The horrifying Mommy blogger

*We went to see Despicable Me 2 Tuesday evening. Fun! And that's just about the extent of my review. It was as funny and utterly predictable as the first movie, didn't scare the kids too badly and was a decent way to spend an hour and a half.

Although there was one bit that was much more funny to B and me than it really deserved. The homicidal chicken kept making us think of this episode of the hysterically funny Monster of the Week, a webcomic retelling of the X-Files (which frankly I find much more worthwhile than watching the series ever was). We just kept whispering to each other "Eaten by chickens: think that happens."

* I have not historically been given to discussing the contents of my childrens' diapers, for which I hope you are duly grateful. So it should say a lot that after 8 years and three children, I changed the most colorful diaper of my parenting career today. It wasn't just the blueberries he had eaten; it was more the multiple crayons he had managed to consume on the sly that gave it that spectacular rainbow edge.

Kudoes, James. I thought I had seen everything the toddler alimentary canal could throw at me, but you proved me wrong with your Amazing Technicolor Dreampoop.

* Heck, as long as I've strayed into stereotypical Mommy blogging overshare topics, here's a conversation Alec and I had this weekend. I was trying to get him to put on underwear by being silly: does it go on your nose? Does it go on your elbow? And so on. Finally, I finished up with, "So where does you underwear go?"
"On my head!"

And so it did. He put his arms through his shorts for good measure too. I hadn't thought about it before, but there's a definite resemblance between the sense of humor of a four-year-old and that of the sort of drunk who finds it hilarious to put a lampshade on their head.

* And finally, James has become the horrifying Uh-Oh Baby:




If he is in fact portending our doom, at least he's doing it cutely.

Gone fishing

* We got back from a two-week trip to Michigan last week.  Goodness, vacations in Michigan are much more pleasant in the summer.  Instead of ice and sub-freezing temperatures,  we had lovely weather in the mid-70s and low 80s, and lots of time at the beach.

We started out stopping in Ohio for the night, went up to my mother's for a couple days and saw 75 percent of the Champaign gang, went up to B's parents and saw lots of family there.  Then we vacuumed approximately 2.5 beaches worth of sand out of our car and reversed the trip - back down to my mother's for a few more days, another night in Ohio, then home.  It was a lovely vacation all around.

* Unfortunately, we got back to a house that was 90 degrees, which is particularly unfortunate because I set the thermostat to 80 before we left.  Hello, broken air conditioner!  Hello, hellishly hot weekend where the indoor temperature never went below 90 degrees!

This is where moving has paid off, because our new landlord had a repairman out the next day and the ac was fixed by Sunday.  But it was awfully sweaty until that blessed event happened.  It's been over a decade since I've lived through high temperatures without air conditioning, and I didn't miss it one tiny bit.

* We saw Monsters University in Michigan.  It was cute, and for a movie where scaring is the main plot point, it was remarkably non-scary.  Even our resident scaredy-Katherine was unphased for the most part, only having to cover her eyes a couple times.  I will say that I like that it didn't follow the typical collegiate sports underdog plot and resisted the easy ending, but mostly it was an entirely unremarkable, inoffensive Pixar movie that didn't break any new ground.  GORGEOUS animation though, natch.

* One lovely part of being back is that camp has started.  Three days a week of only one kid!  This is giving me a preview of what the fall is going to be like when Katherine is in school.  I have to say, I'm liking it a lot so far. I love my daughter, but I've always said I'm a better mother when I'm given the chance to miss my children.

To sweeten the deal, I've been contemplating looking for Friday daycare again.  Of course, I'll have to figure out how to pay for it, which I'm still investigating.  There are legitimate ways to make a supplemental income on the Internet, but I need to find out how much work for monetary return they would require and whether it would be worth it.  The sanity points gained from getting more days off together won't mean much if I spend every evening working feverishly.  So we shall see.