i'm sorry, i can't stop laughing long enough to come up with a witty title

i need a nap

"wile, do you want some lip stuff?"

"yeah!"

"here you go."

"no! not dat kind! otha kind!"

"why don't you just have this kind, i already have it open..."

"no, not want that kind [cups hands together], want that kind [hits edges of palms together]!"

"i...don't know what kind that is. would you like cherry?"

"yup."

"okay. [procure cherry lip gloss.] here you go."

"no!"

"wile...."

"want rose!"

"oh, you mean the kind i originally offerd you?"

"yah."

"here you go."

"nooooo....."

"okay, no lip stuff."

[we make it ten feet down the sidewalk.]

"mama, want cheeeeese."

"i don't have any cheese."

"want cheese!"

"wile, i don't have any, how about--"

"please, mama, wile want cheese."

"that was very nice, but i still don't have any. here, have some apples."

"nooooooooo......."

[silence. sound of apples beign eaten.]

"mama!"

"yes?"

"dere's one apple on dis apple!"

".....ummmmm..."

"dere's one apple on dis apple, right here!"

"there's a piece of apple...on your apple?"

"no, one!"

"oh.... okay."

close encounter

dear alien being who has apparently taken over wile's body,

it took me a little while to realize that my child had been possessed, or subsumed, or whatever it is you aliens call it when you enter a host body and start controlling it. but then we went out to lunch the other day, remember? and "wile" started eating the tofu out of my salad? tofu! and then he (you, whatever) asked to eat some of the "leaves". as in, the salad. the green salad. wile. the child who made his father dissect a piece of pizza to remove a microscopic shred of basil that was lurking below the cheese and ruining his entire dining experience. the child who thrusts his dumpling filling into my face and demands that i "take off!" the chives. this child asked me for lettuce. and he ate it! and asked for more! that's when i knew something was up. this was not my son.

then the next day, at playgroup, mona offerd him some ravioli with spinach. and he said yes. and he ate them. and asked for more. that sealed it. wile? was no longer with us.

so, i just wanted to acknowledge your presence, say how nice it is to have you around.

now maybe you could work on getting the host body to walk up the stairs on its own? great, thanks.

xoxo
"mama"

edited to add: photographic proof!

reap what you sow

the most memorable toast given at stephen and my wedding was, i'd have to say, the one given by our best man, nate, who basically stood up there with the mic and said "these guys...are the best!" several...hundred...times. okay, maybe only like three times. but it felt like a lot more. less memorable to the general public, perhaps, but one of my favorite things about our wedding, was our best woman's toast: sarah simply said, "to kristen and stephen; may life live up to your expectations and your specifications."

so, yeah. both of us are a little...opinionated. firm in our likes and dislikes. some would say picky. some would say compulsive.

and this appears to be something that is carried in the dna.

this morning at playgroup, wile went off on gwen for holding the piece of toast that he shared with her wrong. i mean, really—you give up a piece of your toast to someone, asking nothing in return, and they have the audacity to hold it wrong? what is this world coming to? gwen, to her credit, looked at him like he was nuts as he reached over and adjusted the toast in her hand, then crammed the whole thing in her mouth. good girl.

then this evening, we had wile's friend lucas over for dinner. about halfway through the meal, wile yells, with palpable horror, "oh!! mama!!" i jump out of my seat and go to see what has befallen him, and it's, well, it's almost too horrible to show....it's.....



a piece of food! on the table! call in the professionals, i don't know if i can handle this one on my own!

you know, when wile was an infant, he would cry for an hour or two every afternoon. i assumed that it was digestive issues, but maybe i was wrong. maybe he didn't like the onesie i had picked out, or his stuffed animals were in the wrong order on the shelf, or i had been holding my teacup incorrectly.

it's the journey, not the destination

wile and i were having one of our battles about the stairs. [i know i think i said that i had won the stair war, but i was only fooling myself.] he asked me to pick him up and carry him up the stairs. i said no. he cried and wailed. i walked upstairs and left him there, screaming and carrying on. i did some dishes and put some food away. he screamed. stephen came by and tried to calm him down, no dice. more screaming.

finally i went downstairs and talked him down a little bit. then i told him that i wasn't going to pick him up but that he needed to come upstairs, and i took him by the hand and "helped" him "walk" up the stairs. his feet were technically making contact with the steps, but it wasn't walking. when we finally got to the top, i led him in to the kitchen and tried to distract him with talk of snacks and cat-feeding.

