1) On Friday night, Jason slammed the car door on Noah's fingers. When I tweeted about it later, while the two of them were off having a Great Emergency Room Adventure Involving All The M&Ms, I felt compelled to include all 12 characters of the word "accidentally." You know, just in case anyone might think he did it on purpose, or for fun. You don't get to be thousandaires on America's Funniest Home Videos without the occasional grievous bodily injury, son. Now hold still. KASLAM! An x-ray revealed that his fingers were fine. Just bruised. He had to wear a metal splint on his pinkie for a day or two, which mildly cramped his Lego building abilities but gave us all ample opportunity to point at his hand in horror and exclaim that oh my God, Noah, you're turning into a robot! Noah: You're just kidding, right? Asshole Parents: No, we're totally being serious. Noah: (deep, weary sigh) Stop. Asshole Parents: Oh my God, Noah, you're turning into a ro- Noah: I'll be in my room. 2) Yesterday Ezra woke up with a swollen face and jaw. At first we thought it was another mosquito bite but on closer inspection... Read more →

Operation DIY Backsplash: DONE. Donedone! (Well, we still need to caulk. And put the switchplates up. And paint. And replace a couple cabinet doors. And swap out the door handles. And replace the stove and microwave. So. Not even close to being done. BUT ALLOW ME THIS MOMENT.) I'm happy to report that nobody died and nothing got set on fire. The kids watched an obscene amount of TV, though, and I do still have some grout on the bottom of my foot. This project was made possible by a few dozen YouTube demos and my husband's degree in engineering. Also possibly magic. I went to Target on Saturday morning and came back to BAM. TILE. That is how you do home improvement, ladies. To be fair, I was buying very important things at Target, like ALL OF THE STEEL WOOL, which I then stuffed into every conceivable mouse-entry wall-hole I could find. (Personally, I think the pan of old scrambled egg residue sitting on the stove is what really ties it all together.) A few lessons in DUH MORONS I feel compelled to pass along, in case anyone else is planning a similar project: 1) The fact that this... Read more →

If I have learned anything from my hours (and hours) (zomg) of watching home improvement television shows, it's that pretty much everyone in America hates their kitchen. We're all living in the wrong kitchens, I guess, since SOMEBODY chose our cabinets and countertops and presumably liked them well enough at some point. Then we move in and are like, what were they thinking? That linoleum is an ABOMINATION TO GOD. (Meanwhile, I like to imagine the previous owners of our house, with their penchant for modern laminate EVERYTHING, moved on to some house with a hugely elaborate dark-wood kitchen trimmed with brick-a-brack and grape-cluster corbels and shit.) We'd lived in our house for all of five minutes before we, too, started hating the kitchen. The layout was okay, but mostly because the super-cheap remodel had the shelf life of a bag of chips. The cabinet doors started to peel and chip and hang off their hinges, the countertop started to shed its outer layer of laminate and pull away from the wall, the sink leaked and the appliances were crap and THEN THE OVEN CAUGHT ON FIRE. Point is: I got new countertops yesterday. Yaaaaaayyyyyyy. Yes, THAT FACE EXACTLY. Those... Read more →

Mornin' Ezra, why are you rubbing your eye and ear so much? Is everything oka... ...OH DEAR GOD. (And also: ADDDDDDDRIAAAAAANNNNNN!) Ugh! This again. The dreaded I-swear-I-am-not-making-this-up Skeeter Syndrome. Still hasn't outgrown it, though I was hopeful this would be the year. Alas, it looks like we're in for another long summer with a perpetually disfigured (and/or coked-up-on-Benadryl) child. The worst part is that the mosquitoes just fucking LOVE Ezra so much. They swarm to him, especially his poor, sweet little face. (Though he also has about five gigantic welts on his legs, all hot and angry with oozy blistering centers.) If you send 10 kids outside to play for five minutes, Ezra will come inside with more bites than the rest of them combined. Sometimes he's the ONLY one bit, probably because he's a literal mosquito magnet. And then BOOM. Quasimodo realness. He's like reverse citronella: Want to drive mosquitos out of your backyard? Here's Ezra. Just toss him over the fence. Problem solved, Pied Piper style. "Don't worry, Mommy," he told me this morning, right after my initial real-life OH MY GOD reaction to the swelling, "My mosquito bites will get better on Friday." (Also happening on Friday,... Read more →

(Or Maybe They Did While I Was Only Pretending To Listen) 1) You will spend a crazy amount of time clipping their weed-like fingernails, even though your own nails don't grow worth a damn. 2) They will also probably have nicer eyelashes than you. 3) Little-boy funk-smell kicks in sometime around age three. 4) It smells like a combination of feet and maple syrup. 5) You will totally get peed on. In the face, directly, at least once. 6) I also do not suggest painting the walls immediately around changing tables or toilets with a flat finish. Go with eggshell or satin, or else just thumbtack up some freaking towels. 7) Those little PeePee TeePee things do not work, unless you care to see just how far your son's urine can propel a tiny, soggy cone of fabric across the room. 8) All that said, a lot of times they just manage to pee right on their own heads. Memorize their shocked expression when it happens, because hiiiiiiiiiilarious. 9) Boners. 10) Yeast infections are not just for girls. 11) EW. 12) The instinct to turn random objects into guns/blasters/lasers/phasers/swords/lightsabers/arrows/cannons/etc. is something they are born with. Don't worry about it too... Read more →

