The Literal One.

Me: "Luca, you are the sweetest little girl."
Luca: "I know, Mommy."
Me: "You're so sweet, I want to nibble on your tummy!" ::nibbles on tummy::
Luca: :::giggles:::
Me: "You are so sweet, I bet your tummy is all full of sugar inside!"
Luca: "No, Mommy. It's full of blood. People have blood inside their bodies, remember?"

Milking It.

It feels like much of the country is suffering through flooding and tornadoes and never-ending winters, and here we are in Arizona, soaking up the long twilights wrapped in undeniably amazing weather. We're spending hours outside on the weekends, the kids smelling of sunblock and the outdoors, their scalps milky sweet as they slip into a post-play pool nap with cheeks still rosy.

This past weekend I joined them in the kiddie pool, Rohan filling each drink holder on the pool with water, then starting over again once he'd realized that while he filled the second one the first had drained. Luca choreographed the whole scene, deciding which toys belonged in which side of the pool. On the side with the inflated seat I relaxed, letting my shoulders be kissed by the warm sun. She asked me to fill buckets and watering cans, gingerly leaning down to Rohan and offering him a mini-basketball and a big blue plastic bucket to play with on the side of the pool with the slide. They climbed to the top of that inflatable slide and dove feet or butt first into the water, screaming and giggling and making me wish every day was Saturday.

And then they improvised, taking advantage of the big blanket that was drying in the sun, which I'd draped over 3 chairs to keep it from dragging in the grass. Luca tucked beach towels under it and urged her brother to join her. "Rohan, c'mon buddy! You can come lie down by me, buddy! It's a fort, but an OUTSIDEDOOR fort!"

Before long, toddler tutu swimsuits and swim diapers had been abandoned for cold water and warm sunshine on bare skin. Sandwiches and berry yogurt and big glasses of ice water filled their bellies, and as we went up the stairs for naptime, she looked at me with that smile and said, "We never get to sleep in the same room. Can I sleep in the top bunk?" (What is it with kids and hyperbole?)

Of course I said yes. And of course they giggled and co-conspired and removed every item from the train table in his room and ended up with half of them in bed with them. But a few mintues later, both kids were asleep, he on the lower bunk and she on the upper. I went in for one last check when silence had descended on the house and found myself standing in the doorway, not wanting to intrude on their moment together, sleeping in tandem in separate bunks, together.

Tonight we pulled the wagon out of the backyard and Sleeping Beauty walked beside it as I pulled The Prince along in his seat. They each had a lollipop, his yellow and hers orange, though the lollipops switched from one sticky set of hands to another more times than I could count before each of them was cracked into what seemed like a million tiny crystals and devoured. Sleeping Beauty ran and skipped ahead of the wagon, telling us she was The Leader, then stopped and turned to me. "Mama!" she exclaimed, holding on hand over her chest, "When I run, my heart thumps harder and I can feel it." The process of discovery for little kids never ceases to amaze me.

At the end of the walk, I got them out of the wagon and out of their shoes, and they ran barefoot through a park by our house. Neighbors were there with their respective dogs, all of them running off leash and eager to check out the kids (and, no doubt, try to find the lollipops they could still smell). After greeting the puppies, we raced from one end of the park to the other and back again. Just as the dogs and their owners were leaving, one extra curious dog came running over to Rohan, leaping up and kissing his face. Horrified, his owner yelled frantically for the dog to get down. "Don't worry," I told her, since it was clear the dog's only intention was to give kisses, "he is loving this!"

She stopped for a moment and talked to the kids, then snapped a leash on the dog's collar and wished us a good night. Rohan, still giggling and brimming with excitement at his new doggie friend, bounced on his feet, waved one hand excitedly, and yelled to the dog, "Bye bye, goggie!!! I love you! I love you, goggie! Bye! I love you!"

And then, as the woman covered her heart with one hand to indicate how endearing she thought it was, he took his sister's hand in his and they ran across the grass barefoot, into the dusk.

Bucket Lists.

I don't really have a 'Bucket List' per se. I've never sat down and penned a list of things I need to do before: before I am 35, before I retire, before my kids leave the nest, before I die. Maybe I'm just not mentally organized to work in that fashion? But I do know there are things I've always dreamed of doing and goals I have for my life, and some of those are more of the pie-in-the-sky variety than others.

Among those, sitting near the top as a dream I've had for years, is the one where I write a book and get it published.

I've always been a writer. As a teenager, I spent hours upon hours writing poetry and prose in a little floral-covered notebook I owned. It looked like a regular hardback, so I chose it because it was easily camouflaged among the other books in my room and thus not such an easy target for older brothers who I knew would use whatever I put in it as ammunition to embarass me. I even won a few writing recognitions in school, including a poem I wrote titled 'Angel Dust' which was then refused for publication by my high school because it 'could have been a drug reference'. (For the record, I was way too sheltered as a teenager to even realize that angel dust was PCP....my art teacher actually had to explain it to me.)

As a professional, I'm known as 'the girl with the red pen' in my office. My boss and co-workers are always coming to me to review, revise, and red-mark the things they write, from Board Meeting notes to grant proposals to newsletter articles. And then there is this little corner of the world, which started as a way to document the hard facts of parenting and has slowly morphed into my place to spit out all the thoughts and memories and stories that pop into my mind throughout the day.

I've started and grown tired of several books in my lifetime. I get an idea, start to write, and then get bored or start to feel it's too forced. Or I lose confidence and then never go back to writing until I'm over the storyline, then revisit it and read it with embarassment.

