Gotta tell an Audrey story...

Background. She's got her front permanent teeth and her permanent incisors but the teeth in between were her baby teeth. Over a YEAR ago the dentist was after us to get those out but Audrey didn't want to mess with them and honestly, they weren't loose. So at this point I've got a dental appt for the girls next week and my child has spent the last year looking a little odd with these two big front teeth and little baby teeth jammed in between. They were wedged in there and wouldn't move at all!

So Tuesday Audrey comes downstairs and informs me that she remembers how she lost her tooth in a bit of chocolate last Christmas Eve. She said she wanted to lose another tooth this year. I told her to start with those two little ones as I was going to have to pay the dentist to pull them out next week! Audrey thinks about it for a second and starts digging around in her mouth. 30 seconds later 'MOM! It's LOOSE!!' The left baby tooth is wiggling and bleeding. She goes and gets a kleenex and asked me to pull it out which I do quick as a wink!

Brad and I are stunned because prior to this with both kids any pulling of teeth was an emotional even wrought with tears, drama and long prolonged sessions of coaxing to get them out. So the tooth fairy comes and I've just saved a $25 extraction fee! Hooray. We asked if she wanted to do the other one but she said no, because she wanted the tooth fairy to come twice. Good thinking. Fair enough.

So yesterday I asked if she was going to pull out the other one tonight. She said no so I figured - we've got a few more days before the dentist and worst case I'll have him pull it. Put the girls to bed at 7:30 and I go upstairs to read. 8:30 Audrey bursts into the room with a kleenex shoved into her mouth and the tooth pillow clutched in her hand shouting "I pullbed oup my ober toof!" Brad and I are stunned. Sure enough - tooth is out, already ensconced in the tooth pillow and pressure was being applied to tooth hole wound. Wow!

So the tooth fairy comes again last night (thank goodness we had a stockpile of silver and gold dollar coins which is 'tooth fairy script' in our house!)

This morning we were talking about the event and I asked Audrey how she did it. The explanation went a little something like this...

Audrey: 'you know how the clothes hamper has a handle' (she has a square plastic clothes hamper with a plastic lid that flips up and down).
Me: (suspiciously) 'Uh huh...?'
Audrey: 'Well I held onto it like this (mimics gripping a handle close to her face) and pushed..."
Me: "You mean you held onto the hamper while you pulled out the tooth with your other hand?"
Audrey: 'No Mommy' (frustrated with my obvious lack of intelligence) 'I held onto the hamper and pushed my tooth on the edge'
Me: (disbelieving) 'You mean to tell me, you used the side of the hamper to push out your tooth?!'
Audrey: 'Yes!' (clearly pleased that I finally understood her McGyver-like abilities with regard to tooth removal...)

So that happened. And I just saved a total of $50 in dental fees! Golly I do love that girl!

Testing the Email Function

I tried to link an email whenever anyone posts. Let's see if it works. If this annoys you let me know. If you want to post remember to log in as amystone3797@yahoo.com with the password of weeklyrant

Anyone else hate those 'I'm There' State Farm commercials...

I don't have anything pithy to say about it, except I loathe it like a Dockers commercial...

I secretly dream that the big circle they are inexplicably standing on is a type of black hole that will suck them and their stupid ass lives off my TV screen.

Why do children hate coats?

It's 35 degrees outside and a fine mist is falling. There is a toasty fire in the fireplace and my children would rather go outside. Not only would they rather be out there, I have to threaten them to get them to wear a coat!!! They're convinced the sweatshirt jacket they wear when the thermometer is at 60 degrees is good all year round.
I know their circulation is better, but it can't be THAT good.

The life of a mother.
Esther

Amy: Am I hoggin' this blog?! Okay, I'd like to discuss our family dinner last night...

As a rule family dinners in the Stone home are a 'no-no'. It started once Audrey started eating table food. By whatever perfect storm of circumstances you want to blame, I developed big time stomach issues when Audrey was about 2. Which means that about the time we would have started having family meals, family meals became physically and emotionally painful.

I am married to a very tidy man who does not tolerate mealtime disruption well. Add this to severe stomach pain when such stressors occur, and let's just say, we penciled in a family meal once a week out of sheer guilt. The rest of the time, the kids eat in front of the TV and we eat in blessed silence when they are in bed, like God intended.

As is typical, because we denied them our company during mealtime, 'family dinner' became desireable. I mean, c'mon - you really want to sit there and have me criticize your vegetable to starch consumption ratio? Having your dad micromanage your table manners is fun for you?! Yeah, I guess we are that fantastic.

