Some Days You Just Shouldn't Leave the House

Today is Wednesday. That means it's library day at our house. The local library does a preschool reading hour on Wednesday mornings and Libby loves to go. I decided to brave it even though I'm watching my 1 year old nephew. (He tried running off last week and got halfway to the circulation desk before I caught him.)

Libby did not seem to be enjoying herself. Lately, she won't sit on the rug with the other kids during story time. She wants to just hang out by my knee the whole time. She won't participate in singing time either. I started feeling like it wasn't worth it to be there. Then she decided she didn't want to sit on the chair and do the craft.

I said it was time to go. All that was left was the craft and if she wasn't going to participate we didn't need to be there. The room was crowded and the children's reading area is pretty much reserved for story time during this hour. I told her she could choose three books and then we were leaving.

She said she didn't want to pick any books. I said fine let's go. I got her out of the children's reading area by carrying her. She started screaming that she did want three books, but there was no way in heck I was going back to a room full of sympathy smiles from the other mommies and a grimace from the children's librarian who already doesn't like me (no clue why really, she just doesn't like me or my kids.)

I had to carry Libby all the way out to the van. She fought me getting her back into her seat and buckled. This was all tons of fun to do while I also carried my one year old nephew who's completely confunded by her behavior.

As I finally got the buckle around my lovely little girl she let it drop: "I want a new mommy!" she sobbed.

As we drove down the street over and over I could hear from the back seat: "I want Jesus to make me a new Mommy!"

Lovely. She's going to be so fun at 16.

Faking It

Our stake holds a sweetheart ball every year close to Valentine's Day. Steve and I always go. We have a great time and really enjoy getting out and dancing. We love going with friends because it gives us some camouflage for our goofiness.

Because we are goofy. Neither one of us has ever had any real dancing lessons (Beehive/Scout Cotillions don't count.) We really don't know what we are doing, but I learned a long time ago that if I just followed Steve I'd have a good time. He knows he can't look good trying to be serious, so he just acts goofy with as much confidence as possible.

We hit the dance floor and move all over pretending we know what we are doing when we don't. Sometimes we watch the other couples to see what they are doing. that's how we figured out this Waltz spin that's really fun to do. Of course, he can't just lead me into it, we have to discuss it first, "want to do the spin thing?" "which direction are we going?" "ok, we go . . . now!" Which cracks me up because the couples we're trying to copy just start spinning, no need to talk about it. Of course, neither of us is actually waltzing before we do the spin thing.

Fred and Ginger we are not.

So needless to say I was surprised to learn yesterday that there is a woman in our ward who thinks we are good dancers. It made me smile to hear her compliment. It also made me realize the power of confidence. If you have to fake it, fake it with feeling. You might actually fool someone.

The problem with lever handled door knobs

is that your cat will figure out how to use them. Unfortunately, he won't open the bathroom door to get to his litter box if that's been closed accidentally. He only opens the laundry room door. His food is in the laundry room and he'll try and get in there even if he's been fed recently. Apparently, unlimited access to food behind a closed and latched door trumps the carefully measured food easily accessible in the food dish.

How times change

I've been watching my children do valentines this week. We went to the store and chose the design they found most innocuous but still with the best cool factor. Then we brought them home so they could write their class names on them. This part is still the same as I remember. The class lists so no one gets forgotten or has their name misspelled. The careful selection of which design sends the least worst message to the person indicated. The neatly writing of the names at the beginning quickly degenerating into an illegible scrawl by the time you get to "to: Wally From: Amy." Poor Wally probably could never read any of the names on his Vallentines.

The difference is that my children never have to deal with stupid cards that say horrible things like "Be my Valentine!" or "Be mine!" I never wanted anyone to "Be mine!" yet every year I had to carefully separate out the "be mine"s from the "be my Valentine"s because the "be mine"s sent a slightly more ambiguous message and were the least worst choice for the boys in the class. There would be one or two designs that were message neutral (the beloved "Happy Valentine's Day!") and those went to the scuzzy boys that you didn't want to even get a whiff of the wrong idea much less look at it. Those neutral cards were highly prized and I never even had enough to cover the scuzzy boys much less the whole class.

Apparently though, other 70's-80's children remember the years of careful Valentine sorting in classes where everyone had to give to everyone. Those kids are now working for cheap Valentine corporations and designing those little cards that my kids give away every year. Not one of of these boxes of Valentines has a "Be mine!" anywhere near it. Matthew was sorting his animal designs by which animal he thought the kid might like. Rilla sorted them by which gender was pictured on the front of the card. Neither one of them had the horror of desperately trying not to make anyone think they were in love with them.

I love this so much that I might send a Valentine to the Valentine companies myself just as a thank you.

It won't say "Be mine!"

He Lived

Last night Steve helped me make home made chicken nuggets. It's quite a process and since he requested them, I let him bread them while I baked oven fries and fried the chicken. The oven fries were a bit slower getting done than the chicken nuggets and Steve was feeling antsy for dinner. He kept opening the oven to peek in.

I said, "they'll be done a lot faster if you stop opening the oven door."

"oh yeah. Right." He says in his lovely regressed back 20 years voice. "I never took you for an old wife."

I had to inform him that it wasn't a superstition; it was scientific fact that the inside of an oven can drop by as much as 25 degrees every time you open the oven door, so every time he peeked he made dinner take just a little bit longer. He didn't believe me.

At this point he realized that I was starting to get a bit annoyed with him over this, so he, of course, had to wind me up. We had a lovely discussion where I was getting more annoyed and he was having more fun for the next couple of minutes before I declared dinner done just so I could get him to shut up.

My parting remark right before I took out the oven fries was something along the lines of "believe whatever you want, but an oven looses 25 degrees when you open the door."

"Oh sure" he said, "maybe in AAAAAAmy-land," drawn out and fully accented in the way only someone who made good use of his time as a 5th grade boy can do.

I was speechless. And annoyed. And holding a very hot pan of oven fries.

"That's a hot pan, isn't it?" he asked cringing.

"Yes, dear. It's 450 degrees hot."

"Well technically, it's 425 degrees hot."






And then the kids spent the rest of the night saying "Amy-land" to me and then giggling.