there was a young woman who got very upset because she couldn't potty train her child. When the professor asked her how old the child was she said 10 months. The professor asked the class how many people thought that 10 months was a good time to potty train a child. Most of the class raised their hands. The physical skills needed for potty training develop in both girls and boys at between 18 to 30 months. Though both boys and girls develop the necessary skills at the same time, the average age of potty training varies between the sexes. The average age for girls to be potty trained by is 29 months, and the average age for boys is 31 months. At 36 months, 98 percent of children are potty trained, according to the University of Michigan Health System. These are the things that are not commonly known and should be. We have certainly reached an age where we should have cast aside the notion that people can only have sex for procreative reasons but child rearing is too important to leave to chance. Of people need a license for something as mundane as driving a car one would think that raising a child which is far more complicated should also require training and a license to ensure that the child is raised in a healthy and safe environment. Most of what gets said about how important and precious children are is BS. Just look at how Americans have allowed the religiously brainwashed and the owner class to deprive children all over this country to continually have their education system dumbed down, privatized, and underfunded while there is always money for wars and war machines!

THIS LISTICLE IS FULL OF DIRTY NUMBERING LIES:

There are several that are listed as separate items but are actually one thing: 14-16, 3-4, 10-11. Also, 4 items about pee? I have an 18 month old son and if I had 20 things to say about him--even if I was generalizing to all boys--none of them would be about his pee.

PERHAPS WITH INTENSE THERAPY, YES:

I can only say I hope you can get over the way urine seems to dominate your thoughts and only retain the beautiful memories of your babies childhoods.

TOO SOON, MAN:

Jerry Sandusky is writing under the pen name Amy Corbett Storch

I ATE YOUR GENDER AND IT WAS DELICIOUS:

Every time I read crap like this I want to ask women "Do you really think you ate the only gender in this world?". Women are too self absorbed to pay attention to men.

THE LOST ART OF THE PROPERLY NUMBERED LIST:

This article wasn't that good. A column with numbered items should not reference the comment before with additional information. The whole thing lacks wit and humor.

I LIKE YOU:

...but I HuffPost keeps telling me that sex is just some kind of artificial construct imposed by society on our children!

You're a beast for choosing your child's sexual identify! You clearly should treat your children as gender-neutral-beings until they are old enough to choose a sex for themselves.

MISANDRY!

Misandry beginning with boys. Let's take each item: (1) You will spend a crazy amount of time [time better spent doing what? and the inference is, it's an imposition on the mother's time] clipping their weed-like [the idea is that they are unwanted growth] fingernails, even though your own nails don't grow worth a damn.

Misandry beginning with boyhood. Item (3): Little-boy funk-smell [presumably a bad smell] kicks in sometime around age 3. Second negative.

Misandry beginning with boyhood. Item (4): 4. It [boy-funk] smells like a combination of feet and maple syrup [an unpleasant smell]. (3) and (4) belong together. Third negative.

(This guy went on like this for awhile.)

Misandry beginning in boyhood. Item (5): You will totally get peed on. In the face, directly, at least once. [Apart from the fact that urine in a healthy person is sterile and in some cultures is used to treat wounds, the negative here is that somehow this is unpleasant. Only boys' urinating comes in a stream and this is somehow not pleasant to the mother.] What is worse, if you read the literature on child psychology, you will see that many mothers punish their boys at this point. Let's not discuss child (boy) abuse here. Another negative in any case.

(Quite awhile.)

Not to belabor this, but misandry beginning in boyhood continues item by item: 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,15,16,17,18 (here men are introduced as objects of misandry). The last two items are supposed to make boys endearing in spite of all that is disgusting about them. Not that "wuv" is different from gratitude. Yes, boys are "awesome." Why not just say that and describe how?

(I THOUGHT I JUST DID, DUDE.)

Really, though, I found it all terribly entertaining and wasn't personally bothered by any of it, because: EH. They don't know me or my boys or "get" my "humor" or whatever. And the majority of the comments were positive and sane (although I admit I got bored by page 10 or so). I saw several of YOU GUYS there too, which was fun and a reminder that I am incredibly spoiled when it comes to blog comments, because YOU PEOPLE are always so kind and funny and...you know, not like that. *waves hand in vagueishly upward direction* You're the reason I can bash out a funny-ish quick list like that without feeling compelled to overthink it and anticipate the more fringe-y negative reactions it could possibly generate. Anyway, thank you for being so awesome. I'm sorry I don't say that enough.

