Spring Fling Kidlit Contest 2021!

Happy Spring Everyone!

 

I wrote a tiny Spring story for the fun and fabulous Spring Fling Kidlit Contest! A huge thank you to Kaitlyn Leann Sanchez and Ciara O’Neal for this wonderful opportunity! My story runs 137 words.

 

Thank you for reading...

Jacqueline and the Bean

by Amber Lane

 

It’s Springtime!

 

 

Everything is blooming anew.

 

The sun warms the earth, and it’s time to plant bountiful gardens.

 

        But... not for Jacqueline.

 

 

“Jacqueline!” Mom squeals. “Watch out for my petunias!”

 

“Jacqueline!” Grandma cries. “Don’t smash the sprouts!”

 

 

Sure, Jacqueline is little. Yes, she is clumsy at times.

 

But she longs to dig her fingers into the soil, plant a bean, and watch it grow.

 

 

“You’re too little!” is the constant refrain.

        Jacqueline has enough.

 

 

At night, Jacqueline and her kitten, Luna, sneak into the garden shed to gather supplies. 

 

Then they tiptoe through the sweet, cool grass to their clubhouse and get to work.

 

 

Weeks later, the moment arrives.

 

“Mom! Grandma! Surprise!” chirps Jacqueline.

 

 

They marvel at the plant Jacqueline grew.

 

“Meow!” purrs Luna.

 

“Thank you, Luna.” says Jacqueline.

 

 

“I may be little, but I can grow!”

 

 

 

You can check out the other awesome stories soon here.

 

 

 

Trash Day

I cannot help but look into people’s recycling bins as I take a morning walk with Tylir (son) and Penny (dog). It is snooping to be sure but since the contents are right there out in the open for any passerby to see, I believe it is legal. I imagine all kinds of things about what type of people might have consumed the goods that once lived inside those boxes and cans. And, of course, I use it as an opportunity to judge people and feel better about myself. My neighbor across the street most definitely had a long week. A ton of Budweiser cans are in that bin, each one systematically smashed. I always hide our empty wine bottles under our organic milk boxes. I judge and wish not to be judged in return. Then there’s the bins with pizza boxes. I am just straight jealous of them. Already planning on some pizza for diner tonight. Some people don’t recycle at all…

It’s actually a complicated bit of psychology for me, recycling. I feel I am the type of person who recycles. I likely pride myself on that. But I am tired of washing out those yogurt containers and sometimes I just through them in the garbage and it feels sooooooo good. Rebel, rebel, how could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so.

And, please, don’t get me started on these pureed fruit pouches I buy for my spoiled kids. Gogo squeeze, I think that’s what we get. Some cute little animated dancing fruits on the pouches. I keep telling hubs to invent something so we can be millionaires. Why didn’t we think of this?! Anyway, you can save these empty pouches and upcycle them by sending them back to this company terracycle. I had a big paper bag of these taunting little pouches in my pantry for 6 months! I was so tired of seeing them in there and collecting them. I think it took me 2 ½ months to send them in which is pretty ridiculous. For free you can just drop the box at UPS and voila you are done. I told myself I am just going to recycle them from now on I mean really. Then I checked the terracycle website to see exactly what they do to incentivize you to send back pouches. Well, with the points I earned, I bought a baby chick for a family in need, gave one person 16 weeks of fresh drinking water and made a donation to Sandy Hook Elementary school. Looks like some pretty amazing things can come from me being slightly inconvenienced…

Anyway

I definitely want some people to take care of me when I am old but for sure, I had no idea the cost. 

My children bring the psychological warfare. 

6:15am. Bedroom doors opens KABLAM

Dear daughter ‘Momma! Wake up it’s time for SCHOOL, you didn’t wake up come onnnnnn!’ Due to a short week I guess her internal calendar and me telling her yesterday that today was Saturday was off. 

6:18am. Chanting rains down from upstairs, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. Mommy, Mommy.” There are two of them now jumping up and down in dear son's crib (yes he is still in a crib it’s great). 

And, they are naked. 

An incredible feat that those same children who take 37 minutes to put on enough clothes to go outside can get naked in less than 5 seconds. I haven’t even peed yet but I have fed the dog. 

