Julep: bella figura

I just got the daily e-newsletter from school, which often features a few photos of what the children have been up to today. And I noticed today, as I have before, that my kid looks adorable and the other kids, not so much.

It's not that my children are physically so attractive - they are, but most of the other kids are also nice-looking. The difference is in wardrobe. The other kids might as well be wearing their pajamas. For instance, today the Bear has on khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, and a blue argyle sweater vest. And of course, his school shoes. The boy with whom he is building a block tower in the photo is dressed in a long-sleeved horizontally striped T-shirt, sweatpants with vertical striping on the legs, and plastic sneakers which may or may not light up.

The girls aren't much better. Mostly I'm seeing pants with long-sleeved T-shirts or T-shirt dresses with leggings. I prefer to send Little Bits to school in a dress, but I was caught short on the laundry this morning - they don't usually go to school on Thursday, and I don't have enough tights for four school days in a row. I could have sent her in play clothes, but instead Little Bits is wearing red corduroy overalls with black and white plaid trim, a white blouse with peter pan collar, and two hair bows. (She wanted white, and her brother was adamant that she should wear a red one to match her outfit.)

In a vacuum, most of the clothing items these kids are wearing are fine. I would let my kids wear any given item around the house for play time, or over to my mom's house, or even to Target or the grocery store. But even though they do a lot of play at "school" at this age, I just feel like school deserves the good stuff out of one's wardrobe. Yes, a lot of the time they come home with paint or spaghetti sauce on their nice clothes. I have a free hand with the Oxi Clean, and that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make so that my kids don't grow up to be the kind of people who go to their college classes in sweats or show up to traffic court wearing a Tweety Bird T-shirt and jeans with holes.

Twinks, I am expecting next year's school experience to be a step up. If nothing else, I know the Twinkle sisters will ensure that my two are not the only ones in the building who appear to have changed their clothes after rolling out of bed in the morning.

Julep: for laughs

I feel like you girls will appreciate these.

http://the-toast.net/2014/11/06/women-rejecting-marriage-proposals-western-art-history/

Julep: Nobody puts Baby in the corner

The Bear loves to sing. He sings to me, he sings to himself all the time. He makes up his own songs, he sings children's songs, he sings songs on the radio. He particularly loves to sing the songs from Frozen, including - especially, of course - "Let It Go." He knows every word. He will sing it with me when there is no music playing. Sometimes I can hear him singing it to put himself to sleep.

So yesterday we were driving home from school, he was singing something and I said, "I love to hear you sing, buddy." And he said, in the saddest little voice imaginable, "But I can't sing Let It Go anymore." I said, "Why not? Who said so?" And he said, "XX [a little girl in his class] told me. I'm not allowed to sing that song because I'm not a gril." (Not a typo - this is how he pronounces "girl.")

Y'all. My heart broke.

Needless to say, I immediately assured him that XX doesn't know what she's talking about, that just because Elsa is a girl doesn't mean boys can't sing that song too, that he should sing "Let It Go" anytime he wants to and he can tell XX that his mama says XX doesn't know shit from Shinola. (The last part was slightly more child-friendly when I said it out loud.) I think I convinced him. But. Little Miss XX has some thunder coming.

I'm sure the preschool director thought I was a nut when I called her today to report this story and insist that someone have a little chat with XX. I realize that XX is only 3, and this is an age where children are very interested in gender development and making distinctions between themselves and the other, and I understand that she didn't mean to crush him. But imagine the reaction if Bear had told XX she is not allowed to play with trucks, because trucks are only for boys. Or if someone told XX she is not allowed to sing "Let It Go" because Elsa is a white girl and XX is black.

Reverse sexism is still sexism, and I am having no part of it. If my son wants to sing diva show tunes until the cows come home, damn it, he can.