i turned away from him for a second, and when i turned back he had run out of the kitchen and back into the hallway, where he proceeded to walk back down the stairs, crying and yelling for "mama pick wile up! carry up stairs!"

why yes, we are screwed, thank you for noticing.





ps - this is what my leg looks like now, post-mudslide:

highs and lows

saturday started off good, got better, got bad, and ended worse.

it's always nice to be prepared for an unhappy ending, right?

so saturday morning we all got up at a decent hour and headed out to the farmer's market, my favorite weekly ritual. i shopped, wile and stephen played in the park....and then i hopped on the subway and took off for manhattan! all by my own self!

i cruised the apple store and played with the new macbooks, hopped over to uniqlo and gave in to my longings and bought myself some skinny jeans (hey, if a trend is meant for you, you have no choice but to give in), then made my way over to the real reason for my afternoon of non-mamahood: the taping of the pilot of the tv version of cringe. which was fantastic in its own right, and you must watch it when it airs on tlc, partly because it is hilarious and you'll get to see, among other things, a guy singing a song he wrote for his high school crush that contains the line "you took my heart and ate it like a ham on rye", and partly because i'm pretty sure you'll get to see me, as i was in a primo seat and the camera guy was way up in my grill. but then! it got better. because look who i met!



yes, that is who you think it is! before the taping started, my friend robin (there on the right in the photo in the black sweater), who got us the primo seat, pointed out that heather was sitting behind us and said we should go over together and ask for a picture, by which she meant we should go over together with me walking first and i should ask for a picture. which, obviously, we did, and i did, and heather was as nice as you could possibly imagine, and we only felt a little bit like dorks, and i refrained from telling her that i had emailed her about her piece on friday night lights because i didn't want to seem like a stalker, and though i look like refried butt in that photo it still makes me happy.

so, to recap so far: morning? good! afternoon? great!

then i went home.

and for a while things continued to be great, as the boys were still out (stephen having driven wile up to visit the grandparents in white plains so that he would nap in the car) and i had some home-to-myself time. but then they came home. and then stephen went down in the basement for some reason, i can't remember what, and wile and i heard him scream "FUCK!!!" because when he got to the bottom of the basement stairs he saw this:



apparently during the huge-ass rainstorm this past wednesday, our basement had flooded. which, three days later, left us with mud and many many soggy boxes of potentially ruined belongings. aaaaaaawesome.

we put wile to bed and started assessing the damage, carrying up stuff that was savable, making a big garbage pile, and generally feeling sad/angry. then at about 12:30 i was coming back down the muddy basement stairs and completely bit it. i tried to grab the wall and save myself but only succeeded in almost dislocating my left shoulder, and landed full-force on my ass anyway. i somehow got myself upstairs and out of my muddy (new!) jeans and boots and on to the couch, feeling the whole time like i was going to pass out. thus ended my basement adventures, and my day.



so, aftermath: we spent all of sunday bringing more stuff up, washing mud off stuff, reboxing stuff, throwing out all of my high school yearbooks (not entirely a bad thing....) and many of my childhood books that i was saving for wile (too sad too even think about....), etc.

at least one of us is happy about the house being full of cardboard boxes:

his first original composition

"the backhoe song". with background vocals by truck and lulu....

i thought having a boy meant not having to have that talk....

"that was really great that you just told me right after you pooped."

"yah!"

"but you know what would be better?"

"what?"

"if you told me before you pooped—then we could run upstairs and you could poop in the potty."

"no—wile poop in diapy, mama wipe wile's butt."

"well, yeah, that's how we do things now, but soon you're going to stop wearing diapers, and poop in the potty all the time. mama and dada don't wear diapers, right?"

"mama wear diapys!"

"no, mama uses the potty."

"no, mama wear diapys!"

"no, mama....oh. ummmmm......"

logic

it's getting a little exhausting.

wile and i have had the following philisophical discussions in the last 72 hours:

1) "no, mama, put shoe on dat foot!"

"honey, i can't. that shoe won't fit on that foot. it has to go on the other foot."

"nooooo! dat shoe on dat foot! dat fooooooot!"

"no babe, that's not how shoes work—see, they're shaped different, and the zippers are on different—"

"aaaaiiiiiiiiiiii! [grabs shoe] no! no!"

time needed to get shoes on to proper feet: 20 minutes.



