(In Which I Strive To Not Talk About Sad Things During Another Post For The American Cancer Society) I was looking through stacks of old photos in hopes of finding some inspiration for this entry, something that would FINALLY maybe focus more on the "birthdays" part of ACS' More Birthdays campaign and less about, you know, the "cancer" thing. I'm not sure if I found inspiration, exactly, but I definitely found a theme. And that theme would be: Cake, Pinafores and Unfortunate Bangs. Oh, I'm kidding. But not about the cake part. Aaaaaand maybe not so much about the bangs thing, either. Sometimes I feel guilty about how few photos I manage to ever actually print out. About 99% of my children's childhoods remain solidly in virtual form only (albeit with a robust and slightly paranoid web of backups going on under the hood). There's something nice about sifting through yellowed stacks of photos, never knowing what awkward, poorly lit memory you'll hit on next. Then again: No timestamps. Perhaps these photos were once labeled in an album, but are now floating loose and out of order, so I have no idea how old I am in the above photo.... Read more →

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... Read more →

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. Read more →

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... Read more →

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... Read more →

I was planning to write some kind of tribute. Something happy. Nostalgic and sentimental. I felt confident I could scan some photos, talk about the good times, tell a funny story or two, anything but more cancer talk. Anything but loss, death, grief, because no. It is his birthday. But instead the words are jumbled up inside, trapped within a knotty ball of discomfort somewhere above my heart and below my throat, but the idea of untangling it all seems more likely to result in heaving sobs instead of an eloquently written tribute. I just. It hurts so hard. I miss him so much. I want him back. I want to send him an Amazon gift certificate and talk to him on the phone. I want to hear about the yellow cake with chocolate frosting, his favorite. I want to visit him this weekend and cook for him or treat him to carryout from a restaurant and apologize for how loud the kids are being and for never knowing what to get him for his birthday besides another lame Amazon gift certificate. Because that's what I got him for his last birthday, and the birthday before his last birthday, before... Read more →

I believe I have made my feelings about the zoo known already. Several times, in fact. Wait, here's one more. So going to the zoo yesterday was the very definition of insanity, or completely understandable because my in-laws were visiting and getting out of the house is unbelievably critical because otherwise we all sit around while my mother-in-law helpfully folds my underwear in the living room and my father-in-law watches his laptop defrag for a couple hours. Not this time, I decided. So help me God, we will go to the fucking zoo and like it. CAN YOU NOT SENSE OUR COLLECTIVE JOY? WAKE ME UP WHEN AMERICA REALIZES THAT PANDAS ARE THE MOST BORING ANIMALS EVER. Noah and Ezra, to their credit, had less than zero interest in those dumb overrated pandas anyway. They wanted snakes. Lots of snakes. Are we at the snakes yet? Yeah, elephants, okay, whatever, OH DEAR GOD PLEASE TAKE US TO THE SNAKES. Amy: If I'd known they were that into snakes we coulda just stayed home and sent 'em into the basement with a shovel and some flashlights. Jason: A...shovel? Amy: I don't know. It just sounded right. Wiffle bats, maybe? We spent... Read more →

Very early this morning, the bathroom door opened. I protested because, well, it was closed for a reason, if you get my drift, and I think that you do. A still-sleepy-looking small child appeared in the doorway, clad in old-man-style plaid jammies, holding something. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was a not-insignificantly-sized, perfectly-formed ball of poop. I should note that he was still wearing his pajama bottoms, and that everything...usually involved with this sort of thing was perfectly clean, as if his offering simply materialized in his hand like some kind of goddamned Mr. Hanky of a Christmas Miracle. He was quite pleased with himself, apparently, having bypassed his own bathroom to purposely make his way into mine so he could show it off before depositing it neatly into our toilet. And the You Know You Have Too Many Small Children punchline to this story is that my only reaction was to shrug and think: Well, that's a timesaver. Read more →

Penn State. Unfortunately. I ran upstairs last night and shook Jason awake. JoePa! They fired JoePa! And then we stayed up for hours watching ESPN, watching the students wander aimlessly around downtown while the eternally-present-and-obligatory group of drunk dickheads smashed some shit up for no reason, just like they did 14 years ago for reasons I don't remember. We won? We lost? We were pissed about increased late fees at the library? I don't know, but it always ended with a couch getting pitched off a balcony and set on fire. FUCK YOU COUCH YOU ARE DRUNK. We stayed up watching the Paternos step outside their house -- a house I remember driving by, and the whole car went reverently silent once it was pointed out, because it was JoePa's house -- to blearily thank the "kids" who'd gathered on their lawn, only to be completely flummoxed and shocked by the giant seething mass of media that swarmed their doorstep instead. Because they probably still don't get it, how big this is, how awful. That it's not that you didn't do "enough," it's that you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. Nobody did. At 19 years old, I didn't... Read more →

The baby is sick. A terrible, awful, hideous-sounding cough that I KNOW is just a cough and nothing to get worked up over, except TOO LATE. I am a little worked up. Three kids in, and I still completely suck at sick babies. My nerves cannot take sick babies, because my nerves believe they are single-handedly responsible for keeping said sick baby alive through the power of staying completely alert and on edge for 48 straight hours. He's coughing! I better go check. He's not coughing! I better go check. I am much better at handling sick children, once they're older and already have a few dents in them. (And I'm allowed to dose them with an assortment of sticky liquids and droppers and meltaway chews and other things that say MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS FUCK YEAH.) But when a previously mint condition baby gets sick and your comforting options are limited to Vicks BabyRub, steamy baths and getting your boobs sneezed on? That just kind of stresses me out. Although Ike had a better run at health than Noah OR Ezra, making it all the way past the five-month mark before succumbing to one of the many, many strains of... Read more →