Happy Birthday Papa

Yes, it's December 29th. The kids made you no less than three cakes.
Out of pegs. (Gotta stay thin, ha ha ha....)

All That You Can't Leave Behind

We went to Rochester for Christmas. But more on that later.
I asked Anna to help me out by packing her bag.

[Ten minutes later]
Anna: "Mommy, I'm done. I packed my dresses."
Mommy: "Really? All of them?"
Anna: "No! [scoffing as only a 4-year old can]... Just the pretty ones."

Wow, I'm That Mom, Too

You know: the one whose kid ruins the Christmas group photo.
Note Thomas in the shadows all the way to the right in the middle, above Anna. He started out on the couch like everyone else. As soon as the cameras were raised, he decided to get up and sit just a bit farther away.

And in case you were wondering, this is The Porcelli Family: (roughly) The Fourth Generation.

(This holiday season has certainly taught me a lot about myself, no?)

Look Who's Talking Now

Uh, that would be Jack.
He is also always listening. Which is possibly more disconcerting.
But the good news is I think he is going to be a fairly witty conversationalist. Some examples:

• Jack after oh-so-obviously peeing in the bathtub:
  "Mine potty here."
  
• Jack after discovering a rash on his tummy:
  "I pink, Mommy! I pink!"
• Jack after twirling around in a circle while imitating Anna:
  "House spinning, Mommy, house spinning."
• Jack after Tommy has stolen his pretzel:
  "Mine pretzel is in Tommy's mouth!"
• Jack, after being told we are out of chocolate milk:
  "Buy More!"
• Jack, after listening to Mommy say "He's such a boy!" when Thomas tackled him to get a train:
  [With perfect timing, from the bottom of the scrum...] "He's such a bad boy."
• Jack, getting impatient with Mommy at breakfast time:
  "I big boy I pour Grape Nuts."
  
• Jack, on a long car ride during which only Anna was allowed to hold the portable DVD player:
  "No DVD! Only com-pu-ter! No DVD!"
• Jack, using a shoelace to lead Tommy, who is on all fours and biting the other end of the shoelace:
  "Go horse go! Bite it! Eat it! Go!"
  
• Jack, running with shoelace:
  "Tie Mommy up! Tie Mommy up!"

And he's also very, very sweet:
[pointing at me] "Dis is my Mommy!"
[pointing at me] "I like dis Mommy!"

'Twas The Night After Christmas

I put Anna to bed.
"Mommy, aren't there 12 days of Christmas? So this was only the second one?"

You Got Big Dreams? You Want Fame?

Well fame costs.
And right here is where you start paying--in sweat.

[Back in the 80s, I really loved that show.]

This is where it all began.
The "little Gingers" featured in Discovery Programs' performance of the Nutcracker on December 9th in New York City? Think that came easy?

Think. again.

Popcorn Night Gone Too Far

"Mommy, can we put sticks in the middle of our rug and make a fire?"

Trying To Get Away With It

Anna is sitting at the table. Her plate is empty. She lets me know that she is ready for dessert.
Mommy goes to the sink to wash her hands.
Mommy encounters the remains of Anna's dinner. At the bottom of the drain.
Mommy whacks her toe on the step stool that is pulled up in front of the sink.

After some questioning and a bit of a heart-to-heart regarding the importance of truth and trust and being thankful, it comes down to this:

Me: "Anna, is that your dinner in the sink?"
Anna: "Mommy, it just slipped in there... I mean, there were all these little legs..."

The Rules Of The Game

Anna, Anna, Anna. A few points:

(1) Anna likes to play games. Scrabble Jr, Boggle Jr, Checkers, Pet Show, Chutes and Ladders, Princess Monopoly--if it has letters, a spinner, or sparkly components, she is definitely interested.

(2) Anna likes to make rules. Or (strictly as needed) make up rules.
My advice is: If you are playing a game with her and she says "let's just check the instructions", take this moment to gently remind her that (a) she does not know how to read and (b) this fact, among others, is going to make you suspicious of any Moses/Hammurabi-like revelations regarding the way things are supposed to be done.
Of course, you think, I can always object to any of these last minute additions to the rule book. Well, you can, but she's ready for that:
"Oh, it's there. It's written very small, you just can't see it."

If space and time can be bent and twisted, who are we to assume that Candyland can't?

Whoa! I'm One Of THOSE Parents

Sigh.
Yes, it is true. Evidence:
Last week, Anna brought a donut shaped cardboard cutout home from preschool. Her assignment: to decorate the cardboard as a wreath in any way that she wants.
Anna and I started to work on this. Fast forward ten minutes:

[cue mental image of she and I surrounded by scraps of felt, strands of garland, Elmer's, glitter, and craft glue, and a horse made out of a pipe cleaner]
"Mommy! This is not your wreath, it does not have your name written on it!"

