Judgement

How do kids do it? How do they not hold a grudge, place blame and just hate something? If something gave me the hugest bloody, swollen, nasty, makes-strangers-stare-at-me-so-much-my-mom-made-us-leave-Target-early black eye, I think I'd hate it. I'm certain I would.

I ate a bad tuna salad sandwich at Subway when I was like 10 and I loathe that sandwich from that place to this day. I'll do the math for you - that's a 21 year grudge.

But not Jack. I looked out the Hayes' window yesterday afternoon to find him happily swinging around on the infamous tire swing.

I can't decide if that's stupidity, or a profound ability to forgive.

Shiner

Somebody tell me my baby is going to be fine! Okay, okay, I KNOW he'll be fine. But he has the hugest shiner I've ever seen on a child.

He took a face-plant off the Hayes' tire swing, was walked inside by CJ (adorable) and appeared to just have a decent scrape on his cheek. But he was BAWLING. So sad. So we went home, I cleaned it and put Neosporin on the scrape, and a gigantic bandaid across his face. He ran straight to his room and shut the door. I went in and he was crying saying he didn't want me in there. He was laying on his bed, so I left him. But I went back quickly and he wanted me there. So I laid down with him. I had him mostly quiet and then Daddy came in see how he was, and he promptly burst into tears again. I got him quiet again and he fell fast asleep. Didn't even notice when I got up to leave. I went back in to make him get up to eat something. We could only get him to agree to apple pie, but hey, we just wanted him to have something in his tummy.

He only ate half, and as he was eating, the underside of his right eye got puffier and puffier. He would cry a bit, eat a tiny bite, cry a bit more. I sat with him then on the couch, holding one of Ryker's old teething rings (the cold kind) to his face. Poor guy. Chuck carried him back to his room, gave him Tylenol, and we propped his head up with another pillow. He's fast asleep in the clothes he wore to school (sweats, luckily).

I feel so bad! Poor boy. Chuck thinks it'll be fine tomorrow morning. I'm not so sure.

Grass Wars

Easter grass has a sordid history in my family. My mom would get in the spirit of Easter and fill our Easter baskets with that weird plastic grass stuff. It looked really festive and cute and seemed like the right thing to do. But inevitably, strands of that grass would end up in random corners of our house. You would find it in your shoe the next fall, or a kitchen cabinet in the winter. It got to be a joke in our family. She used to complain about it - all "I hate the Easter grass!" and "HOW does that stuff end up EVERYWHERE?!" But if memory serves me right, my mom KEPT BUYING IT. So in my book, she started the war.

My freshman year in college I decided to really get her. I bought a big pack of it, stuffed an envelope full, with nothing else in it, and mailed it to her. Ha ha.

Point for me.

This year, she came up to Minnesota for Easter and, of course, brought with her two big bags of that crap...er...stuff. She filled plastic pails for the kids with it. My kids don't have the manual dexterity to retrieve candy from the pail without subsequently dumping blades (do you even call it that when it's plastic?) of the grass everywhere.

Point for my mom.

My mom was driving back to St. Louis on Monday. That morning, before he left for work, Chuck put a bundle of it under her front windshield wiper. He wrote me at work and told me what he did, and that he was hoping she wouldn't have noticed until she maybe had to use her wipers on the drive home. Ha ha.

Point for Chuck, and me by association.

Only my mom DID notice before she left. And she removed the bundle from her wipers and put it in our mailbox.

Point for my mom.

Today, I came out from my shower to find kitty-throw-up, complete with Easter grass remnants.

Game, set, match for my mom.

Gladys and the Pips

We have a little thing going where Jack sings and sings and sings, and Ryk does back-up. Our rides home regularly start with Jack requesting "Manic Monday." And if you don't know the lyrics, they go like this:

It's just another Manic Monday
Wish it was Sunday
'Cause that's my funday
Just another Manic Monday

But poor Rykie can't say most of those words, so he just patiently waits through the first part of each line, and then sings "DAY" right on cue, in sync with Jack. I don't know if I'll be able to get it on video ever, being that I'm driving and all. But if you want to hear it for yourself, just make an excuse for me to drive you somewhere.

