"Teachers Don't Have Phones."

And with that, the question over whether or not he was telling me the truth was answered. 

We caught Noah in his first big, sustained lie yesterday. The details are exhaustively boring, but suffice to say he'd figured out a way to game his token/reward system at school and make us think he was earning more points for good behavior than he was. Then exchanging those points for treats at home like playing video games or getting some Halloween candy. (That is not actually from Halloween, but just what the boys call candy year-round here.)

I'd grown suspicious and questioned him a few times, and he remained consistent with his cover story (his teacher couldn't find the stamp so she marked his paper with a crayon instead) and insisted that he was telling the truth. 

"I promise, Mom," he'd say, cooly and calmly, with perfect eye contact and an earnest, dimpled smile.

That was what made me back off, every time: the eye contact. Noah remains a jumble of different quirks from both on and off the Spectrum -- at his last IEP his teacher said she absolutely didn't want to change his diagnosis code from the catch-all "Developmental Delay" yet because she simply cannot figure him out, because he simply ISN'T just one thing or the other and doesn't seem to really fit any of the "usual" codes -- but eye contact is a big deal. If he's upset or overwhelmed in the slightest, it's the first thing to go. 

But yesterday the cover story took a turn for the improbably convoluted. I listened to him chatter on, asked a question and sensed the teeniest, tiniest bit of "OH SHIT MAYDAY MAYDAY" in his voice as he quickly tried to backtrack -- yet his words never seemed to fail him, and he continued to speak clearly and articulately. He wasn't making sense to me, but in a different way. There was no hint of his word retrieval/processing problems; he just sounding like a typical kid attempting some verbal gymnastics while trying to assure me that I'd misunderstood the first version of events he'd just described.

Finally, I told him I was going to call his teacher and ask her about it. He jumped back three feet and froze. "Don't call her," he whispered. 

He wouldn't tell me why he didn't want me to call her. He repeated the story again. He promised he wasn't lying. 

"Why don't you believe me, Mom?" he asked, his voice so full of hurt that I wavered again, because if there's one thing Noah is not, it's an actor. He still won't wear costumes or pretend to "be" anyone during play, and he gets unnerved when Ezra incorporates emotions into their games, like fake crying or anger.

But still, I didn't believe him because my gut didn't believe him. The developmental stuff was a convincing smokescreen, but if I pushed it back and stared at the piece of paper covered with suspiciously childlike scribbles that he insisted were done by an adult, well. Come on, dude. 

I repeated my intention to call his teacher. 

"You CAN'T!" he wailed.

"Why not?" I asked. "Is she going to tell me something different?"

"No! I don't know!" he paused. "You can't call her because...TEACHERS DON'T HAVE PHONES."

Aaaaand there it was. The wheels were falling off. We'd hit the limits of the logic ceiling. 

I gave him another chance to fess up -- I assured him that I cared much, much more about the truth than I did about how many points he was getting at school, but that there would be definite consequences and loss of privileges if I had to find the truth out from someone else.

Instead, he opted to double down. "I am telling the truth," he said, with a perfect poker face.

I went upstairs to get my shoes on -- we needed to leave in a few minutes for his occupational therapy appointment, after all -- but apparently Noah thought I was calling his teacher right then. Jason found him staring up after me with a look of nervous, stomach-churning agony. 

I was halfway back down the stairs when the confession started. 

"I just wanted more Halloween candy," he admitted.

***

Lying is bad and wrong, of course. And being lied to by your child is annoying. Choosing punishments and reinforcing the importance of the truth while curbing your own white-lie fibbing habit is an exhausting and not-particularly rewarding part of parenting.

But oh, you guys, it's also just so normal. 

The Day The Magic Died Because I Accidentally Murdered It

So if you were around on Friday you're already aware that it took Baby Ike all of an hour and a half to make a complete jackass out of me. Post About Thing Baby Is Not Doing, Baby Immediately Up And Does It, All Casual-Like.

Perhaps his reading comprehension is better than I previously thought as well. 

