This year I decided I’d make something homemade for each of my kids for Christmas. And not just, like, toothpick picture frames… nay! I decided to make each kid an intricate gift that requires pinning and basting and sewing and hard liquor (if only I drank). Now, because I worry that my children are three of my four blog readers, I can’t tell you directly what these gifts are. But I will give you blurry picture clues and vague descriptions that will leave you puzzled and wanting to know more!

For Jachin I am attempting to make something that I’ve never made the likes of before. There is no pattern for this. I am winging it. And me + an idea + a sewing machine + winging it (almost always) = disaster. But I’m going for it.

These are squares of material. Think squares. Lots of them. Sewn together.

These are iron-on pages. You print out pictures of things, like… oh, I don’t know, Nintendo characters, and then iron them onto white squares. (That is dark blue minky behind there. Minky, if you are not familiar with it, is super-soft fuzzy material that feels like kittens rolled in cotton balls. Minky can often be sewn to the back of lots of squares that have been sewn together. You follow me?)

These are some of the iron-on pages. I know. Totally cute.

Shhh… no blabbing to Jachin.

Now we move on to Zoe. Zoe, as you may recall, wants nothing but Julie the American Girl for Christmas. I have it on good authority that Santa may be bringing the goods. Therefore, I am sewing Zoe something that has to do with this:

See? How they match?

And it goes with this:

Hello? Can you get more 70’s looking? I don’t see how.

And Deacon, well… okay, I’m not super-worried about Deacon reading my blog, so I’ll just flat out tell you what I’m making. (Plus, I actually work on it in front of him. Because he’s a baby. And two minutes after I’ve put it away, he’s forgotten about it. Because he’s a baby. And on Christmas day he’ll open it and be like all, Yay! I’m a baby and I’ve never seen this before in my life! )

It’s a Quiet Book. The Quiet Book that I started making when I was pregnant with Jachin. Yes, I have been working on this Quiet Book since 1998. Because have I told you how bad I am about finishing things I start? The Quiet Book is actually the token object that is referred to every time I embark on something new. Like, I will start ripping out everything in the boxes in the basement and labeling and color-coding and Jon will come down and look at me in the center of a disaster and say, “Umm, is this going to be like the Quiet Book?” And I’ll shoot him with my angry wife laser eyes. And then a week later I will have abandoned the color-coding labeling project and you won’t be able to walk around in our disaster-ridden basement.

Yeah, it’s like that.

But this Christmas is it! The Quiet Book will be completed! Jon will have a stroke! Pigs will fly by our windows on Christmas morning! And then we will shoot them and have fresh bacon!… but that’s something else entirely…

Okay, did you get a good look at creepy Jonah?

I guess a few days in a whale’s stomach would make you a little worse for wear.

Anyhoo… these are my current projects. Things that I have to finish before Christmas morning. Which — if I know anything about myself — means that I will be up until 3am Christmas Eve finishing them.

Are you making anything homemade for Christmas??

It’s already starting to look a little like Christmas around here… not because it’s cold, or snowy, or because we’ve put up any decorations yet (I am staunchly opposed to Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving), but because my kids are acting like the 12 days of Christmas have already begun. “The Santa Clause” has been playing non-stop for the last 4 or 5 days. Christmas wish lists have been made, and recited repeatedly. And when I say “repeatedly”, I mean the kids have been rattling off their lists every moment that they are awake until they see my ears start to bleed (that’s how they know that the information has sunk in).

Topping Jachin’s list is a Robo dwarf hamster. It’s sort of like a cotton ball with tiny feet. It speaks a lot of his nature that he wants something cuddly and cute instead of, say, a large python that he could feed live Robo dwarf hamsters to. Beneath the hamster on the list are assorted video games, a few Lego sets, and a basketball hoop for the backyard. I almost passed out when I realized that he’s asking for not just one but several things that don’t require a charger or a WiFi connection. Could I have heard him wrong? But then my ears began to bleed and I realized that, nope, I heard his list correctly. All 82 times.

