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How I Spent My Weekend

In case you hadn't noticed, I made a couple of "minor" changes around here over the weekend. And by "minor," I mean I blew the whole thing up and started it from scratch. It looks (mostly) the same from where you're sitting, but I switched blogging platforms and made other significant changes on the back end.

A couple of things that might matter from where you're sitting:

1. I probably broke your RSS feed. It wasn't intentional and I'm still not entirely sure how I screwed that part up, but I did. Sorry! I love you! Please re-subscribe if it doesn't start updating on your old subscription automatically! I'm still at http://www.theburghbaby.com.

2. For now, comments are making you type in your information each time you come here. While that is a major pain in the ass (trust me, I know it is), it should be a temporary situation. I need a little more time to install a better comment system, but I'm not sure when that is going to happen. Brain=KABLOOEY when I started looking at it.

I made the switch for a couple of reasons, and none of them are because there is anything wrong with using Blogger. Blogger is/was a great platform, and you can't beat the price (free!). However, it was a pain in the arse that email addresses weren't always passed through with comments (if I never replied to one of your comments, that was why--I couldn't!), and that many people reported having trouble getting comments to post at all. In other words, the things you have to say do matter to me and I didn't like that I couldn't always convey that to you. Problem solved. (Hopefully.)

For what it's worth, I switched to Squarespace. There are some really good reasons I chose it (and I had been looking at it for several months), but I'm still blaming Mr. Lady for convincing me to jump off the cliff.

If you find anything broken, wonky, or just want to whine that you hate it all, please let me know.

SnOMG! 2010

When that turns to this in less than 24 hours



it's SnOMG!

Through Her Eyes . . . and of Her Eyes

I Have Adored You So, Sleeping Cutey

Everywhere I look, there are signs. The signs that's she's growing up are like confetti falling from the sky. Everywhere, falling to my feet in a colorful puddle of reminders.

She buttons her own fluffy, white coat.

The diapers are gone, replaced by a rainbow of tiny underwear.

A Dora obsession is a dark figment of my memory.

The jars of baby food in the pantry wait for a cat's tongue, rather than the toothless grin of a chubby infant.

She spends more time planning her fifth birthday party than she does talking about Bert and Ernie.

And now, an era has ended. Where once a list of Disney Princesses meant chatter about Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Cutey, now it has been replaced by a more grown-up choice of words.

Cinderella.

Snow White.

Sleeping Beauty.

So long, Sleeping Cutey. I will miss the smiles you brought to my face each time Alexis incorrectly uttered your name.

I'll just stand here, continuing to watch the confetti fall, knowing that "makery books" will eventually transform into "cook books." I just hope it doesn't happen too soon.

Always Be Nice to Your Mother. Always.

In retrospect, I was looking for excuses. If I had just asked Alexis in the first place, the answer would have been a resounding, "YES."

A new semester of dance class started last week. Enrollment for the semester started months ago, but for whatever reason, I kept ignoring it. And ignoring it. And ignoring it. I truly wasn't sure if I wanted to sign her up again or not. Now that I've got my 20/20 Hindsight Goggles on, I know that it was because I wasn't in the mood to keep sitting in that room with those people and feeling those things any more.

Alexis loves the class. She doesn't always participate fully, but the only person who has a problem with that is me. She's totally fine with it. Alexis doesn't care if some of the people watching the class have voices shriller than Dora being shoved through a meat grinder. That's on me, too. Alexis has no qualms about her listening skills sometimes resembling those of a deaf dog. I'm the only one who gets embarrassed about that. It was all me, me, me.

Today I picked her from daycare with the intention of taking her to dance class and signing her up for spring semester. There was just one catch; I had learned that this time the teacher is the one teacher Alexis doesn't like. I couldn't decide if my further hesitation based on that fact was because I was still looking for excuses to not put myself through torture or not. I decided I would just ask Alexis what she wanted to do.

I started with asking her if she wanted to go to dance class. Enthusiasm burst from her mouth so fast I felt like a jerk for ever doubting that I should take her. Then came the moment of truth; I told her the name of the teacher.

