My Prima Princessa…and a Giveaway!

We are enjoying ourselves on an annual camping trip with some hopefully-miraculously-better-than-forecasted weather this weekend (keep your fingers crossed for us), so I decided to leave you with a giveaway post while I'm gone!

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Ali is becoming more of a prima donna every day.

Maybe it has to do with getting closer and closer to the age of three, which is basically a tween these days.

She’s starting to think less of her old best friend, Thomas the Tank Engine, and dream more about princesses and fairies…her world of playing with trains and cars is quickly revolutionizing into playing with makeup and dress-up clothes.

In fact, just the other night before bedtime, she looked at me with an intrigued look, started rubbing my eyebrows, and said, “Who does your eyebrows?”

Shocked, I said, “What??”

“WHO does your EYEBROWS?”

“Umm, I do?”

“Oh. Where do you get your makeup for your eyebrows?”

I don’t put any makeup on my eyebrows, but I saw this was not going to end without an explanation, so I said “From MAC and Sephora.”

“Yes, Sephora. They’re pretty, Mommy!”

Wow. And my Mom thought I was growing up too fast when I argued with her for weeks that I was old enough to wear pantyhose…at the age of 6.

Anyway, I received another movie from Prima Princessa that I knew she’d love due to this new phase of hers, and I was right.

Prima Princessa makes awesome ballet movies for little girls, combining video of real ballet performances, lessons on ballet moves, and videos of little girls dancing.

This one is on The Nutcracker, which I saw live several times as a child and LOVED it, even though I didn’t understand at all what was going on (WHY can’t they have WORDS in ballets?!?)

Anyway, what is so great about this DVD is that there is a narrator, explaining what is going on with Clara, the nut cracking men and the life-sized mice. It makes it MUCH easier to follow.

Ali absolutely loved it, and has been going around all week saying that her NEW favorite movie is The Nutcracker, and can we PLEASE watch it again?!?

(Maybe Clara gets her eyebrows done in the play and I just never picked up on it since I didn’t have a narrator. That would explain where THAT came from.)

Anyway, they sent me an extra copy to give away to one of you! To enter, simply comment on the post.

You can earn up to three extra entries if you:

• Subscribe to OR Follow my blog
• Follow me on Twitter OR Facebook
• Tweet, blog, OR Facebook about the giveaway

This giveaway will be open until Monday, November 9th. The winner will be randomly selected and announced on Tuesday, November 10th.

Good luck!!

A Stinky Reason is Better than No Reason…

(I bet you think I'm going to talk about poo again with "Stinky" in the title. Well, you're wrong. I CAN blog about other things, you know.)

I have come to the conclusion that I can’t take any medications.

No, I’m not a hippy. I’m actually a big fan of medicine – I don’t like waiting around for things to fix themselves, so at the first sign of a headache or a sneezing fit, you will find me running for the ibuprofen bottle or sudafed tablets.

But apparently, my BODY wants me to be a hippy.

I have felt irritable and somewhat depressed for the last two weeks, and I haven’t known why (which makes writing upbeat blog posts a VERY difficult challenge – please forgive any sub-par posts recently).

I assumed that it was stress-related, and waited for it to go away. But it’s only gotten worse, and my irritability would pop up at the most unexplainable times. Like today when I was in the grocery store and having to remind myself to breathe in, breathe out, so I didn’t snap, for no reason whatsoever.

And then it hit me: this was a very familiar feeling. I have felt this exact way many times before, and it has always been caused by a medication. I thought about it…I have been taking Prilosec for my phlegm issue for about a month, and it has really been helping.

But, just like when I was taking the allergy medicine for the same issue and had to give a class-action apology, apparently acid reducers have a very negative impact on my emotional state of balance.

I looked it up – yup, irritability, depression - they’re possible side effects. And if there’s a possible side effect for medication, I’m a guaranteed target.

The good news is that I should feel great!! and happy!! and joyful!! in a few days, just like last time. (And really, I already DO feel much better, just knowing that I'm not losing my mind.)

The bad news – I am apparently stuck with phlegm (and any other illness that requires medication) for the rest of my life.

