It took about two hours this morning for something to become clear to me: either I am going to throw away all the Polly Pocket shoes, or I am going to go insane.

You see, I did a foolish thing this Christmas: I bought the girls a couple of Polly Pocket dolls, and I told others that they enjoyed Polly Pockets as well, resulting in a gift of a lavish, purple Polly Pocket Jumbo Jet. This jet is filled with tiny airplane seats and tiny furniture and even tinier trays of food and drink, and tiny stylish clothes for Polly to wear, and truly infinitesimal shoes. The girls adore it and they have been playing with it all day long.

Now, you mothers who are experienced in the ways of Polly are probably already nodding in recognition of the tininess of the Polly Pocket accessories and the insanity they cause, knowing that only a fool would request Polly Pocket toys for Christmas.




I had good reason for doing this, though. You see, a neighbor girl gave my daughters a bunch of beautiful Polly Pocket houses a few months ago, and the girls play with these all the time. I thought they might like an addition to their collection. The thing is, though, that these were used Polly Pocket toys. All the small parts had been lost long before we ever received them. It was just the houses, some not-too-tiny furniture, and two or three dolls, with no extra outfits, and NO SHOES whatsoever.

Today, after I spent half an hour putting Polly's fancy jet together, I opened the package of accessories and carefully placed them on the table for the girls to play with. It took about two minutes for them to be all over the floor: colorful plastic landmines, lying in wait to cause extreme pain to the unsuspecting, unprotected foot that might try to walk across the living room. Everywhere I look, there's something else: a pea-size drinking cup. A dime-size dinner plate. A shoe smaller than a Tic-Tac. I keep thinking that we've got it all picked up, and then something else appears to drive me mad.

Not only are they annoying because they're just all over the place, but have you ever tried putting these things on? The clothes are ridiculous. I know my parents used to complain about the Barbie clothes my sister and I had, but Barbie's got nothing on Polly Pocket. Barbie's clothes were at least made of cloth. Polly's wardrobe consists of two-piece outfits made of molded plastic. The two pieces are front and back, and they are supposed to somehow connect in the shoulder area, snapping together into a seamless plastic outfit for Polly, like tiny trendy armor.

Maybe I'm just toy-clothing-deficient, but I cannot make those stupid outfits snap together and stay on. Polly is going around with her clothes falling off all the time, and so now Beth has mostly resigned herself to playing with the dolls in the little painted-on bathing-suit-type outfits that they are wearing underneath their pathetic doesn't-fit-together clothing.

Well, I've had enough of it. Call me heartless if you will, but every time I find a tiny shoe on the floor, it's going in the trash. Before too long, this new Polly Pocket play set will be reduced to the same nice, hand-me-down state that our original Polly houses are in. Cute setting. A few dolls. Furniture to play with. Still plenty of fun for the kids. But NO tiny little pieces.

Because Polly Pocket shoes are of the devil, and either they go, or I do.

Today Eric was home to document our baking efforts. And I made sure I at least combed the girls' hair, so we'd be cute with our matching aprons, just like Mom and I were back in 1983:



And here we are making sugar cookies from my mom's recipe today:

Doesn't this brave little rose blooming outside my house know that it's December?

It's a good thing I've become skilled at interpreting kid-speak. Because otherwise we'd be in a world of confusion around here. Lately I've noticed a couple verbal oddities my children have developed, involving shortening words that aren't actually supposed to be shortened.

Me: I need to do some laundry. Let's put these clothes in the washing machine.

Beth, picking up a single shirt: Here, Mom! Here's a cloe! And here's another cloe!

I guess if clothes is plural, than a singular item of clothing ought to be called a cloe. Makes perfect sense.

Or the scene might play out like this:

Beth, sadly, looking at her legs: I fell down and got some owies.

Me: Yep. Looks like you've got some bruises there.

Beth, pointing to one bruise after another: See? Here's a bru, and here's another bru.

Same principle. Completely logical. Completely wrong.

Lucy's current word-shortening habit makes much less sense. Her speech is coming along nicely, and she has even learned to say "Uh-huh" as an affirmative answer to some things, making communication much easier (although her default answer to any question is still usually "No.")

She has a couple little quirks, though. She is usually quite eager to go anywhere when she has the opportunity, and whenever she sees us putting our coats and shoes on, she runs to the coat tree and points at her coat, yelling, "Zhack! Zhack!"

What? You don't know what zhack means? That's just 1-year-old speak for "Jacket." Why does she leave off the last syllable? I have no idea.

