You say it's your birthday

Harper turned three on Sunday and she celebrated by rocking out on her new piano. And wearing her Real Ballet Shoes:

We rode the new train at Hermann Park which she's been excited about for months. She sang "I've been working on the railroad" and "Get on board, little children" during the entire ride. Then we rode the carousel at the zoo, said hello to some animal friends, then came home and she blew out the candles on her very own watermelon:



How I love this shiny, happy, bouncy, singing, dancing girl who has filled our lives with joy inexpressible.

Anthropologie

I got some money from my parents on Mother's Day and decided to go to Anthropologie. There's lots to love at Anthropologie but I didn't buy anything and here is why: it's ridiculously expensive and even when I have "free" money, as it were, I just can't stomach $58 for a t-shirt, AND I am just done with the whole smocky, flowy, babydoll trend that has insisted on lingering for at least three or four years now. It's fun wearing maternity clothes when you are pregnant. People smile at you because you are a Bearer of Life and all that. And I was actually pretty grateful for the trend those first couple of months after the babies came. But enough already.

I thought it was interesting, anthropologically speaking, that there was a girl trying on clothes in the dressing room next to me and she had brought along a little dog and he was sitting in his very own stroller. It looked more expensive than the stroller I use to transport my actual human children. I also noticed in the pet aisle at Target the other day that I can buy an Isaac Mizrahi seersucker doggie dress. We love dogs around here, even though we don't own one yet, but I'm going to be dogmatic about a few things.
1. Dogs shouldn't ride in strollers
2. Dogs shouldn't wear clothes
3. Dogs shouldn't be in weddings/mentioned in wedding announcements, i.e. John and Eleanor will be residing in Bellaire with their two beloved dogs, Carnegie and Mellon.

One other thing that happened at Anthropologie is that the dressing room attendant asked my name so she could write it on the little chalkboard outside the door. I must have swallowed the second syllable because she wrote "PAT" and then asked four different times if "PAT" needed anything. I have never been PAT. Patti has never even felt like a very appropriate name but it is infinitely better than PAT. Margie wrote a few blogs back about introducing herself and her husband (who is Wayne) and saying, "We have old people names." I was thinking about that while I was at my parents' house and realized that my mom (Bonnie) has friends who, like her are in their 60's, who are named Tootsie, Cookie, and Sparkle.

So I didn't buy any clothes but on the way home I stopped at Paciugo and got some gelato. There was a tiny old lady in front of me and when she got her ice cream I said, "Oh, that looks really good--what flavor is it?" and she replied, "I'd give you a bite but I am 89 years old and I have to be very hygienic and I just don't know what germs you have!" She pronounced it hyGENIEic.

One last thing. I think I've mentioned Harper's speech impediments. Two words have proven especially hilarious in the past couple of weeks. She can't make an 'l' or 'r' sound and uses 'w' instead. "All cweatuwes of our God and King... Ah way woo jah! Ah way woo juh! Ah way woooooo jah." And we got this trail mix from Whole Foods that's called Hullaballoo Mix. "Mommy may I please have some Huhwuhbuhwoo?" It's too bad I didn't go to A&M because I hear the fight song has a similar word in it. Oh, wait. I did go to A&M. How does that song go again?

That's what she...sang

So I finally had to tell Harper she was forbidden from telling Hudson 'no' ever again. And what do you think that eager little mind has done to evade the prohibition? Sing, of course. This morning it was to the tune of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes": NO...no-no-no-no-no...nonoNO! came wafting from the backseat on the way home from the park. Then when we got home, it was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"-- no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-nonononoNO...NO,nonononononononononononoNOOOOOO..NO!"
I should have loosed the fateful lightning of my terrible swift sword, but I was too busy laughing my head off in the other room.

To add to the air of musical comedy/disobedience around here, we were out for a walk yesterday and Hudson got a little ahead. He turned around to see if I noticed his daring-do. I asked him to come back and he smiled and broke into this little soft shoe dance. Perhaps he was trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Again, the cute factor precluded any sort of meaningful discipline.

