No picture mojo

My photography mojo has been seriously lacking lately.  It seems to come and go, and it's especially unfortunate when it leaves me on a day when I have serious cuteness at hand.  Witness the results of an attempted photo of the kids at the Pumpkin Patch Express last weekend.  We rode the train at our local science museum out into the woods, disembarked to pick out pumpkins, do fall crafts, and generally enjoy all things orange and pumpkin-y.  Perfect setting for photos.  But without my mojo, everything I shot just seemed off.  Like really off.  But, I suppose, kind of amusing.

Exhibit A: I got mooned

 

Exhibit B: Washed out lighting and semi-comatose children

 

Exhibit C: What might have been a cute sibling moment, eclipsed by our strolling pal Milesy



The Mommy Wars: The Birthday Party Installment

Probably because I have about a million more important things to do, I have spent hours the last few evenings on a terribly low priority activity:  making plans for Dash's second birthday party.  Which for those of you keeping track, yes, is not for another two months, approximately three lifetimes away in parenting terms. 

But I had the idea recently to have a construction-themed party for him because his love of all things digger, backhoe, and crane is so strong and so adorable.  I think he would love it, and I am clearly not the first mom with this brainstorm since I have found endless Pinterest boards to browse on the subject.  I have giddily been planning the homemade construction site cake I want to make, the adorable invitations, and the digger-related activities we can do (filling up giant bins of sand and pushing trucks around in them on the deck in December is totally reasonable, right?).

Then yesterday I was at a birthday party for one of Ella's classmates and I somehow found myself in the middle of a conversation with two other moms about a child's birthday party they had attended the day before.  These two moms were pretty much mocking the mother who hosted the party for all of the DIY projects she had done.  Hand-painted signs on the door?  How dare she!  A homemade cake! Where did she find the time?  A homemade pinata? Blasphemy!  Seriously, these two moms went on about the pinata for a good five minutes.  Apparently the idea of paper-mache was just too much for them to handle.  I will acknowledge that the two mothers disparaging this poor woman's party are both busy physicians and I have always found them to be generally nice women, so maybe they were just directing some of their own feelings of unease about their busy schedules at this poor other mom.  And maybe this other party was in-fact completely over-the-top and ridiculous and done for the sake of impressing other parents rather than the kids' enjoyment (I wasn't there to judge).  But maybe this hostess-mom just likes having parties and actually, gasp, enjoyed making her homemade pinata! 

At least one of the women I was talking to is the mom to one of Dash's classmates and thus a likely invitee to Dash's upcoming construction bash.  Am I supposed to reign in my fun so I don't get mocked by this mom?  I understand that a two-year old's birthday party hardly needs to be fancy.  We went to an hour-long birthday party last weekend for a two-year old with a half hour of playtime in the yard, cupcakes, and then done, and it was perfectly lovely and appropriate.  But if I want to have a bigger party, with more elaborate crafts and decorations and invitations, aren't I the only one who is affected by all that work (OK, Josh might have something to say about it, too)? 

These are the Mommy Wars in action, my friends, and they aren't pretty.  Here's to store-bought cupcakes if that's your thing, or a three-day-in-the-making-construction-site-cake if that's how you roll, and genuine support for your party style either way.

Now back to those Pinterest boards... 

Plank

Over dinner recently, our family had a heated discussion about how hard (or not) it is to hold a pilates plank for a minute.  Mimi demonstrated the proper form for us and Dash got down on the floor to help.  Does it count as a plank if his belly touches the ground even when he pushes his arms off the ground?

I love you

Best sentence Dash has uttered to date? "I love you, mama."  Precious. 

There is a close runner-up, though.  He ran over to me recently and said "Mama mama!" then leaned in close to my ear and whispered very gravely "Cow named Max!"  He really loves those barnyard animals at the local science museum, especially the cow who is in fact named Max.

Napkins

We use what feels like 400 napkins a day at our house since Ella insists on a napkin with each meal and then usually asks for a few more as the first ones get a little dirty.  And since Dash wants to do everything Ella does, he always sits down and says "Na-kin!" until we bring him one of his own.  So in an effort to be a little more green, we have started using cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.   In an unexpected bonus, the kids have discovered that the cloth napkins make endless awesome dress-ups.  Check out their Russian grandmother cuteness at dinner tonight.

