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.

Orange Braces

The Eldest Boy has had his braces applied to his teeth. Orange braces to be exact. (He chose the color. I like it.)

He's been a very good sport about them, hasn't been complaining a lot, though he did take a pass on the mango smoothie I made for him (we had very little in the house I could use to make him a smoothie) saying he didn't like it, no matter how much sugar I dumped into it. (It must've been pretty bad because The Girl, who adores smoothies, wouldn't drink it either. I couldn't tell what it tasted like because I have a dairy allergy and I'd added dairy to the smoothie. Oh well, what's that they say about the best intentions?)

As for The Girl, she just had the "spacers" (small rubber things) put in between molars in the back of her mouth removed and mold was made of her mouth so a palate expander can be made for her. In about two weeks,  she'll have to get new spacers placed between her teeth which really stinks because when they were placed in her mouth just after Christmas she was in a lot of pain. In the meantime, I told her to go wild chewing gum and eating all the foods and candy that will be verboten once she gets the palate expander, followed by the braces . . . that palate expander, man, I am so not looking forward to THAT and I'm not the one who's going to be wearing it.

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.

Quick Hits from a Nutty Homefront: Midnight Hound, Orthodontist X 2, 'Hunger Games,' Room of One's Own, B'Day Mania

Midnight Hound

Max the dog has developed a very bad habit of getting up in the middle of the night and demanding to go outside. I don’t know what he does when he's out there under the moonlight -- and neither does The Spouse who, to be fair, is doing the most of the letting the dog out – but Max stays out there for up to 15 minutes while we yawn and rub our eyes waiting for him.

Now we are fortunate enough to have AC in the house, so it’s not as though Max is overheated at night. And he hasn’t been ill, so we don’t know what to make of these middle-of-the-night rousings. But I do know that we don’t like it. Not one bit.

Paging the Orthodontist, Times TWO

Yes, I realized that when I had twins I’d be buying twice as many diapers, twice as much baby food, twice as many clothes (as the twins are comprised of one boy and one girl), pay two pre-school tuitions and later, two college tuitions simultaneously. What I temporarily blotted out of my mind was the possibility of paying for two kids to get braces at the same time, something I’d been putting off.

But after our recent family trip to the dentist, I realized I can put it off no longer. The Spouse and I were told that both The Eldest Boy and The Girl need to see the orthodontist. Oh goody. Let the braces games begin.

Hunger Games, Here I Come

So as to keep current with all that’s beast (i.e. – cool) with the young adult set, I’m planning on reading The Hunger Games three-book series by Suzanne Collins. While its premise is a dreary one – teens have to participate in a kill-or-be-killed televised competition – I’ve been told by The Girl and The Eldest Boy that I’ll really like it. We shall see . . . I'm still busy mourning the loss of new installments in the Harry Potter series.

A Room of One’s Own

When my parents took my brother and me to summer vacations on Cape Cod when we were kids, they rented a tiny cottage within a five minute walk to the ocean. It was a very rustic cottage, meaning there was one bathroom, no dishwasher, no cable TV (there was a TV with a VCR that didn’t get any channels), no AC and two bedrooms, one for my parents and one for the kids. Sharing a bedroom with my younger brother – who I nicknamed “Scum’s Rash” because he didn't like to bathe – wasn’t exactly fun, but hey, we were at the beach on vacation. We got to swim, build sandcastles, go mini-golfing, eat ice cream and maybe go to the drive-in movie theater depending on what was playing. It was all good.

Flash-forward 30 years and you can understand why I have a hard time sympathizing with The Youngest Boy when he squawks about the fact that when the Picket Fence Post family goes on vacation to Cape Cod -- to a rented house with AC, cable TV, wireless internet and three bedrooms – he’ll have to share a room with his brother while his sister gets her own room. Cry me a river kid.

Birthday Coma

In the days leading up to The Youngest Boy’s 10th birthday, the kid worked himself up into such a frenzy that he could no longer take the anticipation. And, frankly, he’d become supremely over-excited. So he said he wanted to be placed in a coma until his birthday . . . not that the child was building up his birthday to such heights that anything short of a parade, a fireworks display and the arrival of the Stanley Cup accompanied by the entire Boston Bruins team would be a disappointment . . .

Image credits: Meredith O'Brien, Amazon.