Power Play! And other terms I don't understand.....

Last night, Matt and I got to have a date night. Yipee! His company gave him tickets to the Stars game, his mom offered to keep the boys and he said we could splurge and go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Pappadeaux. It was like a trifecta of awesomeness. What? You didn't know we are hockey fans? Oh, that's because we're not. But the awesomeness came in the form of the beautiful words, "free tickets." So off we went!

I don't get hockey. I know I have said that about other (or all) professional sports, but I really just don't get it. Matt and I have been to one other hockey game in our relationship and it was in the year 2000. I was clearly still a girlfriend that was trying to impress him by showing how "into" sports I was. Ha! That didn't last long. Last night, I came to the realization that all of my hockey knowledge was acquired from about 72 viewings of the movie, "The Mighty Ducks" starring the illustrious Emilio Estevez. What can I say, friends, 1992 was a good year for me. So armed with all the Walt Disney knowledge, I was totally prepared for the game. As usual, when we got to game, I quickly realized that we were seated next to "super fans." That is always our luck. Matt had the audacity to suggest that it might not so much be an issue of "super fans" as much as it is an issue of simply regular fans and me. Since I never appreciate a scenario where I am the odd person out, I immediately dismissed this idea. Here is what really chaps me about the super fan problem, it's that Matt is like a sports chameleon. I know for a fact that he doesn't know jack about hockey, yet he has this ability to morph into a fan no matter what the team or sport. Under pressure, he can spout off random facts, players' names and regulation grade trivia. This is supremely annoying. Speaking of annoying, coming in second to the single superfans are the totally adorable super fan couples who have their own really cute little dances and hand shakes when the team does well. Yuck. So to counter act this super saccharine display of team spirit I suggested that Matt and I devise a ridiculously elaborate routine whenever Team Hill does something awesome at a game. For example, two hip bumps and a low five whenever Matt brings me a gourmet pretzel from concessions. Or a two handed high five, fake chest bump followed by exploding "knucks" whenever Melissa goes an entire period without mistakenly cheering for the wrong team! Yes! Talk about team spirit!

So there we were, getting all pumped up for this game when my seatmate arrived to my left. It was really a rather large family all pimped out in their Stars gear and I was fortunate enough to get little sister #4 seated directly next to me. Actually to be more accurate, I was seated next to her hair. Once she got all settled in, she went through an elaborate routine of positioning her luxurious mane of hair. Where did her hair feel the most comfortable? Draped down the right side of my body of course. Hmmm. I don't much care for that. But after a little repositioning, I discovered that there was no escaping the hair sleeve I was being forced to wear. It was like a waist length waterfall that cradled my arm and side oh so lovingly. I felt like vomiting. Despite what I do for a living, it might come as a surprise that I am extremely uncomfortable with random child hair being draped across me. Since Matt had become instant best friends with Stan the super fan on his left, my only option was to lean as far across the armrest as I could and get as much of my upper body in Matt's seat as possible. It was a pose that smacked of desperation and it definitely looked like we don't get out much.

Whatever, I decided to amuse myself by people watching. There are some interesting people at hockey games and lots of yellers. The yellers are my favorite. There was one man who had worked himself into such a frenzy that he was practically frothing at the mouth. I found this super entertaining until I noticed what he was wearing. I then became consumed with worry that this man was about to scream himself into a heart attack while wearing acid washed jeans and a cream colored linen blazer. It could very well have been called ecru though, Matt said he thought maybe swiss coffee, but in retrospect, I think he was just being sarcastic. I told myself that if that man dropped dead, I would be forced to leap over the seats and rip that jacket off his lifeless body, because no one, even a man in acid washed jeans, deserves to yell himself to death in a Miami Vice cast off. I am super compassionate like that :)

So bottom line, here is what I think of hockey. It looks really hard. After all my loops around Texas Skatium, I still to this day cannot skate backwards, so I was really impressed. In fact, I think I am going to rank hockey players above even roller skating Sonic carhops on my list of jobs that I really respect. That's kind of a big deal.

I go by Ma. Ma Hill

Connor came home from school last week practically bubbling over with excitement about a science project they had done in class. They made butter. He had memorized every thrilling detail and shared it with us with an overwhelming amount of joy. He was desperate to recreate this dairy magic at home. I checked it out online and it did look really easy so I promised him that we would make it a spring break project.