I go to pee, when I hear ‘Mommy I have to go to the bathroom so bad!!!!’ Yes dear daughter got out of the crib and into the bathroom just as I sat down there. Perhaps she’ll excel at hurdles in high school… 

Dear son's turn, ‘Mommy!!! I need my black car. No not that one the other black car!!!!’ 

6:29am. Head downstairs, Chocolate croissants… YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY. Dear duaghter, ‘which one is the biggest one. That’s the one I want.’ 

Dear son to his ‘poisan’, smash, smash, smash, smash. Yum. 

Add in countless, ‘he hit mes’, growls, snatches, screams, and complaints about genitals to the complete inability to listen or clean up anything and that pretty much sums up my day. 

Rant over.

A Letter to My 4 Year That I'll Probably Never Let you See

Honey, I love you but holy crap. If I had a white flag to raise I'd be raising it. A nice glass of prosecco raised to my lips might have to do. 

Relentless from sun up "but momma the sun's out get up" to sun down "but momma it's still morning".

If I had a nickel for every "but momma". 

I know you are developmentally needing to differentiate yourself from us by making choices and being contradictory but need you be such an overachiever?

Just when I think I've found a magic bullet, you pull out the vest.  Yesterday I pretended instead of disciplining.  I was your teacher, your patient with eyepoopitous (that's right, no replacements found for that one auto-correct), your prince charming you to say pleases, we got through bedtime as pirates with pixy dust. I thought I'd figured it out. If I'd just play you'd cooperate. 

But you're like a tiny Darwin adapting each day to make my life difficult.

Today it doesn't matter if I play it, sing it, ask it 1 or 4 times, you don't wanna do it. And also you are probably going to wipe messy blueberry hands on the wall and hit your brother with the new purse I now regret buying you just for emphasis. 

If it takes me .00001 of a second to start backing out of the driveway you are all "Mommie let's GO already!!!!

As soon as I get on the phone, the real craziness awakens. "I'm your gummie bear. I'm your gummie bear. Gummie gummie gummie gummie bear bear oh yea" In a nails on a chalk board annoying insanely volumed voice. You sing over and over while running over the dog on your scuttle bug. 

I make the mistake of telling you something. Then, you proceed to ask me one hundred million times when that thing is going to happen. 

You stuck my shoelace in your butt...hole. And pretended it was your lion tail. To your credit, it stayed in there so it really worked well.

I am tired of being Prince Phillip and Ursula. 

I am tired of being bossed around. You are not the boss of me.

At a parent panel, a mother of four grown boys solemnly summed it up. She said the majority of what you do will be discipline. Teaching. Leading them to understand what the boundaries are in life. 

Good thing dear husband got our yard fenced in. I think my work is done here. 

Confession #18: There's a New Pope So I'd Better Get My Act in Gear!

Just kidding. I'm not Catholic.

Getting my act in gear is still a very good idea.

I'll start by confessing to absolutely NOT having the time to write this post.

Its currently 9:01pm just-had-an-hour-stolen-from-us-on-Sunday time. Just got the kids in bed. House is totally trashed. A crazy mess. I probably need to check my work email. I should try to work out. I definitely need to fold my laundry Everest.

I just may finish that bottle of wine and eat some chocolate instead.

I need to call my friends and bathe the dog.

I'd like to stop farting from all those dang lentils I've been eating. Yikes.

I've been working very hard on not yelling at Arden since she's 3 1/2 and I have a graduate degree so I should probably have the patience, understanding and creativity to handle her behavior without resorting to "WHAT I SAY GOES!"

I confess it is one of the more difficult things I've had to do. Turns out it's so easy to just get mad.

Hubbie saw Zero Dark Thirty so we were talking about torture. It's so easy to use one's supposed power over others but it turns out sometimes just playing with them and giving them snacks works even better.

If It Ain't Broke

With pregnancy come the dropsies. One minute it's in your hand, and the next, it's flying across the room. Not fun and not particularly safe when the objects can be broken into a million tiny not safe glass pieces. 

Being the smartipants new parents that we think we are, Kyle and I researched the best kind of plastic drinking glasses out there. After way too much time spent online, we found a made in the US of A product that claims to beat 'em all, literally. Tritan plastic bounces right back after being run over by a Chevy SUV. 

We bite and order ourselves up 6 nice drinking plastics. 

