So Munchkin and I were out in the front yard a couple of days ago. We were doing our usual…him drawing on the sidewalk with chalk and me pulling weeds….when I came across this lovely contribution.

I just have to say a couple of things. OK first, it’s not so much that you chose to throw your empty beer can on my lawn, but…..KEYSTONE LIGHT?!?!? I mean come ON. This is Texas. I honestly wouldn’t have been near as irritated had it been Shiner Bock. At least it would have been litter and not “low-class litter”. And a can. Honey, you’re drinking Keystone Light from a CAN! What, let me guess. Your name is “Bubba” or “Boyd”?

And one last suggestion. If you have to be so rude as to throw something on my lawn, could you AT LEAST make sure it’s something that will kill that damn dandelion? Actually, Keystone Light might just kill dandelions, so how ’bout this. Next time why don’t you just pop the tab (I can’t believe I just said that) and pour the nastiness out on the dandelions and go GITCHER SELF A FRICKIN’ SHINER!!! IN A BOTTLE!!! M’kay?

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

So back a year and half ago Munchkin was driving me BANANAS with his inability to entertain himself for even 13 seconds. On someone else’s advice (sorry, can’t remember who you were, but Cruise bless you) I stalked Craigslist for a few weeks looking for the obligatory train table with some track and trains. Most of the entries looked something like this:

Train table with Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Trains include regular Thomas, Birthday Thomas, 2 Percys, Toby, Edward and coal tender, 2 James’ with coal tenders, Emily and coal tender, Molly, Rosey, Sodor Chicken Cars, Sodor dairy cars, Cranky the Crane, the Breakdown Train, Aquarium Cars, Giggling Troublesome Trucks, Musical Caboose, Annie & Clarabelle, Express coaches, Hector, Diesel 10, Hank and coal tender, Might Mack, Tidmouth Sheds roundhouse, Quarry Mine Tunnel…..and on and on and on.

I remember reading all that thinking, “Good GRIEF, people!”

So a listing for the perfect train table appeared one day for $100 and included about 80 miles of track and a handful of trains. I called the woman, told her I would PayPal her the $100 and kiss her on the mouth if she would promise not to sell it to anyone until I got there. She agreed.

We got it home that night and Munchkin went into a train-induced trance that he has yet to come out of it. Best damn $100 I’ve EVER spent, hands down.

Here is where the irony comes in. That night while DH and I were settling in, I announced, “We are NOT going to go crazy and buy every Thomas train available. That is just RIDICULOUS. I mean, NO child needs all those trains. We can get him Thomas and MAYBE Percy for his birthday, but we are NOT getting any more than that. He will be perfectly fine with a couple of trains and he can pretend he has the rest. I mean it’s SOOOO much better for his imagination and will teach him to appreciate what he has and blah blah blah blah.” I think I also said something about national security and the downfall of society, etc. Oh, I wish you could have HEARD the sanctimonious tone with which I proclaimed all of that.

May 27, 2009 – 53 trains and counting.

So much for single-handedly halting the downfall of society.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate.   Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

I have recently come to realize I might be a little obsessive about my plastic container cabinet. My parents didn’t have a plastic container cabinet until recently. They had a drawer about a foot deep that was level to the top with lids and bowls. When you wanted to store your leftovers, you opened the drawer and started pulling out bowls and random lids until something matched. When you found what you needed, you stood on top of all the bowls and lids and jumped up and down until you could get the drawer closed again (OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much).

Recently when I went to visit my parents my mom asked me to clean out their drawer and arrange everything in the cabinet in their island. I was positively GIDDY I tell you. Fishing out bowls and lids and throwing away sacks full of empty butter and Cool Whip dishes was so cathartic. (I was ordered not to tell my dad I had thrown them away because he likes to save them and gets heart palpitations when you throw something away that MIGHT be useful….next year).

Anyhoo, when we got it all done I felt this warm calm come over me like I had just figured out my meaning in life. It wasn’t quite the feeling I had when they placed my newborn child on my chest, but it was close. I slept like a baby that night.

It was at that point I realized I MIGHT be a titch obsessed with the neatness of my plastic container cabinet. I thought it was completely normal to arrange all your containers according to size so that you get the maximum stacking capacity. And all lids should be stacked from back to front in descending order according to size so that you have maximum visibility for easy retrieval. Square containers are stacked inside square containers and round containers inside round ones. There shall be no mixing of geometric shapes, for this is an abomination in container storage!…..I mean…anyway, that’s kinda what I would say if I were REALLY obsessed. But I’m not.

And then I’m reminded of this episode….

I ask, “Ummm, what are you doing?!?” His response was, “I make french toast, Mommy.”

He is lucky he’s cute.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

Meet my personal chef. Her name is Crockpot Versaware. She’s been in the family for about 3 years and I have come to rely on her heavily throughout the week. She specializes in soups and stews and other one-pot meals. Tonight she is cooking a Chicken Taco Soup. Until today, it was a super top secret recipe. However, I persuaded her to give me permission to share it with the lovely seven people who read this blog.

