The First Aaronisms of 2010

While out on a hike with his Daddy:

Aaron: Did somebody build that waterfall with a bulldozer?
Mike: No, God put it there. And he put these trees here too.
Aaron: Did God build those houses?
Mike: No, but houses are made out of wood and where does wood come from?
Aaron: Lowes?

When Aaron and Mike go on their hikes, they like to take "talkie walks" to talk back and forth to each other.

Aaron doesn't use Q-tips in his ears.  He uses "those white ear picker things."

On our way back from the mall:
Aaron:  Mom, do you know what Aunt G's favorite elf is on Snow White?
Me:  You mean dwarf?
Aaron:  No, elf.  G's favorite elf is "Sophie."
Me:  You mean that G's favorite DWARF is DOPEY?
Aaron:  Dopey?  That elf is Sophie.

And round and round we went.

On yet another car ride home:
Aaron:  Let's drive home past where you and Daddy used to live.
Me:  Well, Mommy didn't live with Daddy when he was in the apartment.  We weren't married then.  I visited Daddy, but I didn't live there.
Aaron:  Where did you live?
Me:  With Grandma Rose and Pack Jack.

-moment of quiet-

Aaron:  Mom?
Me:  Yes, Aaron?
Aaron:  Did you live on the roof of Daddy's apartment?
Me:  ?!?!?!?!  Um, no.  I lived with Grandma and Pack.
Aaron:  (laughing) Oh yeah.  Don't tell Daddy I said that.

Happy 2010!

There’s something so refreshing and wonderful about ringing in a new year. The world gets a clean slate and all of the coulda, shoulda, woulda’s of the outgoing year are in the past while the incoming year is alive with possibilities and promise.


I have always been a resolution maker, but typically whatever grand idea that I have had for a life-altering, year-long change goes out the window less than a week after making the pledge. What can I say? I’m weak in the will power department, but something miraculous happened last year; something wonderful and stupendous and fantastic. I actually kept a resolution which was to lose weight and get back into a shape other than round. I lost 55lbs and started running again. Two days ago, I ran six miles. SIX!

With the success of last year still dancing triumphantly in my head, I decided that if I can lose 55lbs, then there isn’t anything that I can’t do and so I began thinking about other areas that could use some attention. The level of their significance varies greatly, but they are all things that I think could use some tweaking. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Resolution #1: The Pop Elimination Application

Hello, my name is Amy and I am addicted to pop. I love pop. I could drink it all the live long day. It tastes wonderful with everything and as an added bonus, incase you weren’t aware, it has CAFFINE; glorious, wonderful, caffeine. When I reach mid afternoon and begin to feel my energy level wane, the first thing that comes to mind is pop. If I eat anything even mildly sweet, I want to drink a pop with it. Pop goes with pizza like Laverne goes with Shirley. If I could put pop in my morning bowl of Oatmeal Squares cereal I totally…well, ok, I wouldn’t actually do that, but the point is that I love it.

Unfortunately, pop is really bad for you, especially diet which is what I prefer to drink. I overheard a greeter guy at Applebee’s the other day talking about pop and how, “That stuff will kill ya. Especially diet.” I know, I know, but it’s soooooo good.

I know realistically that I will never be able to give up pop forever, but I definitely need to start cutting back. I am challenging myself to give up pop completely for one month and after that, only drink it occasionally. I am getting the shakes just thinking about the impending caffeine withdrawl.

Resolution #2: The Can’t We All Get Along Endeavor

I want to spend less time screaming at the kids and more time enjoying them even when they are driving me completely insane and the only way to get through it is to go to my happy place where I escape to a far away island where cookies grow on trees and there is an enchanted waterfall that overflows with Pepsi. This all boils down to patience and the fact that mine has been worn very thin as of late. I think that it is because I expect too much of them and I often forget that Aaron is only almost five and Elyse is just nineteen months. I need to be more laid back and let the cards fall where they may. It never fails that my worst days with the kids are the ones when I feel like I have a million things to do and stress over getting them all done. In truth, as long as we all have at least one clean pair of underwear and we are not swimming through piles of filth, everything will and generally does get done at some point. Not always in my timetable, but it does get done.

I need to learn to let go of the frivolous and appreciate the now. There will be time enough to clean the house, but the kids are only going to be this age once. I will never remember how often I was able to Clorox the toilet, but I will never forget the afternoons that Aaron helped me make dinner or the hours that Elyse and I spend playing with baby dolls.