She does it with another word, too. Whenever she is cranky or sleepy, she requires something soft to cuddle with. Luckily, she has about a dozen blankets scattered around the house at any given time, so comfort is never far from reach. She requests these by shouting, "Bank! Bank! Bank!"

Not "blanket." Not even "Blankie." Just "Bank."

You know what? I never correct the girls when they use these words, though. Beth is usually quite well-spoken for a 3-year-old, and Lucy has become pretty good at making herself understood, too. So I just giggle over these little verbal mishaps all the more. They'll figure it out soon enough.

The other night, right while we were in the middle of decorating our tree, there was a knock on the door. I opened it to see a trio of grade-school age boys.

"Would you like to buy some mistletoe?" they called in unison.

"How much is it?" I asked.

"Seventy-five cents," they said.

The timing, right as we were in the midst of decking our halls, so to speak, was perfect, and the price seemed reasonable to me. I like having a sprig of mistletoe around the house at Christmastime. Since we live in town and can't go shoot it out of the trees ourselves, I was more than willing to give these kids some money for their trouble. (A note for those of you who don't live in the country: Mistletoe is a parasite plant. Around here, it often grows in oak trees. When the leaves fall in the winter, you'll see big round balls of mistletoe, a hundred feet up in the crown of the tree. To get it down, a lot of folks shoot at it with a shotgun until a bunch falls down).

Beth, delighted, handed the kids three quarters, and we brought the mistletoe inside. It was a small sprig, tied with a bit of red curling ribbon and packaged in a plastic sandwich bag. On the outside of the bag was written in black ink, "50 cents."

Eric started to laugh as soon as he saw it. "Those kids probably bought that from some store for 50 cents apiece and now they're selling it for 75. I bet that sprig used to be twice as big, too. They're probably doubling their profit."

Indeed, the sprig was on the small side. And the fact that these kids didn't even bother to hide the fact that they were re-selling their wares at a marked-up price was a little tacky, I thought. They didn't mention that they were fund-raising for a club or anything; the quarters are probably just going to line their little pockets. But hey, what do I care? I can easily pay 75 cents for some mistletoe, and a 25- or 50-cent profit per bag is pretty minor. They're going to have to knock on a lot of doors to get enough quarters to buy anything decent.

So I just look at as encouraging some young businessmen. They'll probably be running the country in 20 years.

And I don't think there can really be anything cuter in the world than my 3-year-old standing in our kitchen doorway, calling, "Look what I'm standing under..." and her 1-year-old sister running up to give her a hug and a kiss. I'll pay a lot more than 75 cents to see that, jacked-up price or not.

Over the last week we've been getting into the Christmas swing of things around here.



From helping Dad put up the lights.



Even though it was already dark outside.



To a visit to Christmas Storybook Land.



To picking out our tree at a Christmas tree farm (Beth is just a little eager).



Lucy has found the right tree. (and we did end up going home with the one she pointed at, in fact.)



Lucy has also found the coolest thing ever: a STICK!



No, you don't understand. It's a STICK!



At home, Beth was thrilled to carefully place each ornament on the tree.



Lucy was more about taking the ornaments off so she could play with them.



See my lips saying that word: "Noooo."



And here we have the saddest kid in the history of Christmas trees. It's pretty, it's sparkly, and we wouldn't let her touch it. Tragic.



But we persevered, and Beth got to add the final touch: the star on top.



Beautiful.

Monday is my laundry day. In theory, this means that I spend all day sorting, washing, drying and folding, ending with my family's closets and drawers full of clean clothes to wear all week long. It's ironic*, but I was actually much better about getting my laundry all done when I did not have a washer and dryer in my house and I had to travel somewhere else to do it every week.

Now that I have a washer and dryer at home and it should really be much easier to accomplish, Laundry Day looks something more like this:

Monday morning: Start to sort laundry and realize that laundry baskets are scattered all over the house, full of last week's laundry that got done but never put away. Forget about using baskets and sort laundry into piles all over the hallway floor. Notice all the various mud and food stains on the kids' clothes that have been sitting in the hamper all week and spray them with stain stuff, hoping that will do the trick. Put first load in.

Monday afternoon: Go to put first load in the dryer and realize that dryer is full of clothes from last week that never got folded. Spend an hour or so folding and putting away clothes and feel somewhat triumphant because laundry baskets are all empty.

