We waited and waited. Al Gore and the German took their sweet time inside the auto show. Everyone was getting restless and angry. My feet were already hurting and we hadn’t even walked anywhere. The show’s opening passed by at least an hour. Hundreds of people were left standing borred in the lobby while just two people looked at cars.

Finally (I don’t even know how late this was because it was almost 20 years ago, but it was significantly late.), Al Gore came to the stage to talk.

And he got booed off, even by my friend’s dad, who was an FBI agent! I missed my only chance to hear Gore speak, but at the time I was glad because I was 17 and SO BORED from waiting that a political speech would have sent me into a coma. The Auto Show was surprisingly entertaining after that, but perhaps my entertainment level was enhanced by the extreme boredom that proceeded it?

And thus began my inexplicable link with Al Gore. Every time I traveled in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Al Gore followed me. Whenever I got to a nice hotel, I learned that Al Gore had been there the day before or would be there the day after. If I was at an airport, Al Gore was also somewhere in that airport. If I went to a major event, Al Gore had just been there. We kept missing each other. It was like we were trying to meet, but we just couldn’t make it work. It seemed like I was stalking Al Gore, but I’d never find out that he was there until AFTER I actually got there. I joked that maybe the FBI had opened a file on me because of my constant Al Gore coincidences.

It ended as suddenly as it began. I blame George W. Bush. It was all his fault.

In April 2004 I was on a Southwest flight that had made a stop in St. Louis in route back to Indianapolis from San Jose. I was one of the passengers who had to remain seated while they boarded the people who planned to fly from St. Louis to Indianapolis (Why would you do that? It would be faster to drive!). I ended up getting stuck on that plane an extra two hours thanks to heightened security at the airport because George W. Bush was there. I could see Air Force One right out my window.

We waited and waited and when Air Force One FINALLY left our part of the airport, we cheered, not because it was cool to see Air Force One, but because it meant we could FINALLY leave. We were virtually being held hostage by the president’s presence!

After that, I never found myself in the same place as Al Gore again. I feared that maybe I’d switched to accidentally following Bush, but that hasn’t happened either.

Now that I live in Ohio, though, it’s like ALL the presidential and vice presidential candidates are stalking me. They are never not within 30 minutes from my town during campaign season. At first it was neat to live in a town with constant presidential interruptions, but now I kind of miss the days when I was accidentally shadowing Al Gore.

The swingset is only about two years old, but the wood was showing a lot of wear and tear. The elements around here are pretty rough. We have a near-constant horrible wind situation that I believed help beat the stain right off our swingset. There is almost never a day where I don’t whine about the wind. I’ve nearly lost a child-filled stroller or cart in parking lots so many times because of the crazy local wind. You add snow, rain, sun and climbing children to the mix and the wood was balding fast despite our best efforts to water seal it.

This is actually our second swingset. We inherited our house’s “old” swingset when we moved in, but the wood to it rapidly decayed and it became unstable by our second or third year here. Considering the age of our house, the original swingset wasn’t old enough to need tearing down, but there it was. It was totally unsafe to use. Now we are overly paranoid about the life of our swingset’s wood. When my husband saw this year’s wear and tear on the swingset, he wanted to stain it instead of water seal it. I wondered if we might have more fun with exterior paint.

We debated a bit on what color to paint it before I had a vision to paint it freaking adorable. You’d be amazed at how few painted swingsets come up on google and pinterest. The lack of images made me worry that I might be insane. What if it turned out ugly? What if my neighbors thought it was an eyesore? All in all, it was a paranoia fest, but I went forward anyway.

Just to make things more crazy, I let the KIDS pick the colors (though I picked the tones) AND help paint it.

They loved helping, but they wasted so much paint and were so annoying, that I had to cut this short before what was supposed to be an enjoyable experience turned into me losing my temper. Lily was somewhat decent at painting, but Rose is only 3. Based on this experience, do not let a 3 year old paint a swingset if you don’t want to lose your mind. Seriously. Three year olds CAN NOT PAINT. AT ALL. She got more paint on her than on the swingset.

The project cost more than I expected. When you look at a swingset, there doesn’t seem to be much to paint. What I forgot to account for was the fact that every piece of wood on it has four sides. The thing also sucked up a lot of paint. We ended up using three full gallons of Behr exterior paint instead of the three quarts I originally brought home for the project.

Time will tell how the exterior paint does on the swingset, but for now I’m just enjoying the way it looks. And, much to my relief, most of my neighbors seem to like the swingset too. Unless they are just being nice. Their kids like it anyway and now a lot of neighborhood kids are harassing their parents for painted swingsets. It will be interesting to see if our neighborhood swingsets are all still bare wood next year.

