We waited so long for these things to show up.

The bottom ones came in at about 10 months--but those top two didn't show up until she was almost  a year and a half old. It seemed like forever.

Bethie, five and a half years ago, with two brand-new front teeth.

I remember how excited she was to be able to bite into an apple, just like a big girl.

And now she's gone and lost them.

Bethie, on Monday morning, with no front teeth.

No front teeth!

I am, on one hand, thrilled. The second of those top two to get loose had been hanging on by a thread for more than a week. She would wiggle it and wiggle it and turn it around in circles, but wouldn't pull it out. It looked so gross. I was glad to see it go. Plus, just like I thought she was adorable back when she finally got top teeth, I now think she looks really SUPER adorable without them.

But I'm a little sad, because now they're going to grow in. Big, full-size, *grown-up teeth.* (And if she takes after me, the result won't be pretty. I had the biggest buck teeth! Braces were a good thing for me). Because once you've got those big grown-up teeth in front, you just don't look like a cute little kid anymore. I remember in the book Peter Pan, that was how the author made the point that Peter would never grow up: "Wendy saw at once that he still had all his first teeth." So there it is: if you believe in J.M. Barrie's criteria, getting those grown-up teeth is it. The end. The proof. She's not going to stay little forever.

Here is another eternal question to ponder:

Why is it that I can think my children are perfectly presentable, only to get them in the car, lean in to buckle their car seat straps, and discover that their faces are disgusting?

Seriously. I look at them before we head out the door. Sometimes, I even notice a spot of jam or something and tell them to wipe off their face. Sometimes I even wipe it off for them. And I think everything is good. And then suddenly, when I get to the car, I see that their faces are covered in gunk. Boogers, snot, jam, peanut butter, toothpaste...they've got it all.

Pretty eyes. Pretty smile. Disgusting food all over the face.

Is the lighting better in the car? Is it just that when I do the car-seat buckle I have to lean in real close, so I can see the gunk on their skin in all its glory? I don't know what it is. All I do know is that every single day I think we're ready to go, and then we get to the car and I find myself licking my thumb or pulling a crumpled napkin out of the glove compartment, or sometimes even using the cuff of my shirt, and then wetting it with my own saliva to wipe their faces clean before I pull out of the driveway. I fully admit that this is disgusting. And, as Beth pointed out to me, I'm not really making their faces cleaner. "You're making them *dirtier,* Mama. Because you're putting your spit germs all over us."

Guilty as charged. But I don't care. You know why? Because if I go out in public with kids covered in snot and jam, people are going to think I don't care about keeping my children clean. When in reality I do care, it's just that a strange rip in the space-time continuum occurs inbetween my front door and my car, making it so that children who appeared clean one minute earlier are now revealed to, in fact, be filthy.

If I wipe their faces with spit, I may indeed be coating their faces with germs. However, while germs may be disgusting, they are INVISIBLE. Boogers and peanut butter are highly visible, and also disgusting. If my children must be covered in something disgusting, and there is a choice between invisible-disgusting and visible-disgusting, I'll take the invisible variety every time.

Spit. It's my disgusting face-coating of choice.

I intended to buy her some pink hair. I really did.

I was not about to dye her hair pink, but I had visions of finding some little clip-on thing that would give her a cascade of glorious pink curls for her birthday.

But somehow between work and kids and everything else in life, I never found time to get over to the beauty supply store at the mall during a time when she wasn't *with* me. In fact, I ended up doing almost all my birthday shopping in a last, desperate, after-the-kids-are-in-bed mad dash, far after that beauty supply store was closed. And I couldn't find any other pink hair.

I thought I could do the other stuff though. I was sure I'd be able to find a toy mail truck. I could have sworn I'd seen them, both hot wheels varieties from the chain toy stores and more educational, wooden ones from the upscale toy stores.

Neither of them had one.

I ordered a crocodile shirt. It arrived in time for her birthday. It was, alas, not "just her size." Though it claimed to be a size 2-4, it is far, far, far, too big. (Maybe it was a size 2-4 in womens???)

I'm feeling a little bit like a birthday failure.

I did, at least, come through on the crocodile cake (though I won't mention how late I had to stay up the night before the party in order to get it done).



And we found other things, things not on her list, things that she seems to like just as well.