The wait for homemade butter has been almost interminable. I have heard the steps of butter making so many times that I could picture it in my sleep. When we went to the grocery store he flung open the refrigerated cases, giddily demanding the "milk with the most amounts of fat." He regaled his brother on an almost nightly basis with the most dramatic telling of the birth of butter that one could ever imagine. Obviously I had a lot to live up to. Since we were in this homespun type of mood I decided on a whim that not only would we make our own butter, we would go ahead and whip up some homemade bread and strawberry jam. Why not? I had been wanting to try Ina Garten's Easy Strawberry Jam recipe so this was the perfect time. You could probably already guess if you have ever met me, that I was in way over my head before we even started.

So. Today was the day that we were going to go all pioneer. Connor's enormously high expectations had me completely immersed in his world of delusion. I even started out the morning googling antique butter molds a la the strawberry mold Ma Ingalls had in the Little House in the Big Woods. You know, in case I want to get a booth at an artisan craft fair or something. Stop laughing.

First things first, I made my bread dough and set it out to rise. Easy. I am frankly feeling super good about myself at this point. Enter Connor dressed in what he considered to be appropriate butter making attire: jeans, flip flops, no shirt and a flannel robe loosely tied. Whatever, I couldn't let that distract me because we had some butter to create. Here is the basic plan for butter making according to my child and the internet: Put some really fatty milk in a shaker jar and shake it until butter forms. Then drain the buttermilk off, rinse the butter and then BAM! You're done. We hit our first hurdle about 1 and a half minutes into our endeavor. Combined, Connor and I have the arm strength of a 6 year old. Broken down, that means he has the strength of a five year old and I have the strength of a one year old and that is me being generous with myself. I then felt like I should have asked him more details about the butter making at school. How long did he estimate it took his class to churn out that delicious butter? About 40 hours. Wait, what? It turns out that his super smart teacher had each of the sixteen kids take turns shaking the jar. Well, isn't that convenient to have 32 arms at your disposal? Our four arms just weren't cutting it. After I thought we had put enough pioneer effort into it, we busted out the food processor and in seconds had butter. Thank goodness. Connor quickly spread it on his prearranged cracker platter and went to town. I headed back to my jam making. After all a pioneer mother doesn't get much time to rest. Since the jam recipe was titled "easy" that usually means intermediate to advanced to this home cook. It went okay. It all did what she said it would but we thought there was way too much sugar in the recipe so none of us really cared for it. So now we have about ten gallons of overly sweet strawberry jam, ten loaves of bread and a minuscule amount of butter.

I might hold off on the artisan craft fair.

Little Stuart

Since I have been absent from my blog lately due to a myriad of excuses, I was really torn about what story to share for my first post back. Should I cover our snow and ice days? Maybe the epidemic level sicknesses that we have survived this month? No, the answer was very clear to me. There could only be one story important enough to supersede all that other crazy stuff and that particular story is the arrival of Little Stuart.

Some of you might be familiar with Little Stuart's predecessor, Stuart the Dog. If you don't know Stuart the Dog, well, how nice for you. Stuart is Connor's dog personality and he has been around as long as Kenny. The distinction is that while Kenny is a separate, imaginary person, Connor IS Stuart the Dog. Slowly but surely though, over the last year, Stuart has slowly been separating himself from Connor and we talk more about him in the third person as opposed to the first. I started to have a tiny ray of hope blossoming in my soul, that finally, we might be getting rid of one of our weirdo characters. Alas, this was not meant to be. As usual, once I decided to allow myself that tiny shred of hope that we might soon stop talking to ourselves and hugging air, I found out that Connor has been laying the groundwork for his little brother to take over the throne of family dog. Enter Little Stuart.

Since I have had a kid walking around this house barking and wagging his imaginary tail for years now, it really shouldn't have come as such a shock when our two year old started panting and licking the windows. But it did. I thought that maybe, just maybe, at least 1/2 of my children that would resist the urge to be completely sucked into the world of odd. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love that Connor is so super creative and smart, but a lot of times I just don't get him and I was kind of hoping that I could at least say I 'got' one of my kids. Connor, the devious puppet master, was thrilled. He and Little Stuart immediately dropped to all fours and started barking and wrestling with each other. FYI, Kenny was also overjoyed at the new addition to the family.