Monday evening: cycle clothes through washer and dryer a couple more times and spend another hour or so folding clean clothes while watching TV. Notice that some of the kids' stains came out and some did not. Throw stained clothes into the bottom of the hamper to be re-treated with extra-special stain stuff another day when you have more time. Go to bed with a couple laundry baskets full of clothes that you intend to put away first thing in the morning.

Tuesday: Maybe put away clothes. Maybe not. Continue cycling clothes through washer and dryer, piling up clean, unfolded clothes in a single empty basket in the corner of the laundry room.

Tuesday afternoon: feel good because all the piles in the hallway have disappeared. Ignore pile in laundry room.

Wednesday morning: Husband yells that he has no underwear. Say indignantly, "But I just did all the laundry!" Fish some underwear out of the mountain in the corner of the laundry room.

Wednesday afternoon: Fold at least some of the laundry so husband will have underwear and socks for tomorrow.

Thursday evening: Finish folding laundry and wonder why in the world you are still folding laundry on Thursday, when Monday is laundry day. Put baskets of clean laundry in the hallway to put away tomorrow.

Friday: Put the baskets in the bedrooms where the various clothes they contain ought to go, and feel good because now the hallway is clear.

Saturday: Notice that the hampers seem to be overflowing and wonder how that can be, when you just finished doing laundry a couple days ago. Throw another load in the wash.

Sunday afternoon: Notice that load has been sitting in washer for more than 24 hours and is all wet and slightly stinky. Throw it in the dryer and put in an extra "Mountain Fresh"-scented dryer sheet, hoping that will do the trick. Feel good because you're doing laundry and it's not even laundry day, and you must be getting a head start on the week's work.

Monday: Wash, rinse and repeat.


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*Vocabulary note from first paragraph: I have been scared to use the word ironic ever since a friend of mine, who happened to be an English teacher, informed me that none of the events described in Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic" are actually ironic, but merely unfortunate. I had listened to the song many times and that had never once occurred to me, so I began to question my own status as a self-proclaimed stickler for appropriate grammar, and began to avoid the word ironic, because I was afraid I would use it wrong and all the other grammar nerds would mock me.

But I am pretty sure that what I described above really is ironic, so I'll be brave and let my usage stand. Feel free to mock me if I am wrong.

You ever have one of those weeks where the garbage disposal breaks, and the dishwasher stops draining, and the car is making that funny smell that means it's maybe about to overheat again, and you do a load of laundry and discover when it comes out of the dryer that a pink crayon went through the wash and streaks of hot pink wax are melted onto 75 percent of all the pants your family owns, and the thought of having to pay to replace all those pants just about knocks you onto the floor?

It was one of those weeks.

This week I also happened to be reading a couple memoirs by well-known, well-paid writers: "I Feel Bad About My Neck," by Nora Ephron, and "The Year of Magical Thinking," by Joan Didion. (These books were funny, and beautifully heart-breaking, respectively). What these books have in common is that these ladies happen to be wealthy. Quite wealthy. They discuss paying tens of thousands of dollars to live in the right building in New York, and jetting off to Honolulu to live in hotels for awhile and do some writing, and going out to eat every single night, and flying to Paris in the fall. These people have dinner parties with Carl Sagan and live in the same building as Rosie O'Donnell.

These people are so out of my realm of comprehension.

But that's okay. Because my husband was able to easily fix the dishwasher and the garbage disposal, and he'll probably fix the car this weekend. And I worked some laundry magic and we didn't have to go around with pink-streaked pants (because there's actually no way we would have gone out and bought all-new pants. They would have just been pink).

And this weekend I get to visit with my lovely friends from college, whom I don't see often enough. And Eric is going to hang out with his daughters and probably some extended family too.

Our house is nothing like a luxury hotel, and our neighbors are not famous, and we have never once been on a private jet.

But life is good.

I did something today that I once swore I would never do: hung around the house in sweatpants until noon.

In my defense, I was forced to this because my washing machine was out of commission yesterday, and so this morning every single one of my limited number of pants that actually fit me was in the midst of being washed. But still. It's the principle of the thing.

You see, when I first became a stay-at-home mom three and a half years ago, I had an absolute horror of being THAT kind of woman. You know, the one who shuffles around in the house in sweats and eats bon-bons and watches soap operas all day. The one who ignores her kids and does nothing with her life.

So, when as a new mother I discovered that my baby could sleep from about 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. but absolutely required a feeding by 5:30 at the latest, did I hop back into my nice cozy bed afterward? No. When I was working I was up by 5:30 and at the office by 6:45. Why should motherhood be any different? I would treat it like a job, I determined. Did I nap when my baby napped, as everyone told me I ought to do? Only rarely. My husband was out working all day to support the family. He didn't get to nap every afternoon. Why should I?

