The Queen's Rambles

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving (if you’re American). We had a fabulous day. Now that I’ve given over the guilt of not being with my extended family, I am free to enjoy the day. I highly recommend letting go of guilt. It is so freeing to let go of things that I am in no way responsible for.

Anyway!

My friend and I shared cooking duty and she hosted at her place. Her MIL and MIL’s husband were in from England, so that was interesting. The husband, Jerry, had never had a traditional Thanksgiving meal and was quite fascinated. The MIL behaved herself as well, which was a gamble. My friend has a lot of complaints about the woman, but she also has a lot of complaints about every single aspect of her life so it is hard to suss out the truth from her victim mentality.

The most amazing part? All four kids were wonderfully well behaved! Seven hours and only one meltdown! The kids are finally getting to be of an age where they play well together (as long as the 8 year old boys are separated from the 4 year old girls).

I made the best pecan pie of my life. Seriously, this pie was perfect in every way. I am a pretty good pie maker, but not perfect, so I am very pleased with myself. Let’s not talk about the pumpkin. Ha.

Today we’re taking the kids to see Frozen, Elsa’s very first movie theater experience. We’ve seen the trailers about a million times so I hope she is well prepped.

****

Several hours later.

I guess I was a little too optimistic about the movie. Elsa didn’t do badly, but she was not entranced either. She was rolling all around, doing some dancing and just generally acting like a 3 year old who had been cooped up too long. Nothing terrible since we were in a packed theater full of very young children who were all a little restless, but not quite what I envisioned.

We all enjoyed the movie. I know they are touting it is at the next instant classic or whatever–a Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Lion King type movie. I have no idea what makes a movie have that extra pizazz, but I can say I will be buying this one on disk and watching it again. Maybe I’ll even get the soundtrack for the kids.

We have quite a few of the more modern Disney movies. The only one I enjoy watching over and over is Tangled. I’d say this one is definitely on par with Tangled (and strikingly similar in some ways).

I am just soooooooo glad they decided to change up the plot and make Elsa a misguided, lonely sister instead of an evil villain. What do you do when your child suddenly has the name of a Disney villian? Any Malificents in the house? Jafars? Ursulas?

It’s much more fun to unexpectedly have a line of Disney princesses named after your kid. However, I wonder if there will be a run on the name Elsa in the next few years. I tried to come up with unique, yet not made-up names for my kids. Guess I should have went with Malificent! Except that Angelina Jolie movie is coming out soon. Looks freaky!

I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m going to go eat a piece of pie and finish painting my trim.

This girl is going to drive me to drink. She’s three and we all know Three is one of the worst ages. Except for Six. Or I assume Twelve through Twenty-One. But I would hope to god that a Thirteen year old wouldn’t pry open a can of paint with her bare fingers in middle of the living room. GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

So that happened.

Last week she made a mess of the walls in her room, so I’ve spackled over all the patches where she peeled the paint off down to the drywall. I bought a quart of color matched paint, and started sanding things down yesterday. While I was upstairs sanding, I heard a thunk and then Elsa started crying hysterically. I heard Mike cursing, then screaming “We’ve got a problem, we’ve got a problem!” I was yelling “Do I need to call 911” as I trucked it down the stairs.

Then I saw it.

A whole quart of paint dumped out on my living room floor. Elsa crying hysterically on the couch. Erik looking on in shock.

We didn’t even have time to deal with Elsa. We both got down on the floor and started scooping the paint up with our hands. It was expensive and I needed it to fix her room!

We managed to pour about half a quart back into the can. Mike used the steamer to get the rest of it up. It took him nine rounds to get the water to run clear. We are both surprised it came up so well, but I guess those steamers are amazing and we did it while the paint was still wet.

So how the fuck did she get it open? I saw the guy use a mallet to close up the paint can. I guess she is just determined. It was a miracle that she didn’t get a single drop on her clothes. I still don’t understand how that happened.

