And here’s one from me.

Anyway. I got Aura an appointment Sunday morning and in we went, spending a happy hour in the waiting room during which all her ear pain magically disappeared, sometime between when she was driving her Polly Pocket cars over every germ-infested floor tile and when she was rubbing her face on every obviously coughed-upon chair. (WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS FABRIC? WHYYYYY?)

By the time we got to the actual exam room and the doctor finally walked in, I could tell I was in for yet another use-a-little-more-decongestant-and-don’t-forget-to-make-her-rest-knowing-wink-hee-hee! discussion. Just once, ONCE, this is the doctor I want instead:

“Hi! My name is Dr. Smith, and I just want to warn you upfront that I am extremely heavy-handed with the amoxicillin. Now, I know many of my colleagues will tell you to just wait it out a little longer and that there’s nothing you can do for a viral infection. But you and I both know those doctors can’t possibly have children of their own, so here’s one prescription for now, one for later, and also a little something with codeine HAVE AT IT.”

You know what? Once the USDA gets finished with the next and brightest food shape, they should take a crack at the Hippocratic Oath. I bet we all know a coughing child or too who would love to consult.

P.S. Aura is better today. Wow! That waiting-it-out thing does eventually work.

P.S. Oh, and we tried the neti pot with Aura for the first time. Oh, childbirth, I have been FAR too hard on you.

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

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.

Since then, I’ve grown rather fond of our Friday dance-class schedule. This year we even threw tap into the mix, and the chaotic flurry of an armful of little girls frantically changing from whispery ballet slippers to loud, clacky tap shoes is pretty fun. I’ve finally sunk into the routine and had begun imagining this year’s recital: a natty little Gene Kelly-esque tap number, perhaps, followed by a watery, flowery snippet of Swan Lake.

I had plans to buy a Real Camera and everything. Get myself a new contact lens prescription so that I could actually see the stage. I had BIG plans. Epic. Huge, monstrous plans.

Then we went to class last Friday. As they greeted the kids, the teachers told them that the class would begin to rehearse its recital number that afternoon. A few minutes later, as I sat with the other mothers, the strains of an…oddly unfamiliar-familiar song drifted into the waiting area. Conversation came to a screeching halt.

Then one mother swallowed, loudly.”Is that…?” she started, unable to finish.

“Yes,” another mother replied. “My God. I think it is him.”

“Who?” I said, knowing only that this song did not sound like anything Gene Kelly had sung. IT WAS NOT NATTY.

A fourth mother slumped down in her chair, hands hopelessly splayed across her lap.

“It’s Barry Manilow,” she whispered.

Proof that you should NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN:

The holidays were very quiet around these parts. I was able to rouse myself from the couch sickbed now and then to grudgingly remove new toys from their stunningly secure packages and even put a few together. On that subject: I remain stymied as to why today’s toy manufacturers insist upon1,252 twist ties and an enormous amount of unnecessary tape. In my day, I seem to remember the toys kind of just rattling around in their boxes, all those Cabbage Patch Kids and GI Joes and Rainbow Brites just banging back and forth amiably until released. Back then, there was probably even a picture on the side of the box showing how kids could just open one end and pour all the small choking hazards directly into their mouths YUM YUM YOU CHILDREN OF THE EIGHTIES STAND NOT A CHANCE

It was during one of these Christmastime toy dismantlings that I stabbed myself in the thumb with a particularly lethal plastic part. I now have a welt that is totally going to require a better story should it eventually end up as a scar. Something more along the lines of That Time I Got Lost In The Jungle And Had To Survive By My Wits and My Thumb, as opposed to OW-Polly-Pocket-roller-coasters-hurt.

Speaking of Polly Pocket roller coasters that hurt! Why do the instructions tell me to pre-assemble the trillion little coaster tracks if I only have to take them apart to fit them into the main, er, coaster/concert stage/t-shirt shop/WHY DIDN’T I BUY NICE BORING ORGANIC WOODEN TOYS apparatus?

I’m imagining the fine folks in charge of writing the instructions had a conversation much like this:

Instruction Folk #1: Now let’s see. We have plenty of confusing drawings. But what about words? What can we write here?

Instruction Folk #2: Words? Oh, right–you’re new here. Quick rule of thumb: Never use words. Only vague drawings that 37% resemble the actual toy. I mean, sure, you can throw in some arcane German or a little Swahili now and then, but you NEVER use English for toys sold in America.

Instruction Folk #1: Aha. Got it. What about this page? I have drawings of how the many tracks should pair, but honestly, when I tried assembling the toy myself, it really is impossible to put it together with the coupled tracks.

Instruction Folk #2: Even better! You’re a natural at this! You’ve stumbled upon what we around here call the Extra Step of Dratted Nonsense. We try to include at least one in every instruction manual. [slaps Folk #1 on back] Someone is going to do well at bonus time, I can tell.