Here's what they don't tell you. 

These plastics are so much lighter (duh) than glass glasses that if you so much as look at them the wrong way they will tip over. 

I've been soaked to my underwear about 15 times since those blasted plastics arrived. 

As annoying as it is to be cleaning up spilt water all the time, there is an added benefit besides not having to clean up broken glass... It forces me into a mock mopping of my floor and that can only be a good thing. 

38 Weeks

Arden must think that means she has to ask 38 times for everything she wants. Or, perhaps she thinks it means it's how many pieces she should rip up her magazine into. I'm pretty sure it is the number of times I tried to stop myself from swearing today... Yikes. 

38 kicks, turns and punches are sometimes what my little man does in 38 seconds. I love his wild style already. 

It was roughly 38 blocks or 1.2 miles each way on our walk to Michael's today. Call me crazy as I confidently call myself but I needed to stock up on projects for Arden once our little guy makes his appearance. She won't leave me alone for 38 seconds (I've timed it) so I have no idea how I'll manage a newborn too. 

38 is definitely the number of times I've said "if you put that in your mouth one more time I'm throwing it in the garbage" today. 

I'm not sure exactly how many times today I've named off princesses, asked Arden to say please, been too hard on her or too hard on myself but I'm pretty sure it beats my number of the day. Sesame Street would need a few more picnic tables full of kids to reach our number. What's yours?

Confession #17: I Wanted This

I know I wanted something. I'm not sure it was this. 

I guess I wanted to spend every waking minute answering demands, feeding, changing, clothing and entertaining my minions. Meow, meow. Scratch, scratch. At an absurdly loud volume "Momma, Momma, AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" The first thing that makes sense to come out of a 2 1/2 year olds' mouth the moment she wakes up at 6:30am. 

Arden: "GOLDFISH!!!!" 
Me: "How do you ask for something?"
Arden, with a total change of voice from crazed to angelic: "Goldfish please Momma"


One second later.


Arden: "Dinner!!!!!" 
Me: "How do you…."

Arden: "Cheese!!! I want cheese!!!"
Me: One more time as I lay into the invisible punching bag in my mind. 

I guess I wanted to listen to the Walt Disney channel on Pandora constantly. I must have wanted to play 52 pick-up 52,000 times a day. I definitely wanted to clean crayon off of plates and pick stickers off the floor/toilet/walls/my feet....

I know what I want. 


I want to be able to make love to my husband in my bed without fear of waking the baby. I mean I want to do things I don't want my inlaws to read about.... I want to sing at the top of my lungs and dance and let go. I wanna look cute, go to the Feve, grab a Guinness and run into the Punch Brothers doing an impromptu performance of Clara. A brilliant song by a ridiculous band that completely transports me. 


We want and we get and then sometimes, we find out there's a lifetime warranty with no return policy. 


The only thing that makes sense is to go back for more. 

To be continued sometime around May 10th or sooner if I'm lucky. And, I'm not. 

Come on Irene

A hurricane is nothing to joke about and we're lucky to be safe and in the position to have some fun as a family. Enjoy our live report on hurricane Irene from the eye of the storm in Astoria, Queens.

Confession #16: Rumble in the Bronx

Unless you are living in a remote outpost of Denali National Park, AK (Hi Corrie!) then you've all heard we felt the earthquake here in NYC yesterday. For your long-lost-to-the-world-of-blogging NYC Momma, here is how the experience played out:

Arden and I were in the bedroom about to change her diaper when I noticed the mirror on the wall bouncing around. I kept walking and saw the photos on the same wall doing the same thing. In my mind there were only two explanations for what was happening...

Reason #1: I shouldn't have had that fat bomb, otherwise known as a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, on a bagel for cryin' out loud.... WITH cream in my iced coffee for goodness sake... for my second breakfast.  That insane indulgence had pushed me over the fat fatty line so much so that I literally shake the stuff on the walls now when I walk.

Only after having that thought did I realize the stuff was bouncing around while I was standing there observing it. I took a look in the living room and noticed Penny kinda sniffing around which was odd. Then for about 6 seconds I got a strange wave of what seemed like vertigo.  Something akin to what then end of reality might feel like. Naaa, just the effects of too much coffee.

Ah ha! I then realized what it was.

