Thankful for the little things

The best thing about having kids is you find a whole different and bizarre number of things to be thankful for.

Clearly, like everyone, I’m profoundly thankful for friends and family and community. But there are all these little things that only kids bring to mind.

I'm thankful for my youngest daughter at last outgrowing tick tack toe, since it's been tough to feign enthusiasm for the game for a few years. We have moved on to hangman, which is much more fun now that she can spell. Previously in kindergarten it was tough to play hangman since letters were largely decorative and I was certainly “hung” many times by a random letter Y.

I'm thankful for the resale shop, without whom I'd be tempted to horde all my girls old holiday dresses. Instead I keep one or two (okay, three) for sentimental reasons, then pass on a dress fit for another princess.

I'm thankful for the resale shop because apparently I'm growing weeds here, both of whom outgrow clothes at a pace no reasonable budget can deal with.

I'm thankful for the high pitch squeals ringing out all over the house (inside voice? What inside voice?). Sometimes they hit notes that cause the dogs to howl. Sure these squeals would send many people diving under the table, but I love them because I recognize a good time when I hear it.

I'm thankful for the company of exhausted mom friends who I both marvel at and commiserate with. I never would have met them were it not for our children. Just when I think I can’t possibly get one more thing done, I’ll run into a mom who has figured out a short cut for me to try.

I'm thankful for sneakers that light up because they are way too fun to watch as my daughter runs down the hall, literally aglow.

I'm thankful for a car full of carolers because it's wonderful to sing with your daughters even if you really don't want to sing the twelve days of Christmas AGAIN.

I’m thankful for pepperoni and goldfish, a Prosapio snack staple which I don’t eat, but my daughters would wither away if I didn’t keep them in reach.

And most surprisingly, I’m thankful for the collapse at the end of the day where I realize that life is ridiculously full, and that tomorrow I’ll have energy for more.

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Dresses

This weekend it was time for Christmas dress shopping.

Even Sierra, who is nowhere near the fashionista that her sister is, was excited to head out for our shopping trip. Usually she hates shopping. But after I bought her two outfits that she couldn’t even get over her shoulders, she realized she needed to make an effort.

Plus there is something about the Christmas dress. It’s where we get to go all out. Velvet. Lace. Fake fur. Sparkles. Dresses that flare out when you spin.

After making some preliminary selections we headed into the large dressing room. Mireya, who is seven and has inherited the glamour gene and raised it to the power of Prada, selected six stunning outfits. This was going to be a problem because for Mireya, picking just one is impossible and a guaranteed tear generator.

“But how can I choose?” she whined.

“Well, you just have to lay out your options and think of the what’s good about each one, then pick the one that has the most good parts.” Now who could argue with that logic?

Mireya.

“They are exactly the same! They have exactly the same good parts!”

Sierra, on the other hand, was having a completely different problem. Nothing fit. No wonder nothing I was buying her fit. She was no longer in the kid department at all.

When in the world did that happen? Sure, she’s wearing my shoes, but I thought I had another couple of years before she was going to be swiping things from my closet.

So, after easing Mireya’s misery of having to select only one dress with the promise of Christmas shoes, we were off to the other end of the store for Sierra.

Much like Sierra’s transition two years ago to the woman’s shoe sizes, moving over to the juniors section at age 11 doesn’t just mean bigger price tags, it also means a totally different kind of Christmas dress. A Vegas show girl kind of dress. And that’s putting it mildly.

Frankly I’m not prepared to have my little girl dress like she’s doing two shows nightly with a matinee on Sunday. Our new goal became finding something that was both festive and restrained.

Talk about a tough fashion combo.

Eventually we found a dress that worked. It looks beautiful, even though there are no sparkles, velvet, or fake fur.

Maybe they’ll make a comeback in the juniors department in 2010.

Thanksgiving’s Culinary Sweepstakes

Cooking is not one of my better skills.

I mean, I can follow a recipe, sure, just like I can put gas in my car. But I always said, before I had children, that the only reason this house had a kitchen was because it was required by code.

So it is with some dread that I stare into the cranberry stained face of the mega-cooking holiday throw down of Thanksgiving.

Let’s face it. This is not a holiday that brings out the best in the cooking challenged. Take a look at my cooking repertoire these days as a harried mom on the go.

• My specialty these days is mac and cheese. Boil pasta. Add cheese. Done.
• We’ve been celebrating the return of the Hot Dog, previously a banned food, which has regained popularity with the princess of picky eating.
• Broccoli, steamed. It’s the only green the thing the aforementioned princess will eat. So it’s become a staple.
• And I do make a mean pancake. With cinnamon. Available on Sundays ONLY.

Unfortunately my comfort level with this repertoire was challenged when some check out person snuck in a rather large, coupon/cooking magazine into my grocery bag. It had a festive cover and I foolishly started to page through it.

