Quick Hits: Clothes Shopping Hell, Oodles of Braces & No Second Dog (Yet)

Clothes Shopping Hell

The Picket Fence Post kids keep doing this growing this, lately in giant, sudden spurts. The amount of time in which they have to wear their clothes before they turn into high-waters or become so tight that they look like something the Hulk might wear seems to be shrinking. It seems like we're buying new shoes and cleats constantly. The boys' pants aren't worn enough to get rips in the knees.

Thus I took the three kids to Old Navy this week in order to pick up some inexpensive shirts and sports shorts, given that they said, "Nothing fits anymore!" It proved to be bad timing. Did every other mother with kids home for spring vacation have the same idea? The place was mobbed. Between following my offspring around to make sure they picked out the right sizes and nothing too expensive (or inappropriate, like 2-inch long shorts that the store was peddling to girls), it got chaotic, prompting me to start sweating and my patience to evaporate, which is why I think was of the kids who shall remain nameless, was able to sneak in a Lakers shirt without me realizing it. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, so having to go clothes shopping with three children in a packed store . . . well, let's say I'd rather have my teeth cleaned.

The spring shopping excursion then led to another one of my least favorite tasks, one I avoid as much as possible: Going through the kids' clothing to find items that no longer fit, determining which items can be passed down to someone else and making the kids try on certain items, even when they swear that they didn't fit when, in reality, they're just trying to get rid of the unwanted item so I can no longer bug them about why they don't wear it any more. (When I make them take the item back, they resort to cramming it in the back of a drawer hoping I won't see it until another clothing purge session.)

And we didn't even have an open bottle of wine in the house.

By the time all the sorting and shouting was completed, and after I'd uttered my version of "money doesn't grow on trees" and "do you know how much these clothes cost?" parenting classics, we all so needed the laughs that Modern Family afforded us. I love Manny.

Braces, We've Got Braces

Adding insult to the whole shopping debacle was the fact that The Eldest Boy got braces on his lower teeth before our Old Navy trip. Plus, his top braces were tightened. The kid was in some serious pain. And Tylenol didn't really help.

The Girl, meanwhile, was informed that in two months' time the palate expander on the roof of her mouth -- which has been pushing her teeth outward to make more space -- will be removed and replaced with a full set of braces on the upper and lower teeth. Cue the groaning and teenage complaining. Times two.

This ought to be fun: Two pubescents enduring frequent pain in their teeth, begging for milkshakes, soft food and Tylenol. I think I'd better buy the Tylenol by the gross.

No Dog #2 (For Now)

This searching for a second dog is stressing me out.

We've tried several times in the past month to adopt rescue dogs I've seen on PetFinder -- dogs the Picket Fence Post family thinks will fit in nicely and get along with our 3-year-old, 25-pound Max -- but our efforts have thus far been fruitless. We came close last week to getting an adorable Havanese puppy mix (Max is a Havanese/Wheaten mix), but alas, we submitted our application after another nice family who eventually adopted the little guy.

A few days ago, I scared the pants off of The Spouse when, after bringing some donations to a local dog shelter with The Girl, I wound up placing a $25 deposit on a puppy with whom The Girl absolutely fell in love. She'd insisted on returning to the puppy area multiple times, after I said it was time to go, and snuggled with this one adorable, silken puppy. Although I can now admit that the puppy, whose lineage is unknown, would grow to be a fairly large dog, larger than what The Spouse and I had agreed upon, I was in a vulnerable place having lost out on the other puppy last week. I foolishly acceded to The Girl's request to put a 24-hour hold on the puppy and even allowed myself to begin thinking of names for her.

However when I showed The Spouse photos and a video of the dog, he said aloud what I was thinking but didn't want to admit: The cuddly dog would be bigger than we wanted. I sheepishly followed The Spouse up to The Girl's bedroom and informed her that we wouldn't be adopting the puppy. I think I took it harder than she did.

I've decided to stop trolling the PetFinder web site for a while. I need a break.

Image credit: PetFinder.

Quick Hits: NYC School Vacation Trip, Occupy Siblings & Margarita Bombs

NYC School Vacation Trip
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Intrepid. The United Nations. Top of the Rock. Wicked. Skating at Rockefeller Center. Zabar's. A nod to Linsanity.

The Picket Fence Post family headed down to the big city for a few days at the beginning of February vacation and, as was The Spouse's wont, packed so many activities into our brief three-day/two-night stay that I've been rendered exhausted for the remainder of the week as The Youngest Boy keeps bugging about where I'm going to take him next. (Copious amounts of coffee are not perking me up any.)