Zoe’s list is particularly amusing to me. She wants nothing but an American Girl. Julie Albright, the girl of 1974. Because Zoe has decided that she loves the 70’s. Particularly anything with a peace sign on it (which is technically more of a 60’s thing, but let’s not split hairs about ancient times…). What is also funny is that Zoe has never before owned a doll. Never. She’s had stuffed animals by the truck load, My Little Ponies are just as prolific here as Lego pieces, and she’s bought the occasional Barbie, but she’s never, ever owned a doll. She’s never owned anything that needs to be carried around and dressed in different outfits. (Truthfully, her Barbies are usually naked, and she’s fine with popping their heads off to create new and exciting creations.) See, Zoe has always been something of a tomboy. She can build a Lego structure and talk Pokemon with the best of them. I don’t know if it’s been entirely by choice or because she’s usually been surrounded by boys… but she is most comfortable dressing in cute skirts and flowery hair bows, and then going out to throw rocks in the street or roll in the dirt with the boys. She’s a prissy tomboy, if there is such a thing.

So when she asked for Julie — and only Julie, she wants nothing else — for Christmas, I was a little surprised. I wondered if it would pass. I wondered if she just had a temporary longing because some girl at school mentioned how cool her’s was. But when the American Girl catalog came in the mail and she spotted Julie, it really went into full-throttle.

Plus, y’know, the whole thing about how she loves the 70’s.

“Do you know how much I want Julie?” she asks me.

“Yes, I think I get it,” I say.

“No, like, do you really know how much I want her? I want her so much I can’t stand it!”

“I can’t stand it, either.”

I hear about Julie every day. All day. Zoe carries the catalog to school. She eats breakfast with the catalog opened to the Julie page. She watches TV with the Julie page.

She — I am not joking — tucks in her catalog when she goes to bed at night.

Since she can’t yet play with a real Julie doll, she plays with a picture of the Julie doll.

But I know that excitement she feels. I know it perfectly. I remember the year that my sisters and I wanted Cabbage Patch Kids so badly that we thought we would literally explode from the expectation. We would all lie in bed at night and describe what our dolls would look like, what their names would be, what we would do with them. Every night. For about two months leading up to Christmas. I think we would have combusted from disappointment if we wouldn’t have gotten them that year. But we did. I’m pretty sure I cried and/or peed when I opened mine. (My sisters were just as excited as I was, but they aren’t nearly as emotional as I am. They are actually kind of hard-asses. Even as small children…)

So when I see Zoe talking to her magazine and giving her magazine picture a stuffed animal to sleep with at night, it just makes me smile.

I’m really, really hoping Santa comes through.

Apparently all you have to do to get an all-elusive “yes letter” from a magazine is to blog about how you’ve always gotten nothing but rejection letters. About how you’ve resigned yourself to a life of constant no’s and suppressed bitterness. You just have to mock yourself and strut around shouting insults at yourself in a semi-humorous, self-deprecating manner.

The writing gods love that belittling stuff. They eat it up. They eat it up after they slather it with gravy. And then — apparently — they wipe their messy mouths and take a small moment to smile down on you.

Tada!

A submission agreement! Someone is purchasing my crap… err, I mean, quality story! It is a good story (I’m not saying the writing is stellar, but the story is a good one). It’s based on the time Jachin sold a bunch of his toys to raise money for his preschool classmate who had cancer. And yes, that’s a true story. (See picture below.) Back before Jachin became obsessed with video games, he sold his own toys for charity. Or maybe that’s why he got into video games, because he had sold all of his toys. Well, whatever… the point is: yay!

And now, since it is NaNoWriMo, I appeal once more the writing gods… are you guys listening?? I’m crap. My stuff is crap! Hear me? Garbage! Listen to me being snarky and self-deprecating! I stink, yo! Now, if you could help me finish my novel this month and push it through to a fast publish (in twenty languages… that would be cool), I would totally owe you one. Also, if you could help me out with a National Book Award, I’d go brunette or something.

Seriously though, internets, if you want to watch my word counter over there on the right and crack the whip at me every few days, that would be helpful. And if you shout insults at me while you crack the whip, that may help even more. Or it could just make me cry. We’ll have to see.

Before video games and lost teeth:

keep smiling…

Imagine with me for a moment:

Imagine a morning when things are just plain old gray and cold and slowww…. Like, everything is moving slow. The air is moving slow. Time is moving slow. But most of all your kids are moving slow.  And slowing things down even more is the fact that there is not a single drop of Diet Coke in the house. Not. A. Drop. Now imagine that you without morning caffeine is a disaster.

Are you imagining?

And so you offer your late children a ride to school because it is so dang gray and cold… and also because if they took their scooters they would end up approximately something like 2 3/4 hours late for school at the slow rate they are moving. Imagine that you offer them a warm ride because you are a nice-ish mom.  So you open the car to put the cold baby in his car seat only to remember that his car seat is sitting on the garage floor because you had to take it out yesterday to fold the seats down to load a giant piece of plywood to take to the school for Lego Club… And so then begins the 10 minute process of installing his car seat while the cold baby whines and squirms in the other kids’ arms, and the other kids try to cover the cold baby’s ears so that the cold baby will not hear his mother swearing at and beating the dumbest car seat ever created.