But hey – I’d MUCH rather be phlegmy than the Wicked Witch of the East (and Chris and Ali would agree with that sentiment I’m sure).

So, next time I go to the doctor and they ask me what medications I’m allergic to, I’m just going to have to say “All of them.”

Which, in that case, I might as well save my $30 co-pay and not bother going.

Yeesh.

However, Ali chipped in today and helped cheer me up with a rousing Medley to Mitigate Mommy’s Melancholy Mood, which she obligingly let me record to share with you:

And who couldn’t feel better after that, medicated or not?

...And yes...she apparently had quite the burping issue this afternoon.

An Eerily Spot-On Impression...

...for someone not old enough to watch Saturday Night Live.

I am afraid that my daughter is going to be a one-upper.

She is starting to sound JUST LIKE Kristin Wiig’s unbelievably obnoxious, discomfort-inducing Penelope character on Saturday Night Live.

Here’s a sampler, for those not familiar (although it’s much better if watched):

Gina: Yeah, I have a card for everyone to sign. Some of you might not know this, but Mrs. Jacob’s 15 year old cat Whiskers McGee passed away last week.

Penelope: My cat passed away tooo sooo…his name was Whiskers McGee the First sooo… He was 17 years old, so just a little bit older than her cat soo… It died a few minutes ago too sooo… just effects me more soo…

Lisa (annoyed): That cat was like a child to her.

Penelope: My cat was my child. I was pregnant with my cat… I gave birth to it sooo… I had my cat baby in the hospital, and I had my cat baby shower soo… a lot of people there soo…

Kristen Wiig is a geniusly hilarious actress.

So…Ali, the miniature one-upper.

She’s been obsessed with learning about car names lately. Every car we pass, we must talk about it’s name. Her favorites seem to be Jeeps, Chevy Suburbans, Honda Accords, and Mercedes Benzes (She likes variety).

But she has started having this constant conversation under her breath every time we “play cars”…and every time, it gets bigger.

“I used to have a PINK Jeep when I was a little girl. No, I used to have FIVE pink Jeeps. I used to have five pink Jeeps and five Mercedes Benzes. I could only drive one at a time. No, I drove LOTS at a time…I had ALL the pink cars. I had lots of pink big rigs too…I had ALL the cars when I was a little girl.”

I have a toddler who is a one-upper, soo....she can one-up your toddler anyday, soo....she thinks she could drive when she was a baby, soo...she’s going to be more annoying than your toddler sooo…..

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* Editor's note: since you have commented on her outfit and especially her tights, you'll be interested to know that picture was taken directly before the poo events that transpired in the Sol Azteca Ladies' Room...those tights, although now clean, recleaned, and sanitized, have been through a lot since that photograph was made.

Stale, Decayed, Nasty Nostalgia

Chris and I are both very sentimental people. We love to keep things to remind us of days gone by.

Granted, most of these things sit in boxes in our basement, like my cast from when I broke my arm in the 7th grade and his “super-cool” favorite Junior High item of clothing - his denim and plaid vest. So it’s not like we actually look at this stuff - but just the fact that WE know that they’re there…it feels nice – as if we’re in touch with our past. Without letting it clutter up our house.

Thankfully, I don’t think that our nostalgitis is to a point to qualify us for the TV show Hoarders – wow, that show makes us twitch with claustrophobia. And it makes us throw out a few things, just to ensure that we NEVER end up eating family meals on our bed because that’s the only available surface.

(shiver)

Anyway, that being said, we, like most couples, saved the top layer of our wedding cake for our first anniversary. It's tradition, after all. We forgot about it that first year, but were determined to follow tradition for our second anniversary. However, we bought a house before that happened, so we actually MOVED the cake along with our other frozen goods to our new house.

But, it paid off – we actually remembered the next March. We got it out, thawed it, and cut us a big slice of nostalgia.

And it was NASTY. Not just in a “Oh – that’s not very tasty” way, but more like a “Where is the nearest garbage can because this is coming out of my mouth RIGHT NOW” kind of way.

It was stale, as hard as eating a piece of siding, and as tasty as eating one of those cardboard boxes that is holding the rest of our crap memories in the basement.