We packed ourselves into one hotel room -- seriously, New York City hotel rooms are so expensive that we couldn't justify getting two rooms, but at least The Girl got her own bed -- and we were able to make great use of my iPad (I got to watch episodes of Downton Abbey, my new addiction, in bed while the kids slept) in between dragging ourselves all over Manhattan and squeezing in a cat nap at a Starbucks at Rockefeller Center. (No lie. I was so tired at one point I had a very small nap while sitting in a Starbucks. After a latte nonetheless.)

The Girl loved visiting The Met with me, while the boys, or at least one of them, enjoyed going to the Intrepid with their father. (The disgruntled child kept texting me saying he was having a crappy time and wanted me to take a cab across town and rescue him from the horror of touring the museum with his father and brother.) Despite the complaints of that one child, it's a good thing we decided to split up and that I didn't take The Youngest Boy with us to the museum because, while he appalled by the paintings of naked people at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts when we went there several months ago, he would've been downright outraged at the plethora of naked sculptures throughout the Met. Really graphic sculptures too. (Every time we've tried to tell the child that it's art and that the human body is beautiful, he tells The Spouse and me that we're sick perverts.)

My two highlights from the trip: Seeing the Broadway show Wicked (which I didn't think I'd like because it's a musical and I'm not keen on musicals, but I wound up loving it . . . in fact everyone in the Picket Fence Post family enjoyed it, which is rare to achieve a consensus) and ice skating at Rockefeller Center even though I fell down on the ice twice, the second time landing really hard on my rear-end. It still hurts, days later. (Insert pain in the butt joke here.)

We tried, and failed, to get tickets to see Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks' new basketball sensation, play at Madison Square Garden. I was told, in no uncertain terms by the two different ticket agents with whom I spoke on the phone, as well as by the Knicks/Ticketmaster web site, that it was "impossible" for me to buy tickets for all five members of my family. Losers. However we still got a taste of Linsanity by stopping by at the NBA store and getting The Eldest Boy one of the Lin T-shirts that the clerk with whom I spoke said is flying off the shelves. (My personal favorite souvenir from the trip: The "Knope 2012" T-shirt from the NBC Experience store honoring Amy Poehler's lead character Leslie Knope from Parks & Recreation.)

On our way out of town, we stopped at Zabar's, the famous NYC deli/grocery store, and bought the most delicious baked goods I've ever tasted. The chocolate babka -- a shout-out to Seinfeld -- was delectable and the knishes were fabulous. It's a good thing that I don't live near Zabar's or else that fanny upon which I fell at the ice skating rink would most certainly balloon if I scarfed down those choice eats on a regular basis.

Occupy Siblings

Perhaps I've shared one too many news casts and newspaper front pages with the Picket Fence Post kids about Occupy Wall Street because after we got home from our trip, The Youngest Boy decided to stage a sit-in in front of his sister's bedroom door, complete with a little tent, an Occupy Siblings protest if you will.

Why was the little person protesting? Not because there's a 1 percent versus the 99 percent thing going on in our household -- though if you asked The Eldest Boy he'd say The Spouse and I are top-hatted, walking stick-carrying snotty 1 percenters while the kids are the powerless 99 percenters whose only option to make change is to protest -- but because he believes his sister is hoarding a bunch of notebooks and he wants her to share the wealth.

"Do you want to join the protest for notebooks?" he asked his brother, who declined as he was playing the role of the counter-protester taunting the Occupier, only he didn't have a snarky sign with him.

The ironic thing: I'm 100 percent certain that if I went to The Youngest Boy's Superfund Site of a bedroom I'd find 12 notebooks buried under various piles of garbage.

Margarita Bombs

The best line of the week came from The Youngest Boy who was telling his brother a story while we were driving home from New York, "And then the guy threw a margarita bomb!"

He meant Molotov cocktail.

Image credit: Photos of NYC by The Girl, photo of Knope shirt, NBC.

Christmas, Hanukkah & New Year’s Came & Went…and No One Died, Got the Swine Flu or Went to the ER

Believe it or not, aside from a short period of time during the Wednesday evening before Christmas (that’s my personal hell day), I made it through the entire month of December without a significant incident. You might think this is no biggie. Lots of people make it through December without incident, illness or catastrophe. But to me, emerging from December relatively unscathed felt like a major accomplishment.

