For Some Reason Out-Of-The-Blue I Randomly Miss Lucille Ball

Because I am insane, I bought a pair of white pants and am under the delusion that I will be able to keep them white. They kind of remind me of something Katherine Hepburn would wear. Well, wide leg, like Katherine Hepburn and cropped, like Audrey Hepburn. Or maybe Lucille Ball. White pants are a bad idea, period, but white pants with two almost one-year-olds is just plain ridiculous. There isn’t a moment when they aren’t sticky or gopey or drooly or the host of a smooched raisin or masticated clump of pasta. Usually my uniform includes a tee shirt, which doubles as a chin-wiper, nose-cleaner and milk-wiper-upper. I guess I could just wear the new pants at night, after the girls are in bed, and then I could feel oh so stylish as I watch The Office finale. [Is it just me, or does it seem like we only had three new episodes of this show, thanks to the strike?]

Right now as I type this Avery is using her bottle as a giant crayon. She realized she can paint with milk if she turns the bottle upside down. This is her new favorite pastime. And Madeline just turned the television off by pressing the cable box button. I guess she doesn’t want to watch the news. And along this stream of consciousness, my children still won’t watch TV. No cartoon or kid show or Sesame Street. Nothing. On the weekends, whenever I get back from the gym, I usually see that Nicole has once again unsuccessfully tried to indoctrinate the girls into television watching. It’s not that I want them to be addicted but it would be nice to be able to have them engaged in TV for limited amounts of time so I can do things like cook dinner or go to the bathroom without having little “helpers.” I guess I should be careful what I wish for.

Since this post is going along the lines of absolutely no segues, let me comment on breakfast. The eating habits of children perplex me. A while back I introduced them to waffles and it was love at first sight. Then, a couple days later, they would not touch a waffle with a ten-foot ole. Same thing with buttered toast. But the tides change daily so I have no idea what is on the Good List or Bad List. There is no rhyme or reason but it makes sense in their mini worlds.

This morning, they each had waffles, toast and yogurt, all three things that they refused to eat the day before. And you would think I could at least get them interested in cookies. But every cookie I give them they won’t eat. Animal crackers were not a hit, and neither were a selection of animal cracker-esque cookies. What baby doesn’t love animal crackers? I got them some all natural version of animal crackers (called Snackimals, I think) and they won’t eat them. I ended up eating the entire bag. Almond cookies were also refused. And Goldfish…they only really like the plain ones, not the giant tub of Cheddar ones we got at the wholesale store. I really don’t want to stress about it because the reality is they won’t starve, but making sure their little tummies are full is more stressful than I thought.

I do get stressed out by how much food gets wasted. No matter what I do, giant handfuls of food end up thrown out every meal. I usually try to save what I can, but when watermelon chunks are mixing with chicken pieces and broccoli clumps, I just throw it away. I never figured out how much money we spend on food a month but I have a feeling it is huge. Once a week, we order pizza, which is my favorite food on the planet. I love pizza and would eat it every night if Nicole would let me. But that would be overkill (who, me?), so I look forward to pizza night once a week. I never thought about how much that costs, but that little pizza addiction costs us $80 a month (the pie is $17 but I usually just give the delivery person a $20 and don’t ask for change. Because asking for a dollar back seems so silly.) Almost $100 a month on just pizza. Our coffee is more expensive than others, adding another $12 a week, so that is $50 a month. Pizza plus coffee equals $130. The rest, I have no idea. I am a little scared to even calculate, because rising food prices plus crazy NYC prices combine, I’m sure, to make our food bill crazy high. A brick of Polly-O mozzarella (it’s a pound) costs $6.59 at my grocery store. That just seems so high. I shop more at the fresh fruit and veggie market, where the prices are really low, almost half of what it is in the stores. A bunch of basil is $1, as opposed to the $4.99 I pay in Gristedes. That’s a bargain. The problem is selection is random, so I may not get what I need.

If only life’s issues were always this mundane.

I can’t watch/see coverage of the China earthquake. It is so tragic. Those pictures of wailing parents crumpled on the ground in grief after finding out their child has died. It really affects me. My father said that China is much better than America in terms of mobilizing to help the victims, so that is a good thing. God knows they are doing a better job than Myanmar/Burma. In China, troops are marching in by foot with supplies and help.

CNN.com ran a story saying something like how parents are extra upset because many have lost a child and it is the only child they have, thanks to the one-child only rule (which applies, by the way, to populated city areas, not all of China, according to my dad). This is a quote from the article: “Not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child -- they must often cope with the loss of their only child.” Maybe it is just me, but I don’t really see what that has to do with anything. I don’t know a single parent that would think “Well, at least I have another child,” even after the initial shock wears off. I don’t know. It just bothered me.

It seems like Mother Earth is really angry at us. Earthquakes a tornadoes and all these killer storms.

Pictured above, apparently in the wild giraffes eat zebras. And below that, Madeline, plotting her next move. And then, Avery with Mommy when Mommy is talking to Nana.