jools (also a beloved child) – Page 19

Category: jools (also a beloved child)

our dinner with jax

Posted on March 11, 2007 by wrekehavoc

my dear friend jax, who i don’t see as often as i’d like, cooked an amazing dinner in honor of my birthday. (for those of you new here, jax is a friend who works at the same place as BS and who was assigned to be our “daycare buddy” when her DD, a few months younger than BC, started at daycare. over the years, we’ve realized that we are basically the same person; she is the long island italian version, and i am the new jersey jewish version.) what’s especially amazing is that she did this after being on travel for work last week out on the west coast and had just returned on friday. while she knew that chocolate is the flavor i favor in cake, she psychically knew i especially love a chocolate cake with gushy pudding in the middle.
i cannot say thank you enough about that.

i must say, though, that the show that came just before dinner, though, was priceless. earlier, BS and jax’s DH took the kids for a walk to the nearby river, where they collected shells and even found a horseshoe crab shell. you know, it was almost the stuff of norman rockwell. (jax and i sat and drank wine. oh yeah, she cooked. i did nothing.) our four kids were playing together in the house — BC and anya (8, 7.5), jools (3.5) and katie (just turned three — happy birthday fellow march b-day girl!), and we thought they were happily doing something harmless. i’m not quite sure when we realized it, but someone went downstairs to check on the quiet kids. in short, they were covered in paint. jools and katie both had purple paint in their hair (jools had a purple mohawk); anya and BC were also covered. although none of us were particularly happy about the situation, it was incredibly difficult not to laugh. we swooped up the kids, washed everyone off, and jax threw their clothes in the laundry. the paint won’t come off the clothes, and we didn’t take pictures (!), but who cares. at least no one ate the paint.

so a big shout out to my lungisland friend who busted her butt last night and who i suspect is busting it even more, now that there’s a ton of paint on her basement floor. i wish i could help you clean up.

smiling jools said to jax as we were leaving: “next time, you can come over and destroy OUR house!”

that’s assuming our house isn’t already close to being condemned, dude 😉

the bitch is back

Posted on March 4, 2007 by wrekehavoc

i remember when i was a smug singleton… even a smug, married, non-parent, i’d add. i would look at people who had children in upscale restaurants and wonder why these noisy little screamers were ruining my meal. i vowed that when i had children, i would not take them to restaurants until they were good and ready to go. and i sure as hell wasn’t going to ruin anyone’s upscale dinner unless i knew for certain that my kids would behave. i was as good as my word, and i still get bent when i see parents bringing kids to really nice restaurants who are not ready to behave in said places. i figure, shoot, i did my time for society and ate at lots of places with kiddy menus; why can’t they make the short-term sacrifice, too?

fast forward to today.

we had a yummy dinner at nam viet, one of the last surviving vietnamese restaurants in the area formerly known as little hanoi tonight. as we walked in (my kids actually behaving perfectly for once), i saw a late 20-early 30-something woman and man grimace as we were seated next to their table. i then overheard the woman say to the waiter, “you probably should move us, as i don’t think they are going to move.” needless to say, i didn’t like what i heard. it isn’t like my kids came in screaming or shouting, running amok and sticking chopsticks up their snoots. they were behaving better than a lot of adults i know. so of course, i did what any jersey-girl mother would do. i hissed.

i looked right at the lady, and i said, “i hope your uterus dries up.”

around these parts, i am known as a class act.

ladybug, ladybug, you're still dead (like francisco franco)

Posted on February 26, 2007 by wrekehavoc

BC came home from school today complaining of stomachache, pains in her leg, a headache, and other assorted maladies. jools was home with me because i wanted to give sleep-deprived BS a break (though i am just as sleep-deprived as he is. but somehow, i’m the mom so i have to stay sane. he’ll probably get to sleep in the basement; i’ll get my bed but also the kids who moan in the night. i don’t think this deal is very fair, but there it is.)

so now, i have the two of them in the basement playing with the bazillion fisher price little people we have amassed over the year: the little people zoo, the little people house, the little people garage, the little people amusement parks (plural because we somehow have two), the little people doctor’s office, well, i could continue, but you get the picture. peace generally reigneth except for every five minutes, i hear one of my own personal little people shriek:

“MAMA, THERE’S A LADYBUG!”

probably due to the world-wide freakshow known as global warming, we have amassed a collection of dead ladybugs in our basement. for some reason, BC thought she’d share her fear of dead or live bugs with her brother. so now, they want me to pick up and remove aforementioned dead bugs every time they find one. which is, apparently, every five minutes according to my watch. i’m about to lose my mind.