You still with me?
Now we’re imagining that when you finally have the car seat installed and the kids piled in and the scooters thrown in the back, the neighbor kids show up. And so there is a little more rearranging of crap in the back and another seat is folded up and another kid enters the vehicle and then finally you exit your driveway… something like 4 hours after you initially offered your kids a ride to school… and you still really want a Diet Coke.

And as you pull up in front of the school, nodding at the neighbors you know, you realize that you are not wearing a bra and it is really, really  cold outside. So you zip up your coat… just as you hear your daughter wail to your son “Why didn’t you get my shoes like I asked you to?”

And then as you are driving your daughter back to the house to get her some shoes, you listen to her ask over and over, “Mom, are you mad?” And you make yourself say, “No, I’m not mad,” over and over. Even though we are imagining that you are pretty mad.

Also, you still aren’t wearing a bra. And you notice in the rear view mirror that overnight your eyeliner and mascara have smeared halfway down your face. Similar to Alice Cooper. And you haven’t brushed your teeth yet.

Actually, you are pretty disgusting. Really. Just imagine.

And when your daughter runs into the house and gets her shoes, and you glance at the clock and realize that there is no possible way short of teleportation to get her to school on time, you devise the plan to get yourself a Diet Coke.

Without subjecting any more people to Utah’s own hairy-toothed Alice Cooper without a bra.

And as you drive past the school, you explain to your daughter that she is already late for school and therefor it is just fine if she is a little bit later. And you drive to the gas station… pretty giddy over your smart plan to get yourself a caffeine fix without leaving the vehicle. Imagine that you think you’re pretty smart.

Now imagine that you pull into a space outside the gas station and start pulling change from the ashtray just as your daughter begins to open her car door. And — pay attention now, because suddenly the slowwww moving time of the morning jumps to light speed and the following events happen in 2.4 nanoseconds — you notice that there is a car parked really close next to you. So just as you say, “Careful, don’t hit the car next to you”, your daughter kicks open her car door with the force of a pissed-off mule and slams the car next to you.

Which has a man inside.

I know, it’s totally painful, but imagine…

And as he looks over at you and mouths a curse word, you instruct your daughter to now close her car door. And as the man exits his car to inspect the damage, you realize that his car is actually a new, shiny car… in fact, you can almost make out the rectangle outline of where the sales sticker was on his window glass.

And as you roll down your window and ask him if it’s dented (D’uh, Alice Cooper, it’s frickin dented), your daughter asks you repeatedly, “Are you mad, mom?” And the guy says, “Uh, yeah, it’s dented.” And you apologize and offer to give him your insurance info as he licks his finger and rubs his new, shiny car. But he takes a look at your daughter on the verge of tears, and then he takes another look at you — looking like something that crawled back from the cusp of hell — and he envisions you beating your poor daughter over an insurance claim. So he says, “It’s fine,” and drives his shinyexceptforthatonedent car away.

…just imagine…

And as your sweet daughter brings you out your Diet Coke from the gas station, you tell her to keep the change. And then you really wonder if it may just be time to give up the morning caffeine thing…

Seriously. It may be time.

Also, imagine that while you finish typing a blog post about your crazy morning, you hear your baby splashing in the potty back the hall.

Just imagine.

The big news around here is that as of Monday morning Omniture (the company that employs my husband) will be owned by Adobe. For the most part, this is a great thing. One thing that I will mourn, though, is the passing of the “Omniture green”. Omniture is kinda notorious for making all kinds of cool marketing stuff (hats, shirts, pens, Magic 8 balls…) in their trademark green color… which just happens to be my favorite color. This has been awesome for me, as I’ve gotten some weird swag in my favorite color. But from now on everything coming home will be Adobe red. Which… red? M’eh.

Thursday night there was an Omniture party. Sort of a last horrah party before being absorbed into Adobe. Omniture is also notorious for their parties…. Christmas, Halloween… which I’m thinking will now be no longer.

As usual, there was a costume contest. This is something that Jon and I took very seriously. There were prizes for the categories of Most Creative, Funniest, Truest to the Omniture Brand, and Most Likely to Anger Competitors. Jon and I decided to go dressed as money. And not just any money… but money in 1 billion dollars. Billion dollars with the Omniture CEO’s face on it. (We were banking on the CEO liking the idea of his face on huge currency.)

