Smiley's 3rd Birthday Party - pt 2

While I was busy with YaYa Lisa ran another game, this time where they wrapped each other in toilet paper like a 'cocoon'.

 

 

Then it was time to sing Happy Birthday and have some cake.

 

 

 

Smiley then opened his gifts. Note the Spiderman couch, itself a gift from his maternal Grandfather.

 

 

 

<SPANSTYLE="MSO-SPACERUN: yes?>He got lots of cool gifts: squirting race cars, an Avatar playset, Play-Doh sets, sandbox toys, the list goes on and on. From us he received Easy Link, a cool internet connectivity device. You simply take the figurine of your favorite character and insert it into the slot. Presto, it takes you to that characters webpage! There's Wiggles, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Elmo, Bob the Builder, Arthur, DragonTales, Thomas the Tank Engine, Barney, and Fisher Price.

 

 

After that it was pretty loosey goosey, but relaxed and fun. The kids continued to play upstairs

 

 

 

 

 

A very nice time, an imagininative idea by Lisa, and a relaxed and pleasant time for everyone! Happy Birthday Smiley! We love you!

Tags: Smiley, Blogplugs

Smiley's 3rd Birthday Party Pt. 1

On Friday the 7th my Smiley turned 3 years old and we celebrated with a 'Bug' party at the house.

Lisa had picked up inflatable insect balloons at Target and put them up around the dining room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smiley was initially scared of the insects, but we told him they were harmless andhe got over it. We LIED!!!

 

 

We'd also planned on a course of lasagna for the adults and sandwiches for the kids, but at the last moment Lent reared its ugly head. It was Friday after all, and while Lisa and her family are Lutheran mine are Catholic. So Lis improvised a pasta buffet with Alfredo and spaghetti sauce and an optional sausage dish.

 

Surprisingly the pasta idea was a smash hit, and we'll probably offer it again in the future.

 

While we're on the subject of food, the menu also included ants on a log (raisins and peanut butter on celery) and a bug covered mudhill cake. Without question the cake was the ugliest thing I'd ever eaten and looked downright disgusting, more a dung hill than mud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even so it was one of the tastiest I've had, more like a brownie than cake.

 

The house got crowded fast with 12 kids and 14 adults in attendance.  The kids dominated the second floor, the adults the dining and living rooms. The kitchen was neutral territory. Check out all the presents in the 3rd shot!

 

 

 

 

 

The first game was 'eat the ants'. A spoonful of jimmies - one for each year of the child's age - was placed on a paper plate in front of them on the floor. Without using their hands they had to eat the plate clean, with the winner being the first done.

 

 

 

 

Then I was dispatched upstairs to hide 30 rubber insects for a hide and seek game. The kids were sent upstairs by age to try and find them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Here's the problem. YaYa qualified for a prize but had won the ant contest and therefore wasn't eligible for another prize (the law is the law people!). She then melted down and had a hissy fit which I quickly tried to squash. Problem is she eventually admitted to being too embarrassed to go back to the party, which led to a bigger fit when I demanded she rejoin the festivities. "I'm six, I'm too old to have had a fit, I can't go out there!"

 

Man. Sigh. Kids.]

 

Ok, I had to chop the post in half for AOL. More later!

Tags: Smiley, Blogplugs

My 100th post of the year - and of course, it's political ;)

Well, if the pic above doesn't clue you in, this one's political; proceed at your own discrection.

I wasn't going to post about last week's primaries until someone was foolish enough to ask my opinion.

Short version: good job HR Clinton. I was happy.  

Long version: I don't think it changes the final outcome. Consider it akin to our experience on Iwo Jima; the Japanese fought like hell and bloodied us left and right, but in the end it was still only a short time before the war was over and they surrendered.

Last Tuesday might have been her final hurrah. Or not. Like her husband she has a knack for surviving longer then you'd expect. But this isn't a marathon, where everyone who lasts till the end has bragging rights; here you win or you lose.

Survival isn't enough.

Then again given the free pass he has in the media, the monetary advantage and the over the top adulation of 'the masses', I think Obama should have closed the deal. That he couldn't should lead to some changes in the thinking of his braintrust.

