In the past two weeks, I’ve lost two credit cards.

Prior to this, I’d never lost a credit card.  Ever.  I had one stolen once, but I’m not going to count that because… well… just because.

I know exactly what happened in both cases.  Kind of.  I paid for items and then, in an effort to move along as quickly as possible for the sake of the people behind me, and because I was dealing with two fidgety, whiny kids begging to go home, I jammed the card into my coat pocket and forgot about it.

What happened to the cards after that is a mystery.  My best guess as to the first one I lost is that it fell out of my pocket when I pulled my keys out of my pocket.  I’m dead convinced that the second one is somewhere in my house and will eventually make an appearance.

Either way, I’m a lucky woman that no fraudulent charges were made so I don’t have to deal with that mess. 

I’d also like to point out that missing two credit cards at this time of year is a colossal PITA.

And I will add that it blows my mind that I’ve reached a point where I’m so completely distracted that I forget about my credit cards and get careless like this.  I think this is the type of behavior I would have mocked prior to having kids of my own.

No, I’m sure it is.

Moving on…

If you want to feel much better about your search for a pre-school for a child (or if you are like me and absorb whatever emotion is being portrayed on TV, and want to feel your blood pressure increase), put this movie in your Netflix queue.  It’s called Nursery University and it’s about the insanity of trying to get children into the “right” pre-schools in New York City.

It’s like watching people apply for college.  There are admissions counselors.  There are thin and thick envelopes, the width of which is supposed to indicate whether Little Precious was accepted.  There are parents who exercise whatever tenuous connections they have to effect the best result for their child.

It’s mind-blowing.

And it makes me very, very happy to not live in NYC.

Compared with NYC, we have it relatively easy where we live because we don’t really have an intense quality hierarchy around here.  Some schools are more desireable than others, but it usually has to do with the class size, cost, and teaching approach as opposed to the belief that a particular school is a springboard to getting Johnny into Cornell.

There is a wait list every year for my kids’ pre-school because the classes are small and the cost is low.  It’s a Quaker school, which around here gives it an aura of quality, and the school gets good buzz from parents in general.  But after an initial slew of phone calls (see below), getting in required nothing more than filling out an application and paying a deposit.  Moreover, if that hadn’t worked out, there were plenty of other schools around here that Ginger could have attended.

Now granted, for Ginger’s first year, I had to put her in the less desireable (for us) afternoon class because the morning class was full.  Despite having to mess with Fred’s nap schedule big time on school days, however, it was fine, and as an existing student entitled to early enrollment, I managed to get Ginger into the more desireable (for us) morning class for three-year-olds this year.  I also managed to get Fred into the morning program for his age thanks to Ginger’s status as an existing student.  Early enrollment for existing students has also managed to snag us the desireable (for us) classes next year as well.

Now, with all of this said, I did have my own moment of crazy.  I hadn’t really decided whether to send Ginger to pre-school last year, when she was all of two.  I know jack squat about school in general (not exactly a desireable quality in someone raising a child, but I’m sort of winging it here, folks).  But I was at play group one day and heard that a couple others in the group had enrolled their kids in pre-school. 

Suddenly I had visions of Ginger having to take remedial classes in high school because we didn’t put her in school until she was 3.

Thus began the mad rush on my part.

It was as though a switch flipped and I went from being non-chalant to borderline panicked that I had to enroll Ginger somehwere, anywhere, just to have her keep up with other kids.  The hard part was that it was April or so when I had this epiphany, so many classes were full.  This didn’t mean she couldn’t get into school – as I said above, we had other choices – it just meant she might not get into the school that we liked.

So naturally, and just because we apparently like to make our lives difficult, we decided we wanted her in the school that was going to be among the tougher to get into.  I called and called and called, but no one returned my calls, and I went from borderline panicky to downright panicky.  Suddenly, I just HAD to get Ginger into this school (this would be the crazy in all of this).  About a month after my first call, the head of the school called me back, explained that she had been traveling, and told me there was a slot left in an afternoon class, if we wanted one.

YES!  I practically shouted into the phone.

Thankfully things worked out, but the entire episode was a tiny window into what it must be like for parents in NYC trying to get their little ones into school.  I’d like to think that I could keep my head about me as to something so seemingly trivial as pre-school, particularly when other options were available, but apparently I couldn’t even make it through my rinky-dink system without having a partial meltdown.