Alexis started whining. "I don't want to go to dance class," she wailed. "I don't like that teacher," she continued. "Waaaah, waaaah, waaaaaah."

Hearing Alexis summon the waaaambulance was exactly what I needed. I decided right then and there that enough was enough. It was time that Alexis learned that you don't always get to hang out with people you like. I drug her out the door, stuck her in her car seat, and started in with a lecture.

I told her all about how sometimes there are people in your life you don't like and how you still have to be nice to them because it's the right thing to do. I told her that sometimes you have to listen to people and do what they tell you, even if you would rather run away. I might have slipped in that there will be days when she won't like me, but she had better still listen and be respectful because that is what you do when faced with people you don't like. I added that sometimes you have to be extra, extra, extra nice to people you don't like because it's the best way to make it through a situation.

I was certain she caught almost none of my meaning, but I figured if the only thing she got from it was that you should always be nice to your mother, it was still a success.

Then we got to dance class and this happened:



ZOMG! I created a monster! Not only was Alexis extra nice to the teacher, she even did everything she could to kill her with kindness. She was extra annoying towards the teacher, but always stayed on the side of Good and Nice and all that. And? She had fun doing it. Too much fun.

A Break from the Usual as I Share Our Foreclosure "Secrets"

I have been hesitant to write about the new house as I've been fully expecting it to come crashing down any second now. It's been six months since we moved, and it all still seems a little too good to be true. There's a catch somewhere, and I'm not talking about the water leaking in the basement. There HAS to be a catch and it HAS to be worse than that little aquatic drama.

I say that because, as a lot of people know, we bought this house for well under it's actual value. It was a foreclosure. We paid in excess of $100,000 less than an identical house in a different development sold for around the same time we closed. And, no, that's not a typo. Six figures, baby.

Of course, by "identical" I mean it was identical when it was built three years ago. By the time we went to buy the house, it was in significantly different condition than the other one. SIGNIFICANTLY.

Anyway, this all adds up to people asking us a lot of questions about buying a foreclosure. So, here are some lessons we learned. They may or may not apply to all situations:

1. There is a myth that there are all kinds of super-cheap houses in great condition sitting around. First of all, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *gasp* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. There might be in some regions, but it's not the norm. Houses end up foreclosed because people can't afford to live in them. That means they also can't afford to maintain them.

Our house had all kinds of broken stuff and that is why we got it for the price we did. The appraiser happened to show up on the day that it was raining in the family room (because of leaks in the master bath plumbing one story above the family room . . . a LOT of leaks). She also took note of the badly damaged wood floor, the significant amounts of mold in the basement, the dangerous front stairs, the deck to nowhere, scary paint jobs, and all of the holes in the walls. She knocked $100,000 off the value because of all the problems she found.

While we made the repairs for far less than $100,000, we were taking one hell of a risk when we agreed to buy the place. For example, while we were able to clean up the mold with a couple of days work and for less than $200, an estimate put permanent repairs to the problem up over $15,000. It could have worked out that way if the mold had been behind the drywall. We got lucky; it wasn't.

Nearly all foreclosures have the same sorts of issues. It's a risk and all you can do is hire a really good inspector and prepare yourself for the worst.

2. Another lesson I learned through the process is that there is no reason to subscribe to a website that reports to list foreclosures. I tried a few, and never found anything that I couldn't have found on a regular (read: FREE) real estate website (Howard Hanna is my favorite).

The "catch" is that if you are brave enough to be looking at pre-foreclosures, those sites can be very helpful. A "pre-foreclosure" is a house that has a foreclosure pending--one way out of the situation is for the homeowner to sell the house for enough money to cover the outstanding loan. We weren't willing to deal directly with a homeowner and preferred to let a real estate company make a little profit.

Basically, foreclosures are included in MLS listings just like any other house. A Realtor can see that a house is bank (or company)-owned, but it really doesn't matter. I just searched based on price, with a special eye out for houses that seemed like they might be priced a little aggressively.

