Happy Hour

In the not-so-distant past (although it feels like a lifetime ago), happy hour meant heading to the bar for a couple cocktails and appetizers with friends after work. And if things got really crazy, maybe some karaoke and dancing before heading home.

During the rush of our evenings, I think back fondly on the days when I could decide last minute that Kevin and I needed drinks instead of heading straight home. But, while cooking supper the other night, it struck me that maybe that first hour or two after work isn't quite as different as I've come to think it was.

Sure, there aren't buffalo wings or cheese curds, but I often get fruit snacks or an apple. Not as good, but a hell of a lot healthier.  And there certainly aren't 2-for-1's, but let's be honest, wine is often involved. And my friends are never involved, but my 3 favorite people are always there.

So you know what? It really still is Happy Hour. The scenery and the characters are different, but it's still pretty damn fun. And you know what? Sometimes things get really crazy and we end up with some some dancing too.

Sour Patch Kid

One of my favorite advertising campaigns from the past few years was the Sour Patch Kids commercials that ended, "First they're sour, then they're sweet." Every one of those commercials cracked me up. For those that didn't ever see them or just don't remember them (highly unlikely if you are even remotely able to be amused), here are a couple examples:

Alright, I'm back....just spent the last 15 minutes watching all of these online and laughing my ass off. Anyway, getting to the point.

So these commercials cracked me up. No one could forgive someone for those acts so quickly! Hahahahaha....those silly candies.

Well, fast forward a few years and my toddler has turned into one of those candies. One minute she is the most awful, whiny, naughty kid you've ever met and the next she will say the sweetest thing to almost make you forget what happened mere minutes prior.

For instance, at swimming lessons tonight, she decided she wasn't into it....no way, no how was she getting into the water. She was throwing such a fit in the locker room just getting her suit on that once we finally came out into the pool area, some of the teachers were "discussing" our situation to figure out how to lend a hand. Once she finally calmed down and got into the pool (only 15 minutes into the 30 minute lesson), she promptly did the first exercise and then gave me a thumbs up and blew me a kiss. Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd think she was mocking me with each of those gestures, but she had the biggest, most genuine smile on her face that it doesn't seem possible that she didn't mean it.

I could literally post hundreds of situations like that, but I'll limit it to one more....which, if it is ever beaten for most embarrassing and frustrating moment of my life, I may just give up.

A month or so ago (just now has enough time passed for me to talk about it), I left work a few hours early with the express purpose of picking Lindsay up to have a Mommy/Lindsay date at the zoo. We had a great time. We took turns picking what animals to see next, shared ice cream and played on the playgrounds together. Throughout our date, I was giving Lindsay warnings about how much time was left until the zoo closed, meaning we'd have to leave. Towards the end of the day, we both agreed the penguins (near the front of the zoo) would be our last stop.

As we got to the penguins, I could tell leaving wouldn't be quite as easy as I had hoped, but that isn't terribly earth-shattering. After watching for a few minutes, I tried reasoning with her. No luck. I tried negotiating, but even the savviest negotiator wasn't cracking that shell. So, I resorted to the good, old-fashioned method of just picking her up and walking out. So there we were, pregnant mama carrying a kicking and screaming kid out of the zoo.

As luck would have it, the zoo was having some big after-hours event and there were literally hundreds of people lining up outside. As I'm wading through the crowd with a still kicking and screaming kid, I made an amateur move....I caved into her demand that "I WANT TO WALK!" I set her down and started to tell her that she could walk as long as she stopped throwing a fit when she took off running and yelling back at me, "Don't touch me! I'm afraid of you!"

Seriously. In front of at least a hundred people. I really hope none of you have ever had to feel (or ever do feel) the searing eyes of complete strangers who may or may not believe you have just been exposed as a child abuser.

I did my best to calmly wade through the people after her despite kind of hoping one of the strangers would take her home. I honestly was so stunned that I really didn't want to catch up to her, but obviously knew I had to. Once I did, I swooped her back up and carried her the rest of the way to the car without talking....just silently fuming while my child screamed bloody murder and apparently kicked at me, not in frustration, but in fear.

After getting her restrained in the car seat and getting the air conditioner running for her (see, I'm clearly not a monster), I took a few minutes to myself outside the car trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Of course, she was still screaming when I got in the car to drive home....and continued to scream until we got home and I put her in her room for timeout. WORST. DATE. EVER.

