Keeping busy, with mixed results

I have nothing in particular going on this week. I mean, in and of itself. But it's hard to sit around and have a normal week when you know that the upcoming month is going to be anything but. My brain wants to gallop around in circles, but I've been doing a pretty good job so far of keeping cool. We'll see what the score is by Thursday.

What else? On Saturday evening I volunteered - volunteered, mind you - to accompany my sister and nephews on a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's for a birthday party. The party was for one of the twins' school friends, but predictably the other two boys didn't much like the thought of their brother going to the rat's lair without them. I hadn't set foot in a Chuck E. Cheese's since maybe 1990, so I figured, what the heck? It might be fun!

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha HA. If by "fun," you mean "a waking nightmare," then yeah. Sure, it was a blast.

I beg of you - never go to Chuck E. Cheese's on a Saturday night. Just don't do it. Or, if possible, at any other time. The parking lot was full at 6:00 p.m. There was a big sweaty ball of humanity crowded into the entryway and spilling out onto the sidewalk waiting to get inside. The place was at capacity. Once the birthday party had secured us passage through the door, I spotted the world's most frightening salad bar. Think about the general cleanliness of any buffet, first of all. And then think about all the people smooshed into Chuck E's on any given day. And all of the unsupervised little kids running amok. And just the fact that the salad bar is located about ten feet from the entryway, for maximum traffic. Gaaaah.

Past the salad bar, we entered the teeming belly of Chuck E. Cheese. Half the games were broken, and half of the rest were out of tickets. I played a few games of skee ball, constantly defending my tickets from grabby little children. (I gave my tickets to my own grabby nephews. Though I did use a few myself on a high-quality magnetic tic tac toe game. Because you can't possibly just use a pencil and paper for tic tac toe!) At one point I passed my sister, shepherding two of the boys with a look on her face of vaguely glazed horror that I recognized immediately. "It's a like a whole new level of hell," she murmured with a touch of awe. Indeed it was.

I swear Chuck E. Cheese's wasn't this horrible when I was a little kid. It seemed like they didn't have nearly as many fun rides anymore, either. Sure, I know there must have been a reason my mom never wanted to go there, but it couldn't have been this bad. Anybody back me up here?

Wit and wisdom from a 6-year-old

My six-year-old nephew is funny. A lot of kids are funny, but he's often funny intentionally, which is kind of impressive. He's very intelligent, but he can also be a little shit. I guess sometimes that combo goes hand-in-hand. Anyway, an actual conversation from over the holidays between my nephew and his mom:

Nephew: Mary Had a Little Lamb is a true story.
My Sister: Really.
N: It is.
S: Okaaay.
N: Because Mary was Jesus's mother...
S: Oh, so Jesus is the little lamb?
N: Yes!
S: Or are we all Jesus's little lambs? Did we follow him to school one day?
Me: And then everyone laughed at Jesus?
Nephew senses he is being lightly mocked, but takes it calmly enough.
N: It is true. It's in my CCD book.
S: Well, if it's in your CCD book, then it must be true.

Nephew recognizes and appreciates sarcasm, as befits anyone raised in my family. He smirks and does not reply.

-Later-

Nephew: We have taste buds for every single flavor there is.
My sister: No, we don't.
N: Yes we do!
S: No.
N: Yes we do!
S: Nater. We do not. That's not how it works.
N: Yes it is.
Pause.
N: It's in my CCD book.

Nephew and his mom both start to laugh.

Aaaaand scene.

Kids these days

This is the exact jacket my eleven-year-old nephew requested of my mom for Christmas:


My favorite thing, I think, is that it's a woman's jacket. That kid is awesome. A couple of years ago he wanted a purple ninja mask, too. (My mom isn't buying the jacket, in case you were wondering.)

Happy Memorial Day

Mice in heaven

Last Thursday was the opening night of the Wisconsin Film Festival. I saw Chalk with some friends, and really enjoyed it. It's a mostly-improvised mockumentary centering around high school teachers. A Q&A with the filmmakers followed - apparently the film has been making the festival rounds for the past year or so, but it's opening in eight cities in May. If it comes to a city near you, it's worth checking out.

I saw three of my nephews for Sunday dinner today. An actual conversation I had with one of the recently-four-year-old twins:

"I climbed on the side of the chair, and Grandma saw me! She won't let me climb behind the TV, either. But if she's in the kitchen, she can't see me!"

