Not sure how this happened, either, but it has. And in both cases, I think we just need to go with it.

First of all, let me give a brief synopsis of the first weekend, which was the pasta party/marathon/trampoline weekend. I guess all you need to know is that two out of three of those activities were thoroughly enjoyed. Which one wasn’t such a hit?

Obviously not my photo because 1) I do not usually get that dressed up to stand next to a trampoline, and 2) MY CHILD HATES TRAMPOLINES.

Oh, you guys. Sadie was SO EXCITED about that damn trampoline. I talked it up to her all week, and while I expected her to be a little hesitant, I also expected her to get over it once she saw her friend enjoying it. Sadie has been quite the follower lately when it comes to hanging out with other shorties (she wants to mimic EVERYTHING the other party does and will get very testy if you do not help her accomplish this), so I figured she’d quickly get over any fear and enjoy the awesome spoils of jumping around like a crazy person with no adults stopping you. This is the child who attempts to jump on our couch (which is sitting on a hardwood floor and is also adjacent to a hardwood coffee table with pointy edges galore) every blessed day! Surely she will recognize how incredible this opportunity is!

Yeah…not so much.

She balked at going in when we first got there, which I expected. About 15 minutes later, I talked her into at least trying it, and she quickly realized the ZOMGTHISISAWESOME-ness of it all, but then after a few minutes she seemed to notice that the floor of the trampoline would bounce whenever her friend jumped, NOT JUST when she jumped, and this = LOSS OF CONTROL, and because Sadie = MY CHILD WITH MY DNA, I watched as a wave of panic suddenly flashed across her face, and she begged–near tears–to be removed from the hellish pit of unabashed fun. I took her out immediately, of course (nothing destroys me faster than watching her experience the panic that I GAVE HER by way of my genes, I’m sure of it), and she and her friend went on to play with some other stuff for a while. After maybe an hour, Sadie suddenly requested to go back out to the trampoline, so we all rushed back out there. Same thing happened again: a few minutes of pure enjoyment, a realization of OH SHIT I CANNOT CONTROL THE BOUNCINESS OF THIS WEIRD FLOOR, and a panicked request to be taken out. And I couldn’t care less if the kid hates trampolines (less time spent in the ER for me!), but man, it sucks to watch your kid freak out and know that there’s nothing you can do to stop her from feeling that awful flutter of fear in her heart.

And what was Brad doing while I was rescuing our daughter from the clutches of fun? He was recovering from running 13.1 miles in an hour and 50 minutes (8:30/mile) on a surprisingly hot May morning because HE IS INSANE. (And we are very proud of him.) (And I heartily suggest you read his wisdom on marathon running here.)

And then…last week happened, with all its weekly routine stuff. We worked. We came home. I took Sadie to her 3-year checkup at the doctor’s office, which was fine except for the fact that their bathroom was out of order…something I discovered approximately 30 seconds after Sadie turned to me and said “I have to poop.”

In the waiting room during happier, poop-free, yak-hat-wearing times.

I have to say that I am pretty proud of myself in times like that, whenever I have a small person of questionable poop-holding skill telling me that pooping is imminent and yet there is no bathroom is on the premises. There was a time when I’d flip the fuck out in situations like this (and sometimes I still do, trust), but for the most part, I manage to switch my brain to “one step at a time” mode, which allows me to quickly figure out how to most efficiently get from Point A to Point B without losing my shit so that my daughter might lose hers in a proper receptacle.

But that was the bitch of the situation — there was no bathroom within an easily-walkable distance. This would have been pretty awful had it not been for my new best friend, The Plastic Travel Potty I Bought Four Months Ago That Has Been Chilling Out In The Trunk Of Our Car.

Friend, your time is now.

Car-owning parents of recently potty-trained children, GET YOU SOME OF THIS SHIT. Because although we went months without ever using it, we have used it SO MANY TIMES in the last few weeks. That’s partially due to the fact that it’s been warmer out, so we’ve been venturing out of the house more often and for longer stretches of time, and also partially due to…I don’t know what else. JUST BUY ONE OF THESE. PLEASE.

Sadie is thankfully totally cool with the portable potty seat drill, and although we try to just use it for, uh, LIQUID EMERGENCIES, there have been a couple of code browns we’ve had to handle this way as well. And…I’m going to stop talking about this now, because as it is I’m going to have to delete everything I’ve just written whenever Sadie discovers the Internet. JUST GET THE SEAT. YOU’RE WELCOME.

Anyhoo, this past weekend was also excellent, beginning with a Saturday morning breakfast and grocery shopping trip followed by a lengthy trip to the park.

A flower crown for the princy-ess.

We spent the rest of the day eating popsicles on the porch and enjoying a summery dinner together (Sadie’s love for corn on the cob has apparently remained intact since last year), and after the shorty passed out at bedtime, Brad & I watched Young Adult.

I want to talk a little more about this later, but in short, I loved it. And the more I think about it since I watched it, the more I realize how much I fucking love it.

The next morning was Mother’s Day, which I welcomed by sleeping in until 9am and having breakfast brought to me by the cutest two people I know. The same two people also gave me a couple of absolutely perfect cards that damn near made my heart burst.

I was then told to go off and get the manicure I’d been wanting to get for a while now, and you know when’s a super easy time to get a manicure on short notice? On a fucking Sunday that’s also fucking Mother’s Day. I finally located a place that was able to take me and give me a proper manicurin’, but I also had to listen to the, uh, technician? manicure artist? argue vehemently with his mother for the duration of my visit. HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO YOU, MA’AM. Your son may be a dick, but he paints a mean nail.

Upon my return, it was time for an early dinner with my dudes:

(Dinner/dog grooming session.)

We enjoyed a wide array of treats from the all-day brunch menu, which for me included sangria, smoked salmon with capers, and scallops on a bed of polenta. Sadie had the pasta, naturally, but turned her nose up at the strawberry yogurt that was actually just plain yogurt with fresh strawberries on top. So you know what Picky-Picky ended up eating as a starter instead? Half of my damn smoked salmon. Did I mention she also likes dried seaweed as a snack? BUT TURNS HER NOSE UP WHEN STRAWBERRIES ARE ON TOP OF YOGURT INSTEAD OF BLENDED THROUGHOUT?! Child, I do not understand your logic.