In fact, we suspected that it might have been styrofoam all along – just icinged up to look like cake.

So of course we threw it out right then.

Umm, or not.

Yeah. We Ziplocked it back up and stuck it back in our freezer. For some reason, it just seemed like an injustice to throw it out just because it happened to have issues with edibility.

It has been 6 and a half years since that second anniversary, and we have moved yet again. Guess what we still have in our downstairs freezer, right next to the frozen vegetables?

Yeah.

At least it’s in the basement with the rest of our memories.

It’s kind of a joke now, which makes it even harder to get rid of. It’s been around this long – how could we just throw it out, as if it meant nothing to us? As if it hasn't given us many a chuckle at the absurdity of its continued existence?

I pulled it out of it’s hallowed shrine to photograph it just for you. It was nasty and sticky and I felt the need to sanitize after it’s photography session, but here is our masterpiece:

Wanna come over for dessert some time?

I’m pretty sure that some of that icing used to be a nice sage green color. And it certainly didn’t originally look like it was iced by a cement truck.

Please don’t turn this post in to Hoarders. My formerly broken arm would be very upset if they made me throw away my cast.

Men Are Crazy Too.

There are many great mysteries in the world.

What happened to Atlantis?

How were the Pyramids constructed?

Where is Osama Bin Laden Hiding?

Why do they still make Mom Jeans?

Does Dolly Parton have a boob job or does she not?

We can all agree that these are mysteries that may or may not ever be solved. But there’s another Great Mystery that puzzles me to no end.

As much as men say that women are the illogical sex and don’t make any sense, there are a group of men out there that totally befuddle me.

Let’s call this group of men the Drive-By-Pickup-Men.

You know – those guys who, while driving by you, cat call, whistle, yell, wave way too vigorously, all while smiling as big as they can and, again, driving, speedily, right by you.

What is their purpose?

What is their goal?

Do they think that we will write down their tag number, con a policeman into looking up who they are, and call them to ask them out?

And anyway, that would never work because they’re ALWAYS in a company car.

And by “company car”, I don’t mean a nice black sedan. I mean the Little Debbie Delivery man…The Beer Delivery man, the Uniform Laundry Services man…the group of 5 Mexican men in the back of a Landscaping Truck…

And furthermore, their actions don’t seem to be at all related to beauty or availability. They might be cat-calling the 80-year old lady crossing the street at the pace of a centipede with 99 broken legs, the harried Mom with the five kids all crowded around her..the gender-neutral-from-a-distance “person”, the lady with THE THIGHS…

I just don’t get it. I can understand (though not appreciate) the male species trying to pick up a woman when both are on solid ground, going zero miles per hour, in a conversable range. But if you are driving by at 35 miles per hour – what are you getting out of this exchange? What positive benefit are you adding to your life by these making-a-fool-of-yourself efforts?

Even if one of us DID want to give you more than a glare and a quick avoidance of eye contact, how would you go about further contact? If we waved back, would you do a U-Turn in the middle of the highway, risking the lives of you, the other motorists, and the thousand packages of snack cakes or cases of beer in the back of your delivery truck to come back and talk to us?

Please, SOMEONE, give me some insight on these inexplicably illogical Drive-By-Pickup-Men.

Snow White and Mosaic Winners!

Two contests ended last night, and I used my BFF, Excel, and it's awesome formula RANDBETWEEN skillz to pick our random winners!!

First of all, for the Snow White Gift Set:

It is the Diamond Edition DVD, coupled with the Seven Dwarf Plush Set, for a value of $79.99:

And the winner is.... #16, Marie!

The second winner is for the super fun Sticky Mosaic Six Kit Prize Pack from The Orb Factory worth $107:

And the Winner is: #40, Lindsay!

Congrats, Marie and Lindsay!! I will get in touch with you and arrange for your prizes to be mailed to you!

And a special thanks to Disney and The Orb Factory for providing these awesome prizes!

For everyone else, I have one more giveaway going on - this one's at over at Alabama Bloggers - for some really fun CD's by The Mad Tea Party! Be sure to click on over there and enter!