FYI--foreclosures frequently have very little information available online. I *think* Realtors who specialize in representing banks make less on those bank-owned properties than they do privately-owned ones because they clearly spend less time marketing the houses. There are fewer photos (if any) and information is usually incomplete online. For example, there were only three photos of this house online, and two of them were really bad photos of the kitchen. Nearly every description field in the listing was blank. We looked at the house anyway (because of the price and our familiarity with the neighborhood) and were FLOORED when we saw the place. If the bank's Realtor had tried even a little to market the place, there would have been a bidding war and the house would have sold for a lot more money.

3. If it can go wrong, it will because the bank really doesn't care if they sell the place. We seriously didn't know if we were going to have a house two days before we closed. There were some issues with the bank lying on a disclosure. We knew they had lied, they admitted they had lied, everybody knew it was illegal, but we were left to either ignore it or find another house. The bank wasn't going to budge on price at that point because they really didn't care if they sold the place or not. If it had been privately owned, we would have been looking at a Royal Flush and would have been able to make some demands. But, we weren't dealing with a family who was at risk of losing everything if they didn't make that deal. Banks are willing to start over and they will break a contract in a heartbeat. They already have a bunch of lawyers working for them, so it's really not a big deal.

I could list a ton more stuff, but this is already WAY too long. Another day, perhaps. Hopefully I don't find the catch before then.

It's the Little Things That Make Me Happy

If you weren't already convinced that I have an evil streak, it's time to fix that. While we're at it, we'll go ahead and prove that the evil streak will live on within the heart of my spawn.

While perusing Amazon for birthday party invitations some time ago, I came across a little something that made my eyes sparkle with glee. I quickly pulled the trigger on that little something . . . er . . . big something. In fact, it was LIFE-SIZE something.

A life-size cutout of Troy Bolton/Zac Efron.

OH, YES I DID.

I totally bought Alexis a life-size cardboard Zac. The only thing was that on the very day that I made the purchase, she decided that she was in loooooove with Mr. Danforth. She spent an entire evening declaring her loooooove, so I figured I should probably order a second cut-out. Except, I planned to use the things as party decorations, so it seemed a little weird to have two boys and no girls.

And that is how we came to own life-size cutouts of Sharpay, Gabriella, Troy, and Chad.



They are magnificent. Truly.

Alexis, for her part, LOVED them. So much. She giggled when she saw them. She grinned from ear-to-ear as she moved them around and posed them just right. As Mr. Husband and I stood back and watched her joyfully play puppet-master with the 20-something high schoolers, we noticed something.

The dogs didn't seem to be real found of the fake people who had invaded their house.

At all.

I kinda sorta might have taken advantage of that fact and spent an entire evening chasing the dogs with Troy and Gabriella.

(Caution: Mucho barking in the video.)



My favorite part of that video? The fact that Alexis joined in on the dog chasing at the end. Oh yes, she did. It brings a little tear of pride to my eye just thinking about it.

This little hobby never gets old. Ever. In fact, I think I'm going to go chase the bulldog right now. Heh.

A Little Something for the Grown-Ups

When we first walked down the party decorations aisle, Alexis uttered the most frightening words I've ever heard:

"I want a Dora party!"

*shudder*

Fortunately, she spotted the High School Musical stuff a little while later and changed her mind. Before she could, though, I had an idea. A brilliant idea.

A Dora piñata.

I'm not a big fan of highly structured birthday parties for little kids. I tend to think if somebody is paying for pony rides and clowns and petting zoos and performances by the Jonas Brothers for their 4-year old's birthday party, they aren't doing it for the kid. Regardless, I figured it wouldn't hurt the hoodlums coming to Alexis' party to stop setting off bombs in the playroom long enough to smash Dora's face.

Oh. Em. Gee.

I wish I had videotaped it, if only so I could relive some of the most fantastic lines ever uttered by preschoolers.

"Hit Dora in the face!"

"Smash Dora harder!"

"Hit Dora between her eyes!"



I have to admit, the Latina Whore is one tough hussy. She was battered, she was bruised, she was dented, but she would not break. Of course, she was the lame type of piñata that has the strings you're supposed to pull to open her, but I wanted her decapitated. Judging by the gleeful faces of the other parents in the room, I was not alone.

