Years of my own experience should have clued me in, but until I had a daughter and bought her a cute 1-piece cherry-patterned swimsuit from Target, I hadn’t fully realized that 1-piece swimsuits are REALLY CHALLENGING to pee in. It can be a little tricky to find a cute non-bikini 2-piece for a toddler girl, especially at the BEGINNING OF JULY when summer is OVER.
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The majority of the workouts I do are either accompanied by the cheesy synth-pop exercise video soundtrack (Jillian Michaels, I’m scowling in your direction), or whatever’s blaring through the speakers at the gym. When I run, though, I’m addicted to listening to the loudest, most upbeat stuff I can find. I know, I know, safety rules dictate you leave the iPod at home when you go for a jog, but what can I say, music makes the difference for me between “running” and “collapsing in a heap on the cement”.

I recently huffed and gasped my way through a 5K, and these are the songs kept me going:

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This is the spider plant that dominates the living room.  Back when my oldest child was in preschool, his class went on a field trip to a greenhouse.  Each child was given a baby spider plant.  I didn’t try real hard not to kill it:  I don’t like spider plants.  Of course it is thriving, and has thrivened for years, and when I am an incapacitated invalid it will be moved to my hospital bedside because my caretakers will imagine that such an old and healthy plant must be special to me.
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According to the screamingly massive display of barbecue-and-football-themed cards I saw at Target last weekend, Father’s Day is coming up. We’ve covered some gift ideas in the past, so if you’re looking for inspiration, check here and here.

This time around I thought I’d focus on a few keepsake-type Father’s Day gifts that incorporate photos. What father can resist photos of his own adorable children? Sure, he may have preferred that fancy stainless steel infrared grill, but hey, it’s not like we got diamonds on Mother’s Day, IS IT?
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I have only two kids in elementary school, but between them they’ve gone to a couple dozen birthday parties so far. When the other three are in school—-whooooo, that’s a lot of parties to bring gifts to.

My goal is to spend about $10 for a party gift, and I can get a pretty good gift for that, even though I’m a somewhat fretful person and so my mission is complicated by my wishes to please the child and to please the child’s parents; to give a gift that won’t make a huge mess or end up with little tiny pieces lost all over the house or require intense parental involvement; to avoid sending the message that we watch too much TV and/or that we make inappropriate gender generalizations and/or that we are cheap cheap cheap. Ideally, I like the gift to be the child’s favorite present from the whole party, but also to send the message that we are a Quality Family.  And did I already say I want all that for about $10?

Here are some gifts that have been pleasing successes:
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I have often thought that caring for a baby in their first year of life is like watching the lights come on in a house, one by one. First they’re all unfocused and mewly, then they’re laughing and doing that funny stationary leg-marching business, and soon they’re entirely purposeful and able to reach right out and grab what they want. Click, click, click, one room after another gets lit up in their brains, and their worlds open wider and wider.

If that’s true, then the stage around 18 months is like having all the lights on at once, blazing away, while a mad scientist operates the giant electrical switch powering it all. “MOO HOO HA HA HAAAA!” shrieks the apparition in the white coat, hair standing on end and eyes pointing in two different directions. “HA HA HA—WAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Young toddlers are insane, is what I’m saying. They’re physically capable of outrunning you, yet they have no sense of self-preservation. Their emotions are as wild and unpredictable as a storm on the high seas, and the smallest trespass will send them flinging their bodies to the floor in order to throw a tantrum loud enough to detonate an adult’s eardrums at fifty paces. They kick, they slap, they throw things, they scream, they eat things that aren’t meant to be eaten while hysterically refusing things that ARE meant to be eaten.

Thank god they’re still formed entirely of Pillsbury thigh-rolls with baby-soft faces and the occasional desire to cuddle, because in my limited experience this is the age which most strongly begs the question, Would It Be Wrong To FedEx My Child to Octo-Mom, Since She Apparently Can’t Get Enough of this Crap?

So! Let’s talk about ways to survive the 18-month zone, and by that I mostly mean “let’s open up comments because I sure don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
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My three youngest children have their birthdays in the same week and a half: this year, twins Elizabeth and Edward will turn four, and youngest child Henry will turn two. STAY WITH ME, because I need your help with Henry’s presents.

I am not much worried about the four-year birthdays. I idly asked what they were hoping to get for their birthdays, and Elizabeth answered that she wanted
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First, a quick shout-out to all of you who gave me ideas and atta-girl you-can-do-it comments about traveling with my preschooler—everything worked out perfectly, and we had an absolutely wonderful time. Thank you so much!

Today I’d like to talk about evening routines, and what sorts of things help mitigate the chaos. As a quick primer to my thrilling home life, we have two boys: a 3.5 year old and a 15-month-old. Here’s our typical end-of-day routine, along with the items I’ve come to rely on:
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(Winner in the Worst Mother’s Day Gift contest: Jana, who was commenter #9. Yay, Jana!)

This is the fourth in a series of periodic posts in which I test out easy, inexpensive, low-mess, low-parental-involvement activities for young children to do. In the first, I tested, um, dry pasta in cake pans. In the second: painting with water. The third: marshmallows and toothpicks. Today’s test: unspilly stuff in a bowl.

Intention
The preschool-aged child will satisfy her seemingly endless Stirring Impulses, without wasting food or getting any more flour behind the cupboards.
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Oh look, May 10th is just around the corner! My favorite time of year, the day I get pampered, served breakfast in bed, showered with gifts, and . . . what? Sorry, was my sarcastic snorting and eye-rolling distracting you?

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