And keep your eyes out around here - I will have some more giveaways coming up soon!

A Lifetime Ago

I don’t feel that old very often, until I start thinking about how long ago things happened.

Nearly eleven years ago, I met Chris. I was 17, and he was 22.


We met through music - he was this awesome and passionate singer/guitar player/pianist/keyboard player/songwriter. I was still a teenager and a good-guitar-player-but-only-in-my-classical-picking-style-so-please-don’t-ask-me-to-strum-niche and a passable-but-nothing-special singer. I was attracted to his personality, his passion for God, AND his musical abilities.

We became friends, then best friends, then started dating (during which he wrote romantic and not-at-all-cheesy songs for me), then got engaged, then got married…all the way through, music was our most common thread – what our relationship always went back to. From playing in a band together, to leading music for our Church’s Junior High Group for many years (which included many date-night practices),
to playing on the Church praise team, to playing around a campfire on camping trips….
It all centered around music.

A few years into our marriage, we went to a very small recording studio and made a rough recording of a few of his original songs. We both played guitar and sang on the recording, so it took quite a while to get it all down. It was a really fun experience – one that neither of us will ever forget.

Then, life got busy, we had a baby, jobs got busy, parenting got busy, our lives started centering around new things, and music faded into the background. We shamefully went over a year without even opening our guitar cases.

Now, music is taking on a different role in our lives, as we pass it on to Ali. Sure - we're doing a lot more of "Jesus Loves Me" and "If You're Happy and You Know It" than original compositions, but at least once every couple of weeks, we get out our guitars or sit around the piano with her and teach her to love music as much as we do.

However, I got a bit reminiscent the other day and dug out our sample CD. I played it in the car for Ali to hear, and as much as she is insistent on listening to her music and ONLY her music continuously and without a single stinkin’ break for breathing, she was mesmerized. She kept repeating over and over, “That’s Mommy and Daddy singing. That’s MY Mommy and Daddy singing…I wanna listen to it again!”

For once, we agreed on music. I wanted to listen to it again too.

If you’d like to listen to Chris' songs also, here are a couple of songs from the CD, roughly recorded (and you might need to max out your volume to hear them), circa 2004:

All music © 1999 Broken Moon Music.

She Has Now Taken Over My Dreams.

I admit it: I am apparently in “Mommy Mode” now.

You know that dream you have right as you’re drifting off to sleep that you’re falling and it jerks you awake, as you gasp a huge breath and try to grab ahold of anything to keep from plunging to your death?

That dream varies for me from falling off a tall building to falling out of the bed, but I have it a lot.

(Luckily, so does Chris, so we are equal in our need for apology when we almost knock the other one out of bed with our spastic efforts at saving ourselves.)

Well, I had a very original (and disturbing) twist on it the other night. I was falling asleep very quickly after laying down, and then all of a sudden, I’m sitting in front of the toilet, and Ali is sitting on it. Except that she is sitting completely on the FRONT of the seat of the toilet, and begins peeing, creating a yellow waterfall down into the floor and me. I jump up and shriek to scoot her back and save myself from the impending flood,

and then I awoke with a jolt.

Oh, this is bad. My falling dreams have now turned into potty-training dreams.

Granted, this isn’t the first time I’ve had Mommy dreams. After all, my most injurious sleepwalking episode ever (and, thankfully, the only sleepwalking incident (so far) that resulted in an emergency room visit) was predicated by me trying to save Ali from falling down nonexistent stairs.

But there’s just something about dreaming about POTTY-TRAINING that just sucks all of the individuality right out of you and just makes you feel like MOM.

Good thing it’s a pretty rewarding job.

Ninja Resultage

So I haven’t reviewed my Ninja yet because I’ve been too busy playing with it for the last few weeks and trying to put everything into practice that I learned about it in New York. I’ve found what I like and what I don’t like to use it for, but overall love it!

The first thing I had to try, of course, were smoothies. I unpacked it and got it set up and admired the double bladeage, ready to chop the ever livin’ daylights out of some fruit:
The top is where the motor is – it just sits on top and you push down on it to make the blades do their thing:

I decided to see if I could make an all-fruit smoothie, aka no ice OR sugar. So I started with a pint of FROZEN blueberries:

And three peaches:
Ali helped me get it all loaded in: Then quickly ran to the other side of the room, as she knew there would be loud noises to follow.

