Ahem.

Dear What Seems Like Every Driver In The World,

Please take the time to actually clean the snow off your car before you leave the house. (And by “house” I mean “place where you park your car.” I’m not asking you to clean the snow off without actually going outside. But if you know how to do that, email me.) Because although you can see if you clean only the windshield and the rear window, the snow and ice chunks hurtling off your roof at high speeds are sort of dangerous to the rest of us. And if I can not only clean my entire car but also shovel my whole driveway WITH AN INFANT STRAPPED TO MY BODY, you can certainly take an extra ten minutes in the morning yourselves.

Thank you.

Note: This entire entry was actually an excuse to brag about my amazingness at shoveling the driveway with the baby in the front carrier. Because that ain’t easy, folks. He’s HEAVY. But that doesn’t mean I'm not serious about clearing off your cars.

You know you’re a mom when…

…you are surprisingly unbothered by the fact that you are at work wearing clothes that are poop-stained^*. Hey, they’re black. No one can tell.

*Just so you don’t think I’m totally repulsive, I had no choice. I didn’t bring extra clothes for me to the grandparents’ house. This is because I am incapable of learning.

Puzzling

On Tuesdays, Jack and I usually go down to visit my parents because that is the day they have my 4 ½ year old nephew, The Charmer. Last week, my dad and The Charmer settled down after lunch to work on a puzzle. This particular puzzle was actually 26 mini puzzles, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each letter had a picture of something that started with that letter, and also contained the word itself printed at the bottom.

The Charmer soon lost interest in the puzzle and started wandering around the living room. My dad, however, kept plugging away at it, looking for the “ain” segment of the “train” mini puzzle. “Hey, The Charmer, stop stepping on the ones I finished,” my dad said to him. “Glorioski^*, this puzzle is really something else,” he said. He checked the puzzle box and exclaimed, “Ages three and up? I don’t understand why they would say this puzzle was for ages three and up!”

After a while, my mom came in and said, “The Charmer, are you ready for a snack, or are you still working on that puzzle?”

“Oh, he’s done with the puzzle,” I said. “Dad’s got something to prove, though.”

“I just can’t believe that they say this puzzle is for ages three and up!” my dad complained.

The funny thing was, just a few days before I had watched Elfin Nephew – admittedly with help from his mom – put together that very puzzle. Elfin Nephew is three. Of course, I am a very kind person, always considerate of others’ feelings, so I kept this information to myself.

No, of course I didn’t.

I told my father that Elfin Nephew did the puzzle, and my dad wasn’t about to be bested by a three year old, so he managed to finish it as well. Because the puzzle is for ages three “and up.”

*For those not related to my dad: He says “Glorioski.” Also “Whisht.”

Be prepared

The other night, we saw an ad for ABC’s presentation of Castaway. It was the scene where Tom Hanks manages to make fire for the first time. “I actually know how to start a fire without matches,” The Husband told me. “I’ve never had to do it, I just know how. It’s a really weird thing for me to know.”

“Weren’t you a boy scout?” I asked him.

“Yeah.”

“And isn’t that the sort of thing they teach boy scouts?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And did you learn how to do it in boy scouts?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“So it’s not really all that weird, then.”

“Shut up.”

Reason #912 The Husband and I will be an embarrassment to Jack and his potential siblings

On Sunday, The Husband made us pancakes for breakfast while I got dressed. When I emerged from the bathroom, he said, “I made church pancakes.”

“Oh?” I said. “Are they shaped like a church?”

“No.”

“Are they shaped like a cross?”

“No.”

“Are they shaped like the Holy Eucharist?”

“That’s just a circle,” he pointed out. “The traditional shape of pancakes.”

“Well, I know,” I said, “but I thought maybe you were just making a joke because it’s Sunday.” Then I sat down at the table and found amidst the standard circular – or Holy Eucharist shaped –pancakes, two pancakes formed into rings. Looking up, I saw The Husband grinning like an idiot and waiting expectantly. “Are they church pancakes because they’re holey?” I asked him.

“Yeah!” he shouted. And then he giggled for about five minutes.

Obligatory mushy post

Every time I go into your bedroom to pick you up after your nap, I sing the “Good Morning” song and you grin grin grin at me and kick your little feet with joy. And just when I think I love you as much as is humanly possible to love someone, I discover I now love you even more.

But that doesn’t mean I’m OK with the teething.

No, I will not read at your wedding

The summer after college graduation, two of my friends, J and B, got married. In fact, J is responsible for introducing me to The Husband. And I apologize for the lame-o pseudonyms, but I have had a long day of trying to get my teething baby to settle down and eat (Eat! Just eat! If you’re hungry, eat! Here it is! Stop turning your head to yell at me, and eat! STOP TURNING YOUR HEAD!), and I’m tired. J and B, if you’re reading this and can think of good pseudonyms for yourselves, I will accept suggestions.

J asked The Husband to be the man of honor, and she asked me to do a reading. Naturally, I was honored and agreed. So when the day before the wedding rolled around, The Husband and I were ready. The rehearsal went smoothly, and I did very well with my reading. I even heard J’s young cousin, the other reader, being reassured by her mother who said, “Well, she’s been to college, so she’s had a lot of practice. You did fine too.”