carnival cruise – review from a family perspective

Posted on February 1, 2007 by wrekehavoc

we just returned from our very first cruise, a cruise on the Carnival Ship Inspiration. since folks are always interested in information about family-friendly vacation options, i thought i’d share my .02 in case anyone was interested. eventually, i will do a full review. we (DH, 8 year old BC, 3.5 year old hellboy, and i) went on this cruise not knowing what to expect. we booked it last minute, as it seemed like a really reasonably-priced way to have some fun and visit two ports.

carnival touts its “camp carnival” program as the answer to the cruising parents’ prayers — you get a break while the kids are having fun. camp is available to kids 2 to teen. people we met on the cruise were surprised — their travel agent told them that their 21 month old could participate, but the folks on the cruise told them that he could not, so they had a special friend with them throughout the cruise and no break. it seemed like there was some naptime geared to the under-2 set at lunch time for an hour (this would have been completely useless for my kids had they been at that age at that time — when they were babies, they napped in the a.m. and in the p.m. but not over lunchtime), but other than that, the only thing available to parents with kids under 2 would be paying for babysitting from 10 pm until 3 am. i can’t speak much to the under-two situation, but if you were considering a cruise with carnival, you would be wise to make sure that your expectations are in line with what they offer. oh, and know that anyone not potty-trained may not swim in the pool. any pool. period.

we were surprised to find that camp occurs in spurts. most days, it starts around 9 through noon. then, they close for lunch and reopen at 2 (except on days when they have family events at 1:00 — more on that later.) until about 5pm. they close again at 5 and then sometimes reopen for dinner, sometimes not in the 5:45 range until 10pm. after 10, you must pay for a babysitter — $6/hour for first child, $4/hour for second — which is available until 3 a.m. some of the activities are fun — the older kids built, painted, and exploded a volcano. the younger kids basically played with toys, colored a bit, and listened to stories. but they tout this as an “award-winning program”. who gave the award — sony? my eight year old was surprised that two hours in the day — one in the a.m., one in the p.m. — was dedicated to playing with playstation2 and gameboys. “mama,” she said, “why don’t they ever take us to the pool? we shouldn’t be playing with gameboys on vacation!” this sort of programming smacks of laziness, so much so that if an eight-year-old can figure it out, then i wonder why the children’s programmers cannot. in short, you’d do better at a program at a club med, activity-wise, where they take the kids swimming, do sports and circus activities, painting, and a show. while the kids had fun when they were there, it was due more to being around other kids their own ages rather than due to the programming. (oh — and that 1:00 family program? it’s “build your own bear — carnival cruise bear. for $19.99, of course. like you need to shell out more money and pay for more crap to schlep through customs.)

timing is an issue for people with young children. if you have children that stay up late and wake up late, bully for you. for the rest of us, staying up really late means you’ll pay in a big way the next morning. the allure of partying until 3 a.m. is lost on sleepy parents of young children, methinks. unfortunately, most of the nightlife (shows, events, tournaments) starts at 9:30/10:00, so carnival essentially nickels-and-dimes you for childcare if you actually want to participate in any of the things you came on the boat for in the first place. conversely, if you are like us, you never get to see any of the shows because if you stay up really late, you’ll pay for it the next day when your three year old bounces out of bed very early. in short, cruise ship schedules are not exactly young-family-friendly. the people who dreamed up the schedule on this ship either are childless or live with mary poppins, who cheerfully provides childcare 24/7 and lets the parents sleep in at will.

the dining room was the best part of the trip. i cannot say enough wonderful things about the dining room staff, who remembered that my kids liked chocolate milk at dinner and brought it out each night. they were pleasant beyond compare and downright wonderful mostly. if your kid is a finicky eater, there is pizza and chicken nuggets galore. the food is average (hello — indian food requires actual spices, people), even decent in spots, and i still miss the warm melted chocolate cake. which i ordered. every night. and it shows.

the pools on the ship were quite small (it is a ship, after all), though my eight year old enjoyed the water slide. (i think you have to be 48 inches tall for that.) the kiddie pool, near a little play area, is very small. on our first day, it was filled with things like splenda bags, cigarette butts, and other yuck. my kids adored this tiny pool, though (only 18 inches deep) because when the ship rocked, it turned into a crazy wave pool (unintentionally). eventually, the pool was cleaned out so i didn’t have to wonder what sort of nasty filth my kids were swimming in.