Here’s what it looked like to start out:
And here’s what it looked like, 31 seconds later:

I will say that Ali did LITERALLY pee her pants from the noise. I would show you the video of the above smoothie making, but halfway through it, Ali starts squealing from her oopsie, and it kind of ruins the effect.

I ended up adding ice after all – the blueberry to peach ratio was all wrong to be cold enough. But putting ice in with the already smoothied fruits didn’t seem to bother it, and we had lovely now-COLD smoothies.

The blade thankfully lifts right out, which makes pouring and cleanup easier:
And here was the result of my “hard” work:(No, we didn’t come close to drinking it all – I froze the rest for sorbets for later.)

But Ali DID love what she drank!

(After receiving a dry pair of drawers.)

I liked the cleanup – it rinsed clean very easily (no crevices to build up yuck like my blender has):
The next week, I compiled all of your recipe advice and decided to attempt chicken salad. I used the smaller container to chop my celery really fine:

Then, after cooking my chicken in Nabeel’s Greek Dressing and chopping it into big chunks,
I put it in the big container along with the rest of the most commonly agreed-upon ingredients:

Now I have to say, the Ninja did it’s job admirably, but

1. I was making up my recipe as I went along, so I kept adding more of this and more of that. It chopped everything finer and finer as I added things. I would recommend making sure you have your recipe at least mostly down pat before using the Ninja on something that you don’t want over-chopped, and
   
   
2. My chicken salad totally STANK. I hated it. Besides the fact that I didn’t like the taste, it literally stank – it smelled like cat food. I guess that’s the risk of trying to make something for the first time that you are totally obsessed with – your own version will never measure up to the professionals.

I also used the Ninja another night to just chop an onion for a casserole. I wasn’t as pleased with the results – I felt that it didn’t give them as nice of a consistency as my food processor, which slices them very thinly. The Ninja definitely chops, not slices. So if you want slices, don’t ask Mr. Ninja.

So, finally, I made a smoothie in the correct order: starting with the ice, then adding the fruit.

The ice turned to snow in less than a minute:
Then I added my peaches, and got this:

Beautiful AND Delish.

In summary, here are my pointers on the Ninja:

• Great cleanup – super easy to set up, use, and tear down. Also – the containers come with lids, so they can directly store whatever you made.
  
• Awesome for blending things COMPLETELY.
  
• It IS fairly loud – make sure that all children present in the room are FULLY potty-trained.
  
• Slicing – not so much. The Ninja is Mr. Choppy, not Mr. Slicey.
  
• The easiest and most excellent smoothie maker ever.
  
• I stink at chicken salad, but the Ninja does it’s job nicely.
  
• Definitely WAY worth the cheaper-than-my-blender pricetag!!!

If you would like to know how to purchase a Ninja, go here – and they currently have free shipping!!

Blogger Integrity Information: I was not paid to write this review. I was given a Ninja for the purpose of this review, but my opinions are my own.

Dear, Dear, Dear.

Dear Mister-Genius-Who-Created-The-Self-Cleaning-Oven:

Do you think that you could apply your oh-so-amazing abilities to create other self-cleaning Appliances? Namely, a self-cleaning refrigerator?

You know, where it could sense when food is past it’s prime (the premium models could even tell before it grew any green fuzz), empty it, put it into the dishwasher, and oh – take out the trash while you’re at it?

Also – what if it could keep an electronic map of the contents on the fridge – so that you could look at a panel on the door and immediately know that the Sour Cream with the most promising expiration date is the one in the bottom left corner, NOT the one on the top right, which may or may not be just a sour cream container with fuzzy peas in it?

Sincerely,

Someone that is SOO over cleaning out the refrigerator.

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Dear Proctor and Gamble:

I highly recommend that if you are going to sell products specifically for women, that you hire female marketing executives for those sectors of your ginormous organization.

I mean seriously – you people are a multi-billion dollar company – surely someone has the brains enough to realize that?