2) we were out on a walk, hauling a few boxes of stuff to the salvation army in our big red wagon. we get to a corner and wile points west and says "go dat way!". my life flashes in front of my eyes. i take a deep breath.

"no, sweetie, the salvation army is this way [pointing south]."

"nooooooooooo!"

we stood on that corner for 15 minutes debating the merits of going 5 blocks out of our way. and by debating, i mean screaming (well, one of us). and running away. and screaming some more. and finally having to be picked up and carried a half block. after half a block, i decided i couldn't carry him and pull the wagon, so for the rest of the journey i held his hand while he walked and screamed and tried to pry his hand out of mine and people on the street made really helpful comments like "aw, she wants to ride in the wagon! you'll get to ride in the wagon soon, honey!" yes, thank you—give him something else to be upset about. now not only am i questioning his navigational skills, but he's not riding in the f-ing wagon.

all in all though, it could have been worse—at least he walked (protesting all the way, but still). he could have gone limp in the middle of the sidewalk and i would have had to leave him there. (i kid!) when we got to the salvation army the sight of the big trucks unloading furniture made everything alright.


3) every morning we get up and i open the shade in wile's window. every morning. apparently, on monday morning wile had had enough of the shade-opening regime.

"aaaaaiiiiiiiii! no ope shade! no ope shade!"

"wile, it's okay—"

"noooooooo!"

i was too exhausted (having been at the jets game all day and up watching the mets game all night the day before) to do anything but sit back and let him get it all out. stephen tried to mediate and was basically told to stay the hell out of it, this was between him and mama. i managed to get him into our room and away from the sight of the awful, terrible open shade, and he calmed down.

now, this is one i could have negotiated on—if he had taken the volume and the pitch down a bit and asked nicely—if i had gotten more than 4 hours of sleep the night before and less than 3 vodka drinks the day before. but as things stood, i didn't have the strength to make it happen.


4) "mama get that thing for wile"

"that thing right there, 10 inches away from your foot? that thing that's right in front of where you are, sitting on the floor, but pretty far from where i am, standing up on this stool cleaning out your closet?"

"yah. mama get."

"no honey, you can get that yourself."

"no, mama get!"

"just lean forward and get it, wile. it's right there."

"no, mama get! mamaaaa!"

"......."

"nice, please, mama get?"

"that was really nice asking, wile, but i still think you should get it."

"noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause, bloodcurdling shreik, pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get! [pause] noooooooo, mama get!"

by the last few reps, he was just going through the motions, and eventually he gave up, went and played with something different, and came back later and got the thing really slyly, hoping that i wouldn't see.

5) the time has come, the walrus said, to stop lugging 25 pounds of toddler up and down 2 steep flights of stairs numerous times a day.

wile thinks the walrus should go suck an egg.

we played three or four rounds of "stair standoff" in the last few days. not a fun game, if you were wondering. the first couple times, it went like this: i agreed to carry him down the first set of stairs (to the living room) if he would walk down the second set (to the office). he agreed. we got to the second set and he had absolutely no memory of saying any such crazy thing! so he stood in the middle of the stairs and screamed. i tried to talk to him, but it was so easy to be heard over the screaming. so i walked to the bottom of the stairs and let him scream and hoped that if he started to pitch forward i could catch him before he split his skull open. eventually, he came down.

then we moved on to him refusing to even make the false agreement in the first place. more standing, more screaming, more eventual walking.

but! now? not a peep. walks down the stairs like he's been doing it for years.

score one for the good guys!

not that i'm keeping score.

or think of wile as "the bad guys".

at least not at this moment.

plea

i need to ask a favor.

remember when this happened?

well, i've gotten over it and found a new love. and i've fallen hard, people.

the critics love it, but the word on the street (or, i should say, on the internet) is that it's not doing so well in the ratings, and though nbc says they're committed to it, it could be on it's way to.......cancellation. nooooooo!

so, all i'm asking is this: check it out. go on. just one episode. you can even watch on line.

the problem seems to be that a lot of potential viewers (possibly like you) are saying "a show about football? not for me, thanks anyway." but this show is about football like moby dick was about a whale. stop laughing. i'm serious. it's about family and fleeting glory and the pressures of a crazy-ass small town and hot teenage boys. i've cried at least once during every episode i've watched so far.

and ladies, if you're not convinced, let me just say this. thank you, and goodnight.

edited to add: see, i'm not alone!

avast!