It all looks so good. And easy! It all says it’s EASY in big red letters so you know it’s true. Then it’ll have an ingredient list that goes for two pages. But the pictures look so warm and inviting, I immediately imagine the memories possible with these incredible meals.

Then, coming to my senses by the dinging of the microwave, I recall how wonderful mashed potatoes taste from the box if you add some garlic salt. And Voila! Garlic Potatoes A La Prosapio!

Fortunately I have finally gotten wise enough to know that our Thanksgiving memories will be less about dozens of creative side dishes and more about how many times Daddy had to run to the store for something we SHOULD have right here in the cabinet somewhere.

And how many times the smoke alarm went off.

And how the green beans got buried in overabundance of cream of mushroom soup and look more like anemic earthworms, which is not really helpful when you are trying to make a perfect Thanksgiving memory here.

But it will all make you laugh so hard you almost spew your stuffing.

Instead we’ll be thankful that every year, we manage to get stuffed – with great memories, no matter what’s on the table.

Halloween - where is thy theme?

The preparations for Halloween are progressing at a breakneck pace around here. Usually we work a family wide costume theme.

Last year was sort of a Green Meets Halloween. Mireya, who is not big on the scary side of Halloween, was a bat.

A FRUIT bat.

She demonstrated her fruit bat tendencies by having me dress as a bowl of fruit. Then she’d periodically nip at a grape. Sierra went as Mother Nature, which consisted of a green dress, wild headdress and a fake fur collar. Even the dog went as a flower.

Dad went as our escort, declining to dress up. Nothing has quite equaled his year when he was a box of tomatoes.

Now THAT was a costume. If you’ve never walked around Sattler in a modified refrigerator box with the word “tomato” written all over it, you haven’t experienced a true Prosapio Halloween.

A few years before that, the girls were Dalmatians and I was Cruella de Ville. My hair was half white for the rest of the week at work, which goes to show just how far we’ll take a theme.

Then there was the year Mireya was born and she was a pile of leaves in a stroller. We called her Russell.

I’d like to point out that with the exception of the pile of leaves (a onsie with leaves hot glued all over it) I’ve had little to do with the theme every year. Even the box of tomatoes was Sierra’s idea.

But this year relying on the creativity of my daughters is not working out too well. Whether it’s a sign of the times, a result of the tweenager in the house, or just a year ending in an “e”, we are not working a theme.

Sierra and her best friend Cami are going as bananas. Mireya is going as a snow leopard, in honor of her favorite stuffed animal for the last three years. Short of going as the Internet, I can’t figure out how to tie those things together in a theme.

(And how would you dress as the Internet anyway? Several hundred of post it notes with web addresses pinned to your shirt? Dress as a giant computer mouse?)

Fortunately, I’ve got a few weeks. And there’s always the possibility that Mireya will change her mind and want to be a grocery bag.

Now THAT costume I can handle (pun intended).

We don't get too into the 4th of July...

We believe there's no such thing as getting TOO much into the 4th.



Here's small town Texas on the 4th.



Course, the dog has to get dressed up.





Love this bus!


Well, you know Mireya always dresses for the occasion.





Party barge in action.


The fly over by the vintage planes...




Okay, the other dog got a bandana too.




And big sister Sierra wanted a matching dress and Roxie
broke out the stars outfit. And Daddy is not one to be left out either




I just noticed someone is riding in the bucket of the bucket truck. LOL




These racing kids probably give their mother a heart attack with their antics.
They were doing 360s and peeling out all over the place.




Okay, maybe we do get into the 4th a little.



Hope yours was happy!

The Easter Dress Search

Mireya is great fun to shop with. Sierra would rather chew through a bear trap than try on clothes, but her sister loves nothing better than trying on dozens of clothes. Say dressing room and you've got a friend for life.

Once in the store, it's all I can do to keep her away from sequins and polyester. I'm thinking she's a reincarnation of some broadway diva. Maybe a distant relative of Liberace.

Fortunately she has a thing for tradition too, and here were the finalists in the Easter dress selection.

#1 Judges' Comments: Mommy, I like this one because it spins out really cool.

#2 Judges' Comments: It has sparklies.

#3 Judges' Comments: Nice sweater.

#4 Judges' Comments: I like the slip and the see through. And the pink flowers.

#5 Judges' Comments: It's a little puffy.

After several agonizing minutes we ended up with two (and both were worn for Easter). After all, a girl has to change after church.

The shoes were killer, though.

There's simple nothing better than little girls in Easter dresses.

Here's big sister too...

Now that process was a complete disaster. First of all, she didn't come along to buy her dress, which, given how much she HATES shopping, I thought was a blessing. Not so much. She apparently grew a size since our last shopping outing and so I actually bought a dress one size too small. Ditto with the shoes.