But this time, something is different. I am writing a book. It's weird how inspiration hits, but I was listening to conservative talk radio (hey, you gotta know the opposition's views, right?) on my way home from work when a story came on that blew my mind. It had me thinking and suddenly I couldn't wait to get home and write the story that my mind was developing.

So, last night I wrote 3 chapters. And the story is still unfolding in my mind, but I'm feeling excited just to write something that's not autobiographical. After all, my life isn't all that interesting really, so it's fun to create a world in a story that IS interesting. Or so I hope!

Here's hoping that someone else (please, universe, let it be a publisher!) likes it as much as I do!

Party Like A (poor) Rock Star.

Luca's 4th birthday party was this past weekend, and per her request we went with a 'pink and purple' theme. We tossed around several ideas, from a park (too unpredictable given weather in AZ in May can be 108 or 85 degrees) to a pizza place (a little too loud for our crowd) to an indoor jump zone ($$$). In the end, we landed on a party at home in our own backyard. After all, we bought this house mostly FOR its backyard, so why not use it to the fullest?

We used Evite for the invitation. I'd love to tell people we were attempting to be 'green' but really I was last minute with it and it was free. Luca helped me write the list of invitees, and told me she didn't want to include any of her friends from school, except one. Afraid of offending the other families, we chose not to invite that friend either, to keep it simple. In the end, it was some of our closest friends and immediate family who came, which was better because we didn't feel as stressed to impress.

The best part about this party was that I set a goal to keep it under $60 total. Sounds simple, but in the ends kids' birthday parties often end up costing a pretty penny because it's just SO FUN to go all out! Our budget ended up like this:

Location: free
Invitations: free
Pizza: $45 (3 extra large + coupon for 1 free large)
Soda: $3.75
Cake + frosting: $4.50 (bought mix and made at home, dyed with gel dyes I owned already, used candles we had leftover from another party)
Pinata: $1 (made it at home with supplies on hand, but the 'foundation' for the paper mache was a large beach ball from the 99 cent store)
Candy for pinata: $3 (3 bags)
Goody bags: $1 for 8
Balloons: $1 for pack of 24 pink balloons
Chips: $3
Other snacks: free, on hand already
Kool-Aid: $1 for 2 packages
Cups: $2 for 2 packs
Plates: $3 for 3 packs of 16
Napkins: $2 for 2 packs of 24

Grand Total: $70.25. While I ended up a little above my pre-determined budget, I think I did pretty well!

The day was simple: inflatable pool and sprinker in the backyard, pizza, pinata, presents, cake. The kids all seemed to have a blast, and the next day Luca asked when we could have the next 'party with pink and purple cakes and balloons with candy'.

Sadly, my camera is still in the process of getting repaired, so we didn't get any real pictures, but my sister-in-law did video the day. If I can figure out how to post that, I will. But, for now, here's a picture of the highlight of Luca's day: the pink and purple layer cake.

Carpool Buddy.

Mornings are interesting in our house. A flurry of bowls of Cheerios, bananas, wardrobe changes, bag packing, hair brushing, calendar checking (for the preschooler in the family), and shoe finding. By the time 6:45 hits, the parents are on their way to caffienated wakefullness and the kids are ready for the morning routine of waiting for the garage door to rise so they can run onto the driveway and hopefully get misted by the sprinklers.

Rohan's my morning car pool buddy most of the year, except during wrestling season when Darrick does the drop offs for both kids and I do pick ups. Those morning drives to daycare or grandma's house are a sweet time for the two of us. Most mornings, we put the windows down and wave to cars next to us at red lights, talk about where we're headed, listen to music, and make faces at each other in the rearview mirror. Sometimes I try to engage him in something educational, like practicing counting our the alphabet song, to which he always interrupts and says, "NO, Mama!" over and over while I ignore him and carry on from the front seat. I will admit I sometimes worry that he isn't interested in these games, since Luca LOVED playing the counting, singing, alphabet, and 'what sound does this animal make?' games in the car at his age. But my worry went away the other day when he surprised me by singing most of the alphabet song by himself, unprompted by me.

This morning, Rohan snuck one of the 'goody bags' leftover from Luca's party off the counter (inside was candy someone picked up when the pinata broke) into the car with him. I looked back in the rearview mirror and saw him gnawing away at an orange lollipop, happy as could be. His facial expressions get the best of me and make me laugh, so I snapped some pictures when we were at red lights. My little carpool buddy! He makes mornings more bearable.

PS: Camera still getting repaired but man I CANNOT wait to get it back!

Windows Down.

It's unseasonably, well, beautiful in Arizona right now. Typically May ushers in unbearably warm weather which is but a tease of the oppressively hot hours and weeks and months to come. But this year? This year the weather has toyed with us a bit, fluctuating from pretty warm (upper 90s) to downright enjoyable.

Yesterday, I ate my lunch outside of my office, in the shade where the wind would rustle some leaves and cause goosebumps on my arms. I stared at big, cotton candy clouds on the bluest sky.

As I drove home it struck me: people are so used to their little segregated personal worlds that they don't even think to roll down their car windows in rush hour on a day as perfect as this one was. I, of course, had my windows down for the ride home. And I couldn't help but feel sad for all those people recycling the same cold air in their closed-up cars. When life hands you a day like this one, the least you can do to show your appreciation is roll your windows down.