The following are some highlights of Little Stuart's personality. First of all he is absolutely so adorable you can hardly stay mad at him (Hudson also possesses this particular quality). He is particularly good at fetching things and if you ever instruct him to pick something up off the floor, he is happy to comply and will carry it wherever you desire, clutched tightly in his mouth. If I had to nail down a breed for Stuart the Dog, I would always have said some kind of sheep dog, a la the shaggy dog. I don't know why, but that is just how I picture him. Little Stuart is without a doubt a small breed, like a Chihuahua. I base this purely on energy level and the timbre of his bark. He can hear a siren ten miles away and will race to the nearest window, throw back the blinds, and let a yip, yip, howl combo that would put any purebred to shame. His favorite activity is to be walked on a leash, much like the original Stuart. It really gets his tail a waggin' to be hooked to that stupid leash. Never in all my life did I ever think I would be the kind of mother walking her kid/imaginary dog on a leash around the backyard. Yet, here I am.

Little Stuart also likes to wear his dog hat from Halloween two years ago. It is way too small and tends to rest on top of his head like a beanie, which contributes to the very distinct, possibly mentally unstable look.

I have included several pictures of both Stuart the Dog and Little Stuart taken several years apart so you can see how disturbingly similar these two animals are at their respective ages of two and half. That's two and a half in human years, by the way, not dog years.

Connor is 5, Kenny is still 37

Yesterday was my little boy's fifth birthday. I cannot believe he is already five. Whenever I think of Connor and the number five I immediately remember that he weighed exactly five pounds the day we brought him home from the hospital, which also felt like it just occurred yesterday.

I think this kid is magic. I really and truly do. I have heard that it is considered uncool in some circles to be so openly infatuated with your kids. Luckily I don't run in those particular circles, because I am unashamedly in love with both of my children. I am obsessed with raising them to be godly men and singularly focused on helping them be compassionate, funny, creative and kind and if that makes me seem like a boring or one dimensional adult, I'm okay with that. It's a good thing I am married to a man that shares this focus. Like I said, we just think he is magic. He is smart, hilarious and has the soul of a 64 year old man. He worries about turning off the electricity so there will be "enough power around when Mushy needs to go to kindergarten." He is the best big brother that has ever walked the face of this planet and we could not be prouder.

The big number 5 was Connor's first "school birthday" and he has been eagerly awaiting it like it was the second coming of Christmas. He couldn't wait to get to school yesterday to bask in all the birthday glory with his classmates. I told him that I would make whatever kind of cupcakes he wanted to share with his class. After thinking about it for a minute he started listing off his classmates and what kind of cake flavor each one of them liked. Jackson liked chocolate, Chloe likes strawberry, Jilian likes white, and so on. After a bit, I interrupted and said, "Okay, but it is your birthday. What kind of cupcakes do YOU want?" He replied, "Mommy, I want all my friends to have their favorite cupcakes on my birthday so they will feel as happy as me." Oh. That is really sweet and selfless and so unlike his mother. As my baking skills are limited and I wouldn't even know where to begin in the process of creating 16 cupcakes, all in individual flavors, we compromised and made chocolate for boys and strawberry for girls. He was delighted. He had the best day, even if he was feeling a little under the weather. We invited his whole class to his upcoming birthday party. The day he passed out invitations was the highlight of his life (at least until cupcake day). He told me he felt so excited and happy delivering those envelopes to everyone's mailboxes. I told him though, that people are really busy and he shouldn't be disappointed if they all couldn't make it to the actual party. I really didn't think we would have much response since A. I don't know any of the other kids parents and we never see them outside of school and B. I have not taken my son to a single class birthday party all school year (don't judge me! We are never going to see those kids again after June 1st!). Okay, typing that out made me feel kind of bad. But anyway, based on that evidence I didn't expect the RSVPS to roll in. But roll they did.

