The Stitch

"Mommy, Adam is NOT handsome."

"Well, sure he is! I think he is very handsome!"

"No, Mommy. He's not. He's just suitable."

A few local readers were planning to join me on a couple of climbs this year, so I've started scheduling some early summer peaks. I'll start off with the easiest peaks, and work my way up to the more challenging ones, so if you prefer an easy climb, the first one will be the least difficult. The first peaks will be Cascade and Porter. If you'd like to join me, drop me a line and I'll let you know the dates.

It'll be an overnight camping trip with kidlets, and I'll probably climb the peaks on the first day, then go rock climbing with Brian and the critters in Keene on the second day.

We spent part of the weekend in Syracuse visiting my family, who proceeded to burden Elizabeth with sugar and pink frilly dresses. Halfway through the day she understandably metled in a puddle of tears and exhaustion. I held her and comforted her while she wailed in sorrow. Three minutes into the tantrum, she pulled her blondie-blonde head back from my shoulder, looked me in the eye with a tear-stained face and requested between sobs, "Mommy, please take me to the mirror. I want to see how sad I look."

Hey, folks:

We're opening comments again, but if the bleepin' spammers start up with their antics, we'll have to shut them down. We've set the spam filter pretty high, so if your post is at all spammy, it might automatically be deleted. Posts will need to be approved before they appear.

Have a great holiday weekend!

"Mommy, Adam is Prince Charming because he is a BOY. I am a Princess because I am a GIRL. What else can girls be, Mommy?

"CEOs of major corporations."

"see-oh-ohs of major cumprations? GOOD! Mommy, you will be the see-oh-oh of major cumprations, Adam will be Prince Charming, and I will be the Princess!"

(I'm grateful that I've managed to climb the corporate ladder and was promoted above Goblin status.)

This is a picture Elizabeth drew of Brian. You can clearly see the eyes, nose, mouth and mustache!

That very night I was reading her a bedtime story and she was naming the animals on the page. When she reached the water buffalo, she said, "And that's a Buffalo wrap!"

"Mommy, Adam's favorite toybox is the recycled-ing bin!"

Our neighbors stopped by the other day with some serious concerns.

One of our more mannish neighbors told Brian he had driven past our house, looked into our yard to see Brian pulling the kids around on the sled and practically had a heart attack. He slammed on the brakes and hollered at his wife, "Wife! For the love of Pete, we MUST have a boy's hat back at the house we can give them. Adam should not have to wear a pink hat!"

We HAVE boy hats, but we also have a one-year old and a three-year old and the window of opportunity when it comes to slapping on winter wardrobes that delicately lingers between the outpouring of tears and angst is VERY SLIM. We have exactly 2.43 minutes in which to clothe the two mudrunners in Arctic attire and toss them into the snowbanks before they become Very Angry Abominables.

Sometimes a pink hat is the only choice you have when time is limited, and dammit, these kids are gonna get out in that fresh air and they're gonna LIKE IT. Pink hat or no pink hat.

I don't mind Adam wearing pink. In fact, I grew up in the 80s when boys wore pretty pink alligator shirts with their collars flipped up. If the male population can survive THAT, a pink hat is a minor issue.

So, with that in mind, I won't tell the neighbors about the other day, when Adam came prancing into the living room wearing Elizabeth's pink pom-pom boots. It was all I could do to keep from exploding from the cute overload flooding our home to the rooftop, and that's when I decided that if this kid wants to wear pink for the rest of his life, man, I am certainly not gonna stop him.

ch-ch-kaaaah, baby:

I can haz cute so leev mee aloan pleez:

For Christmas all Elizabeth asked for was balls. Lots of balls. Since Adam wasn't able to talk yet, we assumed he'd like balls too, so Santa brought a great big sack of brightly-colored balls. We also ventured down a path of greener living this year, so our very PLASTIC balls were purchased second-hand, as part of our "no NEW plastic" pact.

I wanted to share with you what 200 balls and 198 fewer children look like. It's quite a delicious bit of eye candy.

Because I have displayed public appreciation for my sister-in-law, Jane, I feel it's only fair that I single out my other fantabulous sister-in-law, Julie and shine the love-spotlight in her direction for a little while.

(Yep, Jane & Julie, sisters-in-law: J² )

Y'all know Julie. She's the one who lovingly introduced my daughter to Polly Pocket dolls. This introduction has led to a healthy addiction of molecule-sized doll paraphernalia coating her bedroom floor.

This is Elizabeth's bedroom, post-nap. I think it's pretty safe to say she's not doing much napping anymore.

Dinner at the Piper household is now attended by a jury of six Polly Pocket Princesses. They are lined up firing-squad style, directly in front of Elizabeth's plate and she eats her meals with 12 microscopic, unblinking eyes staring at her. Personally, I think it's a little creepy, but if it keeps her from doing the dinner-tantrum jig, I'm okay with it.

This is breakfast at our house:

This is lunch:

This is the VonTrapp-style (Before Julie Andrews arrived) pre-dinner inspection:

And this? Well, if you threw a six-pack of Miller Lite in the back, THIS could have been my prom night.

Let's hope Elizabeth fares better on hers.

Could someone please explain to me how a perfectly functioning three-year-old can transform into a rabid velociraptor overnight? I really thought we'd conquered everything with the passing of TWO, but all hell's breakin' loose at Chez Piper.

