If so, facebook friend me. I’ll spare the rest of you.

And yeah, I am happy dancing like Snoopy. Thanks for asking!

I didn’t see the picture he drew to cheer her up until today:

No, this isn't perfect, it's good. But it is trying to be perfect. Same with all of us too!

As many times as I’ve experienced this artistic plight, I really appreciated the “same with all of us too!” bit he added there at the end that applies it to life in general. I know what I want to do, and the kind of person I want to be. I’m keenly aware of how far off I am now. But I’ll keep trying. In the meantime, my kids really are perfect for me.

Still, I thought the lesson was beginning to stick — until she started hoarding handfuls of firework fluff tonight. You know those kiddie fireworks that shoot out confetti? At some point Mary asked me to hold the wad of streamers she’d collected. D’oh. But she was running around, and I was chatting with friends, so I figured I’d save that discussion for later.

So, just after we’d pulled into our driveway, I opened my hand to show Mary the fluff, and opened my mouth to say something. But before I had the chance, she threw her arms around me and said, “It’s a gift to you, Mom!”

It took me a moment to reformulate my lecture: “Okay, but what am I supposed to do with it?”

With a kiss on my cheek, she whispered in my ear, “Accept it.”

It's all yours!

Any tips on teaching your kids that stuff is just stuff?

I’m one of those moms. I don’t make my kids clean their rooms. They help with the other chores around the house, but I let them be responsible for their own space. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Ethan’s room is disorganized, but nothing that couldn’t be whipped into shape within a half an hour. He likes it clean, or clean enough, and frequently makes it so. Mary’s bedroom floor, on the other hand, is seeing the light of day for the first time in quite a while. The mess didn’t bother her until she literally couldn’t play in her room without stepping on her stuff. Two weeks ago she started drawing pictures of how she’d like her room to look, and when she asked for help making it look that way, of course I was much obliged.

She also decided she’d like a cube organizer (in addition to her aluminum foil) for her birthday, and I was happy to get her that. Grandma pitched in and bought her a new quilt as further incentive to make her space beautiful. And Ethan and I agreed we’d help her clean.

What a process it’s been though. I love that she’s crafty, has a good memory and excellent imagination, and is rather sentimental, but I’m having a devil of a time trying to teach her that her stuff is just stuff. Especially since I was the same way! I remember being six or seven years old and shedding many a tear over the loss of my dear friend Rachel the Apricot Pit, whom I’d bestowed with a felt-tipped face and some fuzzy red-yarn hair.

Mary had a small family of toilet paper tubes… a tall one with brown eyes named Cylinder Mom, and two blue-eyed tubes named Cylinder Ethan and Cylinder Mary. You could tell them apart because the Cylinder Mary had bigger, cuter eyes, as her maker was wont to point out. This little tubular family has been living on a cardboard nightstand she fashioned some time ago, and their job was to hold the letters and notes we’d write each other. Voodoo-doll mailboxes of a sort, I guess. But today she parted with the nightstand after removing and saving the “PARTY” sign she’d cut out for it. She even said goodbye to the toilet paper tubes, but not before giving them each sentimental kisses and wishing them happiness and new friends at the dump.

WHY does this tug at my heartstrings so? Oh… and the craziest part? Now that I’ve taken the Cylinders out to the dumpster, I’m regretting not taking their pictures first. *Sigh*

Anyway. We’re done. For now. Here’s hoping it’ll last long enough to be worth the trauma it took to get there.

“G’morning, sweet Ethan.”

“Hi Mom.” (stretch!!!) “I’m not all the way awake yet. What time is it?”

“Almost seven. We need to get up and get you two ready to go to Dad’s for the week.”

He stretched again, held out his hand, and called “High five!”

I’m always a bit bummed when they have to go, but I know they love Dad’s house with the star-ceiling theater, and the hot tub, and their cats, their trees (the ones that weren’t cut down anyway), and the rooms we’d painted in their favorite colors, and well… everything. Most of all I know they love their dad, and I’m not going to take that from them. I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t want to leave him hanging. So I gave him an enthusiastic five.

Then after a moment, I volunteered, “Well, I got up and went to the pool for an hour this morning.”

“I know! What did you think the high five was for?”

<3

Because that’s how we roll They love this recipe, and it’s breakfast, fast, so I thought I’d share: if you ever have bananas that are just past the point of an enjoyable snack, just throw them in a blender with some milk — we do one banana per 8oz of milk for a 12oz serving. Add a few drops of vanilla extract if you’d like

E: ;-p como estas?
V: Bien, gracias!

… short pause …

E: [y tu]
E: fantastico gracias
V: oh! Y tu?
E: lol

The best part is that I really get to hear him LOL in the next room.

So the fact that I could make these made me super talented in 1997. Oh, and I’m sure you noticed that technically, I didn’t animate the green guy. But I did use a javascript to make him float down my page on St. Patrick’s Day.

Today I’m putting some hot spots in a flex panorama for class. Will I look back 13 years later and giggle at that too?

I guess I’d always pictured gophers when I said that, but I laughed and told them about the pop up windows we had to endure back in the day. “But most modern browsers take care of them for you, so you guys probably don’t know what I’m talking about.” My oldest isn’t nine yet and I’m sure pop-up blockers have been around at least that long!

“Oh, I’ve dealt with pop ups before,” Mary sighed. “Especially if I can’t get Firefox out of Safemode and I have to use Internet Explorer. It’s so annoying when I’ve got ten windows to close”

Ethan nodded. “Internet Explorer IS a pop up.”

To do when they’re home again: Check for malware & install Chrome. :-p