(I tell him there are too many wires behind the TV.)

"Yeah, but I could go back there anyway! You know what? There's a mouse trap under our TV at home. I touched it."

(I ask what would happen if it snapped shut on his finger. Note - I don't actually think it's that kind of mouse trap.)

"But I wouldn't get hurt, because I saw Tom and Jerry and a mouse trap snapped shut on Tom's tail and he didn't get hurt!"

(I point out that he is a cartoon and not a kid.)

"Yes, but I still touched it. I would hide behind the TV here, and I might get stuck in the wires, and then Grandma would get mad and she wouldn't pull me out. I would have to stay there forever, and I wouldn't get to eat lunch here ever again. I wouldn't get to eat any pickles, and I wanted a lot of pickles."

(I suggest they might toss him some food behind the TV.)

"But Grandma wouldn't be able to see me! Except for my foot. My foot would be sticking out, and she would see it. And I would find a mouse trap, and it would shut on my hand, and then the mice would run up my finger like this. A mouse would run into my ear! I would have mice in my ears and in my head. And then the mice would be everywhere. Mice eat everything. They would eat all the walls of the house and we would have to sleep outside in a tent. And then they would eat us and we would all die, and Great Grandpa would meet us and take us up to heaven."

(I inquire as to whether there would be mice in heaven.)

"No! I mean, yes, and we would eat the mice in heaven! We would eat them up and that would make us come back to life. And then we would go back to our house. And then the bad dragon from Shrek would throw bombs at our house and blow us up! Shrek the Third is a funny movie, and we're going to see it this summer. We will see it at the movie theater, on a giant screen! We will be big too!"

(He picks up a framed photo he brought from home, of himself and his brothers as babies in front of the Christmas tree.)

"I'm making a story. I'm making a story, and here's how it's going to end. All of us babies were in a movie, on the giant screen like Shrek, and then we fell out of the screen and here we are in the frame, and that's the end! No, and then at the top of this Christmas tree are words that say THE END and they will light up like a star, and that's the end! And then the names come on the screen."

Kids are awesome.

Junior songsmith

My five-year-old nephew, inspired by some new kids band on Nickelodeon, has begun to write his own songs. So far he has written two:

Up, Down (Come In The Tree With Me) [paratheses mine]
When I Hide, I Cry

That second one sounds a little emo to me. Anyway, I'm trying to get him to write down the lyrics - because oh, there are lyrics - so that I can torture him with them when he's sixteen.

Update: My nephew has informed me that When I Hide, I Cry is a Spongebob "cover." Ha! The treehouse song, however, is all him.

This is a song and a lesson

I visited twins 3 and 4 today, and I can totally tell them apart now. Yay! Also, I was right about which twin was which in the photos. Logan is indeed the one seducing the camera with his eyes. What's new with them? They're chubby. They make adorable noises and flail at things in an attempt to grab them. They like to stare up at ceiling fans. And they spit up a lot. Hooray for babies!

The subject of this entry is a quote from my 5-year-old nephew. He was in the car listening to The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and remarked out of nowhere, "This is a song and a lesson." Indeed it is, child. Indeed it is. The Rolling Stones: fonts of eternal wisdom.

Want to know something sad? I'm excited about autumn and Halloween and Thanksgiving now, but I'm also starting to look forward to Christmas. Seriously, how pathetic is that? It's barely October. I blame it on the fact that I was so sick over the latter part of December last year that I couldn't really enjoy the holiday. This year, as long as the Christmas season doesn't involve any fainting or CT scans, I'm thinking it will be an improvement. Hoping. That's not setting up some sort of cosmic jinx, is it? I mean ... Christmas this year is going to suck. Yeah.

Jenny Lewis at the Pabst on Tuesday.

Sears photo studio

I just received a link to the Sears baby photos my sister and brother-in-law had taken last week. Since I never came through with Baptism photos, I shall post some of them.

The embarrassing thing is, I still am not 100% sure which twin is which. As you can see from the photos, I don't really think they're identical - it's just that they do look an awful lot alike. I can tell within the group of photos which babies are which .. I'm just not positive which one is Lo and which one is No. I need to visit them this weekend. I will learn!







You can still see the birthmarks on their foreheads. That second one of them together, and the last photo, are my favorites. Especially the last one. I think that's Logan, and it looks like he's trying out pickup lines.

Did you know...