Someone is going to have to tie me down when my kids apply to college.

Anyway, watch Nursery University and feel better about your own situation.  And be prepared to pick your jaw up off the floor a few times before the movie ends.

Actual conversation this morning:

Ginger: Mom, I have to use the bathroom.

GrumpyMomma: OK, sweetie, go ahead.

{a few moments pass}

G {appearing in doorway of bathroom with her pants around her ankles and toilet paper in one hand}:  Mom, I’m done!

GM {trying hard not to laugh}:  Are you sure you’re done?

G:  Yes!

GM:  Then why are you holding toilet paper?

G:  That’s what I used to wipe!

GM {gagging}:  Sweetie, please put that in the potty NOW. 

G {pointing at toilet}:  MOM, I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU!

GM:  Oh, my.  {Cautiously approaches bathroom and braces self for the worst}  Um, what dear?

G:  Look, the potty seat looks like an upside-down gumdrop!

GM {relieved}:  Yes, you’re right!  Now pull up your pants and let’s wash those hands.

G {turning around and sticking her rear end toward me}:  Look Mom, the Bum Dance!!  {proceeds to wiggle her bum at me}

And thus concludes yet another bizarro moment in the world of parenting.

Christmas is by far my favorite holiday.  By a mile.  You can’t beat the lights, the music (well, OK, some Christmas music is just plain awful – Christmas Shoes, anyone?), the generally festive spirit, the constant availability of chocolate, etc..  As the song says, even streetlights look Christmasy with the red and green.  I even manage to (sort of) contain my road rage during this time of year.

So I returned from Thanksgiving travels ready for Christmas and motivated to decorate the house.  I eagerly put on some Christmas music and started bringing all of our decorations up from the basement, where they are stashed in red and green containers.  No, seriously, they are.  I. Love. Christmas.

Unfortunately, my kids had other ideas.  I managed to get the tree up, but before I could take the tree ornaments out of their storage boxes and bags, the kids were ripping them out, using them as footballs, and generally making a hash of anything Christmasy. 

Glitter could be found all over my house.  The glass on one of our stocking holders, which all contain photos of the person whose stocking is supposed to be hung from that particular holder, got smashed (no one was hurt, thank goodness).  I tried putting a couple presents under the tree and they got ripped.

For a hot moment, my house looked like the scene in Poltergeist where crap is flying all over the place, the kids are a giant blur, and chaos reigns.  So I had to crack my Mommy Whip and brings everyone and everything back in line.

Thus, we have a tree with lights only, no decorations and no gifts, no stockings hanging by the fireplace, and no other Christmas decorations to be found anywhere in the house, save for a wreath on the outside of the front door.

Someone please remind me why Christmas is so much more fun with kids, because I’m not really feeling the spirit at the moment.  Bah humbug.

I wasn’t planning to post anything more before we left town for the Thanksgiving holiday, but I can’t resist describing my afternoon grocery shopping trip.

Ginger and I maneuvered our cart to the canned fruit section because there was a sale on mandarin oranges – $1 per can.  This is a good price in my corner of the world and given that fresh fruit that was not trucked in from 2500 miles away and/or not blasted with pesticides and/or that doesn’t taste like mildly-flavored water is pretty much out of the question right now, I tend to fall back on the canned variety to get the kids through the winter time.

So there we were, standing in front of the oranges, and I’m studying them because they are on the top shelf and someone has stacked them three high, meaning I don’t come close to reaching the top cans.  Worse, the cans sitting near the edge of the shelf have been sold, so I have to go up on my tip-toes and hold onto the shelf to have a prayer at getting the cans that are still there. 

I manage to pull down a few cans and put them in my cart.  Then I turn back to figure out how to reach more of the cans.  At this point, a woman with a young child steps in front of me and starts pulling cans down.

I’m not sure there exists a term precise enough to describe how I felt, but “gobsmacked” comes pretty close.  Was it not COMPLETELY OBVIOUS that I was in the process of pulling the oranges off the shelves?  This was a serious breach of grocery store etiquette.  Where are the canned fruit police when you need them?!?