Last year we managed to dodge the horrors of dance recital by sending Lily to a family wedding. From what I hear, we were lucky to skip it because the recital ended up being 2.5 hours of torture for the other dance moms. The stage managers AND the dance teacher treated everyone like crap.

This year, Lily insisted on being in the recital. So, we paid for the costume in December, sight unseen with no description given to us. A couple weeks ago, this monstrosity was forced into our hands.

When did Lily enroll in circus whore classes? I thought we were taking dance?

Big bird threw up itchy yellow tinsel all over Lily’s costume and all the girls were miserable in it. The girls scratched themselves raw.

And then the emails started up. Email after email came about various rehearsals and recital particulars, many of which had nothing to do with our class. At one point an email came about rehearsal times. It listed a bunch of classes individually. Our class was not listed so I assumed it was another “Why the hell can’t they send specific emails JUST to THAT class?” email. Nope. That email was for me. Though 20 classes were listed individually, I was supposed to read every single line of that email instead of just search for our class among the chronological listing of classes. Hidden among all the classes was the statement: 10 AM Recital Rehearsal at 6:30.

What the hell? I’d hate for our rehearsal to be clearly labeled. I didn’t realize this email was for us until another dance mom translated it for me.

We were informed RIGHT BEFORE recital and pictures that our shoes NEED to be white! Oh the horrors if all the kids’ shoes didn’t match! What would “people” think? You know what would have been a good idea? Telling us we needed white shoes WHEN WE STARTED THE DANCE CLASS and were buying dance shoes. I used white shoe polish on Lily’s shoes because I’m a sheep. I should have just told her dance teacher to bite me.

And then the recital handbook came. Here are some gems from it:
* “Please purchase new tights for the recital and do not wear or wash them before Photo Week or performance.”
Because people can TOTALLY tell if tights were previously used from the audience, I’m sure. WHAT IF a tiny bit of dirt showed on someone’s tights during recital? It would surely ruin the whole show. The instructions went on to require that we bring not one but TWO new pairs of tights. Who is paying for these tights?

*“DO NOT WEAR COSTUMES INTO THE RECITAL HALL. This is considered unprofessional.”
Who exactly do they think was coming to see our show, which was mostly composed of 3-6 year olds? Since when are 3-6 year olds professional? Since when is a small town’s dance studio considered professional?

*”Please note: no video or flash photography will be allowed in the auditorium at the recital.”
That’s right, we weren’t allowed to take a video of our 5 year old’s dance recital. But don’t worry! The studio is selling DVDs of the performance for $15! Nevermind that we already spent $80 on this recital in tickets and costume fees– more on make-up and tights and pictures. Let’s pay for a DVD too! I didn’t even get to watch this recital, by the way. Mothers of dancers Lily’s age are required to sit backstage with their kid. This is a fact they don’t warn you about until AFTER ticket sales are over. I was warned in advance, but I know a lot of moms dropped $15 on a ticket for themselves not knowing that they would never actually set foot in the audience.

And in case that wasn’t clear, that’s right, we had to pay $15 a person to pay to watch our kid do a dance we paid money for her to learn. Oh! And glossy programs were $15 because they were “souvenirs”. That’s right, for the low low price of $15 I could look at a glossy book that probably just listed my daughter’s class and not even her name. What a bargain!

As an afterthought in the recital handbook, they listed directions to the recital hall, which is in a totally different location from our dance studio. It was under “Misc.” at the very end of the handbook buried in a bunch of unimportant information like “Make sure your name is on everything!”. Isn’t the location of the recital the kind of information that needs to be front and center? The recital hall is part of the university and has no address to plug into a GPS. I wasn’t able to find it without a campus map.

As the grand finale to the ridiculousness, my daughter’s class got yelled at during the show for walking in the hall wearing tap shoes. It went something like this “Ok, dancers, are your tap shoes on? Good, walk up here in a straight line! WHAT ARE YOU TAPPING FOR? HOW DARE YOU TAP!”

The recital was less painful than I was expecting because it was a full hour shorter than last year’s and Lily performed at the very beginning, middle and end. There wasn’t nearly as much down time as I was expecting.

That said, I am so finished with this dance studio. Luckily, Lily says she is done with dance, but even if she weren’t, NEVER AGAIN at that studio. NEVER AGAIN.

“Violet is the same size as me! We’re both medium!”

Violet is not quite 1 year old and weighs 17 pounds. Rose is 3 1/2 years old and weighs 35 pounds. She’s been consistently 90th percentile or higher for height her entire life. Violet wears size 9-12 months and Rose wears a girls’ size 5 or 5T (They seem the same to me, but maybe I’ve transitioned wrong twice now?).

To say Rose and Violet are the same size is ludicrous. We’re not sure what she means by this. Does she really think she’s as small as Violet or is it something else?