Highlighting their mother's general incompetence was a theme for the weekend, actually. On Saturday Tracey and Charlie came over for an evening of...um. I dunno. Food and baby stuffs. Dogs and Instagramming and YouTube and heavy metal on Pandora. We made slow-cooker jerk chicken and collards with bacon and while the kiddos were eating their frozen mini-pizzas from a box LIKE YEAH, Noah started hollering to me about his cheese falling out. 

I was in the middle of some REALLY IMPORTANT discussion about something that I no longer remember and wasn't particularly interested in pizza-cheese drama, like "Okay dude, whatever, just eat it anyway," but it turned out he was actually trying to tell me that his tooth had fallen out. 

Oh! Yeah. Don't eat that, after all.

Everybody clapped and high-fived and made an appropriately big deal over it. We put the tooth in a little plastic treasure chest he'd gotten from the nurse's office when he lost a tooth during P.E. back in September and discovered that...oh, there was already another tooth in there. He lost three teeth in such rapid-fire succession a few months ago that he apparently lost interest in the Tooth Fairy concept and hadn't put the last one under his pillow. Given the market's high going rate for human baby teeth and our tendency to not ever have any cash in our wallets, I guess we forgot to remind him after a couple days of disinterest. 

But now, of course, Noah was thrilled. Holy shit! Two teeth! Do you know how much money that is, right there? Do you know how many Legos that will buy? Probably only like, five spare blocks, really, since Noah is still a little fuzzy on just how much we've spent on those bloody things, but hey, whatever. It's Legos or college. He's made his choice. 

We put the bounty under his pillow and went right back to our hosting duties, which naturally included making one of our guests put our baby to bed. Charlie acted like I was "letting" him put the baby to bed but HA HA HA. Yeah. Ike went down like a very sleepy rock and did not wake up ONCE, AT ALL, EVER, until almost 9 goddamn o'clock in the goddamn morning. Charlie can come over and put that baby to bed any night he wants to and I'm not even going to ask questions re: whether black magic or bourbon are involved because I AM STILL SO TIRED.

Noah and Ezra woke up a little earlier than that, and I was just slowly starting to become aware of their voices and chatter and Ezra was...crying about something? Maybe? And then Jason bolted upright.

"OH SHIT."

"WHAT?" 

He didn't need to answer, because by this point I was awake enough to hear what the boys were hollering about. 

"TOOTH FAIRY!" They were both shouting. "TOOOOOTH FAIRY!"

"Oh. SHIT." I muttered. "That."

Yeah. THAT.

Noah had managed to open their window (thanks, handy integrated childproof locks!) and they were shrieking in despair at the early morning sky, thus broadcasting our parental ineptness to the ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD.

*headdesks*

So we spent Sunday morning coming up with various excuses for the punk-ass tooth fairy, including traffic and weather and maybe there's a pre-dinner-time cutoff for same-day money delivery? (And the more truthiness-based "she probably just made a mistake and forgot.") 

He seemed to get over the disappointment before too long, though I'm sure this moment of shattering disillusionment in both magic and his parents' general trustworthiness will come up in therapy one day as the source of ALL OF THE PROBLEMS, so I figured I best beat the inevitable bestselling tell-all revelations and confess that yeah, we forgot about your tooth and felt really shitty about it. 

Noah, this morning, one tooth poorer but eight damn dollars richer. 

Looks Like Somebody Needs His Own Blog

There are four whole pages of this. All caps-lock, with not a single instance of punctuation to be found, save for some parentheses on page three.

I COULDN'T BE MORE PROUD YOU GUYS. 

Mr. Fixit

We have an IEP meeting today, the first of two IEP meetings scheduled over the next few months. For this year is Noah's re-evaluation year, the year he's due for...wait for it, oh, you'll never guess...a re-evaluation of his strengths and weaknesses and needs and services, up to an including the Big Label that keeps him in special education and keeps my mother-in-law up at night for fear of his PERMANENT RECORD and her continued, unshakable belief that the public school system is legally allowed to tie him to a cheerful Circle Time Chair and forcibly inject Ritalin into his veins. IT HAPPENS. SNOPES IS IN ON IT TOO.

