Arizona Metaphor

Po sat down in my lap this evening for me to read him a bedtime story. "OUCH!" He said. "Something hurt me."

I wondered what it could be.

He looked into my lap, then stroked my leg. "That's it! Your leg feels like a cactus!"

I should have told him that it's his fault since I slave over him and his well being all day, I don't always have the time or the...well those just would have been excuses. I just laughed until I almost peed, which would have been super attractive streaming down my cacti.

Major Mommy Mistake

I don't know how two women could mess up so royally.

Po and his great buddy, B, were pumped that today was the big party. A girl from school was turning five. B's mom, E, and I were planning for weeks. We went in on a killer outfit and charm bracelet, helped the boys make cards, and coordinated everything. She'd watch Cam and her little one while I chaperoned the boys to the party. The boys were dressed to the nines, and chatted in the car the whole way there.

"Will there be cupcakes?"

"Can we have one?"

"Will so-and-so be there?"

"Can we see the gift, again?"

"I can't WAIT!"

We pulled up to the house at 12:05 p.m., just five minutes late. Some kind of record. There were no cars. Not a single one. I felt bad that perhaps no one had come to the party. We would come to the rescue. I double-checked the address on the invitation and knew we had the right house. Then my heart dropped.

I checked the date. March 21, 2012. Yesterday.

"Maybe we're the first ones here!" came an excited voice from the back seat.

I wanted to vomit. I almost cried.

"Boys, I have a bit of bad news," I struggled. "The mommies messed-up, big time, and we missed the party. It was yesterday. We thought it was today. I'm so, so, sorry."

Silence.

How could both of us have thought the party was on the same wrong day? How? Why couldn't it be tomorrow? Why weren't the boys saying anything?

"We missed the party?" I don't know who said it.

All I remember was the lump in my throat, and that the lump suddenly came out. "We're going to make our own party, and it will be even better!"

"Cool!" one of them said. The other one was crying. That one was mine.

"Po, this will rock, don't worry. Let me just make a couple of phone calls." I dropped the gift at the front door and called the party mom, tail between my legs. She was super sweet, thank goodness. I called E and broke the bad news, followed by "we're making a party, and I'm going to pick up a cake and balloons and come to your house, and we're going to make this up to the boys."

"YES WE ARE!" she agreed, "only don't stop for anything. Come straight back. I'm getting the stuff out to make brownies, and I have ice cream, and I have balloons."

I filled the boys in on the plan, and they seemed pretty happy. Po said "sounds good. I'm just really disappointed." Dagger.

We made quesadillas, and we had warm brownies with ice cream, played catch with balloons, had a stellar water balloon fight, and we played musical chairs. Many times. We even sang happy birthday to "nobody." There were lots of giggles and smiles, but E and I still felt like failures. We smiled through our tears and did the best we could. I'm pretty sure the whole ordeal was much harder on us than it was on the boys.

When we got home this afternoon, I sat down with Po on the couch. "I hope you had a lot of fun today. I know you were really disappointed that we missed the party. I'm so, so sorry for that. Sometimes even mommies make big mistakes."

He sighed and said "Mommy, stop worrying. I'm okay. I'm really okay." Man, I love that kid. Still feel guilty, but the love is starting to swallow that up.

Never Were There Smarter Gentlemen

Spring Break: The special time in my life when fourteen-year-old male and five-year-old male meet in the middle somewhere 'roud 'bout nine-year-old-male–24/7–and in-between bouts of conflict, come up with notions that make me shake my head, speculate about intelligence levels and the future of mankind, and pour myself a cocktail.

Enter today's conversation, upon which I eavesdropped:

The scene: Two nine-year-old boys, one 5'11", one 3'5". Entertaining themselves despite the fact that they are bored, hungry, and tired. Current source of entertainment: 3' foam sword. Just one (sweet).

I'll cut to the chase.

B advises, in complete seriousness and concern, "Po, you should never, never, never touch the blade of a real sword. It is extremely sharp, and if you touch it, it can cut your skin really, really bad. And there are two sides, and both can cut you, and you should never never touch the edge of a real sword."

All the while, Po is stroking the foam sword, formulating his response.

"Yeah, I KNOW! That's why I'm TOTALLY not going to be a knight when I grow up."