We kinda sorta let the kids keep whacking the Whore for a REAL long time. Every single parent in the room was grinning from ear-to-ear. There might have been a few celebratory fist pumps each time the Latina Whore took a good hit to the face. She never quite died, though.

I had to ask Mr. Husband to pull the ribbon. I nearly passed out laughing when I glanced over to find him trying to get the candy unstuck from the Latina's nether regions, but sadly, other than a giant hole between her legs, she was pretty much alive and well.

Until my new hero got hold of her.



You know your party is a success when one of the guests brings you Dora's head on a stick.

She didn't stop there, though. My new hero bashed and smashed and hit and whacked that Dora until she was REALLY dead.



Have you ever seen anything quite as beautiful as a decapitated Dora? I haven't.

Except maybe the look of pure bliss all around when Dora got ripped from limb-to-limb.



:-D

My only regret is that Alexis missed the carnage. She was too busy hiding because her guests had the nerve to look at her when she was about to take a whack at the Latina Whore.

Ready to Party

Thank You, Target

I'm not sure if it makes her crazy lucky or if it means she gets screwed, but Alexis having a birthday at the end of January means she is a child of the clearance aisle. She winds up gifted with whatever is most on sale. It probably means she gets more, but at the same time, we spend less. It definitely means she winds up with stuff we wouldn't otherwise purchase.

Like, a Fur Real Friend. We don't do electronic much of anything. We especially don't do expensive electronic much of anything. But when a panda ends up marked down to less than $10, suddenly it sounds like a good idea.

It was.

File Under: Once in a While, I Just Need to Brag

I'm not really sure why I like to torture myself, but three years running, that's exactly what I've done.

2nd birthday:



3rd birthday:



Alexis has always picked what kind of cupcakes she wanted to take to school to share with all of her friends (we're talking about around 40 kids, btw). The flowers were an excellent pick. They turned out very cute, but weren't terribly hard to put together. A little time consuming, sure, but not hard.

We don't talk about the panda bears. They might not have been quite as filled with warm fuzzy memories for me. The kids liked them, though, and we'll pretend that is all that matters EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT.

This year Alexis set her heart on High School Musical cupcakes. More specifically, she wanted Mr. Danforth cupcakes. First of all, um, EWWWW! Second of all, um, HOW? I had no idea, so I consulted Dr. Google. He was a tiny bit helpful, but really didn't solve my issue. I found some of the plastic little picks with HSM photos on them, but at $2.50 a package, I wasn't really feeling the love. If I wanted to spend a fortune on this whole cupcake plot, I would trudge down to the grocery store and let somebody else do all the work.

I'm WAY too cheap for that.

Eventually I figured out to ask Alexis to pick out bits and pieces for making the cupcakes. She approved some sprinkles. She approved the concept of star-shaped cookies. She thought glittery gold frosting was pretty. She was committed to pink cake batter. A little WHAM! Some BAM! and VOILA!



Some lessons were learned. They may be boring lessons, but I don't care because next year I need to come back here and heed my own wise words.

1. This stuff? IS FREAKIN MAGICAL!



I was muy dubious, especially because of the $4 per can price tag. I'm too cheap to be paying $4 for something that is $2 if it comes in a regular old plastic tub. In fact, I only bought one can, knowing it wouldn't go far, but refusing to commit to breaking the bank. Then I used the stuff and learned that it is $4 for a can of time. Glorious time! I zipped through that first dozen cupcakes in no time flat.

(Psst . . . if you put frosting in a bag/tip thingy, it's much faster than spreading it with a knife. And purdier. You just go around in a circlish spiralish thing, starting at the outside. Once you finish the first layer, you do another circlish spiralish thing on top of the first one, covering the seams. PURDY! Or, let someone else take the time to shove that frosting in the tube by buying the can. Time! In a can!)

2. The recipe that's on the back of the box of cake mix sucks. Alter that sucker and the cupcakes will be moister and firmer, making them easier to decorate.

1 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup oil
4 eggs
whatever cake mix

Mix and bake according to the direction on the box. So. much. better.

3. Put the batter in a storage bag, cut a corner, and squeeze it into the cupcake holders instead of filling them with a spoon. Faster. Cleaner. Easier.

