Archive for July, 2005
Alison (a.k.a. Tiffer) had something on her blog the other day about The Latest Party Game. It is basically an interview game. I’m following Alison’s lead, by trying to answer spontaneously. If you want to play, you can play here, on your own blog on on Alison’s blog. Here we go:
What are your major strengths as a mom? I really enjoy being with them, and I think they know it. I also like to teach them everything and anything, even if it is a strange thing to teach a one year old. We talk about classical composers and football and cooking and heavy metal music, but also about “Sesame Street” and animals and the alphabet. I try to expose them to a wide variety of inputs. I also think my ability to laugh at myself makes me a little bit less uptight as a mother.
If you could fly anywhere next weekend – with Gabe but without the squad – for a romantic weekend getaway, where would you go and why? Some sort of all-inclusive resort, where we could lay on the beach and Gabe could kayak, and we could eat great food and drink really good wine and sleep in.
What are the most crucial things you’ve learned from your twins? 1) I was wrong, I did want twins. 2)There are more important things than sleep.
If you could choose to someday be a success in any career, what would it be? Since I think I am past my shot at becoming a rock star, I would like to be successful in sales. I want to sell something big. Like buildings, or cruise ships or even houses. I want something with big commissions that I really have to work to sell.
Describe the best concert you’ve ever attended. The best show I ever saw was Jerry Cantrell. We saw him play at a little club in Ybor City on a weeknight. The band played a whole bunch of Alice In Chains songs and it sounded perfect. I think Jerry was singing Layne’s parts and he had another bandmember singing his harmonies. The whole crowd was really into it, and a friend of ours who worked for the local rock radio station had VIP passes, so we got to go upstairs and we had an excellent view of the stage.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
2:06 pm |
We made it back from vacation. Shockingly, the kids were great in the car. We had a really good time.
These pictures are from the Squad’s first time in the Atlantic Ocean. We were up in Delaware. Yes, I know it is odd to live in Florida, and go on vacation to the beach in Delaware, but Rehoboth Beach is really nice. At first, the kids (being used to the Gulf) were scared of the loud waves, but by the second day they were loving the beach.
As a bonus for his grandparents, Ian learned how to hug while we were up there. He will throw his arms around your neck and put his head on your shoulder and say “awwww”. It is very sweet.
Here is something strange. We stopped at a rest area in South Carolina on the way home and we let the twins run around, because they had already been cooped up for seven hours in the car that day. It was at this rest area that we realized at 14 months old it was the first time our kids had touched grass. I guess it is because the grass down here is so gross (and fire ants and snakes), I just never put my kids in the yard and let them go. I wonder what other everyday things they haven’t experienced yet?
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
8:41 am |
We leave today. Thirteen hours in the car with the squad. This will be their first trip out of state. Anything could happen. Luckily, we are prepared.
For the kids we have in the car already:
- Two little touch leap pads. One in pink and one in blue.
- Four books
- Two NEW dolls, one boy and one girl. Ian liked the packaging and Claudia was given choices and she chose the Caucasian doll. I kind of wanted her to pick the Asian girl, I’m not sure why. I was hoping she was into diversity at 14 months, but she just liked the one with the most shiny hair.
- Two little monster trucks, one is Grave Digger and I don’t remember the other one.
- The Sonya Lee and Eddie sets from here (or something very similar to them).
- Two little toy cell phones.
- Nearly every Baby Einstein video know to man.
Plus their normal car toys. That does not include the sippy cups, goldfish, teddy grahams, cheerios, applesauce and all that crap that is in the cooler!
By the way, Gabe and I only bought the leap pads and the monster truck. The Baby Einstein videos were from Nonny and Papa. Grandma went with us to Target yesterday and I think she was already starting to miss the kids. She went nuts.
Anyway if all that plus their bears, plus Melissa’s copy of “Finding Nemo” can’t keep the squad buys for thirteen hours (plus we’re stopping in the middle and counting on them sleeping a lot) then we could be in trouble.