You have to really study this bill to take in all of the detail that Jon put into this thing. The binary numbers spell out OMTR, there’s a small Omniture logo, an Adobe logo, and microprint that says JonnyG 2009.

Then I went to Kinkos and had 300 of them printed out on green paper… the closest to Omniture green I could find. Then I went to Savers and purchased a $4.49 jacket and a $4.99 dress… and after many hours, many staples, and a big can of 3M 77 adhesive, this was the outcome:

We were dubbed “The Billion Dollar Couple”, won Most Creative (Josh James DID like seeing his face on huge currency!), and won a Wii.  I was half expecting a green Wii, but it was white.

We sorta smelled like glue the whole night, and I couldn’t sit down, but overall it was worth it.

(It should be noted here that although Omniture will officially be Adobe on Halloween, they will still hold the big Halloween party… I will have all kinds of pics from that, to be sure.)

So bring on the Adobe red… though I will very much miss the green. Much love, Omniture. Peace.

Jeez.

I mean, jeez…

and by jeez I mean, holy frickin hell!

Hi, friends of the internets… SuzyG here, reporting live from my new home here at Primary Children’s Medical Center, where Deacon and I have been holed up for the last week.

Deacon fell off of our bed last Monday night and whacked his head a good one. Good enough to apparently cause some blood in the brain. And that blood decided to clot… clot like a nice little cork right in the channel where his brain fluid is supposed to drain. So there is all kinds of pressure in his sweet little noggin… his noggin which now sports a nice drainage tube. Yes, that’s right, there is tubing coming out of my baby’s head. And this tubing drains off pinkish-tinted stuff that Jachin likes to call “brain juice”, and it drips and collects in a baggie. A baggie that they just throw our when it gets full.

It is just about the saddest thing you’ve ever seen.

Other than when he had to wear a tiny neck brace for the first three days here…

(pics of all of this later… the hospital computer isn’t really set up for awesome blogging.)

Also, little Deacon has a spy name. It was the name given to him in the trauma ward when he came in (by ambulance, by the way). They give weird names to each of the incoming patients before real names are collected and put into the computer. His name is “CSquareMiami”, which I think is actually cooler than his real name. So I am calling him CSquareMiami from now on. The funny thing is that it took them 5 days to get his real name into the computer. So I’d get calls on the room phone from doctors and nurses saying “Is this CSquareMiami’s mom?”

But yeah, we’ve been here a week so far. If I had to give you one-word description of how Deac and I feel, it would have to be “weary”. I am weary. Deac is weary. We are sad and worn down and feeling a little beaten… a little of the fight has been sucked out of us. The last 7 days are a blur of crying and whimpering and CT scans and MRIs and doctors who all start looking the same (except for Dr. Kestle… he’s the man). One day bleeds slowly into the next, and all the days’ edges seemed faded and worn. The only way I know for sure how long we’ve been here is to hold my ever-growing hairy leg stubble up in the sunlight and see how long the shadows cast. (However, this method is less than totally accurate since I didn’t shave my legs the day of the falling incident.)

I have so much to tell you, internets. Stuff is oozing out of me like a leaky IV. But for tonight I am too tired. Too worn.

Too weary.

More to come… but pray for us, internets. Deac and I are ready to go home.

Once upon a time, I submitted a number of stories and poems to children’s magazines. None of my stuff was ever accepted by anyone, but every rejection letter meant that I was trying. It meant that I was finishing something and putting it out there to be judged and scrutinized by total strangers. My first rejection letter almost killed me… not really, but that’s how it felt. I thought my writing career (can I call it a career when I’ve never, ever been paid a dime for anything?) was over because my first story wasn’t picked up by the first person who read it. (In retrospect, my first story was a horrible piece of writing. Generic, lame, and boring. I know this now. But at the time, I thought for sure it was gold.) That first rejection letter stung. The second stung a little less, but not by much. After a while, though, I came to expect those irksome rejection letters. They were the norm. If ever I would have gotten one of those elusive “yes letters”, it would have just been a pleasant surprise.

It’s been several years since I’ve submitted anything to anyone. But this past week I wrote something and decided to submit it. I will now take you through the process, should you ever want to receive your own rejection letter.

Step one:

Write a story.

This sounds like the easy part, but it’s actually the hardest part. You have to write something… start to finish. It has to have a beginning, middle, and end. In that order. Magazines prefer for these stories to not suck, but if you are truly trying to get a rejection letter, a sucky story will actually help your cause.