Reason #2: Just another huge truck passing by, rumbling our apartment-house around again.

At least that is what I thought until I checked my email... You see, I'm one of those I-love-tv-but-think-it’s-evil moms so I had no idea an earthquake was coming. Now that makes perfect sense.

Gotta go. Off to Shake Shack for lunch... :)

Confession #15: Doing It All...not

Long time no excuses. I mean it hasn't been that long and I've got plenty of excuses. Don't we all.

Mostly I've been busting my butt trying to balance some newfound freelance work along with, eh, everything else.

It's a freaking good thing I was never a gymnast...

Balance. What a crock. I tried balancing my checkbook way back when such a thing existed. That was funny.

I have this "sense" that if only I could find balance in my life then I'd stop eating humongous brownies left and right.

There's another mommaloger who I like and I think she put it beautifully in her post "I am so lazy." (Don't you love her already!)  I feel like if all I had to do was pick two things to give myself to do each day that I'd come out on top. I'd get out from under that pile of, oh pardon me I mean, those piles of laundry AND Arden and I would have that 2 1/2 hour play-doh fest that she's been lobbying for. Or I'd hone my sister's sense of cleanliness and I'd turn this shackalious 1 bedroom Astorian nightmare into a European W Hotel room AND I'd save some energy for YIKES you know what.

Instead I've got this definition of what it means to be a "good" mom, wife, friend, etc. floating around in my head and, I'm not sure it's actually attainable.

Here's what it would look like: Give Arden 100% of my attention whenever possible, keep food in the house and not just the same old snacks please, call your mom, iChat with family, pray, exercise and that means more than just running around after Arden if you want to hit Starbucks later on, get the stickers off the kitchen floor, OMG wash the wall behind the baby's high chair, get your work done because someone's paying you to do it!, sleep schmeep, pet the cat, bathe the dog, while your at it - bathe yourself and maybe take a razor with you for once and what was all that about wanting, craving, needing a creative outlet so how's about a blog posting for cryin' out loud!

You get the picture and you all have your very own snapshot.  The list.

I don’t know how our mothers and grandmothers did it, do it.  They never, not once, give off an air of needing something.  It’s as if I’ve cosmically let them down when I feel overwhelmed and let it show.  All I can do now is hone my inner Grandma Marian and strive to be like her with all of my being.

Oh, and the kid at Lomond in the juggling club who couldn't juggle, yea that was me.

To My Mother

Your beauty and strength
     glisten - 


     there 


     mine



Your mother, your mother's mother, your mother's mother's mother........


     i'm listening


You never once said, "One day you'll see." 
     
     if only my eyes would never shut


     mean


     me


Your gazing upon her my gazing upon you gazing


     joy


What can be said of a woman who gives all and loves all


     me
     mine
     mimi

_

Confession #14: Mispronunciation Communication

In the grocery store the other day, Arden pointed to a bag of tea biscuit cookies with a very proud look on her face and said "F$&@!". That's right, the one that rhymes with stuck.

I take complete responsibility for this. I always encourage her to talk and try my darnedest to figure out what she's trying to say. It's so fun to communicate with her like this and I won't pretend the mispronunciations aren't hilarious.

The tea biscuit incident occurred because she thought they were crackers and f$&@ is how she says cracker. Please don't ask me why. A linguist would know...  Too many hard sounds and f$&@ is the best she can do. It's pretty impressive how babies will try to say words even if there's no chance they'll be able to really say it. For instance: helicopter is "pop!", computer is "tuter" and avocado is just plain "cado".

One of Arden’s playmates has the exact same explicative way of saying fire truck. At least that's the right idea. Does anyone remember that scene from Backdraft... I mean, hot.

Being able to understand Arden is so important to me.  I think all moms are able to understand about 95% of what their kids "say" to them even before they can speak. That's why I was so frustrated when I could not figure out a sign that Arden was doing. A little while back we were in the bath singing songs and she started to pump her fists together as if she was saying she wanted to fight me but that's not what she meant. She was trying to tell me a song that she wanted me to sing and I could not figure it out. She kept pumping her fists together shaking her head no, no to every song title I offered up. It drove me crazy!  As time went by, she kept trying that sign to see if I'd figured it out. She is very persistent. Well, one day, while we were watching a bit of Aladdin together, she started to pump her fists together during the song "One Jump" which is a song where Aladdin is being chased by guards through the streets of Agrabah.  It's a fight/chase scene that I now have the pleasure of singing and reenacting to her multiple times daily.  Thank you Alan Menken.

