The awesomeness that is the Minnesota State Fair. People drive across the state and people walk from across the street, people at the state fair run the gamut. I swear, I generally see more butts and boobs at the state fair than I do at the bottom of the pool's water slide.
So, why do I go to the fair? For the food, of course, anything you could ever imagine on-a-stick: walleye on-a-stick, chocolate covered watermelon on-a-stick, deep fried Snickers on-a-stick, cheesecake on-a-stick, Scotch Eggs on-a-stick (a hard boiled egg, wrapped in sausage, rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried, just in case you wanted to make one of these at home).
The second reason I go, the people watching. I saw a very pregnant woman wearing a beautiful blue smock-type halter dress over a pair of shorts (gawd, I hope there were shorts under there) that were maybe an inch longer than the 'smock'. I watched her lean into her significant other, smile at him and nab his cigarette.
His cigarette.
News flash, lady. Pregnant women shouldn't smoke.So I walked over there and started yelling at her about the fact that millions of people have problems even conceiving a child, continuing to carry a child, having healthy children... and that there are hundreds of programs out there to help you quit, even money motivators since having a baby inside you doesn't seem like enough.
Not really,
but I would have loved to scream that in her face,
and she didn't just take a puff; she finished the thing and smashed it into the dirt with her plastic flip flop.
I'm hoping that the state fair will be offering up brains-on-a-stick by 2011, I expect it to be perfect timing for her second (or third) pregnancy.
Here are step-by-step instructions on 'how to guarantee that you get pooped on'.
1- Sit your toddler on the toilet, for the third or fourth time in less than 2 hours, because you know him pulling on the butt of his shorts is a sign that he has to go.
2- Encourage your toddler to go poopie, only to be shouted back at "No, only go pee-pee."
3- Watch him do nothing, listen to him whisper "I'm done. I get a maramellow" (a marshmallow).
4- Stick to your guns. Refuse the marshmallow and pull off Elmo underwear and shorts, anticipating repeating this scenario 15 minutes from this point.
5- Prepare for more shouting and screaming. Expect a mad toddler; mad about not getting his 'Elmo's' back on, mad about not getting the marshmallow, mad about his little toddler life in general.
6- Have a timer set to go off. Perhaps something that can't just 'sit' in the oven, perhaps something for lunch, something like baked chicken (because isn't over baked chicken the worst?).
7- Leave your toddler alone to rescue whatever is in the oven.
8 - Have your bare-butt toddler follow you out to the kitchen after a bit.
9- Have him wave his fingers at you, in the air, smeared with poopie, him saying: "I go pee-pee, Momma". See a large something still hanging from his bare-butt.
10- Prepare for yet again more screaming, this time coming from you.
11- Sweep up your toddler, butt facing you, trying to 'catch' the poop and keep it from falling off of his butt onto the hardwood floor.
12- Proceed to the bathroom with much haste, only to turn the corner of the doorway a bit too quick.
13- Watch poopie fall from your wrist, down your arm and plop down on the floor.
There you have it, guaranteed instructions on 'how to get pooped on'. I've currently tested this 3 days in a row and it's presently worked 4 times! That's above a 100% guarantee!
(You would think that I would have learned my lesson by the second time.)
I'm often astounded by some of the things I see when I go home. Remember, I'm a good ol' Iowa girl, raised in twenty acres of wooded 'stuff' with just my siblings and our large satellite dish to keep me company. You would think I wouldn't be surprise by much, afterall my physical education teacher called me 'Buns' and my after school past-time included walking to the outer edge of town only to eat fried cheese curds at the convenient store that also conveniently made food to order. (Oh, how I miss that ability to eat anything fried and not feel it immediately go to my gut or my butt.) Good times at the Pit Stop.
So browsing through the local paper yesterday, I spied an ad that catches my eye.WTF?
Was that suppose to be a fun play on words: imagine some high schooler giving a high-five for getting digits from some hottie in hot pants: 'You Dog!'
Yep...
Nope.
For the bargain price of $.50 per leg, (yes, people are less expensive than dogs) you and your BDF (best dog friend) can swim together in the public pool. You might have a little dog hair attached to your nether regions when you climb up the ladder from the deep end of the pool, but heck, that's what you get when you pay half the price as your canine friends.
Consider the dog hair your own 'special treat'.
You got me, this Anti-Supermom gig is up. On the occasion, I actually worry about what the heck will happen to my children next.
(Gasp)
Henry will be starting full-time Kindergarten in less than two weeks, these are a few of the things that I've been freaking out thinking about:
-Is being immersed in the Chinese language going to make him pee his pants, like he'll be worried that she will have no idea what he is saying/asking since the same will go for him?
