MamaBloo » humor

Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk

Kari at MamaBloo — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:00:06 +0000

In our house we have an epidemic. As much as I love each and every one of my kids, they spill. Like, a lot. So much so that we have a title that we pass around almost nightly. The title? The Spiller.

It goes like this. Izzy knocks over her milk and it spills everywhere and someone announces, “Izzy is THE SPILLER tonight!!!” She smiles. Ah shucks. I get to be THE SPILLER ? Cool.

We spill so much around here that also have an expression that immediately follows any spill. The glass goes over, water goes everywhere and I shout, “Mobilize the Spill-Unit!!!” Upon this command, Jade runs for paper towels, Izzy grabs plates and other gear out of harms way, Lily grabs napkins and goes low — mopping up the drips that are already hitting the floor, and Ty… well, we are working on him. Usually he helps Jade. I coordinate. In this fashion we get spills cleaned up and everything back in order in less than 90 seconds and dinner continues. We are a well-oiled machine.

Except for the time that Lily overwhelmed the Spill-Unit with FOUR back to back spills. No sooner had everything been put right when.. bloooppp… over went another glass. She spilled Jade’s milk, Ty’s milk and her own milk…twice. It was epic. We still talk about it when the conversation lags. Hey, remember that ONE TIME when Lily was like the Spiller-Extraordinaire? Oh yeah, we all say, that was epic! Then we sort of chuckle. But the chuckling doesn’t last because another spill is iminent and we have to be ready, on our guard for possible spill-unit mobilization.

Usually the SPILLER is Izzy. That girl could enter the Olympics if they had a SPILLER event and bring home the gold.

Last night Ty was the spiller.

The night before it was me. Like I said. It is an epidemic.

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Click here to see Emme and me during a Me Ra Koh photo shoot (last November) for her upcoming book!!!

The Most Wonderful Day of the Year

Kari at MamaBloo — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:27:55 +0000

Yesterday was my favorite day of the year. And nothing holds a candle to this day. Not Christmas. Not Groundhog’s day. Not the first day of school.

It is the day we FALL back. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh….. bring on that extra hour of sleep. I have said before how I feel about Springing ahead, but Falling back? Oh, that day makes all 364 other days worth it. I love going to bed Saturday night around 11pm and setting the clock back an hour. “Oh…is it only 10? ” and I snuggle in all proud of myself for going to bed early.

There was a time several years ago after Dave and I were first married where he woke me up early on Fall Back Day for some god-foresaken reason. I remember my incredulous reaction as I said to him, “You just RUINED my favorite day of the year!!!” Now, when you first get married there is a lot to learn about each other. But I will never forget the look on Dave’s face when he said, “THIS is your FAVORITE day of the year? Seriously?” Yes, dude, seriously. It is to his credit that he has never forgotten the lesson he learned that day.

To be fair, I could go without the dark mornings. There is something so sinister and depressing about waking up in the pitch dark. And it does signal the beginning of winter. Which means that around here we are headed for 6 months of solid rain. Rain. Every single day. Except when it snows. And then the whole area shuts down. Oh, I mean it. Those of you out there in regions where you get snow on a regular basis would be stunned at the Seattle area’s lack of snow savvy. People start to freak out. Two years ago, the schools shut down because there was a THREAT of snow. When it snows around here people don’t go to work and they call their friends and family to be sure they are surviving. We even have our own local reporter who loves to coin terms like “Storm Blast 2009.” He is usually in a hat, coat, and gloves standing on top of the Space Needle while the snow flurries around him and he — get this — HOLDS ON so as not to be blown away, I guess. Then he tells us to expect 3 inches of snow and to BEWARE of STORM BLAST 2009!!!!! Then the one snow plow that is owned by King County starts to work its way around the area. Cars pull to the side of the road and are abandoned as people claim, “I cannot drive in this stuff! Too dangerous!” (And, hec, I say pull over if you think three inches of snow is too dangerous.) When snow is predicted the stores RUN OUT of bottled water as people prepare for the worst. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not.

Now, RAIN we can handle around here – we don’t cancel anything for rain. But SNOW? Nope, we don’t do snow.

