Jack's Robot Birthday

I know...it's the end of July.  I'm a busy lady!

Jack's Second Birthday Party was fabulous! Jack's Mimi and PopPop came out from Cleveland to celebrate his birthday (and maybe Mr. Ginger's MA from Virginia Tech, too!)  Robots ruled the roost as we celebrated with about 100 amazing friends and relatives.  Thanks to a lot of help and a great photographer (Mrs. Kate Yoon) here are some pics of our best party yet!

Invitations by Papers in Bloom's Jamie Gatchell

Because a good wife knows that the way to a man's heart is through beer.   Karl Strauss "Endless Summer Light" on tap

 Getting Dressed

 Handsome Gingers!

 Robot Fuel

labels downloaded from: http://blog.hwtm.com/2011/02/modern-robot-birthday-party-free-printables/

 Mimi and PopPop

Love the shoe falling!

The Grandkids

This lady knows how to have fun!

 Family Glamour Shots

 "Hey!"

LOVE!

Coloring table for the kids

Aunt Mint screen printing t-shirts for party favors

Family Reunion

Pinwheel, Pinwheel Spinning Around

Girls just wanna have fun!

Happy Birthday to You!

Red Frosting.  Rookie Mistake!

RoboCakes

Bran is Not Sexy. Bran Muffins- 8 points

Bran Muffin.  This does not conjure images of busty women smoking cigarettes in black and white film noir alleys.  It does not make one long for her college days and that steamy summer fling in Puerto Vallarta (I have never been, personally, but it seems like a great place for college-aged girls to make steamy bad choices).  Bran Muffin.  Nope.  Nothing.  I think of old people.  And poop.  Let's be honest.  Does anyone not think of poop when they hear "bran muffin."  You're a liar.  Yes you do.  In fact, Harajuku Mommy just stopped by to pick up the Harajuku Girl, and she was stoked to see bran muffins coming out of the oven.  "Yeahhhh.  I'm taking one of these and a cup of coffee on my way to work tomorrow!"  See?  Poop.

Mr. Ginger loves muffins.  He would leave me for a well baked, over sized muffin with some kind of fruit inside and those huge sugar crystals on top.  Fair enough.  I'd leave him for the perfect cheese.  No hard feelings here.  But he does not like a bran muffin.  So when I told him this week's recipe was poo muffins, he said, "Nooooo. Can't you make something good?"  Sorry Valerie, I thought they were a great idea.

Anyway, fast forward to the muffins.  Not nearly as hard to bake as my procrastination assumed they would be.  I decided to mix up the original recipe, found here, by adding raisins, craisins, and dried apples.  I figured the more fruit variety the better.  I guess a Raisin, Cranberry, Apple Muffin sounds better than bran.  Braaaaaannnnn.  It's like the word bran hails from the Midwest or something.

I followed the directions, threw them in the oven and voila!  Muffins!  I can't claim they are as good as a Henry's Bran Muffin or a Starbucks Bran Muffin, but I would venture to say they are probably healthier.  And really, if you're eating a bran muffin in the first place you're probably under the delusion of being healthy.  Somehow my recipe yielded more than the book said it would.  I ended up with 12 regular muffins, 12 mini muffins, and 2 ginormous muffins. Mr. Ginger and Harajuku Mommy raved!  I feel pretty good about this since Mr. Ginger was so down-trodden over bran being the pick of the week.  I don't think it hurt that I was wearing my apron, mascara, and earrings all on the same day.  I think I may have blown his mind with my June Cleavage, er, Cleaver.





Once again, I didn't do the best of jobs taking pictures.  The Dude has an ear infection and a bad attitude and was screaming at me the entire time.  Perhaps my greatest feat today was not so much defying all logic by making a delicious poop muffin, but managing to hold strong and follow through with proper behavior modification techniques in attempt to break my child of tantrums.  By the third time he came out of his room, he said, "Hi Mom.  Good?  Eat?  Nice?"  I guess he figured out that he needed to eat without throwing food at the dogs and that screaming at one's mother is not nice.  Or maybe his tiny little 20 month old brain forgot what he was so pissed off about in the first place, and he smelled baked goods (kid loves muffins.  Maybe more than his dad does.)  Maybe that's what led to the change in attitude.  Don't care.  Doesn't matter.

Happy Baby.  Happy Husband.  Happy Colon.

These muffins earn an 8.

Glory Days

It's amazing how nothing really changes. Take tonight for example. I could, arguably, still be in college.

1.My significant other has a night class so I'm home alone for the evening.

2.I have just cleaned up someone else's mess off the carpet,

3.I'm drinking wine and eating a Lean Pocket for dinner.

4.All I can hear right now is someone moaning and the thumping of a bed against the wall.

Here's what's really happening:

1.Mister Ginger has a night class for which the VA pays him a pretty penny upon completion.

2.I gave the Dude some apple oatmeal for dinner (big treat) and gave him a bath. On the way to his room he bent over to pick up his favorite yellow ball and proceeded to shit on the freshly steamed carpet. Then he smooshed it. After screaming at the dogs to leave the poop alone, I hauled the Dude in for bath #2 (it's not funny.) Ok. I get the dude in his crib with two binkys, two bears a mini weird fuzzy blankie thing that resembles a glad rag from your local sex shop, and a real blankie. Oh. And the plastic innards of a Glow-Worm. He goes to sleep so i get ready to clean up Poopapalooza. I have to call Grandma Steve to figure out why the machine isn't working. Ok. Done. Shit. The machine woke up the Dude. Ok, fine. Talk to Grandma Steve. Take two on the bedtime.