Later that evening when the shorty was in bed, Brad ducked out in order to fulfill my one last Mother’s Day request: a giant piece of strawberry pie. It was perfect, as was my day, and the celebration will actually continue into August, which is when I will be able to enjoy Brad’s Mother’s Day gift to me: tickets to see My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses, FUCK YEAH.

Thank you for making my Mother’s Day, guys! And I didn’t even have to birth you or nothin’!

So, those were my two excellent weekends. Next up: this weekend, when I travel to WV and leave the shorty in the care of her grandparents for the evening on Saturday while I go tear it up with four of my very best girlfriends from back in the day. We’ve got a hotel room for the night and everything! To enable irresponsible behavior! Of course, keep in mind that we all have small children now, so “tear it up” probably means “asleep by 11:30pm because we know we have to take care of small people the next day,” but whatever. This particular group of friends has been known to encourage very…questionable behavior in the past, so I just might have some stories for you next week after all.

See me in the back? THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO ME WHEN I GET AROUND THESE PEOPLE. I foresee much white girl roof-raisin’ in my future.

Sorry, that was rude. I just really needed an excuse to use THE BEST FUCKING ANIMATED GIF OF ALL TIME.

First, allow me to share my sheer fucking GLEE over the fact that the weather seems to have made a permanent turn for the better (i.e., warm and lovely and fuck a bunch of that 40-degree bullshit in MAY, you whore weather patterns). Last Saturday was ridiculously cold and dreary, but by Sunday morning the sun was shining both in the sky and IN MY SOUL, because we were heading out to the new IHOP semi-near our house for a pancake breakfast. We had actually driven out there a few weeks ago in anticipation of syrupy delights, only to discover that it had not opened yet. This news was not received well by the tired and cranky members of our family, which is to say ALL OF US and EVERYONE SHUT UP UNTIL WE CAN LOCATE SOME FUCKING PANCAKES.

Honestly? I don’t even like restaurant pancakes that much. I am a big fan of the paper-thin pancakes I make at home by thinning out the batter, not that fluffy bullshit you get in most places. The only exception is IHOP, where the fluffy pancakes are somehow acceptable to me. Perhaps because each table is adorned with a bounty of syrup options? Perhaps.

After cramming ourselves full of pancakes, we decided to stroll through the Lowe’s across the parking lot to look at the garden section (it’s almost time for me to drop a ton of cash on things to plant in my garden that will get eaten by wildlife/meet a swift end thanks to my blatant neglect!). We ended up buying some of those colorful, interlocking foam squares for a section of the basement we’d designated as Sadie’s subterranean play area, a.k.a. the place we put her play kitchen and larger toys so that her closet can store things other than the Weebles Treehouse.

Which plays some really rockin’ Weebles-themed house music whenever one of the Weebles reaches the bottom of the slide. It’s absolutely not annoying in the least.

Sunday was also the day when Sadie — my pants-loving, dress-hating child — walked up to me and said “Mama [she calls me Mama sometimes now, and I LOVE IT], do I have any dresses to wear?”

Once I recovered the ability to speak, I said “Well, let’s go take a look,” but on the inside I was shouting HELL NO YOU DON’T HAVE ANY DRESSES, DO YOU NOT REMEMBER HOW YOU NEARLY PEELED THE PAINT OF THE WALLS AT CHRISTMAS TIME SCREAMING ABOUT THE INJUSTICE OF WEARING A DAMN SKIRT FOR CHRISSAKES?!?!

She didn’t like the two hand-me-down dresses I found (OF COURSE, but in her defense, they are kind of fugly), and I saw her face fall a little bit whenever I told her those were her only options. “But I want to look like a princyess,” she said, adorably pronouncing “princess” with that “y” in the middle as she’s always done, and I knew then and there that I would find her a damn skirt or dress to wear at 6pm on a Sunday evening if it fucking killed me.

Enter the infamous Christmas skirt:

“Now I look like a princyess!” she said right after I took this photo. Oh, ridiculously overpriced Christmas skirt, you are finally earning your keep.

I promised her that we would pick up some more casual summer skirts soon so she can princyess it up on the reg now that the warmer weather is here to stay. How did we survive all those months with early sunsets and no after-dinner bubble-blowing and sidewalk-chalking?

In other news, it was FoST’s husband’s birthday this week, and we celebrated by providing dessert at our house after their birthday dinner date. I picked up a couple apple pies (his favorite) at a local bakery, and HOLY FUCKING ASSBALLS, Internet. I am not a huge apple pie fan (I, along with Warrant, prefer cherry), but FUCK. FUCK! That pie was the best goddamn pie I have ever eaten, and I told Brad that I would require its presence at every major occasion in my life from this point forward.

Right there with you.

With those tempting pie leftovers haunting our kitchen, it was TORTURE to have to resist taking a bite yesterday morning when I was forced to fast before having some blood taken at one of those snazzy blood-taking places. See, I behaved like an actual adult last Friday and got a physical after having some really weird spells of dizziness/weakness, and after finding nothing wrong with me during my exam (the doctor’s diagnosis: you’re probably just getting old and stuff), I was told to go get my blood tested for…I don’t know, anemia or Weird Dizzy Disease or the presence of spider eggs or whatever the fuck. I think I have mentioned before how much I FUCKING HATE getting blood drawn, so I was totally dreading it, especially because it deprived me of Morning Pie. The Blood Lady was actually very quick and efficient (I apparently have really hard veins to tap — no heroin for this gal!), and I was out of there in no time. The only odd thing was the giant poster on the wall that said “In order to prevent error, your phlebotomist will confirm your identity at three separate points during your appointment,” because, uh, that did not happen AT ALL. I don’t think that lady said a single word to me, so here’s hoping they don’t mix my sample up with some poor fool with fucked insulin levels, because this bitch will not endure a life of artificial sweeteners. WILL NOT.