While Mike was cleaning, I went and did the painting. The color matches pretty well, but if you look closely you can tell it is a slightly different color. The main problem: I don’t know how many coats of paint it is going to take to get rid of the crayon! I thought I’d just paint over it instead of magic erasing it. Sounded like a lot simpler, less intense option. It looked fine last night, but now that the paint is dry it is still clearly showing through. Turns out it would have been a lot less work intensive to just scrub it off. Now I’ll have to paint over it who knows how many times, cleaning my supplies between each painting (since it will have to dry).

I was truly hoping this problem of her writing on the walls was coming to an end since I took away all the crayons and offered Erik a bounty for any crayon he found and brought to me. She has also promised me that she won’t write on the walls anymore (not that I take the promise seriously).

Guess what? She found a dark blue crayon somewhere and wrote letters all over the wall behind the couch. GRRRRRRRR!!!!

I swear we supervise her! Obviously not nearly enough. It is definitely a lot harder to keep an eye on her since we are living in a three story townhouse instead of living in a small apartment like we did when Erik was this age.

+I put on a pair of jeans from the bottom of the closet the other day and they are clearly THAT jean–the perfect fit for me. Comfortable, non-butt baggy, decent looking. I needed more! Thanks to the magic of the internet I found the exact jeans (Levi’s 590 which seemed to be made for apple shapes) on Zappos. Whoo-hoo! Now I have three pairs of comfy jeans!

+My winter coat is literally falling apart. I bought it on clearance for $30 from Macy’s a couple of years ago. It was stylish, but not at all warm. I finally bit the bullet and bought an expensive coat from LL Bean. It is so fabulous! Why did I not do this last year? It is not exactly stylish, but it is warm and super, super comfy. The only issue is that it makes a lot of crinkle noise, which hurts my teeth (I don’t know why certain noises hurt my teeth, but they do).

+Home Depot has paint match. Hallelujah. The lady said it would only be a 93-98% match, which makes no sense to me since they literally put the piece of peeled off paint into a machine to get the color. However, the paint seems to be a better match than that so hopefully it won’t look too bad. If you are on FB, you probably saw my totally stressed out update about Elsa pulling patches of paint off the wall and writing all over the damned thing. (All crayons in this house have been confiscated. My house is COVERED in purple crayon marks). I don’t know exactly how she did it, but she pulled off patches around the window. Took it clear down to the drywall. I spackled today and will sand it down and paint when Mike has a chance to help me move her bed out of the way. I think she did it at night when she was bored and not sleeping.

+Though I am PISSED at the purple crayon marks all over my walls, when I crawled into her bed (it’s a loft bed covered with a canopy) I found a whole row of letters she’d written. Letters! Erik hates writing and never liked to practice. Her letters at age 3.5 are better formed than Erik’s letters were at the end of kindergarten. It’s amazing!

But did she really have to practice on the wall? In deep purple crayon? Magic Erasers are amazing, but the purple is so dark it is almost impossible to get it all off.

+All those years of being stressed out of my skin when we took Erik out in public has finally paid off. He is such a good kid these days. Our MOMS Club went out to dinner tonight and he was truly a delight. He was the only big kid, so he was involved in the adult conversation. He told jokes, asked astute questions and didn’t even fight with his sister. We won’t talk about his sister’s behavior. She wasn’t actually that bad, though. There was a lady with an almost two year old that I wanted to strangle. He had the most horrific screech and he was running around the place, completely uncontrolled. She kept saying “I just don’t know what to do.” and I finally told her that I would pick him up and take him out. She got pissed at me, of course, but I don’t care. Her son’s behavior was completely out of control and we were getting the stink-eye from every person in the place. It was mortifying. If any of my kids had EVER acted like that, I would have had to get up and leave (and, in fact, I did just that many times when Erik was a toddler).

My time of posting Erik’s antics may be coming to an end. I’ve been ordered to not post anything on facebook about him without prior approval upon pain of death. I’ll respect that, of course. My baby is growing up *sniffle*. He’s still a show-off, though, so I don’t think the well will run dry quite yet.