(The ONLY COMMENT on HuffPo that actually for-real kind of bugged me and made my fingers itch to type a reply to was a one snarking that "Amy Storch needs to learn how to use word wrap in Microsoft Word" or something, like I was personally responsible for the formatting of a post that I had nothing to do with after I gave my blessing for someone else to copy-and-paste it. And like, you can't paste formatting from Word into blogging software ANYWAY because it makes everything wonky so your comment simply reveals that you don't know anything about web publishing and therefore I HEREBY WIN THIS INTERNET.

Acuse me of misandry and gender stereotyping and THE REASON WE HAVE WAR MACHINES, but don't imply that I don't know how to use word wrap, maaaan. I do. I'll word wrap your FACE.) 

 

The Next Big Thing

We met with a new child psychologist this morning. So I spent last night organizing and re-filing the mountains of old paperwork we've collected over the years. Old evaluations, assessments, treatment plans, progress reports, IEPs, re-evaluations, insurance rejections and appeals and God knows what else. 

Something old, something new, something photocopied, something blue.

(The cup. The cup is blue. The cup is also full of vodka.)

Reading through those old files is both oddly inspiring and completely masochistic. On the one hand, how far he's come! The things he says and does! The mind-boggling number of victories, both large and small (and medium and miniscule!), that we've celebrated since that fateful day when I took my non-verbal almost-two-year-old to the pediatrician. When that pediatrician cocked his head to the side and asked, "Does he walk like that a lot? On his toes?" 

He did it. We helped. I have no doubt that the things we've done and the people we've worked with have absolutely helped. There are miracle workers in that pile of papers. Bona fide. 

And yet. Ugh. The mistakes are all there too. The consent to discontinue services form I signed for Early Intervention. The progress reports from the mainstream preschool he never should have attended. The very first psychological evaluation that revealed a child buried so deep within himself, that made me wonder if we'd ever be able to pull him out, that made me wonder how in the world I'd missed how serious things were. Noah wasn't just "challenging." Noah was...well, something with an acronym. Something with a diagnosis, a code, something that probably wouldn't just vanish at the end of the "terrible threes."

(And the money. Oh my God. The money.)

But then this morning, we were asked for that diagnosis. And for the millionth time we sighed and shrugged. It's complicated. Little from column A, a little from column B, a little from column Planet Quirkozoid of the Weirdo Nebula. Nobody will commit to Any One Thing and there's always an asterisk after every evaluation. He's Spectrummy and Inattentive and Hyper and Uncoordinated and Anxious and Rigid. He's also Smart and Imaginative and Verbal and Affectionate and The Type Of Kid Strangers Watch At Parties And Declare That There's Nothing Wrong With That Child, So Why The Hell Do You Have An IEP Again?

We talked with her for close to two hours. We probably could have talked for another two, easy. At the end, I handed her the freshly organized binder, full of the Old. 

I'll pick it up next week, when we once again start something New. He'll visit and play and talk about his feelings and fears and what it's like to live inside his head. They're going to do some yoga together. 

In with the New, onward, ever upward, packed to the gills with hope and optimism. He can do it. We can help. 

(Indecent) Anatomy of a Sponsored Post

(This post is a work of hyperbole and wild exaggeration. Any resemblance to actual sponsored posts, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No animals were harmed in the making of this post, but one living room sofa was, kind of.)

Step One: You get an email asking if you'd like your site included on a proposal for a sponsored campaign. Please to respond by EOD. 

(Or more accurately, you FIND an email asking if you'd like your site included on a proposal for a sponsored campaign...usually a few hours after the EOD deadline, dammit.)

At this point the campaign is usually very far off ("timeframe is late Septemboctovemberish.") and the topic is impossibly vague and squishy-sounding, like: WRITE A POST ABOUT BEING A MOM. HEALTHY KIDS. RECYCLING. CLEANING PRODUCTS. SKRILLEX. 

Step Two: You of course reply in the affirmative. Yes! I absolutely have something to say about cheese/identity theft/breakfast cereal/dry-erase markers!