Of the devil.

Anyhoo, now here we are, at the end of another busy-busy week, and I’m excited to be at the start of a weekend that includes a pre-marathon pasta party (hold the marathon — for me, at least) and a Sunday play date that involves a trampoline. It’s gonna be epic.

See you — and hopefully all of my child’s teeth and unbroken bones — next week!

No need to pick the lock, friend! Just waltz right in. Also, did you know that I had a cereal bar for breakfast three years ago on my birthday? Isn’t my memory fascinating?

My nostalgia has been in overdrive this week, spurred on by a friend’s Facebook photos of her new baby girl. I met this friend during our year in New Jersey, which was also the first year of our marriage, which was also nearly twelve years ago, holy FUCK.

My friend, K, now lives with her husband and two kids in a small, quaint town that’s just a few miles down the highway from where our old apartment (in the highly sketchy apartment complex) still stands. I started browsing through her photos and had that weird feeling you get when you revisit a place that’s only existed in your memory for the past several years: Oh. Huh. That place and those people are all still there. I guess August of 2000 through September of 2001 really did happen after all.

It’s not as though I assume that places up and disappear when I’m not in them (I’m not quite that self-absorbed), I just don’t think about them on the reg, and when I do take a minute to remember, really remember, what life was like twelve years ago, it’s all at once shocking and bittersweet (and also just plain sweet) how things have changed.

And how long ago it all seems now. Again, HOLY FUCK and WHO ARE THESE MERE BABIES?!

I think about our newlywed life in New Jersey from time to time (whenever K posts a photo, whenever I run across an old photo, whenever someone mentions Bruce Springsteen), but I haven’t ever acknowledged how close our New Jersey life came to being a much-longer-than-one-year life, and I never stopped to think about what that life would look like had we never gotten that wild hair to move to New York City on the spur of the moment in August of 2001.

We arrived in New Jersey in August of 2000 after a HELLACIOUS road trip that involved both sets of our parents, torrential downpours, confusing New Jersey highways, and a moving truck so ridiculously large I suspect it was used in Maximum Overdrive.

Coincidentally, that’s also what my face looked like after a weekend spent refereeing two sets of parents through a very stressful relocation OMG DID I EVER NEED SOME BOOZE.

I remember the day our parents left: mine departing in the morning, and Brad’s later in the day. With the last of the real grown-ups back on the road to West Virginia, we were finally alone in our very first home as two married adults. I remember feeling completely giddy (and just a tiny bit homesick), and eating a dinner of beer and take-out fried chicken that night, because…that’s what adults do, right?

It’s also what GENIUSES do, OMG I want this in my face right now.

I have very sweet memories of all those little nesting activities I’d waited to do for so long: a big grocery shopping trip to stock our fridge, painting our tiny kitchen bright yellow, decorating the apartment with all our new furniture, cooking for each other with all our new dishes, drinking martinis out of the many (MANYMANY) martini glasses we received for our wedding (martini glasses were seriously in that year, holy shit), and…wondering what the fuck we were doing in New Jersey.

Oh, that part was easy–at first–because I was going to grad school at Rutgers. I had a week or so after we moved in before starting classes, and Brad wasted no time getting hired by an ad sales company in Manhattan, which meant he had about a 45-minute bus ride each way. I have very specific memories of driving him to the bus stop every morning, and returning to our empty apartment (which smelled like freshly brewed coffee and his cologne) and feeling instantly sad. That place without him wasn’t quite home just yet.

Ours was the upstairs apartment, accessible by the door on the right. Please note our lovely balcony, from which we witnessed many domestic disputes unfold at our neighbor’s place across the courtyard.

The fall progressed and I got busy with classwork. Brad was doing well at his (SUPER-DEE-SUPER SHADY) job (it was seriously similar to the shit that goes down in that terrible Boiler Room movie), and we often took the train to the city on the weekends (which sounds so bizarre to me now — we just…WENT? Without having to think about bedtimes or sitters or ANYTHING?!). We had family visiting pretty often to help with residual homesickness, and with each visit, things felt more and more settled. This was our life — me in school, Brad doing…things to make money in the city. We were doing it! We were surviving! GO US!

Gee, what are those DARK OMINOUS CLOUDS OF FORESHADOWING doing here?

Sometime after Halloween, I started to wonder if maybe I hadn’t made a huge (expensive) mistake enrolling in grad school. This was an enormously terrifying realization for many reasons, but mostly because WHAT THE FUCK, I had dragged myself and my poor innocent new husband hundreds of miles away from everything and everyone we knew to LIVE IN NEW JERSEY so I could pursue my education, so WHAT THE FUCK, if grad school isn’t my plan, then what the hell is?

One sunny afternoon as I was standing outside the Fine Arts building on a short break from acting class, my (giant, 2000-era) cell phone rang. It was Brad, who was audibly upset. The strain of the shady dealings at his workplace had gotten the best of him, and he had quit. He was freaking out because he was now unemployed, I was freaking out because I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE DIRECTION-LESS ONE HERE. I didn’t react very well to the news at first (something I feel bad about to this day), because I saw in Brad what I was seeing in myself for the first time in maybe ever: complete and utter confusion about what the fuck I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Things settled down; Brad found work as a reporter for the local paper, and I immersed myself in classwork and decided not to make any rash decisions until the end of the semester. We drove the long nine hours back to West Virginia for Thanksgiving (I remember absolutely nothing about the holiday that year, for some reason), and on the way back, we got stuck in a horrific traffic jam in the middle of Pennsylvania. Pulling into our apartment complex back in New Jersey, exhausted after what ended up being a ten hour drive, Brad uttered a phrase that we still repeat to this day (albeit under happier circumstances): “Ahhh, home crap home.”

Coincidentally, I took up cross-stitching around this time.