Now to be fair, I’m not entirely certain this woman knew what I was doing.  Although I was standing directly in front of these items and had removed a few cans from the shelf, it’s entirely possible she thought I was simply admiring the remaining cans, hoping they were going to find good homes.  I suppose. 

But I doubt it.

So when she pulled down a few cans, struggling as I had given that she was about my height, and stepped away to put them in her cart, I did what any petty, passive-aggressive individual would do:  I stretched as high as I could and snagged every last can that someone of our height could possibly reach.  Better yet, I took my time.  And I could feel her standing there watching me.

After I cleared the reachable portion of the shelf – buying far more cans than I actually wanted – I turned to Ginger, said, “Come on, Sweetie!” in a chipper voice, and walked away.

I hope she was gobsmacked.

Goodness, I didn’t realize so much time had passed since my last blog entry. Where does the time go?  At least I have a good excuse: we’ve been hiding in the basement with food, toilet paper, and shotguns, hoping that no one with swine flu comes near us.

I kid.

But seriously, who knew it could be so difficult to find a doctor to stick a sharp object in you?  My kids finally managed to get their first round of jabs, but I’m still naked, as is GrumpyDaddy.  My hands are practically bleeding from the constant washing and I canceled a play date when the mom told me her kids woke up with runny noses.  I’m not sure why I bother, given that my kids are in school and therefore will eventually contract every illness known to humankind.

So it’s been total chaos around here for no good reason other than that’s life in our household.  No one has pooped on the carpet, I haven’t ruined any food lately, and we didn’t leave town only to discover how much we miss being childless. 

For whatever reason, 3-year-old Ginger’s social life has kicked into high gear and we’ve had loads of play dates.  I suppose this is good, although she managed to bite another child at one of the play dates we hosted, which essentially is the social kiss of death amongst pre-schoolers.  She has never done this before and after the talking-to I gave her likely never will again, but I suspect the victim won’t be inviting Ginger over any time soon. 

The episode was just awful and was one of those moments that made me want to disappear into thin air because I was so mortified.  Remember Jonah, who bit Fred?  He was on my mind the entire time I was on my knees, in Ginger’s face, telling her that she was going to be in time-out until she was 18 because this was so beyond unacceptable.  I don’t think I could have apologized more to the victim’s mom in my effort to be the un-Jonah-mom.

I also got a bunch of hair cut off and was berated the entire time by a very loud hairdresser who spent 20 minutes announcing to the packed salon how awful my hair was.  I used to dye my hair and I’m growing it out because somewhere between the dye and my pregnancies, my hair went bad.  Really bad.  And if you had been in the salon that day, you could have heard just how bad it was.  The worst part was that I tipped her anyway when she was done.  Why why why???

So we are off for Thanksgiving.  A full week in a beach rental with my entire family.  And yeah, I’m thinking the same thing you are and it essentially involves the Oh &%#! face.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I considered giving this post a subtler title but really, what’s the point?

Tonight my kids were doing their usual pre-bath routine of running around naked while I was running the water to get it warm.  Ginger gets in the bath and I call for Fred.  He toddles toward me, pointing at a toy on the ground of the master bedroom, which is visible from the bathroom, and is clearly upset.  I tell him to get in the tub, at which point he says, “Poop!”

“Did you poop?”

“Yes.”

“On the carpet, over there?”  I point toward the “toy.”

“Yes.”

I run over to take a look and sure enough, there are three “toys” strewn across the carpet in the master bedroom.  Wow.

I then run back to the tub to find Fred climbing in, and Ginger screaming that he has poop on his rear end.  I tell him to turn around so I can inspect but he proceeds to sit down and I watch helplessly as a glob of poop floats off his butt and across the tub.

“Ginger, get out of the tub now!”

I drain the tub, clean out the poop, and then go retrieve the deposit on the floor.  It was surprisingly easy to clean up and this is where I made my biggest mistake of the evening (because letting Fred run around diaper-less and then sit his poopy butt in the bath wasn’t bad enough).  I failed to mark where the three poop deposits were and there was no visible mark left on the carpet, at least that I could see.  As a result, I had no clue which portions of the carpet to clean. 

This has got to be a joke.

So I bathe the kids and then get a flashlight and start crawling along the carpet, looking for poop stains.  It’s dark out and the lights in our room aren’t that bright, so I can’t see anything.  But then I realize my foot is in something wet – oh yes, Fred also managed to pee all over the carpet.  Fabulous.