Even if you actually don't, it's best to just say yes because 1) 99% of these things go absolutely nowhere and you'll never hear about them again, and 2) Whatever! You totally have until late Septemboctovemberish to think of something anyway. 

Step Three: Forget about it completely. Be in the midst of some major naturally-occurring life storyline on your blog, the kind that will make the sudden appearance of sponsored content feel completely jarring and annoy the maximum number of readers.

Step Four: OH HEY IT'S TIME TO WRITE ABOUT THAT THING YOU AGREED TO SIX MONTHS AGO, WHICH HAS NOW CHANGED THE TOPIC ON YOU FOURTEEN TIMES AND SENT OUT FOUR DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF TRACKING LINKS AND LOGOS — please use the SECOND version we sent, not the most recent, thnx — AND NOW THE CLIENT WANTS PRE-APPROVAL ON YOUR COPY, WHICH THEY WILL NATURALLY HATE, AND COULD YOU PUBLISH IT ON SUNDAY AT 10:43 PM SO THEY CAN GET MAD AT YOU FOR FAILING TO LIVE UP TO TRAFFIC EXPECTATIONS? 

Step Five: Profit! Well, after sales commissions, taxes, and the fact that you were desperate enough for content that you went out and like, bought props, and paid a babysitter to take your children to the pool while you stared at your laptop for hours in writer's-block-related terror because you have nothing interesting to say about cat litter.

***

Point is, sometimes sponsored posts can be a lot more work than you anticipate. (NOTE: This is not a sponsored post, though I guess it is technically brought to you by First World Problems.) Sometimes your first draft or idea ends up being completely unusable, because the scope of the campaign or desires of the client change, or because you end up with a giant penis-shaped stain on your sofa.

SAY WHAT.

So last week I had that handy-household-tip campaign from Pine-Sol, right? (NOTE: That campaign was not at all an example of the off-the-rails campaign detailed above, for the record. Nothing but love for the Pine-Sol people. This clusterfuck was ALL ME.) It was originally going to run before we left for the beach, and I decided to write about my couch. For Ezra had scribbled all over the arm with a ballpoint pen:

(A ballpoint pen that my husband BOUGHT for him. Because it was in the shape of an ICE CREAM CONE. Because the man has learned NOTHING and should probably read more MOMMYBLOGS for AUTHENTIC, REAL-WORLD ADVICE, brought to you by the letter NO and the number HEADDESK.)

So I always use hairspray on pen stains. Plain, cheap-as-possible hairspray, preferably. But then the campaign date got bumped back a week, and in the craziness of packing for the beach, I completely forgot to buy some. The only stuff I had was some Paul Mitchell "extra-body volumizing finishing spray," which is LIKE hairspray but...not. I don't know? What is "finishing spray," really? What am I even spraying on my head? I honestly can't tell you, but it seemed like maybe a bad thing to spray all over a prominently visible part of my couch. 

And then I packed it before remembering that I at least wanted to do a test patch, like on the underside of a cushion. (Where there are probably also pen stains. And red wine. Possibly curry. Our sofa has a wonderfully aged patina of TOTAL FILTH.) 

So on Sunday morning, Jason packed up the car and I desperately looked around for an alternate Stain Solution that I could quickly take before-and-after pictures of. Just so I could get the post written and scheduled without depriving my children a minute of all the fun we were surely going to have, since this was before the week devolved into wanton property damage and ridiculous vet bills. 

A quick Google search suggested that rubbing alcohol was excellent at removing ink stains from microfiber furniture. Ah! Yes! I knew that. I have that! LET'S DO THIS THING.

In my haste, I had neglected to really think a few things through. 1) I didn't do a test spot, but instead went immediately whole-hog with the alcohol all over the arm, 2) There was NO WAY the couch was going to fully dry before we left, so I probably wasn't going to get a good "after" photo, especially since my hair dryer was buried in the bottom of a suitcase that was already out in the car, and 3) DUDE YOU FUCKING DREW A PENIS AND NUTSACK ON YOUR COUCH. 

Well. THAT'S not very brand-friendly. 

I frantically tried to soak up the alcohol, while dabbing more in other places in an attempt to camouflage my accidental artwork. Then I paced around in circles, hoping that it would dry AND that the pen stains would vanish along with it, because I COULD STILL SEE THE STUPID PEN. 

