Sometime I’ll divulge the details of my run-in with Spiderman, too.

Gee, how this blog has suffered as of late. There’s actually a pretty decent reason for the suffering, and I’ll explain in a couple of posts from now, which leaves you all with a lot of breathe to bate, I know. The way I’m leaving you hanging, it’s not all that different from when I used to watch that crap apocalyptic show Jericho starring Skeet Ulrich and then our DVR missed the final episodes and I was overcome with BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO THE POOR STRANDED APOCALYPTIC PEOPLES, LEAD BY THEIR FEARLESS LEADER NAMED SKEET.

Not that this is any kind of excuse, but I could plead the fact that our weekends have been very busy recently. Not with shopping (like I used to do), or gourmet meals (like I used to eat), or witty adult conversation (like I might have had once no promises). Oh, no. The weekends have been just chock-full of birthday parties. Kid birthday parties. Gymnastics party after dance party after paint-your-own pottery party after Huh! Tony Said He Invited You to His Party, Too? The Invitation Must Have Gotten Lost in the Mail! [furtive smushing-down of top papers in recycling bin] party.

Without further ado:

Everything I Have Learned About Kids’ Birthday Parties But Never Really Wanted to Know

birthday cake

1. Pray as you might, the invitation will never say “Parents, feel free to drop off!” This will make you stomp around a little. Possibly a whole lot.

2. Though you may have bought the birthday girl/boy’s gifts weeks ahead of time, it will never be wrapped by the time you leave. Nor will the card be signed. When it is signed, you realize your daughter is using an apostrophe in place of a comma and the card says Love’ Aura and now you’re going to be late because of a conversation about possessives since I DIDN’T WASTE FOUR YEARS ON THIS ENGLISH DEGREE FOR NOTHING, KID.

3. No matter how many birthday parties you have been to in the same month with the same exact parental set, you will inexplicably wear the same exact stomach-hiding sweater every time. The good news: No one will know about the Belly of Many Jigglish Bits. The bad news: Everyone will think you’re either spectacularly poor or spectacularly bad at laundry.

4. Even if there are 20 million other parents around, you will be the one inevitably stuck talking to Batman and you will be the one hearing his “Where do I live? Oh, I live by THE CAPE. Get it? It’s a joke because I WEAR A CAPE.”

Your kid might be roped in, too, and grimace madly in discomfort. Suffer one, suffer all, I say.

5. You will tell every adult in hearing distance that this time you’re not going to eat the cake. You will then eat the cake. The cake will have a Batman logo iced in black frosting and no one will have the heart to tell you that the black rubbed off on your upper lip and you now bear a frighteningly eerie resemblance to history’s most hated German. Your husband will tell you later at home, in between great big sobs of hysterical laughter.

Anyone care to add anything? I see a Cafepress T-shirt in ALL of our future.

 

 

 

See, this never would have happened if we had just signed her up for karate.

It’s been well over a year since I signed up Aura for her first dance class. And almost a year since I blogged about my recital qualms, and then the ensuing recital hijinks. (Ah, hijinks. Entirely maladroit here, yet there is not nearly enough usage of hijinks these days. That and décolletage. Oh, and bamboozle….

Now if only I could think of something lucrative to do with all of these twist ties. Besides cursing at them.

new year

So! Happy 2012, everyone! A nice even number, this one. A leap year, even, which I prefer to think of as a year with an extra day when you can eat a lot of cookies and then forget it ever happened. Or something like that. (For those of you with more stalwart, healthier resolutions, what…

I might get myself a plaque, too. Something gilded that highlights my cookie-bribing achievements.

Trader Joe

I’ve been feeling sick off and on for a couple of weeks now, and the lead-up to the holidays has been a lot more muted that I would have wanted. Aura and I still haven’t made the peppermint bark, I’m only a scary little percentage done with Christmas shopping, and the stuff on the kitchen…

How One Child Makes a Christmas List, or: Crap, Guy Fieri Strikes Again

Just make the Santa list

(I hold these truths to be self-evident. Also, extremely expensive.) 1. Approach, rather lackadaisically, the toy catalogs that have recently arrived by the armload. Let the bright purple circling marker dangle loosely from your fingers, as to give the impression that Eh, You May Have Better Things to Do and Are Possibly Above This By…

I am now having very optimistic second thoughts about those cans of Funfetti frosting, assuming that kneading is involved.

So I picked up this little gem of a project a few days ago: Yes, indeedy. It is one of those prefab gingerbread house kits, the kind of which I have avoided for most of Aura’s childhood, simply because I couldn’t put up with what I knew would be Adam’s protestations: “A pre-made gingerbread house?…

Please, no quacking jokes. I’m still recovering. A lot.

I’m not sure how many of you remember the Great Duck Fiasco of Thanksgiving 2010 (main plot points: Adam attempts to shun centuries of tradition by insisting on duck for the main course instead of turkey; threatens to cook rabbit for Easter if he doesn’t get his way, leading me to yell things like YOU…

I’d much prefer Cuddly Panda mom. Or even Super-Terrific Honey Badger Mom.

tiger mom image perception

The other day, during swim class (the last one for a while, thank all that is fully holy, semi-holy, and even just a little holy), I noticed that Aura was giving her teacher a bit of a hard time about going under water. After it had gone on for a few minutes, I stood up,…

Just think of the damage I could do with a fake blog post on moisturizer. I mean, we’re talking HUGE.

You know, it’s turning into one of those weeks when I realize I have absolutely nothing interesting to say. I had a brief moment of weakness ( or extreme strength, depending on how glass-half-full you are these days) when I thought, “Hey, I’ll just make something up!” but all I could come up with was…

I was going to talk about Little Red Riding Hood too, but some of us prefer nightmare-free sleep.

chocolate touch

Since Aura started reading illustrated books on her own a while ago, Adam and I decided to start reading her chapter books at bedtime. It’s been an…enlightening experience. I have much to say on the subject, but for now, allow me to cast a modern parenting eye on four classics from my childhood. The Chocolate…