The short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was a total blur, as it always is. Highlights included me getting a cavity filled at the most terrifying dentists’ office I have ever seen (he had pictures of celebrities he’d ripped out of magazines TAPED TO THE WALL — I actually almost left when I first arrived because I thought I’d made a mistake and was in a TATTOO PARLOR)(Why didn’t I leave?!), Brad covering a tragic shooting for the newspaper which involved him being inches from a freshly killed gunman (’tis the season!), and putting up our very first family Christmas tree.

That part was actually nice.

After another epic holiday journey to WV and back, we welcomed another family member into the fold, and for a while there, things seemed better.

DAWWWWWWWWWWWW.

But then classes started up again, and with the beginning of the new semester, it became abundantly clear to me that I wanted (and needed) to get out of there. In a move that still hurts my grade-grubbing Nerd Pride, I dropped out of grad school at the end of January.

I don’t really remember the terror that must have been (or SHOULD have been) filling my gut at that point, but I do remember applying for a jobs at Hallmark and Pier One. I started working at Pier One around Valentine’s Day — our first Valentine’s Day as husband and wife! — which we celebrated by getting really drunk on house wine at the Olive Garden.

Shut up, we loved that place. Unlimited soup, salad and breadsticksissimo!

Working at Pier One was…OK. It was a shock to be in the working world again after I thought I would be mostly in the academic one for a couple of years, but hey, I had an employee discount and got to go home to Brad & (tiny sweet wee) Tootsie every night, so I wasn’t complaining. We bought a used car for me (my first ever car JUST FOR ME, eeee!), and I wasted no time purchasing sweet fuzzy dice for my ride. In March I even auditioned for a musical and got a lead role along with K, the person who would become my very best New Jersey friend.

After Jersey-born-and-bred Tootsie, of course.

Feeling more like myself after completing a successful run of the show (and with my mood bolstered by the emerging spring weather), I interviewed for a job with a software wholesaler that would take me out of retail and boost my earnings, and I was happily offered the position. The commute was longer than the one to Pier One, but the extra money (and distance from papasan chairs and wicker furniture) was worth it. I ended up taking an 11am-8pm shift that meant I avoided most rush hour traffic, but MAN, do those hours sound CA-RAZY to my 35-year-old mom ears now. I remember having to SET AN ALARM to wake up for an 11:00 START TIME at work, and I also remember meeting Brad at the gym after work (and BEFORE dinner/meeting friends for drinks). When the fuck were we eating dinner those days? 11pm? I do not understand you, crazy young version of myself.

And you were also apparently really into white t-shirts. Ah, youth!

This was when life in New Jersey really started to settle for us: we both had jobs we liked (enough), we had friends we liked to hang out with, we knew our way around the area, we got to hang out in the city whenever we wanted. We even spent some time looking for houses to actually purchase, if you can believe that shit (I can’t — real estate prices were RICOCKULOUSY high and WAY beyond anything we could afford, but what the fuck did we know, we were 23 years old). We ended up renewing our lease in our (questionably safe) apartment complex over the summer of 2001 and prepared for another year in Jersey.

Where you can’t pump your own gas — did you know that? I did not, but became hip to the fact after getting screamed at by my fair share of Middle Eastern gas station owners.

That second year in Jersey didn’t happen, of course. Brad started doing stand-up in the city and we both decided that it was now-or-never time in regards to taking a chance on life in NYC. Brad sweet-talked the rental company into letting us back out of the lease, we found an apartment in Queens, I put in my two weeks at the software company, September 11th happened, and suddenly we were New Yorkers (if by location only).

But unlike living in New Jersey, New York never felt like home to me, not really. I never once thought we’d stay there forever (or even for more than a couple years), whereas New Jersey felt…do-able. And looking through my friend K’s photos of her central Jersey life this week, I let myself imagine what things might be like had we never moved away.

In the middle of August 2001, before we decided to take the leap and move to New York, I took a pregnancy test on my lunch break at the software company. It was negative, of course, but what if it had been positive? I know for a fact that if I’d gotten pregnant while we were living in New York, we would have hightailed it back to WV in a full-on panic, but if I’d gotten pregnant in New Jersey, where both of us had friends and insurance and solid, full-time jobs, chances are good that we would’ve stayed.

And I would have a kid who’d be turning ten right about now. Shit.

It could have been me in some of my friend K’s pictures of her July 4th cookout, her son’s first birthday party, the Halloween parade down the main street of her quaint little town. Brad and I might have been her neighbors there (assuming we’d managed to conquer the crazy real estate market), and I might be writing here to complain about our NINE hour road trips to West Virginia instead of our four hour ones. Or I might not be writing here at all.

I would still be with Brad, but we might not have Sadie. I might have found some success commuting to Manhattan for an acting career, or I might have given it up altogether. Brad & I might be the pretty much the same people we are now, or we might have grown in a completely different direction.

I am of course referring to spray tans and hair gel.

All the different permutations just never stop being completely fascinating and terrifying to consider. But the important thing to remember is that we made all the right decisions, lived the exact life we were supposed to, and ended up precisely where we are supposed to be.

Good luck, crazy young people. I barely recognize you, but you are in for one hell of a fun time.

Although I don’t see how that would be possible. I follow the instructions on my pill bottles to the letter!
(I laughed at this for way too long. Read it aloud in an increasingly agitated tone. It gets even better.)

Not only was our photo studio experience mostly painless, the resulting photos are pretty awesome too:

Just a screenshot from the website, but unnngh, you guys, the cute.

I let Sadie bring along two of her beloved stuffed animals (she chose ‘Baby Reindeer’ (who is really just a deer) and ‘Mini-Oreo’ (a black cat who is a tinier version of a larger stuffed cat she named Oreo)), because, hell, that’s who she is right now: a little girl who hates dresses and has a stuffed animal in her hand at all times.

Don’t mind me — my heart’s just flying apart inside my ribcage.

Baby Reindeer made it into some of the shots, but he looked a little…less than alive in most of them.

This one’s not too bad, because I jumped in to semi-pose him before the photo was taken. I mean, he looks like he’s either in the midst of yoga or smelling the floor, but at least…

…he doesn’t look like he’s been shot.