wile wanted to look at pictures of "baby wile", and we found these. and i couldn't resist sharing.

hissy update!

so i finally gave in to my urges and emailed hissy's new family to see how she's doing.

i got a really nice email back that read, in part:

"Kitty is fine. And guess what - she is a BOY! I had named her Misifu and already had gotten a pet tag and a pink collar before the vet let me know so I just left everything as is and consider him a drag queen."

whoops....

and: hee!

and: i am even more convinced that s/he went to a good home.

and i don't think a monster truck would help

if you took a poll of all the moms i know, i think the consensus would be that the first 12 months with baby is the hardest. it's all-consuming. you don't sleep. you never ever ever ever have a minute to yourself (okay, you have a couple, but it feels like you don't). you have to take blind stab-in-the-dark guesses as to what the hell you should do to stop the crying, and at least 50% of the time you're wrong. and the main, overriding thing is that it's such a complete departure from your life up to that point. when you call up one of your friends who doesn't have kids and they tell you about the great day they had shopping and going out to dinner, it's all you can do not to hang up on them. right after telling them to kiss your ass.

but where we are now? at 2? hard in a totally different way.

for that first year, for the most part you're dealing with physical needs: poop in the diaper, hunger, gas, too cold, too hot, etc. but now the little muffin has turned into a person. and he doesn't only have needs, he has wants. let me rephrase that: he has WAAAAAANTS.

stephen and i were just having a little discussion about something, and the first thing that popped out of my mouth was "don't argue with me—i spend all day every day arguing."

it's true. i'm less a mom than a hostage negotiator. i listen to demands, i weigh their validity, and i give my answer. sometimes the guns are laid down; sometimes innocent victims (our afternoon, my nerves, his nap) die.

our latest standoff came about an hour ago when i was putting him down for his nap. first he laid down on his bed, on his stomach, and said "mama change diapy upside-down." he wouldn't accept that that was just not phsically possible, and screamed as a i hauled his butt up to the changing table and laid him down on his back. then i took off the diaper. "no mama wipe wile hurt butt! no mama use dat cream! no wile wear black diapy! wile wear yey-yow diapy! no, maaaa-maaaaa!" i put him back down on the bed, and he grabbed his pajamas from where they were hanging on his bed guard. "wile wear truck jamas!" no, we only wear jamas when we sleep at night, you can nap in your clothes. "no, wile wear truck jamas! wile wear! wile wear truck jams!" wile, just lie down, it's time to– "noooooo! wile wear! wile wear truck! wile wear truck jamas!" at which point, as he spiralled off into a parallel universe, a very loud, very tear-filled universe, i had to go out in the hallway for a minute and let him scream. i went back in, picked him up, he calmed down a little, i laid him down, and he went down for his nap.

now, at this point, you may be thinking, as i was, why not just let him wear the gaddamn pajamas? and believe me, i almost did. but if i give in, am i only letting myself in for exponentially more screaming fits? i don't want to live in a world where screaming and crying = getting what you want. i've lived in that world for the past two years, and it's time to start moving on. it's time to free the hostages. but it's going to be a long standoff....

hissy has left the building

and i am 75% okay with that.

she left on friday morning, and i'm much better now. i still miss her and worry that her new parents aren't giving her as much love as we were. that they're not letting her sleep on their pillows at night, and that she doesn't curl up into a little ball and start purring when they pick her up like she did with me. that she had imprinted on to me as her new mama and is now feeling abandoned.

but really, we just couldn't keep her. there was too much of this:





and really, i think she went to a good place. the woman who took her said that her last cat had gotten out of their house and gotten lost and though they searched for her for a long time and even scoured the local pet shelters, they never found her. so it's not like she was going to a novice cat owner. and hissy will be growing up with the woman's son, who is 14 months. so that's nice to think about, especially since hissy suffered wile's affection really well:



but, of course, the flip side of that line of thinking is that man, wouldn't it be nice to have a kitten for wile to grow up with instead of these two grumpy old felines who he wouldn't have the strength to hoist of the ground even if they'd let him... alas, that way madness (and sadness) lies.

so farewell, sweet hissy....

a tale of three kitties

this is our new houseguest:



i call her "hissy".

she has a slightly inflated sense of self....