And now to start speculating on what next year's theme of choice will be . . . it just better not be Jonas Brothers because, um, EWWWWW!

P.S. Not a sponsored post, but there is an Amazon Affiliate link up there somewhere.

If Only She Would Use Her Magic Powers to Slow Time Down

Dear Alexis,

FOUR! Can you believe it? Of course you can. You've been anxiously awaiting this day essentially since your last birthday. I'm not real happy that you went out and found that flux capicitator and magic juju that allowed you to fast forward time through the past year, but I'll forgive it because you have enjoyed this day more than Meg enjoys sleep.

Speaking of sleep, this is the year that I finally came to terms with something--you don't need sleep. I keep saying it because I find it so incredibly hard to believe. I mean, what's not to love about sleep? It's really my most favorite thing in the world. Besides you, that is.

You are, in every way, my little buddy. You had to be forcibly evicted four years ago as you had absolutely no interest in doing anything but drop-kicking my lungs and punching my bladder for the rest of your life. Now you've spent the past four years trying to find a way back in. I could say you are like a gangrenous growth that is constantly attached around my body, but I prefer to think of you as "cuddly." Very, very cuddly. (Secretly, I love every second of it. If I told you that now, though, you'd probably hire a plastic surgeon to just finish off the permanent attachment. We'll stick with me telling you to "find a hobby" instead.)

When you aren't busy trying to find your way back into my womb, you're running around belting out the songs in your heart. If you hear a song once, you own it. You will sing it, you will dance to it, you will be it. It's absolutely fantastic when the Song of the Day is something from High School Musical, but not so much when it's Opeth. My current favorite is when you start yelling, "BOOM BOOM POW" because there's nothing quite as funny as a short person declaring, "You're jackin' my style."

Simply put, nobody could ever jack your style.

You have an amazing style that is all your own, from the way you dress to the way you carry yourself day-to-day. With your heart in your pocket, you seek to make the world a better place, and you're doing it on your own terms. You enjoyed helping me select toys for some kids in need so much at Christmas that every shopping trip is now filled with requests like, "Can we buy this for the kids who don't have a lot of toys like me?" That giving heart is going to take you great places some day.

I can't wait to go those great places with you.

I love you, kid, and don't you ever forget it.

Happy birthday, Alexis. I hope Four is your greatest year ever.

Love,

Your Sleep-Deprived but Completely in Love with You Momma

One Last Look at the Face of Three

Psst . . .Last year's Birthday Eve post.

Only One of Us Knows How to Act Like a Mature Adult

So, it turns out I have issues and baggage and such. SHOCKER! OK, not really shocking, but birthday parties and the like seem to have the ability to knock 20 years off my life instantly. It's like the fountain of youth over here, complete with the insecurity and stupidity that comes with worrying about party lists.

The last time I had to figure out who to invite to a birthday party, I was about two feet shorter and walking around wearing green knee socks, clear jelly shoes, a pink skirt, and a purple sweatshirt. While you should be very grateful there are no photos of said fashion tragedy, I remember very clearly putting together a list of kids I wanted to invite to my birthday party and failing miserably at it. It was probably my 8th birthday, or so, and the one and only time I ever had a party. Because I screwed up the list. Like, really.

I wanted to invite all of the girls in my class. I listed them, wrote out the invitations, and realized I had one more invitation that I had names. No problem! I would just invite a boy!

WRONG.

I forgot a girl. Just one, but still. She knew I forgot her. I knew I forgot her. She was devastated. I knew she was devastated. There was no patching it or fixing it or whatever. I wasn't even smart enough to ask my parents to bail me out. I just snubbed her because it was easier.

I still feel like a jerk for it. See also: I have issues and baggage and such.

So when it came time to figure out who to invite to Alexis' first ever birthday party, I opened the closet, grabbed all that baggage, and set it down at the table beside us. I would have liked to have invited every single kid at her school, but this party is going to be at our house. As much as I would like to be super nice and avoid drama, I'd also like to still have a house next week. So, that idea was out. Then I thought we would just invite her class, but the darn kid complicated that issue by being smart enough to sometimes hang out with the class ahead of her. Really she's about 50/50 with two different groups. So, I was left with only one option--I made her decide who to invite.

