I have been waiting to get a good picture of McPantses with her brother for a while now–I want to use it on a calling card from The Paper Menu. I rather like the shot of McP and the Crabcake from 8/27, and if you feel like scrolling back and checking it out, I’d love to know what you think.

If you check The Paper Menu’s new designs, the very first thing pictured is a square photo calling card. I think a picture of my darling loudmouthed droolers (well, one is a drooler) would look fantastico and I think The Paper Menu’s prices are pretty darn good. In fact, someone asked me last night at church if I would think about starting to print photos directly onto Christmas cards and I said, gee, I can barely manage to use my computer programs to print the things I print, but you should check out The Paper Menu because she more than manages it and her stuff looks amazing.

The Paper Menu does something I’m itching to try out that not many other people do: waterproof bottle/sippy cup labels. Very important in the world of drooly baaaybees or daycare/MMO moms. Thus sayeth the Queen of “my ink still rinses right off in the dishwasher, dammitalltohell!”

Check her out. Keep her in mind for your paper needs. I have been fortunate enough to get to know her a bit and I think she’s good people building a great business.

And she’s funny.

Funny is big.

Write your thank-yous.

The good thing about living in the deep south is that the social season lasts all year long, just about–there are a couple of debutante balls in the late summer and another couple in the late spring, which means that big partiers get the month of June off (for weddings, you know). I think it’s because southerners like to drink and flirt and contemplate having affairs out of sheer boredom, and dress-up social events encourage all those things. Fortunately, I have a passel o’kids* and I like to read, so I’m rarely flat-out bored.

However, I like to twitter about with the best of them and there’s no better excuse to treat yourself to a wonderfully expensive dinner than dress-up clothes. Plus, the Husband looks swell in his tuxedo.

We have a ball to attend tomorrow night. We skipped it last year because I was four or five months pregnant and yakking my guts up no less than 47 times a day. We’re skipping it this year because I just plain don’t want to go. I can’t send the kids to daycare all day and leave them with a sitter at night–if the ball was on a Saturday night, I’d think twice about skipping. Tomorrow night, tho, I think the boychild would protest mightily, even with a sitter from the daycare. I can’t even be bribed with the promise of an expensive dinner, and we’re way overdue for a big dinner out.

We’re skipping the same ball two years in a row, so there’s a chance we won’t be invited again next year, but there are at least 20 other balls during the year (not that we get invited to anywhere near all of them), so a good dress-up excuse will roll around again eventually. But, this is a good ball and it’s at the country club across the street from our house,* so we could, if we so desired, get completely smashed and walk home and retrieve a car the next day.** There are a few balls that are traditionally more fun than the rest. The big debutante balls are only entertaining because you can watch to see which debs are so tipsy they can barely do the curtsy. Tomorrow night’s shindig is known for being fun and the one on Fat Tuesday is always a blast. I think last year two girls (one of whom is in my Sunday school class) got in a slapfight towards the end of the night.

Maybe next year I will be able to squeeze my asships into something sassy and fun. It just ain’t gonna happen this year. I have a boychild to snuggle and a girlchild who hates it when we go out on a weeknight.

* Two kids may not be a passel o’kids in your book, but in my book, two = three times the work = passel. So there.

** When I say that we live across the street from the country club, don’t go imagining serious antebellum or anything. There are beautiful homes behind the country club and near us, but my street, tho it squeezes into the historical district, has seven ranch houses built in the 50s on it. That’s how we can afford to live there. Oh, we are also not members of the country club across the street. While the Husband is a country club type and was raised with lots of country club exposure, I am not. I think we’ll join eventually (golf! right across the street! wheeeeee!), but I can’t imagine I will ever feel completely comfortable there. Not my scene. Plus, the food sucks.

*** While the ability to stumble home is tantalizing in theory, we’ve never utilized it. We’re more “designated driver” types instead. It works well for the husband to have a pregnant or breastfeeding wife.

To the perv who got here searching

women in high heels “50 years” old

I say, turn off your computer and go get some fresh air.

Lordy.

The boychild has his first word and it’s Muh.

I am his Muh, you see.

He’s a bit of a clingy fella when it comes to his Muh (I’m not much pleased, can you tell?) and he’ll holler for me from all ends of the house when he’s playing or when the Husband is holding him. When he hollers, it’s Muhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, followed by various screechy sad noises generated especially for my ears–if I’m dressing in the morning and dash by the crabcake and his dad, the boy will turn his entire body towards me and shout at me in an effort to get me to come scoop him up and snuggle him into clingy mama’s boy bliss.