...that instead of CNN or whatever, the Southwest Terminal at Midway shows Days of Our Lives from 1:00-2:00 p.m.? I did not know that, but now I do, because I am sitting in the Southwest Terminal at Midway, and Days of Our Lives is on.

Sunday was No and Lo's Baptism. It was nice. Sean's brother was whispering comments to his girlfriend at approximately 10-year-old humor level - no, scratch that, my nephew is 10 and he was much better behaved - but that was easy enough to ignore. Especially since I had to concentrate on keeping Noah safe from the devil. I don't have any pictures right now (damn you, non-digital camera!) but perhaps I'll have one to share eventually. Because those are some seriously cute babies.

I'm headed to LA for business and then fun, which is why I'm at the airport. Uyen has dangled the tantalizing prospect of Korean BBQ in front of me, and perhaps a night at Largo if the stars align.

Birthday summer

Between the end of June and the middle of August, three of my closest friends, both of my parents, and four of my nephews have birthdays. It's rough! Saturday marked the end of the birthday season for another year, with my nephew Nate's fifth birthday party. My sister threw the pirate-themed fête in her backyard, complete with a treasure hunt, eye patches, bags of loot, a treasure chest pinata, and pirate cake. The only incongrous element was a giant Scooby Doo moon bounce, though predictably the children didn't mind the breach of theme in the slightest. All in all it was a fun afternoon. My mom also managed to round up all seven of her grandchildren for a photo, which was actually quite a feat.

Speaking of the children of my sisters, my niece starts middle school in a couple of weeks. How did that happen? I basically know her as a child, but I'm looking forward to getting to know her better as an actual person. (You know what I mean.) I haven't had much opportunity, since I typically see her only briefly every couple of months. I need to find out if she has an email address.

Pennsylvania

Lindsey moved to Pittsburgh this weekend. She stopped over on her way, which was fun. Another good friend of ours has been in Philly searching for an apartment for the past week; she starts her new job there in September. Lindsey starts med school orientation tomorrow. It seems so random that two of my best friends from high school will now both be living in Pennsylvania. Both of them seem vaguely surprised by their new state of residency as well. It wasn't like they both had this long-standing dream of living in PA. It's just kind of what happened. Well, more places to visit for me.

I saw the newer twin nephews this weekend - they are seven weeks old now. Not having seen them for over a month, I wouldn't have known them. They also look even more alike now than they did when they were newborns, which seems kind of weird to me. Lo is heavier, which is the main way to tell them apart now, but if No suddenly catches up they may never know who is who again. Okay, well, I may never know who is who again. Their ten-year-old brother also amused me by frantically gaining the attention of a bunch of adults in the room and then announcing, "I have a question or comment!" before going on with whatever he had to say. It was obviously the slightly askew application of some rule of etiquette he'd picked up, which is kind of charming, but it was hard not to crack up. Ah, children. I don't really want any of you right now, but you are fun to visit.

Finally, if you had to pick a commercial for which the actors therein loathe themselves the absolute most when they see it on TV - like, "Oh my God I want to kill myself" type self-loathing ... what would it be? I used to think maybe the Dr. Scholls "gellin'" commercials would win, but lately I've been thinking otherwise. Those Pepto Bismol commercials - including the new "hip hop" version - where the people have to do a little Dance o' Symptoms to the tune of the jingle, clutching at their asses when they sing "diarrhea!" ... I don't think anything can beat that. Seriously. I can't even imagine.

Lists

I don't think I've made a good old fashioned list post in a long time. So, without further ado, here are some lists:

Mnemonics, Memory Devices, or Other School-Learned Phrases That Will Be in My Brain Forever:

• kingdom phylum class order family genus species
  
• y = mx + b
  
• first, outside, inside, last
  
• Mary's very eager mother just sat until night passed (Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto)
  
• Every good boy does fine (EGBDF)
  
• Roy G. Biv (red orange yellow green blue indigo violet)
  
• Gee, Scott has nice cuffed pants (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama)

Most Recent Stream-of-Consciousness Subjects I Looked Up on Wikipedia:

• diphtheria
  
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
  
• Thomas Pynchon
  
• Gravity's Rainbow
  
• Ten Commandments
  
• YHWH
  
• county seat
  
• Consenza
  
• Calabria
  
• urine
  
• Edmonton, Alberta
  
• white-collar
  
• The Magnificent Ambersons

Things My Nephew Wanted For His 10th Birthday Last Weekend:

• Spongebob Legos
  
• gold necklace
  
• purple satin Ninja mask

Please tell my brother

And now, the twins. I am extremely pleased to report that both Noah and Logan (eating his brother at left) are at home. I met each of them over the weekend, and I can't wait to see them again outside the hospital - in Logan's case, outside of a very dim NICU where we weren't even allowed to hold him. (Blah blah not the mother or father blah blah blah.)