We keep asking her if she is bigger than Violet and she’ll admit she’s taller or “Tall Medium” while Rose is “Small Medium”, but she still claims they are the same size. Even though Rose is almost the same size as Lily for real, she says she is not the same size as Lily. Lily is “Big” and “Tall”. Lily and Rose weigh the exact same amount and Lily is only a few inches taller than Rose. People think they are twins all the time.

I don’t get it. Violet is clearly little to me. She is smaller than the other two girls were at this age. Every 9 month old we meet is bigger than Violet and Violet is almost 12 months old!

But no. She’s medium and clearly the same size as a 90th percentile 3 1/2 year old! Rose said it so it must be true!

Both of my flying experiences were nearly identical. The first time, we flew with 20 month old Lily from Detroit to Northern California for my cousin’s wedding. This time, we flew from Chicago to Southern California. They were both 4+ hour flights with lap babies. Both were torturous, though this time was possibly a little better.

The entire flight is devoted to making sure your baby doesn’t cry, which leads to the most intense parenting you do al year, especially if you are a laissez-faire parent about playtime like I am. Here’s a sketch of what you do with a lap baby to prevent them from crying on a 4+ hour flight (though nursing was no longer an option when we flew with Lily):
1) Nurse baby
2) Entertain baby by turning overhead light on and off and on and off and on
3) Snacks
4) Read 3 baby books 20 times
5) Make funny faces/sounds with baby.
6) Snacks
7) Overhead light switch play
8) Baby toys
9) Funny faces/sounds
10) Nurse/brief nap
11) Overhead light switch
12) Baby toys
13) Funny faces/sounds
14) snacks
15) 3 baby books 20 times
16) Nurse
17) Snacks
18) Overhead lights

Multiple this repetitive list times about a hundred and maybe throw in a few minutes of the baby watching two minutes of a movie on your laptop and that’s what it’s like to fly with baby. Fun!

It’s probably as much direct parenting as Violet gets in three days all jammed into 4.5 hours, especially when you consider she shares my attention with two other children, my husband and our dog.

It’s intense and hard. And travel days are always rough. With a flight like that, you spend at least 12 hours from door to door between car rides, airports and planes. Add a baby to that equation!

But I guess like childbirth, it’s just one day. After all that work, you get to your vacation and try to have fun. Will you have fun? That remains to be seen. We got lucky this time and fun happened. The baby behaved and adjusted to the 3 hour time difference better than we did. I managed to sleep relatively well in the hotel beds, an act that usually eludes me. I got to eat in restaurants for every meal– my favorite part of vacation. I suppose it was worth it, but the plane ride is still torture!

My hats off to the parents out there who actually enjoy traveling and take their children lots of places. I doubt that will ever be me!

For months, I’ve been taking my kids into a department store with me and showing them a pair of earrings I really liked. For weeks, I’ve been telling them to tell their dad I wanted those earrings for Mother’s Day. For weeks, I’ve been telling my husband to take my kids to this department store because they knew which earrings I wanted. Yesterday, my husband took the kids to the department store to buy the earrings. They came back and everyone was excited because they were sure they got me what I wanted.

I was excited too. I really wanted these earrings. I couldn’t wait to open them and FINALLY wear them. They were pretty cheap earrings, so I’m not sure why I didn’t buy them for myself, but I haven’t. I just want them NOW.

Can you see where this is heading?

This morning I opened the box to find NOT the earrings I’ve been showing the kids for WEEKS, months maybe. I’ve wanted these earrings a long time.

I’m not good at hiding what I’m thinking. I immediately said “That’s not them!”

I back-tracked and said “But they’re very close! Good job remembering!”

But still. How disappointing!

They were very close. VERY close. They got me the small stud version of the earrings I wanted when I’d repeatedly shown them the dangles. I’m a bead and a fishhook away from having the earring I want. But I REALLY don’t want the studs.

Which just goes to show that small children never understand what you want. It doesn’t matter how specific you are or how complete your plan is, when you put small children in charge of showing your husband what you want, it’s not going to happen. Even if you have a wishlist.

Anyway, I’m going to return these earrings to get what I want. Also, as payback for my pain and suffering I bought a second pair of earrings I wanted at Kohl’s today.

Otherwise, aside from some restaurant ridiculousness with the big kids, it’s been a lovely Mother’s Day and I’m thankful for my adorable children, even if they fail at following directions. The dangles! Not the studs! The dangles!

And thus ends our tale of a spoiled person. Or really an unspoiled person because I still don’t have those damn earrings!

Five years ago my husband briefly considered going to his fifteen year college reunion, but we decided not to because Lily was a baby.

“We can’t possibly fly with a baby! It would be too hard!”

“What would we do with the baby while we were at events!”

“What would we do about the time difference!”

“We can’t take a baby! It would be way too much work!”

