My little meatatarin.....

So I was in my room, doing a few random crunches on the floor. The Princess was doing some, too, while Side Salad was trying to sit on me. The Squirrel all of a sudden says,

"I wish everything I touched turned to meat! And gold."

.....okay.....

Then, she began running around turning things into meat. "Daddy's TV is meat! The counter is meat! The towel is meat!"

The Princess tried to reason with her little sister. "What if you touch us? Then, we will be meat, too. You can't turn everything into me-"


"You're meat! Look, Mommy! I turned her into meat!" Obviously, the Princess wasn't very convincing in her argument.


She followed me downstairs and patted me on my back. "Mommy, you're meat. I'm just kidding. But everything else is meat, meat, meat!" She bopped off to work some more magic.


"Pencil meat! Yummy yum-yum!"

"Call me on the line, you can call me, call me anytime-Mommy your phone is meat!" That's right. I am rockin' Blondie for my ringtone.

Anywho, the Princess and the Squirrel, as far as I know, have never heard the tale of King Midas. That makes it all the more intriguing that she is touching things and turning them into meat.

Guess I know what tonight's bedtime story is :)

My Perfect Princess

If any of my children is me all over again, it's my Princess. She is a true diva, late to her own birth. She stayed an extra 10 days before her eviction/induction. Our running joke is that she stayed in because her hair wasn't right. This child was born with a doobie wrap. She was due a week before my 21st birthday, but born 3 days after. This was NOT a good thing. Princess was my hardest pregnancy. Six straight months of vomitting during which I lost 20 lbs. My whole weight gain was only 16 pounds. She was 7 pounds 19 ounces and only 18 1/2 inches long. (A wee bit bigger than her mama, who was 7 pounds 1 1/2 ounes, and only 18 inches long). She was born rather quickly; I went from 6 cm dialated to her being in the isolette in about 20 minutes, epi free. That short birth is probably why her head wasn't very cone-y. We are both Sagittarius' and have similar dispositions and similar taste. We even look alike. Our baby picks are nearly identical. Except I think she is much prettier than me. She has this big doe eyes, with impossibly long eyelashes. They literally look like butterfly wings, they are so long. Sometimes I can't believe this gorgeous creature came from my belly.
Me at four:
She at four:


She stayed on her own schedule, not walking until she was nearly 14 months, not talking until about a year and a half-but spoke in full sentences immediately. She was very petite and looked like a little walking doll. In fact, I bathed her in the bathroom sink until she was nearly 3.

But now she's tall and lanky, like the horse who happens to be her Chinese sign.

Princess is a tough cookie. Her doc took her tonsils and adenoids at the tender age of 4. Dora accompanied her to the hospital for surgery that day. It was one of the most nerve wracking days of my life. Surgery and the whole anesthesia thing terrify me. But Princess was a trooper.



To be candid, she was born at the wrong time. She should have been a firstborn child, the oldest or an only. She is so competitive, has so much drive but she feels so limited and inadequate because Astronaut can do more than her. She gets so frustrated when he does things she can't, but at the same time, she is very advanced. Not to brag, but this child is quite possibly a prodigy. She taught herself to tie her shoes and write her name at 4 years old. While amazing, it is a major factor in her school behavior. She was bored silly by pre-K and it showed. I got a lot of calls home last year.

I love my mini-me. She is a challenge. I imagine her teen years will be memorable. And I can't wait until she is all grown up so we can do things together.

Sweet, isn't she.

Squirrel, in a nutshell

This is my Squirrel.

She is a most unique child. She possesses an almost elven, pixish aura. She is petite, slight, but she is by far my loudet child. She is quite possibly the brightest, most well spoken three year old I know. That is, when she chooses to talk. Squirrel is notorious for not acknowledging the presence of others. She won't talk to people she doesn't know well. She frequently hides from them. She has been known to run. This causes people to think that because she does not talk, she cannot talk. They are shocked the first time they hear her speak. I spend lots of time with her because the big kid go to school all day. We do many things. We play.
We put on puppet shows.

We cuddle.

We talk.
Sometimes, we talk late at night. She's been getting up at night for the last few weeks. She tells me the most unusual things. The other night she got up and we sat and looked out the window at the feral cats (that's another story). She looked at me and said...
Squirrel: I know what Mommies and Daddies do.
Me: Er, uh...is that so, sweetie? Ah, what is it that they do?
Squirrel: They kiss.
Me: Really. Is that all?
Squirrel: No. They eat food, too. And they look in the mirror and brush their teeth.
Me: That is absolutely fascinating.
We like music, all of us. We dance all the time. We have big band, opera, classical, disco, pop, R&B-basically our collection has everything from Gregorian chants to Bollywood. We have family dance parties (aka Mommy has to get some kind of exercise when she can't make it to the gym). We do this kind of Soul Train circle where someone gets in the middle and does a dance, then everyone does it. When it was Squirrel's turn, she hopped in the middle, started shrugging her shoulders and shouted:

"Do this, ya'll! Shake your hipples!"

I love the way her mind works. Appearantly she correlates shoulders to being similar to hips (which they kinda are, anatomy-wise. both have ball and socket joints) and they are close to your chest, where your nipples are located. Hence, we have hipples.

My sunny, funny little girl. My little squirrel.

J is just plain gross.

J, my almost 3 year old, has to be the grossest kid ever. She is obsessed with butts and poop. She talks about them all the time. She also puts her boogers on her siblings. She finds it amusing. I find it gross. I know that it has to do with her development psychologically-Kolberg, moral development, Erikson, crises, and all that jazz. But that does not take away from the fact that it is just plain gross and that I am always digging for some tissue to catch her lastest find.

Enter: Boogie Wipes.

That's right, Boogie Wipes. They are little-get this!-scented wipes that take care of the booger issue. You can try to win a Boogie Wipes gift basket on this site:

http://hermashaw.blogspot.com/2008/09/catch-that-booger.html

TTYL!