My other sister (mother of my other twin nephews) has sent a nightly batch of photos, some of which you see before you. At the risk of sounding like a bad aunt, I'll admit I had to call and verify which twin was which. But my hunches were correct! For reference purposes, I have determined that Noah has chubbier cheeks despite weighing less, and the bridge of his nose is flatter than Logan's. These are pictures of each when they came home from their respective hospitals. Logan is just chilling in his fly blue lion outfit, but look closely at Noah down below. He's pretending to be innocently asleep in his carrier, sure ... and then you realize he's flipping you off. That's my boy.

Good morning! Good morning!

This morning, I officially acquired two new small nephews. Logan was born at 7:24 a.m., 7 pounds and 2 ounces. Noah was born at 7:25 a.m., 6 pounds and 8 ounces. Pretty good sizes for twins born two weeks early. Logan is apparently having some minor respiratory issues, so they are going to transfer him to the neonatal unit in West Allis. I'm not sure if I'll get to see him or not this weekend - maybe I could stop there? I know it's supposedly nothing too serious, but I can't help being somewhat concerned. I myself was transferred to Milwaukee shortly after I was born, though, so I should know the drill by now. Maybe I can give Logan some pointers.

I suck

After having read New York Magazine's article about Grups recently, and mocking them along with Anya (especially Neal Pollack telling his son that the TV shows he watches suck - though he did post a rebuttal here) - I did the exact same thing this afternoon. Totally unintentionally, too.

The family Easter meal was over, and my nephews (the three-year-old twins and the four-year-old) insisted on watching, for the second time, the videotape they'd brought from home: a truly cringeworthy collection of Mary-Kate and Ashley birthday party shorts. The stories show the Olsens somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10, singing insipid songs at various themed birthday parties with their fake friends. As Mary-Kate and Ashley clutched their faces in "horror" while their slumber party guests chirped about scary monsters, I was driven to comment, "Okay, you guys really need watch Mary-Kate and Ashley at home."

"Why?" demanded Nate, the four-year-old.

"Because this is the worst video ever made in the history of the world," I replied.

"No it's not!"

"Yes, it is."

"Why?"

"Because it's incredibly cheesy, poorly acted, predictable, and extremely uncreative."

"What does that mean? 'Uncreative?'"

"It means ... you know exactly what's going to happen. They didn't think very hard when they made this movie. They didn't come up with any new ideas." I was already starting to regret this conversation.

"Yeah they did!" Nate exclaimed.

"Not really," I replied. "They're just at a sleepover. They want to stay up all night, but soon they'll all fall asleep. Now if they all turned into dragons or something, that would be awesome."

"Well, yeah," Nate conceded, climbing onto the couch. "But they had to think of all the words to all those songs!"

"Yeah, but I'll bet they rehearsed them earlier! They didn't just think of them on the spot!" was my lame-ass reply. That was when the "oh my God, I'm actually arguing with a four-year-old who just wants to watch the little girls sing songs about birthday parties" realization fully kicked in. So I didn't bother pointing out that they were actually not singing at all, or to explain the meaning of the word "trite." In my (weak) defense, it wasn't like I wanted to turn on Adult Swim instead or anything. I wanted to watch Old Yeller.

Mom for a day

Saturday afternoon was my twin nephews' third birthday party. This involved me shepherding young children around a gym for a good portion of the afternoon, and eventually holding week-old baby while her mom took a break. Not that it's never happened before, but twice people I didn't know assumed I was a mother. It's not an odd assumption - I'm the right age for a youngish mom with little kids. The odd thing is how people treat you when they assume you're with your child.

I'm not talking about discrimination. It's just a different world. I know I'm not telling those of you with children anything new, but it was so weird to have moms I didn't know approach me and exclaim over how cute "my" child was, and then spontaneously share anecdotes about their own kids like we were old friends. ("My youngest was a preemie, so tiny like your little one, and now she's in gymnastics here and we can't keep her still! I bet your daughter will be the same way.")