The most difficult aspect of this sudden shift in personality has been the enormous language barrier that has erupted before our eyes. Three weeks ago, a typical conversation between Elizabeth and her father would be:

"Elizabeth, let's pick up our toys so we can read a story!"
"Alrighty, Daddy! Clean-up-clean-up-everybody-do-your-share. . . "

This week it goes something like this:

"Elizabeth, let's pick up our toys -"
"WHAAAAAAAAAAAZOMMMMFLOOOOOGISTICKITYMUCKITYDOMPTOOFUPPPPPMOCKERSTALKDOOOOOOOOOO AND I DO NOT LOVE YOU!"
*kick*kick*kick*

Three weeks ago:

"Elizabeth, what are you drawing?"
"This is my Daddy, and this is my Mommy, and this is Badam, and these are the rainbows and heart flowers that float around our family because we all love each other very, very much!"

This week:

"Elizabeth, what are you drawing?"
:glare:
"Is that a flower?"
:glare:
"Is that Mommy?"
:menacing growl because you've touched her paper:
"Are you at least having fun?"
"NO AND I DO NOT LOVE YOU AND IT IS NOT MOMMY IT IS A BOGBLOPPIUPTTTTTTTT"

Three weeks ago at the dinner table:

"Awwww, honey, don't we have perfect children? Isn't life perfect?"
"Yes, dear! Everything is perfect!"

This week at dinner, while listening to screams at the same decibel level of two planets colliding:

"OH MY GOURD CAN DINNER BE OVER ALREADY? WHO LET MARIA SHARAPOVA MOVE IN AND WHEN DID SHE GROW A SCREAMING LITTLE BROTHER?"

(Because anything big sis does is MADE OF AWESOME and MUST BE COPIED.)

See, to explain: we fed Elizabeth shrimp for dinner. She loves shrimp. Except for this one night, and that's the night that shrimp caused her tongue to dissolve as though the shrimp was made of acid. She took one bite and said, "NO!" and began pointing furiously at her tongue, while making the angsty "LEHhhh-LEHhhh-LEHhhh!" noise

Now, to her credit, Elizabeth is GREAT at trying new foods, so we don't make a big fuss when she tells us she doesn't like something. She tries everything we put on her plate, and eats most of it, so if she says she doesn't like it, we have no reason to disbelieve her. The problem is that she hasn't learned the fine art of subtlety yet, so discarding the offending mouth trash is often a problem. At first we asked her to politely spit it into her napkin, but she's a bit of a drama queen* and a simple swipe of the tongue became a rather nauseating display of horking and ckhullllkking ABC food across the dinner table.

We now ask her to politely excuse herself so she can spit directly into the garbage can. Yes, I know this isn't the POLITE way of completing this task, but SHE IS THREE, and right now we're just trying to make it through the meal without a mass puke-fest. We'll deal with garbage-can consequenses later.

Normally she's happy as a cowbird in a fresh mud puddle to toddle off to the garbage can, but this week, well, THIS WEEK EVERYTHING IS NOT THE SAME. After her tongue melted in a big puddle, she insisted that we carry her to the garbage can.

Why did she need to be carried?

"I CAN'T WALK BECAUSE THE SHRIMP IS NOT GOOD!"

Except, because she had a mouth of shrimp, it came out as

"AH-CAH-WAH-BAHCAH-AHH-AHMP-AH-AHH-GAHHH!' followed with a dollop of drool.

Now, Brian and I have learned the hard way that giving in to these demands NEVER ends on a happy note. You can condemn me straight to Polly Pocket Land (my own personal version of hell) and call me a bad parent, but I really don't feel like carrying her to the garbage can FOREVER anytime her food tastes bad - because she WILL expect me to do this forever if I give in this one time.

Those who have dealt with toddlers will know EXACTLY what I'm talkin' about. And those who have never had children, well, you can stop angrily pecking on that keyboard right now, because I'll be hittin' the old DELETE button as soon as I receive your "HEATHER IS A ROTTEN MOM" email.

So, if you haven't yet figured it out, I did NOT carry Elizabeth over to the garbage can, because:
A) Her legs were kicking about, which made me think that her legs were probably working just fine
B) If I carried her this one time, I would be expected to carry her to the garbage from this day, forward, until the end of time. If you think I'm joking, I am so very much NOT.

The result: The biggest meltdown in three-year old history, resulting in a time-out, which resulted in early bedtime, which resulted in her falling asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow. While in Time Out, she screamed (while holding the shrimp in her mouth) so loud that I wondered if I should call the neighbors over to see for themselves that I was not feeding her to our dog piece by piece. Each time I asked her if she was ready to walk over to the garbage, my question was met with a scream louder than the previous one

WITH THE SHRIMP STILL IN HER MOUTH.

FOR FIVE MINUTES.

People, seriously, this is where I have trouble understanding toddler logic, if it even exists.

If the shrimp tastes like sh*t, would it not make the most sense to get rid of it as quickly as possible? I mean, would this not serve your best interests? Does it make any sense at all to hold it in your mouth until your demands are met? Does it even make sense to HAVE demands at this point? Would anyone hold sh*tty shrimp in their mouth for five minutes to simply prove that BY GOLLY, GYMBOREE, I WILL WIN THIS WAR!

The only other person I know who would do such a thing is, well, me.

Last night she was back to her usual cheerful self, so I'm hoping the erratic behavior has been a quick adjustment phase that can easily be explained by strange planet alignment.

Right?

RIGHT?

*I don't know where she gets it from, so STOP looking at me