Me neither. Just for that reason.

The Package

Po has been working really hard to quit sucking his thumb. He wears a bandage on his thumb each day as a reminder, and we have a two-week-long chart to track his progress. He's gone thirteen days straight with no sucking, so tomorrow is the big day when he gets his reward. I ordered it from Amazon to arrive tomorrow, but it came a day early.

Of course, Po knows what's inside, and he's parading the Amazon box around. We can't open it until tomorrow, though!

Cam is caught up in all of the excitement, so she's following him around the house, and he keeps trying to find a place for the Amazon box so she can't reach it, to no avail. So he had a little chat with her:

"Cam. It's my package, and it's special to me. I don't want you touching my package. I drew a girl on it with an 'x' through it, which means 'no girls can touch my package.' I don't want you touching my special package, because it's really important to me, and I'm going to do something special with it. So quit trying to touch my package, because no girls can touch it."

I'm so glad we've got that settled.

How to Sell Bake Pops

The littles' birthdays are coming up, so we've been party planning for their combined celebration. They settled on a Bakugan/Team Umizoomi theme. I just love a challenge.

We've been discussing cake options, and this morning Po suggested Bake Pops. He told me they're "fast and easy. You don't want a boring cake when you can have Bake Pops."

Either he's taken a sales training course I was unaware of, or we've been watching too much TV.

"Well, if you want Bake Pops for your party, then you'll have to ask your sister how she feels about that," I instructed.

"Okay," and he was off.

From the other room, I hear, "Cam, do you want Bake Pops instead of a cake for our party?"

"Nope," she shot him down.

"Well, Cam, you should know that regular cakes are boring. Why would you want a regular cake when you can have Bake Pops? They are easy and fun and delicious. Just stick the sticks in, then have an adult bake them for you, then we can decorate them with the frosting pens!"

She's taking it into consideration.

My Little Winos

Ding-dong!

The man in the brown truck came again today, this time with a package from a family member who has some serious connections in the wine industry. This person usually sends a pre-shipment of fine wine to keep us in supply while this person visits, this time for the holidays. It is quite a luxury, and much appreciated.

I drug the heavy case in the house, and the littles, as littles often do at this time of year, inquired about what might be inside.

"It feels like wine from you-know-who!" I announced.

"A-gain?" groaned Po.

"Is it kid wine?" glowed Cam, my little enthusiast.

Though disappointed in the realization that Santa was not delivering early Christmas presents for him, Po eagerly helped me unload the package so he could make a rocket ship-mountain cabin-tunnel-bridge-hat-finish line out of the protective styrofoam, only to pepper my carpet with "snow." A-gain?

Stop the Violence

Po and I got into a pretty heated discussion today as we were getting ready to go to the library. We were all scrambling around to find one long lost book under the couch or another in the hamper, and we eventually constructed the complete mountain of books we checked out a couple of weeks ago.

One thing I understand about Po, if nothing else, is his sentimentality for inanimate objects. He has a love/hate relationship with library day because, although the lure of new reading material is exciting, he is heartbroken over letting go of the friends he's read countless times over the last few weeks. He is spawn from the gal who, as a little girl, had a secret stash of her father's empty Marlbro boxes, thinking she'd saved them from a dark, lonely death. Though I've gotten over that freakishness, I can sympathize with my son, so I allow him to renew one book each time. And then I am tortured as I watch him agonize over which one will make the final cut.

Today's three finalists were all teen-geared Transformer comics. I told him that I didn't really like the books for him, and that I thought I'd made a mistake by allowing him to check them out in the first place. Po is Transformers-obsessed, so sometimes I am a bit to lenient on the matter.

"But MAWMMY! I love them so much. And you let me check them out before, and I love Transformers, and they aren't really that violent. "

Funny, I'd never mentioned violent. He sealed his fate.

"No, Po. These are going back, and I'll help you look for some more appropriate Transformer books. We'll find some," I reasoned.

"Well, Mommy. If you think these books are so inappropriate, then why did you let Daddy take me to see the Transformers movie in the movie theater. I mean, they are doing stuff in the movie, and a book doesn't do anything. It just sits there and it turns its pages!"

Nice of him to give me practice for his teenage years, eh?