The good news: 1) The alcohol really did get rid of the pen stains, and 2) dried in time for me to take one final "after" picture.

The bad news:

Hello! Welcome to my home. Please have a seat next to the Sell-Out Penis Outline of Fail. 

(ANY FURNITURE COMPANIES LOOKING FOR COUCH-RELATED SPONSORED POST OPPORTUNITIES PLEASE INQUIRE WITHIN. I WRITE REAL GOOD FOR YOU CHEAP-LIKE PROMISE OKAY?)

Things We Broke While On Vacation

1) The shower. Okay, first of all, you need to know something about our Ocean City vacations. We stay for free with Jason's great-aunt and great-uncle, who retired there. Who are very nice and gracious and welcoming, but also COMPLETELY KIND OF TERRIFYING. I mean, first, they're in-laws. Distant in-laws. That's baseline intimidating already. And all my in-laws have this quiet, measured, Germanic stoicism about them, which is the complete opposite of my family. We're a bunch of hand-talking Irish drunks with voice immodulation syndrome. 

Plus...well, they are very particular and set-in-their-ways and they keep their condo impeccably clean and organized, having mastered the "living in small quarters" thing to an enviable degree. 

And then we show up. And basically wreak havoc and disaster all over the damn place. Every year the amount of STUFF we have to lug there grows exponentially. Not surprising, given that every other year we seem to show up with a whole new family member in tow. More suitcases, more bags, more toddling towers of childproofing terror. Now with bonus lightsabering pool noodles!

They like children, at least. And they especially like babies a whole lot. But they don't particularly like said babies and children to touch anything. So then we have to move everything that our children might possibly touch, but then that sets off a chain reaction of Cluttered Surface Everything-Not-In-Its-Place Eyelid Twitches, so I start not moving things and instead spend our time inside chasing after children and prying remotes and coasters and decorative baskets out of their grubby fingers, panicking that they're still somehow tracking sand inside, spreading tea towels on upholstered chair surfaces and picking up stray Cheerios off the floor before anyone else sees them.

Basically, it's like bunking with the Imaginary Authority Figures. Only they are real and trying to assure you that "oh, it's fine, we understand" but YOU KNOW BETTER.  You know you are racking up Imaginary Bad Houseguest Citations LEFT AND RIGHT, girlfriend. 

So naturally, I'm the one who broke the brand-new shower head in the guest bathroom. In my defense, I was trying to hose two children off at the same time, while also being naked and slippery myself, and I didn't pull up on the detachable handle thingie-thing before pulling down, and then heard a sickening oh-now-you've-done-it crack as the plastic bracket that held the shower head snapped in two. 

I hid the evidence with a strategically-draped towel over the shower door for three days while we waited for the new shower head we ordered to arrive from Amazon. 

2) The chair. Not just any chair. Jason's great-aunt's favorite porch rocking chair, the one that has been there for as long as I can remember. We were sitting out on their balcony by ourselves when suddenly Jason yelled "HOLY SHIT!" and started flailing wildly backwards.

Being the quick thinker and devoted wife that I am, I instinctively grabbed the bottle of wine off the table in between us while Jason frantically tried to not like, crack his head open on the glass door behind him and die. 

Two bolts on the underside of the chair had up and cracked solidly in two. Jason tried to spin his confession in the best positive light, like "I'm just glad it happened to me and not <great aunt>."

That went over about as well as expected.

3) The window screen. After applying a little more wine to the situation, everyone quickly forgot about the chair (except me, because I was still trying to find the right moment to drop the shower head news on them and was starting to reach Telltale Heart levels of guilt). We were all enjoying a nice chat and people-watching session out on the balcony together. That's when a little Noah-shaped silhouette appeared in the living room behind us.

"We need to go home!" he whispered. "We need to go home right now!"

He was clearly terribly upset about something, and after some hushed questioning I got the bone-chilling answer: "I broke the window, Mommy."

I looked over and indeed: The screen had ripped from the frame and was merrily flapping away in the ocean breeze.

"Are you mad, Mommy?" Noah asked.

