My daughters' first love

My children are in love. With a man. An older man.

No, it's not Daddy. It's a fellow band director. We'll call him Matt...because that's his name.

Over a year ago, we were homeless. We had sold our house, but our new one wouldn't be ready for six weeks. So,we lived with a friend for three weeks, and then we moved in with Matt and his wife for three weeks.

The girls loved Matt. He and my husband would get in about the same time, and they would say, "Hi, Daddy. MATT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" They'd rush Matt, hug his legs and not leave him alone until I forced them to go to bed.

When we moved out, I thought they would forget about Matt. Then, we saw him at a distance during a band concert. We were up on a balcony abovve the crowd. When Ivy spotted him, she yelled, "Mommy, there's MATT!!" Story chanted, "Matt! Matt! Matt! Matt!" all through the concert. You think the children of two band directors would have more respect for a concert?

This weekend is no different. My kids have been spotting him all over the hotel, making sure to point him out to us.

Story is being a punk

What is wrong with this girl today??

• She keeps spanking us all on the legs and saying "Bad, bad!"
• She wants me to pretend I am grandma.
• She tacked Ivy, got on top of her and pinched her cheeks.
• Ivy was laying on top of me and she jumped up and body slammed us.
• She is trying to shut my computer as I type this.
• She keeps opening the chocolate pretzels, licking one, and then giving it to me (of course, I have to take one for the team and eat the pretzel. Okay, this really isn't a gripe).
• She is jumping on the bed like a trampoline, pretending to burp, and saying "Mommy! I tooted!"
• She really wants a chocolate donut. Now. As in five minutes ago.
• She tried to climb in the fountain.
• She is climbing in the big tub and sliding down off the top of it.
• She has smushed Nacho Cheese Doritos into the carpet.
• She is jumping on crayons trying to break them.

AND, everytime I tell her not to do something, she goes out of the way to do it, like she's sixteen or something.

When I told her to apologize to the crayon she broke, she said, "Mommy. It not talk."

Belly buttons

Ivy has this annoying habit of pulling on her belly button. It makes me worried that she's causing herself to have an outie, which is horror upon horror. Outies are gross.

And I can't stand belly buttons. I don't like mine; I don't like to watch people touch theirs.

I mean, I cringed typing that.

And she always pushes her underwear waaaay down underneath it. It annoys me. When she puts on her tights for ballet, they are long enough to go up to her armpits, but she pushes them down below her belly button. This causes her leotard to pooch out, which in turn causes her little skirt to stick out, too. My daughter goes to ballet with a beer belly.

Tonight when I put Story's panties on after her bath, I pulled them all the way up. She said, "No, Mommy. I like Ivy," and pushed them down...below her belly button. Then, she pulled on it. I almost puked.

I seriously hope this is not God's way of causing me to relax about belly buttons. It ain't happening.

What are the odds that I would have TWO kids to irritate my belly button issues?

Body parts

One day Ivy and I were talking about how much she talks. I said,

Ivy, you have two ears and one mouth. God wants to you to listen more than He wants you to talk.

Ivy: So, why do I have two eyes?

Me: Um, so you can look more than you talk.

Insert pause.

Ivy: Mommy, why do I have two arms?

Me: So you can hug...more...

Ivy: But, Mommy, I have two legs.

Me: Well, it would be hard to hop everywhere.

Ivy: But I only have one nose. Should I smell less than I see?

Me: Um...

Ivy: I guess I have two holes in my nose.

Me: Yes, you do.

Ivy: I have ten fingers.

Me: Actually you have eight fingers and two thumbs.

Ivy: Thumbs aren't fingers?

Me: No.

Ivy: Why?

Me: Because they're not.

Ivy: And I only have one belly button.Why? And why is it called a belly button?

Me: Because it's like a button. On your belly.

Ivy: But it doesn't button anything.

Me: You're right.

Ivy: So, why?

Me: Ivy, I don't know.

Ivy: I don't like my panties on my belly button.

Me: No one does.

Ivy: Not even God?

Me: IVY...God doesn't have a belly button.

Ivy: Why? How do you know?

Me: Dinnertime!!

Abby and the Nighttime of Poo

I have a dog named Abby. She is an eight and a half year old Golden Retriever. She's incredibly low maintenance (almost making up for the 2 years she was more maintanence than a houseful of kids).

Last night, she nuzzled under my arm at three AM, urging me to let her out. I did it in  daze, and plopped straight back into bed. I must have let her in again without realizing it because when I woke up, she was there.

And there was dog puke. On my rug. I have an unusually strong stomach, but I really hate dog puke.

I cleaned it up, disposed of it, and checked on her. She was laying in front of the couch and seemed pretty sick. But she's a dog, and I can't hold her in my lap and rock her, so I decided to pour some coffee and salvage what was left mf my workout time.