So I did the best I could cleaning up the pee, but never did manage to find any poop stains.  Maybe tomorrow morning they will be more obvious.  In the meantime, I’m not saying a word to GrumpyDaddy, who has a fear of poop that exceeds his fear of death, about the essence of poop that sits on our carpet.  If he knew that our kid crapped on the carpet, you could probably find Fred listed for sale on eBay.

I’m going to do something here that I don’t ordinarily do, which is a serious rant.  As in, I’m serious when I rant about this.

Why is it that when you invite my little Ginger over to your house for a playdate, you feel compelled to stuff her full of junk food?  I’ve yet to have Ginger come home from a playdate and not report that she had one or more of the following: lollipops, ice pops, fruit juice, candy bars, ice cream, artificially-sweetened water, jelly beans, and/or gummy bears. 

What is the point?  It’s not as though Ginger or any other pre-schooler needs a bribe to go on a playdate.  Do this many people really think it’s acceptable to feed kids this much garbage?  I realize that I’m a wee bit neurotic about sugar intake in our house, but apparently the rest of the population sits on the extreme far side of the spectrum on this issue.  

Moreover, are pre-schoolers really not capable of going 90 minutes without eating or drinking?  Ginger is on the lean side, but she doesn’t look as though she’s hurting for food.

Let our kids play, and scale back the junk food.  I can promise you that I won’t be feeding your kid any of that stuff when they come over to my house because (1) they don’t need it; and (2) I respect the fact that you may not want me to feed your child like that.  Trust me, our kids will have a good time without it.

About 6 years ago, before we were married, GrumpyDaddy and I traveled to Ireland to visit some of his family.  One of his cousins came over from England with her children to meet up with us during our visit.  One of her sons was about 3 and tended to rip his clothing off at all times and run around naked.  GrumpyDaddy and I had several discussions about this, all of which started out along the lones of, “Can you believe that Johnny runs around naked all the time?” and invariably ended with, “We will NEVER let our kids behave like that!”

Fast forward to 2009.  We have two children and every night before bathtime, they love to rip off their clothes and run around the house.  Indeed, despite the freezing cold weather that has settled in here, they throw a fit if I don’t let them run around naked for a while.

And let me tell you, nothing is funnier than watching little kids run around naked.  Well, maybe little kids cursing, but I will NEVER let my kids behave like that.

Anyway, I think it’s hilarious.  GrumpyDaddy is appalled (he gets points for consistency).  My kids love it.  Life is weird.

Since I always need to be obsessing about something, my newest focus is germs, or rather, killing them.

H1N1 (swine flu) is making the rounds.  We also have the regular flu to worry about.  And just for fun, the weather has turned sharply colder, which means people are just going to be sick in general.  As a result, I’ve become a bit of a germophobe. 

You know those people who won’t shake hands, and who use a tissue as a barrier between them and everything they touch?  Yeah, I’ve kind of become one of those people.  Plus, I’m washing my hands about 25 times a day.  And then using hand sanitizer, bottles of which I have stationed around the house, in my car, and in my handbag.

Apparently I revel in my insantiy.

You need to understand that I’m usually one of these “germs are good for you!” people.  I’ve never considered sending my kids to a chicken pox party or not vaccinating them, but I think it’s good for them to play in the dirt and pick up the occasional cold.  Germs are our friends!

Not this year, baby.  I’m basically convinced we’re all going to wind up in the hospital.

Please note this does not mean I’ve decided to actually start cleaning our house.  Why would I want to do something crazy like that?!?  So I’m sticking with the hand-washing.  It’s something, right?

Anyway, apparently using hand sanitizer, anti-bacterial soap, etc., is not good for the population as a whole, so I suppose I’m now making myself even more of a nuisance to the planet, but when you have two kids in school and almost assuredly will spend the next 7 months listening to them hacking up balls of mucus and feeding them ibuprofen to fight fevers, you are willing to take drastic measures.  If I have to play nurse to two kids + one hubster, I need to be healthy myself.

And so it is that in mid-October, my hands are already cracked and dry from the constant assault from soap and alcohol.  Woot for flu season.  May we all emerge healthy and intact.