smart cookie
By heather | October 4, 2010
Scene: Dinner. I’ve just placed a scalloped potato and ham casserole on everyone’s plates. Although this is a relatively easy dinner, I should mention that my crappy food processor made it a bigger mess than it needed to be, and I hate to cook.
Alex: Yuck! I don’t like this dinner! Will you make me something else?
Me: No. I’m not running a restaurant.
Alex: Yuck! I don’t like this dinner. I’m not eating THIS.
Emily Kate (smiling sweetly): Yummy Mommy! This is the bes’dinnah evah!
It seems that Emmy has inherited the suck-up gene that Alex hasn’t yet discovered.
Topics: Alex, EK | 1 Comment »
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nuk goblin
By heather | September 3, 2010
Confession: Emily Kate still uses a pacifier at night and during nap. Yes, I’m well aware that by now I should have taken it from her but she sleeps SO DARN WELL. I love sleep. Emmy loves sleep. We are both cranky when we don’t get enough or when accosted too early by the perky, morning-loving boys in our house. Plus they are still kind of cute, tucked between her chubby cheeks, letting me hold onto her babyhood a little longer. She even requests them by color – pink! yewwow!
I allowed this parental slide to go on through the summer, but now…well…it’s Labor Day, summer’s official end. Time to face the middle of the night demons.
A few weeks ago, I started talking to her about how it’s almost time to give the nuks to the little babies who need them, like baby Marli from daycare, and that pretty soon we’re going to pack them up and give them to another little baby. Alex tried to help.
“Emmy,” he said, “You have to give dem to baby Mahli! Da wittle babies need them. You a big gowl now!”
At this point, Emmy’s face crumpled and she burst into tears.
“NO!,” she cried. “I need dem! I NEED DEM! Babies don’t need dem, I NEED DEM!” She was devastated, tears pouring down her face. I cracked.
A few days later, I experimentally cut off the tip of one of them. She continued to suck it lovingly, only occasionally taking it out to look at it as if sucking hard enough would make it grow back. Finally, she found one that was whole but continued to carry the cut one around, referring to it as “my bro-en nuk.”
I started to wonder if I could paint them with that nasty stuff you use to try and stop biting your nails. Then in just the nuk of time, I was saved. I picked Emmy up from daycare on Tuesday, and she informed me, “Soon the nuk goblin is going to come take my nuks!” I quizzically looked at Miss Sue.
“Did she just say nuk goblin?”
At some point during the day, Alex had spun some sort of tale about a goblin coming to take Em’s pacifiers away. Where Alex learned the term goblin, I have not a clue. Dora? Some other crazy Nick jr. show that I can’t stand to be in the same room for? Regardless, the nuk goblin seems to be a better alternative than giving the nuk to other, needy babies.
I decided to go with it, tooth fairy-like. Today, Emmy has told everyone she meets that the nuk goblin is coming to take her nuks. We’ve explained that the goblin is coming tomorrow and that tonight is the last night she’ll need her nuk. After breakfast tomorrow, we’re packing them into a box and while she’s at her gymnastics class, the nuk goblin will come and take her nuks and if she’s really lucky leave her a surprise.
“A potsickle?”, she asked me hopefully.
Now it seems, we just need to get mommy to let go.
Topics: EK | 4 Comments »
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i knew it would get me one of these days
By heather | August 20, 2010
And…now it’s the end of summer. It’s like July never existed on my blog. The story I’m about to tell is entirely true, and documented not because it’s especially entertaining but so that the next time I decide to do something like this, I’ll be able to read and remind myself NOT TO.
I had a big meeting today, and yesterday while plotting what I should wear it occurred to me that I hadn’t REALLY done my hair in over a month. My summer haircare routine has been blow dry and straighten my bangs, and let the rest fall where it may. I’ve been working for months now to grow it out and it was finally, FINALLY long enough to get into a ponytail, or twist into some messy version of an updo. So I looked at it in the mirror and thought, “damn I’m frizzy”. Spending most weekends immersed in chlorine at the pool hasn’t helped my ends any although my natural color lightened so that part wasn’t too bad.
I called my salon, which is the salon I’ve been going to since I unceremoniously dumped my other stylist of three years, and unsurprisingly they couldn’t fit me in for a cut in the next 2 hours.
Because I am ridiculously impatient, and because I am a hairdresser whore, I decided I couldn’t wait until the proffered Tuesday appointment to go see my regular hair stylist who’s been helping me grow out my layers and who I really like and who listens when I tell her “just a trim”. So I called up the salon I used to go to knowing my ex-hairdresser had just left there and HOORAY! They were able to fit me in, see you in 20 minutes! I explained to the new girl all about growing out my layers and trying to get some length and we agreed on a 1/2 inch off the botton and a little more off the layers since that was where more of the damage was.
As I watched her cut, I noticed that she was going excruciatingly slowly. Then I saw her lift a section and chop a good 2 inches off. At that point I carefully inquired as to her last place of employment, which was when she told me she just graduated from beauty school three months ago. Fighting rising panic, I thought, “Ok well, three months that’s not ideal but she seems to know what she’s doing even if she is horribly slow.”
Turns out she may have graduated three months ago, but had only been cutting hair for a few weeks. She also apparently had a gigantic problem with me not keeping up my color, and after offering several times to give me a “demi-color” thusly decided to go to town on the trim that I requested trying to cut off everything that was blonder than my roots. After the clumsiest blow dry I’ve ever had, and a flat iron which she did despite me telling her not to, she turned me around to see the back.
It looked like a lawnmower had run over my head. A hundred different lengths. Hair as flat as if I’d been caught in a rainstorm. Because I am from Upstate NY and we only do big hair, I am not a flat iron kind of girl - I wear big hair to disguise my big head. By the time one of the master stylists came over to take a look, I had gone from tentatively suggesting that it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to being almost teary and trying not to flip out. After some discussion of what we agreed upon at the beginning of the cut, new girl was sent away and I was spirited away to a different chair by a comfortingly big-haired master stylist who talked soothingly while she fixed what she could.
6 months of growing out my hair laying on the floor of the salon, and I have the exact same haircut I was sick of when I started growing it. On the bright side, if there is one, hey- free haircut. So a note to my future self – that’s what you get for being a hairdresser whore. Your luck ran out.
Topics: hair | 2 Comments »
Tags: bad haircuts, impatience
living summer
By heather | June 22, 2010
Out of curiosity yesterday I went and peeked at my site to see when the last time I posted was, and it was even longer than I thought. Several things have been contributory – I started working on an MBA (why? anyone’s guess is as good as mine) and I’ve found that while I have a lot of actual paid work to do, being able to work from home allows the work to flow around other things I want to do. That flow also means that tasks really expand to fill the space I have to accomplish them. I used to get more personal stuff done between 4:30 and 7pm than I sometimes do in a week now.
I also took a week and went to visit my parents, which was an awesome and relaxing trip despite the almost 10 hour drive. We had beautiful weather and the trip consisted mostly of park visits, making ice cream, bubbles, and other good stuff. It is so amazing to me to watch these two distinct little personalities as they emerge and grow and leave impressions on people around them.
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| Bubbles at Grandma and Grandpa’s House |
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| At the park… |
I really miss the mountains. And this is one of my favorite pictures of Emily Kate:
Her expression says so much about her personality, the raised eyebrow and half smirk indicating that she had a bigger plan for that water table…
My dad and I were laughing too hard to stop her. I think that should be the goal this summer…to be laughing so hard that you can let the little things go.
Topics: vacations | 1 Comment »
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