So, here I am today, all rested from my extra hour of sleep and ready to face Storm Blast 2010.

A Phone Glued to Her Ear

Kari at MamaBloo — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 14:22:00 +0000

Emme is now officially 19 months old.

But she still doesn’t really talk. Her words still only amount to “uh oh” “night night” ”mommy” “daddy” and her newest word “HELLO”. Why, “hello” you might ask? Because she is obsessed with talking on the phone. Honestly, I don’t talk on the phone THAT much. I am more of a text-er, email-er kinda gal. But, nevertheless, she loves the phone.

Whereas Ty loved to turn everyday objects into a gun (click here to read that list), Emme prefers transforming whatever she can get her hands on into… a phone. Then, she holds said object to her and walks around all.day.long. saying …… “Hello!”

Here is the list of every day objects Emme has used as a telephone:

Baby Monitor
Remonte Control
A grape
A shoe
A sock
Sunglasses
Fork
Her sippy cup
A pad of paper
Car keys
Rolled up pair of socks
Star Wars figure
Calculator
Flashlight
Mint tin
Credit Card
Legos
A book
Granola Bars
A plastic plate

Oh, and of course, the ACTUAL PHONE.

A Tail

Kari at MamaBloo — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:30:35 +0000

Saturday at lunch Ty informed the family that he has an invisible tail.

Ya wanna see?

Well, I will try to see it. It is invisible after all.

He wags his bum at me and says, see it?

Uh, well….

It has very small feathers on it that you need a microscope to see.

It does?

Mommy? When something is invisible can you still touch it and feel it?

I think so. But I don’t really know for sure.

Well, then my tail is also intangible.

Of course it is.

Waterboarding, Anyone?

Kari at MamaBloo — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:30:36 +0000

If anyone out there needs information from me and they find me to be, oh lets say, resistant, the simple solution is to park me in front of a slow computer and make me try to compose blog posts on it.

It won’t be long until I am begging for them make it stop. I’ll tell you ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, I would whimper. Just give me a few more gigabytes, a faster processor, an a truck load of RAM. Just don’t make me restart one more time or wait 5 freaking minutes for my internet browser to load.

I am pretty sure that I would rather be waterboarded than use a slow computer.

Pretty sure.

Mowing the Lawn. Why It Never Seems to Happen.

Kari at MamaBloo — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:30:59 +0000

I worried that I have completely emasculated my husband. True, he’s a TAD bit hen-pecked. But I may have gone too far this time. So, a while back I read that running a gas lawn mower for one hour has the equivalent impact on the environment as 40 cars idling in traffic for the same amount of time. Well, being from the Northwest where being green is a requirement for citizenship, this freaked me out. So, when we were in the market for a new lawn mower, I made the unilateral decision that we would get an electric mower. I remember standing in Home Depot and Dave had this sort of defeated look on his face. The look said, “Is this the battle I want to fight, because I have to pick them carefully….” to which I responded with this look, “40 cars, Dave, 40 freaking cars….” and we went home with the electric mower.

But the sad truth is we both hate the lawn mower. I hate it because I miss that loud, growling noise each time the lawn is mowed. I mean, the sound of a running lawn mower screams, “SUMMER” and is just so “cool.” It’s like the yard work equivalent of a Harley Davidson. You know what I mean. But, frankly, our electric lawn mower sounds like a sewing machine. And I hate to sew. I think Dave hates it for mostly the same reasons — but he would define it thus: It’s a wimpy lawn mower. Don’t get me wrong, it works and gets the job done (when it actually gets used…more on that it a sec.) but it screams “Girlie-Man” like nobody’s business. It doesn’t help that you have to trail a cord behind you as you mow – or that one of the wheels always falls off.

What have I done?

So, because we have the world’s stupidest lawn mower, our lawn is almost never mowed. Which is another reason why I hate this mower.

Here you can see that the indentities of the innocent are being protected. No one wants to be associated with this yard.

This is the situation that has developed in our yard. In our own defense, we are not big yard work people to begin with, but our yard was designed by the world famous Jamie Durie – who, I might add, is anything but a girlie man. But you would never know that our lawn was professionally landscaped — all due to our lawnmower. I think it is my fault. Well, mine and the environment’s.