A few minutes later when I went back in (thankfully the screaming had subsided), she was laying on her bed and she looked at me and said, "Even when I'm mad at you, I love you all the time." And then gave me a big hug and kiss.

Again, seriously. Sadly, this version of my kid was not witnessed by a hundred people.

We had a long talk after that about "the incident"....and never did get to the bottom of where she'd get the notion to apply "afraid" to me, but thankfully she hasn't broken out that soul-crushing phrase again.

So while you can see this incident didn't come in a neat, packaged 15 second commercial, she clearly has the routine down. SOUR! Then sweet. It's just really too bad the sour part isn't as appealing in kids as it is in candy.

The Power of Band-Aids

Lindsay is WAY into dresses. She'd wear one everyday if we'd let her. And frankly, if not for rainy or chilly days and my laziness in doing laundry, we'd probably let her. The problem with dresses, however, is that they leave a good portion of a clumsy toddler's skin exposed when they inevitably go tumbling across the ground 20 times a day.

Of course, not all of these tumbles happen on grass or soft ground. So yesterday, walking through the Target parking lot, Lindsay took a tumble and scraped her knee pretty good. We got through the crying and tears and went into the store. While shopping, I noticed some blood on Lindsay's knee, so we walked over to the Band-Aid aisle (or adhesive strip aisle for you anti-corporation folks)...because really, you can never have too many Band-Aids available.

As soon Lindsay realized what we were looking at, her "injured" leg stopped working. She could no longer walk. Amazing timing on those delayed symptoms. So she picked a box of Tinkerbell Band-Aids and we decided to use one right there in the store. Amazingly, she could once again walk, so we were able to finish our shopping.

So last night we were doing some yard work (meanwhile, Lindsay was sitting on a rock "waiting for some wind so she could fly a kite") when I decided to check her wound and give her some fresh dressing. As soon as I removed the old Band-Aid, she predictably could no longer walk. The limp she used to get back inside the house would've made any personal injury lawyer proud (assuming Target is clearly at fault for negligently having the audacity to pave their parking lot). Again, as soon as we put a new Tinkerbell Band-Aid on the wound, she was good to go.

We have a strict "no-blood, no-Band-Aid" rule in our house. But after seeing the magic powers, we may have to change that. Although maybe it was just the fairy dust?

Anatomy lesson

About a month ago, I made a decision. Right or wrong, it was time to teach Lindsay about girl parts and boy parts. Age 3 might seem a little young, but the reality was that she had noticed there was a difference between boys and girls and she wanted to talk about it. It all started with this little exchange while she was going potty one day:

Lindsay: "When I grow bigger, I'm going to turn into a boy and grow a funny butt!"

Me: "What now?"

Lindsay: "When I grow bigger and turn 4, I'm going to turn into a boy and grow a funny butt."

Not sure what exactly to say about it, and being pretty certain she wasn't talking about butts, I just changed the subject. But a few days later while going potty, she again said, "When I grow bigger, I'm going to turn into a boy and grow a funny butt!"

Having mulled the previous conversation over, I had decided that if the issue was raised again, I was going to face it. I knew what I had to do. So this time I explained to her that boys have penises and girls have vaginas. And that girls will never have penises and boys would never have vaginas. (Yes, I saved the conversation about sexual reassignment surgery....figured that would've been a lot to handle on top of all the penis/vagina talk).

We talked about it for a bit and she seemed satisfied with my explanation....so I thought that was the end of it for now. But she thought differently.

A few days after our conversation, we were driving in the car and she said, "You're a girl. And I'm a girl. And we have 'banginas!'"

And it didn't stop there. She went through a list of everyone we know and told me whether they had a penis or a "bangina." Not exactly normal rush hour discussion, but I guess at least it was in the privacy of our car and not in the middle of Target.

Again, I thought that might be the end of it, but she had different ideas. It has become a regular topic of conversation around our house. And then one day it turned to cartoon characters. We were sitting there innocently watching Diego and she said, "Diego is boy and he has penis! And Dora is a girl and she has a bangina! Mike the Knight is a boy and he has a penis!"

So far, no one is safe. If she's met you, she has speculated on your anatomy. I'm just waiting for the question about whether Bot (from Team Umizoomi) has a penis or a bangina. Now there's question I don't have an answer for.