At one point, the photographer pulled out a long length of pink tulle (you can see it in the pic above) and had Sadie pull it up over her face (“I’m a ghost!!!”) and then throw it off with enthusiasm. I was not so excited about this, because I knew it would mess up her already static-prone and highly-mess-uppable hair, but then it resulted in this, one of my very favorite shots:

When was the last time your child killed a deer then channeled Mick Jagger?

I still like the non-studio pro photos better, but man, I really liked some of these. I even ordered a few of those collages the employees put together to try to sucker you into spending way too much money, but I think I’ve established that when it comes to this kid, I am a complete gulli-bull.

Bless you if you recognize that joke, because it has been stuck in my head for twenty-odd years and WILL NOT LEAVE.

So, thank you, family who is constantly pressuring me to darken the doorway of these dumb chain photo studios. Sometimes it actually pays off a little.

(All seemingly dead Baby Reindeers have been tastefully cropped out in the production of this photo.)

Hey, if you ever want to lose faith in the creative power of humankind, do an image search on corporate-ish buzzwords and phrases like “time management.” What the fuck is going on up there. WHY IS THAT GUY PULLING A DESK LIKE IT’S A FUCKING PLOW?!

So, some exciting things happened this weekend: I got to spend a whole weekend with Sadie all to myself because Brad was out of town for work (BOO), and we had a thoroughly fantastic time (YAY!). Even though we didn’t do much of anything except get some more damn studio portraits taken at Target (BOO, as you know, but this time she not only ENJOYED IT, she was flat-out WORKING IT for the Target photo lady, which means I spent a metric assload of cash on the prints because SO CUTE) and play outside in the beautiful weather (YAY!), this kid, she is a delight. And I’m saying that even after she sort-of-accidentally-but-also-maybe-on-purpose pile-drived her giant melon into my lip and made me see stars for about ten minutes.

Oh, that photo up there? Taken during our fucking INTERMINABLE wait at Target (why do they even bother having you make appointments?! WHYYYYY) with my brand new spanking Instagram app, because I am on the cutting edge of technologies released two years ago.

I don’t even know what took me so long to get it (IT’S FUCKING FREE), because I LOVE looking at other people’s Instagram photos, and I love the way they seem to capture the moment how I see it/want to remember it (a more eloquent explanation of why I like it so much can be found here). Also, I’d been looking for an easier and more mobile replacement for my Flickr pro account, which I let lapse over a year ago. I even removed it from my sidebar over there because I think the “recent” thumbnails included the photo I took on the day I got my tattoo in January of 2011, and that’s just a damn shame.

So, anyway, I’m on Instagram as jiveturkeyjones if you’re also on Instagram and want to see how I kind of went apeshit taking Instagram photos this weekend. It’s a little much. At least I’m not tweeting every one I take (or any of them, actually), but you best believe I log on to Twitter solely to see other people’s Instagram photos. SUCH IS MY OBSESSION WITH INSTAGRAM.

OK! OK! I’ll get back to work. Hope you’re having a great Monday, Internet.

Also, boobs.

And then, the weirdest thing happened. One minute she was all

And then I blinked and she was suddenly all

“Sorry — I gotta take this.”

Just like my own birthday, Sadie’s birthday really hit me hard this year. Not at all in a bad way, just more in a HOLY SHIT, ACTUAL YEARS ARE PASSING HERE kind of way. I didn’t even realize how much had changed since last year until I saw the photo evidence:

Chubbycheeks vonTinypants, last year on her second birthday.

I MEAN COME ON.

Thanks to leap year and the cruel passage of time, Sadie’s birthday fell right in the middle of the week this year, so I took the day off to spend with her. Brad had initially planned to be off, too, but having to take off for the broken-furnace-feline-kidney-stones-a-palooza of the first part of the week meant he had to go slave away for The Man while Sadie and I lounged in our jammies and took a trip to the museum. After she went to bed on Tuesday night, though, we were both able to prep the living room for Little Miss Three’s birthday surprise:

FUCK YEAH DOLLHOUSE! Also, Tangled shirt that was worn all day on her birthday, to bed that evening, and to school the next day. If you can’t indulge in a little spotty hygiene on your third birthday, when can you?!

I have some really sweet macro shots of the dollhouse on the “real” camera, but who knows when I’ll actually upload the photos, so here are some iPhone shots for your consumption. SERIOUSLY with this dollhouse, Internet. I love it so hard. So does she, of course, but UNNNGGHH ALL THE TINY THINGS I CANNOT GET ENOUGH. We actually had the foresight to tell people what we were getting her so they could supplement with gifts of the accompanying dolls/furniture sets, which you can see worked out pretty well. I don’t have any shots of the kitchen right now, and it is BY FAR the most AMAZING room, what with the tiny cutting boards and knives and food and canisters and muffin tins with tiny muffins and yes, maybe I do play with the kitchen set sometimes after she goes to bed, LAY OFF.

We were some of the only late afternoon visitors at the museum on Wednesday, which was fortunate for two reasons: 1) Sadie was able to have unfettered access to all her beloved exhibits in the hands-on kids’ area:

(Please note hot pink manicure, which she has been requesting for a while now. Don’t worry — this is about as far as I will go with the cosmetics until she is much older. I mean, sure, we get her brows waxed and her roots done every six weeks, but she has to have something to keep her occupied while her father and I are getting our Brazilians.)

And 2) there were virtually no witnesses to the barn-burner of a tantrum that ensued thanks to a toy horse that just KEPT FALLING OVER, YOU STUPID WHORE PONY and her plummeting blood sugar. This was the first real public tantrum she’s had in a loooooong time (maybe ever-ish?), and probably pretty indicative of what we’re in for with age three (lord, beer me strength), and although it was in a nearly empty area of a space that I’m sure has housed its fair share of shorty bitch-ass-ness, I still felt my face flush with embarrassment as I dragged Shit-Lose-y McThree into the (very echo-y, THAT’S JUST GREAT) marble hallway to calm her down. After I managed to get some strawberries and crackers in her gullet, things evened out and we were able to continue enjoying the day, but you can rest assured I will not be so lax in doling out the snacks in the future. DAMN.