Both the kids have been in swimming lessons since July and they love it. I keep thinking I need to end the lessons because it’s winter, but it is their favorite part of the week and swimming is an important life skill. I’ve noticed lately that they are having horrible eye reactions to the chlorine. It was never good, exactly, but the last few weeks they’ve had red eyes for at least three days after swim class. Last week I almost took Erik to the doctor, his eyes were so red.

I dug out some goggles but none of them fit very well, so I bought them some new goggles at the pool.

Who’d have thunk it would change their lives?

They’ve been spending a good portion of their evenings in the bathtub with the goggles on. They even seem to be having *gasp* fun together. They are a typical set of siblings–fighting interspersed with playing together. Erik says he doesn’t like Elsa, but he often seeks her out. They watch TV together because he secretly likes Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony but can’t watch it on his own. It’s really fun to watch their friendship develop. He drives me crazy because he wants to be the boss, but I was the exact same way when I was that age (and. . . ummmmm. . . now) so who can blame him. Oldest child syndrome, right? Not that I allow it, but I understand his perspective.

In Elsa news.. . .

Yesterday she was having a three year old moment where she just repeated the same thing over and over and over and was getting more and more upset that we weren’t following her instructions. She was holding up her fingers saying “glamma hair” (only pronouncing hair more like he with a short e) over and over and over. We tried to get her to clarify, but it was still impossible to determine what she wanted. I finally figured out she wanted nail polish, something she’s never had before. I don’t wear it, but happened to have a bottle so put some on her.

So now she’s getting her nails painted on a daily basis. I must have bought some serious shit nail polish the last time I was tempted at Target, because it rubs right off in the bathtub. It’s blue and she wants purple, so I guess we get to go buy girly stuff.

I’m worried I’m going to get a call from the principal to come in and get my kid today. I don’t think that will actually happen, but I’m creating fantasies of grabbing Erik in a huff, telling the secretaries to take him off the rolls because I’m homeschooling and then e-mailing the entire PTA that I quit.

As if homeschooling that boy would somehow be easier and less stressful than dealing with the PTA. Ha!

Erik broke down crying last night, saying he hated school on Tuesdays and was never going to go to school on a Tuesday again. He has art on Tuesdays, which I knew he didn’t really enjoy but he did ok in it last year. He has a different teacher this year and he says she yells at him that his lines are not straight and he uses the wrong colors. I told him to ask her if she was trying to create artists or copy machines, which made him laugh. I really hope he asks her that, but I am worried it would be interpreted as being disrespectful and get him sent to the office. Not that I really care. I will argue with whoever I need to argue with that children getting yelled at in art class for not doing art correctly is the most absurd thing I’ve heard.

I know it’s not 100% the teacher’s fault. The new art curriculum is completely ridiculous. The students learn about an artist and are then expected to create a piece of art in the same style. This teacher apparently takes the curriculum to new levels of absurd. The few art teachers I’ve talked to hate the curriculum and do their best to encourage students to stay within the guidelines, but secretly take glee when kids do their own thing.

Of course, it’s not like Erik is into art and doing his own thing. More likely he is moaning and laying his head on the table and doing the absolute bare minimum. He has never enjoyed coloring or making art. In fact, I used to wonder why parents complained about their kids drawing on the wall. That bit me in the ass and I have freakin’ purple crayon marks all over my house. Magic eraser is great, except it doesn’t get rid of all the dark purple. She couldn’t have picked an easy color.

Anyway. . .

We have parent-teacher conferences today so I’ll see if his regular teacher can shed any light on the art problem and then I’ll arrange a conference with the art teacher. My 8 year old should not be crying over an art class. That’s so wrong.

He was also crying over his math homework, saying it was boring. I honestly didn’t blame him. I was about to cry over it myself. They are doing addition and subtraction using open number lines, which I suppose is a pretty helpful technique if you struggle with math but it is extremely tedious if you can actually do math.