 - purple is Obama wins, pink Clinton. Iimage blatantly borrowed from Electoral-Vote.com; I'll remove it if it becomes an issue.

On that score I think it a shame that the Dems have allocated delegates (in many states) on a proportionate basis, meaning she took Ohio by an 11%  margin - a legitimate landslide politically -  and still had to share the delegates with Obama.

Why??? In the general election it doesn't work that way, it's winner take all. If a candidate can take a state primary I think it only makes sense to act, correctly or not, as if that decides which of the two is capable of notching up the state in the fall. Anything else is fairy-tale 'fairness' that generates nothing but division and drama. It's certainly done so this year.

As it stands I think the odds still favor Obama. But HRC is now in it through Pennsylvania and *possibly* through June. I don't worship that fact as the death knell of the Dems. That idea is obscenely overrated. Folks can go to blows at the convention and I think they'll still have time to pull it together and giveit a go.

A popular view, and one I share to an extent, is that slim delegate lead be damned, Obama can't pull in the big prizes that matter in November. Ohio, Texas, California, New York, and the disputed Michigan and Florida all lined up for Clinton.

Hey, I love living in Wisconsin, but if you have a canddate who takes Wisconsin, Wyoming and Maine and forfeits the one's listed above, then I think you have the makings for a loser in the general election.

It's not that simple, naturally. New York and (probably) California would go blue if you put Jesus himself on the ticket for the GOP. Therefore the win - or rather the loss - of those states in the primary is largely irrelevant.  Likewise TX is pretty assured to go Red (or course, ditto that for some of Obama's wins).

Should Clinton hold her own in the rinky-dink contests, then take Pennsylvania and somehow have Michigan and Florida thrown back into the mix (by seating their banned delegates or doing it all over again), and should John Edwards throw his 26-32 delegates to her, THEN I  think she goes into the convention having muted Obama's momentum and with a legit arguement that she deserves the nomination.

[on that score, nice year to play hardball and ban two state's field of delegates for infractions. Thanks Howard Dean, you're a peach. Best of all Howard, with all the recent calls for changing the rules midstream and allowing the delegates/revoting/blah blah you've reinforced the notion that the DNC has little respect for rules and law. Good job buddy!]

What about a shared ticket? I can't see Obama playing second fiddle; more likely he'd hold off and try again in 4 or 8 years. And I can't picture him being tied down with her as an intrusive, media hog VP, especially given his mantra of 'change'.

So for HRC it's really her last hurrah. She doesn't have the option of waiting 4/8 more years. Therefore anyone who says she should step aside or concede gracefully needs to get a grip on reality and understand that, like it or not, she's a brawler. She's not going out until the bell rings, and maybe not even then.

I still think Obama will take it, but his free pass in the media is running out and HRC is going tobloddy him up a bit; he'll have a tougher time in the fall because of what happened this past Tuesday.

* * *

In other political news, Wyoming is now sending a Democrat to the House in place of retired former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Sure the Dems put a great candidate out there and the GOP . . not so much, but anyway you spin it it's a PR blow to the GOP. That district hasn't sent a Dem to Congress for 11 terms. Not good, not good.

Tags: Clinton, Obama, Howard Dean, Dennis Hastert, GOP, DNC

On Boots, cupcakes, my hair, sign language, and a cranky baby

Before we begin, let me point out that my house was clean on Friday for Smiley's party. Today, a scant 40 hours or so since the party ended, my house is something last seen in news reports about houses with 100 cats and 2 feet of garbage on the floor.

15% is leftover party mess, and 80% is the kids, pure and simple. They earn partial credit on the remaining 5% too, since I tore apart our bedroom looking for a credit card I assumed had fallen out of Lisa's pants pocket. In reality, the kids had swiped it  to use on Lu's pretend cash register.

Ugh.

Smiley, meanwhile, seems to have adopted his own set of sign-language. A quick tap with his forefinger on his cheek seems to signify his name, or 'I' or 'me'. A similar brushing motion on the same spot, in imitation of shaving, appears to be 'boy' or 'man'. 'Girl' or 'lady' may be represented by a brushing motion of the hair; that one I'm not sure of yet.

