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... :)