He brings home his math papers and the number line work is always wrong because he doesn’t pay attention and labels them wrong. If he could just do the problem like a normal problem he would have the correct answer. I’ll be talking to the teacher about this as well. I hate that school is making him hate something he loves. I understand why they are learning this. . . just wish he could skip over it since it is actually detrimental to his skills. Bah.

I think a lot of his crying has to do with being over-tired, though. He has been staying up way, way, way too late to read independently It’s great that he is finally loving to read, but the sneaking up to read at all hours has got to stop. I used to do it too so I sympathize, but I don’t enjoy dealing with the aftermath.

And now the boy is home and saying art class was ok. We’re watching MasterChef Junior while Elsa is at preschool. I think Erik has a long way to go before he’s ready for this show! They’re making handmade pasta! I don’t think I could do that.

We had nothing on the agenda for this weekend, which is a small miracle. Soccer is over, birthday season is done, holiday madness hasn’t started yet. I was going to start painting the trim in our living room. Yes, I know. It’s literally been MONTHS since I painted the rest of the living room. The blue tape has become a permanent fixture. I need to get motivated and get to work.

At 2 pm a neighbor knocked on the door and asked if our kids could go to her little girl’s birthday party at 3 pm. Literally in an hour! She said not to worry about a gift.

Normally I would have said no to such a late invitation. I wasn’t even sure of the little girl’s name. Since we had nothing on the agenda I decided to chance it and take the kids over there since they seemed pretty desperate for guests. I have a gift closet, generic cards and wrapping paper at the ready, so we did manage to take over a gift. All I had for little girls was a couple of Disney princess dolls. I decided to go with Ariel since she at least wasn’t as blonde as Rapunzel. I was wishing I had a Mulan doll since the little girl is from the Philippines and I think it is important that children have dolls that look like them. Mulan is my favorite Disney movie, but I guess she is not a part of the Disney princess culture? At least I have never seen her represented in all the princess things.

But maybe I’m racist for thinking I have to give an Asian child an Asian doll? I don’t know! I have no idea what the answer is. I just wanted her to be happy and enjoy her gift. She had a Disney princess cake with Belle, Ariel, Cinderella and Snow White. She had a gigantic happy birthday poster filled with blonde Barbies and pictures of her. They were very proud of the poster (it literally covered one whole wall) and said they ordered it from their country. I guess if you want to be happy in this country you can’t dwell on the limitations? I have no idea since I have white privilege, but I am trying to learn. Now that Elsa is getting older I need to stock my gift closet with girlie things. I guess I should steer clear of dolls and Disney princesses since it makes me feel guilty (I tend to buy things that I would have wanted to play with when I was a little girl and I was all about dolls and princesses and sparkle).

The kids had fun at the party, and I found it pretty entertaining so it was a win. There was an interesting variety of people there and I learned all about my neighbors. They live across the street in a townhouse that has a garage instead of a basement. I have no idea how they all manage to live there. Six adults (a matriarch, two married couples, a bachelor and a 6 year old) in three very small bedrooms. But here’s the thing: three of them are medical doctors! The six adults all work in the medical field. I can’t understand why they would choose to live in cramped quarters. There are plenty of houses in this area that could comfortably house an extended family of seven.

All in all, they were very nice people and I was glad to get to know them a little better. And now I know where to go if I ever have a medical emergency. I’ve been confused by them for years because they are in and out very odd hours, but it all makes sense now.

There were two awkward things:

First, the food. I’d already eaten a big lunch so wasn’t hungry, then when I saw the food I knew I couldn’t stomach it. I didn’t even know what most of it was, but it just looked really unappealing to me. I thought I might get some of the stuff that looked a bit like a creamy fruit salad, but on closer inspection it had shrimp in it. I brought some beef stuff home for Mike and he said it had a lot of liver in it. There was some kind of olive loaf. I tried a bit of flan, but I am not a flan fan. It tastes like scrambled eggs that have been soaked in syrup.