She was so tired after her spaghetti dinner that she didn’t even make it to birthday cupcake time at home (she calls them “cupcapes,” which makes me clutch my chest from cute every time), but we sent her to school with them on Thursday so that she could enjoy the sugary spoils of her birthday with her friends.

(Don’t worry — we checked with her teachers to confirm that this was cool before we delivered the giant tray of baked goods.)

(Although I am just now realizing that I subjected her teachers to an afternoon of wily children post-cupcake consumption, and for that I am truly sorry.)

I wrote Sadie an entry in the I’m-Afraid-I’ll-Die-Before-I-Get-To-Tell-You-These-Things journal I keep for her, but in case the journal perishes along with me in the fiery airplane crash I worst-case-scenario myself in late at night, allow me to provide some documentation here of what Sadie is like at three years old.

At three years old, Sadie:

• Will finish song lyrics from Tangled if you start humming them around her (often in the right key — DAMN MUSICAL GENIUS, I TELL YOU);
• Still says “aminal” along with “cupcape” and “backsit” (for “basket”). I am prepared to die inside when she eventually corrects these;
• Likes to be held, but only for a little while (which is fortunate, because she is getting tall and heavy, yo);
• Doles out unprompted hugs and kisses;
• Loves to watch Brad’s dramatic re-enactments of her trips and falls;
• Loves laughing at herself;
• Will playfully mock me and parrot back my words in a funny robot voice;
• Likes to stand on my feet and talk to me when I’m making food/washing dishes in the kitchen (I love this so much);
• PARENTAL PRIDE ALERT: Knows and can identify all her letters, can count to twenty unassisted, is starting to sound out words (with assistance), can write her name without tracing, is a goddamn PRODIGY according to her boastful mother;
• Can be shy around large groups and new people (especially when I’m around), but once she warms up, it’s Ham City, complete with constant requests to “WATCH THIS, WATCH ME DO THIS, DID YOU SEE THAT?!”;
• Still asks a lot of “Why?” questions, but they’ve recently gotten less generic. It’s not so much “Why?” as it is “Why are some people boys and some people girls?” Uh. I think I liked the plain old “Why?” questions better;
• Always wants to help with chores, and actually folds a mean washcloth and/or hand towel. She will also be straight-up pissed if you unload the dishwasher or put away the groceries without her;
• Will be a teenager in ten short years, holy shit;
• Will always, always, always be my baby, my Sadie, my heart.

Happy birthday, kiddo.

C’mon, man. You know how I roll.

So, Easter weekend. That happened. Holy shit, did it happen. Let’s dive in:

JEERS:

• The fact that Sadie screamed for a solid hour during the drive to WV Friday night, complaining that her “butt hurt.”
• The fact that we have been dealing with “butt hurt” complaints for, like, a month now (who is she? the Internet?), and after taking her to the doctor a couple weeks ago and having everything tested, we were told it was probably a yeast infection from the antibiotics she was on AGES AGO, so we purchased and applied the requisite cream, so WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Actual pain or preschooler drama? (Please note that butt hurt never happens at school, only at home, only around me, and only when she’s tired/doesn’t want to do something she’s supposed to be doing, like GOING TO SLEEP ALREADY, GOOD LORD.)
• The fact that she woke up at 2am later that night squirming and crying and experiencing obvious discomfort, SO NOW what the fuck do we do?
• The fact that she was up until 5am in this manner. Sorry, brother-in-law, who opened his spare bedroom up to our charming family! Hope you didn’t plan on actually, you know, sleeping tonight.
• The fact that–after a call to a very awesome pediatrician friend–we discovered that we had been applying completely ineffectual lotion to Sadie’s infection.
• Because I bought the wrong kind all those weeks ago.
• Because the RIGHT kind (Lotrimin) is shelved with the fucking JOCK ITCH products and marketed as “FOOT CREAM,” and how the fuck was I supposed to know that it was OK to put that shit on my small child’s tender nether regions?! Where is my kid-friendly version with a fucking teddy bear on the package?
• The fact that my HURR DURR caused my poor kid to suffer unnecessarily for weeks.
• The fact that I am talking about yeast infections on my blog.
• The four hours of sleep we all got before Sadie’s big birthday party.
• The overtired tantrum she threw at bedtime on Saturday, when she literally cried and screamed herself to sleep (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONEY).
• The cold (and cough! don’t forget the cough!) she woke up with the next day.
• The broken furnace and subsequent COLD AS FUCK house we came home to late Sunday night.
• The kidney stones Tootsie was diagnosed with Monday morning.
• The $420 vet bill that came along with it.
• The hefty furnace repair bill, that was nice enough to come along and keep the vet bill company.
• FUCKING A.

CHEERS:

• Looking in the rear view mirror and seeing the sheer excitement on this face as we headed south to visit her relatives and have a Big Girl Birthday Party:

• The party outfit I bought for Sadie, who loved it just as much as I did:

You guys. That face. My heart.

• The party, attended by so many cute shorties, after which Sadie said, “That was the best birthday I ever had.”

• The Easter pants! That arrived on Friday! And totally fit! And looked criminally adorable!

It appears we are over getting our picture taken.

• Tootsie did not die while we were away, and in fact should make a full recovery with the help of some special food.
• Her vet, who was quick and kind and presented me with all the treatment options and prices in a way that made me feel like he wasn’t going to judge me if I didn’t want to front the cash for stuff like cat ultrasounds.
• The furnace has been fixed. Baguettes are no longer being frozen off.
• Act Classy launched and is fucking hilarious. Seriously.
• Tonight I will be baking vanilla cupcakes with strawberry frosting for a certain little girl who turns three tomorrow at precisely 6pm.
• HOLY SHIT.
• Cupcakes for breakfast tomorrow. Recognize.
• After the cupcake baking (complete with thorough taste-testing), Brad & I will be assembling Sadie’s rad new dollhouse for her birthday morning surprise, and I ain’t gonna lie, I am so excited to play with that shit.
• I’m taking the birthday girl to the museum tomorrow, and then we’ll join Brad  for a fancy spaghetti dinner. Man — did I get lucky birthing a kid who always wants to eat pasta or what?!
• THREE YEARS, Internet. Three years of this one:

The Sadie-pillar renders all your JEERS null and void.