Twinkle: Fun Sink Needs a Personality Adjstment

So I've found this awesome balance with my new job, and it is working really well. I now do all of it from home, or a coffee shop, or a carpool line, or wherever. I describe what I see in pictures of the items that are in these estate sales. For instance, there might be a picture of a blue vase, and the caption will say "blue vase," and I'll change it to say, "A lovely Sevres-style vase with gilded foliate scrollwork and cobalt blue ground; it has a pretty pastoral scene in reserve." I love it because it's fun learning the words for everything, and I can do it on my own time. It's not every day; I can still go to the grocery store or make dinner or do laundry, but I look forward to when new items pop up that need their descriptions embellished. It is fascinating; I learn every day, but I don't feel like I'm neglecting my mom duties. It's not a full-time job, and sometimes it's only a few hours a week. It depends on how many sales are going and where we all are in the sale. I enjoy the times when there's a lot of work, because I learn new things. But if there's not a lot of work, that's fine, too. It is the perfect balance for me, and I could not have designed a better job for me.

I don't know why Fun Sink has to be so nasty about it. Things are generally OK with her, but I don't think she understands this job at all. She was asking about it tonight. I talked passionately about how much I like it, how fascinating it is, how much I feel like I'm learning, and what a great balance I've found by working from home on a really relaxed and flexible schedule. She said, "Well, that's all fine. IF you can make any money that way." And, honestly, for me this job is about learning and doing something that I find intellectually interesting, and a little bit of extra money is great, but I'm not exactly the primary breadwinner here, and nobody expects me to be. This balance works for us; and it's OK that we're not getting a 40-hour/week salary for it because the flexibility is worth more to us than that monetary amount. What is her problem?

I sort of feel like no one can judge me anymore. Like, now I have this job, so the Leaning In b*tches can't criticize me. But I'm still home with my kids. So the Stay-At-Home crowd can shut their mouths. I have carte blanche and no hater can say anything. It's a lovely place to be.

She was also a little too giddy tonight when there was a miscommunication between Mr. Twinks and me. The girls are spending the night over there tonight, so I thought Mr. Twinks and I would have a date night, and we had even talked about it. But he decided he needed to work on Baby B's birthday cake, so, when I said, "What are we doing tonight?" he said, "I guess I'm decorating a cake." I said, "Oh...I thought we were having a date night." Fun Sink giddily chimed in, "Misunderstanding!" She just sucks. And yeah, it was a low-key night: we went to Kroger for cake supplies and joked around and had fun. We were laughing more in a Kroger than she ever has. What the hell is her problem?

Julep: shoes with lights

Mr-Mama went to Hilton Head with her buddies two weeks ago. I knew she would be spending a lot of time at the outlet malls, and in a feeble effort to get out ahead of a problem, I sent her an email with a list of items that the kids and I could really use, if she happened to run across any of them while bargain-hunting.

Instead of purchasing any of the things on the list, she bought Little Bits some sleeveless pajamas (very handy for wintertime) and a new pink coat ... after I just dropped $40 on a beautiful little corduroy swing coat for her. Best case scenario, my coat gets worn half as often, worst case is she gets all attached to the pink coat and there's a battle royale every time I try to get my coat on her. You know what? Mr-Mama's coat is going back. I picked out a coat I really like for my kid to wear all winter, and she's going to wear it. Finis.

I can't get around the other problem she purchased for me, though. She bought the Bear sneakers that look like cars, with lights in the heels. He wore them yesterday (since she brought them over when I was not home), and he wanted to wear them to school today. I said no. Tears ensued.

She sent me four text messages about the shoes from Hilton Head to make sure she had the size right. I ignored the first three. The fourth came after midnight, when she informed me that she bought the shoes and I should let her know whether to exchange sizes before she came home. I wrote her back and said, "While he would love shoes with lights, I already bought him some very nice shoes to play in for winter." Did that stop her? Ha!

