Month: October 2007

Halloween Post-Mortem

Our trick-or-treat contest for your little BOOOOOS closes Sunday. Share your best (or worst) Halloween memories in our album! [photopress:IMG_8054.jpg,full,pp_image] P.S. Anyone else take out candy taxes from their kids?…. 🙂

I blame retailers for enabling my pre-Halloween celebrations

There’s nothing wrong with the way I grew up. I rode backwards in the station wagon, we only had two TV channels and Halloween only lasted one day. We made our costumes, carved our pumpkins, and trick-o-treated all on Halloween night. When did people make Halloween a month-long celebration? And by people, I mean me. And by a month, I mean three months. As soon as the last fireworks light up the sky on the Fourth of July, I start thinking about Halloween. I’ve been known to come home from the fireworks display and surf eBay for costumes.

Just another example of how I make and break the rules as I see fit

There is a long-running tradition of believing in superstition in my family. For example, my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother all lived in mortal fear of El Cucuy at some point in their lives, believing he’d whisk them away in the middle of the night if they didn’t behave. For years now I’ve tried to put it behind me like that bad memory involving P.E. class and accidental flatulence. For the most part, I’ve been successful. I no longer feel it’s necessary to scotch-tape a nickel to my belly during a lunar eclipse. I don’t feel like I’m cursing a baby if I admire their cuteness and don’t follow through with gently touching their head with my hand (an absolutely real belief in some circles). Black cats, ladders, the number thirteen and spilled salt mean absolut...

Party all the time

On Friday, my daughter threw her third annual Halloween bash that included an inordinate amount of hairspray and the disturbing confirmation: Like Mother, Like Daughter. [Insert evil cackle here.] [photopress:IMG_7899.jpg,full,pp_image] We also played games such as Pin Pick the Nose on the Pumpkin, indulged in devilish epicurean creations including my green slime chocolate fountain, read a haunting story with Dora the Explorer who made a celebrity appearance and had a free-for-all civilized candy hunt in our backyard.

Technokid

Bryan and I are tech freaks, so I am not surprised that Declan loves gadgets and gizmos already. At JUST-TURNED-FIVE. We gave him one of our old PDA’s… and he uses it to practice his letters, do little graffiti drawings and manage the profusion of play-dates with his little friends. (Just kidding, that’s my job). OK, and he also likes to draw incredibly accurate sketches of the Palm Pilot itself, so it has its uses as a “model” too.

Channeling June Cleaver for the Modern Mom

Growing up watching re-runs of Leave it to Beaver set me up for disappointment and self doubt later in life. June Cleaver is my hero. Clean house, happy kids, and home-cooked meals. Ward, Wally and “The Beaveâ€? were served a hot meal and a smile every morning for breakfast. She was even polite and patient with the ornery, suck-up-of-a-neighbor kid, Eddy Haskell. It’s hard to not feel like a failure of a modern mom compared to June. I realize that June Cleaver was a fictitious character, but she set a standard for me all the same. I grew up admiring her, but once I became a wife and mother myself, I realized how hard it was to emulate her. Through careful analysis and contemplation I realized that June didn’t have any abilities or characteristics that I didn’t have. But, there was ...

Rockies Win The World Series: McDad Guarantee

(Editor’s Note: We are proud to announce that our very own Mitch McDad received a very generous mention in Time magazine. Hats off to him and all the great daddy bloggers out there!) Here are the reasons the Rockies will win. All the pundits are picking the Red Sox except for those that are natural contrarians. When there is a strong consensus in anything, look for the opposite result. Man-Ram (Manny Ramirez) will trip over his hair on the base paths at a critical juncture in the series. The Rockies had no business being in the playoffs. Forget the near unprecedented run they are on, the Brewers saved the Rockies asses twice just to get to the one game playoff with San Diego and then the Rockies entered the bottom of the 13th with a two run deficit and won. The whole scenario makes f...

The Quest

You would think Indiana Jones himself was responsible for placing the sacred bowl in our cupboard. It’s easy to imagine what he went through in his quest for our treasure. Mostly likely he dodged snakes launched from the mouths of ancient gods, carved in the stone of underground burial chambers in 1930s Prague. With Nazis and rogue Hindu priests hot on his trail, he narrowly escapes by the scar on his chin in a hot air balloon with jet engines mounted on the basket piloted by a beautiful librarian/lounge singer he picked up in Marrakesh. He doesn’t lose his hat. His grin is crooked. The bowl is safe. That very bowl is what my kids fight over every morning and snack time—ever since the Colorado Rockies began their historic and astounding bid to clinch their position in the...

They Lied

Antonia, my oldest, was a born nervous wreck. If I didn’t know better, I’d have said that she’d been sharing womb space with Marilyn Manson for nine months. Traumatized is the only word I can use to describe her little facial expressions and her glass-shattering vocal pitch for the first year of her life. I do realize that newborns are supposed to cry. Some even have a condition commonly referred to as colic. But this was… different. Antonia seemed genetically-inclined to be disturbed by things like sunlight, water, nutrition, voices that didn’t belong to her mother, shiny things, furry things, socks, music, kisses, touching in general, and the concept of SLEEP, for crying out loud… I say this because she cried out loud. For YEARS UPON YEARS, she cried out loud. When she was tw...

A Love Letter to the Rockies

Dearest Rockies, [photopress:Rockies.jpg,thumb,pp_image] This letter is actually on behalf of my husband, Jamie. He has been a devout follower since your amazing winning streak (I believe the correct term for him is “fair-weather fan.”) Regardless, he is committed to your cause and can be seen wandering around with bloodshot eyes after particularly late nights out on the town with you. I admittedly am not much of a baseball connoisseur (due to the inordinate amount of pucks I took to the face whilst growing up in Canada) but I would love nothing better than for you to win the World Series. I have even been to a few of your games. Of course, I was usually lucky enough to be in a suite with oodles of food, Internet access and television so I can’t really confirm if you were...

Finding Turtle

My son Declan loves the movie Cars. Loves, loves, loves. And ever since we broached the subject of Halloween, he was determined to be Lightning McQueen on the spookiest night of the year. But here’s thing, while I have nothing against Lightning McQueen as a person, err, talking car… I really hate pre-made costumes. Particularly cheap, made in third world country costumes that still somehow cost me an arm and a leg. And if your child is as obsessed with Cars as mine is, you know the Lightning McQueen line of Fall fashion is bottom barrel of cheap. So, I thought we could take on making Mr. McQueen. With chicken wire and paper mache. What, am I a lunatic? Every weekend we even came close to thinking about attempting this marvel of craftmaking ability, I started hyperventilating so...

Home For the Holidays

Even though I’m not yet ready to think about it, I know the holidays are coming. I can ignore them for a few more weeks, assuming I stay out of department stores and home improvement stores, but it won’t be long before they’ll be inescapable. I love the holidays insofar as celebrating them among the four (soon to be five) of us, right here at home. I’ve already got some great ideas as to what to get for both girls, and since my husband has plenty of interests, it’s always fun to figure out what to get for him. I love to put up a tree and hang stockings. We’ve established a traditional Christmas eve dinner – homemade pizza – and a traditional Christmas dinner – steak. We have a lovely time lolling about and doing exactly as we please.