Eight. Eight. EIGHT. That baby. Is now this kid. I sat down on Friday to cull through the year's photos and video haul — that's probably my favorite part of the yearly montage tradition, looking back on the year and trying to pinpoint when their faces changed and their limbs stretched out — and after a few hours of half-hearted editing I realized that there was just no way; that eight might be the year to stop and figure out something else. All my video of Noah has its own soundtrack now — there's no little pop song that's going capture Noah's year better than his own retelling of the Legend of Mister Dooknob*, or top his rendition of an original song, sung at the very top of his lungs from under the dining room table; even if it really is just him singing "stunkadilla, stunkadilla" over and over to the tune of Jingle Bells, while his little brother beats out the rhythmn on his drum set nearby. What's a stunkadilla, I ask from behind the camera. YOU'RE A STUNKADILLA, is the answer. Obviously. Happy birthday, Noah. You are officially too big, too much to ever describe in three minutes... Read more →

(So as per usual, I managed to trip on mah high heels and fall face first into unexpected drama. I very honestly [ZING!] was completely unaware that there was any controversy and such strong feelings about The Honest Company until the comments started rolling in — yesterday's post was my third sponsored post with them, and each time I've been treated with nothing but the utmost respect/kindness/bloggeriffic freedom, and literally knew NOTHING about the other blogger's experiences or the trademark dispute. Because I live in a hobbit hole, apparently. Anyway, as my intentions are always to merely amuse, never offend, I sincerely apologize to everyone who was angered or disappointed by yesterday's post. The Honest Company posted an update on the situation on Facebook and asked me to encourage y'all to reach out to them directly at [email protected] if you have any additional questions, comments or deep thoughts about things. So that is that. Can we still be friends?) *** Yesterday afternoon I deployed my standard plan of action for OH CRAP THE INTERNET IS ANGERED-type situations: I backed away from the laptop in a panic and went outside to play with my children. It's usually quite therapeutic and perspective-building,... Read more →

This post is sponsored by The Honest Company. (So, yes. Me and Honest. Again! Sitting in a tree. All BFF-y and stuff. This is how these deals should work, I think. They pay me for posts and then I turn around and give all the money right back to them because I can't stop buying All Of The Things. Yep, that's me, straight-up winning at being a business person. And math.) ANYWAY. I finally caved and signed up for a subscription bundle for household/bath/body stuff. Not surprisingly, we go through a fairly ridiculous amount of cleaning products in our house. I get as much done with vinegar and baking soda as I can, but sometimes you just have to bust out the big guns of AHHHH KILL IT BURN IT SANITIZE IT. It just takes a lot of work to keep my house looking as awesome as it does, where "awesome" means "one step above hovel, with bonus rogue underpants/stealth poop." We rarely get through a meal without someone spilling something, my floors are always sticky and covered in crumbs (and usually at least one of my children is as well, thus keeping hand soap dispensers full and at the... Read more →

I suspect that the Superman underpants are reproducing. It's like the opposite of the underpants gnomes up in here. There is no way I actually purchased THIS MANY pairs of Superman underpants. (I mean, they came in a variety pack! And possibly got me on some NSA Internet watchlist.) And yet we are disportionately overrun with JUST the Superman variety. They are everywhere. They are legion. There's a pair in the bottom of most of my handbags and there's at least one pair turning up in every load of my own laundry and no lie, there is seriously a pair sitting outside my bedroom door right now. Just...sitting there. Watching. Waiting. FOR YOUR BUTT. (I feel compelled point out that those are, in fact, a CLEAN pair. Like that matters, somehow. Like I've just finished painting a picture of a home where underpants run amok and lurk in every corner, where they litter the floor like an obstacle course, perhaps join us at the dinner table once they evolve and develop a sense of self, but oh! Don't worry! They are clean underpants. Because we have standards.) Read more →

Ike is many many things. Ike is very cute, very funny, very smart, very passionate about getting the specific kind of liquid he requested in a very specific cup. (I mean, the boy asked for mulk in a plain red cup and you tried to give him joos in a Go Diego Go cup. You sir, do not deserve your nice eardrums, and shall be punished accordingly.) Ike is also a tiny bit sassy. Ike is NOT, however, a performing monkey, and lately seems to get real and actual delight from thwarting my attempts to document the cute/funny/smart things he says and does. Oh, he'll indulge me off-camera endlessly — say this, say that, count your shoes, do that weird forehead-to-the-floor-butt-to-the-sky breakdancing move again — but then the second my fingers inch towards the record button he's all, IKE'S OUT, BITCHES. His next birthday montage will be heavy on shots of him hollering NO at me before running out of the room. The good news is that I can probably recycle the footage when he's a teenager. (And then I will pull these photos out... ...and make the "MAGIC IKE!" joke for the millionth time and send him running out... Read more →

