Halloween Curmudgeon

Why is it that someone who loves costumes as much as I do, has such mixed feelings about Halloween? I love this holiday. I love dressing up and helping my kids dress up. I love going to the pumpkin patch and picking out the perfect pumpkin. I love the taste of freshly baked pumpkin seeds. So why do I spend most of October agonizing about all the negatives about Halloween. Here's a list to enjoy with your candy hangover.

• Kids costumes reinforce gender stereotypes.
• Kids costumes are too expensive.
• I don't have the time or skill to make my children's costumes.
• Toddler costumes rely too much on a cute hat that my kids will not keep on their heads.
• Women's costumes are too sexy.
• Candy rots your teeth.
• Trick or Treating teaches your child to take candy from strangers.
• When stores offer a "safe trick or treating experience," it's just a cheap advertising ploy.
• Neighborhood teenagers ring the doorbell too late and wake up my kids.
• Pumpkin seeds are way to hard to separate from pumpkin pulp.

Exponential Mischief

Twins are a blessing. A random splitting of the egg and now I have two little boys with different smiles, different ways of maneuvering themselves into my lap for a story, and arms that flail in different patterns as they run like excited penguins into my arms.

And because there are two of them they are able to increase their amount of mischief exponentially.

I'm not just talking about the cliched image you see of twins, one boosting the other up onto the counter Butch and Sundance style to steal from the cookie jar. Although I have certainly watched as one of my boys climbed up on a chair and the other pushed him to the kitchen sink where they thought they spied some unattended knives that would be fun to play with.

No, I'm talking about something a little more subtle. Having already had one child I thought I had a pretty good idea about what kind of mischeif the toddler brain could think up, and it was definitely a finite amount. The twins have taught me that with two toddler brains, mischeif is limitless.

For example, on his own Milo might have thought it would be a good idea to empty all the tupperware out of the bottom drawer and fling each piece around the room. But once the drawer was empty it was Huck who realized that they could now both climb inside the drawer and jump up and down in it until it broke. And although Huck might be the one who found his sister's safety scissors, he might have given them back until Milo showed him what fun it was to run around the room with them.

And perhaps Milo's toddler brain might never thought about rubbing peanut butter in his hair, but once he saw how good it looked in his brother's hair, he couldn't resist. Huck taught Milo the thrill of throwing things in the toilet, but Milo taught Huck the joy of throwing things down the storm grate. It was defitely Milo who pulled the eyes off of Annabella's bunny, but it was Huck's idea to eat them.

Yes, twins are a blessing. A double blessing. I am just wondering why when that egg split to create my two little boys, why didn't my eyes split and form two extras on the back of my head?

Did Daddy Marry These Shoes Too?

I am not that into shoes. Since I no longer work in an office and I live in a warm climate, my shoe wardrobe usually looks like this:

• Summer=Tevas
• Fall=Flip Flops
• Winter=Crocks
• Spring=Flip Flops
• Running=Running Shoes

I have 4 other pairs of shoes in my closet. There are the white satiny, flowery shoes I wore on my wedding day that I haven't cleaned in the 6 years since I wore them (once). I realized why I kept them the first time Annabella's eyes lit up when she found them, put them on, and sauntered around the room, glowing like I haven't seen since her aunt gave her a Cinderella wand for Christmas last year. She loves it when I tell her that mommy got married to daddy wearing those shoes. She calls them my "married shoes" and tells me that she will wear them when she grows up and marries a little boy named Dylan who is in her preschool class. Then I tell her that Dylan better grow out of his severe nut allergy, because otherwise she'll have to give up eating peanut butter straight from the jar.

I also have two pairs of relatively nice shoes that Annabella calls my "babysitter shoes" since whenever I put them on a babysitter is coming.

The last is a pair of totally impractical, out-of-style platform shoes that an equally impractical friend convinced me to buy in 2001 and that I would never even try to wear now. I keep them for all the obvious sentimental reasons. They represent a time in my life when I could wear those shoes and go out after work in San Francisco and take three hour naps on the weekends. I wouldn't trade my current life for the one in which I wore those shoes, but it's nice to think about that life every now and then.

I thought about it yesterday when Annabella found the platform shoes and spent a good amount of time looking seriously at them and somehow getting her 3 year old mind around the fact that they truly were impractical.

Then she looked up at me and asked, "Did Daddy marry these shoes too?"

Since when did I become a cliche?

I dropped Annabella off at preschool yesterday and was driving to the grocery store in our Toyota Sienna when I heard this on the radio news:

"Want to know who's going to be the most powerful block of voters in the upcoming election? Well, if you just dropped your kids off at school and are headed to the grocery store in the minivan, then look in the rearview mirror."

1/2 Marathon

Yesterday I ran my first half marathon. I started running in February when I'd just begun to emerge from the cloud of sleeplessness that was the previous 10 months of caring for three children under 3 (2 of which didn't care to sleep very much.) I did it because I needed a goal, one that was hard, but reachable. I did it because I'd given birth to 15 pounds of babies and I was pretty sure that was harder than running 13.1 miles. I did it because a friend was training too and she ran 3 days a week at 5:45 in the morning. At that point in my life I was up anyway and running seemed a lot easier than taking care of two screaming boys. Marco knew how important it was for me to do something that had nothing to do with our children or my work or him. And so he endured many early mornings on his own. In the begining I couldn't run much longer than 5 minutes without stopping to walk. My goal for the half marathon was to finish it without walking and to get as close to a 10 minute mile as possible. My final time was 2 hours 18 minutes, which comes out to a 10:33 mile. All I can think of now is beating that time in the San Francisco marathon in July. Who's with me?

When Life Hands You Lemons

Cherish Every Moment?

People say that you should cherish every moment when your children are young, because they grow up so fast. People say this, so it must be true. But I do not think that it is true. I do not think you should cherish changing dirty diapers that make the entire room smell like the inside of a sewer. I do not think you should cherish the twelve times you have to tell your 3.5 year old daughter that she has to clean up her room. I do not think you should cherish the moment when after the twelfth time she slaps you because she is so tired because she has given up her nap, even though she really needs it. Today I choose to cherish this moment. We are saving paper towel and toilet paper rolls for some project in Annabella’s preschool class. This afternoon the kids entertained themselves for the better part of 15 minutes marching around the living room making horn sounds into empty toilet paper rolls.