Do You Know Your Husband?

Kari at MamaBloo — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:45:48 +0000

On our recent vacation to Whidbey Island, I found these little quiz books at the local “everything” shop.

And because I have a devilish sense of humor, I bought them. When Dave saw them he said, “Oh Great” and then he prepared himself for the worse.

These are the kind of questions I had to answer about him:

#2 Does he have his tonsils?

#9 What is his shoe size?

#42 How many times a day does he brush his teeth?

These are the kinds of questions he had to answer about me:

#5 What is her favorite color?

#11 How often does she shop for groceries?

#36 Has she ever used a power saw?

See, it starts off innocent enough, and I have to say both Dave and I were doing quite well on our respective quizzes.

#73 Which one of these CAN’T she do? A.) Touch her toes B.) Stand on her head C.) Jumpstart a car or D.) Rewire a lamp.

Uh, yeah, I can’t do any of those…

How about these:

#48 Does she know who Pythagoras was?

Whatever…

#14 Would he like to ride into space?

Totally, he would be there in a second. I, however, have to be drugged to ride in an airplane.

But then a few zingers found their way into the game, for example:

#26 Which one of your women friends does he find the most attractive?

Let’s just say I got that one right. Not because he admitted it, but because he turned bright red and opened a beer.

#89 Is there anything you (he) can do that SHE can’t?

No. I can even pee standing up, if required. Oh, wait, he can swim the butterfly. Take it from me, my butterfly is pretty darn ugly. I also cannot do calculus.

#43 What would she say about the idea of a strip club a mile from your home? A.) “Where do I sign to protest?” B.) “Makes no difference to me!” C.) “Great!” or D.) “Hmmm, Wonder if they are hiring?” Well, since the high school I used to work at is RIGHT NEXT to a strip club (I kid you not), I am gonna go with C. Okay, just kidding.

Of course, now when some creep out ther googles “strip club” my blog will come up. Lovely.

So, if you are bored this summer and looking to torture your husband, pick these little gems up. Or better yet, give them as wedding gifts. The groom will thank you, I am sure.

The Double Slit Experiment

Kari at MamaBloo — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:30:00 +0000

So, as Dave and I are climbing into bed last night, I take the opportunity to tell him about a couple of back-to-back nightmares I had the night before. I am not prone to nightmares but these two were especially vivid as they both dealt with Ty being in mortal danger and me, the mommy, being fingertips away from saving him but not being able to. I normally don’t talk about stuff like that as I don’t believe in putting stuff like that out there. But last night I needed to shake the dreams by telling my husband. He listens and does the much needed nodding and cooing. Then he says, “Ugh, sometimes I have waking nightmares where I imagine something happening right before my eyes.” I nod… oh, we are being so supportive to each other right now. “Oh yeah, like when you’re walking down the stairs carrying Emme and you have this flash of yourself tumbling down while you’re holding her?!?!” We sorta sit there and nod. Sigh. I feel satisfied in our mutual comiseration of morbid thoughts. And then Dave says THIS:

“Well, we all know about the double slit experiment.”

What-huh-huh-huh-eh?

Well, no actually, I don’t, I inform him. Oh, he says, you are just baiting me, aren’t you? Correction, husband, you baited me with your weird science-teacher talk and now, I fear, I am in for some rudimentary lesson in physics that I know… know I can live without.

Well, the double slit experiment is pretty well-known, he says. Great. Now I am being insulted as well. Perhaps I am the only person in all of the world who has never heard of this COMMON, well-known, probably on Sesame Street experiment, but, please, continue. So, he tells me that if you take a piece of common cardboard and put two slits in it and shine a light through the two slits, one gets a pattern on the opposing wall that looks like stripes because (and this is where I have to take his word for it) two electrons are interacting with each other to create the pattern. But, oh and here it gets really really crazy, if one turns down the intensity of the light so that only ONE electron goes through the slit, you will still see the same pattern on the opposing wall. Even though, he says with a gleam in his eye, there is only one electron passing throught he slits. You can imagine my chagrin at never having heard of this amazing experiment.

But it gets better.