Cards/Twins

You know what's a big deal up in Minnesota? Outdoor baseball. They've been without it for a long, long time - played in the climate controlled Metrodome for 20 or 30 years (I'm not a true Minnesotan because I don't know the exact number). But now they, or "we" rather, have outdoor baseball again, and people are SOOO excited. And rightfully so.

When it was announced that the first games in the park, albeit exhibition, would be against the Cardinals, I went a little bit nuts. I was raised a die-hard Cardinals fan, and I've taken quite a liking to the Twins since I've lived up here (13 years now!). I was determined to go. And my friend Clausman came through. Her parents gave us their tickets, so she and I got to sit in the very nice Legends Club off the third base line. But then my mom got in on the action too, and ordered 3 more tickets - for Chuck, Jackson and her. THEY got to sit in the lower deck, behind home plate up by the concourse. Not bad!

I carefully considered our outfits. Jack got his first Twins hat to wear with the Cards t-shirt he already had. I got my first Twins jersey (a Mauer one), and a new Cardinals hat to balance it out. Chuck decided to stay true to his roots and ONLY wear Twins gear, and threw in a Carleton shirt to keep all allegiances clear.
My mom bought me a Cards pullover, similar to the one she was going to wear, and it ended up being chilly, so I was wearing that OVER my Mauer jersey and I got a decent amount of crap about that up in C and my seats.

Anyway, the game was PERFECT! I'm kind of annoying right now because I won't shut up about how great it was. Perfect weather, awesome company, great ballpark. And having two teams that you like playing each other makes it so you get to cheer for pretty much everything that happens in the game. It was fantastic. Jack had a great time, too. And why not? He got to have a hotdog AND ice cream. AND Grandmommy playing games with him on her cell phone to keep him entertained!
More pictures are on Flickr - link to the right. Check them out.

Julie McCoy - Cruise Director

Okay, do any of you know who that is? I didn't. I planned a happy hour (yes, ANOTHER one, two weeks running) for work and my friend called me Julie. It made me wonder if she had forgotten my name, and HOW would that happen?, and yes it's her birthday but she's not THAT old! But while I was pondering all of that she explained to me that that was a cruise director. I still don't get it, but whatever.

Anyway, this relates to my family. I promise.

So I think Jack is our family's Julie McCoy. He is already planning his birthday - a full six months in advance and I have to repeat the guest list to him every day to prove to him that I still remember it. And he told me last week that everyone can be here, but anyone that wants to go into his room needs to pay a quarter. And that sounds kinda troubling coming from a four year old. I didn't ask follow-up questions.

Also, every night we have to have a "dance party" in his room. Sometimes it's a "singing party," although I have yet to figure out the difference. Tonight's dance party consisted of Ryker and me sitting on Jack's bed playing on the Magnadoodle and coloring, respectively. Jack got to pick the music, and every once in awhile he'd get a very serious look on his face, and then he's start doing a VERY slow version of ballet steps.

He's completely adorable.

The Smell of Clorox and Neosporin

That is my house right now. I prefer the smell of cookies.

Clorox - used on the floor where Tug peed, in the house, for the first time since we moved in. Also used in the bathtub after Ryker pooped in it.

Neosporin - used all over Jack's legs, where he managed to skin both knees and both shins in one fall on the driveway.

If the wind blows just right you can also catch a whiff of the Calendula cream we have to use on Ryk's face to keep scales from forming.

And just the faintest whiff of blood - take your pick, from Jack or Ryker's bloody lips they both had this weekend. Ryker got his sitting at the firepit at the neighbors' house (no idea) and Jack got his from an unfortunate encounter with a lacrosse ball at a sporting goods store.