Step two:

Pull out old course material that goes through how to properly format your manuscript.

This course material — if you are anything like me — is probably located in the same dusty binder where you keep your old info on successfully training for a marathon.

(When I was a little younger, I used to think I could do hardish stuff, like marathons.)

Step three:

Read through outdated catalog of children’s magazine markets, finding a suitable magazine for your story.

Then, since the info is outdated, Google the magazine to find out if the editor has changed in the last few years. It would be much easier just to buy a current catalog of children’s magazine markets, but you like doing things the hard, complicated way… right?

Step four:

Fold up your manuscript and inset into envelope. Apply stamp. (You are partial to Bob Hope stamps… well, not really, but you were too embarrassed to ask the guy at the post office for the Bart Simpson ones.)

Lick envelope, paper-cutting your tongue. This bad luck is an omen of something, you are sure.

Step five:

Insert envelope into mailbox and put up the little flag, signaling to the world that you have once again put yourself out there for judgment and scrutiny.

Try not to imagine the editor sitting around drinking glasses of wine with her girlfriends, laughing mockingly at your manuscript until she falls off of her leather couch.

Step six:

Go back into your house and have some dark chocolate, reassuring yourself that your story isn’t total garbage.

Wait six to twelve weeks for a rejection letter. (Try not to obsess about your manuscript for those six to twelve weeks… it may help to periodically eat more chocolate.)

(Side note: there is also another option for submissions; it’s this newfangled thing called “email”. Some magazines let you email your submission via your high-tech computer, bypassing the need for any Bob Hope stamps or tongue paper cuts.)

The one thing that makes me feel warm and fuzzy about getting back out there is that Zoe is now old enough to see what I’m doing. She has decided that she, too, wants to write and submit stories to magazines. She has decided to write a story for Hopscotch magazine because it states in the children’s market catalog that Hopscotch pays writers 5 cents a word. To which Zoe looked at me with eyes bulging out of her cute little head and exclaimed “I’m gonna be rich! “

Yep, a rich writer… just like her mom.

Ok, so I’m starting to think that it’s me. Am I a little smelly? Do I consistently have something in my teeth? Are my jokes annoying? (I know the answer to that last question…)

Why is it that all of my best friends are moving far away from me??

It’s now been over a year since Diana moved back to the east coast. And if you ask her, she will tell you that her life has never been better since our separation. Diana is the person that I’d known the longest here in Utah. I met her while I was pregnant with Jachin.That means that I’ve known her for about 11 years or so.

The next oldest friend I have out here is Heidi. We used to be neighbors. I’ve known her for about 8 or 9 years. And guess what? She’s moving to Portland, Oregon today. Portland is also on a coast, though it’s the west coast. It’s like both of them went as far away as they could before going, “Crap, an ocean… I guess we can’t get any further away from Suz without actually living under water”.

Heidi’s family is moving because her husband took a job opportunity in Portland. He is what I used to call a financial planner , but he’s actually more than that. Heidi calls him a wealth manager. All I know is that by moving to Portland, he will basically be over all the money in the state of Oregon. Read: they will be lots richer.  She told me about the house on the lake that they will be renting. She said it’s a good house for entertaining. Now, I know all about entertaining. I entertain my neighbors by weeding my yard while wearing my reindeer-print pajama pants and screaming at my kids at the top of my lungs. (It’s quite entertaining… ask them.) Heidi is in a whole different sphere of entertaining, though. Her entertaining includes things like shmoozing and catered dinners and people wearing pants with high-heels. In truth, she is way too classy to be my friend. I’m scared she’ll figure this out one day. Okay, okay, I’m actually pretty sure she already knows. I’ve shown up a few times to these entertaining deals in my Target clothes and flip-flops, laughing like a drunk mule at my own jokes, scarfing down hors d’oeuvres like I’m scared someone else will have some. And she’s still been my friend the next day. (Though she did stop inviting me to so many things where other people would be.)

(Here we are golfing a couple of years ago… trust me, I am embarrassing to golf with, but she did it anyway.)

For our last outing  before her move, we went to have pedicures. We both got Glitter Toes. (It was my first time.) Mine are done in Celery, and hers are in Vegas Pink. We chatted about things, mostly the move. She was still freaking out a little because the whole thing was happening so fast. I was freaking out a little because there goes another of my friends. And while I have lots of “friends” as far as people I know and talk to (if you ask Facebook ,I have over a 150 friends!) I am dwindling on “friends” that are actually in physical proximity. Friends that I do more than just check the “Like” button for their comments. Friends that I know and trust. That I’m comfortable with. That I can be ugly in front of. That know that I’m not actually all that funny in person… and who are okay with that.