Likewise he has gestures for 'food' and 'drink'.

YaYa wrote a 3 chapter book on fairies, richly illustrated, and presented it to usyesterday. It's hard to decipher many of her imaginative spellings, but again: why couldn't she do it for the contest?

Oh, and a quick slap to my own wrist. I complain about her and meanwhile I miss the deadline for a writing contest in the local paper. Apparently something in our DNA enjoys pi**ing away opportunites. (also - two rejections in the last 30 days; waiting on more)

Irrelevant aside: I am truly in love with my size 14 black Stanley ankle-high workboots, complete with a magnificent steel toe. They've kept me dry and warm through all the 6 feet of snow this winter and protected my toes from my obsession (shared with Parker) of kicking ice, and I adore them. They're my first ever pair of work boots, but if I live to be 90 I'll always own a pair.

Lisa a moment ago: "You're blogging about your boots?"

Me: "Yup".

Lisa, with disgust: "Live high Dan. Live high."

In other news the Baby WILL - NOT - STOP - CRYING and kept me up most of the night and straight on til now. But, yin-yang and all that, Lu's been an angel, and even right now is helping her Mom decorate cupcakes for her cousin's party.

On the other hand she's downright cold about my hair. I just asked her if I could have her donate some hair to me. Her answer, a typical mix of age-appropriate speech and some lisp:

"Ur never gettin' it back. It's gone. And you should lose some weight too. You gonna be old real soon."

 

A rant about the kids and some pics of George Washington

I have to do a post about Smiley's 3rd birthday party, but to be frank the # of pictures to upload is intimidating. So in the meantime here's a post I wrote over the last week, 'round about the 4th.

To tell you the truth, I was disapointed in YaYa today. She came home having been scolded by another parent for co-ercing (albeit nonviolently) a cookie from her friend. She also had her name put on the board and was kept in from recess for arguing.

Frankly, she's a bit of a Junie B. Jones.

It's all cyclical. A month ago Smiley was the terror of the house. Then LuLu. Now it's YaYa's turn. Soon enough the worm will turn again. It does get old fast.

[I do realize that when you put an Oldest Child used to bossing around her siblings into a social cliche of Youngest Children used to being bossed around by siblings, someone's gonna rise to the top of the pecking order. I think she is ill-served by that setup and would have been better off in a cliche of stronger, more dominant personalities who wouldn't take her guff, but que sera and all that.]

But what really disappointed me was her refusal to participate in this years Reading Rainbow Child Authors contest. She seemed very interested up to recently, but it was like pulling teeth to get her to do the 5 required illustrations and then she just up and said it wasn't something she wanted to do this year. Never mind all the stories she writes on her own; she didn't want to do it and, reluctantly, I honored that.

Fine, I guess. Certainly not the first or last time one of the kids will make the ol' regret meter ping, but to me it just seems like a waste of talent and ambition.

One of the apparent reasons for Lu's recent turnaround was a promise that after 5 'perfect' days she would receive a new Princess area rug for her room. We figured it would be start-stop-start over for weeks, but nope, she reigned it in and won the prize. Here it is: Lis surprised her with it tonight after dinner. Lis also tossed in the Belle lamp Lu is looking at.

And the President's Day masks finally came home. Here's the work she bragged about:

Look at Lu's hair. She was complimented on it all day. I tease her and say that I want my hair back, as I had that thick dark hair most of my life. Maybe some day she'll donate to my hair transplant :)

Here's a pic of Lisa and Lu on the way out the door to Stars on Ice; yeah, I know Lis has her eyes closed and Lu looks dopey, but concentrate on the outfit. The alternate pics have Lu scowling and being a typical unco-operative kid.

To balance the scale, here's a pic of Lisa and Smiley that day.

Today (the 8th) YaYa had a screaming fit on the way out to the car, calling me the worst Dad ever, followed by Smiley having a crying jag in the store over a balloon (I finally weened him of it, and in the checkout line this[redacted] woman comes up to us and says 'here, yourboy forgot his balloon!' and started it all over again), and then Lu joined the fray when we got back home.

Happy happy joy joy.

Tags: LuLu, smiley, YaYa