I actually wasn't so much "mad" as "wanting to grab a few loose belongings and drive off in the dead of night in abject mortification," but...well, I went with "mad" because it was easier. He'd been warned about leaning on the screen several times, especially since we were in a high-rise building, NOT TO MENTION all the times I've barked up at him from the backyard to stop mashing his face against the screen in his bedroom because if you rip that it will cost all the dollars in your piggy bank SO HELP ME.

At the same time, it was also mostly an accident. And he'd come out and promptly confessed. Instead of like, pitching the good silverware out at the parking lot 12 stories below. 

Still, though, I made him go back out and tell everybody else what happened, the heat of my secret shower-head hypocrisy burning through my cheeks as Noah dutifully apologized to his great-great uncle and I was like, "oh God, just add it to our tab."

4) The dog. Our pet sitter called on Tuesday to report that Ceiba was having bloody diarrhea all over the place, plus vomiting, plus not eating or drinking, so....yeah? Should probably take her to vet? Or something?

So from that point on, several times a day, we attempted long-distance pet crisis management over the phone, blindly approving charges for X-rays, blood tests, IV fluids, antibiotics, medical boarding and I don't even know what else, because every time I attempt to read the itemized bill I pass out:

The official diagnosis? Gastroenteritis, the catch-all name for Your Dog Probably Done Ate Something Stupid. Again.

We have no idea what she got into this time (the stress of being left with a pet sitter for the second time in a month probably didn't help anything, though) (LIKE OH SURE DOGS ARE TOTALLY ALSO WELCOME AT THE CONDO HA HA HA), but by yesterday she was fully recovered and ready to come home. We were planning to stay the full week, but you know what? Sometimes you just have to listen to the Vacation Gods and know when to pack it in. 

We packed it in and came home to pick Miss Thing up ourselves. She seemed very grateful.

EPILOGUE:

I confessed to the shower head crime before we left, hoping that the fact that we were packed up and leaving and (almost) guaranteed to NOT BREAK ANYTHING ELSE would soften the annoyance. The new one is being delivered today and our check for a replacement screen is in the mail too. I should probably send a fruit basket or gift card or case of wine or something too. 

MOST EXPENSIVE FREE VACATION EVER FTW.

Mullet-hat baby don't care. Mullet-hat baby didn't break a damn thing, and doesn't know what y'all's problem is. 

Deep Fried Sand Nugget

Sweet.

Merciful.

Sandy.

Crap.

Pine-Sol asked me to submit my best household-y tip — you know, like putting clear nail polish on panty hose runs or vinegar in milk when you're like, seven steps into a recipe before you realize you don't have any buttermilk  — so I thought I'd go vacation-themed and share one that has been near and dear to my heart (and my kids' butts) quite a bit in the past month.

Baby powder, y'all. Buy it, pack it, use it. Do NOT try to de-sand your sweet, gritty little hermit crabs without it. Sand will cling to wet, sunblock-y kids like...um. Like sand clings to wet, sunblock-y kids. It will multiply and hide in every possible crevice and thigh-fold, waiting for the perfect moment to come tumbling out in buckets from between their toes. Like...in the car, or your bed. Or on your in-law's couch. 

Powder them up before coming inside and the sand will wipe off with a dry towel or relatively sand-free t-shirt. They may look like ghostly, powder-y refugees from a flour fight when you're done, but it's way easier to get baby powder off the floor or bathtub drain than sand. 

(I also highly recommend putting a generous dusting on the inside of swim diapers for reasons that I will not go into because this is a sponsored post, which means there is an expectation of maintaining a shred of basic dignity.)

Oh, and also 1) buy boys' bathing suits that DON'T have the little useless back pocket on them (like what is Ezra supposed to keep in an itty bitty scaled-for-size-2T pants pocket? lip balm? his fake ID?), or 2) sew them shut lest they fill up with sand and you forget to turn it inside out until you shake the suit out inside and HOLY PHYSICS-DEFYING SAND MONSOON all over the bathroom floor. 

You can submit your own favorite tip or trick at Pine-Sol's website. And also here in the comments, for no other reason than because I am a sucker for a good shortcut or reading about 101 different uses for bobby pins. 

This post is sponsored by Pine-Sol® Cleaners. The Powerful Scent of Clean, with Everything You Need, and Nothing You Don’t.