Parental Controls: A Snafu

The whole NC-17 debate really loses some of its luster when your two year old is coming up with content like this.

Party Like A Rockstar?

Nah. Party like a Princess. Now that's a party.
A 'Princess Dress-Up Tea Party' for Caroline's fourth birthday, to be exact, and there is a little shop on the Upper East Side that does only this kind of thing. Dresses, tiaras, wands, sparkly slippers, jewelry, purses, makeup, tea and cake. Truly astonishing. Anna loved it.

It's That Time Of Year

... and Anna and Sloane went to see their first Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. The place was packed with elementary school girls; Gummy bears were sold alongside champagne at intermission.

Anna liked it a lot, particularly the second act. Particularly Hot Chocolate and the Sugar Plum Fairy. Only she keeps referring to her as the "Tooth Plum Fairy".
Which, in the land of sweets, seems somehow strangely appropriate.

Why Does A Glue Stick Look So Much Like Lip Balm?

I don't know.
Tommy doesn't know either.
But it sure didn't taste like Anna's Strawberry Swirl Surprise, that's for sure.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It truly was a gorgeous day in NYC on Thanksgiving. Some proof:

Young Frankenstein

It was Tommy's first Potato Head.
And we were all speechless.
He was really, really, really proud of himself.

How It's Gonna Be

I will relay a short anecdote:

Thomas pushes Jack.
I tell Tommy to apologize.
Tommy looks at Jack.
Tommy says "I sorry Jack."
... and delivers another good shot to Jack's midsection.

Remember This Post

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream ?
Well, to make a long story short, times have changed.

My children now cry for: Mita-mins, La-la-pop, and Happy To You.
Which, roughly translated from Tommy-speak, yields: Vitamins, Lollipops, and Birthday Cake.

Nice. Progress is our middle name.

Kindergarten Interview: What You Wish You Knew

Sigh.
All I will say is, at the end of my "roundtable discussion with current parents", after Anna and all the other children came bounding back into the room with their little flashlight souvenirs, I was very happy that Anna jumped on my lap, smiled, asked me to open my mouth, and shined her little light inside.

How cute is this?, I thought. Clearly, any admissions professional would be able to see that Anna loves me and we are connected and she is brilliant and interested in lots of things like teeth and tongues and excited to explore and will obviously be hugely successful.
(As soon as she graduates from college. Which is some time after she starts Kindergarten.)
All of this was clear to me.
Let's just make it brutally clear to everyone else, shall we?

Wow Anna, what do you see?

"Hmmmnnn, Mommy. Well, I see a tooth. And a tongue. And cavities... "
[Hmmnn, mention of cavities maybe not so great but maybe we will count as dental diversity or something]
"... and a piece of apple stuck in your teeth."

Hah! Funny, eh?
Hope none of the current parents were too bothered by that.

Enter The Man-Tights

Just in time for the chilly New York City winter, Thomas and Jack's friend Jonas has introduced us to man-tights. Jonas is from Norway, where man-tights are evidently de rigueur.
Or whatever that is in Norwegian.
(Standarden? Normal praksis? Google was not so helpful with this one.)

Let's see: Jack loved them immediately. Fashion, you know.
Thomas had to be convinced. Clearly it wasn't too tough.

More On The Afterlife

Anna is still busy trying to sort out exactly what happens when things die.

One of my standard lines about this is that people usually die when they are either very. very old or very, very sick. And since neither she nor anyone else in her family nor any of her friends fit this description right now she shouldn't spend time worrying about it.

This had been working for a few months, but then last week she started asking for concrete data:
"Well, how old and how sick do you have to be to go to heaven?"
"Is heaven up in the sky? Do you get there in a tube?"

I told her that dying happens to everyone but no one knows exactly when.
I told her that since no one we have met has ever been to heaven and come back with photos, we don't know exactly what it is like and can make up our own idea of where the person we love would be happiest.
[From what I can gather, Anna has decided that her heaven is somewhere in the vicinity of Churchill Downs.]
I have no idea where she got the tube thing from.
She wrapped up this conversation by asking me if heaven is where the dinosaurs went. And do they eat people?

A few days later, we were listening to her Disney Classic Children's Songs CD. One of her favorite songs for a while now has been "When the Saints Go Marching In".
When the song was done, she asked me what a saint is. I told her something along the lines of "someone who does very good things while they are alive and goes to heaven after they die".

She thought about this. Then, with her best 'Da Vinci Code' look she told me:
"Mommy! The saints go marching in! So heaven must be on the ground!"