Archive for September, 2006
Disclaimer: Yes, I know we’re all supposed to be boycotting McDonalds because of Hummers and gas prices and the war, but honestly, as long as they keep making delicious french fries and are located conveniently on the way home from my playgroup that hets out at about 12:15, I just can’t help myself. Plus, the boy loves nuggets and the girl loves french fries.
Yes. I stopped on the way home from playgroup and got happy meals for the kids.
As most of you reading this already know, I have boy/girl twins that are two years old. The day I found out that I was pregnant with twins one of the nurses at my obstetrician’s office, who also had twins, told us this: “Buy two of everything. And don’t go thinking that you can get one yellow ball and one purple ball either. Oh no. Get two purple balls.”
There are two schools of twin parenting thought. The first school doesn’t like to waste money and they teach their children to share. I call this one the “Let Them Fight it Out” school. The second school, which the nurse and I both subscribe to is the “Buy Two of Everything” school. (Okay, this is an oversimplification, but I think you get my point.)
Often when I go to McDonalds and get Happy Meals they will ask me if I want girl toys or boy toys. I usually tell them that I don’t care as long as they are exactly the same.
See, I don’t believe in the boy toy/girl toy thing. Both of my kids have trucks and both of my kids have baby dolls. It is okay with me if Ian drinks out of the pink cup. I just don’t care. They both like Dora and they both like Diego.
Today the drive through people didn’t ask what kind of toys I wanted.
Maybe they peeked in the car. I don’t know. But I do know this. Today I got one of these:
And one of these:
The top picture is of Toa Hahli. He is Bionicle. Who according to the LEGO website is:
Seeker of the Mask of Life!
Toa Inika Hahli may be the most important of the new heroes, for her Kanohi Elda, the Mask of Detection, will lead the group right to the Mask of Life! If the Piraka try to get in the way, her laser harpoon fires a mix of water and lightning.
Oh. I apologize. The boy toy is a girl. Whatever. SHE is a Bionicle.
The bottom picture is of a Little Mermaid bracelet that has lip gloss in it. Let’s pretend for just a second that a two year old has a use for lip gloss, just because I don’t even feel like going off about that right now.
I’m sitting in the van getting ready to merge onto I-495 when I realize that they toys are not the same. I am thinking that the kids are going to completely lose their shit. I don’t know which toy they are both going to want, but these are quite clearly very different toys.
I pass the toys back – the warrior with the sword to the boy and the bracelet with the make-up in it to the girl and hold my breath.
I guess McDonalds knows something that I don’t.
The Goon Squad is thrilled. Ian is making his guy fly and Claudia is opening and closing the special cosmetic compartment. I couldn’t turn around and really look, but at this point I wouldn’t even be surprised if she was applying the lip gloss properly.
The irony (if you can even call it that) is that I have spent the last year and a half telling people that there were innate differences between boys and girls.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
10:46 pm |
I just got off the phone with Gabe. He is on a “business” retreat. For work.
Why is “business” in quotes, you ask?
This was the beginning of our phone call:
Gabe: How’s it going?
(loud noise in the background)
Me: Did somebody just yell San Dimas High School football rules?
Gabe: Yes. Yes, they did. They’re playing beer pong.
____
Man. I wish I worked for Gabe’s company.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
4:49 pm |
Is there anybody in your life that you feel like you were just supposed to know?
Here is an example. I have a friend named Ritch. I’ve known him for about 15 years now. We met at our college orientation. (Wow. If you didn’t already know how old I was, I bet you could do that math in about three seconds.) I didn’t know anyone else there and I started talking to him because he was wearing a Death Angel t-shirt. (Can we please just act like I started talking to him for some other less embarrassing reason?) We also ended up living in the same off-campus dorm together. It turned out later that we each only applied to three colleges and they were the exact same three. (USF, FSU and UCF) We both got accepted to all three schools, we both applied to USF as our fallback school (Take that Gabe and Lori, so what if your team beats us at football every year?) we both wanted to go to FSU and for unknown reasons changed our minds and decided to go to UCF instead. We had also been in several places at the same time before and just never met (mostly metal shows but since we lived in cities that were two hours apart, that is still fairly unusual). I have always felt like I was supposed to be friends with Ritch. Call it fate or destiny or whatever, I just perceive it that way.
There is also a blogger like that. You can call her MOWA or Stirrup Queen or you can call her by her real name (which I won’t here because she doesn’t use it on her blog) but I first encountered her online when my family decided to relocate to the D.C. area. I knew her husband from blogging and I contacted him about a twins club around here. He said his wife was involved in one and put me in contact with her. She helped me out with information and then I lost touch with them when they both stopped blogging for a while.
A couple of months later I was talking to a woman on a local listserv about trying to get my kids to drink milk out of sippy cups instead of bottles and it turned out to be her.
Small world, huh?
Then about a two weeks ago, I was checking out blogs that link here. I noticed one that was an infertility blog and that the authors had twins, so I added them to my Big Multiples Blogroll.
About 10 minutes later I get an e-mail that it is her again. MOWA! And she lives about 30 minutes away from me. I feel like some power is trying to get me together with this woman. I don’t know why yet, but I’m guessing if we don’t make a playdate soon I will just run into her at a mall. I’ll be talking to the woman with twins (Twin parents always talk to the other parents with twins) and it will just be her. I completely expect this to happen.
On the other hand, I’ve been trying to hook up with Kristen from A Tale of Two Kiddies.
We have made about four or five playdates so far that have ALL fallen through. One time my kids got sick, one time I didn’t realize that it was Labor Day weekend and I wouldn’t even be in town, once I forgot all about something we had to attend for preschool and yesterday her daughter got an ear infection.
To add to the strangeness, she is a very active member of one of the twins clubs that I tried to join when I moved here. (Remember that mess?)
Do you think that some higher power is trying to keep us apart? Do you think two of our kids will get married and our grandchild will be a super villain? Will we concoct some sort of bioengineered virus that will wipe out the Earth’s population (doubtful, I don’t have a laboratory or a good Chemistry or Biology background) will we accidentally unleash an evil imp from captivity or the darkling?
Do you have a theory on this? Do you guys have people in your life that you felt like you were supposed to know, or not know?
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
8:41 am |
This is for Karen’s Love Thursday.
I love this picture.
This is how it is. This is what we do. This will always remind me of what it was like when they were two.
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
10:53 am |
September 27, 2006 | Randomness
I just had my favorite spam comment so far. It was a link to zoosex. I didn’t click it, but I have to admit – I thought about for a minute. (By the way, I’m up to over 1600 spam comments since June. Akismet has caught 98% of them.)
MÖTLEY CRÜISE! (It’s not a joke. Thanks BIYF)
I used to have this exact same poster up in my bedroom in high school.
I heard over on The Zero Boss that The F Bomb aired on “Family Guy”. Here is what supposedly ran. (Of course, then Jay made fun of me for watching football instead of “Family Guy” and then I had to threaten him and insult his manliness. Things get out of control quickly around here.)
Ewwwww! Screech naked. (Thanks, Gabe.)
Posted by Goon Squad Sarah @
7:04 pm |