okay, to start at the beginning:

last week, mona took in these two little hooligans:



she found them outside the elderly housing complex on her block, a notorious flophouse for stray cats. the mama was still in the picture—mona had even seen them nursing one day—but these kittens were clearly on the fast track to feralville. so even though she had reservations about dragging them away from their mama and her milk too early (always an especially touchy subject for us nursing moms), she scooped them up. she took in black kitty (they're still working on names) first, thought about giving him away, decided to keep him, decided that if she was going to take in kitties she'd rather have two, and went back for stripey. the two of them are crazy, spazzy, adorable, noisy, lovey, and okay with wile and gwen picking them up. stripey likes to climb up the leg of your pants when she wants your attention. they sleep on top of each other then wake up and play kitty death match. they are the perfect kittens.

yesterday we—me, wile, mona, and gwen—were walking past the elderly housing complex and saw hissy. she was wedged in between the glass and the exterior gate of a basement-level window, and she looked....well, we couldn't decide. was she stuck? was she sleeping? it looked like she was just sleeping, but.....maybe not? we decided she was okay and left. this morning we were walking by again (the e.h.c. is on our route to the park) and there was hissy, still all jammed up between the window and the gate. hmmm.

"if she was stuck," mona said, "she'd be crying, right?"

and right on cue, hissy started mewing.

so she went in to the complex and tried to extract hissy, who just wedged herself in furthur. we decided that there really was plenty of room between the window and the gate and that she could get out if she wanted to, and that we'd check on her on our way home from the park. when we made our way back...there was hissy. still outside, 24 hours later. and evenif she could get out, where would she go? out on the sidewalk? i went in this time, and managed, after some fancy maneuvering, to extract her. as i pulled her out, i saw her mama inside the window, which was shut tight.

we stood around deliberating for a couple minutes, then saw a resident of the e.h.c. going in through the main gate and asked him if he could get a maintenance man to come open the window and let the poor baby in to her mama. he seemed sympathetic and told us he'd take care of it. a couple minutes later a maintenance man comes out, we ask him if he can help us, and he says "oh, that's the super's window. those are his cats. he's trying to get rid of the kittens, he's got like 7 cats in there." he's trying to get rid of them by...locking them outside? grrrrr......

then out comes the resident we spoke with, another resident, and the super. we ask the super if this is his kitten. he says yes. we ask if he knew that she was outside, separated from her mother. he said that they go in and out all the time. "yeah," i say, "but it's hard to go in a closed window. can you open it so she can get to her mother?" he tells us again that they "go in and out all the time", which i took to mean "i'm not opening the window, why don't you nosy white women leave me alone." then the other resident starts talking about how they have so many cats living in the complex, cats cats everywhere, always kittens all over the place.... to which mona replies, "well, why don't you get them fixed? there are places that will help you do it." none of them appear to hear her. we end up asking the super again if he really plans on just leaving the kitten out on the streets, and he asks if we want it. we say no, we want it to get back to its mother. he says the kitten's fine and can get in to her mother anytime. we look at the closed window that no kitten i've ever met could get open. we tell him we're taking the kitten. the men all walk away, and we can hear the super saying "...don't know what they're so fucking worried about..." oh, i know. we're just overreacting. i'm sure she'd have a great life on the streets.

and so here i am, with hissy sleeping in my lap.

i still don't know if we're keeping her. she's definitely warming up to me, but not so much to trucky and lulu. she's met both of them, and had the same reaction both times: hissing and yowling and puffing up, like she's some big ol' tom cat who's going to take them down to chinatown. trucky and lulu, contrary to all of my expectations, are fairly chill—more than anything, they look really confused that this little piece of fluff is stepping up to them.

and even if they all get along, we really don't need three cats.

on the other hand, there's this:

hissy: mew! mew! mew!

me: the kitty is sad because she's just a baby, and she's not with her mama.

wile: kitty miss kitty mama?

me: yep, she misses her mama.

wile: [after a little deliberation] wile share mama kitty?

if wile wants to share me with this baby kitty, who am i to say no?

it's all in how you look at it

while he hasn't started throwing big drama-queen tantrums, or hitting, or any of the other "two" behaviors, wile is getting a little bossy. okay, fine, he's always been a little bossy. but now he is extremely verbal and specific in his bossiness. with most of his commands, you can easily understand the reasoning behind them:

"mama! stop comb wile's hair!"
(the hair combing really isn't much fun)

"mama, sit righ dere and dig, big geen shuyul."
(those rocks aren't going to move themselves!)

but sometimes he seems like he's just abusing his power:

"mama, no put hand dada's seat!"
(....?)