This particular meeting is, quite frankly, going to be bullshit. Not much more than a procedural checkpoint. We will show up and be told about all the different evaluations and testing procedures they plan to do before our next IEP meeting, the big one that will determine his placement for first grade. (Where there are no Circle Time Chairs, but I believe you may be able to request one of those coin-operated massage recliners for your child's Clockwork Orange-style med drip. Fingers crossed!) They will hand us five trees' worth of paper detailing everything we just talked about and our 17th copy of the Parental Rights & Responsibilities handbook that we cannot turn down because they found a typo on page 47 of the last version, thank you and we'll see you again in a couple months, time for the next family, moving on, thanks. 

***

At almost half past six years old, Noah has no real trace of a speech delay, the thing that started All Of This. He never shuts up, actually. Sometimes his grammar is a tad mixed up and full of extra words that buy him precious processing seconds, and he still adorably pronounces V as B. (As in "This lebel of Plants Bersus Zombies is really hard.") But other than that, he's your typical chatty exuberant omg inside voice, Noah kid. Bonus: he's learned all kinds of delightful words from his classmates, or at least he thinks he has. 

"Damage!" he says, deviously scanning my face for a reaction. "Beenis slug! Poople tale!"

His brain seems to be running a constant loop of things he's seen or heard -- usually TV or movies which he memorizes like a human tape recorder -- and he has a hard time turning off the recall or understanding that not everybody else in the room has any idea what he's talking about when he randomly decides to talk about how the bad bird was up on the roof but then the thing fell down and that was funny, right? Right? Right Mom? Right? 

"What are you talking about?" I usually end up asking, exasperated that I am unable to coax more than five words from him about his day at school but will get several hundred about some bit of an Angry Birds fan video he watched once on YouTube.

The thing is, TV and movies help, too, especially with the bigger social picture and his ongoing issues with rigidity and anxiety. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies and books, for example, maybe play to his current obsession with potty talk than I'd like (OMG THE MOTHERFUCKING IRONY), but have completely changed the way he treats his friends, and especially Ezra. "I'm not a mean brother like Rodrick," he says. "I'm a nice brother. I'm a friend brother."

The various iterations of Star Trek -- with different costumes and ship details and characters and hell, even actors -- have been hugely helpful when he's confronted with something being "different" or "not normal." Before that, Star Wars and Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz taught him how to use his imagination.

And Kung Fu Panda 2, of all things, gave us the phrase "inner peace" as an effective code for "rest your body" or "holy sensory freakout child, please calm dowwwwwwn." 

And the auditory recall seems to work at school, too, despite how easily distracted he is by...well, EVERYTHING. The wiggly leg on his chair. The edge of his shirt sleeves. That other kid who is in time out for saying Something That Sounds A Lot Like "Damage." Anything and everything in the classroom that may have been moved from its usual location. The sound his mouth makes when he blows air out like this or like that.

Despite all the distractions, he's learning. He's reading. He's writing. He's drawing elaborate re-tellings of his favorite movies comic-book style on the wide sheets of paper we set out on his kindergarten-teacher-recommended Writing Station, up to and including the closing credits. His fine motor skills have never been better, and his teacher even declared his handwriting "beautiful," especially for a kid who only really figured out how to hold a crayon properly a year or so ago. 

He says he hates school, which of course bothers me, but I sort of think that's the point: I roll my eyes at "damage" and "fartle fart" and "pooper diaper" but have a hard-to-resist kneejerk reaction to "I hate school." Why? Why do you hate school? What's wrong? What's happening there? Is it your teacher? The other kids? TELL ME SO I CAN FIX IT. I CAN CALL ANOTHER IEP MEETING AND FIX IT.

I should know by now it doesn't exactly work like that. Sure, there are things about Noah that I could cautiously, inelegantly call "fixed" or "resolved." Things that took years of therapy and effort and money. And other things that simply faded away with a little extra time: maturity on his part, understanding and creative thinking on mine. And other, other things that found unlikely, almost sudden solutions: A curved exit ramp, Star Wars, karate or sometimes just actual, real-life magic. 