Resolution #3: The Ducks in a Row Undertaking

While I know that in order to be successful with Resolution #2, I am going to need to chill out a bit, I also know that I am not a person who tolerates disorder and chaos well. This year I want to try to tackle some of the areas that cause me the most distress, and once and for all get a handle on them. This is probably a little like shoveling the sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard, but I feel that the success of Resolution #2 is directly related to the success of Resolution #3. And if both #2 and #3 fail, then I am going to throw my hands in the air, wallow in my failure as a human being, and drown my sorrows in a case of diet Pepsi. You’re nothing without a plan.

So there they are…The things that I want to work on this year. They all seem doable and not at all as scary as last year’s resolution to lose weight.

More than anything, I hope that 2010 will continue to find us healthy and happy.

Happy New Year everybody and good luck on all of your resolutions!

The Planning...It Never Ends

Well, Christmas is officially over and I have begun the daunting task of reclaiming my home in the name of order and organization. The tree is down, decorations have been put away, and the massive amounts of wrapping paper, boxes, and packaging paraphernalia was taken away by the garbage man early this morning. It is now possible to walk in the family room without stepping on a thousand miscellaneous pieces of toys, games, and art supplies and I can actually breathe normally again instead of hyperventilating over the chaos and confusion.


However, I now have to switch gears from holiday cheer and merriment to full blown birthday party planning strategery (Yes huh, strategery is a word. GW says it is. Geesh!) Anyway, Aaron’s birthday is January 11th and it sneaks up on me every single year because we are always so busy with Christmas stuff. Then the tree comes down and the decorations get put away and holy crap I have to plan a birthday party! I thought that I was slightly ahead of the game this year because Aaron had declared long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, that he wanted a Star Wars party. So for about two weeks now I have been Googling Star Wars party ideas and gathering as much information as possible to pull off a great Jedi event. That is until he informed me a few days ago that he now wants Scooby Doo instead.

I am not all together disappointed with the change because honestly, I know a whole lot more about Scooby and the Gang than I do about the Force, but I was willing to fake it if that was what Aaron wanted. Thankfully he made the change early enough that I can still switch gears without blowing my carefully crafted timeline.

This year, we are celebrating a big birthday. It’s the big 0-5. My baby boy is almost five years old! Excuse me for a moment while I sob in the corner as Baby Mine plays over and over in my head…

Ok, I’m better now. I can’t believe how fast the last five years have gone. He is such a big boy now. He likes to get himself dressed, and make his own breakfast, and he even asks if he can have some privacy when he is in the bathroom. Privacy…from the kid that runs around naked most evenings after bath time. Boys?!?

So wish me luck with putting on a super Scooby celebration. I think that I have a pretty good plan so far, but there is just one thing that I’m not sure how I am going to pull off. Does anyone have any idea how I can convince Mike that it is imperative to the success of the entire party to give our van a Mystery Machine paint job?

Oh Crap!

So Christmas is almost here and everyone is busy with the hustle and bustle that comes with the last days leading up to the big day. Elyse, being the sweet baby girl that she is, got me a special, last minute gift yesterday, but it was a gift I that would have gladly returned. A gift so awful, that I would have gone so far as to return it to a store that I knew it didn’t come from, without any type of receipt, just at the off chance that I would find the one guy in customer service who hates his job so much that he would be willing to accept a rabid squirel just to spite his employer and because he just doesn’t give a damn.


Here’s what happened.

Aaron had Christmas pageant practice yesterday at 4:00 pm. 4:00 pm is horrible for us because Elyse is almost always napping at that time and I make it a point to NEVER disrupt her nap because when Princess doesn’t nap she goes all Linda Blair for the rest of her waking hours and frankly I just can’t scrub split pea soup out of the carpet again.

In an attempt to still get her a nap, yet make it to practice on time, I put her down a little early and crossed my fingers that she would embrace the coziness of her bed and drift blissfully to sleep whilst Aaron and I did some much needed Christmas cleaning. About forty-five minutes later, she was still whooping it up and partying like it was 1999. I decided that my only option was to go in, break up the party, and try to get her to cozy up one last time or else take a trip to Target to kill time before practice and then suffer the consequences of no nap.