As I wrote the first part of this posting about a week ago Arden’s ability to pronounce multi-syllable words has increased.  So, if you come over for a visit and she calls you a f$&@er, you’ll know she’s just hungry.

I'd love to hear about your own trials of communication!  Please feel free to comment and share.

Mean People Suck

I just consumed my third shot of espresso for the day (in latte form) and a large piece of coconut flake covered chocolate cake for lunch.  Yep, it’s one of those days.  We are well into April and NYC has overcast skies as well as what feels like a high temperature of 2 degrees.  I’m huddled on the couch, space heater blasting, trying to warm up my soul.

The baby is watching “Follow That Bird” for the 12,000th time.  I’m not proud of that.  At this point, I’m practicing zen and the art of the lesser-of-two-evils.  Better to have her watch a movie than to have me scream at her.

You know what’s funny?  I’ve been thinking about it and I cannot remember my mother yelling at me, not even once.  She is a very strong woman but I still don’t know how she did it.  Some days I feel like I’ve got my tongue in a never ending headlock.

I don’t want to yell at Arden.  No one feels good about themselves when they are being yelled at.  That doesn’t make someone feel loved.  The look on her face when I yell at her says so much, “I let you down Mom..., I’m sorry Mom..., I feel worthless, I’m mad at you for yelling at me and I am going to hold it over you...”  Her facial expression stops my yelling like a swift kick to the heart.

It’s so hard knowing that my lack of patience, creativity and selflessness cause her pain.  I wonder if they have a 529 savings account for therapy...

Confession #13: It Finally Happened

 
The trees in NYC have finally started to bloom!  It may still be overcast, rainy, freezing winter coat and hat weather out there today but we have flowering trees so that gives me some hope. Ah, New York in spring..., but, that’s not the thing-that-finally-happened that I’m really here to talk about...

Arden jumped!  It was so cute.  Instead of just bending her legs and doing all the movements of a jump but not having her feet leave the ground like usual, her feet actually defied gravity.  It’s so much fun to watch her do things I so take for granted for the first time.  One of those joys of parenting that keeps us reproducing.  But, that’s not the thing-that-finally-happened either...

Arden walked up and down stairs without crawling, scooting or holding on to anything!  We were hanging out at Athens Square (Astoria, Queens is still home to the largest contingency of Greeks outside of Greece) and right in front of the statue of Aristotle, she just started marching up and down, back and forth. It was too funny because as soon as I pointed it out to her, she started crawling up and down the very same stairs.  Sometimes analysis is paralysis. But that’s not the thing-that-finally-happened either... It must be obvious by now that I am stalling.

I am about to find out who actually reads my blog because I don’t think there is anyway you can read this and not have something to say about it. Okay, here it goes.

I’ve been dreading this since Arden was a baby.  It’s a hazard of living in NYC and a hazard of living in an apartment building.  It seemed like it was only a matter of time before it happened.  I think it was more likely to happen now since she is a bit older but still puts so many things in her mouth.  We had just come home from the store and entered the foyer (if you can call it that) of our building.  In the 1.5 seconds it takes me to fold up our stroller Arden found a dead roach on the stairs, picked it up and took a bite.  Although her back was to me, as soon as she turned around, I knew what happened...mostly from the “OMG, Mom what did I do” look on her face and the roach legs on her bottom lip. I went a little nuts. 

“ARDEN! That’s why I'm always telling you not to pick up stuff off the floor and eat it!!! UGH! BLECH! Why did you bite it?  Did you think it was a piece of chocolate?” To which she responded, “Yes.”

I wiped the body parts off her face as fast as humanly possible and made her stick out her tongue so I could wipe that clean as well.  Honestly, we got lucky.  She hadn’t swallowed anything and the roach was dead, after all.

Suffering Succotash

One of the questions that plagues me daily is how much should I let Arden suffer? Whether we like it or not, suffering is a huge part of life. And I wonder, should I shelter her from as much suffering as possible or allow her to build up a tolerance?