No, I guess that I don’t know for a FACT that you don’t have female marketing executives…

Except for the fact that NO woman in her right mind would have EVER signed off on THIS marketing campaign:

Word of Advice: Women do NOT want to be told to cheer up when they are in need of your product.

In fact, something about that sentence can take an otherwise happy female and tap into the inner most hormonal depths of her soul and make her want to immediately find the closest man and make him PAY for the sacrifices that us women make just to be women.

Maybe try something more calming like, “Here’s a Box of Chocolates to go along with our product – take a moment, sit down, and know that you are appreciated.”

Or maybe something sympathetic, such as, “I know that you may or may not feel happy right now, and that is completely and totally appropriate. But no matter how you feel, know that WE understand.”

Or, if you don’t like those, then I guarantee you that just being silent and having NO slogan at all would be better that your current one.

Sincerely,

A Normally Happy Woman, (as long as someone's not telling me to have a happy misery.)

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Dear French People:

You have funny words. And even funnier combinations of words.

The End.

I’m not sure if we’re trying to scare off giant mosquitoes or arachnophobes, but it’s working.

Our neighborhood has been taken over…by gigantic spiders.

And I DO mean GIGANTIC.

It started with this one, which quickly became Ali’s best friend:

And then it had babies – ones who built magnificent webs,

Ones whose heads eerily jerk around and stare at you when you drive past,

And even apparently some die hard Alabama Arachnids:

There are even a couple so large that they would make Hagrid get all ooey gooey on the inside:

There seem to be more Halloween decorators than Christmas decorators in our neighborhood, and they’re not just limited to spiders. Our neighbors shell out big bucks for taller-than-Ford-Econoline-Frankensteins
And full-yard cemeteries.

At first I thought that maybe Halloween deco in general was just becoming more popular than the classic few pumpkins sitting here and there, but from what I have observed and heard, it appears that we just live in a extraordinarily Halloween Enthused neighborhood.

(Which scares me to think of all of the “tricks” that we might get on Halloween night for not being home to give out “treats”.)

(Maybe we should leave a huge conciliatory bowl of candy on the front porch.)

However, there’s one thing for sure: Ali LOVES it. She looks for each one of these landmarks every time we leave the house, and we have a constant discussion about whether or not Freddy and Christie’s house will be sparkling with orange blinking lights or not.

So, in an act of kindness to a toddler (and to her mother who has to answer all of these questions), would you please be so kind and when you take down your Halloween decorations, immediately replace them with Christmas bling so that I don’t have a depressed toddler for a whole month?

Or maybe some neon blinking turkeys and spinning cornucopias for Thanksgiving, perhaps?

If y’all won’t do it, I’m sure that Chris would love to have an excuse to go Griswold on our house even earlier than last year.

At any rate: the expectations have been set, and your spiders are welcome to stay. At least if Ali has any say-so in it.

At the Risk of Becoming Known as a Poo Blogger…

…but I can promise that there are no pictures anywhere in this post.

I’m sure you’re ALL just dying for an update on my Poopless Princess. Her marvelous talent for being quite literally anal retentive has created some pretty impressive results lately.

For one, a Monday through Saturday fast ended SO monumentally (at Gramamma’s house, thank goodness) that it made my Mom utter the word “Turd” for the first time in her life.

At Sunday dinner.

Whilst holding her hands about four feet apart to illustrate how long it was, in explanation for why she ended up having to plunge the completely stopped up toilet after a TWO YEAR OLD used it.

So I gave Ali Miralax every day last week, in hopes that she wouldn’t be able to continue this new hobby of hers. She STILL went 5 days on her mission of Determined Defecation Delay.

And then…Sunday came.

I REALLY wish it hadn’t.

But it did.

We were eating a nice meal with some good friends at a Mexican Restaurant after church. Ali made the short, high pitched “eeeee!” that she often makes when she needs to go tee-tee. As if the urge hits her out of nowhere. No problem – we hop down and head to the bathroom.

We arrive and I pull down her pull-up and tights all at once and hoist her onto the toilet, not really paying attention to what I’m doing – it happens a lot, after all.