Curse you, Polly Pocket (and Friends!). May you (and Friends!) somehow fall into the fireplace soon.

Yet the most I can seem to do is the bare minimum and then I just lie around on the couch. It has been while I am lying on the couch (I often ask for the vapors, like they always do in my Victorian novels, but I’ll be damned if a single person around here has the vapors; it’s all for better or for worse and through sickness and health UNTIL YOU NEED THE DAMN VAPORS) that it struck me that man, my standards for A Good Parent have fallen dramatically. Basically, I now suck. Cases in point:

• There was a time when Aura’s time with the iPad was strictly limited. A little Angry Birds, a little Princess Ph.D. (HAHAHA I MAKE MY KID PLAY SOMETHING CALLED PRINCESS PH.D.), then it was Off to Your Imaginative Play and Maybe One of Those Impressive Looking Shape Puzzles. This week, Aura has logged approximately two million five hundred thousand seven hundred and forty eight hours with the iPad. (That effin’ Muffin Knight, man. I can suddenly see junkies’ point.)
• Turns out you can say “Really? Don’t you want to watch one more show? Please?” with very little shame. You can even say it more than once an hour.
• Roald Dahl is getting a plaque somewhere in this house, once I get off the couch to order it. Reading aloud Charlie and the Chocolate Factory while lying-very-very-still-no-one-jostle-my-headache has bought me ample bonding time. You’d think all that talk of chocolate bars and melting chocolate and chocolate marshmallows would further upset my nauseous stomach, but nope. Apparently chocolate trumps all.
• Which brings me to my final Parent of the Year observation: Cookies and then more cookies from Trader Joe’s actually do a lot for a suddenly boring mother’s reputation. In fact, at dessert time around these parts, I may have been called the BEST MOTHER EVER.

Thank you, Trader Joe’s. Bless your packaged little heart.

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 Now.

2. Eventually flip pages loudly, murmuring now and then over an especially obnoxious-seeming Lalaloopsy doll or a particularly winsome 122-foot-long Hot Wheels racetrack.

3. When mother encourages you to indicate things Santa might want to bring, place careful checkmarks next to the most improbable items in the catalog, such as a Very Explodey-Looking Chemistry Set or a OMG HELL NO Ant Farm.

4. Randomly point out how suddenly very desirable a baby toy is, such as a foam bowling set or those really chunky little crayons made for tiny, chubby baby hands.

5. Furrow brow in confusion when mother bursts into tears, then calmly chew a cheese sandwich cracker as she begins her monologue on How Did You Get So Big, It’s Like You Were Only Born Yesterday, I Can’t Believe You’re Fiiiiiive. Consider offering her a tissue, then decide against it. Have another cracker instead.

6. Take a break from catalog browsing. For several days that border on many weeks. Inspire in family general sense of panic over a Santa list. Notice mother getting more wrinkly. Especially in the forehead area. So many…lines.

7. After 1,000th plea for an inkling of a Christmas list, grudgingly reclaim bright purple circling marker and trudge over to catalogs. After a few circles, discover within self a growing, urgent spirit of circling. Cackle wildly. End up with this.

(HELP EVERYTHING IS CIRCLED I DID THIS TO MYSELF AND WHAT THE HELL IS A RADIO CONTROL GIANT FLYING SHARK)

(ALSO: HAHAHA THE GUY FIERI “MINUTE TO WIN IT” VIDEO GAME. FINALLY, A PRESENT IDEA FOR ADAM.)

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? That’s ridiculous! Do you know how easy gingerbread is to make? Then you just cool it and cut it and whip up some royal icing and blah blah blah and blah blah blah and I’m making that superior face I know you hate but it’s like I can’t keep from doing it because I watch too much Bobby Flay.”

The thing is, I’m a big one for from-scratch baking (despite the fact that I detest cooking-cooking and shall detest it for all eternity). But who are we kidding? When am I going to have the time to bake and precisely measure gingerbread walls and roof shingles? As I explained to Adam, I suppose I could have tried to fit it in between CHURNING BUTTER and GROWING MY OWN COTTON FOR PETTICOATS, but life is short.

Plus, when you make your own gingerbread, I bet you don’t get that subtle taste of…let’s see…sodium benzoate. And you completely miss out on FD&C Yellow #5.

Also, mixing up a batch of homemade icing in the KitchenAid would have deprived Aura of the chance to…let me take another look at the instructions…ah, yes. She wouldn’t have been able to Knead Icing Fervently Until Proper Consistency. That fervent kneading got me three full minutes of laundry folding. I am throwing my full support behind fervent kneading of all sorts. I’m suddenly very equal-opportunity on the fervent kneading.