Putt, Putt & Away

We're away AGAIN this week. Visiting family in Ocean City. I know, right? I don't really know what we're thinking, taking all these exhaustifying vacations and creating preshus childhood memories and crap. 

Speaking of which, the following photo is quite possibly the best representation of life with three children I have ever managed to take. And quite possibly just the greatest photo ever, flat-out:

Not to oversell it, or anything. But come on. As sybdix commented (when I posted this on Instagram), this is life with three kids: Carrying one, helping another and trying not to step on the third.

Yes, exactly. And any day when you manage to not drop and/or step on anyone is a raging success. The teaching/helping step is optional.

Posting this week shall be light yet not-completely-non-existent. (But completely-over-hyphenated-as-per-usual.) I'm taking the week off from Mamapop, but don't let that stop you from reading all the other awesome stuff less-highly-overrated-than-me people are posting.

(HYPHENS ARE THE NEW CAPS LOCK!)

Oh, and my summer schedule at Alphamom is dropping down to one Advice Smackdown a week. Which is killing me because that column is like, the ONE PLACE ON EARTH where people occasionally seem to listen to what I am telling them to do, put that down Ezra, put that DOWN, Noah stop spinning in the living room, stop SPINNING, Ike Ike Ike no no no no no OKAY SORRY I GOTTA GO GUYS SHIT IS HAPPENING HERE. 

(CAPS LOCK IS THE NEW HYPHEN!)

I WILL CLUB YOU INTO A PULP, MINI-GOLF, FOR I AM UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT.

The (Belated) Obligatory

So you probably thought that since we were en route to Aruba on Ike's first birthday proper, you were going to be spared the excruciatingly boring "Baby's First Cupcake" photo essay, aka Why Do Parents Think It Is Cute To Post Pictures Of Kids With Poop-Colored Schmutz On Their Faces.

BISH, PLZ. It's like you don't know me at all. I am a slave to tradition. Or maybe it's just reruns, given that my children are all soo eerily similar-looking that I could probably post pictures of any of them and be all, "Here! It's Baby Ike! Kinda. It's a blondish round boy baby. Gimme a break, I'm tired."

Baby Ike's first chocolate cupcake experience started out predictably enough, with great dramatic flourish:

Followed quickly with that moment of ZOMG THIS FEELS AMAZING IN MY MOUTHHOLE:

And then the aborable scrunchy-face that results when you are unable to just unhinge your entire jaw to cram more cake inside at once:

Aaaaand the dawning realization that historically, we enjoyed this ritual at home. Usually sans clothing. Why did we...oh, right. The mess. The terrible, terrible mess.

Not to be indelicate, but just BE YE WAY GRATEFUL that you can't see what's happening below his waist, because at some point Ike decided he was full. But since he didn't want to relinquish control of the cupcake (leftovers, yo!), he decided to hide it. On the high chair. Under his butt. Yeeeeah. Squish.

Applause! Hooray cupcakes! Hooray for smushed chocolate frosting in your thigh rolls! Hooray for being at the one age of your entire life when smushed chocolate frosting in your thigh rolls could possibly be considered not weird at all!

And that's when things got kind of weird:

Mmm, bib.

NO, BUT SERIOUSLY. THIS BIB TASTES AMAZING.

FORGET CUPCAKES. THIS BIB IS BLOWING MY MIND. 

It is true. The bib got a much bigger and more enthusiastic reaction than the cupcake did. I'm not really surprised, though. Ike is my third baby. I'm super laidback and go-with-the-flow now, in ways I probably wasn't when Noah and Ezra were this age.

In other words: that bib was positively FILTHY. 

PS. Baby Ike, Imma let you finish, but Baby Ezra had the best "Baby's First Cupcake" reaction shots of all time. OF ALL TIME!

Places My Children Insisted They Were Not Tired

At the airport:

On the plane:

At the dinner table, night #1:

At the lunch table, day #2:

At the beach:

At the beach:

At the beach:

On the bus back from De Palm Island (home of the water slides):

(Not pictured: Ezra, Ike and Mama similarly tanked out in the back row.)

At the dinner table, night #3:

(TRIFECTA ACHIEVED.)

In the crib:

In the bed:

(More photos at the Amalah's West blog here and here.)

Kindergarten, Day 180

SHUT UP NAPKIN YOU ARE DRUNK.