Sometimes, the Husband will bring Charlie to watch me get dressed and today, they stood behind me as I slogged on mascara and I heard the “Muh.”

I love it.

McPantses had about 12 different words before she got to “mama.” She started with dada and progressed shortly thereafter to “byebye dada” and I think “uh-oh” and “shopping” (yep) came long before “mama” at 10 mos or so. I remember when she first said it because we were in Philadelphia for a wedding. McPantses was a talker and Crabcake is a mover.

As much as I wanted the first word to be “assface” and as much as I am enjoying hearing the nonsensical blabbering and raspberry-blowing, I think that Muh is a fine start.

Oh, and I am Muh of the Year today, too. It’s McPantses’ ballet day and she’s wearing the leotard and skirt that I pulled, unwashed, from her ballet bag because her other two leotards are dirty. Last week’s outfit has something that looks suspiciously like spaghetti sauce in small spots (two on the leotard and two on the skirt) all over it, so I made her cover her eyes and turn her face away and sprayed the spots with Clorox Oxi Whatever. By the time we got to school, the wet spots were almost dry. The stains were still there, tho.

We are busy as all hell this week, but we’re having a great week.

Thanks, commenters below. I think my kids are something else. I love the cherubic blush on crabcake’s face when he still had the gown on. He started squalling shortly after that and I changed him into a blue broadcloth apron dress (boy dress with a tabbed belt in the back) above. I promise that he has a lovely neck. You just can’t see it in the pic.

Speaking of boy dresses, you should have heard my father’s good-natured groan when I sat down in church holding the boychild in my arms. I said, “Are you groaning at the boy in the dress?” He grimaced and laughed. He’s very worried that I’m going to keep the boy in dresses forever.

And I just might, despite my mother’s pleas to stop with the dresses as soon as the crabcake is walking. I said I’d compromise and stop by 18 mos or so.

Over the weekend, Charlie seemed to come out of himself even more. He’s full of squeals and screeches and he can army-crawl all over the place. The Husband made me come look, Sunday morning, from a hallway vantage point, at the study in contrasts our kids are. McPantses, in her fluffy dress, was seated in her chair at the coffee table lining up crayons. Her back was ramrod* straight and she had a serene smile on her face. Crabcake, on the other hand, was still in a onesie (I dressed him at church–if you’ve ever had to shove many yards of batiste under carseat straps, you know why I waited!) and was rolling around the new rug on the floor in his room, growling and screeching all the while. The Husband said all that was missing from McPantses’ scene was Bach playing softly in the background.

We’ve officially finished the leftovers and that’s probably a good thing because McP was getting tired of grits casserole, the blasphemous little snipe.

On a crafty note: something else that makes me happy: free shipping from a[n allegedly] great source of Japanese craft books when you spend $39. I haven’t ordered from there yet, but I am bookmarking my favorites.

A wonderful internet friend took time from her busy workday in Los Angeles and sussed out a Japanese bookstore for me and sent me three stuffed animals books, and they’ve just scratched the surface for me. I can’t wait to [attempt to] make gorgeous things.

* “Ramrod” is a funny word.

a lovely day for the Heels family. Charlie Crabcake the Third was baptised and we had a brunch afterwards at a local place that opened just for us.

Because I want you to admire the boychild, I’ll post pics with bits of my face and the Husband’s face with the usual caveat that I’ll take anything down that the Husband wants down. First, here’s the elf-eared boychild in the gown that I made when McPantses was baptised in 2001. I spent a solid year making it.

Here’s the boychild taking a quick break from chewing on the wondrous fluffy and delicious goodness that is a handsewn swiss batiste gown. I believe he was contemplating how to best get at his father’s coffee.

We are sure that McPantses had the best time of anyone this past weekend. She loves it when family comes to town and people from both sides were here.

In a monumental effort to make myself feel better physically, I got my coffee with regular sugar this morning instead of Splenda–my mother swears that artificial sugars are the root of all evile, so I’m testing her theory. I’m willing to bet that it’s about as valid as her “vinegar/water as healer of all ills.”