Little rocker

While attending a friend's wedding on Saturday, we discovered that Lindsay is quite the little rocker. Sure, she was excited about dancing the chicken dance and she liked the conga line (despite the fact she kept goosing the lady with the short dress on who was right in front of her), but her real dancing chops showed up when the DJ played "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC.

Ladies and gentleman, I offer you Lindsay's first foray dancing to a rock song. Hopefully she doesn't try the ankle dance at an actual rock concert.

What's missing?

A long, long time ago (September 19th), Kevin and I left for a long weekend trip to Orlando, FL. Kevin had a conference and I had....well....I had to sit by the pool while he was at the conference. We had grand, old time.

We ate well:

We drank (very) well....that pink drink is Kevin's:

And we swam with the dolphins (some people might call them ducks):

And while we were gone, Lindsay was having fun with Grandma and Grandpa Pfeifer and the pups back in Rosemount.

But that wasn't all the fun they were going to have because not only did they all hang out together in Rosemount for a few days while we were away, Lindsay was going back to Watford City (that's in North Dakota for all you out of state readers) to stay with both sets of grandparents and hang with the rest of the family.

TWO WEEKS! "What will you do with yourselves for that long?" was the question we were asked dozens of times prior to our trip. Well, we found lots of stuff to do.

We ate at nice restaurants:

We enjoyed some more libations:

We golfed (I'll let you decide if I drove the ball that close to the flag):

And we ate at some more restaurants:

That took up about 4 days. And then we were bored....because all we want to do is play Uno Moo with this kid:

I joke that this means we are too old for fun and are boring suburbanites, but what it really means is that this little monster has buried herself in my soul. I wouldn't have it any other way. If that makes me old and boring, so be it, I guess.

Herein ends the sappy part....and the blog post. Because this girl is hopping in the car to head to Fargo soon to get my little girl back!

It's a girl!

No, I didn't birth another child. Nor am I breaking any news about adding to our family. This is just a simple reminder that Lindsay is indeed a girl. Maybe you didn't need the reminder. But I'm not just talking any girl....I'm talking GIRLY GIRL. Since most of my readers have probably met me, you also probably don't need to be told that the phrase "girly girl" most likely has never been used to describe me. Don't get me wrong...I expected some of this.

For instance, I kind of expected her to really like the color pink. After all, most people buy little girls pink clothes. Here's the outfit she chose to garden and help Daddy put up a fence in (pay particular attention to the gold-sequined flats with the bow on them):

Check.

I also kind of expected her to be into princess stuff, well, because a lot of people also buy princess books, toys, clothes, etc. And yes, she does love princesses:

Check.

And you know, I sort of even expected her to be into dresses even though she will rarely see her mommy in one, because again, people love giving little girls dresses....and I must admit there is something damn cute about a little girl in a tiny, little dress. Well, you guessed it....she loves dresses and when she's going out, she wants to put one on. Here's her "party dress". Appropriately named because she wore it for her 3rd birthday party:

Once again, check.

But one thing I didn't see coming was a declaration she made a couple weeks ago. Daddy had to work, so her and I drove to Minneapolis to watch the Vikings preseason game against the Chargers. No one that has met us would be surprised to know that we've trained her to know the names and numbers of some of the players on our favorite teams. She will happily declare that "Joe plays baseball! He wears a 7!" or "Kobe wears a 2 and 4 and plays basketball with Mommy!" (I haven't corrected her on the latter.)

Anyway, we got to our seats and I said, "Who are we here to watch?" The answer, of course, is supposed to "CHRISTIAN! He wears a 7!" Instead, her answer was, "The cheerleaders!" *ERRRRRRRRRR* (That's supposed to be a record scratching....which is what I heard in my mind.) Either this girly girl thing is getting out of hand, or she's been hanging out with her Uncle Richard too much.

I tried to explain to her that no, we didn't drive to downtown Minneapolis, pay for parking and buy a beer (for me) and some popcorn (for her) to watch the cheerleaders. We came to watch Christian....and AP....and Jared....and Percy. But she was having none of it. In fact, when the cheerleaders came out for their between-quarters routine, she said, "When I grow bigger and bigger, I'm going to be a cheerleader!" And wouldn't you know it? The next day she found a couple pom-poms in her toy box and has been carrying them around ever since. I guess she might make a cute cheerleader...

This whole girly girl thing will take getting used to, but if she goes the cheerleading route, I can get on board. But Lord help us all if she wants to be involved in pageants. THAT is something I'd have to consider trading her in for.