A Perspective on Santa

The scene: sitting on the couch with Greyson watching Diego. Something about a baby reindeer, to be honest I’m not really into it and have zoned out.

Greyson: I don’t like reindeer.

Me: How would Santa fly his sleigh without reindeer?

Greyson: Santa can’t fly a sleigh.

Hmmmmm…I’ll ignore the obvious answer to this statement and take the bait.

Me: Why can’t Santa fly a sleigh?

Greyson: Because he’s not a good driver.

Let’s see…driving a sleigh led by woodland creatures at night, in the dead of winter,  landing on people’s roofs, breaking and entering while the owners asleep. Point for Greyson, Santa probably isn’t in the right state of mind to be driving.

Cinderelhim

My kids LOVE to help me with things, well some things anyway. They don’t want to do plain old boring things that I would like them to—like pick up their toys. But to help with something that I normally do by myself is a treat! I figure it’s about time I start exploiting them. Greyson is 3 and Kinsley is 2, when I was them I already had a full-time job planning clothing changes for my Barbies. 

I asked Greyson if he would like to help me do the dishes. You would have thought I offered him a trip to Disney! Now before you go thinking I am a bad mom and turning him into Cinderelhim, I had already done most of the dishes and removed all the sharp objects. There was a few pieces of silverware and bottles to be washed. 

 Greyson was delighted to have dish brush in hand. I even showed him how to wash the insides of the bottles with the round brush. Just when I’m thinking I must have been a total idiot for not doing this before he goes to dump the dishwater out of the bottle… and then it’s all over the floor. 

“That’s okay Greyson, you just keep washing dishes.’

 “Kinsley, here’s a towel honey if you want to wash the floor.” Kinsley comes running, “Yeahhh, I do it!!”

Good job kids! I love you so much that next you can clean the bathroom. Mommy is going to read her Kindle.

You have a little something on you

Yesterday, we’re at gymnastics…Greyson is jumping on the trampoline. The trampoline is a big deal at gymnastics and there is only one kid allowed at a time. Needless to say, there is a line of mothers and their little bouncers waiting for their turn. So there’s Greyson…jump, jump, jump, freeze, insert finger inside nose. Flashing red light in my mind—we have an issue at hand.

I use my outside-of-the-house mom voice that implies I’m so loving and sweet but DON’T push me, “Get your finger out of your nose now. That’s gross.” My inside-my-head-while-we-are-out-of-the-house mom voice that begs my children to behave and not look like they are hooligans says, “Please do not put your finger in your mouth and eat a booger. Please please pleasssse.”  Success! Greyson drops his hand to his side and starts bouncing. Issue adverted.

Flashing red light in my head returns—new issue. My mind switches to warp speed to process the new situation—there is a booger hanging from the tip of his nose. Option 1) tell him and ask him to wipe it off. No, we will likely return to the original dilemma where I feared he would put it in his mouth. Option 2) Ignore it. That seems kind of mean to let your own kid run about with a booger hanging from his nose. Option 3) Wipe it off. Option three is good. Let’s move quickly. No tissue.

Before thinking I reach up and swipe my finger across his nose. Issue resolved. Red light still blinking—new issue. Now *I* have a slimy boog on *MY* finger. Wipe it on my pants and carry on. After all, the kids have done a hug and wipe on my legs a dozen times this morning. No booger in mouth, no booger hanging from nose, booger on Mom’s pants. Grrrrrreat.

Fabulous, Simply Fabulous!

Important: While it APPEARS I only have one follower (thank you my dear friend Missy Grant Cooke), I had 60 people view my blog the first day. Don't go thinking it isn't cool and you shouldn't read it anymore. It's cool I swear! Fifty-nine other people said so. Thanks to all of you!

I just ordered a new potato* bag on Etsy. Two fabulous things in one sentence-let me back up. First, a potato bag. If you don’t have one of these you probably don’t know what I’m and talking about, and you don’t know what you’re missing! It’s basically this fabric bag with a fold down top used to cook potatoes (and any other vegetable you want to steam) in the microwave. 

Yes, I am aware you can cook a potato in the microwave WITHOUT a potato bag, but once you have, you realize you wouldn’t want to ever again. They come out so wonderfully fluffy and perfectly done.

Before you go thinking my family is ga-ga over potatoes, I’m not really a huge fan of the starch (Bo would argue this is a vegetable. It’s a STARCH. So is corn. Accept it and move forward please) but Bo thinks they are fabulous. I think they are fabulously cheap, are great for adding to soups and casseroles, and allow me to make another side dish in 6-12 minutes.  So while I wouldn’t say they are fabulous, they are still pretty okay.

An added bonus: potatoes ARE one of Kinsley’s favorite “toys.”  Potatoes in the bag, out of the bag, in the bag, out of the bag, roll them around, stack them up—attempt to stack them up, put them back in the bag.

You may be asking, if she loves the dang thing so much and thinks we should all buy one why doesn’t she already own one? 

Well, I did. 

It caught on fire. 

In the microwave. 

Don’t go freaking out. I’ve had this happen with other fabric microwave things, like the rice bags that you use as heating pads (another fabulous). I don’t think it is a user error although I will not fully omit that option. I think just after being microwaved so many times the fabric particle enzyme proton neutrons break down (I did just make that up, sound scientific didn’t it?) 

I don’t really know why or how it happens, but we had the thing for 5 years so I am fully ready to invest $6.00 in another one. Don’t worry about the whole fire thing, it gives off a funky smell that’s hard to miss so you’ll catch it before there is any real issue. (Side note: you SHOULD have a fire extinguisher and check that your smoke detector batteries are charged, so really it shouldn’t be an issue anyway. I’m just saying.)

Second fabulous part of my opening sentence—Etsy. You will quickly learn that when I love something, I really really love it and think everyone should love it too. Etsy (www.etsy.com) is one of those things. It’s an entire website dedicated to people who are selling hand-crafted (or what we called “home-made” in the olden days) items. That’s right people, no more having to wait for art-fair season, battle parking and hope you can find what you are looking for amongst 100’s of vendors.

Looking at Etsy does make me feel a little (a LOT) untalented nearly every time I am on there; but it also provides me with dozens upon dozens of ideas of things that I would like to create, great original gifts, and always upon always it is one of the most amazing sites to “window shop.” 

All this to say: potato bags-fabulous. Etsy-fabulous. I love them, you should too. They're cool.