Noah graduated from kindergarten yesterday. My god.

At last year's preschool graduation "ceremony," he threw a fit about the hats and tossed his certificate on the floor in protest just seconds after receiving it. 

This year, I left with video footage of him holding hands with his classmates while singing a song ("First Grade, First Grade" sung to the tune of "New York, New York"), complete with choreography and a dramatic bow at the end.

There are still issues, yes. We are still struggling with some things and will be taking steps this summer to deal with those things (anxiety, attention, self-esteem, etc.), lest anyone reading these last couple entries think I'm like, "ANNNNNNNDDDD CURED! All done, that's that." Noah remains a bit of a tough nut in some respects, but then in others....

Well, he's just another kid in the big ol' general education kindergarten room. And I can't begin to express how happy that makes me. 

***

And now that the school year is over and this topic has been thoroughly (and hilariously) discussed over on Instagram, I suppose I can finally address the former professional soccer player in the room. Yeah. Noah's kindergarten teacher. He's...uh-huh. I know.

Both Noah and Ezra had male teachers this year. It's a shame that men in early education are such a novelty, but they are, and I was admittedly pretty surprised that we ended up with two in the same year. 

On Back to School Night, waaaay back in September, there was like, a laughably palpable wave of ZOMG amongst the room mothers when we all realized that oh, him? That's the new teacher? Wait. He's. Kind of. Ridiculously good-looking? Okay! No afternoon pick-up in pajamas THIS YEAR THEN. 

The classroom volunteer sign-up sheet has been solidly full ever since.

I should also go ahead and zoom in on the classroom aide, as well:

WHAT THE HELL, RIGHT? ON WHAT PLANET DOES THIS HAPPEN?

Now, even if these men are not your particular type, try to imagine watching them do stuff like...pouring tiny cups of apple juice. Straightening hair bows. Tying shoes. Giving gentle, reassuring head pats and pep talks to scared, vulnerable little humans. Magically bringing the din of close to 30 children down to silence with nothing but a couple hand claps and a soft-spoken "okay boys and girls..." Teaching your child how to read.

Right? You see it now. YOU SEE THE PROBLEM I HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH ALL YEAR. 

I like to think of myself as a sensible, non-giggly sort when it comes to omgboyssss! I'm happily married, I don't flirt or get crushes, and I've even gotten much better about not falling apart into complete doofusdom when confronted with minor celebrities.  

And yet I am sure Noah's teacher thinks I have some kind of brain damage, because whenever I'm around him I just talk and talk and talk and flap my hands around and try SO HARD TO BE FUNNY AND COOL that eventually he's like, "Uh...I gotta go like, teach and stuff now. Young minds of America and all that."

Then he backs away slowly while I stand there grinning and nodding like a crazy person, probably failing to notice that Ike has once again managed to yank my shirt down and my nursing bra is showing. 

Ezra, at graduation yesterday: You bitches be crazy. Talk to me when there's cake. 

For the record, he's married and his wife had a baby a few months ago. Noah came home super excited because he decided that he also wants to be a daddy AND a teacher when he grows up. You can be both, Mom! Isn't that cool?

Yes, dude. It's very cool. 

Anyway, thanks for being such a cool teacher, Mr. D. Sorry for being such a spaz, but my kid loved you. Turns out that's a slightly contagious emotion. 

Brave Little Toaster

Once upon a time, I was the mother of a little boy who was scared of the bathtub. Who was scared of so, so many things. 

He wanted to be brave. He tried to be brave. But when your brain sends you into fight-or-flight mode over the sound of a nearby lawnmower, or the feel of grass on your bare feet, it's hard to brave. It's hard to try new things when you can't process them, when you can't articulate what you're even afraid of, when you can't work those new things out to their logical conclusion.

Even when the logical conclusion is: This is supposed to be fun, dammit. 

"I know what that is!" he said, pointing at the rental snorkel gear. "It lets you breathe underwater! Can I try it?"

Uhh. Okay? Sure. Yes.

The thing is, if we'd asked or offered, he probably would have said "NO." And that's okay. We've finally figured out how to sit back and wait for him to ask. To surprise us.

And to always say "yes" when he does, even if it scares us, a little.

Way to go, Noah. You're officially and for-real the bravest kid I know.

BONUS:

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