Luckily with a little creative engineering, the whole thing hung together long enough for church, pictures, one Easter egg hunt and dinner. Never to be worn again. Anyone need a size 10 Easter dress with matching 8 mules?


(They are with Roxi, the newest addition to our household, which is a whole other blogpost.)

I fixed my @#$# titles!

At last! Now there will be titles to my posts! WEEEEE.

I've also set up an old computer for my use when the kids are surfing faster sites. Because blogging is so old school and low band width, that I can do it from a Commodore.

Ah. It's a good day.

PLUS I found out the kids don't have MLK day off, and while I wish they were a bit more enlightened about holidays at CISD, this means I have my OWN day off!

My own day off!

!!

I've already got enough plans to put a White House Chief of Staff to shame.

I wonder, could complete an entire novel in a day to myself?

Could I paint the bedroom some sassy color that will haunt my nightmares for years to come?

Is it possible to put 83,467 photos in albums in one day?

Stay tuned.

When Christmas Lingers Too ... Widely

There are many things that seem to escape containment after Christmas. There’s always an ornament that slipped under the couch which you find in February. A card with a smiling baby in a Santa hat is uncovered in a stack of unopened junk mail. A tangle of tinsel sticks on your black pants which you only notice after you’ve met with about 40 people at a “dress for success” workshop. Which you're leading.

But there is one part of Christmas that is lingering a bit too prominently.

For years now I’ve been in hiding. Seriously hiding. Of course, I can share this with you because I know you won’t tell anyone.

As we all know, the first step is admitting you have a problem. I’m GREAT at the first step. I’m a confessional type, always ready to toss myself on the mercy of the court. But saying it out loud to a large group of people… well, perhaps it’ll be cleansing.

I’m speaking, of course of my egg nog “issue.”

Yes, my seasonal egg nog addiction got a wee bit out of control. You know it’s bad when you have to make sure you’ve got a candy cane in your pocket so your breath won’t give away that you’ve snuck into the kitchen for your 4th glass of egg nog. In the last hour.

So, needless to say, I’ve got a bit of an egg nog belly. I’m back in sweats and baggy sweaters, waiting for this week to go by, the final week where the grocery store will pull the last 5 million calories off their shelves. In fact I’m forbidding myself to come within 50 feet of the dairy aisle.

It’s the only thing that saves me every year – The Egg Nog Law. The fact that they don’t sell real egg nog beyond mid January. Apparently it’s actually illegal to sell egg nog unless it’s in a can after January 15th.

Fortunately I’m never even tempted by the canned stuff. No, for me it’s got to be the full bodied, cows in Santa hats, red and green label, thick and creamy with a hint of …

I better stop myself. If I can just hold out for a few more weeks, I might stave off further … expansion.

Then again, it does only come once a year… And baggy sweaters are in, right?

Doable Resolutions

Generally I don't make resolutions.

Well, I should amend that. I don't generally KEEP resolutions. But in the last few years I've made plenty of changes in my life including turning into SUPER MOM.
Now if I can just quit tripping over the cape…

Most of the resolutions I'd like to take on are impossible to achieve. For example I'd really like to do a better job with the domestic things around here. It would be so novel to have clean clothes in actual drawers instead of baskets, for example.

I'm fairly certain I've ended up washing clean clothes because I assumed they were dirty since they were in baskets.

Or perhaps I could have a completely clear kitchen counter without "the pile." "The pile" always starts out small, a staging area for calls that need to be made, papers that need to be filed, items that need to be reviewed. Then, like a huge black hole, it sucks in all matter of debris.

I don't even know what's in "the pile" anymore. I'm afraid to look.
So I thought I'd try for a few doable resolutions for 2009.

I want to not take parenting so seriously in 2009. I'd like to laugh a bit when my little ones act as if helping with the dishes is akin to water boarding.

I want to take parenting more seriously in 2009. Do more reading and talking to other parents so I can figure out how to survive it.

I want to take my children more places in 2009. We should hit a few more museums and events with food on sticks.

I want to stay home with my children more in 2009. Spend time in our yard, wrestle with the dogs and use finger paints to turn our arms interesting shades of blue.

I want to cook more unusual foods in 2009. I want to expose my children to a few more exotic dishes so they can expand their culinary horizons.

I want to spend less time in the kitchen in 2009. I want to find things we can more easily toss into a backpack as we head out for an adventure.

I want to wake up early in 2009. I want to have the lunches packed and the clothes set out so we can leave the house calmly every day.

I want to sleep in with my children in 2009. I want to cuddle up with them until the sun rays poke at our eyelids, then run around in a mad race against time, laughing as we spill into the car, hoping everyone has shoes on.

Now these are resolutions I think I can keep.