Things we are not ready for

Since we woke up this morning, it's been a rainy, dreary day, meaning that many of our usual special Saturday activities like walking to the Farmer's Market, spending time in the yard, taking a walk to visit friends, or going to the park didn't happen.  To make up for the fact that I spent the afternoon shopping by myself and the kids got dragged around on errands with Josh, I had the bright (or so I thought) idea that we could have family movie night after dinner.  Sounds really fun, right?  Everyone puts on their pajamas, we curl up on the couch to watch a movie, and we eat some kind of yummy treat.  I proposed the idea to Ella who was so excited about it she could barely sit still at dinner.  After we finished our turbot, sweet potatoes and green beans (lesson one:  eat a healthy dinner to make up for the movie snacks), she zoomed around the house picking up toys, putting on her pjs, and even giving herself a sponge bath.  She was undoubtedly super excited about movie night.  Dash had no idea what was happening, but every time we said "movie night," he said "Dashy coming!" so we decided to let him join us for the first little bit and then have the ultimate movie treat - popcorn mixed with peanut butter M&Ms - after he went to bed.

So onto the couch we went.  We showed Ella previews for Shrek, Toy Story, and The Incredibles, and she picked The Incredibles, I think because we told her the little boy in the story is named Dash.  The movie started and (our) Dash loved it.  He exclaimed loudly about everything he saw: "Big car!  Loud boom! Silly boy!" and was chattering with great enthusiasm pretty much constantly [Aside:  I have conveniently forgotten that with Ella, we didn't let her watch any television at all until she was two].  Ella was much quieter tonight although she did manage to ask every two minutes when we'd have treats. 

My first inkling that maybe this plan was not well-suited for our very young crew was when the first scene showed a chase scene between a bad guy and some police officers including guns and several loud building explosions.

My second inkling was when Ella started asking "Mommy, do you like this movie?"  I said yes and asked if she liked it.  The first time I got a yes, the second a kind of, and the third just a head tilt.  I finally asked her about 30 minutes in if she was bored, and she said that she was.  I probed a little more and it was clear that all she really wanted was some M&Ms and a familiar show from Nick Jr.

So maybe we picked the wrong movie.  Or maybe Ella's attention span just isn't ready for something more than her usual half hour, preschool-geared show.  In the end, I realized that while sometimes I feel like my kids are growing up SO fast that I can't even keep up, they are really still very little people and I shouldn't hurry the growing up part.

Eggplant Parmesan

Since I just wrote about how Ella rejected my middle eastern burgers tonight, I should be fair and give her credit for an excellent dinner moment earlier this week.  I'd made eggplant Parmesan, knowing that it might not be a meal that she or Dash would be very excited about, but with an abundance of tomato sauce in our freezer, eggplant in our farm box, and basil in our garden, it was an easy call.  Oh, and it's yummy, right?  Our family plan for the last several months has been to make food that we (as in the grown-ups) find delicious and healthy, and just to serve it to our kids without doctoring it for them or making them separate dishes.  If they eat what we make, great.  If they don't, well, they are unlikely to starve, especially if they look around the floor for all the cheerios that get dropped throughout the day.  Basically, Josh and I just decided that we want for us all to eat the same dinner together every night and we want to show our kids that all kinds of food can be yummy.  So on this particular night, I brought out the dish of eggplant parm to the screened porch where we were eating, and Ella looked at it very dubiously and said "Mama, can I pick out the eggplant?"  I told her that that would be awfully hard to do that so she should just eat whatever part of it she wanted.  Without any further prompting, she proceeded to eat one bite, then the entire helping.  She proclaimed it delicious and then asked for a second helping.   It was a family dinner MIRACLE, I tell you.  The next day she told my mom that at first she didn't think she liked eggplant Parmesan, but then she tried it, and she liked it!  Dash meanwhile, ate his serving, and then said "Mo pizza!  Mo pizza!"  Whatever, bud, you can call it anything you want as long as you keep eating it.

(And for anyone interested, the eggplant parm recipe from Cook's Illustrated is freaking delicious).