The month of December and bad stuff has precedent in the Picket Fence Post house. Last year, as I’ve mentioned before, I missed Christmas because I came down with the swine flu on Christmas Eve and on, the day after Christmas, The Spouse severely injured his ankle while playing basketball, during a snowstorm I might add, and had to be driven to the ER by a neighbor because I felt like death not even warmed over. (The only plus from the whole thing was that I lost some weight . . . which I eventually gained back.)

The year before that, The Spouse broke his wrist on New Year's Eve Day while ice skating with the Youngest Boy and we rang in the New Year while my husband was high on morphine and The Eldest Boy had a raging fever. That was delightful, I'm telling you. A couple years before that, both my father and I came down with either food poisoning or the same stomach bug on Christmas Eve night and essentially spent Christmas Day feeling and looking like something you accidentally stepped on and then scraped off of the bottom of your shoe. Several years before that, my grandfather died on Christmas Day.

Luckily none of those things happened during December 2011, so once it officially became 2012, I felt as though I could finally breathe, and let go of the Yuletide Zen upon which I had a death grip throughout the month, determined to enjoy the season no matter what happened. I’ve even decided to extend the Christmas spirit by allowing the holiday decorations to remain up in the house until this coming weekend and have still been playing Christmas music . . . quite unlike me who’s normally an up-on-December-1-down-on-New-Year’s-Day kinda person.

So, how was Christmas et al, you ask?

X-Box Wars: Well, Santa brought the boys (*godhelpme*) an X-Box which became not only the focal point of their Christmas vacation, but the source of many a lively, uh, discussion, yeah, discussion’s a good word for it. (Sounds a lot better than "heated screaming matches.”) The Spouse and I told them that there was no way in hell that we were going to allow them to buy any video games which were rated M (for Mature), like Call of Duty, even though they swore up and down that EVERYONE they knew had that game. We, they claimed, were being unreasonable, overprotective control freaks.

After we celebrated Festivus with two other couples with whom The Spouse and I used to hang during our UMass days, along with all their kids (nine juveniles, up way too late, trying to comprehend what the adults found so amusing about the Seinfeld Festivus episode and why The Spouse brought an aluminum pole to the gathering), The Eldest Boy started to grill us and ask if we thought our college buds were good parents. It was a set-up because my pals had gotten their children a rated M version of Call of Duty which the kids played it on Festivus night. It was an annoyingly torturous lobbying campaign that the two young bucks waged, culminating with The Spouse proclaiming that they could only buy games that were rated T for Teen or E for Everybody. The knuckleheads felt as though they’d pulled a fast one over on The Spouse when they found a Call of Duty game that was rated T the following day. Of course they did. They excitedly ran up to me as I was scrolling through my e-mail in our local Game Stop, clutching the coveted video madness in their sweaty hands and declared victory. They’ve been obsessed with the simulated shooting and mayhem ever since.

Cell Phones: We, as Liz Lemon might say, went to there, that place we’ve been trying to avoid for so long.

The Spouse and I gave The Eldest Boy and The Girl cell phones for Christmas. And yes, they can text. The Spouse dropping The Girl off at a gym where he thought she had basketball practice on his way to run The Eldest Boy's practice, then learning, after he'd left her, that she didn't have practice and was in fact stranded, alone at the gym at night (and he couldn't abandon the practice he was running so I had to go get her) was what motivated us to finally make this move.

And since December 25, it’s as though we’ve unleashed a technological monster as far as The Girl is concerned. She's already composed and received hundreds of texts. (Thank God for unlimited texting packages.) The Eldest Boy, by contrast, seems genuinely pleased to have a phone but isn’t crazy about texting, at least for right now. When his sister kept texting him when they were both in the house, he would yell, “Just talk to me!”

Forget Brand a New Bag. Mama’s Got a Brand New iPad: I now own my very first Apple product. Everyone else in the Picket Fence Post family, except Max the dog, has some form of an iPod or an iPod Touch. And, until this year, I’d never really been jonesing for a tablet or Apple product. Now that I have my own iPad, The Eldest Boy is in his glory explaining to me, the Apple virgin, how it works and frequently informs me that I’m “doing it wrong.” That’s because I’m an ancient, know-nothing, power-mad, anti-X-box kinda mom I suppose.

Gone in 10 Minutes: Max the dog consumed one of his presents in, literally 10 minutes. While the dog toy that we gave him for Christmas was edible and meant to eventually be eaten, it was intended to last for more than the time it takes to listen to two songs on an iPod. Watch the video for the Spinz Bone and you tell me that it’s normal for my 26-pound dog to eat that product in 10 minutes.