3. A little crying, but mellow so I go open a bottle of wine. White. Yummmm.... What to eat, what to eat? I don't even want to eat, but I'm terrified of getting shitty when I'm alone with the Dude, so I must eat. Screw this. Lean Pocket it is. Seriously? More crying? All I wan to do is drink a glass of wine, fold about 900 loads of laundry and watch some Gossip Girl on Netfilx.

4.So here I sit, waiting for the wailing and thumping to stop whilst I eat my Lean Pocket (really 300 calories? Is that lean???) The worst part? It's an Italian Meatball Lean Pocket. Everyone knows that's really a red wine kind of meal. Sigh. Wish me luck on round three of bedtime.

Pumpkin Chip "Muffins"

I love summer. Actually I love Summer with a capital S. Summer is my best friend. So, you can imagine that I like to hold off on all things apple, pumpkin, spice, etc. until mid-November at the earliest. In my world, Halloween is the end of Summer. This is partly because I'm delusional, partly because I'm stubborn, and partly because I grew up in Southern California where Summer has a mind of her own. Last year in San Diego we had no summer. The year before that I spent Thanksgiving pregnant and sweating because our turkey dinner was cooked indoors despite 87° weather. (p.s. The two Virginia years were rough for me. Ask anyone who witnessed my ineptitude doing recess duty in a tank top and sandals amid falling leaves and snow. It was ugly.) I, therefore, choose to believe in the Endless Summer.


Back to the muffins. Big Sissy had just been down for a visit, and the Little Sissy asked her about the "magical muffins." I'm sure many of you are familiar. It's apparently a Weight Watchers kind of deal, but it doesn't seem believable that these would be diet approved. Fast forward a week when Little Sissy and I have The Chick and The Dude and no projects planned. Enter emergency Pumpkin Chip Muffins to the rescue. Yum. Pumpkin is now allowed if, and only if, I have two hungry toddlers in my charge and no animal crackers in sight. I'm having a sordid love affair with one right now. I'm singing Brobee's "Party in My Tummy" song in my head as I type. I'm talented like that. Here's the recipe and directions on how to keep munchkins happy in the process of making them. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
2 boxes of Spice Cake
1 large can (30 oz.) of pumpkin (NOT pie filling!)
1 bag (12 oz.) of mini-chocolate chips

Step 1: Get naked. Pour cake mixes into a bowl and stir to break up any clumps.

Step 2: Pour mini-chips into bowl and mix well.

Step 3: Clean up any fallen chips.

Step 4: Don a party hat.

Step 5: Mix pumpkin into dry mix. It ain't easy. No you don't need more pumpkin. I called to confirm this with Big Sissy. She said, "It'll get better." It did, after about 50 calories burned from stirring.

Step 6: Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven.. You know the drill- check 'em at 20 minutes with a toothpick. If they don't scream, they're done.

Step 7: Celebrate and share a bite with your puppies. Try to make it a non-chocolaty bite, but that's almost impossible with these treats!

Photo Credit: The first image is not mine. I never got a pic of the final product, mostly because we were scarfing them down in a not-so-Weight Watchers like fashion. This picture is pretty close, although they claim to be cookies. It's from this blog: http://deliciousdixie.blogspot.com/2010/10/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-cookies.html

My Fart

Today I am still finding myself randomly brought to tears thinking of my high school friend, Lisa, who lost her little baby girl Sunday night.

After a raucous night of meatloaf and Jeopardy at The Padres house we brought The Dude into bed to snuggle for a bit (which we can only do when he falls asleep in the car, because he's a no-snug zone when he is concious) and I took some time to smell him. That may sound weird for you Freebirds aka unparents, but when they are brand new babies, we spend hours and hours sniffing their new baby heads. The scent is absolutely intoxicating. It's like olfactory Oxicontin. As Don Draper's ex-mistress, turned beatnik, turned heroin junkie said, “It’s like drinking a hundred bottles of whiskey while someone licks your tits.” Ok, quite frankly, I don't like whiskey and having my boobs "licked" kind of just makes me think of nursing our special needs dog, Poppy, but it's the hyperbole that's important here.

Well, The Dude doesn't smell like he used to. It's not so much the heroin-like baby deliciousness. He kind of has this milky, Cheerios, wet dog, sweaty, pee smell by 8:00pm and if we have been at Grandma Steve's house for dinner and skipped bathtime, well, he goes to bed nasty. Call me unfit. Call me gross. Call me tired. But last night, last night, I held him as close as he would let me before wriggling free. I breathed in the stench of that sweaty little boy's scalp so deep that I thought my lungs would give out. And then he thrashed about until he positioned himself as the little spoon to my big spoon, and he yawned a huge yawn. It was gorgeous. It brought tears to my eyes. And then he farted on me.

I love that fart. I will always remember that fart. It was a fart just for me, and I'll take it.