Sugar doesn’t instantly dissolve like Splenda does, so I was rooting around in my desk drawer’s front tray for my fabulous letter opener. It’s long and curves like a scythe and I use it to stir things and to peel oranges. I couldn’t find it and thought to myself, in an Office Space-like moment, “my letter opener! I must have my letter opener!” and I wondered what weirdo would take a letter opener and leave the handful of change or the four different pens that light up (giveaway cack from various companies soliciting our funds).

The letter opener was ‘neath the pen stash (four sharpies, one clicky pencil, three regular pencils, two fountain pens with no ink, a battery, a $.20 stamp, a 1 1/2 inch screw, a king size smelly marker, two hilighters and the aforementioned light-up pens).

Minor a.m. hilarity: the two semi-burly men in front of me at the coffee counter who both poured vanilla creamer into their coffee. Dudes! Nothing says burlyman like vanilla creamer.

Minor inane habit: I like to sign the purchase orders for bills with pens from the billing companies’ competitors. We get a lot of pens.

In no particular order…

The boychild:

Good: He’s got a tooth! I can just feel a little jaggedy tooth poking through the skin. We noticed it on Sunday. He won’t let us see it, though.

Bad: I guess this could be construed as good, but it’s also the scary: he can scoot across a room like lightning and cannot be left unattended for a millisecond. I caught him midfling late last week again and I was sitting right beside him on the bed.

Ugly: The squash incident of ‘05 is probably best left unmentioned, but I will tell you that he cares not for steamed yaller squash and that, when spit from a baby’s mouth, squash puree can travel a great distance.

McPantses:

Good: She can do more simple math than me at this point. I don’t think we need to hammer education down kids’ throats, but McPantses craves the work (and begs for it), so upon good advice, I snagged this workbook and got her a second copy for school. It’s marvelous.

Bad: She woke up at 5:30 this morning and was ready to SING! My house was like a broadway musical rehearsal before it was even light outside.

Ugly: No matter what anyone tells you, it’s probably a bad idea to try a simple vinegar/water solution on your child’s rashy spots. McPantses has had mysterious rashy spots since she was a little over a year old and we’ve treated them with Cutivate ointment, but the ointment has taken pigment out of her skin in the crooks of her elbows, so we need a new solution. Sponging on a bit of the vinegar/water soln. isn’t helping the rash (my mother suggested we try it for a week) and the sharp sting makes McP miserable. We’re stopping that one. It looks like what we really need is a trip to the doctor, but I hate to soak her in sick kid germs for minor rashy spots.

Coworkers:

Good: The unabashedly nerdy guy. He’s a complete dork and he wears it well. He has a great fake British accent, too.

Bad: The nervous nerdy guy. Go hide, dude. Quit skulking around and embrace your dorkishness.

Ugly: Security’s new shirts. Uck.

The funny thing about the people in this building is that I could be talking about a hundred random people and each one would think I meant him.

Me:

Good: Last night, I embroidered a swirly belly button on what I hope will be the tummy of a stuffed kitty like the one loobyly had up recently. I also embroidered the inside of the ears and a smile on the kitty’s face. Whether or not I can attach the pieces together into anything remotely resembling any kind of stuffed animal remains to be seen. (I’m doing a blue shirting fabric kitty with a white face and white ear insides. The embroidery is a sort of medium periwinkle blue. I picked decent but generic fabric for the first effort because I’m unwilling to waste great fabric and equally unwilling to use crappy fabric for such a monumental effort.)

Bad and Ugly: My mood, which resulted from two sheets of paper in one envelope in the mail. UGLY. I shouldn’t have opened it because I burst into tears when I did and I’m still hurt and angry. Feeling, quite rightly, like I am the only person behaving rationally in a bad situation and that I am trying to be gracious and like people are smacking me in the face right and left. I think I am being made to feel completely insane for being the only person behaving rationally, which is starting to be pretty crazymaking, if that makes any sense at all. One simple solution to that problem would be for people to quit sending me goddamned mail that no longer has anything to do with me.

Nice way to be on your spouse’s birthday. Fortunately, two fingers of Knob Creek lightened my mood considerably and the Husband joked that if we ever end up in marriage counseling, when they ask what he’d change about me, he’d tell the counselor that he wishes his wife would drink more.

The Husband:

Good: Got to play golf, drink scotch and smoke a cigar on his birthday. Can’t ask for much more than that, says he.

Bad: Had to deal with irate wife.

Ugly: Through some odd mismaneuvering (is that even a word?) managed to knock every single plastic cup off of the shelf in the kitchen, resulting in a hilarious and huge mess. Cleaned it up partially, though.