UpChuck E. Cheese

Our oldest child has mastered a skill. I mean, of course, in addition to be being able to cry at a moment's notice about the color of her socks on a Tuesday. I mean that she can now dress herself for school. Yes, she's six and has been dressing herself for years -- technically. Actually, until kindergarten started, her self-dressing skill was never in question. But when we all had to get out the door by 7 a.m., it became painfully clear that something was awry.

Anna is an "in the moment" kind of gal. Which means that between choosing clean underwear and putting them on, she can find any number of barbies to dress, stuffed animals to serenade, and world leaders to E-mail. At any other time, we enjoy watching this comedy, sometimes with a bowl of popcorn. But in the pre-caffeinated hour of a rushed week day, it can put quite a strain on one's connection to the Divine. So, her daddy and I, with the goal-oriented fervor of first children, tried out a Chuck E. Cheese reward chart to motivate her to dress herself before breakfast without being poked, prodded, nagged, begged, or otherwise financially compensated. This meant that once she completed a couple of weeks with her chart, we had to take her to Chuck E. Cheese to get her free tokens. This is her "I'm-at-Chuck-E.-Cheese-and-I've-got-tokens" face.

But her mommy and daddy learned a hard lesson on our visit to Chuck E. Cheese: free tokens are never free. Of course we knew an outing to Chuck E. Cheese would be crowded and loud -- we're not stupid.  Having been parents now for 6 years and having lived in 3 different states in that time, we've been to lots of Chuck E. Cheeses. We assumed, as red-blooded, marketing-addled Americans, that the restaurant chain rule would apply. Sure it would be loud and crowded, but there would also be upbeat music, fattening pizza, kid-friendly rides, and an enormous mouse suit that may or may not be stuffed with a stoned teenager. We figured we could deal with it if it meant that the kids had fun. But you can see where this is going. It was much, much worse than any annoying-but-generally-wholesome experience we had in mind.

First off, we paid a fortune for a "large" pizza that anywhere else would have been classified as "postage stamp". Then we waited for it long enough to find ourselves nearly permanently affixed to the audibly sticky seats and table. This is Maria's "I'm-probably-done-waiting-for-pizza" face.

This is Steve keeping Maria occupied with a lively game of "smash the cockroach."

This is me faking an "I'm having a great time" mommy smile. Anna's smile appears genuine, thank goodness.

I really tried not to whine about the unsanitary conditions I was noticing throughout dinner. I do realize I'm a little too emotionally involved with my hand sanitizer. I get it. I do. But when Anna ran her fingernail along the edge of the booth rail, and scraped a thick collection of gunk into her nail bed, I had no choice but to throw up in my mouth a little. And then to heave her over my shoulder and sprint off to scrub her hands in the bathroom, which thankfully still had one working soap dispenser.

 After ingesting our pepperoni-and-disease-flavored pizza that was priced like it was made of gold flecks mined by Kate Middleton's own family, Steve and I gathered up our girls, while trying to minimize contact with any of the surfaces around us, and headed off to the rides. We employed our usual man-to-man defense, with Steve guarding the token-laden kindergartner and me on toddler duty.

I learned quickly that the toddler preferred to play on non-moving rides, so I completely missed out on the fun Steve and Anna were having putting token after token into broken machines.

I did, however, get in on the horror of realizing my angel of a daughter had climbed into a plastic race car that had recently been occupied by what I can only hope was an incontinent child. Mind you, I was not aware that her precious little pink-sandaled feet were resting in urine until she had been in there for a full minute. And then I had a second child to scrub up in the bathroom.

I tapped out after the urine-car incident. I took Maria out to the truck for the rest of the evening while Steve braved it out with Anna, who was only a little put off by the fact that every other machine she tried just ate her hard-earned token and sadly blinked its two or three working lights at her.

By the time we got them home, I cashed in my determined mommy chips and put them both in the bath -- even though I had just bathed them that afternoon. I'm just proud to say I resisted the urge to actually dip them in rubbing alcohol.

The week following our visit to the petri dish, we all fought off different sicknesses, from colds to stomach upsets. Thankfully, we have lots of people around us who pray for constantly anyway, so we're recovered. And much, much wiser, I might add.

The first beach day of winter

February 21st  is still technically winter, my brain kept telling me. You can't go to the beach in the winter.

But on February 21st, there was no work and there was no school (happy presidents to me!), and there most certainly was a beach. And besides, we had already shined up our best goggles.

We arrived near 9 a.m. in the morning. Beach towns are glorious at 9 in the morning. The brown wrinkly ladies with giant gold rings are taking their terrycloth running suits for a walk. The brown wrinkly men with sun visors are sweeping metal detectors across crunchy sand that is still wet enough to squeek your toes. And the toddlers are digging their way to China.