They kept insisting that we eat the food, and there was a group of us who kept looking at each other like deer in the headlights because we were not from that cultural and it was just not something we could stomach. The funny thing is, me and my kids were the only white people there. The African-Americans and Hispanic families were just as wary of the food as I was. In fact, the teen girl who called Erik “Hitler” was there and she was complaining the most. Her mother and sister were trying to shush her, but she wasn’t getting it (btw, I found out that her dad is a minister and he was terribly embarrassed by her behavior with Erik).

I know it is a part of many, many cultures to try to feed people as a gesture of warmth and welcoming. I am sure it was really rude of me not to eat the food, but I just couldn’t.

The other awkward part is that they kept introducing me as the vice-president of the PTA. Which is true, but not really something that elevated me to the status they were trying to give me. I should have been passing out membership forms.

I also learned that Elsa is a very common name in the Philippines, which I had no clue about. In fact, there was another Elsa at the party–an older lady who was tickled to find a little girl Elsa.

Sooooo. . . interesting weekend! I’m always up for a new experience, as long as it doesn’t involve strange food since I am embarrassed about my picky eating. It was probably crazy to go over there since we don’t actually know them at all, but I was curious about them. I would love to go into every single house on our street at least once. I’ve only been in nine of them (out of about 80–they have us squished in here cheek to jowl).

I took the kids to get pictures done on Monday. I picked a good time–we were the only ones there. I felt slightly guilty for pulling Erik out of class early, but when I saw the homework he missed I gave up on all guilt. He missed identifying odd and even numbers. Seriously, is this second grade or preschool? I think it was just a review. They are doing other things, but that just seemed rather ridiculous.

I swear the portrait studio (JCP) puts cocaine in the air. I don’t know why they would want incredibly hyped up kids, but something happens to both my kids when they walk in the door. They go completely nuts and make me want to hide or scream or fly to the moon (not that I would ever want to be an astronaut. That would be the scariest thing ever, a thought I’ve had long before the movie Gravity came out.).

We’ve been there so many times that the kids are totally comfortable going to the prop cabinets and pulling things out. Which is NOT ok with me. At all. Erik immediately asked for the top hat and the gal didn’t even know what he was talking about. She couldn’t find it and said it was probably in storage.

Elsa grabbed a stool and used it to launch herself onto Erik. She weighs 40 pounds. He weighs 55 pounds. She doesn’t know how strong she is and she can totally knock him over. He was getting irritated, and I don’t blame him. She was jumping all over him, grabbing at his shirt, running circles around him and just generally being a menace.

He was trying to be a serious looking model, which was hard to do with Elsa gleefully yelling while running in circles and pummeling him.

This is basically what they were doing the whole time. If you haven’t seen the series on FB, you are welcome to click through for more. We did get a winner for the Christmas card and a great one of Elsa. We got one of Mr. Skeptical Erik, which is the look he was going for.

I ordered a solid purple shirt from Amazon, but they sent the wrong size. I didn’t notice until I put it on him. And oh lord, just getting that shirt on him. “It’s purple! I’m not wearing purple! It has buttons! I’m not wearing buttons! I’m not tucking it in! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!”

Everyone thinks Elsa looks just like me, and she does. But I look just like my mom. But Elsa looks a lot like my dad. Genetics are crazy. It gives me such a funny feeling to look at her and see facial expressions my dad used to have. Her lips are exactly like his.

What else is going on?

We had a PTA meeting last night. The president announced that I would be the president next year and I publicly said “no way.” I can’t work with these people. No one seems to know the value of keeping commitments, taking initiative and all that jazz. And honestly? A lot of them don’t seem to be that intelligent. People seem to have a lot of trouble making logical connections, pre-planning, and generally being competent. I don’t know how the species hasn’t died off.

OK, gotta take Erik up to bed. At least I get to lay in bed and read my book. I am really enjoying this new routine!