Month: November 2007
CSI: Suburban Denver
My son Ryley approached me one recent evening as I reclined on the couch. The look on his face told me he had Big News: “Mom, I have something very important to tell you.” Okay. “There is a mountain lion at school.” “There is? How do you know?” I was taken aback, expecting his important news to feature something scandalous one of his siblings just did, like shamelessly eating his blueberry yogurt while using my wedding gown for a picnic blanket.
My Christmas Wish List
(Editor’s Note: Join us in welcoming guest blogger Jenn Starbuck who is slowly being converted from the world of print journalism to blogging.) I’m cranky and it’s just barely Christmas season. Well, I guess in today’s world the festivities begin the day after Halloween, with the stringed lights, nativity scenes and tree lots going up almost as soon as I put out my jack-o-lanterns. Yes, I was that one mother you saw on Halloween morning, with kids in tow, searching from one store to the next for pumpkins. After three retailers, I ended up at a local nursery eyeballing a half-dozen shriveled, pint-sized gourds. We took four of them home and carved our wimpy family just in time for trick-or-treating. After that slacker-mom experience, I vowed to get my Christmas gift-...
Baby Candy Christmas Onesies Giveaway
Congratulations to Lesha Anderson who won our Santa Correspondence Kit! We have two other fantastic giveaways: 1) A Family Four-Pack of tickets for Disney on Ice – Princess Wishes (see sidebar for entry details). 2) Baby Candy’s delicious Christmas onesies, “Dear Santa” and “Sugar Daddy.”
Another One Bites the Dust
Kyra, my two-year-old, recently attended a day care where you were considered an over-the-hill parent at 25, where everyone (disabled or not) parked in the disabled parking spaces, left their Hummers humming, and allowed rappers named after pocket change to cascade freely through their open windows. Sure, it wasn’t ideal, but we probably could have been more tolerant had it not been for the fact my two-year-old’s older sister was enrolled in another day care, one more conveniently located, one whose staff would use the word “profession” to describe their line of work, as opposed to the dreaded JOB. The reason that Kyra wasn’t at the same day care with Emma was because of their policy to only take children who are fully potty-trained. Something that Kyra was no...
Desperately Seeking Presents That Won’t Be Recalled in 6 Months… and Some Holiday Spirit
Anyone else sick of sorting through the bin and taking toys away from their children because of safety concerns? My favorite was the Aqua Dots fiasco, where the little pellets were filled with the date rape drug GHB. How does a DATE RAPE drug get into our toys? I mean, a Stoli martini maybe… but little plastic balls that you glue together with water? I admit I find myself at a bit of loss this holiday season. I took the Buy Handmade Pledge, and have been doing some searching on Etsy, but I have a general malaise I can’t shake. Why do I have to run around franticly from the day after Thanksgiving until December 24th, buying stuff, stuff, STUFF? And trust me, it’s not so much the consumerism that bugs me, it’s the consumerism crammed into 30 days, where I am supposed ...
Black Friday’s “Blowout”
I am unsure how Black Friday even got started. It was probably some raging psychopath who thought it would be fun to use bargain hunters and desperate toy-seeking parents as puppets. Plan a shopping spree in the middle of the night after people have devoured inordinate amounts of sleep-inducing hormones from their turkey? Sounds like fun! My hubby was among them. The insane, that is. The reason he went shopping was not because of any particular sale but because we cannot sleep past 6 a.m. (an illness exasperated by the recent time change). Even though I was awake at 4:45 a.m., I let him brave the crowds while I stayed home to watch the kids and obsessively write my Christmas cards. Because the world will come to an end if my Christmas newsletter is not post-marked by December 1st.
Let the Games Giving Begin!
The turkey and pumpkin pies have been successfully devoured. We now turn our attentions (and stomachs) to the glories of eggnog, gingerbread and even more gluttony as the weight-loss centers devise their New Year’s repentance campaigns. Here at Mile High Mamas, we are givers. And takers. We have some fantastic giveaways lined up for your enjoyment these next few weeks. Giveaways that will whisk you away to the land of Princesses on Ice, dancing nutcrackers, live Santa telegrams, BabyCandy’s delicious holiday onsies and today, Santa’s Little Helper – A Children’s Christmas Correspondence Kit.
A Blogspot Book
After our twin boys were born in Boston, my husband and I moved back to Florida, primarily so I could stay home with my children. And also so my mother could provide free babysitting every weekend. For life. Ten minutes into my new gig, I realized the key to emotional happiness and domestic bliss was simple. I had to turn off the television. Commercials kill a new momâs self-esteem. Viewers are either bombarded with ways to earn a degree from home or endlessly urged to call now if hurt in an auto accident. Between commercials, trying to find missing socks, and getting babies to appreciate Mozart – no wonder full-time moms start drinking in the afternoon. Thatâs why I decided to write.
Happy Thanksgiving!
[photopress:peacock.jpg,full,pp_image]Enjoy your Turkey Day! XOXO The Mamas Editor’s note: I realize baby Maddie is dressed as a peacock. But you try finding a cute picture of a kid dressed up as a soon-to-be-overstuffed slab of meat.
A Family Who Bags Together, Learns Together
I completely abhor raking leaves. It comes from growing up in Maryland, where there are a LOT of leaves, and a LOT of wet, gooey leaves. In fact, when Bryan asked me to marry him, I said yes only on the condition that I would NEVER have to rake another leaf again. And Bryan had held true to that promise for the most part. Except here in Colorado, we have lovely, dry, crunchy leaves. So I actually pitch in every once in a while. Every ONCE in a GREAT while. And now we have a 5-year-old minion to do our bidding. So the boys did a bunch of raking this weekend. And bagging. And raking. And bagging. And I yelled “woo hoo!” from the porch. Until we had a gigantic pile of bagged leaves sitting on the front lawn. Declan was amazed at how many bags we had from our little yard. (So were ...
The dilemma of the white lie
Generally speaking, I’m all about honesty. Why has Mommy locked herself in the bathroom? It’s called food poisoning. And the door is locked because it’s possible your eyes would never fully recover upon witnessing what is happening on the other side. Why are we having hot cocoa and cereal for dinner? Because those are two things you know how to fix, and they won’t make Mommy lock herself in the bathroom again upon smelling them. But, as anyone who’s been around a two- and three-year-old knows, there are times when the questions are as hard to answer as a telephone survey at dinnertime. Case in point — we rented a car during our recent vacation in Delaware. Emma, our three-year-old, wanted to know who this beautiful, new set of wheels we were using belong...
Get Found, Kid
Years ago, I read an article by Robert Fulghum in The Reader’s Digest that I have never forgotten. Now I know why. He spoke of a neighborhood hide-and-seek game. As children scattered, he noted there was always that one kid who hid so well, nobody could find him. After a while they would give up on him and leave him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because they didn’t keep looking for him. In turn, the “seekers”would get mad back because he wasn’t playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There’s hiding and there’s finding. But sure enough the next time around, he would hide too well again. As Fulghum reflected upon his childhood merriment, he spotted a kid hiding under a pile of leaves. He walked over ...