-If he does make it to the restroom; who will tell him, when he walks out, that his zipper is down or even worse, he hasn't snapped up his pants, has his shirt tucked into his underwear and has his pockets pulled out?
-Is he going to remember everything that he has apparently forgotten over the summer, like the ABCs? (seriously)
-Is he going to learn any ability to sit still and listen, maybe not be as loud as he has been all. summer. long?
-Is he going to wash his face off, spaghetti sauce on his chin, ketchup smeared across his left check, barbecue sauce on his forehead (which I have no idea how it gets there, but believe me, it happens all the time to him)? Is he even going to look in the mirror to notice/care?
-Thanks to some 'lovely' commenter, I'm worried about poopie posts being read out-loud during lunchtime, making Henry blush or worse, cry. (Wait, they're 5 years old, they can't read...) I deleted your 'well-intended' comment BTW, congrats on being my first deleted comment!
-Is someone going to tell him to get off the bus? The school is out-of-district, he'll be nowhere near his home when he gets off, so will someone please remind to get off the bus?
*
Is it too early to give him a cell phone, maybe install a web cam on his backpack?
I have no doubt that my minivan is smarter than I am. It recoils it's doors when my children are jumping out of the van, suicide style, the van sensing their little bodies in some danger (or sensing them getting yelled at by me for doing that yet again). It incessantly beeps when I leave the keys in the ignition warning me not to lock my beloved in the backseat. It even squeezes my butt just a little, when my hip accidentally pushes the 'close door' button, on just the 'right day'.
Genius.
So why does my 'check engine' light turn on when I don't screw on the fuel cap properly? Better yet, why does the 'check engine' light only turn on after a few days of the cap being improperly screwed on? Oh yes, and why oh why can the 'check engine' light possibly remain on for several days after you have properly screwed on the fuel cap?
I feel like I'm driving around checking my dashboard every 5 seconds to see if that freakin' little light has finally turned off. And if it's not just the 'fuel cap', I'm now expecting confetti and noisemakers to go off telling me something is about to blow up in 35 seconds; so unbuckle the kids and jump/roll out of the car into the nearest clearing.
All of this because my 'fuel cap' may or may not have been in the past or is currently improperly screwed.
I can tell you what to screw.
I don't always have a lesson in my posts or do you learn anything of any real value here, but today is your lucky day (just don't expect much).
I was putting Wyatt's tennis shoes on in the car. For the third time, I had to unvelcro them, shake out the imaginary rocks/sand/dust bunnies that he swore were in his shoes, brush off his feet, put his shoes back on and velcro them back up.
During the third velcro 'scenario', Henry was sitting next to Wyatt in the car.
"Mom, why isn't he wearing socks?"
I simply respond "Because I'm lazy". More specifically, it was because I threw Wyatt's faux-Crocs in the laundry and then was too lazy to sort them of out of the wash and proceeded to put them into the dryer. (Here it is, your lesson for the day...) Wu's Crocs shrank to about half the size they use to be. His cute little camo Crocs were now a tinier versions of the original. Sigh. Maybe this wouldn't have happened with real Crocs, but like I've said before I'm lazy and cheap.
So, in my mind, his tennis shoes must be sandal-ish, slip-ons and sans socks.
Henry continues "But why are you so lazy?"
Me: "I just am." (See, I'm even too lazy to come up with a reasonable explanation to his question.)
Henry: "I will call you Mrs. Lazy and Dad (who is 6'5") will be Giant."
I guess he got that right on both counts.
touché
I hate grocery shopping, like scotch tape my eyeballs open and throw me into a pine tree, kind of a hate. Even worse, missing my weekend shopping trip, meaning I have to skip my Monday night's mind numbing hours of HGTV including House Hunters, where I sit yelling at the television for people complaining about the yearly taxes of a house, try living in Minneapolis, seriously people.
So, I'm grocery shopping, it's 9PM on a Monday night.
When I'm forced to shop after my kiddos go to bed/'Mommy's Zone Out time', I like to reward myself with a little treat, a little something special for being a 'good mom' and putting something on the table other than Easy Mac (which I love and often ponder why they even sell the stove top kind anymore, but I digress).
Most of my time, behind the wheels of the cart, is spent throwing things in and looking up and down the aisles for the best possible good job grocery shopping, Mommy - reward.
Finally I spied it: a temporary price reduction (a TPR, if you aren't not familiar with those awesome little, yes - I'm cheap, orange stickers) on a box of a dozen donuts. It was the last box and it didn't include any of those fake cake, only pretending to be a donut, donuts. Perfection. At $4.99, absolute perfection.
