Pets vs. sibs

Today, while walking into the house after school, after telling me that her friend A. has a new rat, S-phie opined, "If we didn't have so many babies, we could have more pets."

Truth hurts

Recently, my mom got S-phie Dr. Seuss's "My Book About Me. " I had it as a kid, and it was great fun. For those of you who were unfortunate enough not to have it, it's a fill-in-the-blank book for kids about how many teeth you have, what your favorite food is, how many steps and windows your house has, what your nose looks like, getting your postal carrier's autograph, etc. We got started on it the other night and filled out a few pages. One of them was about your house. It had pictures of all kinds of houses (apartment house, city house, mountain house, etc., w/about 20 choices). She chose "house in a town," which pleased me, as she did not choose "house in a suburb." Then, at the bottom of the page, it had the following prompt: "My house is: _________." I had been looking at this while she chose what kind of house (in a town) and wondering what she would say, as it's so wide-open and six-year-olds often struggle with questions like this. I was thinking "yellow, small, one floor," all of which she's remarked on, or even "cold." So, we get to the question, and without even a hint of a pause, she exclaims, "Dirty!", and then asked how to spell dirty so she could write it in. D-i-r-t-y.


p.s. I am going to search that book and make sure there's no page that includes the dangerous and potentially heart-breaking prompt: "My mommy is: _________" If such a loaded page exists, it's coming out w/an exacto blade before school lets out today. Some truths cannot be borne.

Still kicking

Good golly it's been so long since I posted on overpopulator. I was talking about the blow job queen barbie tonight at bookclub (and about how Sophie concluded that the lowest common denominator of Bratz and MyScene Barbies was not their sluttiness, but their big heads, which I discovered when I overheard the MyScene barbie telling the others not to look at her big head, that she couldn't help it, was embarrassed by it, etc. and my mother also mentioned that Sophie had told her not to say anything to Nolee about her big head b/c it made her (Nolee) feel bad). And I realized that I should have posted this post-script to the Barbie story, as it is truly a story unto itself, and that I also really need to share my new revelations about offset parenting and the extent to which environmentally correct parenting has freed me of huge amounts of guilt and that I haven't even posted pictures of the buggers in ages. So maybe I'll just post some pictures right now, just jump right back in, and stories to come:

Summer 2007 photo montagearoo:

Henry loved the beach. We loved him loving the beach.


S-oph and R-by (Anna's daughter) frolicking in the waves, which they did w/much delight until R-uby got stung by a jellyfish. :(



Carina hated the beach so much. Look at this face - the WTF face. She would say, "all done beach," every day when we'd go out. "All done sand," when we'd try to build castles. "Hey Carina, look at the dolphins!!!!," "all done dolphins." How can I, pisces and sea-lover, mother this child? I could barely love her after this.

Henry w/self-styled solider-style sunhat.

Carina contemplating a piece of yard schmutz, aka communing w/nature.