"dada, put fork down, plate."
(....??)

when he tosses out one of these more arbitrary directives, stephen sometimes asks why he asks us to do—or not do—such random stuff.

and my answer is this: to wile, "don't hit the walls with your bat" and "don't throw your food on the ground" and "yes, you have to wear pants" probably seem lik we're just pulling shit out of our asses.... i mean, really, pants? like, every day.....??

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!

pillow talk

last night, one a.m.

on my way to bed, hear wile crying. give him five minutes, decide to go in.

w: mama....mama.....ba-boo? ba-boo?

m: no baby, it's time to sleep.

w: ba-boo?

m: lie down and go back to sleep.

w: ba-boo?

m: no ba-boo.

w: ba-boooooooooo

m: wile?

w: aye?

m: listen to me.

w: aye.

m: it's not time for ba-boo.

w: aye.

m: it's time to sleep.

w: aye.

m: okay?

w: aye.

m: i'll lie down with you, but you have to go to sleep.

w: aye.

m: okay. [lying down]

w: ba-boo?

m: okay, i'm going. [getting up and going]

w: maaaa-maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! [repeat at constant pitch (homicidal) and volume (turned up to 11) for about 5 minutes]

m: [going back in] wile.

w: mama yie down?

m: okay, but we're just going to sleep.

w: watey?

m: you want water?

w: aye.

m: okay. [go to bathroom, fill cup, return] here you go.

w: [guzzles water] done.

m: okay, let's go to sleep.

w: aye. [lies down. all seems well.]

just as i'm drifting off i hear

w: no big cup, mets cup

m: mmmm-hmmmm.....

w: no mets...no big....no big cup, mets cup!

m: mmmmmm

w: mama, det mets cup! mama—wile—mama—wile—wile mets cup watey!

m: [sitting up] wha?

w: [now crying at full force] mama det wile watey mets cup! no big cup!

m: no.

w: no big cup!

m: wile, i'm not getting you a different cup.

w: mama, nice, please, wile mets cup?

m: no.

w: wile cup!

m: wile, i'm not getting you a different cup. i'm going back to sleep. [lying down]

w: mama!

m: wile.

w: get...wile...get...mets...watey...

m: wile, it's time to sleep.

w: [thinks about it, heaves huge sigh, lies down] mama yie right dere.

m: i am, i'm lying right next to you.

w: no, mama yie right dere.

m: i'm right here, wile.

w: no, mama! mama yie right dere! [points at spot a half-inch from where i'm lying]

m: okay. [nudges over]

w: no, mama! mama yie right dere!" [points at spot a quarter-inch from where i'm now lying]

m: okay. [nudge, nudge]

w: no, mama! mama yie right dere!" [points at spot an eighth of an inch from where i'm now lying]

m: okay. [nudge, nudge]

w: no, mama! mama yie right dere!" [points at spot an eighth of an inch from where i'm now lying]

m: wile?

w: aye?

m: i'm right there. i am.

w: aye.

m: i'm going to sleep now.

w: aye.

silence for about two minutes........

w: mama!

m: huh! wha!

w: watey?

m: yeah. [get the much blasphemed big cup, hand to wile]

w: [guzzle] done. [hands back cup. lies down. falls asleep.]


really, it's not so different from a lot of conversations i've had in the middle of the night...in college...after a night out at the bar....

5 big ones

this year was anniversary #5, so stephen and i wanted to do something special. we thought perhaps per se? or maybe wd-50? after much deliberation, we decided on....



the allentown fair!

it had it all, really.

first, there was the fine dining. we began with:


(eaten too quickly to get a photo of the actual item...)

and washed it down with:



then we started searching for our main course. first we saw this:



but it just gave us bad flashbacks, so we moved on.

and oh were we glad that we did. becasue we found this:



where we got this:



mmmm-hmm. in trying to sell us the ribs, mr. pigg told us that his ribs "aren't like what you'll get at applebee's or chili's". and while i'm not qualified to verify that statement, i can say that they were porcine perfection. he dry-rubs them with a spice mix and smokes them over an applewood fire, spritzing them occasionally with apple juice, which gives them a nice glaze. and his sauce was perfect—tangy and vinegary, not too sweet and not at all smoky.

and for dessert?



which are little mini fried dough pieces tossed with powdered sugar, which leave you (or at least, me) looking like this:



of course, the fair had more to offer than food. there was shopping:







and attractions? oh, were there attractions....


personally, i would have preferred if the woman was normal-sized and had a ginormous cat, but that 's just me....


bilingual freak show!


and where there's the smallest horse, there's also, of course....


taller than bigfoot!

we rode the ferris wheel, where there is

why? are they afraid of people choking? or, possibly more likely, spitting it down on to innocent bystanders?

and, last but not least:



all that, plus:


children on leashes.

and then, why, look who we ran in to!


hi gener! hi deaner!

oh, and look! it's....