Apparently despite his father's social awkwardness and the fact that in elementary school his mother's best friends were literally books, our son has managed to become good friends with his entire class. What I loved was the fact that every mom who emailed or called me to tell me they were coming had something nice to say about Connor. And not fake nice, really nice. (I can tell because I am fake nice about 79% of each day.) They shared stories they had heard from their kids or things they had witnessed up at school and it just wowed me to hear that unexpected praise from strangers about our little guy. I loved it. Then I really felt bad about skipping all those parties :)

If you have ever even glanced at this blog before you will know that Matt and I have just about no idea what we are doing when it comes to parenting. We try super hard and we stumble constantly but when I look at my now, oh so grown up five year old I have to feel eternally grateful that he is brilliant, sweet and kind despite the novice parental stylings of his mom and dad.

Finally a note about Kenny. I kind of had this tiny thought (dare I say dream) that Connor would wake up on the morning of February 7th and decide that now as a five year old it was time to let Kenny move on to another family. After all he is in his mid to late 30's and has just about worked his way up to a semi-management position at the donut shop. He has a lot of life to lead and I think we are holding him back. I will never voluntarily bring up my invisible child Kenny to Connor, just in case he one day wants to forget about him. But no. This morning, on his first full day as a five year old Connor told me that Kenny had given him a birthday present. Warily I asked what gift his invisible friend had bestowed up him. His response? "Love, Mom. Kenny gave me love for my birthday."

Oh crap. He is going to be with us forever.

525,600 minutes

How do you measure a year? Lyrics to one of my favorite songs and really fitting for our family this year. This has been a year of change for our family, our little boys are trying so hard to turn into little men and have worried, challenged and entertained the daylights out of us in 2010. It has been a year of a lot of big decisions and probably the biggest is that we decided to get the heck out of dodge! Well, not literally, but a plan has been ever so slowly set into motion for us to move away from all the hustle and bustle and take our particular brand of crazy to the country.

That's right, I said the country :) Don't we look like the type? In all actuality, I consider the country to mean I have to travel an hour to get to things I love the most like Super Target and Ross. We won't be nearly that far, more like 20 minutes, Matt assures me that I will still be able to get Bravo out there in the sticks and he better not be lying to me. We are headed to a little place called Poetry. Eventually. We casually have our house for sale and I say casually because no one seems to want to buy it, which isn't a big deal because we aren't in a huge hurry to sell it. We kind of just think that it will fall into place whenever it is meant to be. In the meantime, I am trying to live with two boys and a husband in a house that has to, for all intents and purposes, be ready to be seen by strangers at the drop of a hat. It is all very low stress as you can imagine. I won't even get into how totally freaked out Matt gets when strangers come "creeping" around our house. He acts like they are all the future stars (for lack of a better word) of "To Catch a Predator."

I guess it will sell eventually. In the meantime, we are getting really excited about building our "dream house." As you might imagine all four of us have very different opinions on what our dream house should look like. It is really fun to talk about and imagine all the things we want to do, whenever we eventually break free from this haggard, city life. Matt wants a house that is totally powered by a windmill. That is a little weird for me. I am more of an "on the grid" type of girl. So we will see. There has also been talk of having our faces mosaic-ed in the front entry way of our home. I won't mention whose idea that was, but I think we all know. I mean, don't you all want to walk into our new beautiful home and look down to see you are standing on my face? Matt does.

Connor has his own list of ideas for our new house and they include the world's biggest fort (do-able) and an area of the yard to build his own space shuttle (not so much). I am sure we can put that right next to the windmill. Crazy, hillbilly decor aside (which we are absolutely not having, by the way), we can't wait to spend the summer hitting up open houses and stealing as many great ideas as possible. We are so ready to have some real room to breathe and some space for our boys to spread out and grow up as creative and adventurous as possible. And while we still have a ways to go before we settle down, green acres style into our dream house, we sure are excited about what this New Year is already bringing to our family.
Oh and I forgot to mention what might be the best part! Matt's parents are going to be our neighbors! Doesn't that sound like a million blog posts just ready to write themselves? I told Matt that we are going to wake up one morning to see a twelve foot high privacy fence has erected itself overnight after Connor's 50th visit in two days to his Gammie and Gampie. Doesn't it sound like heaven?

So, anyone want to buy a house?

Gun Control

Lately I have been noticing that many of my posts have been Hudson centered. They usually veer into the "Good Lord, I don't know what to do with this kid" category. This would be another to add to that list. I love him more than I could ever explain, but often his behavior is beyond explanation.