And then I look down.

And I see that while putting her up on the toilet, I have created a horizontal mountain on the side of the toilet bowl. And multiple brown streaks all the way down it, all thanks to the contents of her pull-up.

And then I look down further.

It’s everywhere. All over her tights…legs…you name it.

Thinking that this was going to be a quick tee-tee trip, I had left my purse at the table. I had NOTHING with me. No wet wipes, no extra pull up, no high-powered pressure washer, no white flag to run up the flagpole, no barf bag, no toxic waste protection suit, no phone to call 911. . .

I stood there, looking at Ali, who at this point I had pulled back off of the toilet and was standing there, staring at me.

I spent a minute hoping that one of the other kids would have to come tee-tee, and so another Mom would come to my rescue.

Silence.

Ideally, Chris would empathically sense my desperate need of help and come rushing to my rescue anytime now.

Silence.

I weighed all of my options, and finally decided that our table was close enough to the bathrooms to leave my child in the stall with her poo around her ankles and get my purse.

I mean – what do you do? Her pull-up was certainly not going to be travelling back up her legs!

I told her to stand still and to NOT TOUCH ANYTHING (as she had been very curious about the sideways mountain), and I ran.

I got to the table and in a panicky voice told Chris to hand me my purse and ran back as Chris and all of our friends watched wide-eyed, knowing the carnage that must be behind those bathroom doors.

It took me about 20 minutes and another stopped up toilet to clean up the full reaches of the toxic spill. It included higher levels of difficulties where I gained extra Mommy points such as the fact that the changing table had a significant curve downward, so I couldn’t let go of Ali to throw away my used, um, “accessories”, because she would slide right off, creating even more streaks of unpleasant substance.

But the best part of this whole adventure was Ali. I was panicked about it and focused on the task at hand, but I never fussed at her. She was calm, but she took it upon herself to repeat, over and over throughout the whole ordeal, very matter-of-factly and emotionless,

“I’m sorry that I didn’t recognize that I needed to poop, Mommy.”

We finally got all cleaned up and returned as everyone else was leaving.

But that’s okay.

Seeing as how we were eating Mexican, I really didn’t feel like finishing my refried beans anyway.

p.s. – No one use the handicapped stall at Sol Azteca for a few weeks. It’s stopped up. And might have a few germs left on it.

A Homecoming Revue

home·com·ing (hom' kum' ing) n.

1. A coming to or returning home.

2. An annual event at schools, colleges, and universities for visiting graduates.

3. A seasonally ridiculously cold football game that had to be scheduled ridiculously late so that taking a toddler into the game as had been planned would be completely foolhardy. However, being that there is a parade and much to entertain said toddler, it is still a worthwhile event at which to spend part of the day.

re·vue (ri-vyoo')
n. A musical show (or blog post) consisting of skits, songs, and dances (or just pictures), often satirizing current events, trends, and personalities.

Although the cold weather was a bit off-putting to ME, Ali was thrilled for her first opportunity to try out her new girly winter coat:

In ever-so-fitting of a manner, Cousin Eli was QUITE busy making sure that he didn’t look girly in ANY way:I love the mud-mixed-with-snot look.

Ali, not so much. She was too busy daintily holding her cookie so as to not get even a crumb on her prized coat.

Although she didn’t approve of Eli’s facial fashion sense, she WAS quite impressed with his hot ride:

As soon as they started moving, she looked up at me and squealed, “Is this a special treat?!?!?!?”

We sat up camp on the parade route early this year to ensure a place to sit. However, that gave us QUITE a bit of time to entertain three kids and keep them from walking one inch forward into the road.

So I let Ali do a bit of photography. If Ali had a blog, this is what her photographs would look like:Her comment as she critiqued this picture: “I got a picture of a PART of Daddy….”

Ali’s Gymnastics Idol, Rachel, was sitting with rest of the Alabama Gymnasts across the street from us. Ali was thrilled to be in their presence. So I taught her about zoom, and let her photograph them:

She also got Uncle Joey…
And Aunt Lindsay…
And even another shot of a PART of Daddy…

But no interest in photographing Uncle JC or her cousins.