And today, regardless of how prepared or unprepared I was, or how well I did at finding the presents she thought she wanted, she is 3. She's beautiful and articulate and completely original. She never, never fails to make me smile.

We have a birthday tradition of allowing the birthday person to pick whatever they want to eat for dinner. Evie's choices for tonight:

oranges
crackers
potato soup
cake
life savers

So that's what we're having for dinner tonight. Oranges, crackers, potato soup, cake, and life savers.

You know what's amazing? Potato soup was what I was already planning to make for dinner tonight before I remembered about the birthday dinner thing! (Another mom fail: forgetting to plan the birthday dinner until the morning of). But I hadn't mentioned it to her. I hadn't mentioned it to anyone. I just wrote it down on a sticky note. And then remembered about birthday dinner, and prepared to chuck my potato soup plans and run to the store for ingredients to make whatever her little heart desired.

And instead she picked what I was already going to make anyway (well, I was going to couple the soup with salad and bread, but oranges and crackers are fine too). Birthday dinner couldn't get any easier than that.

I just love this kid.

More insights into the fascinating world of Evie:

my mom asked her yesterday what she wanted for her birthday and she rattled off the following list (no mention of pink, this time).

1. A car like the mailman drives

image from Wikipedia

2. A lot of puzzles

3. A pig; but not a real pig, a toy pig

4. A crocodile shirt that is just my size

Shirt from spreadshirt.com

5. A book of "The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf"

and

6. A plant.

plant image from Wikipedia

I better start my shopping.

Eight days. Only eight.

That's how many more days Harold Camping and his followers believe are left until Judgement Day. These people truly believe, based on Camping's calculations, that the world as we know it will end on May 21, 2011.

Let me just state that I absolutely don't believe that's true, without commenting on the mental facilities of people who DO believe it.

I will say that if I truly believed the world was ending next week, I don't think I'd be spending my remaining time on a long road trip handing out tracts. What would I do?

Well, this might not be very ethical of me (and probably a sign that therefore I wouldn't make it to heaven on the 21st) if I truly believed it didn't matter any more, I'd stop being careful about money and just do all the things I want to do but think I can't afford. Who cares about paying? I wouldn't be here when the bills came due.

I would go out and buy fabulous, brand-new clothes so that at least I'd spend my last days on earth looking gorgeous.

I'd thank my parents for all the ways they have cared for me and supported me, both throughout my childhood and continuing to this very day.

I would spend every minute of every day with my family.

I would not do laundry.

I would eat a different delicious dessert every day.

I would spend every night in my husband's arms.

I would hike to a mountaintop--which one doesn't matter, just somewhere pretty and tall--and sit there and contemplate the beauty of this world.

I know I would not have time to travel to all the many, many different parts of the world that I have not seen, or do all the many different things I've dreamed of doing. But there's one thing I think I could manage, before the end.

Fireflies streaking through the forest. Original image, and more details, at Wikipedia.

I would book my family a flight to some part of the world where fireflies live. And then at night time I'd find a pretty spot, and we'd all sit in the dusk and watch the fireflies come out and swirl around us. I'd give my girls jars and join them in running around and catching as many as we could, then study them as they glowed, just for us, in our hands. Then we'd set them free and watch them shine out, up and away.

Because I've never seen a firefly, and I've always wanted to.

What would you do, if this week were really your last?

This post is another from my series of lost-and-found posts. Originally begun on Sept. 10, 2009.

It was the summer I was 15. Old enough to want a summer job, but not old enough to drive yet. Living out in the country, I was stuck at home...until a neighbor family asked me to babysit their kids a few days a week.

It sounded ideal--I could walk to work and I would earn tons of money. They paid me $1 per kid per hour. Most of the time, I had two kids, which means I would earn as much as $15 a day! Woohoo! But sometimes, when brothers and sisters from a previous marriage were visiting, I had as many as five children to watch, which means I was making the unbelievable amount of five dollars per hour. Plus, if you grew up reading the Baby-Sitters Club, like I did, then you knew that baby-sitting was totally awesome.

logo from Scholastic

The problem was, these kids and I just weren't a very good fit. I was 15 (only a few years older than the oldest of them) and soft-spoken, and really would have preferred small, compliant children who wanted to read books and draw pictures and play Barbies all day--after all, that's what I did when I was a kid. But these kids were active grade-schoolers who found sitting at home all summer with a dull teenage girl to be the worst thing ever. They soon learned that I had pretty much no actual authority over them--I couldn't ground them, or spank them, or do anything that really made a difference. The worst I could do was give them a "time out," which mattered absolutely nothing to them.