So I’m holding interviews. Wanna be my friend? What if I mentioned that there would be a salary involved?

I miss you, Diana.

And I’ll miss you, too, Heidi.

(inquire for applications)

Raise your hand if you have a mythical creature living in the playroom of your house.

You can’t see me, but I am raising my hand. I seriously doubt that you are raising yours.

Meet Dave:

Dave is a centaur … a word of Greek origin meaning “winged horse with a Ken doll head”.

The kids named him. “Dave” is about the least mythical-sounding name I can think of, but whatever. Apparently in the magical forest from whence Dave hails, the creatures are less hoity-toity  with their names than those creatures from, say, Middle Earth.

Until just recently, Dave has been great. He eats very little, he’s quiet, mostly keeps to himself. He never poops on the green shag carpet.  If he throws parties late at night, we never know about it… he cleans the place up. The dishes in the Barbie house are always done, and the brightly colored doll furniture is never broken.

Recently, though, Dave has been “exploring” outside of the playroom. I found him rummaging through my wallet, trying to get my Amex number.

When I asked him what he was doing, he explained that he ran out of shampoo and needed to go out for some Mane ‘n Tail. I pointed out that he doesn’t have a mane. He has a plastic head. And his tail is made of fake hair; plastic, as well. He laughed nervously and replaced my card.

Only an hour later I found him back in my wallet, this time with my library card.

Mama don’t play that.

Credit cards are one thing, but rackin’ up fines on my library card? Um, no. I hid my wallet at that point.

Then I caught him passing on some very un-gentlemanly behavior to some of the other toys.

Barbies are one thing. They’re of age. (Some of them are actually quite the Cougars.) But leering at underage toys? That’s just yucky. And Little Ducky had always been such an innocent little thing. Not with Dave around…

The real kicker, though, was this morning when I found Dave with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. And by hand in the cookie jar, I really mean face in the Diet Coke.

Not cool, Dave. (We all know how I feel about my Diet Coke.) He claimed, of course, that he’d been flying and fell in accidentally. Except that my glass had been full when I left it.  A point to which Dave had no response other than to belch. A really, really loud carbonated belch. It was a gross yet mythical sound.

Dave has been grounded. He is not allowed out of the playroom. These mythical creatures, man, you give them an inch, they take a Dwarf-ish mile…. which sounds like it might be a shortish mile, but it’s really a regular sized mile…

We’ll see how he behaves in the coming days.

On a very nostalgic note: Dave’s head hails from my very first Ken doll, Dream Date Ken. I got him for Christmas the year I was 6 or 7. It should be noted that Dream Date Ken was always very well-mannered. This tells me that all of these recent shinanigans must originate from the Dave’s horsey parts…

I mean, seriously… what attention hounds, these kids of mine. They were wanting three meals a day. Almost every day. And some days? Snacks, too.

They were wanting clean clothes. Again, every day! And not just wiped off with a washcloth and heavily Fabreezed… no, actually washed. In that machine that washes clothes. Something about “some kids’ parents don’t think we have a mom when we wear the same ketchup-stained shirt three days in a row… and no underwear”. And something about “mom, we aren’t allowed to drive ourselves to our friends’ houses in your car”. Pshaw.

And the tiny kid… y’know, the baby one? He is the worst about it. He wants food put directly into his mouth for him. And clothes put directly on his body.  And his tush wiped for him! Something about “dude, I’m a baby and can’t even get my hands to go into my mouth when I want them to”.

Again, pshaw.

Yep, these kids were getting way too needy and stuff. They needed a lesson in self-sufficiency. Needed to learn to stand a little on their own two feet! (Except the baby one… he can’t stand yet.)

And to them I said: Quit being so needy! Do some stuff for yourselves, tiny people!

So I signed up with Twitter.

Because between my blog and Facebook and Flickr, I was being left with, like, 15 minutes of free time every day. Time I was using to cook meals and wash clothes and wipe tiny tushies.

But no more!!

From now on, my kids may look a little more homeless. A little less like kids who have parents. But they are learning to do things for themselves! Especially the baby one… I am teaching him to  hold a baby wipe and reach his own tush as we speak. (Seriously, I can write a blog post and teach a baby to wipe his own butt at the same time. I am frickin awesome like that.)

Because, TWITTER!

Follow me…

y’know, after you’ve put in that call to Children’s Services…