At the rehearsal dinner, we talked about the choice of readings. My reading was from 1 Corinthians, also known as “Love is patient, love is kind.” It’s a popular choice for weddings. “We just picked the readings out of the booklet they give you at the church,” J said. “I almost didn’t care as long as we didn’t use the ‘Wives, be submissive to your husbands’ reading.”

After the party broke up, we all headed home with an agreement to meet up at J’s house at 11:30 the next morning, an hour before the wedding was to start. Being the responsible friend that I am, I took my reading home with me so that I could practice it one more time before the wedding. I was very tired that night, but I made sure to set my alarm for 8:30, which would give me a good two hours to get ready before I had to leave.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I awoke the next morning to the sound of my mother calling, “Mo? Don’t you have to leave?” It was 12:00. I was supposed to be at the church in twenty minutes. The church which was forty-five minutes away. I was in bed, and I was supposed to be dressed and ready for a wedding in 30 minutes, 45 minutes away. It seems I had experienced an a.m./p.m. problem with my alarm clock, and The Husband had called my house when I was a half hour late, found out I was still in bed, and said, “Get her up!”

I gave a strangled cry and leapt out of bed. Through superhuman effort, I was in the car en route to the wedding ten minutes later. Unfortunately, despite J and B delaying the wedding as long as possible, I arrived at the church just after the readings finished. I got to see them exchange vows, but I missed everything else. Even more unfortunately, because I had the only copy of the reading they wanted, the priest picked the first one he came across as a replacement. Can you guess which one it was? Yes, it was, “Wives, be submissive to your husbands.”

Happily, J and B found it in their hearts to forgive me, probably due to a combination of freshly-wedded bliss and the sight of my tear-filled eyes as I apologized.

When my brother and sister-in-law asked me to do a reading at their wedding six years later, I of course agreed once again. I figured that I was safe because this time my family definitely knew what time the wedding started, and there was no way I could oversleep. Once again I took the copy of the reading home with me to practice after the rehearsal. Ever responsible, I looked it over in the living room one last time before we left, switched my belongings to my fancy purse and headed off to the church.

That’s right. I accidentally left the copy of the reading on the couch. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just ask the wedding coordinator for another copy.” Well guess what? Every single copy of the booklet of wedding-appropriate readings they had at the church had that page torn out. And do you think she could find a bible? You would think so, given that we were at a church, but she couldn’t find one anywhere. I think she ended up borrowing one from the rectory or something. Meanwhile, I was hanging around the back of the church until about one minute before the wedding, becoming increasingly panicked that I would be responsible for ruining a second wedding.

She found a bible just in the nick of time, and I’m pretty sure that Sister-In-Law never found out about this. Until now, because she reads this blog. Hi, Sister-In-Law! I almost ruined your wedding! Sorry!

But it’s not my fault. I am clearly cursed. So, no. No, I will not do a reading at your wedding.

Just so you know who’s really in charge

I thought some of you would be interested in a follow-up. Yes, Jack will take bottles from me and The Husband. No, he will not take bottles from his grampa. This is the second week in a row where I’ve had to go feed him because he was in hysterics. And, while I certainly don’t object to the excuse to go visit him twice during the workday, it would be a bit easier if I didn’t have to. When I got there today, I nursed him to take the edge off, then tried the bottle, thinking that maybe it was being in a different house that was the problem. Jack took the bottle from me, albeit a might grudgingly. So then, once he was almost done eating, I tried giving him to Grampa to finish off the bottle. Instant screams which stopped as soon as I took him back. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Grampa was sticking him with pins instead of feeding him.

Apparently it is not the different house that bothers him. Apparently, in his world, Mom and Dad provide the food, and no one else.

So there.

But the orange “A” blends right in to the orange square!

Jack has a toy Noah’s Ark that has animals mounted on shapes which fit into slots in the top and which fall through into the ark when you pull a lever or twist a knob or some such manipulation. Whenever I put this ark away, I make sure all the animals are sitting in their proper holes and – this is the important part – facing forwards. Because that’s how they’re supposed to go. Forwards. If the cow-mounted-on-a-circle is not facing forwards when I first put it away, I will rotate the cow-mounted-on-a-circle until it is.

Yes, I realize I have a slight problem.

But I am not alone. Just last night Big Sister #4 was telling me about putting away her son’s foam puzzle thing that has alphabet cutouts. She and Elfin Nephew were picking up the puzzle squares and letters, and she found herself with an orange “A” in her right hand and an orange puzzle square with an “A” cutout in her left. All the other letters in that puzzle square were yellow, and she was faced with a choice of finding a yellow “A” or just putting the orange “A” into the orange square.

“Mom,” said Elfin Nephew, “that ‘A’ doesn’t go there. That’s the square for yellow letters.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Big Sister #4. “It fits, so let’s just put it in here and put the yellow ‘A’ somewhere else.”

That’s what she said, but only because she doesn’t want to be responsible for creating an OCD monster. In her head she was shouting, “I know! You’re totally right! We clearly need a yellow ‘A’!”

Uh...I think he did it on purpose

Last night we watched The Office. I wasn't paying close attention at the beginning, so I'm a bit unclear on why, but Michael Scott was organizing a bachelor and a bachelorette party in the office. He charged Jim with hiring the entertainment for the bachelorette party. Jim told the camera that Michael wanted him to hire someone from "Banana Slings," but instead he hired someone from "Historical Figures of Pennsylvania."

"How could anyone get those confused?" asked The Husband.