So part of the sponsorship dealie thing with Sauza (who I refer to in real life as simply TEQUEEEEEEEELA, because we're close) included the assignment to have an actual Ladies' Night In. OH. IF WE MUST. How could I resist these eyes? <-- Click that and then guess which set of eyes I am talking about. GO ON GUESS. However, because I am no fool, I invited my favorite lady AND her non-lady significant other, because I knew he would bring dessert. Specifically, cupcakes for the kids and macarons for me. (He did not let me down.) Since Jason and I have never met a party theme we didn't enjoy beating into the ground, we decided a Sauzarita party called for a taco bar, complete with homemade guacamole and salsa. We also decided that Tracey and Charlie were about fourteen different people: HEY YEAH WE BOUGHT ALL THE LIMES, TOMATOES AND AVOCADOS IN THE WORLD THERE ARE NONE LEFT NOW SORRY BYE. We ate all of this. (Ezra helped.) And this. Jason made homemade roasted tomatillo salsa (recipe here) and I encourage everyone on earth to follow suit. It will change your life and probably cure at least some of... Read more →

Meanwhile, not long after I wrote yesterday's post and tried (again) (and failed) (again) to coax Baby Ike into a nap, I realized Ezra was being AWFULLY nice and quiet downstairs. Suspiciously quiet. Like, now-is-the-time-I-realize-he's-decided-to-dump-a-bag-of-flour-down-the-toilet-for-fun quiet. Nope. He was just really very tired. Even Ceiba was like, uh, is you dead? Nah, he's fine. Just drunk, probably. Ike also eventually, finally caved to utter exhaustion. Also in a slightly unorthodox location. My children do have beds, I swear. Horrible, hateful beds, apparently. Whatever, I'm not here to reason with any of you crazy people. You stay there and dent your face up all you want. (Awwwww. I want to stroke that fluffy head, but I won't, because SHHHHH NOBODY BREATHE WHOEVER WAKES HIM UP GETS THE HOSE, I MEAN IT.) Read more →

Do not let him fool you. Do not lend this child any money. That angelic little serious face has not napped in three days. THREE DAYS. And I don't mean oh, he's fighting his naps, or only taken short naps, or irregular naps, I mean NO NAPS. Not even so much as a 15-minute catnap in the car. Yesterday I saw him half-close his eyes in the stroller on the way home from the playground...and then he caught himself and powered through another four solid hours of daylight. 6 am to 8 pm, this child is a ball of non-stop terrifying awakeness. Is he tired? Exhausted? Collapse-on-the-floor-wailing-because-his-head-is-stuck-under-his-musical-activity-table-again-level sleep-deprived? Oh, fuck yes. All that. He's a complete wreck at this point, possibly able to see through space and time but unable to figure out that hey, I'm tired. I should close my eyes and sleep instead of freaking out everytime I blink. Molar number four is cutting through. Which I think (hope) (pray) (trade personal soul for) is the root of the problem. The other three fucked with his nights; this one decided to mess with his days. For kicks! To be different! Oh, that upper left molar, marching to the... Read more →

You may have noticed (or...not, probably not, but allow me a moment to wallow in delusional self-importance) that I have not posted a single non-camera-phone photo in a very long time. I think Ike's birth was the last time we pulled out the "real" SLR camera, and even that was a last-minute scramble of BATTERY! CHARGER! MEMORY CARD! LENS CAP! And then it was still easier for me to grab my phone off the nightstand and snap photos. And in a way, the ease of always having a semi-decent-ish camera in my back pocket (and the forgiving hazy glow of Instragram filters) has probably saved poor Ike from the worst of the third-baby photo fatique. Sure, not every picture of him is a professionally framed shot in high resolution, BUT AT LEAST I TOOK A LOT OF PICTURES. I DESERVE PARTIAL CREDIT. But probably the biggest reason I abandoned my trusty SLR is that it maybe kind of sort of got accidentally punted down the basement steps by my children and/or one of their friends, I don't know who, I was too busy enjoying wine with my friends to pay attention to the fact that our children were playing soccer... Read more →

Happy Mother's Day! I got you the gift of HOLY SHITBALLS IKEATASTROPHE: A few weeks ago, we impulse-bought a wall cabinet at Ikea, brought it home, and promptly procrastinated the hell out of actually assembling it. The box sat propped in a corner until yesterday, when Jason decided to finally tackle the project, because he knows how much I love moving Things from One Thing into Another Thing. In this case, sorting and moving all our serving platters and entertaining-type dishes from the sideboard in the dining room into this new, awesome cabinet, AND THEN moving the sideboard into the living room as new-and-improved toy storage, AND THEN moving the bookshelves out and OH MY GOD, POINT IS, SO MUCH DEPENDED ON THIS CABINET. I spent a few happy hours sorting dishes and vases and whatnot into keep-donate-maybe piles, then began stacking them neatly into the new cabinet while Jason reorganized some other cabinets. No longer would I need to climb up on a stepstool to get a baking dish from that annoying cabinet over the fridge! No more digging for oversized bowls from the depths of the sideboard! Everything we actually use and need will now live in this... Read more →