I hope you had a better/just as awesome Easter weekend as I did, Internet. Check this space tomorrow for incoherent weeping about the cruel passage of time!

(I’m really not.)

So! This weekend is a holiday, and you know what that means for the JT family.

Fuckity.

Yes. The road trips, they get very, very old, but I will once again replace my blood with Mountain Dew this evening to bring us all safely south for an Easter/Sadie’s birthday weekend extravaganza. I have not told you (and will not tell you, because it’s really kind of boring) about the latest family dramz, but I am both completely fucking over and AND ALSO no longer participating in it, because when I skim over my past (five!) years of blog entries on this here site, it seems that I am alluding to this same drama at least once every couple months or so, and NO. FUCK IT. I’m done.

I know I just used this yesterday, but it’s just so fitting for so many things.

Sadie is having a small birthday party tomorrow at her grandparents’ house, and there will be ice cream, cake, balloons, and a couple other shorties in attendance. She is very excited.

Almost as excited as she gets over Easter egg hunts. And girlfriend damn near blew a gasket over the coolness that is dying eggs.

What is not so cool, however, is the ongoing issue of Tootsie’s health. Last Friday morning, Tootsie came upstairs and started meowing repeatedly while standing at our feet and walking around all weird-like, so it was obvious to us that she was probably illin’ to some degree. She acted similarly once before when she had a UTI, so we decided to go to work and examine the litter box when we got home (fuck yeah Friday night) to see if she was able to produce any pee cakes during the day. Here’s what we came home to:

• Four (4) piles of cat barf, strategically placed only on our house’s few carpeted surfaces, goddammit;
• One (1) cat perched awkwardly on a throw rug in the kitchen, looking strange and leaking (warning: things are about to get real) bloody pee.

It seemed evident that we had a UTI on our hands, so I decided to take her to the vet in the morning to avoid a fucking astronomical emergency vet fee that night. A phone call to the vet in the morning revealed that the wait was all for naught, though, because as a drop-in, I’d have to pay a fucking emergency fee anyway.

I ended up taking Tootsie to the vet myself while Brad (who had run a 19-mile race that morning like a CRAZY PERSON) chilled with Sadie (who I’m sure did not want to see the very hostile way the cat she is already afraid of reacts to being examined by the vet). The vet ended up taking Tootsie to the back room to examine her after I made it very clear that SHE WILL TRY TO HANNIBAL LECTER YOUR FACE OFF, NO SRSLY, and while I sat playing Angry Birds in the exam room, I was treated to the soundtrack of Tootsie losing her everloving shit while three people tried to hold her down. Good times.

The vet came back with the expected UTI diagnosis, and doubted my ability to give Tootsie the required course of antibiotics (“Are you sure? She is really mean.“) But once I assured her that Tootsie was mostly all bark and no only the occasional bite with us, we were sent on our way to the tune of $200. Sigh.

So, all this week we’ve been dutifully dosing Tootsie twice a day — a very…colorful situation that Sadie loves to watch from a safe distance, mostly because she thinks it’s funny how I have to wrap the cat burrito-style in a towel to keep her still — and for the first couple days, she seemed to get better. She barfed once or twice, but a follow-up call from the vet’s office confirmed that this was normal with her particular antibiotic. Over the past two days, though, things have gotten worse. She’s throwing up every day, and the evidence she leaves indicates that it’s a rather violent affair. She’s not acting like herself. We have to lock her in the basement because after a couple days of normal peeing she has started leaking bloody pee all over the damn place again, and GOD HELP ME I will not have a house that reeks to high heaven of cat urine.

The cat is sick. I’m a little afraid of how much, but I have an appointment on Monday morning to take her in. I know it’s kind of shitty for me to make her wait the weekend, but Internet, there is a holiday and a road trip and a little girl’s birthday party to think of, and if it makes me a shitty person to put the kid above the cat for two days, so be it. I already know I’m going to have to shell out another couple hundred to have Tootsie sedated for a thorough exam on Monday morning (not to mention the time off work), so LAY OFF, REAL AND/OR IMAGINARY HATERS. I AM DOING MY BEST-ISH.

What else? Well, Brad & I and a couple of our very fine friends are launching a new website Monday. I hope you’ll come check us out.

I also got my hair did after neglecting it for waaaayyy too many months and letting it get way too long. It was to the point where I’d be walking down the street and my damn weave was getting stuck in my armpits. Hot. So I made a quick trip to the salon across the street from my office yesterday and had many inches cut off, as well as a quick rinse of color. Here I am trying and mostly failing to get a picture of it:

Seriously, why is it so hard for me to take a picture of myself in the mirror with my stupid phone? Judging by how much I struggle with doing so, I suspect there is math involved. I took about a zillion of these photos that only captured 85% of my fucking face before giving up and deciding to back up a few feet…

…where the lighting was so crappy that you really can’t see anything. But I assure you that my hair is shorter and lighter and layered and lovely, and now I am free to neglect it for the next six months or so until it gets unbearably long and dull again.

Speaking of unbearably long and dull, I’ll go ahead and end this here so that we can all begin the busy weekend of candy-inhaling that awaits us. Happy weekend, Internet! I hope no one around you ruins a perfectly good Easter cupcake by putting that gross Jolly-Green-Giant-pubes shredded coconut on it.

Ho-ho-ho, diiiis-gusting.

And I wasn’t even mad about these pants, which are obviously made from a dress I had in 1988 and are so very deserving of my ire. For fuck’s sake — is she wearing a Pull-up under there?