When I walked in, I was assaulted with the strongest poo aroma in the history of all aromas. And that’s when I saw it. My little Princess was pants less; as in no pants, no diaper, and no poo catching apparatus within a hundred yards. Upon closer inspection I was able to fully access the defilement of her crib which was widespread and far reaching. And my bitty baby was a giant turd; covered in crap from head to toe.

I would have loved to have seen what my face must have looked like from her perspective because I know that I have never been more horrified in my entire life and that includes the day several weeks ago when I saw stirrup pants on a rack at Wal Mart. What do you do? What is your first response? What should you tackle first? While I ran the scenarios in my head, Aaron turned and ran out of the room, gagging the whole way. Not fake gagging either. He was as repulsed as I was and it was taking its toll on him.

When I snapped out of it, I organized a plan of attack and put it into motion; run bath water…scrub baby like you are re-enacting a scene from Silk Wood…lock baby in brother’s room…remove all bedding, stuffed animals, pacifiers…find comfort in the fact that we are done having children…Clorox every inch of the crib and surrounding area.

By the time the poop explosion was contained, I had just enough time to throw the kids together and head out of the door to pageant practice. Because I have been blessed with the most wonderful husband on the face of the planet and on Mars, Mike left work early after my frantic phone conversation with him shortly after I discovered Elyse’s crap graffiti. He went with us to practice and then we had a much needed dinner out.

Do you want to know the best part? She decided to strip BEFORE she pooped. The diaper that had been flung to the ground didn’t have a speck of poo on it. I believe that she could have been thinking only one thing when, after already stripping, she felt the rumbling below and became a human poop geyser…”Oh crap!”

I Run Because...

I run because for the last four years, I couldn’t run. Well, I could.  I had the physical ability and the motivation if say I had to run from a bear or something, but after the kids were born I let myself get so out of shape that the thought of running was overwhelming. Frankly the thought of walking for very long was too much, but I knew that deep down inside, somewhere completely buried, I was a runner.  I missed who I was when I used to run. In this last year of weight loss and exercise, though, I finally found her again. That girl who used to look in the mirror and be happy with what she saw. I never want to lose her again.

I run because I love the example that it has set for my kids. Aaron, while he has always been active, has taken a great interest in exercise and working out. He has his own set of weights and he can do walking pushups better than I can. I need Elyse to see that a healthy woman isn’t some stick-skinny model who analyzes every morsel that goes into her mouth. A healthy woman has muscle and she isn’t afraid to sweat for it.

I run because I want to spend the rest of my life with my husband and I want that life to be as long and as healthy as it can be. I love the look of pride that I see in his face when I pass him on my way to the shower after a five mile run. Even completely soaked with sweat, that look from him makes me feel like the most beautiful woman alive, and it is only because of him and his support that I have been able to come this far.

I run not for how I feel at the beginning of the run, or how I feel at the end, but for that feeling half way in, when all of a sudden I am weightless and I feel as if I could run for days. My legs move without me hardly thinking about it and every part of my body is in perfect rhythm. The feeling is fleeting, and if I directly acknowledge it for too long, it’s gone. But for those few moments I am more alive than I have been in years and it validates my belief that I am, and always have been a runner.

I run because.

I Hope It Will Be the Little Things...

Much like I have done for the last four Christmases that Mike and I have been parents, I have been surveying the items that Santa has been able to check off of the kid’s Christmas lists and I wonder if the big guy has done enough. When it is all wrapped and under the tree will it look like as much as the receipts claim it is, or will it seem like much less? When the kids come down Christmas morning, will their eyes light up with excitement when they see all that Santa has brought? I hope that they feel that Santa was good to them, because I know that he did everything that he could to give them as much as possible, not that it will be an avalanche of gifts by any means. But while I was obsessing about the gifts and their quantity, I started thinking back to my childhood Christmases and I realized that none of those memories ever include a tally of what Santa brought. Those memories are about so much more.


I remember how excited my sisters and I always were to start decorating. Dad would be busy stringing the lights on the tree while we paced anxiously waiting to load every inch of free space with our most favorite decorations. There were the decorations that looked like cotton candy on long sticks, and the straw lady that Mom always made sure had a special place of honor. We each hung our baby ornaments from our first Christmases and we never forgot the shredded wheat wreaths that we had made in school.

