They say bigger is better. That’s a myth, but no one wants to pretend that a tiny bit will do the job. It’s embarrassing to want seconds and thirds just to get enough.
Who the hell came up with the “fun size” Halloween candy? There is nothing fun about that size!
What were you thinking?
Sophia’s first Halloween she was only one month old. We of course stayed home that year and handed out candy. I’ll never forget the stupid teenage boy that spotted Sophia across the room with her already long brown troll-doll hair and asked, “What is that? Is that a kitten?” Uumm no. “Oh, it’s a baby” he says, and then looks at me, “cute baby.” Uuhh yeah too late asshole.
The second Halloween we went with a group of friends to a neighborhood near them. I can’t remember if I carried Sophia in a front pack or pushed her in a stroller, but either way there was very little participation from her not that we expected much from a one year old. It was obvious from an early age that I would never need to warn Sophia about strangers. She would not even take a piece of candy from a bowl or bucket at age one.
At age two she mostly stayed in the stroller and would occasionally allow us to carry her up to the door. I think a couple of times she may have even picked out a piece of candy from a bowl. We still didn’t expect much from her and just the fact that she didn’t have a meltdown made it a great Halloween. It’s really hard to ruin a Halloween anyway.
Last year there wasn’t any participation from Sophia at all. She sat in the stroller the whole time. The only candy she received was from her friends (other three year olds) putting some in her bucket. We were disappointed that she never warned up to trick-or-treating last year, but Kurt was adopted by our friend’s three year old and he got to take her trick-or-treating. I was too pregnant to keep up. I just stood at the end of driveways or tried to waddle a head start to the next house.
This year was FANTASTIC! I think there was a trial run of trick or treating at preschool. She came home on the 29th, her last day for the week, and kept saying, “trick or treat”. On Halloween we had some friends over and headed out to terrorize our tiny town in sugared up mob style. It took Sophia a couple houses to get the idea of what was going on, but she did it. For some of the houses I held her hand and for others it was Kurt. I had a hard time keeping up with the other kids because I was carrying the Lukas monkey in the front pack.
Because no princess costume is complete without a polar bear wearing a butterfly shirt. 
At one house the mob of kids from our group was at a door and had already said their trick or treat line – Sophia pulled at my hand and rather frantically said, “trick or treat” as if she wouldn’t get anything if the magical Halloween phrase wasn’t uttered. That right there is the magical fun of producing spawn with an engineer. The world is such a black and white place with special rules for everything and each must be followed to the letter.
She was thrilled to be getting candy, but then what child wouldn’t. I didn’t hear a lot of giggling or chatter from her as one would expect from a child collecting candy. My child was on a mission, but I know she had fun because when we asked her in the car on the way home she said, “yes” without hesitation. She also asked me in the morning, “Can friends come over today?” As funny as I think it is that she believes the Halloween rules to be set in stone, I think it’s even more awesome that she’s enjoying normal childhood activities.
It's supposed to read, "Little Devil", but the way he's sitting and the angle I took the photo from it looks like, "Lite Evil". 
Lukas sat in his booster seat situated to the side of the dinner table. He reached across the tray and pulled. His face turned beet red. I tried to finish my dinner while Kurt cheered him on with, “Come on boy, poop!”, and then Sophia parroting her father.
After the poop show was over and dinner was finished I went to change the boy despite the lack of stench. Nothing. Later I saw Lukas scooting around the toy room, then stop, lean forward, and then continue scooting around. That time a stench followed the boy. Taken on the 18th of October with my Nikon D60 for your high-resolution pleasure, I now present to you the double, double over butt-molded poop streak. The Baby Squeezins, Diaper of the Month.
We aren’t proud of ourselves. We did it for you. If you’ve been pining away for a Dirty Kurtie Twisted Tune today is your day.
A couple or few months ago (I’m not sure which because there was a long span of sleepless night there for a while) Kurt and I were watching Curious George with Sophia. While listening to the theme song Kurt said, he heard something different from what they said. He told me, and I could not shake it. After that, every time I watched the show with my then three-year old that is what I heard. As punishment, I made Kurt further defile the lyrics of the current favorite children’s show in our household. It is now with great regret that I present to you the greatly mangled version of a much-loved children’s show… To the tune from the theme song of Curious George – Dirty Kurtie’s version goes like this:
You never do know who’s in your bed
A hot, young stripper or a guy named Fred
When you’re bi-curious, Bi-Curious George
(Swing!)
Well everything (everything!) is so glorious (glorious!)
And everything (everything!) is so wonderous (wonderous!)
There’s more to explore
When you act like a whore
And make friends like this,
A guy to kiss
(Whooooa!)
Get bi-curious (bi-curious!) and that’s marvelous (marvelous!)
You’ll sleep with a slut
And take it in the butt
If you ask yourself, who needs tits?
Like bi-curious, bi-curious, Bi-Curious George
Every time I turn on one any of the toys that play music, Lukas’ arms fly up in the air. He sits on the floor twisting at the waist swinging his arms as if he’s a conductor. I always ask him, “Are you dancing?” He just laughs and swings his arms even harder.