Let there be blood

Hudson got his second bloody lip yesterday trying to walk down some steps in the Tot Spot at the Children's Museum. Depth judgment comes much later than it should really. On a note less bloody, we got to see our friend Izzy's dance recital later in the afternoon. She did a fantastic job. My favorite part was the moment of contemplation she took in the middle of the tap routine to "Good Ship Lollipop." Harper was very excited about the recital until we got there and she remembered that she had planned to wear her "ballet shoes" but we had forgotten. I'll confess that I had not reminded her because I didn't really want her wearing her too small white patent dress shoes in public, but I felt pretty sad when her eyes welled up with tears of disappointment and she kept saying, "Oh Mommy, I can't dance with the ballerinas without my ballet shoes." She recovered and managed, much to my surprise, to actually sit in a chair and watch quietly while the girls danced. She did get a chance to dance with Izzy when the recital was over, though it was more Twyla Thorpe sort of galloping and flexed toes than anything classical per se. Probably because of the shoes. She is getting an actual pair of ballet shoes for her birthday in a couple of weeks. Though after having seen them in action, she also would like some tap shoes. I'm going to get my mom to dig around in the attic and try to find my old ones. I took lots of dance classes but always preferred gymnastics. I was a decent tumbler in my day and, to impress Harper and Hudson, decided to do a cartwheel in my parents' backyard while we were there over the weekend. Just a plain cartwheel, mind you, not the aerials I used to be able to do. Oh, it hurt. Like fire. All the way down my leg. I really, really need to start doing some yoga or pilates or something. Anyway, they did look awfully impressed that Mommy had twirled around like that.

The snipers made me do it

I lied. Our current apartment is actually 988 square feet. My fact checker, who is, incidentally, also my legal counsel AND spouse, discovered my prevarication while looking online for a way to get around our rate hike. Understatement is a valid rhetorical device, probably not seen quite as often as its good friend hyperbole, but I was basically trying to get you to feel sorry for us which is just ridiculous considering that we still have more living space than approximately 98% of the world.

I read this actual sentence in an obituary a few weeks ago: (I changed the name)

"Louisa may have had many ventures but her true love lay with Jazzercise."

I read them mostly because I think it's interesting how many euphemisms there are for the word 'died'. I think 'expired' is my least favorite.

We got some money to buy a new television for Christmas and we finally got around to actually buying one a couple of weeks ago. Our old one was eleven years old and was deeper than it was wide. It required rabbit ears. When the new tv showed us its sparkly high definition, the husband and I chortled with glee. It must be like what it feels like to get glasses for the first time. Of course, it is also precisely the kind of nonsense Ray Bradbury was warning us about in Fahrenheit 451. Why engage in the real world when the virtual world is so accommodating?

Harper is a pretty even-tempered kid most of the time. She does, however, tend to get frustrated quickly when she can't do something by herself, like get a toy that's really wedged into the corner of the toy box. She usually lets out this high pitched grunt/scream. Yesterday she took it up a notch. She was trying to ride her tricycle through a too narrow pathway in her room and the wheel got tangled in a corner of her tent. I was washing dishes and heard the grunt/scream and was walking over to render aid (and encourage her to ask for help before the grunt/scream instead of as a last resort) just as she threw herself backwards, a la Mary Catherine Gallagher on SNL of old, into the side of her tent. To add to the comedy, she had earlier taken off most of her clothes and was wearing these white patent dress shoes with ankle straps that she calls her "ballet shoes." So there she was on her back in the middle of her wrecked tent crying, yelling, and waving her ballet shoes in the air in utter frustration. I had to put her in her bed for five minutes just to compose myself.
Hudson thinks it is hilarious when I blow my nose. He is also entertained when I am putting my hair in a ponytail. He starts talking in the high pitched voice he uses when he sees animals so I can only assume that he thinks I have suddenly sprouted a puppy on the back of my head.

Weep with those who weep

Our rent is going up $300 a month; $600 if we go month to month. That's right. For just under 900 square feet. We'll be moving. Again.
Today we went to the library. Harper fell off the curb and skinned her knee. Once inside, Hudson fell and cut his lip open while trying to get a better view of the book Harper and I were reading. It bled rather impressively, he wailed very loudly, and Harper did not get to finish her book which left her cranky. We got home and I put Hudson in the highchair so I could wash Harper's hands and when we came back into the kitchen he was chewing on his shoe. Picturing all of the invading microbes rushing into his cut lip, I overreacted. "OH HUDSON--Nooooo!" And this is just too much for the little wounded one. His poor swollen lip makes an upside-down "U" and he starts weeping. As I'm getting him out of the highchair to comfort him, Harper's puppy apparently falls and hurts his lip too and Harper decides that the best way to comfort him is to start crying as well. So, because misery loves company, I joined them. There we sat, for about 5 minutes, having a good old fashioned catharsis. Then we dried ourselves off, had some lunch, and took (Lord willing) very long naps.