When Arden was three days old we took her for the required visit to her pediatrician. He told us a lot of things and one of the things he said was that we can let her cry. The whole (warning, here I go with the over-hyphenating again) if-you-pick-up-your-baby-every-time-she-cries-you-will-spoil-her thing. So, against what every bone in my body and all my intuition was telling me, we let her cry in her crib at 2am and I went to take a shower. It was awful. As soon as I got out of the shower I ran in and picked her up knowing that it was way too soon for that kind of suffering.

Of course, now at 21 months, letting her cry in her crib is sometimes an option since she's no longer a newborn.  Even though I hate to see her cry and I empathize with her, I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to go through her childhood without learning the ropes.

In America’s Women by Gail Collins (NY Times Op Ed writer), Ms. Collins writes about the fascinating lives of women throughout our history in America.  When I want to feel smart, I dive in to read a bit.  One thing she discusses in the book is how prior to the Civil War, mothers allowed their young daughters to travel, carry on chaste love affairs (ah, those were the days) and return home from dances at 2am.  Mothers shielded their daughters from the truth that once they were married, they would basically become home-bound slaves that were expected to keep house and were not allowed to walk the streets alone. But then, the young women would marry and overnight become nothing more than cloistered housewives without any preparation or forewarning.  They often struggled to perform all the chores necessary in the 1800s (way beyond Swiffering) since they hadn’t been taught how to do it and they had to figure it all out in isolation. (pp. 137-138)

I don’t want something comparable to happen to Arden.  I know that life only gets more difficult as you get older.  I want Arden to have a fun and carefree childhood but there has to be a middle ground.  I don’t want her to lead a sheltered life as much as I hate to see her suffer.  It’s likely better for her to learn how to handle difficulties at home first before having to handle them out in the world.  Just surviving me should give her enough experience to prepare her for the world of hard knocks.

Redefining Terrible

If you look up the word terrible in the dictionary this is what you find:

Terrible - adj. For definition please ask the parents of a two year old.

I used to think, "Come on, what could be so terrible about a tiny two year old...?" Even though Arden is only 20 months, terrible is beginning to take on a whole new meaning for me.

Here is a list of things she did this morning:
(Please note she was given a warning each time not to continue doing that thing.)

Kick the dog, repeatedly
Grab the computer mouse, hold it over her head and say "Yay!"
Put Kyle's boxers on her head covering her eyes and start walking around
Put a hat over her eyes and try to step off the couch
Walk successfully from the bathroom to the kitchen holding her baby potty over her face (thankfully it hadn't been used)
Throw her fork, twice
Throw egg at me
Wipe yogurt on the back of her high chair
Run away from me naked
Scream in my ear for no apparent reason
Pinch me, timeout number 1
Hit me, timeout number 2
Stand up on the chair repeatedly while in timeout eliciting a longer timeout
Pick pieces of foam off from underneath the air conditioner, timeout number 3
Draw on her leg with crayon
Draw on the tv with crayon
Draw on my face with crayon. Yes, I finally took away the crayons.
Eat stickers
Scream at me, "No baby!!! (meaning, let me put my own boots on)
Chase Mew our cat screaming "Ahhhhhh!"
Spill water on purpose
Spill soup on purpose
And my favorite of the morning..., chew up a pea pod and spit it out all over Penelope our dog's head. I take the blame for that one because no one really wants to eat pea pods anyway.

Confession #12: Blame it on the Supermoon

“Don’t you blame it on the lame nap,
 Don’t blame it on the diaper rash,
 Don’t blame it on the terrible twos,
 Blame it on the Supermoon.”

We barely sleep Saturday night and not for any fun reason.  Our little girl decided to scream her head off at intervals inhibiting rem sleep all night long.  I’ll take this opportunity to remind folks just stopping by that we all sleep in the same bedroom.  City living. Na na na na na. Kyle did an extraordinary job of trying to calm down our night-time banshee, unfortunately to no avail.  She wanted to be in bed with us and if she didn’t get what she wanted, she was going to go nuts. 

We tried to wait her out but after it was clear she was not going to calm herself down, we headed out of the bedroom.  That always results in a dramatic increase in the decibel level emitting from our child. Then, thinking we are so rational, we begin to discuss what’s going on.  “Well,” I say, “She didn’t get a good nap in...”.  “Argh,”, Kyle says, “This wouldn’t be happening if we had a house.”  We give her sufficient time to make sure she’s back asleep and we head back in.