So, okay fine. Family dinners then. About two years ago we ramped it up to 4 - 5 nights a week. Felt a bit like torture to Brad and I but we put forth the work effort. Of course about this time the girls decided that they really only liked about 5 foods. Those 5 foods of course rotated randomly through the sweet/starch/chickenfried food spectrum - best I could tell, pretty much randomly. After about a year of making two dinners (flat out stupid) and a year of making dinners that we all might like (flat out impossible) I decided to just make some food that Brad and I enjoyed. Kids were invited of course, but I braced for the inevitable fallout on a nightly basis.

And fall out it did. I would spend hours planning menus and making meals only to have Lilly start laying the groundwork for not eating at about 3:15. She'd ask (she thought slyly) what we'd be having, and then, after what I am sure seemed to her a reasonably long time period, she'd start to drop hints about phantom stomach aches, or how she ate so much for lunch, or how she'd bravely forego dessert as she just simply couldn't eat any dinner. You have to understand that Lilly will eat a clod of dirt if it is served in a restaurant, but anything served in our home is viewed with skepticism at the very least, with downright suspicion being ultimately more typical.

Let's just say this didn't do much for my GERD.

So Monday I asked Brad if there was anything he wanted me to fix for dinners this week. He'd just read this National Geographic article about the 100 best foods and he suggested (with a straight face) that I 'try to encorporate some of those foods' into our menu. Ummm Hummm. Okay, buster, you asked for it.

Monday evening was butternut squash risotto (which Brad had decreed unacceptable weeks ago due to its shocking lack of meat content), grilled chicken and steamed asparagus. As the meals were plated I braced myself for the neonate fall out.

Not only was there no fall out, but I'm damn sure that those were not my children at the table. They were - my hand to God - FIGHTING over the asparagus. Lilly ate all her chicken (never happens, although she did dip it liberally in mayo - shudder!) and ate two leftover steamed shrimp from the night before. She also ate three asparagus spears and although she eschewed the rice for the most part, she did give it a good try and Audrey polished hers off with gusto. Brad and I kept eyeing each other over the table trying to make sure we weren't having some sort of hallucination.

It was the best family dinner ever.

So I figured my best bet was not to push it. They ate homemade pizza in front of SpongeBob tonight. I just need a few more hours to bask in the glory before we regress to the mean...

Esther: Bumper Stickers Help Angry People Feel They've Had Their Say

I never really thought about it before, but while I was reading the hatchback of a Subaru Legacy on my way out to Hamburg on Sunday, I realized what a public service bumper stickers really are.

I mean, you take this guy I was following. I counted 15 bumper stickers on the back of his car, leaving just enough space for the rear window. They all made rather definitive statements about his political, moral and economic opinions...some of them even used BOLD type to EMPHASIZE a word, phrase or name. Obviously, this man had a lot to say and wanted the world to hear it.

And then it hit me. Without bumper stickers, this man would have to stop everyone he saw and yell all of this information at them. I mean, how much time would something like that take?

Thanks to bumper stickers, we can all share our thoughts and opinions about deeply personal and political issues with complete strangers in cars around us. And the real beauty of it is, we never have to say a word to them. Is that some kind of public service or what?

Amy: Is it possible to be a reverse racist?

One of the many birthday parties I endured this weekend (that is another rant altogether) was for Lilly's friend Malaayia (I swear to God I am sure I spelled that wrong - there are like a hundered a's and y's involved but I get the order messed up...). She is a sweet little girl of color in our otherwise lilly white Scott county. Okay, I just flat out lied there. She actually is a bit of a bitch but she LOVES Lilly, and has spent the last two years defending her friendship with Lilly like some sort of prize and picking fights with other girls who get to friendly with her.

Okay, so here's the thing. I really want to encourage Lilly to have a friend who is different from her, but I think I might be encouraging a friendship that I would never ever encourage if the the little girl was white! We went to her birthday party today and I love her mother - she's super sweet and works at Toyota - just promoted to specialist from a job on the line. Let's just say that we were the marshmallows in the cocoa at the party, but everyone was VERY nice. The thing is - they are super duper Baptist. I'm not talkin' - go to church and then a potluck Methodist behavior. I am talking full on, almost-didn't-make-the-party-because-CHURCH-RAN-UNTIL-2:30 Baptists!!! Now that is not necessarily a deal breaker, but I was a bit worried that I was going to say something wrong. The one gal was a hairstylist and I was informed that she had 'ministry in her hands'.

Okay. Sure.

Another other gal shared that she is attending Asbury to be a christian counselor. Fantastic, although I could have done without her rave about how great the program was because it contained little or no psychology or counseling classes. Seems like you might need a bit of those things to be effective, but what the hell do I know?

So the party was fine. The girls had fun. But honestly, if they were white, I'm pretty sure she'd not be coming over for a play date next week...