Backstory 1: This family owns a single cap gun. I can't even really remember why it was acquired to begin with, but I am pretty sure that it was mainly as an accessory to Connor's rodeo outfit (You know we are all about the costumes in this house). We are not gun people. We are dull samurai sword people. It has never really served a function, it has never fired a cap and has been languishing away in the toy box for years. Or so I thought. I now know that it wasn't simply hidden away like a forgotten toy, it was waiting for it's true master to claim it. Much like in Harry Potter, where a wand has a way of choosing it's owner, the gun has chosen Hudson.

Instantly upon discovering his love for the gun, Hudson expanded his vocabulary to include the word "soot." As in, " I soot you." Lovely. He also has a very specific, slightly aggressive gun stance. Legs spread, brow furrowed, eyes afire. I can't say that I love it. This has been going on for a while and we have been working our tails off reprimanding him for threatening to shoot people. As sneaky as he is, he seamlessly transitioned into shooting everything else. The walls, planes in the sky and one nightmarish afternoon, his own son, Big Baby an act for which he at least showed instant remorse. But back to this in a moment.

Backstory 2: On a whim, I bought the boys the movie Hook for Christmas. Connor isn't a huge movie watcher and didn't really care. Hudson, being a second child and therefore an avid fan of the cinema, became hooked. He watched it every day, at least once during Christmas vacation. Sometimes twice. I know that admitting that here makes me sound like the laziest mother in the world, but when my choices boil down to 90 minutes of Hook or a 90 minute set on the drums.....don't judge me. Here is the thing though, Hook is not a cartoon and it kind of scares him. So he came up with the genius idea of watching the movie with his gun poised at the ready, hammer cocked, just in case he needed to protect himself. (Please see Exhibit A)). Whatever. He wasn't threatening to shoot any of us and he was happy. But as this odd gun, Hook, Hudson love triangle continued some more interesting details started to emerge. First of all, although it was truly Captain James Hook that Hudson is scared of, it is in fact, the mild mannered, middle aged Peter Pan played by Robin Williams that Hudson preferred to shoot. AKA the good guy and there was no talking him out of it. So Hudson had cast himself as a henchman. Fantastic. And not at all weird.

Now, fast forward to last weekend. Connor had the great idea of mounting a stage production of Captain Hook and Peter Pan in our living room. I knew in my heart of hearts that this was a bad idea, but they were both so gung ho that I just had to let the disaster play itself out. It was all going quite well, Peter came out in some of his little brother's pants in order to look the part (whatever that means) and Hudson came ready with his gun. There was a lot of chasing and "arghhing" and laughing so I decided that this might not be so bad after all. As soon as I mentally commended myself for having two bright and imaginative boys, the screaming started. James Hook decided it was time to cut to the battle scene and attempt to lop off Peter Pan's hand in retribution for his own hook. Sigh. I had to stop Hudson as he attempted to perform Connor's de-handing with his gun. Yes, you read that right, my youngest son tried to pistol whip his brother's hand off with a buck ninety-nine six shooter.

I had Matt take a picture of the crime scene (exhibit B). Connor is convalescing with his bag of ice and shorty pants and James Hook is sitting in time out bearing witness to his brother's pain. You can see who looks more upset. So, the gun is gone. I thought that might help dial down the anxiety I feel about being a victim of a cap gun drive by in my own house, but it hasn't. Although he has been denied access to the offending weapon, he has resorted to finding alternate guns. To date, they have included a wooden spoon, a baby carrot and a rather intimidating stick he found today on a walk (exhibit C and please note the stance). I am scared that he is going to start biting his bread into the shape of a gun. I can just picture myself in a school counselor's office saying, "Well, I'm not positive but I think it all started with a single cap gun...." Matt said I should worry more about a potential vitamin D deficiency as result of the inordinate amount of his life that kid spends in time out. I just don't know anymore.

Christmas 2010

Another Christmas has come and gone in a whirlwind of excitement and noise. Noise being the key word there because Santa was kind enough to deliver a drumset to this house. For months whenever anyone asked my boys what they wanted for Christmas, they both would say drums. Or dums. No matter how hard we tried to shift their yearnings subliminally with advertisements and sometimes downright begging, it was still at the top of their list. It was actually the only thing on Hudson's list, Connor's was rather lengthy and included a real space shuttle and an actual star. Since his list tended to veer toward the completely unattainable we decided to get the drums because we wanted Santa to get the credit for coming through in as big of a way as possible.