CHICKEN TACO SOUP
1 onion
1 tbl olive oil
2-4oz can chopped green chilis
1 -2 pkg taco seasoning (to taste)
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 cans diced tomatoes
6 cups chicken broth (low sodium, low fat)
2 cans Black beans (rinsed)
2 cups cooked chicken (or more to taste)

*Toppings—-cilantro, Monterey jack, tortilla chips

(note: add all juices of canned items if desired for extra flavor, but rinse the beans)

DIRECTIONS: Add all ingredients and cook for at least 6 hours on high.

Enjoy! And if you have any suggestions regarding how to persuade your personl chef to clean up after dinner, I’m all ears.

P.S. OR this recipe might have come from a super sweet friend who brought me a big pot of soup while we were all sick.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

So Munchkin has been getting 5 M&Ms whenever he takes his antibiotic. (I know, tsk tsk tsk. But honestly I have tasted the stuff and I wouldn’t take it unless you promised me a gift certificate to Bliss Spa every time, so I figure in this economy we’re getting off good with 5 M&Ms.)

Anyhoo, he gets his five M&Ms the other night and takes them over to his little special place on the ottoman to lay them all out and go through the ritual of counting them and grouping them by color (he IS my child) and deciding which one he should eat first when he says, “Mom, why deez M-uh-Ms don’t have Ms on ‘em?” I go over and look and ask what he means because they all have Ms on them. He says, “No Mom. Doze are EEEEs.”

So I turned them all 45 degrees to tranform the Es into Ms. He gets a look in his face as if he’s just grasped the intricacies of String Theory . “Wow, Mom. How did you do dat?”

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

He’s standing there waiting for the first time he gets to go on the ice. He knows that if he is going to be a “big hockey pwayer just wike Daddy” that he must first learn how to ice skate…and he can hardly wait–to be just like Daddy, that is.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

So here it is. I caught Munchkin on the toilet with his View Master.

It truly MUST be something in the Y chromosome that produces the insatiable need for entertainment while one is sitting on the pot. There were men in my family (I’m not mentioning names) who used to sit and read the Sears catalogue on the pot. I worked at a hedge fund in NYC where I witnessed many a men coming out of the bathroom with their thumbs flying across their Blackberry…because we know absolutely NOTHING can wait until you get back to your desk from your potty break.

I don’t know women who do this. I don’t take reading material or my phone to the bathroom with me. Who knows, maybe that’s just because I don’t have time. I rarely (if ever) get to even go in there by myself anymore, much less take 30 minutes to answer emails or pick out my spring wardrobe. Although, maybe if I had a View Master with some picture wheels of George Clooney or Hugh Jackman I could find the time.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

This is the latest post in my “Child Labor Series”.

So I got a Swivel Sweeper for Christmas and can I just say that I love this thing. It swivels on a dime. It sweeps my kitchen tile and even gets right up to the baseboards. No more running around with a seperate broom and dustpan sweeping up crumbs. But the BEST selling feature of this little jewel is that it is light enough for a preschooler to use.

It rotates and rolls with virtually no effort whatsoever and it weighs next to nothing. So there you go. The perfect “toy”, if I should say so myself. Of course, he’s afraid of the noise so we are working on actually turning it on while he’s “playing” with it. But I have my hopes up.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

Last July for Munchkin’s 3rd birthday, I was insane brave and decided to have his party at the house. We didn’t have a lot of money to spend since we were having the obligatory family party AND kid party. But we did all sorts of fun things that didn’t cost a bundle.

A couple of days before his party, Munchkin and I went to “Hobby Wobby” and “Wal-Mark” to pick up supplies. I bought a big bucket of foam stickers, some brightly colored bulletin board trim, small paper sacks for favors, double-sided tape, a bag of multi-colored fuzzies, a big bucket of side-walk chalk, a multi-pack of 5oz cans of Play-Doh, and some take-n-toss plastic cups with straws.

I also came across this cute little cardboard playhouse that you assemble and color yourself. I thought that looked like a really fun party activity but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend almost $20 on a cardboard box. And it wasn’t even that big. No, what we needed was a dryer box. THAT would be the pièce de résistance.

So I set out on a mission to find a free dryer box and found that Lowe’s was all too eager to get rid of their appliance boxes. I picked one up that day! The bottom was already cut off so that was less work for me. I decided to rip it apart at the seam and flip it inside out so that all the printing would be inside the house and not on the outside. I taped it back together with packing tape and voilà. DH and I then cut windows and a door with a box cutter (this almost ended in a divorce because I couldn’t do it right, but that’s a different post). Easy peasy and it turned out fantastic.

The big day finally arrived and I was set. I put on my breast-plate and horns (which I still had from my days of singing opera) and was ready for preschooler mayhem.