other cruise lines are undoubtedly different from carnival. but the carnival clientele is not dominated by urban parents: it’s predominantly middle america, people from the heartland who smoke aplenty (and they did, which even irritated my kids), drink aplenty (and those drinks with the umbrellas ain’t cheap), and apparently who think it’s cool to get t-shirts from the harley davidson store in grand cayman even though harleys are american. (note: pet peeve alert — the smoking area rules were not enforced at all. if you do not like being around cigarette smoke, you really need to be aware of this.) they were shocked that my kids ate from the sushi bar (and OHMIGAWD what a brave move for carnival to put one on board, open from 5-8 many evenings but very smoky due to its position near a bar) and even more shocked the night they offered indian food.

anyway, that’s pretty much the family angle. i will also point out that the cruise price is just the beginning. everything costs extra. sodas. (my daughter asked for lemonade with dinner, and apparently, that wasn’t considered a juice. $2 + tip, please.) as you can probably glean, i am probably not a cruiser, as i don’t like feeling like i am being nickled-and-dimed for everything. club med sandpiper was a much better value, imho (and no, i don’t work there — i’ve just been there several times) and does a much better job with the kids program. IMHO, carnival should take note.

oh, my nose!

Posted on December 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

with no apologies to marcia brady whatsoever.

yesterday, as hellboy was waking up from his nap, i came over to tell him that BS had put up a tree for christmas and that we were going to go and visit santa’s helper at the mall. we celebrate chanukah in this house, but we also help BS celebrate christmas, too, in a very secular way. (we’re probably more religious than he is.) he was so excited that he accidentally head-butted me in the nose. in short, i think my nose is broken. it hurt so damn bad that i was convulsed in tears for a solid two minutes. “go get daddy!” i told him. he bent over and kissed my head, which of course made me cry more because he was so sweet. “it was an accident – i know you didn’t mean it. go get daddy!”

eventually, he toddled off. i heard muffled voices, then i heard BC walk over and shout, “mommy’s crying, daddy!” yep. i’m sure in about 10 minutes time, jools would have worked his way over to “mama is hurt,” but no matter. BS, in an effort to keep order, told the kids to sit on the couch and watch TV. he assessed my nose in about 5 seconds, went away, and threw a bag of peas over, then promptly left to watch the kids or something.

so there i sat, holding a bag of frozen peas on my nose. not very dignified, huh. i eventually came out of there, blew some of the blood out of my nose (yes, i get prettier as this goes on), and looked at my husband for some sympathy. of course, at this point, he was knee-deep in christmas lights, which only means one thing: stay the hell away from BS. i tell him every year to just get a new set and avoid frustration — it is worth the $20 not to have him bark at all of us because the light in the very middle is out and taking all the other lights out with it. but no. so i sat with my kids, who were very sweet. jools was sad that he had hurt me, and so i of course went into “i’m really ok” mode. (a day later and my nose still hurts.)

so if anyone wonders why the hell i don’t care for christmas, you can put this down as one more reason. christmas is freaking hazardous to your health 😉

toys in the attic

Posted on December 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

that would be wishful thinking at this point. plenty of toys are scattered in the family room, in the sun room, in the kids’ own rooms. i feel like there’s no room for any of my stuff anymore unless it is something acceptable to people under age 8.

currently, hellboy, who gave us more fun than we ever could have wanted last night by hitting 105.2F, is scattering paper butterflies all over the place from his new elefun. of course, he don’t need no stinkin’ trunk to scatter them. he just took the trunk off and is currently littering the world with red, green, and yellow faux thingies. he’s pretending it’s a leaf blower, which, while not something the game makers intended, might make for an interesting idea next fall.

that assumes, of course, that it survives until next fall. if it’s anything like the easy bake oven that BC got for chanukah, it’s got a life of about, er, 1 hour. see, BC decided to shove the plastic spatula-type thing into it, only it had the pan in it simultaneously. and now, it’s stuck beyond hope. one call to the nice folks at hasbro, though, who tried to walk me through fixing it while jools kept blowing me with the elefun (remove all heads from gutter, please), resulted in the nice folks at hasbro shipping out a replacement part, i.e., the entire oven and spatula. gratis. of course, it is backordered, so she probably won’t see this until her 14th birthday, by which time i hope i will trust her with the real, honest-to-G-d oven.

ah, burger meister meister burger, we hardly knew ye.