Of course, the Littlest Pet Shop pets had to watch. As they do most things in this house. Say, when you’re stepping buck-naked out of the shower. Or perhaps when you are waking up from a relaxing night’s sleep to OHMYGOD THAT DIM-LOOKING BUNNY WITH THE WEIRD FLOPPY EARS AND INAPPROPRIATE BOWTIE IS ONE INCH FROM MY FACE.

Even with the voyeurism, I’d say the gingerbread house was a success. Granted, it did highlight the fact that someone around here is in desperate need of a good old-fashioned anatomy lesson (starting with pointers on how most faces have two eyes), but for $9.99, it makes a pretty good table centerpiece.

Or it would, if someone would stop eating bits of the centerpiece. I tell you, it’s as if my agonized wails of “NOT THE RED #6 ADDITIVE CHIMNEY DECORATION!” simply fall on deaf ears.

So, question for you: How quickly do these suckers go to mold? Because I’m starting to have serious doubts about that door knocker.

Unfortunately, Adam planned ahead this year, buying two ducks (because one unwanted duck is never quite enough)  from some Web site where people deranged enough to buy Thanksgiving ducks buy their Thanksgiving ducks. The birds arrived Wednesday afternoon and I knew things were only going from bad to worse when I saw the wrappers, which read “Fresh Young Duckling.”

Why? Why did it have to be described that way, all lovely and youthful and reminiscent of those little darling fuzzballs I see every spring by the pond down the street? I mean, you go with “Fresh Young Duckling” and you might as well be planning to cook up a

or perhaps a

It didn’t help matters that Aura kept parading around the house asking if she could “eat the beak,” then, when told these ducks would be, er, bill-less, she switched to demands for “THE LEGS.”  This is what happens when you allow your husband to drag your small child to every Korean and Japanese market under the sun, where she learns to cagily size up live octopuses and extremely fresh and…exotic cuts of pork. Granted, I knew she was bordering on bloodthirsty when she ate the eye of a fried red snapper at a Mexican place last year (SO CRISPY CAN I HAVE THE OTHER ONE TOO WHAT’S WRONG MOMMY YOU LOOK WEIRD) but still. The beak?

The clincher: Adam overtrimmed the neck of one of the ducks. So not only did I have to force down duck on that most trytophan-sacred of all holidays, I had to force down duck that looked for all the world like it was embarking on a really big poop.

All this has taught me that we’re having Chinese food for Christmas. Vegetarian Chinese food. I sure am thankful for Chinese food.

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, walked over to the edge of the pool, and told Aura that I expected her to listen to her teacher and put her head under the water at least once. When she protested, I repeated what I had just said.

When I returned to my seat, another mother leaned over and said, “Look at you, getting all Tiger Mom over there!”

This woman is a close friend of mine, so I know she meant it as a joke, but the remark has resonated with me the past few days and I’ve come to a conclusion: She’s totally and completely correct.

Now, now. I’m no Amy Chua, not that I’m sure Amy Chua was even quite Amy Chua, given the mythic proportions of the fallout from her book. I lavish Aura with love and positive reinforcement, I would never insult her to inspire her to do better, yada yada yada. But I’m all about the high expectations. If I know that Aura is capable of doing something, be it finally putting her nose under water (after months of lessons, keep in mind) or moving on to the next level of the math problems we write out for her on her playroom easel almost every day (first grade seems like an excellent time for trigonometry, as I like to say when I’m good and inebriated; I’m a big hit at holiday parties).

Have you guys noticed that there’s a bit of eye-rolling and a touch of social ostracization associated with pushing your kid a little? In my severely limited view of the world, I have this understanding (and keep in mind that I came up with this one while in the throes of Diet Coke withdrawal, since I am once again trying to give it up, making me the World’s Least Bearable Person with Whom to Live Except for the Time I Gave Up Chocolate and Was Locked in the Closet Fairly Regularly):

Mid-twentieth century: DO YOUR HOMEWORK OR ELSE AND SCREW YOU ALL CREATIVITY

Late-twentieth century: I’M BFFs WITH MY KID AND WE EVEN WEAR EACH OTHER’S JEANS AND THIS BIG A HOMEWORK LOAD IS TOO CHALLENGING SQUEEE

So, I’m just going to bust out of the Tiger Mom closet and be done with it. My name is Kate and I hold my kid to high standards. She does workbooks. She is expected to read aloud to us every day. She’s starting an afterschool math enrichment program soon, and city birthday deadlines be damned, I’m petitioning for her to go to first grade in the public schools next year.

Which brings us to the following:

Um, is there any educational value in these things? If not, I’m thinking of disappearing them in the middle of the night. Or introducing really BIG place value stuff. For example:

1,322 Squinkies – 1 woman’s sanity  + 1 nearby recycling bin = ?

Take that, Mensa.