The kitchen smelled eerily like poop. I looked all around, and never saw any, so I shrugged it off and lit a candle. Suddenly, Abby sprang up and rushed to the door. Thinking she needed to puke again, I set the cup down on the counter and ran to get the door.

As I approached the door, I slid in something icky. It was scary...I could smell the poop odor again, and my foot was slimy, but if I just ignored it, would it go away? I realized it wouldn't, so I looked down slowly and saw.....

Diarrhea. The exact color of my hardwood floor. Yuck. If there's one thing I hate worse than dog puke it's doggy diarrhea. Especially at 5 AM.

I spent 20 minutes cleaning it up, and then another 10 scrubbing three layers of skin off of my foot.

Prom

I love prom.

Luckily, my job as a teacher enables me to stalk prom without being a weirdo. Okay, somewhat.

I wasn't that into prom when I was in high school, which is evidenced by my own prom pictures. I only went to two proms, and was probably lucky to go to those (side note: I wasn't too popular in high school. I know, hard to imagine!). My sister got to go to a bazillion proms, which while unfair, sparked my interest.

I love the dresses and the hair. In fact, I can trace the trends in dresses from year to year. This year, dresses made from prints were fashionable. And hair has slowly made it's way from an updo on top to a knot at the neck, or a loose, barrel curl with the sides pinned.

When I look at a school yearbook (which happens a lot more than you might think...I was also on the yearbook staff in high school and am obsessed with analyzing others' pica spacing, articles, and picture facings, even yearbooks in which I have no association with- just in case you didn't know exactly how big of a nerd I was), I go straight to the prom section to see the pictures.

Sometimes when I am traveling somewhere in April or May and I pass a high school or other establishment where they are having a prom, I will pull over and watch. Which, of course, is really weird when I don't know anyone there...but I do it anyways.

I try to ask innocent questions about hair and dresses of high school girls that I know. It only takes them a couple of minutes to discover my unhealthy obsession with what they are wearing. Astonishingly, they kind of think it's funny. Which is a lot better than them thinking I'm a stalker.

Which is why it was totally okay for me to find stuff to do with two kids in tow in town for five hours yesterday just so I could go to my husband's high school prom and walk around outside looking at the dresses on the pretense that it was for my kids. I mean, it was, they were excited, but Mommy was really excited, too.

And which is why the first thing I did this morning upon awaking was to get on facebook and see if anyone had any pictures of prom posted.

I have actually been invited to chaperone prom with my husband a couple of time, but he doesn't want to go...probably because he senses my obsession might get out of control. I might actually buy my own prom dress then.

A Saturday out and about

Today's plan was to take the girls with me to Solo and Ensemble Festival. Because it was supposed to be a LOOOONG day, I promised them that we'd go see the "princesses" after it was over (at the SV prom). I also threatened that if they weren't good, the music police would come and get them...after twenty minutes of Ivy obsessing about the music police, I had to tell her it wasn't true.

But, S&E ended at 1 PM instead of 4:30 PM...and the prom didn't start until 6. What on earth was I going to do with the two of them out in public for 5 hours??? I could have just gone home...but then Ivy would have been really mad at me. And I am starting to learn that she is both an elephant and my mom- she never forgets, and she can hold a grudge unlike anyone I know. So leaving was not an option.

Luckily, I could post my problem as a facebook status and get instant answers to my dilemma. We went to JC Penney's. We looked at kid clothes, purses, bathing suits. When we went to the "lingerie" section, both kids, for some reason, had to touch the cups of every bra. And not in a cute way, in a very embarrassing way. I thought it best to hightail it back to purses, so I tried to get them to leave, but they diabolically planned to dive IN to separate racks of bras, which had me yelling, counting to three, and dragging them out, dropping my purse in the process....which of course spilled out into the main aisle.

The dressing room was entertaining. I think the people in the other booths thought I was beating the kids. They threw a fit when I made them stop wrestling each other in front of the mirror.

Managing to make it out of JCP alive, I had no idea what to do next. I vaguely thought it would be a good idea to give up and retreat homeward...but then I decided we'd go to a movie.

We went to see How to Train Your Dragon. Or maybe it's A Dragon. I can't remember.

Three minutes in, Story had one lens of her 3D glasses popped out and was trying to engage the toddler in the row behind us. Luckily, Ivy and I were so scared of 3D dragons, we didn't pay much attention to it. Story went to sleep about 15 minutes in, so then Ivy and I were free to enjoy.

And we talked very loudly to each other throughout the movie. Nice to know she's got one of my traits.

When it was over, we went to see the "princesses." It was a good 15 minutes or so before they were tired of it. When I suggested leaving, they threw a fit...apparently playing in cigarette butt-filled gravel is too much of a good time. They needed more. I could only draw them away by suggesting the playground across the street. I said ten minutes, we spent 50.

And probably only left because it was POURING after 50 minutes. Even then, I had to call Ivy off of the slide...she cried the entire way to the car. She didn't even want to sing "Singing in the Rain." What a dud.