And of course there are still other things. Big things, subtle things, question-marky-let's-keep-our-eye-on-that things. The IEP helps with some of those things, along with OT and diet and a truckload of patience, so we keep chugging along and showing up and doing everything we possibly can to help, to guide, to aid.

But not to "fix."

Because you can't fix something that isn't broken. And my child is not, and never has been, broken. 

 

The Christmas That Ate Everything

As in, ALL THE FOOD. ALL THE COOKIES. ALL THE WINE. ALL THE BRAIN CELLS.

Hello! And happy 2012. Sorry for slacking off last week. After Instagramming the shit out of Christmas Day, I guess I got distracted by our hosting duties, my new-found mastery at making pâte à choux and filling it with horribly fattening delicious things, and Noah's pleas to assemble ALL THE LEGOS.

If you ain't no punk holla We Want Legos WE WANT LEGOS!

The Spongebob house (worst set EVER, was missing a ton of pieces and will fall apart if you breathe on it too hard) was a brief diversion from the True Meaning Of Christmas, however, which was:

STAR TREK

MORE STAR TREK

GOOD GOD COULD THERE BE ANY MORE STAR TREK IN THIS PICTURE

(Judging from the complete Enterprise Bridge Model Playset with Poseable Action Figures and Various Other Impossibly Tiny Pieces currently taking over my entire living room floor, the answer is YES.)

"It's not that big, I don't think," my mom texted me re: this cardboard spaceship. Lies! Such lies!

My mom was actually the one who had to go to the emergency room on Christmas eve. Her calf and ankle were swollen after she arrived on the train and kept getting worse so I insisted we go and check it out. "I Googled!" she protested. "It's nothing!" (Again with the lies!) I didn't even have to Google that one to know exactly what WebMD article would come up first. Never challenge a blogger to a Google-off, people. YOU WILL LOSE. GET IN THE CAR.

(Two ER visits and two ultrasounds later, it was diagnosed as a Sprain Of Mystery and not a blood blot.)

This family, right?

Ike spent the week acquiring eleventy billion new teeth, no exaggeration.

(Slight exaggeration: He now has seven. SEVEN.)

He also did more than his fair share of eating all the food. Parsnips, carrots, peas, zucchini, pears, yams, celery root with potato, green beans with mint, a little Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.

OMG IT'S THE CATERPILLAR I BARFED ON IN THE STORE THAT TIME NO WAY U GUYS.

After Christmas the second wave of family arrived, including my five-year-old nephew, so the real feats of strength could commence. And the beatings. And the "stop that, you guys, stop that, somebody's going to get hurt, stop that."

(THUMP.)

(WAAAIIIIILLLLLLLS.)

(REPEAT.)

I think someone said something to me about "wow, I guess this is what it would be like with three boys" before it registered on their face that OH RIGHT THE BABY. But I may have imagined that comment because you know what it's like with three boys? Drunk. All the time. As much as possible. 

(Kidding.)

(It's mostly full of stuff like this.)

Anyway! It's good to be back, little blog! But now I must be off because I promised the kids we'd go bowling one more time before school starts tomorrow. Then I have to get ready for another IEP meeting this week and lose 20 pounds of pâte à choux-related ass. I know. So much excitement going on with this rockstar lifestyle of ours, it's incredible that I can even find the time to type it all out sometimes. 

Weekend Things From All The Things

Weekend Thing One:

Another three months, another belt test.

Another hilarious ("HILARIOUS") and obligatory video of the board-breaking moment and belt ceremony, during which Noah was specifically, personally warned -- upon penalty of FAILING -- not to touch his board or bring it up to the front, which he always does, because...well, have you ever broken a damn board with your foot? Me neither. I imagine I'd probably glue that thing onto a fascinator and then never take it off, just to warn people not to mess with me, I WILL BREAK YOUR ARM OFF AND USE IT AS A CHIN STRAP FOR THIS HERE HAT, M'KAY?