Now it’s egg shell time.  Arden is in a state where the slightest movement or sound wakes her up for more screaming so we don our invisible astronaut suits and attempt to move weightlessly back into bed.

We make it but can’t fall asleep.  It’s so hard to fall asleep without making any adjustments to get comfortable.  If I even smell Kyle thinking about turning over I silently yell at him.  You see, Arden is like Zool from Ghostbusters.  If you even think that she might wake up and start screaming again, she will. 

Just as I was telling myself, “clear your mind, clear your mind,” it just popped in there.  I couldn’t help it. I started to think about her waking up crying and sure enough, she stood up an started wailing.

By now it’s 1am and the Supermoon is having it’s maximum effect on all of us.  We leave the bedroom are now completely irrational.  Instead of turning into werewolves we turn into sailors letting every swearword we know rip off in true sleep deprived form. After 20 months of trying to cope in the middle of the night we still haven’t figure out a good way to do it.  We totally loose it at some point every time. I believe I take top prize this time by my declaring that I would, “get dressed and walk out the door,” if Kyle blew up the air mattress for me.  I should record a video of my 8am self (post-Americano when I am most completely with it) warning my 1am self that, “if you are watching this video you should go sit down and shut up!”

Thank you Supermoon. You are beautiful but if it's another 18 years until we meet again that's fine by me.

And the Winner Is...

Liza767!  Congratulations!  I'll be in contact by email to get your shipping information to send your copy of:

Gustafer Yellowgold's Infinity Sock Off-Broadway show was GREAT!  Arden got to meet Gustafer in person since they had someone wear a very well done costume at the end of the show.

Thanks to everyone who became a subscriber and commented on my blog!  I appreciate all the support so much.  Looks like I'll soon pass 1,000 views, wow!

Gustafer Yellowgold Shout-Out and Giveaway!

Allow me to introduce you to Gustafer Yellowgold!  Gustafer is a yellow creature who came to earth from the sun and landed in a Minnesota lake. He quickly makes many friends like Slim, the eel and Forest Applecrumbie, the pterodactyl.  Two friends of mine, Morgan Taylor and Rachel Loshak, are the brains, music, illustrations and wonderment behind Gustafer.  Morgan illustrates, writes, records and performs all that is Gustafer Yellowgold and Rachel sings, plays bass and masterfully runs the business.

Morgan is one of the best songwriters I know.  The “soft rock” style behind Gustafer is so fun to listen to. Every song becomes a favorite. Morgan likes to rock out and also writes so creatively using different instruments like French horn (ahem) in so much of his music.  Gustafer Yellowgold has become a success while being marketed as a great thing for kids but anyone will enjoy it!  

You can experience Gustafer Yellowgold in many ways.  There are currently 4 DVD/CD sets available.  Each DVD consists of songs with animated illustrations, Gustafer music videos if you will.  They ROCK!  You can pick ‘em up here.

Also, if you live in or going to be visiting the NYC area in the coming weeks, you can check out Gustafer Yellowgold’s Infinity Sock, their new off-Broadway show (i.e. A BIG DEAL).  Arden and I will be there (the DR2 Theatre at Union Square) with bells on this coming Saturday, March 19 for the 11am show.  Please join us!  Tickets can be purchased here.  They've generously given us a discount code: DR2GUST. Gustafer Yellowgold shows are such a great time.     I really am not sure who enjoys them more, me or Arden.

And last but not least, to show my love for Gustafer I am going to be giving away a  copy of their second DVD/CD set Gustafer Yellowgold’s ‘Have You Never Been Yellow?’ You can check out one of my favorite songs from that DVD called “Pinecone Lovely” here.  I’m sure that song is the reason why one of Arden’s first words was pine!

To be entered to win all you have to do is either become a follower of my blog, Confessions of an NYC Mom, or comment on one of my other posts.  Please comment.  I really want to hear from you!  Do you like what I am writing about?  Can you relate to it?  Am I just annoying?  Let me know.

You’ll be entered into the drawing once per subscription or comment with no limits.  Arden and I will pick a winner literally out of a hat next Saturday afternoon after the Gustafer show.

Good luck everyone and I hope to see you on Saturday!