At home, when I place my white box of a dozen little 'good mommy' rewards on the counter, my husband asks: "Who's going to eat that many donuts?"
11 hours later, which is including 7 hours of me sleeping, I'd eaten 3.625 donuts. The .625 came from eating the last of Wyatt's because I just couldn't bear to put it down the garbage disposal. I came to the realization, it would probably be me who'd eat them all.
So I stacked them all nice on a glass plate, wrapped them in saran wrap and sent them to work with my husband as a gesture of thanks.
Thank you, employer of my husband, for keeping him employed in this crappy economy, please accept this plate of (day old, make that two since he brought them in the next day. Come to think of it, they were on TPR, so they could even be 3 days old by the time they reached his office - OK, so possibly 3 days old) crappy donuts.
Some day, they'll get vengeance on me for having them wear bow ties to have outdoor wedding when it's 95+ degrees, but until then - they're all mine.
Henry walked in the bathroom after I had just gone. I was washing my hands, he unzips to go pee because we are cool like that and are this 'open-door / no-privacy / walk-in-when-I'm-pooping' kind of family, perhaps this is the cause of Wyatt being BFF with boobies?
*shrug*
I might be reconsidering this free for all policy once Henry starts requesting buddies to go into the bathroom stall with him to have 'someone to talk to'.
So Henry's peeing and gives me this disgusted, pained look:
"I just ate poop."
I'm pretty sure my glaring eyes darting towards his direction scared him to pee a little bit more.
"No - I just went to the bathroom."
Henry: "But, I can taste it in my mouth."
Me: "Henry, just because you smell it doesn't mean that you are eating it."
Henry: "But it tastes yucky".
Me, rolling eyes and generally annoyed with his over-reaction to the smell: "You are fine, you didn't eat poop!"
Henry zips up his zipper, starts to wash his hands and says "Mom, I think my tummy's a little sick."
I give up.
Consumerism at it's greatest; Dr. Pepper's 'I Want it All' commercial sung by my two year old:
As informed by him, he forgot a part:
I find it ironic and unfortunately as his mother, utterly fearful for my next sixteen years. Oh yes, the The Blog Frog I'm even cuter on my Mom's blog shirt wasn't intentional wardrobe for this video. It was free and umm... yeah... oh, shut up.
It was just a pretty normal Saturday for us. We were sitting on the patio of this little ice cream shop. The shop is simply quaint; there are gumball machines lined in the front window; red and white stripes adorn the tables, the chairs, maybe even the walls; and the menu's cover has a picture of the owner's mother and father on their wedding day, as a tribute. You can't get much more 'Americana' than this place or with us; sipping our malts, sitting on the patio, soaking up those yellow rays bouncing off the view of the river.
Wyatt and Henry were playing a game of chase around a tree only they stop each time around for a taste of our malts. Henry had claimed my husband's for sharing, lucky for him because Henry is the only child on this green earth to dislike ice cream (or pizza or chocolate... and yes, if I didn't push his little squished head out, between my legs, I wouldn't probably believe he was mine). Henry takes tiny bites. Wyatt, on the other hand, loves ice cream (and Popsicles, pudding, chocolate...). Each lap completed was a bigger spoonful of ice cream for Wu.
As he was running faster and faster around the tree with Henry, the ice cream started to miss his mouth more and more, landing on the concrete in little melted ice cream puddles.
On one of his laps, he discovered these puddles.
Wyatt: "What's that, Momma?"
Me: "It's ice cream, silly."
He gets down on his hands and knees to inspect it, like he does when he spies a little ant running across the sidewalk. He asks again:
"What's that?"
"It's ice cream, you spilled it."
Wyatt responds "Oh."
He continues to lower his head, further investigating the ice cream puddles. He then moves over a little bit. I looked down,
he licked up one of his ice cream puddle
and he was moving onto the next puddle.
I screamed "Yucky! No Wu, Momma's got ice cream right here," frantically shaking my tin cup. I attempted to pull him up by his arms as he fought to lick more of the ice cream off the concrete. At that moment, I'm sure I heard the hearts of the four grandmas sitting next to our table simultaneously stop beating.
This licking-any-kind-of-germ-infested-surface is pretty normal, right? Because I can not accept being responsible for the deaths of grandmas all over the world because of my two year old's licking addiction.
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I'm the Featured Friend today over here - go say hello.
Pretty please.
The awesomeness that is the Minnesota State Fair. People drive across the state and people walk from across the street, people at the state fair run the gamut. I swear, I generally see more butts and boobs at the state fair than I do at the bottom of the pool's water slide.