The parade was FINALLY getting close, so the excitement was building: …as was her need to pee.

But I chose to ignore that. My parenting philosophy: If she can hold poop for six days, then she can hold pee through a parade.

She took the parade very seriously, critiquing the band:

And dutifully waving at all of the Princesses with Crowns. (Although some were “Queens”, according to her. I sincerely hope not.)

Of course, you get to see the obsessed fringes of Alabama Football society on homecoming day, like the person that would pay untold amounts of money to get licensed artwork transferred onto a car:

or would take the time to create a whole amusement park truck, with fully animated rotisserating opponent mascots:

or would have specific plays airbrushed onto their motorcycles:

Because you just know that in fourth grade on career day, Tyrone Prothro said “I wanna be such a good football player that I get painted on motorcycle wheel wells!!!”

I started noticing the overwhelming fashion trend in all of the sororities:

But I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Ali said, “They’re ALL wearing boots, Mommy!!!”

JC replied, “Yes, ugly boots.”

Lindsay explained, “Actually, they’re UGG boots.”

Ali: “They’re all wearing UGGGGly boots, Mommy!!!”

(Those pieces of fashion commentary brought to you solely by JC and Ali. I can’t be blamed or associated with their opinions, although if I were, it might not be inaccurate.)

There was a very tiny taste of Dragon*Con at the parade, except with FAR inferior costumage than D*C:

These tastes were mostly brought to us by Chris’ Alma Mater Dorm, The Mallet Assembly:

Chris was tearfully proud of his heritage:

But one thing you can’t get at Dragon*Con: The Stormtrooper, QB edition:

The law school was in tails and jeans as always, but it looks like someone is going to be getting sued for tearing off their banners before the parade: Somehow I’m thinking that they didn’t win best float.

And don’t miss the guys in the back of this second royally fancy float with the cut-off jeans to accompany their tails:

Speaking of, it’s time for a bit of fashion revue. Although I usually stick to the female variety of fashion critique, today is a special edition: How to achieve the Tacky Male Fan look.

Remember me talking about toddlers in clown pants earlier this week? Well, there is one exception to adults not wearing clown pants, and that is if you are going for - you guessed it - the Tacky Male Fan look: If we ever change our mascot from Big Al to Bozo, we’ll know who to call.

Secondly. I love Houndstooth. It’s a great accent piece to any Alabama outfit. It adds class, variety, and is a nice, neutral print. Especially on girls.

(such as Ali on Friday:)

HOWEVER.

Men’s Pants were NEVER meant to be in a super-jumbo houndstooth print:But the red and white striped belt and matching tie – that’s what REALLY completes this outfit as true Tacky Male Fandom Glory.

And finally, the classic embroidered-elephants-on-the-trouser look:

Unless you are going for said Tacky Male Fandom, here’s a Rule of Thumb: On the male body, the only place that embroidery is appropriate is less than an inch in diameter on the chest area – maybe an alligator, an eagle, or even an elephant is acceptable.

A man should NOT look like his over-excited-mother-who-just-got-a-new-embroidering-sewing-machine got ahold of his nice dress pants and WENT TO TOWN.

Now I know that I said that it was all about men this time, but I did discover one eye-opening nugget of fashion information: I always wondered how thigh-high boots worked. How did you bend your knees?

I now know:

Thigh-high boots are just FAUX-boots above the knee. Kind of like those vest-shirts I had in the 80’s. Vest on the front, T-shirt on the back.

But you know what? I bet her legs were warmer than mine.

*** End of Fashion Revue ***

Finally, back at the tailgate party, Ali put to use all of the good football skills that Daddy has been teaching her to impress an Older Man:
However, no matter how much one prepares to catch the ball,

Sometimes it’s hard to keep your head in the game:

Finally, after much homecoming fun, Lindsay and I filled her back seat with cousins and headed to our warm and cozy homes, leaving the menfolk to turn into fansicles while enjoying the game.

p.s. - I just realized that my husband would be so ashamed of his wife's lackluster fandom if I didn't mention SOMEWHERE in this post that Alabama is now ranked number one in the country. Consider it mentioned.