Cold Front

A few weeks ago, a cold front blew through our house and the girls decided to dress themselves appropriately. I must have accidentally left the air on 79 or something.

(Note that the mittens are socks.)

Poor Lex didn't get a choice about whether or not she wanted to be a part of this game. The girls squeezed her newborn hospital hat or her head just for good measure.

Chunky Monkey

Holy cow, I love this sweet baby. Never thought a baby could be patient, but this one is. She is so amazing and snuggly and round and happy and wonderful. I just can't get enough!

Plus, there is an added bonus: her cute legs are so chunky that she actually gets stuck in her chair. It has become a two-man job to get her out. I think I'll go pinch her in her sleep.

Buying a Bathing Suit: The Great Equalizer

Summer is here in full swing, folks, and in addition to confronting triple digit temperatures and astronomical electric bills, it's time to face the dreaded bathing suit season.

I, like many of my contemporaries, hate buying a bathing suit. First of all, they are too expensive. Second of all, if you want to buy one that fits, you have to try one on. (Or two, or three, or however many it takes to find one that will hide everything that you want it to hide without pinching everything that you don't want it to pinch.) And if you want to try one on, you must subject yourself to dressing-room lighting, which is, unquestionably and yet ironically, the harshest and most unforgiving lighting on the planet.

For the past two summers, I have happily gotten away with not buying a bathing suit. This is in large part because any time that I considered taking the plunge and buying a new one, (pun intended) I have completely and utterly chickened out. And as much as I blame the priciness of the whole endeavor, deep down I know that it is something else altogether. So, alas and alack, after two years of beach camping and splash park going and general swimming revelry, I was faced with one sad fact: it was time for a new one.

Last Wednesday, during that magical hour between dinner and bedtime, I decided to face the truth and make a run for it. With a newfound determination, I drove as quickly as I could to Kohl's where they were having a half-off bathing suit sale for one day only. I rushed into the store and made a quick left, and there it was: that over-priced, glistening section of women's apparel that has been the source of millions of women's self-esteem issues for decades. I literally wanted to turn around and walk out.

Bravely, however, I approached the racks. Another woman that was there perusing must have sensed my apprehension. "Having fun?" she asked, jokingly. I told her exactly what I was thinking: "You know, there is something inherently traumatizing about shopping for a bathing suit." She responded, "I know. They should just have an order window where you can go up and tell them exactly what you need." "Yes," I said. "You should be able to just list you body type and problem areas, and then they can come up with the perfect bathing suit for you." She nodded in agreement. Kindred spirits, we were. It was so nice to bond with someone during such a difficult ordeal.

I knew I couldn't stand there indefinitely with a grimace on my face, so, trying to be confident, (but really panicking) I grabbed a few selections that were "sure" to at least mostly fit... and headed for the dressing room. (Unfortunately my selection included the most granny-like bottoms I could find.)

Round one: Nothing fits. Not even the granny bottoms. I take them back to the rack, where my new friend is still looking. Shoving them back into the wrong places, I mumbled, "that was even more depressing than I thought." She looks at me and smiles sympathetically.

Now I am even closer to a panic. I race through the racks, and in the meantime, "I shouldn't be here, these aren't even the right sizes, I will never find one that fits, I need to get back home, this is ridiculous" is repeating in my head like a broken record. What a sad mommy.

Finally I manage to make a new selection, promising myself that I will leave the store and never come back if this one doesn't fit. Smartly, I grab the size bigger than I think I am and...ta-da! I have squozen into it, and I can still breathe, and not quite everything shows, and it's half-off, so I won't even have to take out a loan to buy it. Whew. (Why doesn't every bathing suit have a tummy control panel?) Too bad my friend wasn't around to join in my silent celebration. Time to get out of there.

I rush out of the store, both because I want to distance myself from the too-new memory of the experience, and because I am sure that, by now, my baby is screaming back at the house. (Which she was.) I walk to my car like a soldier returning to his homeland with immeasurable spoils, and I comfort myself with the fact that I never have to do it again. Because I have decided that this is the bathing suit that's going to last forever.

Fruit Lovers Anonymous

Now you know why we call her Savanna Banana.

Where Have all the Batteries Gone?

There are many things in our household that frequently vanish into thin air. Cell Phones. Remote Controls. Sippy Cups. Keys. Scissors. Pens. Shoes. Those are just a few. Today, I realized that we can add something else to the list: batteries. Like any faithful parents, we buy batteries and then we place them into toys, tiny screwdrivers flailing about as if we are performing a very intricate surgery. But no matter how many batteries we buy, they all seem to disappear without the courtesy of leaving a forwarding address. So, when batteries run out and we want* to replace them, there are none to be found. Hmm.

(Here the word "want" refers to the desire to replace batteries in a very select group of important toys. The rest of the time a small celebration ensues when certain things run out of batteries, never to be heard from again.)

Culprit #1: It doesn't help that almost all of the clocks in our house run on batteries. (That's 6 clocks. Not that many, maybe, but all those clocks combined have at least enough batteries to run one small musical butterfly and a Little People bulldozer.) Unfortunately, at any given time, the batteries in 2 or more clocks have died, leaving them completely stopped. For example, the clock in our bedroom has said that it is 9:45 since probably February, when I had my third child and stopped thinking about unimportant things like what time it is. Or what day it is. So, 4 months later, when I finally started caring about what time it is, and I actually took the time to replace the dead battery, I couldn't. find. any. Okay, that isn't entirely correct. I found lots of batteries, they were just all dead.

Culprit #2. I'm gonna have to blame the toys. All 8,967 of them. Now I know that we have never had batteries for all of them, but I used to be pretty good about switching them around and giving each toy an equal chance to fulfill its purpose through song or movement. My latest quest, however, (tiny screwdriver in hand) to search out, remove, and change out batteries, ended in utter failure. While I thought that our toy piano would be the lucky recipient of a 3-AAA battery transplant, I was unable to perform the operation. There were just no donors. Not the Little People race car. Not the garbage truck. Not the musical butterfly. Indeed, all hope seemed to be lost.

So, full aware of the consequences of not having a tiny piano for my 4-month-old to play with while sitting adorably in her Bumbo chair, I became desperate. Wielding my tiny screwdriver, I opened every single toy, upstairs and downstairs, hoping against hope that the 3 necessary working batteries would be found. A-ha! There were two in the non-descript yellow insect that sings about shapes. One more, only one more to go...I finally found it! (To be honest, I don't remember where I found it but the important thing is that I did, right?) The batteries were all dead, but rechargeable, so I defibrillated them in the charger and then placed them oh so lovingly in the musical piano with my skilled surgeon's hands.

Only by this time the baby was ready for her nap. And she has yet to play with that stinking piano. And I realized that I spent all morning on something that wasn't that important. And then I spent all night writing about it.

I am sure I began this thrilling story with a moral. But now that it is done, I am unsure what that moral was. Something to do with buying more batteries, perhaps? All I know is that I'm glad that when I see the clock in my bedroom I can still pretend that it is 9:45 and not the time that it really is right now.