Desperately Seeking Girl in Cookie Costume

You know how you have days where you hit late, late afternoon and you're suddenly so famished you're sure you're wasting away to nothing. You think as hard as you can, but can only come up with a handful of nuts and a glass of milk for your day's nourishment? (No wonder you're STARVING!) Friday was not that day. And Friday makes the days I lose track of time and forget to eat okay. For the record I'm pretty sure it wasn't really all my fault. I started out well - yogurt with a little bit of Grape Nuts sprinkled on top, breakfast of champions. Then I got down to feeding the boys and here we come to accomplice #1. Grey has been begging for Toaster Strudel. (because he saw a commercial for some and can't get them out of his head, along with the sham-wow, the snuggie, some black-head extractor and the most horrible carry-all purse that he is sure will solve all my problems. I digress.) Anyway the begging has been going for at least a month and I finally caved. Too bad the real thing wasn't quite as delicious as what he had hoped. All three boys left at least half of their tasty toaster treats on their plates. Too bad for me really, because I ended up eating most of what was left over. Not so bad, actually.

Inexplicably I was hungry again around lunchtime. I was getting ready to head out to the horses for a ride, I'd need my strength, folks. Frozen Burritos to the rescue. Mmm. Such a very guilty pleasure. (I think I might need one now. . .) And I'm quite willing to take full responsibility for that one. Never met a burrito I didn't like. Surely, you say, you stopped the madness there. But, no. That wasn't all.

After school I rounded up the boys, my lovely niece and her lovely girls and we all headed to the mall to meet another lovely niece and do a little shoe shopping for the boys. (Max informed me the day before that he "now [had] a new hole in the side of [his] shoe". New hole? I asked. Then he showed me how he could take the middle of the sole out through a hole in the bottom of his shoe! He was so proud of it, and I was so horrified. a.) How many people has shown THAT trick to? b.) How long has that been there?! c.) I can't believe we haven't seen child protective services, or at least had new shoes dropped off anonymously on the porch.) ANYWAY, as we pulled up to the mall I said something to the effect of thinking one of those soft mall pretzels sounded good all of the sudden. Enter accomplice #2. Lovely niece number one says, "Ooo, yeah. Have you ever had the little pretzel bites?" No, I hadn't. But let me tell you, I have now. I was feeling very empty bellied after the shoe store and numerous terrifying trips up and down the escalators with five little children - most of which who refused to hold anyone's hands. They were de-li-cous. (The pretzel bites, that is.) soft. warm. all buttery. and salty. Yummy.

As we loaded back into the car to head to our next shopping destination I realized WHY we were hungry and the kids were so whiny. It was basically seven o'clock and we hadn't really fed them or ourselves yet. So we hurried through some equally delicious jeans shopping and ordered some pizzas to pick up on the way home. Yeah, pizza would top off the day nicely. Luckily, lovely niece number two had the sense to insist on picking up salad 'stuff' (along with lovely nieces three and four) on the way back.

Not so luckily, ten minutes from home, warm pizza boxes on niece number one's lap, what to our wondering eyes should appear but accomplice #3 - a DANCING TAGALONG. You heard me. An enormous dancing cookie motioning mid-macarena to the girl scout-mothers sitting behind a table in the stripmall. (At whom we waved a twenty and asked "how much can I get for this?. . . wait, we've got more!") First off, a note to all you girl scouts:

For the two weeks or so I spent in girl scouts, we went door to door to sell our cookies, dressed in ridiculous little brownie outfits. (Wonder why I only lasted two weeks. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the stupid 'sand-art' bird we made at one of the three meeting I ever attended. It was always about the cookies. And starting fires. Boy Scouts make fires, thought the girls would too. No such luck. Filled up a sprite bottle with different colored sand, glued on a feather and googly eyes. I was out of there before the glue dried.) Where are all the Brownies now? All we see are your mothers. You don't realize what you're missing by NOT knocking on my door. Seriously, I am a veritable gold mine. No one has enough Samoas or Tagalongs to fill my freezer. Let me order them from you, little girls. If we're not home, leave us A CARD. You don't have to do the Macarena on the street corner (although, that was fairly impressive in itself.), or sit at a table outside a grocery store selling a measly few boxes at a time. Come. Sell in bulk. Go home happy.

So, long story short, the endless carb fest ended with BBQ Chicken pizza, refreshing salad, and too, too many scrumptious Girl Scout Cookies. . . which are now gone. We are now desperately seeking the dancing tagalong once more. Hope you stocked up, girlies.

Babies Come From Heaven

Baby Max

Back in the day when I was thinking about someday being a 'mom', I only thought about the little kid mom-issues. Didn't sound too hard. Diapers, play-dates, Kool-Aid - nothing I couldn't handle. I never for a second approached the thought of my kids needing 'the talk'. (The first whopper of a step on the way to being a teenager, ugh.) Suddenly that seems to be an issue. Grey, who will be six this month has asked me repeatedly over the last week, "Sooo, how exactly do babies get in the mommies' tummies?". First I told him that Heavenly Father puts them there when he's ready to send down a new child. He squinted his eyes, furrowed his brow and said, "No, how exactly?". Great. I'm SO not getting into 'how exactly' with a kindergartner! Then, a feeling of relief overcame me as I realized I didn't ever have to tell him about the birds and the bees - this must be my reward for having only boys. I pawned the whole thing off on 'daddy', who told him to ask again in a couple of years. (Which means, of course, he'll keep pestering me about it until he moves on to some other mystery. Meanwhile, Max, who wouldn't dare ask that question if his life depended on it, has sat through each of Grey's little interrogations as silent as a stone. I'm thinking we got 'the talk' when were in, what, fourth grade? I hear so much about kids 'growing up' faster now with the onslaught of information that is constantly thrown at us all. Does that mean the point on the timeline where he actually needs in on that fun discussion has been moved to sooner than later? I mean, I'm pretty sure he still believes in Santa Claus; surely he can't be ready for this. Tyler is no more excited to sit down with him when the time comes. After all, his dad simply gave him a book titled "Now that You're Twelve", told him to read it and ask him if he had any questions. Right. "Um, Dad, I have a question about page six. . .". He was fourteen at the time, by the way. It didn't matter that his parents kept him out of the sex-ed program at school. His friends and brothers had already filled him in on all the gory details long before. So, he doesn't really have a good 'talk' to base his off of! I can't say I'm anywhere near being ready to have my little 'angels' knowing all there is to know. . . but how much time do we have left? A year? Two?