So I was sitting in a work meeting this morning, scribbling notes on a very old notebook that is branded with a very old logo of a Giant Multinational Corporation's Website For Laaaaaadies that courted my blogging services, once upon a time. (I just checked and the site still exists, albeit with a different logo, so presumably they were able to find some bloggers who were willing to work in exchange for free notebooks.) Only about six pages of the notebook have anything written on them, which is about my going attention span for every notebook or journal I have ever owned. I dream dreamy dreams about keeping orderly household lists and a running log of post/column ideas...maybe even experimenting with some short stories or book ideas, until I get bored and hand-crampy and my handwriting devolves into the chicken scratch of a serial killer. (Same with dayplanners. I'm completely over them by March. But then December rolls around and the siren call of calendars and tabbed pages and preprinted lines for my to-do lists proves irresistable once again.) I paged through those six pages and was horrified to realize that oh my God, it's a blog post I wrote... Read more →

I have written (many, many times) already about my love/hate relationship with the zoo. Here's the Tl;dr summary... THINGS I LOVE ABOUT GOING TO THE ZOO: 1) The idea of going to the zoo. THINGS I HATE ABOUT GOING TO THE ZOO: 2) Everything else. But today I am happy to report that I have done it. I have SOLVED THE ZOO. I solved the zoo by not actually going to the zoo, but instead getting my hair cut (and various patches of body hair forcibly yanked out, because TREAT YO SELF) while my crazy husband took our children to the zoo. All three of them. By himself, alone, with just his two measly arms and two puny eyeballs. Just...cuz. I dunno. He just woke up Saturday morning and decided to take them to the zoo. He took our double stroller, some bug spray, two diapers, half a package of baby wipes, one sippy cup and three baggies of Goldfish. He said he took them because he needed to prove to himself that he COULD take them. (Similar to the time he texted me a picture of Noah, Ezra and six-week-old Baby Ike at a restaurant while I was at... Read more →

"Do you hear water running?" "I do...wait, is it the dishwasher?" "..." "Yeah, probably just the dishwasher." "Yeah." (NOTE TO SELVES OF OH, 18 OR SO HOURS AGO: It's never just the dishwasher. Fool-ass fools.) Some time after this conversation (which was mostly fueled by our joint desire to not get up off the couch), Ezra entered the room. "Some water spilled on the floor in the basement." Jason and I raised our eyebrows at him, not because we wanted further explanation — oh no, that might result in us hearing something that required our presence or supervision — but because that's our parenting code for "THAT SOUNDS LIKE A PROBLEM YOU KNOW HOW TO SOLVE YOURSELF, YOUNG MAN." Ezra smiled blankly at us for a second before saying, "I know, I'll get a towel!" YES. YOU GO DO THAT, SON. He wandered into the kitchen, grabbed a single dishtowel and went on his merry, problem-solving way. I don't know exactly how much time passed between this moment and the moment where I suddenly realized Jason was screaming bloody murder about towels, but it was probably a few levels of Candy Crush, making all my Sims use the toilet, and... Read more →

It's been a tough couple months for Noah. I've been tangled up over what to say or what to post — the fist-pump GO NOAH! entries are so much easier for me to write; going back to the days of routinely wringing out every tiny neurotic emotion via the keyboard isn't something that interests me much. Because even during the tough periods, we're still moving forward. Backwards isn't an option. But I guess lately we've been moving more sideways. Summers are always tough; the back-to-school transition is even tougher. The same old issues are there: anxiety, rigidity, social and attention/impulse control issues. They just take new shapes and forms and ebb and flow in their frequency. The loop is still there, looping around and around, as my child tries so hard to make sense of a world that just doesn't make sense to him. And a world that increasingly isn't quite sure what to make of him, either. (He quit karate, by the way. Yeah. At the beginning of the summer. Just a few weeks after all that earlier drama and my premature pride in coming up with a solution to keep him going. I probably started a dozen blog... Read more →

Amy: Hey guys, everybody getting their pajamas on in he... Amy: ... Amy: Ez? Ezra: What? Amy: Why do you have band-aids on your chest? Ezra: I have a boo-boo here. And over here. Two boo-boos. Amy: Ezra, those aren't boo-boos. Those are your... Ezra: No, I have boo-boos ON TOP OF DEM. Amy: On top? Noah: OH NO EZRA HAS BOO-BOOS ON HIS NIMPLES. Ezra: Yeah, on top of my nickels. *** (Please note the semi-relevant point that the band-aids in question were Muppets, with Gonzo on one ...uh, side and Statler & Waldorf on the other.) *** AND SCENE Read more →