Maybe it wouldn't seem so strange if I lived closer to that world, but at this point I don't. At all. I visit my family a couple times a month, and am well versed in the ways of the children, but my life in Madison is very much adultcentric. I work at a company of young professionals, where the median age is something like 27. I live with a college friend, I keep nice things on low shelves and cleaning products in unlocked cabinets, none of my close friends have kids, I stay up until all hours, I go out when I want, I travel at a moment's notice. I am not a parent. So when someone assumes I am, my world view gets messed up for a little while. It turns my perspective around, and it's rather disorienting. ("My God, that could really be me right now.")

I don't think I really have a point. Just something I was thinking about today.

Boy oh boy

As some of you may recall, my older sister Niki is pregnant. She's due in early July, which means she had her first ultrasound today. The first ultrasound is sometimes a little later in the pregnancy, but my sister is 37, so I think she and Sean just wanted to make sure everything is progressing as expected.

I currently have four nephews and one niece, who is the oldest of my sisters' offspring at nearly 11. (Side note - why the hell can't English have a gender-neutral plural to denote the children of one's siblings?) My other sister was the last sibling to give birth, almost three years ago, and she had twin boys. Ever since we found out about Niki's pregnancy, everyone in my family has been rooting for another girl. Well, everyone except for Niki's two existing children, who inexplicably both want another boy. (I think perhaps Bailey likes being the only girl.)

So, Niki had her ultrasound today, and when I got home from work today I had a message to call her cell phone. "You know how I really wanted another little girl?" she asked me. "Yeees," I replied.

"Twin boys."

For the love of all that is good and holy! I am officially never having children. Mine would probably be triplets.

Kids are funny

If you're the kind of person who doesn't like hearing "charming" anecdotes about other people's kids, you should stop reading right now. I can sympathize to a degree, but goddamn it. My nephews are cute, and I'm going to talk about them.

I actually have four nephews and a niece. My niece is 10 years old, and although she is a very cute, smart child, I don't really have any stories to relate about her. She likes crappy teen girly music, reading about animals, eating shrimp, dressing up, swimming, and riding her bike. Her brother, my oldest nephew, is almost 9. He can be kind of a pill, and he likes to act tough, but the funny thing is (forgive me for being amused by this) he's absolutely terrified of storms. I have no idea why, since he never used to be. This started about a year ago, and it's not like he's had any traumatic storm-related experiences. But seriously, the kid will periodically flip to the weather channel while watching TV, just to keep an eye on things. He's really good at reading radar maps.

He's also more gullible than his sister. A year or so ago, I remember him telling me that he and grandpa were going camping soon (if you knew my dad's track record, you'd know you have to be gullible just to believe that part) and that for food grandpa would be killing them a tiger - with a saber. I also had him convinced for a long time that I used to have a magic dragon scale, just like Emmy and Max on Dragon Tales. I went to Dragon Land all the time, I claimed, until one day I tragically lost the scale. My sisters backed me up.

My other nephews belong to my middle sister, The Lawyer. The oldest, Nathaniel, is 3. He probably amuses me the most because he's so smart, yet so young. He and his twin brothers (Miles and Jack, age 2) all love Shrek to pieces. (They got a play castle for their yard at a recent rummage sale, and Jack likes to dash in and "save Princess Fiona.") Anyway, last time I was home for a family dinner, my sister mentioned that Shrek 3 would be coming out in 2007. "I don't know about this," said Nathaniel in his most skeptical tone. "There's already Shrek 1, and Shrek 2, and Shrek 4-D, and now Shrek 3? I just don't know about this." On the same day he also reprimanded his 8-year-old cousin, who was watching a Pokemon cartoon (and checking the weather channel). "I don't know how you can watch the Cartoon Network," Nathaniel huffed. "You don't learn anything from those shows." Pretty high and mighty for a kid who used to worship the Wiggles.

Finally, the twins are just plain adorable. Miles is obsessed with lights and fans, and loves turning them off and on. He's broken a few pulls off ceiling fixtures after pushing his highchair into a position to climb up and reach them. He's always running around the house, chattering and laughing. Jack is a little quieter than Miles, and enjoys more solitary activities such as sweeping and vacuuming. He also likes to lug a wooden dog about half his own size around my parents' house when he visits. He's named the dog Ketchup. (It's a Dalmatian. I don't know.)