Anyway. Noah obediently placed his board next to him and put his hands back on his knees while other students were called up to receive their new belts. And then Jason and I watched as he sl-o-o-w-ly started losing focus and succumbing to the siren call of Shit To Fidget With and picked his board back up.

"NOAH, NOAH!" you can hear Jason and I frantically hissing from behind the camera. "PUT YOUR BOARD DOWN. NOAH, NOAH! NO BOARD DUDE, NO BOARD!"

Our whispers got increasingly desperate (read: loud) with each kid's name and finally he turned around and heard us, just in time to put it down and head to the front for his belt. 

"OH MY GOD," I groaned, even though I really meant "HOLY FUCKBALLS." But I did not say that, because honestly? Noah's karate teacher scares the hell out of me, too, so I try to stay on my best behavior.

***

Weekend Thing Two:

So babies are, obviously, born with the ability to somehow KNOW that their parents have bragged about what good sleepers they are. Even if it's nothing more than a Facebook status update, they KNOW that you have broken the code and invited the wrath and eaten something from the table with That Thing With Eyeballs In Its Palms From Pan's Labyrinth. They will wake up seventeen dozen times that very night and there's nothing you can do about it. You asked for it, you big dummy. 

I was totally betting it might work in the reverse when I called Ike out for being a crap sleeper last week. Maybe, JUST MAYBE, his instinct to Prove Mama Wrong All The Time could be tricked! "Oh, you think I'm a terrible sleeper? Well, look at me! Look at me sleep! Don't you feel silly now?"

(Or alternately: "Oh, you think THAT was terrible? HA HA HA I'M GOING TO WAKE UP EVERY 15 MINUTES FOR NO REASON AT ALL.")

Back in the days when Ike was a mostly pretty good sleeper, his bedtime originally settled around 9 pm. Late, yes, but it was nice because I could help get The Other Two into bed before getting called up to Boob Duty, and Jason could squeeze in some baby cuddle time that didn't involve The Other Two dive-bombing Ike's face over and over and over because Baby Ike! Baby Ike! Baby Ike! He's so cute! We want to hug his neck with a vengeance!

Eventually it was clear that 9 pm was entirely too late and he was going to pieces by then, so we tried edging it up. But then there was his tendency to take a late, short catnap around 6:30ish, which yes, YES I KNOW, was not a good idea but it allowed me to get the stupid mac n' cheese on the table and the cocktails in the shaker, so I went with it. But the nap wasn't long enough to really count as sleep and yet was just enough to take the edge off for a few hours, at which point Ike would lose his shit when he went from zero to massively overtired in a span of a few minutes.

We tried an 8:30 bedtime, then 8, and even a 7:30. Still hideous. I tried getting him to take a nap earlier, at a more appropriate time. Swaddling, no swaddling. Adding an extra, post-boob bottle. Same result: A screechy, exhausted baby who would not put himself to sleep without maximum sturm und drang, and who would, at best, sleep fitfully all night, with lots of wakings and irritation, until finally conking out good and cold at...oh, 5 am? Maybe 6? HOW'S THAT WORK FOR YOU? 

But now it's looking increasingly like we just hadn't moved his bedtime up early enough. That 6:30 "nap" was actually him trying to tell us to knock that shit off and put him to bed already. 

So now Ike's bedtime routine kicks off Early Bird style...by 6:15 he's in the bath, by 6:30 he's changed and lotioned and strapped into his Nighttime Battle Armor Diaper, and then we rock and nurse and sing for a little bit and he's out like a light by 7 pm. 

And on four out of the last five nights, I haven't heard a peep from him until 7 am.

Oh the fifth night, he woke up once, at 3:30. I nursed him and he went back down within 15 minutes. I sense that waking was a warning because I think he somehow knew that I was thinking about writing this post. 

HA HA CHILD I STILL HAVE LEARNED NOTHING. I WILL PUT YOU TO BED AT FOUR PM IF I HAVE TO, THEN GO OUT FOR A $6.99 STEAK DINNER IN BOCA. 