We also decided to get Connor a Wii, as we are undoubtedly the last family in America to get one. He always likes to play it at my dad's house and since he is about to turn five we thought he would be able to get a lot of enjoyment out of it. Plus Matt is determined to beat me in Wii tennis but frankly that is just not going to happen. So Christmas morning Matt got up super early to turn on the tv and wii and make a fire and before 6:00 Connor hopped out of bed and raced in ready to greet his gifts. He encountered his first problem, his sleeping lump of a baby brother. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and trying to acquaint myself with the fact that it was 5:45 in the morning, when I came out and saw Connor literally laying on his brother and prying his eye lids open. The Mush did not so much enjoy that. While Connor was filled with the magic of Christmas, Hudson was filled with the two helpings of Santa's milk and cookies he had stolen the night before and was in no mood for early morning shenanigans. After a lot of cajoling we finally managed to get them both downstairs.

They were so excited, they didn't see the drums at first. When Hudson finally noticed, it was like a spotlight shown down from heaven illuminating the tiny set while a chorus of angels broke out into hallelujahs. To sum up, he was excited. There was a minor setback when we discovered that even in it's lowest short boy setting, the stool was still to high for our vertically challenged son to mount on his own, but we didn't let that put a damper on the excitement of our sons owning their very own drumset. Oh no, not when there was so much joyful noise to be made!Granted, he also could not reach the bass pedal, but who cares? We will just hit that with our sticks too! Also in the wee hours of the chilly Christmas morn, we discovered that our two year old had some pretty intense showmanship on the drums. He had an elaborate routine of counting off the beat while hitting his sticks together. A very loud high pitched voice shouting, " A one, do, free!" He would then proceed to play the crap out of those drums only pausing to stick them behind his back and twist them around. That move was strictly to make him look cool. Listen. I don't know where he learned all that but I am going to really have to monitor his netflix queue more closely.

After about five minutes I started to hate Santa. I mean, really, do we hate ourselves? And honestly that question has been posed to me on several occasions by well meaning friends who wondered why we would ever allow our family to live with a drumset! It really isn't like me. I am much more the, "here is a stocking full of books and a new sweater vest" kind of mom because all of those things are peaceful and quiet and I am a nerd that loves books. But I also want to be the mom whose kids know that she wants them to be as weird and creative as they want to be and if my Mush wants to express himself on a drumset, than who am I to hold him back? Oh. That was even hard to type. By the way, they also did get stockings full of books. We haven't completely lost our minds here people.

At approximately 6:14 a.m. once the fury of unwrapping and drumming had settled down to a dull roar, Matt and I collapsed on the couch in exhaustion to watch the boys play. Connor kept spontaneously announcing that this was the best Christmas he had ever had and that he was so glad it was Jesus' birthday. That really made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The mention of Jesus also reminded Hudson that life isn't just drums and ketchup and he ran into our breakfast nook. I was just gathering the energy from deep within to follow him when he galloped back into the living room yelling, "Yeehaw! Yeehaw!" I asked Matt why he was running and holding his crotch at the same time (those are questions I feel like Matt should always have the answer for) and upon closer inspection we discovered that he had ever so carefully plucked the donkey out of our nativity scene and was pretending to ride that tiny mule around our living room. As Matt reached for him in order to save the donkey from his inevitable fate, Hudson froze mid gallop, arms outstretched and shhh'd us as loud as he could. We all also froze, because frankly he is unpredictable and unpredictable people are dangerous (I learned that on the Real Housewives FYI). He stood there for about twenty seconds with that donkey clutched in his hand and then said, "Shh, baby seeping." "My baby seep." We followed him back over to the nativity and saw that he had placed a kitchen towel over the baby Jesus. Isn't that sweet (assuming he was tucking him in and not trying to smother him)? Ignoring the fact that touching my nativity is an offense punishable by death, it was absolutely precious. Ahh, a small glimpse into the real meaning of Christmas.

It almost made the drumming bearable. Almost.