I guess my house isn't clean enough for a 3 year old!

Sarah and I were at the grocery store earlier this week. We were on the aisle with all the cleaning products and she pointed and said, “Mommy, who’s that man?”

“That’s Mr. Clean,” I said.

“Oh! Well, maybe we could ask him to come over to our house!”

If only.

Timing is everything...

Sarah and I were leaving Wal-Mart yesterday. She was strapped into her car seat and I was loading the back of our SUV with groceries and talking to her. As luck would have it, right as I was saying, “You know better! We put boogers into Kleenex not into our mouths!” I looked up to see the father of the guy who I spent most of my college years with a giant crush on walk right by us.

I did not say hello. Instead I put my head down and pretended not to see him. He did the same thing. Can you blame him?

Peter's version of "Guess How Much I Love You"

The other day as we were heading out, we drove past my parent’s house and my dad was heading into his shop. He saw us and waved and we waved back. Peter said to me, “Mommy, I love Grandpa more than you do!”

“You do? I don’t know about that. He’s my Daddy after all!” I replied

“Well, I love him a lot more than you because he’s my Grandpa!”

“Oh, yeah. Well how much do you love him?”

“I love him from our house, to the moon, to our play set, to the shop, to the beach and back to my room! That’s how much I love him!”

“Well, that is a lot! I think I love him that much too!”

Chocolate covered pretzels

I've been busy this week making lots of these...

And these...

And these...

Don't they look delicious??

My kids loved them. And why wouldn't they? Almost anything is good covered in chocolate. Hmmm...does anyone have a recipe for chocolate covered broccoli?

Peter, who has a birthday coming up soon, even asked if I could make some of these for his birthday cake. Ah, birthday pretzel rod cake. But where would I put the candles??

Peg, that boy ain't right...

For the last 8 months or so, Peter will abruptly declare that he is not getting married. He will say it out of the blue as if someone has just asked him about his feelings on marriage. I find this behavior very odd for a not quite 5 year old. The only thing I can figure is that maybe some of the girls in his class at school have been talking about marriage. I know that on the playground the girls will chase the boys around and perhaps he thinks marriage is what happens when one of the girls catches one of the boys …he wouldn’t be too far off.

I don’t make a big deal out of his declarations because I don’t want him to think it matters one way or the other. And of course it doesn’t matter one way or the other but I keep screaming in my head, “You have to married! I want lots of grandbabies!” Although one could argue that he could still give me lots of grandbabies without being married. That, however, is a whole other post.

Back to the story at hand…at least once a week Peter will declare, “I am not going to get married!” To which I try to reply nonchalantly, “That’s fine. You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.” But yesterday, he declared gleefully, “I love all the computer games on Legos.com so much that I think I want to marry them!”

I think a statement like that might even scare the little girls on the playground away. Good thing he’s cute!


***Edited to add - Even as I am typing this Peter is in the other room telling my husband that he is going to play baseball for the Red Sox when he grows up. This, of course, makes my husband very happy. Peter then asks if any of the Red Sox are married because he is going to be one that is not. This, of course, makes me very sad.

Sweet Treat

There are a lot of fringe benefits gained from living next door to your parents. Among them for us are free and convenient babysitting, delicious Sunday lunch served right after church, free use of a riding mower and access to a wonderful front porch equipped with a swing and lots of rockers.

Last night as I was drying the dinner dishes my mom called me to ask if we had finished dinner.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Have the kid’s had their baths yet?” she asked.

Baths? Ha! Wasn’t really planning on giving them baths.

“Um. No,” I answered.

“Good! Send them over here with their pajamas and I’ll give them a bath while you and Dan run to Dairy Queen.”

An impromptu run to Dairy Queen! What could be better than a quick trip to Dairy Queen with no kids?

We got 45 minutes of uninterrupted talk with each other. We got to listen to bad 80’s music in the car without anyone yelling for us to “turn on my songs”. (Why is it that all stations insist on playing "the best of the 80’s" on Saturday night?) We got to eat without having to wipe melted ice cream off of anyone’s nose or ear. And best of all, when we got back home, our kids were clean, in their pajamas and ready for bed!

If anyone of you ever has the chance to live right next door to your parents, I highly recommend it…almost as much as I recommend the Chocolate Xtreme Blizzard at DQ!

To go or not to go? That was the question I didn't have to answer.

We just got back from a wonderful, restful long weekend at the beach. The weather was great and we had a wonderful time. However, I missed my 20th high school reunion. (Yes...I'm old!)

When I received the invitation to the reunion, I was torn. Part of me really wanted to go and another part of me really wanted to hide. I probably would have been more inclined to really want to go if a couple of my good friends were going. But one had a wedding in Chicago and the other was just as torn about going as I was. So, that left me trying to decide if I really wanted to pay $68 to stand in a corner with my husband marveling at how different everyone looked. Which wouldn’t have been much fun any way since my husband doesn’t know any of these people.

There are a handful of people from high school I would really like to catch up with. But in order to talk to them (if they even attended) would I have to endure endless small talk with people I didn’t really even talk to in high school? Or worse yet…would I end up alone in that corner with my husband because no one wanted to talk to me? I kept mulling these questions over and over in my mind.

The nosy part of me wanted to go just to see if the cheerleaders had gotten fat and if the football players were bald. And another part of me wanted to go just to say look…I didn’t get fat and my husband still has some of his hair!

But in the end, I didn’t have to decide. My parents were able to get a house at the beach the exact weekend that the reunion was to be held. Part of me let out a huge sigh of relief and another part of me was a little sad that I wouldn’t be able to go after all.

So, if any Black Knights from the class of ’87 happen to be reading this blog, sorry I missed you. I hope you had fun if you went.

Maybe I’ll see you at the 30th…I haven't decided yet if I'll go or not...

Are they spying on me?

We use Amazon.com for Christmas and birthday shopping. If you have ever used Amazon.com then you know that periodically they will review your past purchases and send you a list of books they think you might enjoy. Yesterday I had to laugh out loud when I was informed by Amazon that I might enjoy the following books:

Scream Free Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel

Come Be My Light by Mother Theresa

Wow! Is someone trying to tell me something?

Conversation with Peter....

Me: How were those Lucky Charms, this morning, kiddo?

Peter: They were delicious Mommy.

Me: Yes. But were they magically delicious?

Peter: Huh?