slurpees gone wild

Posted on November 29, 2006 by wrekehavoc

for those of you who can manage to scroll back all the way to nov. 21st (you can DO it!), you might recall that i promised mr. jools a slurpee should he keep his pants dry and clean all day. ok, so he had a slight mishap on thanksgiving day; otherwise, he has been a superchamp. so today, after school, we piled into the car, and the three of us had a slurpee party. nevermind we all had coke (ok, i had diet pepsi, which i secretly loathe but which was the only thing edible that fit in with my new food regime) slurpees, and as newly-caffeinated citizens, we will all be up until 3am tonight.

we brought aforementioned slurpees home in time to watch the humungus leaf sucker truck (as it is known in these parts) eat up the leaves in the street. jools at first was afraid the giant hose would suck him up, too. BC, meanwhile, wanted to get as close as possible to the hose to see inside it, making me very nervous. (it’s always feast or famine, huh.) and we sat and watched them as they slowly moved down our sleep. after our leaves were sucked up, we had the good fortune of seeing the men take the truck apart, as the truck broke down — someone put a plastic bag in the pile, which felled the giant machine.

in these parts, that makes for good theater. sadly, we had to break up the fun because it was time to pick up DH at the metro. but we had us some good fun, we did.

i want candy

Posted on November 21, 2006 by wrekehavoc

so, in a move that will guarantee me a spot in mommy hell, i told jools that if he kept his pants dry all day long, he could choose a piece of candy from his halloween stash. until he kept his pants dry all day long, though, he wasn’t have any sweets. i’ll be damned. the boy kept his pants dry. all day. even went potty voluntarily several times.

yep. my kids are motivated by sugar.

struggling

Posted on November 20, 2006 by wrekehavoc

the day started out ok. jools had blood in his ear, so we dropped BC off at school, then he and i went to safeway to shop until it was time to go to the doctor’s. we lovelovelove our pediatrician, so much so that BC was jealous because she wanted to see dr. j. anyway, dr. j didn’t see any infection in his ear and figured that perhaps jools had somehow scratched it up inside. so off we went, stickers in hand, ready to go to the big thanksgiving shindig at jools’ school.

at lunch, my face swelled up again. BS, in a moment of sheer kindness, left work and came to jools’ school to take my place with jools at his feast while i went home to put my head on the heating pad. when i returned to pick everyone up, jools had once again pooped in his pants and was in a different pair of pants. he always tells me he is too busy to go to the potty. at home, he pooped in his pants again. later, he peed. he asked to wear a pullup. reluctantly, i agreed.

i finally told him that he is acting like a baby, and babies don’t eat candy (which he asks for constantly since halloween happened), so until he keeps his pants dry and clean every day, he can’t have candy. something in my gut tells me this is really a bad idea, but i don’t know what else to do. he *knows* that he’s doing this; he’s been able to do this before. i told him that we can’t go fun places either, like the zoo, until he keeps his pants dry. but i don’t think he cares. and everyone else in the family ends up being penalized because of this. BS is about to go spare. BC is pissed off, too. and we can’t plan any vacation if he’s going to be pooping all over.

i’m really struggling with this.

good things come in threes. so do bad things.

Posted on November 17, 2006 by wrekehavoc

so yesterday, when we last left our hero (me), i was covered in beer. it stood to reason that i would spend the rest of the week wondering when i (or things that required cleaning) would be covered in other substances.

wonder no more.

today, i have indulged in a happy cake-baking marathon. a very special little friend of ours is turning 4; another special little one is turning one; and BS is turning, well, older than 4 + 1 combined, for sure. the parents of the first two parties are having one giant party tomorrow and have asked me to bake. i am honored. of course, the cakes may not end up looking like a professional made them (especially since there are little folks here who are d y i n g to help decorate, so please forgive me now, alanna and kelly, wherever you are), but hopefully, they will be tasty enough to please the folks who are eating them. (besides, we all know everyone cares mostly about the frosting, anyway, right?)

but i am covered in flour. substance #2.

so you say, well, that’s only two. where’s three, little miss can’t be wrong?

i got #3 for ya. in spades.

last night, left to his own devices, jools got hold of a BIG bottle of baby powder. mind you, we seldom ever used baby powder on either kids as babies, so this was a gift that we’d had since jools was born. to make a long story short, he poured all of exhibit A on his library books and CDs; on his furniture; in his BOOMBOX, in his drawers; and basically everywhere his little hands could go. i asked him later: why did you pour powder everywhere?

he informed me that he was sprinkling powder to scare away the skeletons. jools is afraid of skeletons. i don’t have the heart to tell him that there’s a skeleton inside of him at all times for fear he will never sleep again.

suffice to say that we’ll be living with the baby powder for awhile, or at least until we move him to his new room.

yep. beer. flour. powder. good things come in threes. yahoo.