"You can invite ten friends to your birthday party. Who would you like to invite?" I asked her.

Oblivious to the potential future social implications, she started rambling off a bunch of names. I quickly wrote them down. When we got to ten, I looked down at the list and went, "WOAH, WOAH, WOAH." She had named eight boys and two girls.

"Don't you ever play with any girls?" I asked. I really don't know why that mattered, it just seemed weird that a little kid would have been so lob-sided with her gender breakout.

We tweaked the list a little and then we tweaked it a little more. Then I realized I couldn't figure out where some of the kids she had listed had a mailbox at school (as in, I'm not sure one of the kids actually exists), so I kinda sorta substituted a few with kids whose boxes I was able to find. In the end, I felt like we had a pretty good list of the kids that she frequently talks about even when she's not at school.

Fast forward a few weeks and I realized I had not gotten any RSVPs. While I know I am a complete goobernugget about RSVPing for things, I still had that moment of flashing back twenty years to insecurity and drama. What if nobody showed up? OMG. FREAK OUT!

Of course, that was totally unfounded insecurity because the kid is already more popular than I could have ever hoped to be. She's oddly magical like that. People just suck about RSVPing. No big thing.

But then today came and, once again, I had to haul that luggage out of the closet. I checked the email account where I asked people to send their RSVPs AND THERE WERE THREE! I squeed. And then I wanted to punch myself in the face for being such a dork, but I'm really tired and that sounded like a lot of effort.

Thank goodness the kid is completely oblivious to all of this self-imposed drama I'm creating. Maybe by the time she has grown up enough to care what other people think, I'll have done a little growing up myself.

Finding Her Purpose

I recently wound up in a conversation with someone who is about a month from becoming a father for the first time. I feel like it's my sworn duty to make sure all soon-to-be-parents are given two valuable (and unwanted) pieces of my infinite wisdom: 1.) Don't spend good money on a good changing table because your kid is just going to cover it in poop and 2.) That thing people say about newborns not sleeping? They lie. A lot.

It's about 135134098535 times worse than anyone tells you it's going to be.

It's not that people are trying to lie, of course. It's that there just aren't words in the English language that adequately describe the level of sleep deprivation that comes with that first month or so. The closest I've ever come is to tell people that it's like you set your alarm clock for 2:00am and then hit snooze when it goes off. Instead of going back to sleep, you walk down the hall, thread a needle, watch a high school drama club reenact an episode of Seinfeld, sell a life insurance plan to a 7-year old, and then go back to bed, only to have the alarm go off again 15 minutes later. Once again, you hit snooze. You repeat the whole process. Over and over. All night long. For a month. Or longer.

I then mentioned to the soon-to-be-father that it really sucks that I apparently got a defective model of baby girl. Mine STILL doesn't sleep. I explained that she just plain doesn't need sleep, as if she's some sort of robot or something.

Somewhere along the line, his eyes got big and he started to look a little worried. "My wife is like that. She doesn't need sleep either and never has."

He was concerned that the baby might take after his wife, but some of the words he said floated out of his mouth bearing flashing lights, sirens, exclamation points, and pure joy.

His wife is a doctor.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A purpose!

A goal!

A use for that no need to sleep superpower!

When we're done paying for med school for Alexis, I'm making her buy me my very own sleeping quarters. I don't care where they are or what they look like, but the kid owes me nearly five years of good sleep.

A Win!

I spend a great deal of my time walking around confused. It's pretty much a constant state of being for me. A great deal of the blame for that state of being can be attributed to the short person who does random weird stuff daily. Like this:



For most kids, torn up knees wouldn't be a big deal, but that is Alexis' knobby knee, so THAT IS WEIRD. The kid has not destroyed a pair of pants in . . . actually, I can't remember. It's been a long time since I started praying to the Church of Gap, and since then she has outgrown stuff long before she has destroyed it. She just doesn't tear up her clothes (Exception: Target or Children's Place clothes--those last two wears and then fall to pieces at our house.).