Once the tree was done, we continued to spread the Christmas joy all throughout the house with the set of three snowmen snowballs that always sat on the coffee table and the green ceramic tree that lit up and found its place on our TV. The decorating was never finished until the gold sleigh, complete with reindeer, was set out on the window sill in the kitchen; I saw it there yesterday when Aaron and I went to Mom and Dad’s to tag along on a shopping trip.

Some of the strongest memories are from all of the Christmas Eves that we spent at my Grandparents house. We always went to Christmas Eve mass at the church down the street and then went back to their house to eat, open gifts, and tell stories. My grandmother, “Gum Gum,” always made a huge pot of rigatoni and you were never finished eating until you had at least one piece, but usually more, of her famous poppy seed roll. I remember how special the night seemed as we all said our goodbyes and headed out into the cold Christmas air to get into the car and head home to get ready for Santa. The sky was always so dark, but clear and there was no denying the magic.

I was never able to sleep on Christmas Eve, my mind swirling with thoughts of what Santa might bring, but I strained to drift off because I knew that he wouldn’t come until I was asleep. At the crack of dawn, we dragged our parents out of bed and when we came down the stairs and walked ran, into the living room we were always, always overwhelmed by the realization that Santa had actually come. I can still see our living room and how beautiful the tree looked the first time that we saw it on Christmas morning.

Of course there were gifts, but it’s not the quantity that sticks out in my mind. To tell you the truth, except for a few random presents, I really don’t remember exactly what Santa brought each year. But I remember the Santa cookie cutter that we used to make sugar cookies; Mom gave it to me to make the same recipe with my kids. I can see Dad sitting in the living room surrounded by pieces of our artificial tree, trying to put it all together despite the fact that Angie and I kept stealing large branches to make t-pees. I can see Mom sitting on the couch with her morning cup of coffee, trying to take in the intense excitement that overflowed in the room at six o’clock in the morning, and the looks on Mom and Dad’s faces as they met each other’s gaze from across the room while they watched the three of us girls tear into our Christmas loot.

There are so many more memories that I could go on and on about; things that were really special and made a lasting impression, but in the grand scheme of things, to most everyone else, were quite insignificant. I hope that when Aaron and Elyse look back on their Christmases, they remember how we went to my Mom and Dad’s house every year, the weekend before Christmas, to make the same sugar cookie recipe with the same Santa cookie cutter that I used when I was a kid. I wonder what decorations will stand out in their minds as things that were a must when decorating our house. Will they ever notice the way that Mike and I look at each other while we watch them revel in the magic of Christmas morning? There will always be gifts, though the quantity may vary, but I hope that it will be the special things, the little things that they remember most when they look back and remember our Christmases together.

A Date with Aaron

Yesterday I had a date with a very handsome gentleman. We exchanged witty conversation over our pizza lunch and he held my hand when we walked into Toy R Us. Aaron and I went on a date. I needed to take him to pick out a Christmas present for Elyse and I thought that it would be nice if we made a whole thing out of it, just the two of us.


While we sat and ate our pizza, I watched him and was amazed at what a big guy he has gotten to be. When he was little, I used to imagine what it would be like when he was old enough for us to enjoy these kinds of things and I have to say that it was absolutely wonderful. He was so polite and well-behaved, and he had so many interesting things that he wanted to talk about. It was hard to believe that five years ago I was eight months pregnant with him and there we sat, enjoying our lunch and each other's company.

After lunch, we went over to Toys R Us and he picked out Elyse's Christmas present. I let him take his time and look at all of the little things that he wanted to look at and when I gave him a nudge to move on, he went without incident. It was so pleasant and made me think about a time when it was always just the two of us, only now he was so much older and I could just enjoy being with him rather than chase him all over the store.

When we got back into the car, I asked him if there was anything else that he would like to do. After thinking about it for a long time he said, "I think that it would make you happy if we went to get ice cream." He knows me so well. So we went to get ice cream, not because he wanted to, but because it would make me happy. As we ate our ice cream, he said that he thought we had done enough and that Daddy was probably wondering where he was at.

Our date was over and it was time to head home, but we promised that we would see each other again. I look forward to many more dates with Aaron, and I hope that he never gets too big to hang out with his mom. I am pretty sure that as long as ice cream is part of the deal, he and I will always make time for a date.