I am hoping the ride will look like these pictures:
That was the first time we used the headphones. We were joking, but it worked well.
I think I’ll be able to post when I’m gone, but I’m not sure yet.
Wish us luck.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
9:13 am |
Ian found a new way to wake me up this morning. He jabbed me in the nose with his thumb three times. This is only one of the down falls of bringing a teething toddler into your bed in the middle of the night. I’m surprised he didn’t give me a bloody nose. He has given Gabe and my Mom bloody noses in this fashion. When he got Gabe, we were in Babies R Us. Gabe ended up walking around the store with a bloody burp cloth. It looked like he stabbed a baby. Ian thought it was hilarious.
Then, I went to the back of the house to get some pants on and use the bathroom. I was temporarily distracted by my e-mail, but this all took less than five minutes. When I got back to the living room, the kids were playing nicely with their mega blocks, but there were wipes everywhere. The two of them had emptied an entire large box of wipes. I know it was both of them, because I smelled their little paws and both of their hands smelled like fresh springtime lavender, or whatever the hell it is.
Next, my Dad called. As he is telling me that my assignment is to teach Claudia to roar when we say “What does Grandpa say?” (this is all true, I swear it), I look over and Claudia is waving around a diaper. As I am wondering where she got the diaper, I notice she is naked from the waist down. Mystery solved. New mystery – how did she get it off in the first place? I am never buying Huggies again. The nice big tabs make these diapers way too easy for a 14 month old to get them off. The last thing in the world I need is two bare assed goons running around in here. Especially when you take in to consideration that Ian had six poopy diapers yesterday, and that is only slightly above average.
One more thing. Last night I began to read Misconceptions, by Naomi Wolf. My first misconception was this was a work of fiction. I’m just finished the forward, and it looks like it is a book about first time motherhood. It is scary already. I’ll let you know when I’m done, but so far, I would say not to read it if you are pregnant with your first child. There are three or four places in the introduction alone that would have made me cry when I was pregnant – not that it took much to bring me to tears then… or now, really.
All of this happened (or occurred to me in the case of the book) to me this morning. I am about to hit the publish button and it is only 8:34 am. I can’t wait to see what these guys do with the rest of their day.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
8:30 am |
Becky and I braved the mall today. That makes two adults and five children, four of which are 14 months old. Andy is three and he was an angel the whole time. I can’t imagine the squad ever behaving like that, but I hope someday they will.
I feel bad for whoever had to clean up under our table at the food court. My kids threw some green beans and rice. I was trying to impress Becky and show her that Ian will eat anything, but it would have been more accurate if I would have told her “Ian will put anything in his mouth and then spit it back out and Claudia will throw any type of food on the floor”.
Overall, it went pretty well, considering the four one year olds. I also bought the squad some new shirts so that they can dazzle the grandparents with cuteness, which is sort of ironic because the grandparents are so crazy about the squad that they could show up wearing ritualistic robes covered in goats blood and all four grandparents would still think they were the cutest thing they had ever seen.
Speaking of which – my Dad has been trying to get the kids to roar like a lion ever since they were born. He does this with every kids he knows. Apparently, my cousin could roar really well when she was a little kid and my Dad is still looking for someone to top Renee. Over Memorial Day, my Dad actually had Ian roaring, it was hilarious, he would make his mouth into a little “O” shape and make dry gargling sounds. He did it for about a week, and then he got tired of everybody asking him what a lion said every five minutes. So, we’re in Gymboree and Ian sees this big orange stuffed cat, it could be a lion, or a cheetah, or a big housecat, but he’s pointing at it like crazy and “ROAR”, after three months of nothing, he roars at the stuffed lion and I handed it to him and he hugged it. If I had one child, he would currently own the lion or whatever it is. But what kind of person would I have been if I only bought one? There were five kids looking at me. Maybe I’ll go back in secret later. The other stuffed animal was a rhino, Gabe’s favorite.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
1:45 pm |
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