Memorial Day weekend

I spent two and a half hours yesterday going through kids clothes and sorting out what we're going to keep, what we're going to give to St. Vinnie's, and what we're going to store, either until fall (if the girls still fit into them) or until Julia grows. She's such a little peanut; she still fits into some 18-month clothes (a little short on the legs but they still pretty much fit) even though she'll be 3 at the end of July.

Nothing like Allie, who wore her 0-3 month clothes for about 2 weeks before moving on to larger sizes. Nonetheless, I dug through the stored accumulation of Allie's old clothing and Julia now has a huge summer wardrobe and St. Vinnie's is getting five bags of baby clothes, blankets, and potty-training pants that we never used because once both of our children decided they were potty-training, they were trained.

I found out that we have an immense supply of old diapers, pull-ups and so on. Included in this is an entire unopened pack of size 4 diapers left over from almost 4 years ago that we never used for Allie. And Julia never got beyond a size 3 diaper before she decided she wasn't wearing diapers any more. I'm thinking we'll give them to the local food pantry, who like to have personal and baby items on hand as well as food.

I am so glad, in retrospect, that we had two girls. We went shopping earlier in the month for a complete new summer wardrobe for Allie since she's grown out of the stuff she wore last year. I can't imagine doing that for two kids if we'd had a boy. We don't have any friends who had their kids at the right time for us to get hand-me-downs.

Greg just came out of the shower and he's singing a song with the lyrics, "Oh, I'm so glad I'm me, don't you like what you see," as he wiggles his butt.

This is my life!

I'm stuffed, is it Thanksgiving?

We had a lovely, quiet, food-filled Mother's Day in the Lee household today. My husband made wonderful french toast, ham, and home fries for me this morning (on a tray in bed, thank you very much).

I was so full that I didn't even eat lunch.

Then for dinner tonight, Greg worked for several hours on a truly kick-ass french onion soup. I went to the grocery store with Allie this afternoon and bought a rather slender piece of guyere cheese from Switzerland for $7.53.

Wouldn't you think that Wisconsin, dairy capital of the U.S., would have a dairy making guyere somewhere? Well, if there is, our local grocery store doesn't carry it. I don't know, is there a guyere thing like there's a parmesiana reggiano thing? Limited dairies?

Regardless, we ate big bowls of soup topped with Italian bread and freshly shredded guyere and it was amazing. Dave, you have competition in the soup category! And Greg says he has a new favorite cheese.

Mmmmmm. Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!

The green, green grass of home

Who invented lawns, I wonder. I mean, what's the point of having a lawn and having to mow it and mow it and mow it again. Every three days or so, realistically. That's a lot of work.

Just so you can have green stuff around your house during the summer. Hmm. That's assuming, of course, that you're willing to water it in August, when it would naturally go dormant if people didn't putz with it.

Greg cut our grass tonight (yes, I do it too) and because it's been raining a lot lately, the grass had actually already gone to seed.

It's like a lush, needy carpet. Anyone for ground cover and prairie grasses instead? I could go for burning it off once per year instead!

Zeeba neighba

My favorite comic strip of all time is probably Calvin and Hobbes, but the creator stopped drawing it a few years ago and it'll probably never be back.

When I was in high school and college, my favorite comic strip was Garfield. They're still drawing that, but it's just not that funny anymore. Or my taste has grown up, who knows.

My favorite current comic strip is Get Fuzzy. Next is probably Pearls Before Swine, but only when they do strips with these idiotic crocodiles that live next door to a main character, a zebra.

They're always plotting to eat the zebra, but they're really, really stupid. And funny. And they talk like the title above.

You can check it out by following the link off our main page for My Shameful Secret. Enjoy!

Awful children and Willy Wonka

One of those fix-your-family, super-nanny shows was recruiting families for future shows in our area this week. The newspaper reported on where they'd be available for interviews and said that part of the application process was to answer the question, "What's the worst thing your kids have done in the last week?"

Okay, I know I'm completely tempting fate here (and Greg would tell me frantically not to say it because he's pretty superstitious), but I can't think of anything that awful that my kids do. I know, give them time. They're only 6 and 2 3/4, so the major fights are obviously still in our future, but I've spent a little bit of time watching those shows and there are plenty of families with kids that age that are having a terrible time of it.

Kids who scream everything they say and kids who hit while obviously trying to hurt and kids who are god awful in public and kids that are so obviously out of control that you wonder what happened. Were the parents completely out to lunch the first few years or is there some weird kind of genetic mutation out there? You know, exactly the kind of families who got their comeuppance in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

The worst things my kids have done in the last week, let me see: Not sharing things (that's a biggie), pushing each other (but not pushing each other down or anything), hitting mommy (that earns a timeout but a 2-yr-old obviously doesn't do much physical damage), yelling at each other, complaining about being bored (that would be the 6-yr-old), chewing with their mouths open, wanting to wear pajamas all day, and not eating dinner.

The best things my kids have done in the last week: hugging each other, sharing sometimes, giggling together, not using bad words even though they hear Daddy say them, putting up with having their faces washed and sunscreen put on, being excited just for going outside, saying please, thank you, and excuse me, changing clothes without complaint, playing together nicely in the bathtub, helping each other, going to bed without complaint even though it's still light outside, sleeping peacefully through the night, being potty-trained, being nice to the cat, eating fruit instead of asking for candy all the time, doing well in school and at daycare, and sleeping on the weekend at least until 7 a.m.

I love my kids. No super nannies needed right now, thank you.