What I should have done, obviously, was mention any misbehavior to their parents, as soon as it happened. As a parent, that's what I want babysitters to do when my kids are naughty. I'm sure that the parents would have enforced some actual consequences for not minding the babysitter, and  we all would have gotten along much better. But I was afraid that if I mentioned anything to the parents, they would think I wasn't a good babysitter. That I wasn't capable of handling the job. And so I kept my mouth shut, and the kids took advantage of this (stupid, they were not). Talking back, not doing what I told them, complaining about everything I suggested--kids will generally take as much slack as you'll allow them, and I found myself completely incompetent at reining them in at all.

One day, one of the girls--she was about 6, I think, a cute little thing with an angelic face and long blonde hair--looked at my feet (I was wearing sandals) and said, in a tone of absolute scorn, "Your toes are the ugliest toes I have ever seen. If I had toes that ugly, I would cut them off."

But the real kicker came one day when I had all the kids. We were playing outside. Two of the boys said they wanted to walk down to the mini-mart at the end of the hill. I told them no. I didn't want to wrangle the whole gang, and argue with them about what snacks they could buy or what movies they could rent from the little corner of the store devoted to VHS tapes (they were all partial to horror movies, which they swore up and down their parents *always* let them watch).  The boys got mad. I said no. One boy in particular got even madder. I still said no. And then he just took off. This was all taking place in a rural area, with houses set on big pieces of property, bordering fields and trees. And the kid just ran off into the trees and before I knew it he was completely out of my sight. Gone.

I felt sick, and scared, and guilty, all at once. I knew that a good babysitter would never LOSE one of her kids. This did not happen to Kristy, Mary Ann, Stacey, or Claudia. What if he got lost? What if he didn't come back? I was going to lose my job, I was sure of it. And most of all, I was so pissed off. If I had found that little sucker, there were no guarantees I wouldn't have smacked him upside the head. Two or three or ten times.

I couldn't leave the other four kids by themselves while I looked for him. I couldn't let them all wander the woods with me because then I'd probably just lose the rest of them too.  I yelled his name. I screamed at him to get back here right this minute. I was sure he was up in a tree somewhere nearby, where I just couldn't see him, laughing at me. I waited. And he didn't come back.

And then, finally, I gave up. I went in the house and called the kids' grandmother, who lived up the street. I told her what had happened, and she came right down, and then I just left.

I didn't stay and help her look for him. I didn't watch the other kids while she found him. I just turned around and walked out the door.


I considered never going back. But I didn't want to be a quitter (even though walking out before my babysitting hours were over the day before kind of made me a quitter already). Not going back at all would *really* mean that the kids had won. And I couldn't let a bunch of little kids know that I couldn't handle them (even though I kind of couldn't).

So the next day, I went back. And the parents assured me that the kids had faced some consequences for the day before. And they didn't take me to task for abandoning my charges halfway through the day. And as far as I remember, the rest of the summer continued uneventfully. But I don't think that particular family ever asked me to babysit again.

How about you, readers? Did any of you have horrible babysitting experiences you care to share? Please let me know that I'm not the only one who fell short of the BSC's lofty standards.

Another post from my series of lost-and-found blogs; originally started Dec. 4, 2008.

Three words:

Brown. With speckles.

Seriously. I want everything in my dream kitchen to be something that doesn't show dirt.

 Everything in my current kitchen is white. White floors, white cabinets, white tile, white appliances, white sink, used-to-be-white-but-is-now-dingy-grey grout inbetween the tiles.

 You can clean this kitchen and have it sparkling and lovely, and 30 minutes later it looks messy again. Because white shows everything. I have come to hate white. Hate it very much.


And everytime a crumb gets dropped on the counter (which happens approximately every 17 seconds, I think); or everytime someone walks in from the back yard and bits of dirt and grass fall off the soles of their shoes onto the floor (daily); or everytime I cook and a splash of sauce or a bit of flour falls somewhere, I hate it more.