Lukas’ babbling, “ah bah bah”, makes him sound like he likes ABBA, so that is exactly what Kurt played for him. Kurt called up a video on the interwebs and the boy was thrilled. “Your boy is a dancing queen,” he called to me as he then proceeded to sing all the words to the song perfectly in sync with the video.
Picture taken 10/14/2011. Lukas was being entertained by Sophia.
So many classes peeked my interest when I started going to college. I probably took a year’s worth of classes before I figured out what I even wanted to be when I got around to growing up. One of those extra classes that had absolutely nothing to do with my ultimate goal but have forever been thankful I took was called, “Mass Media”. It was linked with a required English class, so even if I hadn’t found it so useful the other half was pointing me in the direction of a degree.
That class taught me to see behind the theatrics of televised news, to question statistics, take notice of the verbiage used, and pay attention to the time allotted to each news story. All of those things used to push an opinion onto the viewer.
I rarely watch the news anymore. I prefer to read it. It allows me to determine what news is important and how much time I want to spend on a given topic. In addition, seeing the words allows me to mentally circle any slanted language and not be so easily suckered into frivolously taking a side or even accepting that the story presented qualifies as news.
A piece that aired on October 27th 2011 about aspirin made Brian Williams lose all credibility.
A bottle of generic Aspirin – $4.29
Medical research – Tens of billions of dollars
A household item that could prevent a range of illnesses…
Priceless
I don’t want news that is an extension to a MasterCard commercial. I don’t find it cute. It’s silly to try and make the news “hip”. I don’t want to be entertained by the news. I turn to the news for facts. I know I’m asking too much though, because the news is tightly controlled. It took two weeks before the major news began showing the Wall Street protests that began on September 17th.
On the other hand, the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Brian Williams bit about aspirin being priceless was a message from the big corporations. Was that actually a big Fuck You from WallStreet to the protesters? The major corporations’ way of saying, “Here’s your fuckin’ healthcare.” Just a thought. Just let it fester in your head for a little while.
“NO! He’s touching it! He’s touching it!” She shrieks.
“What?”
“That!”
“I’m not in the room I can’t see. You need to say what that is.”
“That! That!”
“What?”
“My grocery cart.”
I go to look. He’s across the room from Sophia and the cart. Lukas isn’t even heading in that direction. He’s looking at her, confused by the shrieking. I walk away.
That mom moment in time is brought to you by Van Morrison and Lays Potato Chips, “There will be days you wish you’d stopped at one” and by the number Two.
The same day, moments later, I turn on Dinosaur Train for Sophia and tell her I’m going to take a shower. I take Lukas up to the bathroom with me. I bring some of his toys and a baby gate. Set him all up I leave the bathroom door open, and put the baby gate up in the doorway incase Sophia needs something I don’t have to worry about her leaving the bathroom door open for Lukas to discover the joys of gravity rolling him down a flight of stairs.
I turn on the water and wait for it to warm up. Lukas happily plays with his toys. I enter the shower, close the door and Lukas spontaneously erupts into tears because I’ve vanished into thin yet somewhat humid air. Forget it. It’s been three days. I need a shower. Seriously.
Then I hear Sophia. She can’t open the baby gate, but I could hear her either try to open it or lean on it. “It’s ok Lukas. It’s ok.” She says. My four-year-old came all the way upstairs while one of her favorite shows was playing downstairs just to try to calm her brother. He was quiet for a moment. He started up again, I assume, when she left to watch her show again. It didn’t work, but it was an effort much appreciated.
And now I’m tearing up just writing about it. OHGODDAMNIT! Do you know how hard it is to see this screen through tears?
‘Schweddy Balls‘, juvenile humor, hits their radar. Their complaint states disapproval of “Hubby Hubby” (a tribute to gay marriage). But they make no mention of ‘Karamel Sutra’, which I did find at the store. Maybe the original “Sex for Dummies” guide could help them overcome fear of ‘Schweddy Balls’. It’s only ice cream after all.
Years ago, I lived in a tiny shack of a cabin. It was part of a cluster of tiny cabins that had been built in the 1930’s or 40’s as summer cottages. Each cabin was on a concrete slab and was made of cement and chicken wire. I know this because the cement was falling off the sides faster than the rental manager could paint over it and the chicken wire was showing through.
The concrete slab that my tiny “summer cottage” rested on was cracked. Every time it rained, and this was in the Seattle area, water came up through the crack. If the carpet wasn’t still saturated from the previous rainy day it absorbed the water. That place smelled FANTASTIC.
Aside from it being the second cheapest place to rent on all of Whidbey Island, the one plus was the huge picture window that only my cabin had. Situated next to a two-lane street that hugged Puget Sound and overlooked Penn Cove. I had a one of a kind view.
In the spring and summer, I watched sailboats galore, seabirds, beachfront, and waves. It was spectacular. But the one thing I loved watching the most were the crazy crows.
For a while I thought what they were doing was accidental or just birds being messy pests, but one day when I really stopped to watch I realized something amazing about them. I watched those cunning crows pick muscles from the rocks on the beach, purposely drop them on the road, wait for a car to run the muscles over, and then snack on the muscle meat. Those are some clever birds!
Those ever so lovely “summer cottages” were demolished about a year or two after I moved out.
Momma what do I do with this?
Baby pumpkin eater
Sophia insisted on her pumpkin being a silly one and that it have ears.