First, they created their own “party crowns” out of the rainbow colored bulletin board trim, markers and stickers. They were a lot more fun than the cone-head hats with the annoying rubber band that goes under your chin. I only needed one package of bulletin board trim and the left-over stickers and fuzzies (which we attached with the double-sided tape) will be used again later.

Much fun was had while making crowns and eating brown markers.

Next on the agenda was making their own birthday muffins out of Play-Doh. Each child got their own can of Play-Doh and we smashed and rolled and squeezed the “muffin dough” until the muffins were ready to be put in the muffin pan. I put the muffins in the oven to “cook” while they moved on to the next activity.

Making muffins!

Decorating the Birthday House!!! I provided washable markers (“washable” being the operative word here), stickers and fuzzies–all left over from the Birthday Crown extravaganza. They stood around for quite a while decorating and coloring and going in and out of the house.

Having too much fun!

The Birthday House kept them busy just long enough for the Play-Doh to magically transform into whole wheat banana-nut muffins (or rather for me to put all their Play-Doh back in the canisters and bring out the real muffins in the same muffin pan).  Finally, the muffins were done and there was muffins and juice all around!

The Birthday Boy’s muffin, complete with 3 candles.

I think he was trying to tell me my muffins were dry.

While they were eating their muffins, I assembled their goody bags. They each got a handful of left-over foam stickers, their own can of Play-Doh, a couple of pieces of chunky side-walk chalk, a set of Flashcard Zoo number flashcards (which I had made myself) and their take-n-toss cup.

They finished their muffins and juice and headed out the door with their goody bags just in time to make it home for a quick lunch and be plunked into bed for a nice long nap.  It was a successful day and oodles of fun was had by all!

The Birthday Boy had a day to remember…

Oh, and the infamous Birthday House is still around. It became The Christmas House in December, complete with Christmas lights and a hand-painted paper plate wreath on the front door.

It has been the center of much fun at several play dates…

and The Munchkin still loves to occasionally redecorate and take his books and flashlight in there to read in the dark.

It’s by far the best damn $0 I ever spent. I think it will be a sad day over here when the Birthday House finally leaves the premises. That box holds so many memories.

So it really is possible to have a great birthday party without spending a ton of money. The Munchkin had a blast with his friends and that really was priceless. It’s almost a year later and he still remembers his party, so I would say that was a resounding success.

We also didn’t have gifts at the party. I begged the guests not to bring more toys into our house, as the family party had yet to happen and I knew it would be a hideous display grandparental overspending. It saved the other families a bit of money and Munchkin didn’t know any different. It was just one fantastic play date where he was the center of attention…pretty much every three-year-old’s dream. SUCCESS!!

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.

Yep, that’s a baboon taking a pee on another baboon’s head. But they kissed and made up right afterward so it was all cool.

Today Munchkin and I went to the Fort Worth Zoo with some dear friends. It must have been “Gitcher Rear In Here” day at the zoo because virtually every animal we approached promptly turned around and showed his back side.

We saw striped butts,

purple butts,

and “OMG-is-the-train-coming-yet-is-it-is-it-is-it?!?!?!?” butts.

But I actually did get some fantastic shots of some animals that will likely show up on some flashcards in the near future.

Look at this gorgeous cat. They are cubs if you can believe it.

And I thought this guy was just amazing.

And these little monkeys were at the “Snack Exhibit” displaying mouths-full of my (now) famous homemade granola bars.

In fact, they were such a big hit that I am going to share the recipe with you.

SHANNAH’S FAMOUS SUPER SECRET RECIPE GRANOLA BARS (or something like that)

INGREDIENTS
3 cups rolled oats
¼ cup flaxseed meal
¾ cup whole wheat flour (you can use a full cup of whole wheat flour and omit the flaxseed meal if you don’t have any.)
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup apple sauce
2/3 cup salted butter, melted
¾ cup honey
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup mixed seeds and/or nuts of your choice (I used chopped pecans, pumpkin seed kernels and sunflower seed kernels)
1 cup chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 inch pan with wax paper.
2. In a large bowl combine all dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add wet ingredients and mix thoroughly. (Mixing thoroughly is key to making them stick together.)
3. Press mixture in prepared pan. Lay another piece of wax paper on top of the mixture and press it down evenly and firmly with your hand. Remove wax paper from top and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the edges are just golden brown.
4. Remove from oven and pack down firmly and evenly with a spatula. Let cool COMPLETELY before cutting. Cut into desired size bars with a pizza cutter.

Note: The last two cups of ingredients (nuts and chocolate chips) can include all kinds of fun stuff. You can try any combination of raisins, other dried fruits, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, nuts and seeds. Anything goes.

These also freeze well and can be saved for lunch box snacks and quick breakfasts. They are SUPER filling and stay with you a long time.

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I create fun and colorful flashcards for children. When you do that long enough, you begin to see the world as a series of flashcards. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are warm and fuzzy. Sometimes they are mildly innappropriate. Come see the snark at The Flashcard Zoo Blog.