new mexico trip

we spent a week out in the high desert of santa fe, new mexico, and brooke flew like a champ! we breezed through security the first time with no hitches & the second time only lost a tube of kids toothpaste (you know how bombers love to use kids crest to blow stuff up). brooke insisted that she needed to wear the coyote ears that i made for her & she mostly enjoyed the comments from strangers, but was slightly pissed off when they asked her if she was a reindeer or a cat or a horse or some other foolish animal. funny how personally she takes it when someone guesses wrong.

as we boarded the first plane, she told the flight attendant that it was her first time flying & that earned her a trip straight into the cockpit where she got to sit in the pilot's seat & have a little photo shoot with the pilot & co-pilot. it cracked me up as i peered around the doorway to see her posing with her new found buddies like she's a flying pro & does this every day.

we had a hard time putting our cameras down for most of the whole week we were gone & came home with tons of great pics that i won't force you to endure. what's that? you want to see them? ok, you talked me into it, so maybe i'll just share a few.

my friend, cristi, who we stayed with has a huge great dane named moses & brooke spent a large portion of her trip caressing him. she was mesmerized by his sheer magnitude and his mouth. she loves dog jowls & teeth & likes to poke into there for a peek at the goods whenever a dog will allow it. i think mo had more attention lavished on him over the 5 days we were there than he even knew what to do with.

it was great to stay up late & talk to one of my childhood friends. we hadn't seen each other in 5 years, but we jumped right back in like no time had passed at all. it just took some time to catch each other up on all the things that we've missed. the good, the bad & the ugly.

brooke & i took ourselves out for a walk in the freezing, windy, beautiful air a couple times while cristi was working and one of those times i managed to get us just a smidge lost. we actually walked straight across the road where we were supposed to turn & kept right on trekking along until brooke started crying that we were lost & would never get back. we sat down on the sidewalk for a few minutes to recover and then kept going - in the wrong direction. my cell phone had died while we were out because i was chatting up my mom while my service was roaming. oops. but eventually we found our way back & didn't get eaten by any of the wildlife that roams freely in that area. and we got some great pictures while we were on our never-ending walk, so it was worth it!

i also wanted to tell you guys that i missed you. i feel like i left my blogging buddies behind while i was away & i'm trying to get caught up on all the happenings in the blogosphere.

worry wart

tomorrow we leave & brooke's starting to get nervous. she's worried about going through security & having to put her stuffed animals & backpack through the scanner & walk through the archway without them. i'm just glad i thought to tell her about it ahead of time so that i could walk her through the process ahead of time. she can usually deal with stuff that's new as long as she knows what to expect. she's planning to put a tiny stuffed animal into her pocket so that she can feel its fur in her hand while walking through the metal detector. here's hoping neither of us sets off any alarms & has to get wanded or they might have a loudly freaking out kid on their hands!

takeoff is troubling her too, but we've been practicing in the kitchen. i've been setting up chairs together & walking her through the steps, including me tipping her chair back slightly & jiggling it just a smidge to imitate what it'll feel like.

we're praying for calmness & humor everywhere we look. oh yeah, and no terrorists please.

i'll be really glad when this first part of the trip is over so that we can both stop fretting and get to the fun part!
now if i can just remember to pack the dramamine & a pack of gum...

photo freak contest

there's a "best photo you've ever taken" contest going on over at photo freak's blog & i thought i'd toss my own favorite into the mix. it's nowhere near a professional level of photography, there's something about it that just pulls me into the eyes every time i look at it.

laundry fairy

i'm going through my mental list of all the things that need to be done between now & friday morning when we head for the airport -
print out directions to the airport
febreeze the suitcases
check the weather forecast
dig out cold weather clothing & make sure it fits
do the laundry...

and that's where i land and stick. right smack on the laundry. in order to wash the clothes, i need to FIND the clothes & i realize that none of brooke's favorite clothes are in her basket. they're not lying around her room in plain view either. i know she's going to be one ticked off camper if her favorites (meaning clothing in natural animal colors because she can't stand to dress like a girl, but only wants to dress like an animal almost every day) don't make it to new mexico with us. i started digging around in various hidey holes around her room - here's a brown shirt under her top bunk. there's a pair of gray leggings on a shelf under a table. there's a pair of gray camo shorts with real fox tail still attached under an upside down rubbermaid tub. when i got to the dress up box i hit the mother load. there were articles of clothing in there that went missing many months ago and here they were, covered with stains & probably outgrown by now. i plundered through there & dug out many valuable items of booty.

i was feeling vaguely irritated that i had to go looking for her clothes (i'd make her do it herself or too bad for her, but she's out of the house with daddy so that i can have some quiet time to get things done around here) until i started hauling the baskets toward the laundry room. that's when i realized that most of my bras & socks were missing. and my pajamas. i had to go on a hunt to find the places where i'd shucked my bras off when i declared myself to be "boobies free!" then i had to dig around in the vicinity of the couch because i have chronically cold feet, but then periodically my feet become suddenly claustrophobic & must be ripped out of my socks in a rapid & frequently spastic fashion. i even found a pair of socks stuffed into my purse from when i was out wearing my new furry boots & had to peel my socks off right in target or i would have spontaneously combusted, feet first. i found my jammies in the bathroom & also stuffed into a corner beside my bed & another article of sleepwear draped over a kitchen chair.