Weekend Thing Three: 

Ezra left this for me in my phone's photo library. I...I don't know what it is, but it is oddly reminiscent of a Top Chef Quickfire challenge, no? 

Ezra Storch, your Next Top Iron Chef Food Network Chopped Star From Hell's Kitchen Challenge

All Blogs Are Hideous At Age Eight. It's Quite Normal.

Oh my God, you guys, this blog is eight years old today.

Eight years, I have been blabbering on about whatever it is I blabber on about. No wonder I'm running about of things to say. Can't I just tell the volcano story again? Or the oven fire or the bird or Newark and also luggage cart? Could I perhaps start a business selling ready-made birth stories for today's busy modern momblogger who is too busy writing sponsored product reviews to deal with the whole messy, overwrought emo side of the business? 

Eight years. I was in my 20s, in the city, in an office, in heels. I am currently in none of those things. Now it is: 30s, suburbs, work-from-home-bed-nest, bedroom slippers.

(Though I still own all the heels. I'm just more apt to whine about them when I wear them.)

There's also that whole THREE BOY CHILDREN plot twist that happened along the way. The me of eight years ago would NEVER have seen that coming, and probably would have been a tad horrified at the prospect, which makes me want to point and laugh at her, because man, that uppity bitch totally had this coming. 

At the risk of sounding ancient as all hell and get off my virtual lawn-ish, it's really gobsmackily crazy how different the Internet is now. It was so...small, and yet wildly exciting huge and untamed and new. I didn't even start a blog, I started an online journal. Because that meant you were more writerly, or at least longer-winded and less inclined to edit.

*puts on monocle and holds dainty teacup*

There were no ads or ad networks and the great Sell-Out debate centered around whether it was tacky to put an Amazon wishlist or PayPal button on your site. I had no idea how to handle drama or trolls or criticism or how to even be all that authentic. My early entries manage to be both embarassingly personal overshares and experiments in playing an online character. I was wildly excited to realize that people were reading and commenting and linking, and then I'd go home for the holidays and my dad would advise me to stop wasting my time entertaining my dumb friends online and get back to you know, real writing. 

Anyway, blah blah blah different time new world blogging-as-viable-career-path-cakes. Let me get back to what's really important, to what defines this blog-thing now, eight years and probably millions of run-on sentences later: GROSS STORIES ABOUT BABIES AND WHY BABIES ARE GROSS.

1) We took the boys to see The Muppets on Wednesday. Mini-review: Super-duper fun and awesome, especially for grown-ups, but perhaps about 15-20 minutes too long for little kids. That last quibble was perfectly evidenced by Ezra, who -- during the last of about three quietly emotional turning points in the movie where somebody learns something about the value of friendship -- decided to shriek I GOTTA GO POOP at the top of his lungs. 

2) Then we came home and I was playing with Ike on the couch, lifting him up in the air and making goofy faces at him, like mo-oooo-ooooom, you're so lame and embarassing, and he chose that exact moment to remind me that we are NOT fully past the days of the turbohork and yes, I am using my blog's eighth anniversary post to tell you about the time my baby barfed on my face and it got in my mouth. What of it? BEHOLD, MY LIFE'S WORK. IT IS RICH WITH MEANING AND PURPOSE BUT CLEARLY NEEDS MORE FART JOKES.

(Eight years and counting and I still haven't bothered to learn Photoshop.)

(And as God is my witness I probably most likely never will, because bleh.)

NOAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!

I COULD sit here and tell you what my weekend was like, with words and stuff, OR you could just go ahead and watch the following video over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (breathes) and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over a few hundred dozen times or so and basically get the gist of things.

Overhung

NOTE FROM THE MANAGEMENT: Please direct any complaints about the lameness of this post (and I assume there will be multiple)to my husband, who decided it would be fun to make me a margarita at 11 pm last night, even though he KNOWS that tequila and I broke up over a decade ago for a very good reason, and that very good reason is that tequila likes to wake me up at 4 in the morning by clubbing me in the face with a two-by-four. 