No, I was mad about Sadie’s pants; rather, Sadie’s WOULD-BE pants, as in the pants I would have purchased for Sadie had there been one fucking decent pair available in the six stores I patronized between 7 and 9pm. Yes, I spent two solid hours in search of an actual pair of pants (not JEANS, not LEGGINGS, not CAPRI LEGGINGS, not SHORTS, it is FUCKING APRIL IN PITTSBURGH WITH HIGHS IN THE 50s) for my dress-hating child to wear for Easter- and birthday-related occasions, and came up completely empty-handed. Is it so damn unusual for a person to want to dress her little girl in a nice pair of decent-looking pants (without the words “PRINCESS” or “DIVA” splashed across the ass)? Well, the 25,000 racks of frilly Easter dresses I painstakingly sorted through point to YES.

Here’s the thing: ever since Christmas 2010, when Sadie was roughly a year and a half old, she has balked at dresses. Well, it started out as balking, then by last Easter at age two it was crying and whining, and last Christmas at age two-and-a-half we arrived at full-blown tantrum. My girl, she hates dresses. She hates tights. She will humor the occasional casual skirt-with-shorts-underneath in the summertime, and she is definitely going through a shoes phase right now (she loves to wear and try on new styles, which is totally opposite of how she was last year), but girlfriend has always and forever disliked dresses, and you know what? That’s fine with me. I don’t really care for dresses either except when it’s hotter than balls in the summertime, and I’d be right-pissed if someone was always forcing me to wear a dress when DAMMIT, THAT’S NOT WHO I AM.

RIGHT?!

Sadie is a person with likes and dislikes, and I want to respect that whenever I can. In the grand scheme of things, this is not a battle worth fighting. She’s not petitioning to be allowed to hang out on the roof or play with my hairdryer while in the bathtub, so who gives a flying fuck if she doesn’t like dresses? Well, everyone, and every buyer for every store everywhere, apparently.

I actually began searching for a decent pants-based option a couple weeks ago, like a normal person who understands the concepts of space and time and how long it takes for items ordered on the Internet to physically arrive at one’s house via the postal service. After searching (and searching, and searching), I found a cute outfit on the Gap’s website that was in the right price range and size range, and although they were technically JEANS (but pretty cream-colored ones with little embroidered pink flowers, so FANCY JEANS), they were passable. I quickly found a shirt to match, and I was all set to order it, and then I just…didn’t. I can’t even remember WHY — I think I panicked about the sizing and decided a trip to the mall would be better, because there’s nothing I love to do more with my few hours of down time on a weekday evening than walk around the fucking mall.

I am all at once 20 years too old and 35 years too young to enjoy this activity.

So last night I set forth into six perfectly reasonable stores to find a cute, seasonally-appropriate, spring-y, somewhat dressy pair of pants and matching top for Sadie (to wear on a day that will be rainy and 60-degrees-ish), and this is what I found:

• Dresses
• More dresses
• Seriously, assloads of dresses
• Skirts
• Jeans
• Bedazzled jeans
• Jeans with Dora on them
• Jean skirts
• Leggings
• Capri pants
• Capri leggings
• Velour tracksuits
• Shorts
• Fucking yoga pants, Jesus H.
• Bathing suits
• My fucking brain on the floor, because it had leaked out my ear holes from sheer frustration

Soon, all the stores were closing so I had to go home. Where I ordered the exact same outfit I had almost ordered ten days ago, but this time I got to pay 22 fucking dollars for express shipping. I win at life.

And now, a little something to clear the pants palate:

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

]]> http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?feed=rss2&p=5607 19 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=5599 http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=5599#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:34:25 +0000 Jive Turkey http://www.jiveturkeyjives.com/?p=5599 Continue reading →]]> So, look who hung out at my house last night:

Brad!

Oh, no, wait: A BABY!

That RIDICULOUSLY cute child is none other than Max, son of our friends Joe & Sarah. Max is no stranger to the Internet, something I am SO HAPPY ABOUT because that means I can share his cute little punim with all of you.

Max spent some time chilling with us last night while his parents went to a movie (or maybe they just napped in the car while parked outside our house — I ain’t judgin’), and over the course of his few hours with us, I learned the following things:

1. He is possibly the most chill, non-cryingest, easiest-to-get-to-sleep baby I’ve ever seen;
2. Sadie loves being around him far more than she usually leads us to believe;
3. I have no idea how to hold/change/feed a baby this small anymore;
4. No, really, I have lost all skill I ever had in that department;
5. My uterus passed the test, and after spending three or so hours with unfettered access to a criminally adorable child, and seeing my own criminally adorable child sitting next to him and wanting to take care of him, I was miraculously not compelled to add another passenger to the Brewster Express.

(Translation: I got to spend time around one of the cutest, most agreeable babies who ever babied and I still didn’t want to have another one.)

It’s weird, though, because I still have flashes of overwhelming emotion whenever I think about how fast Sadie has grown and continues to grow. Sometimes they hit me at the most unsuspecting moments — I’ll be watching her eat yogurt and all of a sudden my breath catches and my hand goes to my chest because WHOA, THIS IS MY BABY, and she’s really not a baby anymore and soon I’ll blink and she’ll be driving off to college. How heartbreaking and yet incredibly amazing is that?

Almost as amazing as these pierogies tasted, HOLY SHIT.

But what I truly long for is to go back and re-live some of the Sadie experience, not begin a whole new experience. And unless one of you has a reasonably safe two-seater time machine, I guess I’m shit outta luck.

Since when is my baby bigger than actual babies? SINCE WHEN?!

Sadie will be three in about a week and a half, and I had no idea how old three is. She wanted a tricycle for her birthday, and her grandparents were all set to fulfill her wish before we realized that, hey, 39-inch tall little girls really need to ride bicycles. And not even the smallest bicycle, the next size up. Oh, and that helmet that fits up to age five? Too small for your kid’s head because she’s just that determined to grow up and leave you WAHHHH.

Please excuse the blurry photo, but it’s really hard to take a decent photo of an excited little girl riding her early birthday present in her pajamas. Coco the monkey agrees.

Whatever. She’s still my baby. My one, my only.

Sadie Rose: Kung-Fu-ing my heart since 2009.