More bizarre, those were new jeans. She had only worn them once before, so it wasn't like they should have been beat up. I asked Alexis what happened.

"I took a nap," she said.

There were about fifteen things wrong with her response. First, I had to quiz the kid to determine that her definition of "nap" and my definition of "nap" are not at all the same. My definition is superior because it involves actual sleep, but whatever. I asked more questions to figure out how you tear up both knees on a pair of pants by lying around on a cot for an hour or so. I never got an answer better than she "took a nap and fell off the cot." The thing is that her "cot" is really just a mat and sits no more than an inch off the floor. Apparently her cot was hungry and decided denim looked yummy.

The good news is that the universe heard my annoyance at the little incident. I didn't pay much for the ripped up pants because, well, I refuse to pay much for anything, which is exactly why I wound up trolling the clearance rack at Kids Gap again today.

Looky what I found!



Before you get too impressed, please note that all clearance at that Gap was an extra 40% off. Those jeans? Were $5.38. I found four pair in four different styles. I AM A SHOPPING NINJA.

Good thing, since apparently my kid's nap cot is out to get her.

It's Not That I Hate January 23rd, It's That January 23rd Hates Me

Screw you, January 23rd.

And screw you again.

Picking and Choosing Her Audience

This video, which was sent to me by one of our daycare teachers, has been in my possession for a few weeks. We've watched it something like 2346241.41 times. Each time it cracks me up, althoughy really my response should be more like OMG! How rude! followed by a stern lecture and maybe a stint in prison. For her, not me. I'm not that rude.

I think the most amazing part of this little display of cute followed by obnoxious followed by OMG! How rude! is that it took place in the midst of the absolute chaos that is 20+ three and four-year olds running loose in an enclosed space. It's like Alexis was standing in the middle of a pinball machine while multi-ball was in effect. She is completely unphased by it all and magically manages to avoid getting smashed in the back of the head by a shiny silver ball. That may very well be because the short people are crazy, but not crazy enough to go near the kid with the floppy hat and dangerous purse.



Fickle? Yes. Bossy? Yes. Mine? Definitely yes.

Sigh.

If you had asked me yesterday what I thought I would be posting about today, I would have guessed that it involved violent thoughts, threats, frustration, and maybe a spork or two. OK, maybe a whole box of sporks. After multiple concerts and shows and programs, I've come to expect this:



It doesn't matter how early we get there. It doesn't matter where we sit. It doesn't matter how nice we are. We ALWAYS end up sitting right behind at least one bobbleheaded gooberface who makes it impossible for us to catch even a glimpse of our kid. It's like a law, or something. (FYI--That's the BEST photo I have from Alexis' Christmas show because it's the only one where I can find so much as a strand of her hair.)

Today was Alexis' dance show, so I walked into the building ready to bore holes in the back of someone's head with my eyes.

It didn't happen, because this was the view:



Alexis sat off to the side, not participating, swimming in a puddle of self pity for the entire hour.

It sucked.

It's not a secret that she's a shy kid. She keeps her heart in her front pocket, but clenches it tightly when there is a large group of strangers. That's actually why she's in dance in the first place. I don't care if she memorizes First Position or can do a Shuffle Step or knows the difference between Tap Dancing and Square Dancing. She's there to work on her confidence and to become a little more comfortable in groups.

All semester, she's done really well. Really, really well. So well, in fact, that I had actually forgotten that it was a problem. We've gone to make-up classes comprised of nothing but total strangers, and she was fine. We've had a couple of shows, complete with parents in the room, and she was fine.

And then today she was not fine.

It was my fault.

Work was chaotic today, the kind of chaotic that makes you wish you could hit the reset button and start the day over just so you can get a few extra hours. It was also the kind of day when leaving early just wasn't a possibility. It was beyond my control when I left 15 minutes later than I would have liked. It was beyond my control when I picked Alexis up 15 minutes later than I would have liked. It was beyond my control when we walked into the dance center right on time.

I know we need to be early. I know Alexis needs those extra minutes to mentally prepare herself to deal with strangers. I know it would have been much different if we just hadn't been the last ones to come rushing in, just before the program started.

I hate that I set her up to fail.