Sunday, August 17, 2008

Performing surgery in the Stone Age


This week was staycation week. Should have been vacation week, but Hurricane Dolly blew through those plans. Once it was confirmed we would have to cancel our flights to the beach, I immediately switched gears and drafted a staycation plan with details for each day of the week and forwarded it to Hubby Hawks for review and approval. He approved but with an addendum: we would spend the final weekend in Vegas – two fun-loving adults with no regard for diapers or tantrums. Oh yeah. (Thanks Grandma and Papa!) And that’s as much as I’ll say about Vegas on my “mommy blog.”

So back to that “stay” part of staycation. It was action packed. Because of course sleeping is for sissies, even during staycation. We kicked it off with a puppet show, then a train ride, next a day at the zoo, then a day at the water park, and we threw in dinner at T-Rex, the dinner “experience” restaurant. Having no expectations, I actually loved it. Of course, it’s a fantastic family-of-four tourist trap, but I kinda loved being a “tourist,” trapped in my own city. And I am a complete sucker for anything that gets my boys’ eyes wide and wheels turning. The gigantic, fake, moving and breathing dinosaurs that live inside the T-Rex restaurant certainly did that. The food, not so much. The boys ate corn dogs -- as I’m sure the ancient cave people ate as well -- and I had a realization as Hubby and I were sitting there dissecting and blowing on each mini-dog on their plates:

I am always performing surgery on my sons’ food.

And sure enough, there I was, sitting in the Stone Age or Ice Age, or wherever I was, next to a life size woolly mammoth, performing surgery once again. Inevitably, each time we go out to dinner, or eat at home for that matter, the boys’ dinner is too hot for them to eat it when it’s finally ready. And they’re starving. Or have already filled up on Goldfish because they were starving. And about to have a break down. And so not interested in the umpteenth matchbox car I’ve got in my bag of tricks (a.k.a. the diaper bag). So the first thing Hubby and I do as soon as it is placed on the table is steal it from them, take the scalpel to it and start puffing away on it, pumping it with as much cool oxygen as we can before passing out.

Why is it that here we are decades after the introduction of the microwave, and we still don’t have a small appliance that zaps food in the other direction – taking it from steaming hot to just right? I would be first in line.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

And now a message from my 14-month-old, who loves typing

2GGB B MN6TYYY65CV RVFGCTE /.78 78KOMPOK

I love that he used all caps. He knew exactly what he wanted to say; nothing wishy washy about him! I love his deliberate punctuation, his banging approach to the keys, as if this was something he'd been waiting to get off his chest for quite some time. And this was literally it. Once he'd typed that final K, he was so done. On to the next thing. As desperate as he was to type this message, he couldn't be bothered with the computer once he was done. I love that conviction about him. I think he got it from me.