Le Freak, Boutique

Just before Dos was born, a co-worker gave me a gift certificate to a fancy-schmancy baby store near my office. Correction: not "store." Boutique. La-dee-dah.

On the day I planned to use the gift certificate, Bug got a stomach virus and when she wasn't spewing all over the place, she was sleeping deeply on my chest and very pregnant belly. Not exactly perfect conditions for shopping at a boutique. By the time she was better, I was in the hospital, birthin' Dos and didn't exactly have time for boutiques.

The gift certificate has been sitting in my purse for over a year now. I finally got a chance to go to the store last week and, oh my, yes it is a boutique indeed. White walls, white floors, white shelves, and expensive white towels, sheets and blankets. You can tell that people go there BEFORE they have a baby because no conscientious parent would haul a barfing, pooping baby or grabby, sticky-handed, crumb-faced toddler into a store like this. Sorry, boutique.

The boutique had such beautiful things. I think I touched every blanket they had and they were all as soft as a baby's skin. I shook the rattles and squeezed the stuffed animals. I may have even nuzzled an organic cotton bunny. All heavenly. I fell in love with a palm-sized, wooden rattle/music box that played "Alle Meine Entchen" so sweetly I almost cried. I tinkered with every toy car and train, thumbed the pages of nearly every book.

I jealously eyed the staged nurseries. Everything matched so carefully and precisely that it looked like page in a design magazine. Hearty cribs with delicate linens. Porcelain night lights and decorative plates, hand-painted with lambs and bunnies. I thought back to Dos and Bug's room, with the 20-year-old hand-me-down crib and Ikea bed covered in mismatched sheets, no door on the closet and books haphazardly stacked on the shelves. Am I a bad Mommy because I didn't paint the room pink when Bug was born? Are my girls suffering because I haven't spelled out their names in pastel wooden letters over their beds? Would Dos sleep better if she had a $75 scent diffuser by her crib? I had to pull myself away before I felt the need to tear up my Mommy card.

Then I rounded the corner to the strollers. Not just any strollers. The Lexuses and Mercedes of the stroller world. The strollers were sleek and gleaming. They had cup holders perfectly sizes for venti soy lattes and BPA-free bottles. These strollers were ergonomically designed and built the the same material used in car and airplane production. They had ports for ipods. One had speakers. I think I drooled a little as I reached for the price tag on one of the strollers.

Have I mentioned before, or has it made itself apparent that I am budget-minded....some might say "cheap"? Yes, well, I *do* gasp and go gog-eyed when I see a $1999 price tag on a stroller. Unless it pushes itself and teaches my child three languages there is no stroller on earth worth $1999.

I backed away from the strollers and started looking at the price tags on other things. A matching set of 600 count crib linens? $210. A cashmere romper? $98. That dear little music box? $54. I knew that I would never be back in this place again. I wanted to make the most of my gift certificate and go home to hand-me-down kids' clothes and second-hand stroller. Back to the homemade bedtime mix CD on our creaky old boombox. Back to my giggly girls who didn't seem to care if they weren't wearing designer clothes or any clothes at all for that matter. Better access to tickly ribs and armpits.

I left the store with a small bag of fun odds and ends, all of which are going in the girls' Easter Baskets. I think they'll like them as much as the very non-boutiquey candy I bought for them at Target.

The girls' room doesn't have a theme other than "comfortable." I didn't put a whole lot of thought or money into a design concept. I don't worry if their toys are organic or free-trade as long as they're smart and safely built. Their room doesn't smell like lavender and fresh-baked cookies. I'm not a boutique kinda mama, I guess. That's ok. I think my girls love me anyway.

I Don't Do Math Without A Net

I have a liberal arts degree. I have the actual diploma, beautifully framed and hiding in a closet somewhere. Come visit, bring me a piece of your favorite cake and I'll show it to you.

Liberal arts majors, if you didn't know, are notoriously bad at math. It's why shirts like this exist.

I am no exception to this stereotype. Lacking a mathmatical mind and patient teachers, I made it all the way through college counting on my fingers. God, that's embarrassing to admit.

Grinch, who is quite mathmatically inclined, got so frustrated with my finger counting one day, he swatted my hands down and said, "Stop it! You CAN do this in YOUR HEAD. Do it." So I did. I'm pretty slow and I can't do math in front of a crowd, but I no longer look like I'm doing sign language while I try to figure out the tip for a $34 dinner bill.

So this is a leap for me, but it's important. You need to know this. This is important to the future of all potential iphone owners everywhere. Quite possibly, the future of Apple Computers itself relies on this.

I'm working on the following formula:

X x Y = Z

X equals the number of times you drop your cell phone
And Y equals the number of times your partner SEES you drop your cell phone
Z equals the odds that your partner will buy you an iphone for Christmas and it is ALWAYS a negative number.

It is terribly simple and there are other variables I need to include, like the actual price of an iphone, the amount of time you will spend Twittering on your iphone instead of paying attention to your partner. So I've gotten you off to a good start, internet. Let's get to work on this. (I'm lookin atchoo Eli and Wolfgang.)

Name that Critter

For the bug's 3rd birthday, my sister and neice gave her a very nice world map made out of felt.






To go along with the map, there are about 25 little felt critters with velcro on their backs. The idea is to put the animals on their home continents. Most of the critters are easily identifiable, like these:





Top to bottom, left to right, we figure these guys are a panda, giraffe, zerba, lion, eagle, butterfly, kangaroo, hedgehog, flamingo, rabbit, hawk and camel. Easy peasy, right? There are some that are not so easily identifiable, like these guys:




After months of deliberation, we've decided that they are a roadrunner, moose (with really dinky antlers, poor fellow. OH! Maybe it's a reindeer?), crow (bor-RING!), and turkey. Believe it or not, that turkey took a LONG time to identify. Three college educated adults and a very smart teenager turned that sucker a million different ways before it finally made sense.


If you're counting, there are still nine critters outstanding. What the hell are these?



Now, we're not complete knuckleheads. We figure the grey dude with the tusks is a warthog. His neighbor is squirrel of some sort (artic, perhaps?), and the black thing with the horns and the white U-shape on his face is a bull. Maybe? But what is the brown thing with feet and a tail? A Darwinian pile of poo? On what continent does that live, exactly? Is his grey cousin on the bottom row just a cold weather version of him?


So, I'm turning to you, all-knowing internet, to help us identify these creatures and point us to their happy homes. Beacuse the bug has named the black-and-white critter at the top Boo-ba-dee and I don't know if that's its genus or phylum. Get to work. Name those critters.