Oh, and as of New Year’s Eve, Max had also killed the stuffed, faceless toy we called “Dough Boy” (after the Pillsbury Dough Boy). Max gutted Dough Boy, removing his squeaker and much of his stuffing. I kept thinking that this was an apt metaphor for . . . something, but, as Dick Clark counted down to 2012, I couldn’t put my finger on what metaphor for which I was grasping and fell asleep.

The Braces are Coming. The Braces are Coming. The Eldest Boy and The Girl got “spacers” put in between their back teeth a few days after Christmas, rendering their mouths sore to the point that they didn’t want to eat very much for a few days. I whipped up milkshakes, soups and other soft foods and doled out ibuprofen to no avail, especially for The Girl who was in a lot of pain. The spacers are a precursor to actual braces that The Eldest Boy will get in the next week or so and the palate expander The Girl will get (to which I’m not looking forward because The Spouse has declared that I’m going to be the one who’s going to have to turn the key to expand it every night, but more on that later).

Their younger brother’s response to this development? To grab the container of gum that he got in his Christmas stocking – the 13-year-olds can no longer have it – and pop a bunch of pieces of gum into his mouth. Right in front of them. “What?” he asked mischievously when I called him on it. Let me tell you, there’s no question that The Youngest Boy’s will need braces and, as my mom noted, payback’s gonna be a bitch.

Happy New Year Picket Fence Post peeps.

Notes from a Rainy Spring Break: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Potter Mania, Patriot's Day, Passover, Clothes Shopping & a Visit to the ER

If you asked the Picket Post Fence kids, I'm guessing they'd likely tell you that they did "nothing" during their spring vacation, nothing of note anyway. We didn't go away to a warm, tropical locale like several of their classmates. We didn't go to an amusement park or a super-fun venue. We stayed home and I didn't arrange for them to party their way through the week.

And though I still attempted to work from my home office this week -- one day resorting to hanging a blanket over my windowed office door and banishing the children from the room so I could finish something -- between The Spouse and I, we still managed to do a bunch of stuff with the kids so they can't say they just sat around all week. Well, they can say that they sat around all week, even though they really didn't:


-- After The Youngest Boy's hockey team blessedly lost their playoff game, thus ending the season (*wild fist pump from this hockey mom*), we went out to dinner at the 99 Restaurant near us, which boasts that the day after the Red Sox win, kids eat free. Suffice is to say that the restaurant haven't been serving up many free kids' meals lately as the last place Red Sox haven't exactly gotten off to a stupendous start, and our kids certainly didn't eat free the night we dined there.

-- One weekend night, the five of us went to see The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, which was at least better than the first film version of one of my family's favorite kids' book series by Jeff Kinney. In this sequel, Greg Heffley wasn't a raging, inconsiderate narcissist and actually had a heart, unlike in the first film where he was nearly soulless.

The Picket Fence Post kids spent the whole car ride home afterward telling me how much nicer Mrs. Heffley is than I am and how, compared to her, I'm "wicked strict." I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or not.

Image credit: Boston Breakers

-- The Spouse and The Girl went to see the local women's professional soccer team, The Breakers, play their home opener. The Girl got to meet and get photos/autographs with players after the game, including with her new favorite professional soccer player, Alex Scott, who plays defense, like The Girl frequently does. I was thrilled that she got to enjoy a game where female athletes took center stage for a change.

-- On Patriot's Day -- a holiday in Massachusetts commemorating the beginning of the Revolutionary War -- The Spouse woke The Youngest Boy up in the 3 a.m. hour (yes, he really did) so they could drive up to the town green in Lexington, Mass. and secure a good spot from which to watch the reenactment of the first battle of the Revolutionary War. They returned home like twin ice cubes from being out in the cold for so long, even though they'd just spent an hour in a toasty warm & cozy restaurant eating goopy, syrupy breakfasts.

While The Spouse essentially slept the rest of that day, I took The Girl to the Emergency Room to have her wrist X-rayed and learned she'd only sustained a sprained wrist -- as opposed to a broken wrist -- during her weekend soccer game. (A follow-up orthopedic appointment took place later in the week for more laughs and wasted moments spent lingering in a waiting room, after The Girl's pain persisted.) After our ER visit, I cooked up a Seder dinner for the Picket Fence Post family. The Spouse made the brisket, while I made everything else.



-- There was ample Harry Potter mania at the Picket Fence Post household over the vacation week as I finally allowed The Youngest Boy to watch the fifth movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, seeing as though we finished reading the book aloud together last month as part of our Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project. (We're at the beginning of reading the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.)