Besides getting my ass kicked by a single mean-drunk cocktail, I am also running low on things to talk about. Seven other blog deadlines in addition to my regularly-scheduled freak-outs right here are fine and manageable some weeks. Other weeks I'm all panting and crazy-eyed by Friday, like OH MY GOD I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT BREASTFEEDING ANYMORE. (Seriously, though, it does come up a lot. Exhibit A, and B, and a totally cheaty C.)

TL;DR version: HERE ARE SUM PITCHERS I TOOK WITH MAH PHONE. SHUT UP, I'M TIRED.

School picture time! This is, without a doubt, Noah's best showing in a school portrait. While I am of course majorly biased in my belief that he is an incredibly handsome child, I have to admit that there is something about school pictures that transform him into a slightly demonic-looking gooberface. 

There's a big trend among this portrait companies to shoot in front of a green screen now so parents can select from a variety of cheesy-looking backgrounds. I geninely think they're missing out on an opportunity by not offering something like this one. 

And then there's THIS KID, who looked so absolutely adorable in the one-inch photo preview the portrait company sent home that I was POWERLESS to resist buying a super-expensive portrait package with a gazillion and one wallets, but who I JUST NOW NOTICED managed to dribble some kind of bright red liquid all down the front of his shirt. (Way to go, preschool! You apparent bunch of rookies.) He also has a band-aid on his arm, just to complete the "Don't Let The Vest Fool You, I Am A Fan Of Bar Fights" look and feel of the whole thing. 

Here's Ike, who we all know by now has two basic expressions: Schmoopy glee or WTF IS THIS SHIT, MILK LADY. 

Here's my makeup-less self showing Ezra how to use the Incredibooth app. 

And here's why that may have been a mistake.

I'm deleting about 20 of these A DAY, at least.

Also a daily occurrence: me attempting to get "fancy" with the morning sunlight, resulting in streaky, blurry photos of my baby's giant head.

YOU KNOW WHO'S REALLY ANNOYING? THE CAT. HE'S ALWAYS TRYING TO SNUGGLE WITH ME AND GET ME TO PET HIM EVEN THOUGH I MOSTLY JUST PULL ON HIS EARS BECAUSE HE'S JUST SO DAMN NEEDY AND...

He's...totally right behind me, isn't he? Crud. 

 

Aaaaaaannnnd that's all I've got. Time to go parent through a hangover, because I am a winner and an awesome grown-up and also a noted Internet parenting columunist who knows ALL THE THINGS, except how to see through my husband's transparent attempt to get laid and ruin my Friday. 

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

Like many ineffective parents, we use a token/incentive system to bribe our children into behaving. If you can make it through a few paltry basic tasks without losing your everloving shit for no apparent reason, we will award you with a shiny magnetic star.

Accumulate enough of these shiny magnetic stars throughout the week by doing advanced manuevers in civilization (like "put your clothes on your body" and "hygiene" and "eat enough non-chocolatey sustenance to keep your organs functioning"), and you shall be rewarded with the prize of your choice. 

Oh my God, you guys. My kids are the biggest nerds.

The "Bad Guy Ship" that Ezra -- who is a mere three years old, may I remind you -- wants?

Would be this one. The Klingon Bird-of-Prey, as seen in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.

ROAR!

(Note: Please don't tell him that Bad Guy Ships don't actually say "ROAR." It's cute and I'm allowing it.)

Noah wants the "Pointy Ship," also known as the Narada, Nero's Romulan mining vessel from Star Trek (2009).

BEWARE MY FEARSOME POINTINESS

Noah is particularly keen on reaching his goal this week, since he's already constructed the Romulan drill out of Legos and figured out how to make a black hole out of a t-shirt. 

(And of course, he already has good 'ol Bearius Care's ship, the Emperprise.)

SPOILER ALERT #1:

The ships have already been purchased in anticipation of the boys' success. (Along with some likely candidates for next week's objects of Star Chart desire.) The wait to get them out of the boxes may be killing Jason a little bit. 

SPOILER ALERT #2:

Oh, Baby Ike. You are just so doomed to inevitable dorkdom in this house.