Thursday, March 22, 2012

Party For One

Here's the thing about finally having a kid.  No one's satisfied.  As soon as you bring a little person into the world, everyone is all up in your business about when you're going to have another one.  Granted, I expect this from my family and maybe even my friends.  But the neighborhood window washer? 

A few weeks ago, the guy who was trying to get the hard water off our back windows asked me how many kids we have.  When I told him "just one" he about had a come apart.  He informed me that having just one child was a disaster, and that my daughter would grow up to be lonely and selfish.  He then told me that we needed to start working on another baby right away (to which I said, "Like right now, while you're washing our windows?" He was not amused).  From his own experience, kids that were too far apart weren't friends.  In fact, they were practically strangers. 

Of course, I thought all of this was garbage.  But then I started to wonder, are we doing our daughter a disservice? At three and a half, have we ruined her for life?

We do put her in a corner, where we make her play alone for hours...


 We've been known to leave her in her pajamas all day...



And when we do get her dressed, she tends to look more like a ten dollar hooker than a toddler-


Who needs more kids...this one's turning out JUST fine!

Monday, March 12, 2012

I Feel Pretty

I have a ritual every morning.  I shower, grab a cup of coffee, and put on my make-up at the kitchen table while I read the news on line.  I have done this for as long as I can remember.  Over the past three years, I haven't given it a second thought that a certain little person has been watching my every move.  I left the table yesterday morning to get dressed, only to return to this forlorn face:

After years of watching me, Morgan had the idea right, even if the technique was a little off.  Unfortunately, Morgan was so upset at me taking pictures that she began crying, "Look away, Mom - I did it wrong!!!"

So I dried her tears, wiped her face, and decided it was the right time to teach her one of the most important lessons a mother can pass on to her daughter...

...there isn't much in life that a good coat of mascara can't fix.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Super Trooper

I try to write a funny blog.  I actually work pretty damn hard to highlight the lighter side of our life.  But some times, life isn't funny.  It can be downright scary.  I already told you about Morgan battling pneumonia this year and my dad having his knee replaced.  What I haven't shared is that my family just had its second harrowing (if not character building) adventure with cancer.

Two years ago, my father was diagnosed with the "C" word ( cancer, not candy corn, in case you were confused).  It was prostate cancer, which is very treatable when caught early.  Fortunately, we were lucky and my dad will live many more years to torment me.

Wouldn't you know it, we got the same diagnosis for my father-in-law in January.  Because I had been through this once before, I was confident everything would be fine.  My father-in-law, however, was not so sure.  The only trauma this man has ever faced is a root canal....and maybe a few bad haircuts. Frankly, I don't know whether he was more worried about the cancer or just how terrible the hospital food was going to be.  But you know, Italians are hearty stock.  He had surgery last week and is cancer free.  Nick= 1, Cancer= 0

Welcome back, Dad.  Someone's missed you. 


Monday, March 5, 2012

"The Shugas"

When David and I first met, we took a trip to Tennessee to visit some friends.  A key part of our vacation was travelling to the Jack Daniel's Distillery.  As part of our visit, we were able to sign up for a free tour. 

We learned the history of Jack Daniel, including a little personal information shared by our tour guide...

Meet Bubba.  Apparently, Jack Daniel met a painful and untimely death.  Bubba explained that Jacky Boy "didn't know what the shugas was."  He developed some sort of infection in his feet, gangrene set it, and it was off to the great distillery in the sky.  After doing a little more research, I later found out that he had actually kicked a safe and and tried to treat the injury by dipping his toe in whiskey.  Regardless, word is that the man had undiagnosed diabetes...hence, "the shugas."

Fast forward eight years.  One of the very friends we went to see on that trip lovingly sent Morgan her first Polly Pocket.  Very quickly, my life came full circle.


You see, Polly was about to meet her own painful and untimely death.  At first, I didn't notice anything was wrong.  Morgan would regularly ask me to help her change Polly's clothes and shoes. 

Then one night, I noticed that Polly's sandals weren't fitting quite right.  All of a sudden, her toes were missing, like some crazy gangrene had eaten away at her little plastic feet.  Was Polly a long-lost decedent of Jack himself?

After I quickly ruled that out, my next thought was the dog was the culprit, but then I realized that there would have been a whole lot less of Polly if that were the case.  I then briefly wondered if maybe Polly had been that way the whole time, but I would have noticed if she looked like that when we took her out of the box.

I then remembered my daughter, who had recently been sent home from school with the note, "Morgan needs to please stop biting all of the tails off the dinosaurs in the classroom."  Looks like it wasn't "the shugas" after all.