Early in the vacation week, I purchased Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 on DVD and finally got a chance to see if for myself because when it came out in theaters last fall, events conspired against me being able to see it, though The Girl saw it twice and took The Spouse with her once. It was a fantastic film -- much better than the Half-Blood Prince film -- and it left me feeling depressed and sad for one of my favorite characters from children's literature. I have a soft spot for Harry Potter.

-- Later in the week I took the two older kids (The Youngest Boy was visiting some classmates at the time) candle pin bowling in a bowling alley that looked and smelled like it was 1965, only minus the cigarette smoke. (I half expected to see Sally Draper there.) We met a friend of mine and her three children and I got to jabber away with my college pal while our kids bowled and I intermittently humiliated The Eldest Boy by cheering "too loudly" and embarrassing him . . . which only made me want to do it more.

-- The kids and I also spent several hours in the torturous shopping mall near us (I HATE shopping, except for books) seeking clothing items that would be appropriate for Easter, Passover and a first Communion we'll be attending in a few weeks. It always feels as though I just went shopping to get them clothes, but they keep doing that growing thing, necessitating frequent clothes shopping excursions. During our trip, The Youngest Boy was for some reason trying to press me into buying him a suit (?!), this from the kid who spends most of his waking hours trying to convince me that 40 degrees is shorts weather.

It was general chaos as I tried to oversee not only what the kids were trying on -- checking on the sizes and the price of the clothing, as well as whether the items fit them when they emerged from the changing rooms, sometimes all at the same time. I started stressing out, which generally leads to bad shopping decisions on my part. When we got home later, The Eldest Boy told me I had left some of the stuff that was designated as being in the "to buy" pile behind, though I think he accidentally left those items in the dressing room. But I could be wrong, perhaps that last discussion about boys' undergarments unhinged me. Who knows?

-- An ice cream sundae party with their younger cousins was canceled after one of my nephews got ill (before coming to our house) and we ate the sundaes without them. We visited the library once, had two of the kids' friends over to play at the house on Patriot's Day and The Girl had a sleepover with a friend one night.

Now I need a vacation from their vacation where they didn't "do anything."

Image credits: Cinemagie, Boston Breakers.

Lobbying to Stay Home Alone by Reenacting Scenes from a Sitcom and Making Me a Sandwich

I was going to make them accompany me.

All three of them.

To a business meeting.

I had a meeting scheduled in the next town over in the middle of the day. Our babysitter was unavailable and The Spouse couldn’t work from home, so I told the Picket Fence Post kids (ages 9, almost 12 and almost 12), “Sorry guys, but you’re going to have to come with me.”

Cue the whining, followed quickly by the enthusiastic pleading from the older two, “Why of course our dear mother, we can be trusted to be left home alone, and besides, you yourself have said we older children could soon babysit.”

I’ve frequently left the kids alone for short periods of time, but I try not to saddle the elder two with their younger brother who can be a handful (who isn’t at age 9?) too often. It just causes friction when they tell him what to do and he resents it.

However they didn’t exactly help their case on this particular occasion when the two boys started fighting over whether someone “took” something from the other’s room and the alleged thief ran and hid in his bedroom with the purloined object.

I heard them arguing and fighting while I was trying to take a shower and get ready. While still in a towel, hair dripping wet, I stormed over to the door to the hallway and shouted, “That’s it! EVERYONE’S coming with me. You people can’t handle it!” Then I slammed the door shut.

Minutes later, the three of them – with whom I’ve recently been watching season one episodes of Malcolm in the Middle -- started reenacting scenes from the second episode, “Red Dress” where, as a response to their mother’s punishments, the TV sitcom kids wanted to show how gleeful and cooperative they were and joined hands, danced in a circle while singing, pretending like they were all one lovey-dovey bunch of siblings.

But my kids took things further. Once I made my way to the kitchen, I discovered that my trio had made me a turkey sandwich, fetched me a glass of ice water, unilaterally offered to rub my shoulders as I ate and even presented me with the sandals I was going to wear – no lie – on a pillow.

“Fine,” I said, relenting to their charming though utterly transparent, ham-handed lobbying campaign, “but this is a test. If you three cannot get along, if you fight and things don’t work well, you’re not going to be left alone any time soon and will have to come with me to meetings.”

If there were any problems, I never heard about them. They wisely kept their traps shut. Nor did I find find evidence of any scuffles shoved into corners or stuffed down into bottom of the trashcan.

Yet.

Image credit: Fox via Fancast.