Longer than a Tweet but Shorter than a Blog Post, 2.0

Sometimes I really think I want one more child. And then my daughter wraps her little arm around my neck, fondles my ear with her fingers, and tells me, "Mama, you're the best!" before planting a kiss on my lips at night. And I wonder why I would ever start over with diapers again.

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Walking around New York about three days into our trip, Son asked me, "Mama, does anyone live in New York City?" I looked at him a little astonished and told him that millions of people lived here, that probably most of the people he saw walking down the sidewalk at that very moment lived here. Clearly he could hear the question in my voice, and he replied, confused, "But...I haven't seen any houses."

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If you have mosquitoes the size of small birds in your state, as we do in Michigan, and if your children are allergic to those dastardly bites, as mine are, you basically have two options. You can either, as Son explained to me, "wish that the only mosquitoes at our house were boys because only the girl mosquitoes bite." Or you can break out the chidlren's liquid benadryl. It worked wonders on Daughter's ENORMOUSLY swollen lip this week, as well as on the giant welts all over her arms. It also has the added benefit of making bedtime pretty quick. (To be clear: the stuff is ingested, not rubbed on the bites.) The doctors will tell you not to use it for more than three days in a row, but we find that two or three doses (one every twelve hours) is all it takes to make those huge, itchy welts nearly disappear. Easy peasy.

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Can anyone explain to me why the manufacturers of those stylish fine-cotton shirts -- you know, the ones sort of like t-shirts, but with curved seams or ruched necks or other nice design features that make them look like real grown-up shirts, presentable enough to wear out to a casual lunch while still comfortable enough for the playground, basically, the perfect shirts design-wise -- Can anyone explain why THOSE shirts are invariably made of some kind of magical cotton that shrinks vertically when washed according to the tag directions? It never fails that the bottom edge of those shirts hits the perfect spot just around my hip bones when I try them on in the store, and then I wear them once and feel all stylish in them, and then I wash them, and suddenly, they are naval-gazing shirts. I just don't get it. How can cotton shrink only in one direction? And why is that direction always UP? If I were a clothing designer, I'd do a long-waisted sister a favor and make a comfy-but-stylish casual shirt that wouldn't make her look like she was trying to pretend she was seventeen again, all flat-bellied and sexy with that sliver of skin hanging out. I mean, I'm no prude, but there are just some parts of a 30-something-mother-of-two body that don't need to be hanging provocatively out of one's clothes, and the threat of butt cleavage is one of those places.

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Fishing with children is dangerous. Not because someone might get hooked in the eye (which someone might when it's Amateur Hour casting into Ye Olde Neighborhood Ponde). Not because someone might fall into the pond (which someone might when it's All Fun and Antics on the slippery muddy banks). But because someone might actually catch a fish. And then YOU, the mother, will have to undertake the hair-raising, empathy-inducing, visceral sound and feeling evoking, deeply unpleasant process of removing the poor fish from the hook. All the while feeling as if you a) have no earthly idea what you are doing or how to do it quickly and effeciently; and therefore b) are certainly torturing the poor fish; and depressingly c) have created a deeply flawed plan for the afternoon because if a kid can catch one fish with just five minutes of effort, imagine how much fun he can have fishing for an hour -- and of course, the other kid will want a turn with the pole too.

My advice? "Lose" the rest of the bait by accidentally dropping that piece of bread into the water or letting the little sister feed it to the waiting giant carp (you honestly didn't think putting a poor innocent worm on a hook was going to be part of the equation did you?), and then just let them practice casting into the pond over and over. That's pretty fun.

Until someone gets hooked in the eye.

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Have a happy rest of the weekend!