I draw the line at wearing these shoes to school or church. I would prefer that my child never wear plastic shoes that light up, but as a grandmother, I suppose it's her prerogative to buy hideous items that he will love madly. However, one would hope that she would have enough foresight to realize that buying my kid something I will not let him wear every day means that she has purchased a boxful of family trauma. Thanks, My-My!

Mr. J called me a fascist this morning when I told the Bear that his new shoes are not school shoes, and handed him his school shoes instead. (We are still in a cold war stand-off after yesterday's explosion.) I'm OK with that. At least my kids will grow up learning to dress for the occasion.

Julep: overwrought

This was supposed to be the first weekend in three months that Mr. J would be home all weekend and available to participate in family life. Literally since the end of July, there have been only two weekends that he was not wholly occupied with sailing all weekend, and one of those weekends was our anniversary trip to Maine.

I desperately need a new pair of shoes for the cold weather - my driving mocs/ bus-walking shoes are completely trashed - and I need some new bras but I need to get fitted first. I don't want to take my children for these activities; although Little Bits would love the shoe department, I feel that they are rather too much to unleash on the sanctity of Dillard's lingerie department. I can only imagine the Bear's running commentary on the measuring process.

So I've been waiting and waiting for this weekend. Did I mention that Sunday is the Bear's birthday? Did I mention that we have family and Bear's friends coming over to our house on Sunday afternoon ... and that our powder room toilet has been broken for at least eight months, plus there's a gaping hole in the screen door on the back porch and a pile of crap next to our garage that makes us look like white trash? For Mother's Day - yes, that's right, in May - I asked Mr. J to address these household tasks plus a couple other items that should take a handy man like himself less than two hours, total, to complete. None have been tackled, but he did find time to install his friend's garbage disposal, so there's that.

To complete the white trash motif, our grass is overgrown, and my toes haven't seen a pedicure since August.

Mr. J just told me that he has booked sailing lessons both days this weekend. I cussed him like a sailor, then called my mother and cried.

Julep: what we have here is a failure to communicate

Mr. J is off sailing again this weekend. I talked to my MIL earlier this week, and she said she'd like to have the kids come play at her house sometime. "That would be great," I said; "We have plans on Sunday and we'll be going to church on Saturday evening, but I have a lot of errands to run and it would be such a help if they could hang out with you for a while."

She sent me an email today and suggested that the kids could come over Saturday afternoon so I could run my errands or get a pedicure or go to church, and then I can come back around dinnertime and we can order a pizza and I can look at the sample clothes from her Expensive Clothes party.

Well, this would not be helpful. I know perfectly well what was going on in her head. She doesn't like to get up in the mornings, and would prefer to loll around in her pajamas until noon. I feel that - I would love a pajama-lolling myself. But you know, I already told her that we were going to church Saturday evening - it's her church too, she's well aware of what time Saturday Mass starts and she knows that they can't be relied on to wake up from naps before 3:30. I would get them over to her house, run maybe one errand, and then come back and have to drag them to church when they are not nearly tired of her toys yet.

But did you catch the key piece from her idea? I would leave the kids with her while I go to church. She thought to herself, "Julep can go to church by herself and that way I can sleep in."

Last month I let her keep the kids while I went to church on Sunday evening. And I did not feel right about it at all. My conscience was pricking me all through Mass, and I actually missed having them there squirming around in the pew. I decided I don't want to do that any more. And when I picked them up from her house that evening, I thanked her profusely and told her that the time alone with my thoughts helped me realize that even though it's hard to take both of them by myself when Mr. J is gone, I can manage, and I want to manage. It is important to me that my kids go with me to church on Sunday, every week.

I do my level best to be diplomatic with her but that woman just does not listen.

Oh, and the Expensive Clothes? I have told her the last two times that they just don't cut their clothes for me. They are beautiful, but they don't make petites. It is really nice that she wants to give me things, but I don't need any of the things she wants me to have, and all the sleeves and hems are several inches too long.

She doesn't care what I actually need, she only cares about what she wants to give.