Home made candy necklace, or bracelet. Remember candy necklaces? My kids don’t because we are sugar free. We are also grain free, hormone free, glucose free, pesticide free, vegetable free, meat free and least but not least sanity free. Just kidding. But seriously who eats holes through their food. She doesn’t eat like a normal human but more like a caterpillar.
W has evolved overnight. She went from fragmented sentences to elaborate pretend play in like the blink of an eye. Her new favorite past time besides literally torturing the dogs by dragging them around the house on leashes and tying them to door knobs, is enacting scenes from the tv shows she watches. Right now she is swiper everything.
She will tell me to say “swiper, no swiping. swiper, no swiping.” then she will use this game as a valid excuse to launch something of value that I am currently doing across the room.
While I was hanging clothes in my closet she pulled shoes of my shoe rack and screamed “YOU’LL NEVER FIND THEM NOW” and threw them out of the closet. Thanks for that. This game sucks.
She threw my toothbrush in the bathtub the other night.
She takes the decorative wooden balls off the top of the dogs bed and throws them on the floor probably hoping I slip on them.
This is hilarious on so many levels. W playing swiper with Nika and then screaming at Lady to Be QUIET. Then W running for her life when Lady starts barking at the door, and poor Nika. Poor, poor Nika.
Daddy was on daycare duty while O was at an audition a few weeks ago. He text me this adorable picture of W enjoying her new favorite place sweet frog frozen yogurt.
awww cute.
Then he text me back and says “notice anything?”
Oh god, new baby earrings!!! So adorable!! C has to do that stuff because I can’t watch. He said her eyes got all big and when they walked away she looked him square in the eye and said “They HURT me”. Sooooo sad 🙁
I was really unsure if she would keep them in or mess with them because she didn’t really ask for them like O did. But She loved them! She kept showing everybody “Look at my earrings.” She was so proud and she even twists them herself.
O just wrapped her first big time commercial.
It was probably the biggest one she has done so far in terms of competition and work involved on her part. Her BandAid commercial ended up being really big but it was nonunion to start so none of the union pros were able to audition. This commercial was a union job so all the union kids auditioned in addition to any nonunion kids. She had a couple solid lines and a principal role in the shoot.
I must admit I was nervous, we go on these auditions and typically the odds are so stacked against you that you leave and don’t think much more about it. (ok, well that’s such a lie because I think about it every day until I hear it books!)
I took her to the first audition, also called first round/call. We had just been to the same casting office a week or so earlier for a different huge casting (20 kids for a school class) which I was sure she would have booked but alas I will never know what casting is looking for. She did get a callback for that one too but ended up not booking! Bummer.
I will never understand this business and as much as I retrospectively analyze each experience it never paints a clear picture. We arrived on time and hung out in the waiting room. The casting director came out and informed all us moms there were lines for the audition so we all scrambled to get our kids prepped last minute. Usually we get the script ahead of time to practice but this was only a one-liner so it was no big deal. O ran lines a couple times then was called back and skipped her way into the audition room. But when she came out O came out with this look of sadness on her face I was immediately in mad-mom mode wondering what these people said to her.
“what happened, what’s wrong?” she informed me that casting asked her to do other lines that weren’t for her age. LOL. Good thing? Bad thing? One will never know. Except I did learn during the shoot the client thought O was hilarious because she apparently told casting in the audition “those aren’t my lines“. And she was right. And they loved her ‘tude I guess.
Then the callback audition.
This was awful timing for me and C so Grandmom ventured out this time. All was smooth sailing and O said she had fun and did a few more new lines.
O then got a “hold” placed on her, which is when they want specific kids to be available to them while they figure out which one they will use for the shoot.
When we got the booking call I was nervous and excited.
It’s a lot of pressure wondering how O will be feeling the day of the shoot, if she will be into it or pick that day to decide she’s over this whole “acting” thing.
To top it off O woke up with pink eye two days before the shoot. I was FREAKING. Luckily I treated her with medication I had and it went away pretty quick but she totally woke up full blown sick sick sick the day after the shoot. I did learn a little stress reliever while on set – union gigs always book a back up kid in case things don’t work out with the first pick. PHEW. There were two for O’s role, two for her fake older brothers role and two sets of twins for the baby sister role! That was crazy because all the babies were cranky too. The very last baby of the four ended up working out for the shot.
She cracks me up with these roles. Whenever she gets off book for an audition she always incorporates new language from the audition or the characters name into daily play with her sister. She did a voicover audition for a fairy role and had t say “whoopsie-doodle”. Now her and W say “Whoopsi-doodle” all the time. And she makes us call her by her character name all the time too. Maybe she is a method actor? har har.
The shoot ended up going great. It was a lot of work for her but she nailed it. It should air in February – I will be sure to post it 1 million times everywhere I can as soon as I get my hands on it.
don’t blink you’ll miss me fo sho.
I’m big into lists right now. I don’t know why. I actually take that back, I have always been big into lists. My entire life is like a giant, never-ending to-do or grocery list. But maybe because the school season is approaching I have started thinking in an even more structured and nonsensical way about everything in my life.