WAYNE!!! hi wayne!!!







and then we went home. the end!

it's official

my status as a project runway fan can be upgraded to "obsessed": i dreamt that i was on the show.

perhaps this is because i spent the evening re-watching last week's episiode and then reading this. and this. oh and this. and this!

i have a little bit of a history of this.... example: i didn't start watching buffy until it was in it's sixth season and they were showing reruns on fx. they showed two episodes, back to back, from 6 to 8 every night. i left work at 5:15 every night for three months and didn't miss an episode.

so, if you didn't already know this about me, now you do: when i get into something, i kind of zero in on it. much like a bloodhound. or a junkie.

no wonder i scared so many boys in high school/college....

gut reaction

wile loves his aunt sar and uncle perry (aka "peggy").

observe:





unfortunately, they make him barf.

exhibit a
wile is three months old, we go over to sar + perry's apartment for football sunday. wile barfs more than he'd ever barfed before and has ever barfed since, soaking me and him. i'm able to borrow cothes from sarah, but wile isn't so lucky. i'd forgetten to bring him a change of clothes (what, i'd only been a mom for 3 months!), and as sar and perry only have cats, not babies, wile ends up wearing home.....a pillowcase. this was the first and most dramatic in a string of times that wile barfed at sar + perry's apartment in his first year of life. i learned to bring lots of extra clothes.

exhibit b
a double whammy, this one was. sarah's bachelorette weekend in manhattan (which i was co-planning) and perry's bachelor weekend in vail (which stephen was co-planning) were scheduled, of course, for the same weekend in january. on the thursday before the big weekend, with stephen already en route to colorado, all hell broke loose. wile and i were both sick for only 24 hours, but stephen didn't fare as well.... maybe it was the fact that his barfing was prefaced by a long plane ride (and a trip to burger king), but he was down for almost the whole weekend. he spent the entire drive from the denver airport to the condo in vail lying on the floor in the back of perry's uncle's suburban, praying for death. he tried to get out on the mountain, but had to be brought home by ski patrol. and then, of course, it spread.... not only to the other bachelors, but to the entire state: there was a flu epidemic in colorado in mid-january. back on the east coast, wile and i between us managed to only pass the ick on to uncle conner, who had come down with my parents to stay with wile.

exhibit c
two months later, the week of the wedding rolls around. we are getting on a plane on sunday to make our way down to miami, the site of the big event. on friday, like clockwork, wile starts barfing. he barfs on saturday. he barfs once on the plane. when we get to florida, he stops barfing and i start. by the day of the wedding, we're both recovered.

exhibit d
this weekend was shmergelfest, the annual wiffleball/bbq/pool party extravaganza thrown by perry and his brother. so, of course, last wednesday wile stared barfing. he barfed wednesday night. he barfed thursday. then, thankfully, no more barfing. stephen and i weren't taken down. and we all attended schmergelfest, where wile discovered the joys of "fwhutaball". but still, there was barfing.

it's like his insides hear me say "party...sarah....perry" and start a-churning.

e-z bake

as if wile hadn't brought in a big enough haul at his birthday party, this weekend stephen's parents brought him his own kitchen. it has almost as much counter space as mine. it really is a wonderful thing: stephen's dad made it for wile's aunt susie when she was little, then it got passed on to cousins marcus and julia, then back to stephen's parents, and, one fresh coat of paint later, on to wile.

wile has grasped the concept of pretend quite firmly. here you can see him preparing some lovely noodles for me:



after noodles, of course, what you'll want is some cake:



potholders? feh! potholders are for sissies!



why yes, it does look delicious



what, this isn't how you serve your cake?



and finally, one can enjoy the fruits of one's labors...




other notable news this week:

-- he's switched from wanting everything "big" to wanting everything "yodee diny" (trans: "little tiny"). we'll see how long this one lasts....

-- he has started to say okay, except it comes out "otay." i just about choke trying not to laugh every single time.