and that's when i realized that maybe it's not just brooke who needs to be reprimanded by the laundry fairy. she's shaking her judgemental stick at me too.

linky loo

today marks yet another first in this here blogging experience for me. i was the guest author on laffy lady's blog laugh out loud. i ran across this blog last week & was definitely entertained by her line up of funny people & now, here i am, joining in their ranks. i shared with them the story i told here recently about my last flying escapade that involved me, a flight attendant, an empty airplane & a naughty proposition.

thanks, miss laffy for the chance to hang out with your readers! i love your blog. the rest of you, go visit her if you're looking for some giggles today!

maybe a loin cloth...

we've developed some problems with pants around here. brooke's got my body type which means that she has short legs & tends to get thick around the middle. and from her daddy she was given the gift of a super long torso. for a while i thought she just had a long butt crack since it was always showing out of the back of her pants, but i think now that it's the whole torso that's long, not just the crack.

so almost all pants are too long. no problem, i can hem. sometimes the waist bands are oddly shaped - no big deal, i can add elastic which solves many problems. but lately, even the shortening & elastic aren't enough. every pair of non leggings (and even some leggings are guilty) either scratches her, squeezes her, gives her wedgies or causes some other form of pain & suffering. today, she went through 5 pairs of pants before we could leave the house. her bedroom floor was like a cemetery for pants. we went to a store & tried on 14 pairs of jeans & sweats to leave with only one pair that's hopefully going to work for more than a minute before causing the twitching & shrieking to begin again. we're about to take a trip to a place that's cold & this child needs to wear something warmer than leggings whether she likes it or not. it's a frustrating situation we find ourselves in here & it's annoying both of us.

after we got home from shopping, brooke went up to her room & came down a few minutes later with several drawings that she wanted to put on her blog showing how she feels about pants. please, click over to her page & have a look at things from her perspective.

amusing vs easy

a decade ago (damn, that makes me feel ridiculously old) i worked at a retail store that sold kids clothes. one of my co-workers was a woman who thought that having a kid who was amusing was more valuable than having a kid who was well behaved or easy. at the time, i was struggling angrily with infertility (i wrote about that here) and i would have been thrilled to have even the most boring of babies. as a matter of fact, it almost seemed to me that boring might just be better because that kid would be less likely to do things like projectile vomit across rooms, cram food items up their nose, start fires or mouth off to authority figures.

we spent a lot of time at the store talking to little kids, trying to engage them in conversation while we helped their parents to purchase clothing. and i have to admit, the amusing ones were way more interesting to have around. there were little girls who would monkey climb up onto the sales counter, chattering to us all the while. "my sistoo tooked my bawbee, but dats okay cuz dat was duh bawbee wif duh fingoors dat my dog chews on. ben said dat i can pway wif duh twain twack when we get home cuz den it's gonna be my tun cuz it was his tun befowe. and i wants to be a tow twuck dwivoo when i gwow up cuz them's weawy coow."
that's the same little girl who's likely to, while still standing on the counter, whip her pants down & show you her new little mermaid panties and then sing a couple verses of  "a whole new world" complete with arm motions & hair tosses. she wants to kiss you on the lips before her mom can snatch her down off the counter stage where she was performing for her many new fans.

over time i did learn to appreciate that those kids were definitely preferable to the ones who sat there like lumps no matter what we said or did. you know the ones, you say hello & they stare blankly at you. you smile & cross your eyes & still the blank stare. you offer them a sticker & they can't even bother to reach toward you or acknowledge that you're speaking to them. maybe they suck their sippy cup before turning away disdainfully, but they don't engage at all. even the cutest kid in the world loses its charm if it has no personality.

my own child, as it turns out, is one of those amusing types who, as a toddler was often found standing on a counter telling some unsuspecting cashier way too much about her day and toys & food preferences.

she's developed quite a vocabulary & she uses it perfectly in casual conversation. a few days ago she wrote a number backwards & when i asked her why, she shrugged & said, "i guess i had a glitch." she calls her stuffed cat the "duplicate" of her kitten & yesterday she put on a blue leopard print jacket & some wacky leggings & pronounced herself to be the "elusive blue snow leopard." she told me that someone milked the magic from her leopard fangs -actually, she said from her canine teeth- like she was a venomous reptile and it was causing her to lose her fabulous blue coloring & she'd have to go back & drink from the magical fountain so that she could regain her blue. she said she was excessively thirsty for some magical water.

she tells me often that my style is "understated & tacky". she has declared the cats to be "frenemies." she roars at strangers & draws bizarre pictures to express her feelings. she rarely wears normal clothes & spends her days living in her imagination, where she can be anything she wants to be with no regard for reality.

 during prayers at bedtime tonight she told God, "uno momento, por favor" and then she rapidly climbed down from her bed to rush into the bathroom & wash her hands twice because when she'd reached to pet her kitten, she's accidentally touched her butt instead. i'd never thought to put God on hold while praying before, let alone in spanish!

here's a video from today when we were making banana bread for "culinary" class (brooke doesn't really like cooking, but it beats doing history when it's school time). please note the fork i provided that she was NOT using to mash those bananas. gosh, i love this kid.


in conclusion, maybe i would prefer that amusing kid after all. it certainly keeps things interesting.