Now, when I say that my dream kitchen is going to be brown with speckles, this does not mean that I really want it to be floor to ceiling beige Formica. But I think you could select counters, floors, and cabinets that looked beautiful and yet were more forgiving than just plain white.

You are probably going to question my design sense forever, but I keep thinking back to my mom's 1983 kitchen. You can't really tell in this picture, but from what I recall it was pretty much all browns, and yellows. It had brown cabinets, Formica countertops patterned to look like butcher block, and some kind of brown and orange patterned linoleum on the floor. Also a bright yellow kitchen table.

Me and mom in the kitchen.

With the exception of the ugly linoleum, I think a modern kitchen along those lines would look really cool. Butcher block counters, wood floors, non-white cupboards and a spot of color in there somewhere.

I mean, just look how beautiful this kitchen is:

Photo from frugalbits.com (these counters are from Ikea and are relatively cheap, apparently. Who knew?)

Simple wood counters, wood floors, a shot of color with the cupboards. (Not that my busy family kitchen would ever be this serene and uncluttered, but a girl can dream).


Or this one?

Photo from High Street Market.

It's got the wood counters (brown! with a pattern to them!) more green in the cabinets (why isn't anyone pairing red with butcher block? I'm partial to red). The backsplash is white subway tile, but a *little* white I can handle. Just not one hundred percent.

Now, I'm not saying for sure that I would have to have butcher block counters. I love the way they look, but I have heard they're kind of a pain to maintain. I could go a completely different route, with maybe some kind of a retro '50s laminate.






I kind of love that Champagne Nugget one. Different from the butcherblock counters in the two pictures above, but still you see the common thread?

• Something that's a smooth surface (no grout to get disgusting); 
• in the brown/beige color family; 
• and with a pattern or variation to the surface (so every little speck doesn't stand out). 

I'd pair the laminate counters with

• cupboards in a color other than white
• a wood floor 

And I would be good to go!

(Some of you may be tempted to ask: Jen, if you get the kitchen of your dreams, the kitchen that doesn't show dirt, will you ever clean again? And the answer is yes. I still would. But I just wouldn't get stressed out looking at my smudgey, imperfect kitchen inbetween times, the way I do now.

There you go. A complete kitchen remodel. That's not much to ask, is it?

Today, as I look out my window, it's grey, windy and wet. Just like it has been for so many of the past few months. Yesterday was golden; today is depressingly not. Some people talk about moving somewhere else, some place where sunshine is not a rare commodity that Mother Nature measures out in drips and drops. But I can't help loving it here anyway.

image from Wikipedia

After all, according to the New York Times, Corvallis (and its overlooked sidekick, Albany) is THE safest place to live, natural-disaster-wise. I mean, yes, we've got rain. But we don't generally have tornadoes, hurricanes, major earthquakes, droughts or blizzards. Unless you're made of sugar, rain isn't going to kill you. (That's what my mom always used to say to me. "You're not made of sugar! You won't melt!")

I also love that when we *do* have a sunny day after a long rainy spell, it's not just another sunny day. It's a magical day. Yesterday I went for a run with a friend along the Willamette River on Albany's lovely Dave Clark path, hiked with my family at Bald Hill along the edge of Corvallis, and worked in the yard for hours. It was one of those days that was just so gosh-darn pleasant you want to put a pin in it and keep it in your mental scrapbook, preserved forever. (And, as my friend Stephanie eloquently points out, the fact that the news about Osama bin Laden's death came as just a pleasant surprise at the end of a pleasant day is a testament to how fortunate we are to live in relative peace and safety every day).

In the Northwest, a sunny day brings everyone out of hiding--not just physically, but emotionally, too. There's a tangible sense of goodwill spilling out of everyone. Everywhere I went yesterday, there were people, people, people; paths and trails and yards were full of pale folks soaking in the Vitamin D. Living here in the wintertime can feel a little like hibernating--everyone dashes from their cars to their houses without taking time to stop and chat. In spring, we all emerge, blinking in the light, and neighbors walk their dogs and dig in their gardens and wash their cars and we all smile at every person we see, whether a friend or a stranger, because after all--it's a sunny day.