So to go with the theme of lists here are five of O’s favorite things in life right now;
Listen to me complaining. Like I don’t think everything O does is the most absolutely adorable and hilarious thing ever ever ever. Keep doing your thing O, and I’ll just keep cleaning up after you, it’s my job – plus it gives me great material. (And interesting talking points when my neighbors come over. I doubt anybody else in the neighborhood has Barbies taped to their kitchen cabinets.)
in no particular order;
We have a book “everybody potties”. Girls do it, boys do it, Grandma does it,Kitty does it, Puppy does it… and that’s basically the book. It’s cute and its that thick cardboard so your kids can chew on it and won’t be able to shred all the pages into subway lettuce like a gerbil in heat. Why do kids shred paper? It’s like this instinctual impulse to just destroy, everything. I can;t even build blocks with my kids because it’s always a fight. O has got the hang of it finally but W is like Godzilla still, no building or structure is safe. Maybe they learned it from the dog? She is a major shredder though her specialty is diapers. She doesn’t like the clean ones, the dirtier the better, it’s a sickness really.
Anyway I found this image of our book, I keep it in the car for light reading in traffic.
So I got this for O when she was small and W likes to read it in the car. All you have to say is “Pee-pee” and they go ape-shit laughing like hyenas on crack. If you say “Poop” there’s no coming back from that you will likley have an accident of some sort.
SOOO on to the point, O was begging me to read her “book” she is obsessed with making books these days, and I am annoyed because like any real mom I am always trying to do something that requires my full attention and I am never able to give my full attention to anything because someone is inevitably always requiring something of me AT ALL TIMES > wow, that seems harsh and awkward and a little violent but you know what I’m saying don’t act like you don’t.
So I take a break from whatever it is I am doing to look at her book because. And this is what I find…
Cover. Awwww. She can write her name so I am not sure what this says but it has a heart and a little girl so I say “Awwww”
Page 1. WHAT??? HAHAHHA OMG this is a COMEDY, ok damn well if I knew that I would have read it a long time ago, I LOVE comedies. Dude. Leslie Patricelli better watch her back because O is like totally as good an artist, (if not better since she’s 4) than that lady’s artist, or that lady if she does her own artwork.
then this page. BOOM > that’s what I’m screaming. what. She is clearly on the potty and she is doing her thang. Now, don’t be judgy – I don;t know if that’s the sink or one of those things you use on the beach to search for coins and other relativley metal things, or maybe she’s watching her iPad? I’m not sure, but you know what, it doesn’t even matter. Because my 4 year old writes books biatches and I can actually read them. I am like SO PROUD. She is so funny. And awesome and cute and smart and I just want to SQUEEZE her so hard that her eyes bug out. But in a loving way not a violent way.
Oh BTW when I was looking for the potty book image I found this:
This is so going in C’s stocking this year. I might buy everyone one.
I have done a garden every year with moderate success. We have great morning sun and lots of ground so it’s pretty easy to get veggies to grow around the yard. Last year C made me a really great formal looking veggie garden and we had tons of veggies that went to waste. Every year we say we are going to only plant one of each type of veggie plant like cucumber or zucchini but then I always plant two in case one dies and then I feel to guilty to pull up the other one because it’s like alive and all and I don’t want to kill it. So weird, I know.
I experimented this year and did Lima Beans and Broccoli. I have never done these before and didn’t care too much if they worked or not so I just planted them right in the ground, oh I did spinach too. 
I dug a trench and put in spinach and the broccoli. The next day I saw the Guniea Hens in my garden with big holes all in the areas I planted the seeds. Ok. That round was done for. No biggie. 
Well a few weeks later I planted a row of sunflower seeds and they came up all nice and neat and then a whole bunch of other stuff came up all jumbled in a group. It’s lima beans, broccoli and 1 small spinach plant.
We are working on replanting the front too because the super cold winter killed a lot of our plants out front. Ugh so much work.
To my surprise a friendly (NOT!) snapping turtle took a liking to my small zucchini also. We were all staring at this prehistoric beast and realized it was acting all weird, like in a trance. I knew from my extensive National Geographic watching (and C said he knew from that kid sea turtle movie) that it was nesting!
How crazy is that?! Like real life NatGeo. I’m scared now we will have an infestation of snapping turtles.
O did some amazing artwork at school to represent our little turtle family.
“Mommy, why are you making that face?” Because I am losing my marbles.
Mostly, I try to shake the small stuff, like my need for order, cleanliness, arriving on time for once – anywhere, putting on makeup, brushing my hair, ok – just general personal hygiene, getting out of my pajamas, making my children wear clothes, getting the dogs outside before they can’t hold it anymore, getting my kids to the toilet before they can’t hold it anymore, getting to the toilet before I can’t – ok this just got weird.
Anyway, my point is everywhere I look stuff just isn’t right and I feel like I have really grown as a person because I resort to taking pictures instead of totally flipping my shit. It doesn’t do any good anymore and if the baby craps on the floor once in a while because she won’t wear pants then I guess that’s what steam cleaners are for, right? Um, BTW Bissell is much stronger than Rug doctor in my personal experience and I have A LOT of experience.
figure 1. using all my clean dishtowels as a bridge across the floor covered in dog hair.
my flock enjoying individual dirt baths in my garden. bye bye new seeds I just planted. We will clearly not be harvesting any spinach or broccoli.
this is just a simple picture of my cat scaring about 5 years off my life when I got down on all fours to reach a ball that rolled under the bed. I look up to this nose right in my face. Not even sure why it scared me so bad.