So we skipped the fifteen year reunion on account of Lily.

Flash forward five years to my husband’s 20 year college reunion. TWENTY YEAR college reunion.

It’s five years later and we again have a baby. Violet is now 3 months older than Lily was for when the fifteen year reunion is scheduled, but we essentially have the same situation PLUS two more kids. We decided to leave Lily and Rose with my parents and travel across the country to my husband’s reunion with “just the baby”.

“We’ll only have one baby with us! What a vacation!”

“We’ll just take the baby with us to all the events. What else are we supposed to do? People will deal.”

“Meh, time zones. She’ll just sleep in the stroller.”

Man, five years and two additional kids sure makes flying with one little baby seem like a piece of cake. I mean, it’s still a ton of work to travel with a baby, but at least we aren’t traveling with three kids! It’s weird to think about how hard one little baby was when we had Lily, but everything is harder with your first kid even if they are well-behaved and charming. You just don’t know what you’re doing yet, which makes it overwhelming. I’m glad that babies don’t seem hard anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not still stumbling along trying to figure out 5 year olds.

A couple of years ago, I found a type of organic chocolate bar that was dairy-free. I believe it was this one. Unfortunately for Lily, it was also extremely dark chocolate. I know it brings into question my status as an adult or at least as a woman, but I hate dark chocolate and I’m pretty sure most little kids do too. I’m a milk chocolate girl. Dark chocolate tastes too bitter to me. This particular brand of chocolate bar was the most bitter chocolate I’ve ever tasted. It was almost on par with the bittersweet chocolate used in baking. Whenever I tasted it, I wanted to spit it out.

Ghirardelli makes a dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate chip that tastes pretty decent, so I would offer the chips to Lily if Rose and I were eating Valentine or Halloween chocolates. But if Rose and I were eating candy bars, Lily wanted the chocolate that looked like what we were eating. It tasted so bitter that I can’t imagine any little kid would like it, but she kept eating it.

Then the other day, I noticed Ghirardelli also makes a dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate bar for baking. We were supposed to toast s’mores at a party later that week. When we got the bar home, we tasted it to make sure it wasn’t secretly bittersweet baking chocolate. It wasn’t! It tasted great!

And Lily had a revelation.

“This is really good! Mommy, I didn’t like that other chocolate, but I love this chocolate! That other chocolate tasted bad, but I ate it anyway.”

Why did she eat it if it tasted so bad?

“I don’t know. Because we were all eating chocolate…”

I wonder if she was pretending she liked the chocolate because the rest of us were drooling over our own chocolate?

On Lily’s first day of preschool, I spent the whole three hours feeling lost without her. She’d almost never been away from me. I was also terrified she’d have an accident. She was barely potty trained in time and probably not well potty trained enough to be there, but her teacher was understanding and she somehow made it through that first semester. It wasn’t until that first semester was almost over that her teacher told me that Lily never talked to any of the teachers there! She didn’t really speak at school until the second semester.

Times have changed. Now Lily never shuts up at school, especially when she’s talking to a teacher. She’s a totally different person than the shy, scared not-quite 3 year old I dropped off almost 3 years ago. She can read, write and add. She has a sense of history and understands the community. She has friends. The potty is no longer an issue (though I’m still always on edge about it. Will that ever change?)

This year was particularly special because for the only time in their lives Lily and Rose were in the same classroom. Lily taught Rose how to be a good preschooler and they loved attending class together.

In August, a new chapter begins. Lily will start her formal education at our local public school while Rose continues on at the same preschool without her. Lily’s classes will be less about playing and more about learning.

When did I get an elementary school aged child in my house? Even though Lily was qualified for kindergarten last year and I delayed it, it’s still impossible to believe my little girl is old enough to go to kindergarten. I have vague memories of preschool, but I remember kindergarten well. How did we get here?

And if these three years of preschool flew by this quickly, how soon will elementary school be over? Am I going to wake up tomorrow and have a college graduate?

Lily threw up in a puke basin!

The level of pride I feel over this seemingly unimportant and very gross thing exceeds the moment I realized she was able to read. I mean, I knew she’d be reading soon based on her level of letter/sound knowledge for months/years beforehand, but puking in a basin? No warning! Just Sunday she was still in the Barf-on-the-Floor skill set.

My joy and elation and praise over this skill was larger than any joy and elation and praise I’ve ever given her. I should probably feel guilty about this, but if you’ve ever had to clean up kid barf, you understand why I was SO excited. SO EXCITED. If my kid wasn’t so sick right now, I’d be on a happiness high. There were three separate vomit incidents that I didn’t have to scrub out of my carpet or couch. Three separate vomit events that did not require laundry. It was amazing. This is a goal I’ve had for Lily’s entire life and it is finally here!