Mommy was my new job title, and I was determined to do it well.

And so. The years have come and gone. I've gone from working part-time to working not at all to doing a little freelancing from home. I've made it through the sleepless nights and hours of breastfeeding not once, but twice, and am gearing up for it again. And I find that things are different this time around.

Are my standards slipping? Perhaps. Am I merely being realistic? Maybe that's it.

Whatever it is, I've been taking it easy on myself this pregnancy. Real easy. I've had a lot of strange hormonal fluctuations that result in swift mood changes--cheerful to weeping to intensely angry within an hour. It's not been a lot of fun for me, or my family. And so to cope, I've just flat out given up on some things. Making the beds? Nope. Fixing the girls' hair every day? That's out the window. Going running every morning? Not happening. You get the picture.

As a result, I'm much mellower and relaxed. And that's a good thing. Yet my eternal angst over what I really ought to be doing with my time and whether I am being a good and exemplary and productive person resurfaces from time to time. Like today. When I didn't put on real pants until about 11:30 a.m. How many responsibilities are too much and make me drained and stressed? How few are too few and make me lazy and bored?

It's hard to say, and I'm beginning to recognize that it changes from season to season, depending on what other hurdles (pregnancy or those first post-partum weeks or potty-training) I'm currently having to leap.

Maybe sometimes I can manage a clean house and a happy family and lots of extra projects too. And maybe other times I can't.

And maybe, as I said to my husband today, I need to stop worrying and blabbering about whether I am being productive.

And just be.

I don't think I have an accent.

That is to say, I know that if I went to England or Australia or even Canada they'd be able to peg me as a Yankee right off. But right here in America, I think I speak in a pretty normal way, with no unusual vowel sounds or strange twists to my words. People in other areas of the country--the South or Minnesota or Brooklyn or wherever--they're the ones with the accents. In my mind, I'm just normal.

And then this morning I found myself on the phone with a customer service representative who had perhaps the thickest, heaviest Southern accent I've ever heard in real life. I could understand only about half of what she said. And it was clear she was having the same trouble with me. I was enunciating as well as I could. We were spelling words out to each other. We even used the phonetic alphabet in an attempt to make clear what we were trying to say. It took two tries for me to give her my e-mail address so she could look up my account, and three tries for me to understand the coupon code she was giving me to make my online purchase work correctly. It was ridiculous.

I hung up feeling frustrated that the company didn't hire someone who talked more clearly, and she probably hung up wondering just how ignorant and slow one little Northwesterner can be.

How can two people be from the same country, and speak the same language, and still be so completely foreign to each other?

Clearly, I need to travel more, until I'm well-versed in all the different dialects of the U.S. (and a few foreign countries wouldn't hurt either). Then all my customer service calls will be nice and easy.

I like lists.

I have a chalkboard in my kitchen. On it, I keep a running tally of things to do. Some items I triumphantly erase within a day ("make grocery list" is so far all I've erased today) while others languish for weeks. Or longer. (I believe "update photo albums" finally got stealthily erased out of guilt because I couldn't stand to see the undone item staring me in the face anymore).

I don't put every-day items on there ("make dinner" and "get dressed" are not important enough to rate to-do list status.) But reminders for appointments, people to call, projects that must be done, even semi-regular but not every-day events get put on the chalkboard. (You wouldn't think that two intelligent people like Eric and myself would need a written reminder to take the garbage out, and yet I can't count the number of Tuesday mornings I've found myself hauling the bins out to the curb in my bathrobe at 6 a.m. because we didn't remember to do it the night before).

In addition to the chalkboard, I often have smaller, paper lists of work things to do or phone calls to make strewn across my desk. I used to put sticky notes all over the edges of my computer monitor at work. A boss once commented that he had never seen so many sticky notes on one desk.

I am even one of those silly girls who made a list of all the things I was looking for in a future husband. (And yes, he fulfills every item on the list).

I've always felt a bit nuts for needing so much written reinforcement in my daily routine, and for getting as much satisfaction as I do from crossing things off my list. So I was glad to find this blog and learn that I am not alone in my list obsession. Not only are there other list-ers out there, there are hundreds of them! There's a blog about them! Even a book. Check out the Nov. 14 post. Apparently I am not alone in occasionally even writing down things I've already done, just so I can cross them off. At least I've never made a "to-don't list."

I'm not that weird. Yet.