The best thing about the beach is the smell. Well, the second best thing. The bery bestest thing about the beach are the cutie patooties.

Classy eh? We're nothing if not fashionable. You've seen these before. They are safety goggles from Lowe's. They have air vents all around the edge of them, so they are completely useless as water goggles, but again, it's about the fashion, people!

Maria took a break from the all of the digging and seagull stalking to fuel up. She's still normally in diapers, so a morning of carefree piddling in her Dora suit was a real treat. For everyone but mommy, of course.

(It's not that gross, really. Sandy waterlogged diapers are grosser. And a package of swim diapers cost more that my car payment. Carefree piddling is well...free.)

So, that was our first beach day of winter. While we were digging up sea shells, most of my family was digging their tires out of the snow that was still (STILL!) falling. But I try not to brag.

Happy Birthday Baby Jesus! We made you a vampire cake!

Our wonderful friends Trier and Andrew invited us over for a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Eve. Her mom and twin sisters joined us. Trier is a first child/oldest daughter kind of person (like me), so she had everything planned out perfectly (also like me, *naturally*), but she has this wonderful relaxed, welcoming personality that just goes with the flow (um. Not like me. Frowny. Face.). So does Andrew, really. Even with a house full of frosting-toting kids, they were either genuinely amiable and pleasant or they can both do masterful impressions of rainbows.

Trier and Andrew are expecting their second child, and even with that, and house guests at Christmas, and an active preschooler, they still had everything together. My only job was to bring the "Happy Birthday" banner and some birthday hats. I simply couldn't pull that off though. So, Steve was given those items on a list and sent to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve morning to pick them up (grounds for divorce in some states). He came back with a banner, but no hats, because he couldn't bring himself to buy Hello Kitty themed hats to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior. So, Trier magically made non-cartoon themed hats appear as well.

Their table was set with two perfectly rounded cakes already baked and accompanied by icing and sprinkles fanned out beautifully--one for each family to decorate for Jesus. Levi is their son, and he and his mommy and daddy decorated their cake with a carefully formed tribute to the Christ-child.

Our cake was decorated as more of a tribute to the stable part of the Christmas story. Remember? It's the part of the Christmas story where the stable floor gets cleaned with a shovel.

During events like this, our family lets Anna take the lead. You know, because she's five and totally into stuff like this and will take home lasting memories from it all, and blah, blah, blah. But also because it's hilarious to watch her go. We should probably have warned Trier and Andrew, though.

Anna began the party by putting on a princess dress. We had already accepted that this was non-negotiable. She allowed me to help with the all-over, first coat of frosting.

Steve graciously played goalie, keeping Maria involved, but not too involved. He also kept his head on straight enough to stop mommy from letting our 18-month-old child stuff handfuls of icing into her mouth for the sake of some cute photos. He was right, of course. I only hope my momentary lapse in judgment didn't mean that Trier and Andrew found frosting drool on their furniture later or a sparkly pile of vomit near the tree.

Anna even let me help with the real decorating--at first. We both ran colorful edging around the cake, with lots of loopy fun. Then she got her mitts on the sprinkles. She dumped sprinkles, double-fisted, like Zeus pummeling the mortals with lightning bolts. She squeezed out more icing and sprinkles on more icing and sprinkles until our birthday cake for Jesus looked like an inside-out autopsy. Some of the sprinkles were from Halloween and were actual "Vampire sprinkles," too, which (with my junior high sense of humor) I could *not* laugh hard enough over.

But once the sprinkle dust cleared, we lit the candles and sang. I was a teensy bit surprised to find that I really liked having a party for Jesus. I can easily imagine that depending on who attended such a party, it could result in a get-together of such cheese and fakery, not even Jesus would want to blow out his candles. But, it wasn't like that with genuine people. Trier and Andrew are honest, real, refreshingly humble people. Singing "Happy Birthday to Jesus" means something important when you're singing with people who remind you of Him.

When we got to work on Monday, we discovered a colleague whose birthday was December 25th, and I was going to tease him about whether his parents always compared him to Jesus, saying something like: "I'll bet Jesus never complained about having to share HIS birthday with Christmas." And then I was all, "Huh. Not as funny as I first thought."

And that was sort of why we wanted to have a Birthday Party for Jesus in the first place. Not only does Jesus share his Birthday with Christmas. He's often not even invited to the festivities. I also wondered if having a Birthday Party was just too much, you know, schedule-wise. But, with good friends like Trier and Andrew, it didn't feel like we were squeezing another dutiful event in before the REAL Christmas stuff happened. It was a tiny moment of the real stuff of Christmas, stable droppings and all.

Hope you had a few moments of Real Christmas, too!

Au Naturel

We've been playing in the sunshine. Anna sang you a song, and Maria took full advantage of the naked Wednesdays policy.

Maria's a player

It's shocking that her first favorite toy would be a book.