But if only one electron is passing through the slit, he ponders, where is the other electron? The one needed to interact with the original electron and therefore create the striped pattern? I hold my breath. Well, says Dave, we can’t prove it yet, but the most PLAUSIBLE (this word is very important so remember it… plausible) explanation is that the other electron is in an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. Are you saying that in some alternate universe I actually fell down the steps with Emme???? NO, but there are zillions and billions of alternate universes. And guess who came up with this whole thing, he asks? I shout out perhaps the only famous scientist I know, certain of success: EINSTEIN!! No, Dave says….. it was GOD. And this is all coming from a man who refuses to watch LOST because it doesn’t make sense.

A moment of silence passes and then I say: Go get my computer! Oh good, he says, you’re going to Google this, aren’t you.

Nope. I am going to blog.

Tomorrow we are going to analyze a Shakespearean sonnet before bedtime and then discuss Dante’s 9 circles of hell… one of which I was on during the discussion of the double slit experiment. Stay tuned.

My Root Core

Kari at MamaBloo — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:30:36 +0000

When my Ty was born, Dave would actually try and compete with me on over who was the “most tired.” I would say, “I am sooooooooooooooooooooo tired!” and he would say, “Me, too.” And I would say, “But not as tired as I am.” And he would sorta squint and look at me and say, “I think I might be” and then I would say,”No, Dave. That is not possible. I am nourishing another human being from my (said in a whisper) breast every two hours.” I would say, “Dave, I am tired at my ROOT. I am tired at my CORE.”

In an effort to streamline things, we have now abbreviated the whole mess to I am “tired at my root-core.” And the phrase lives on. Oh, we can really throw down on this one. Dave has two jobs working with teenagers that require him to commute to two different cities and he usually works 2 weekends a month as well. Plus, when he walks through the door, he is expected to be daddy and uncle Dave and be smiling and happy and give me a foot rub. Me? Well, I am in charge of five kids ranging in age from 1-14. Enough said.

We’re tired.

Can I get a witness?

Most days I tackle our life with grace and aplomb. Not really. Most days I tackle our life with a gritty determination to do my best and not send anyone into therapy. To get all the hugs in. To make sure they are all fed. To listen to my gut. To pray. To breathe. To get a shower in, if not make-up on. To kiss my husband when he walks through the door. To call my mom. To parent with intention.

But April nearly killed me.

And it bled a bit over into May.

These last few weeks included a very sick one year old, three trips to the ER –two trips for head lacerations on two different kids and one of those trips was for me because I broke my toe. And if anyone thinks I am being a wimp about a broken toe, come on over and ram your toe into the mega vacuum cleaner we own. No? Okay, let me continue with my list. These last few weeks included sports for three of the kids — that’s Track, Soccer, and Martial Arts — a 1/2 dozen birthday parties to ATTEND and two to HOST, Dave starting a new job, and a huge project that I cannot even begin to tell you all about because it is just that top secret. I am also the room mom for preschool and for some reason I just signed a permission slip last night for Izzy to attend and help out at the school carnival. Whah? I know it is all just LIFE and I am not complaining. But last night I decided to up the ante on our “tired competition.” As I was coming home from a preschool board meeting after spending a total of four hours and 7 phone calls trying to restore our internet and a Costco run that had my broken toe throbbing, I looked over as Dave was pulling in the driveway from swim practice. I said to him. “Hey Dave, my root-core just BROKE!”

He stopped. Looked at me. “Well, okay… you win!”

A-ha!

I win!

I am the most tiredest of us all! I win!

I wonder what my prize is?

Skull Bubbles

Kari at MamaBloo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:30:17 +0000

One time, a long time ago, I found a giant strawberry that I swear looked like Jesus. I suppose if I was more devout I could have made the news or have been invited to the Vatican.

Last night, Jade did me one better.

At dinner I noticed that she appeared to be blowing her nose into her glass of milk. “Jade,” I say with as much disgust that I can muster, “What are you doing?”

“There are bubbles in my milk,” she replies with perfect candor and seriousness. ”And I had to blow on them because there were really freaking me out cuz they looked like SKULLS!”

You be the judge: