(opening the English-Spanish translator that she thinks is a Bible)

Kaelin: And God said, “Bring me some money so I can buy candy at the mall.”

Yesterday was Kaelin’s first day of school for the year.  It went about as expected.  There were tears when I dropped her off but by mid-morning she had gotten over it.  Fortunately, they keep those kids so busy they don’t have time to be upset.

I typically don’t pay much attention to Vice Presidential candidates, but after experiencing Cheney for the last 8 years, I’ve decided it’s more important this time around.  Don’t get me wrong, I think Dick Cheney was probably the best VP choice Bush could have made, because he’s probably the single biggest reason Bush hasn’t been assassinated. 

But I’m hoping the candidates this time around have bigger goals for their VP selections than “insurance policy.”

So Obama picked Joe Biden.  Makes sense to pick someone with experience, particularly in foreign affairs.  And he’s an excellent debater.  But I wonder if Biden’s tendency toward political incorrectness will be a liability.  Obama has already had to forgive him publicly for a verbal misstep. 

And I’m not sure how much “experience” will make the difference when we’re talking about someone who thought an appropriate response to 9-11 would be to send Iran a check for $200 million, “no strings attached,” so that we can “show the Arab world we’re not bent on destruction.”

But I find the Republican VP nomination to be far more interesting.  Today, on his 72nd birthday, John McCain picked 44 year old Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin.

Ok.  Didn’t see that coming.

It makes perfect sense on some levels.  She’s young – perhaps that’s an attempt to balance out John McCain’s age, but I wonder if it will just end up making him look older. 

She’s a woman.  An attempt to out-minority Obama?  Probably.  An attempt to win over Hillary Voters?  I hope the GOP isn’t that naive.  Although I’m told there is a group of Hillary Revenge voters who are planning to vote Republican out of spite (in which case they don’t need a woman on the ticket), I’ve never met a Hillary supporter concerned about the issues who would ever consider voting Republican.

She’s attractive.  She’s very popular in her state.  She’s intelligent.  She’s a mother.  She’s likable, which John McCain is not.

But she’s also inexperienced.  Her resume tops out at two years as Governor of a state with one of the lowest populations in the country.  But hey, John McCain has enough experience for two people, right?

She’s a lot of things that John McCain needs.  At first glance, I like her.  But ready to step in as Commander in Chief should something happen to the President?  I’m not convinced.  And I’m a little worried about how she’s going to hold up to Biden in the debates.

I’m also wondering how seriously John McCain takes his own VP pick.  Obviously it’s a political move to win votes but I wonder if a 72-year old, dyed-in-the-wool politician who loves nothing more than touting the fact that he’s been in politics since the Civil War would ever listen to a 44 year old woman with 2 years of Governor experience.  Or did he just hire a pretty face to do as she’s told, “inquire daily as to the health of the president, and … attend the funerals of Third World dictators.”

I guess only time will tell.

However, I must say that I find it pleasantly ironic that after all the fighting, back-biting, twisting and money spent by the Clinton campaign, this lady is closer to getting into a presidential capacity than Hillary ever was.

“Is it the doctor that gave me stickers?”
“No, Dr. Seibert isn’t working right now.  We’re going to see a different doctor that we haven’t met before.”

She chattered cheerfully on the way to the after-hours clinic.  The bleeding had stopped and the pain had subsided.  It was past her bedtime but she was wide awake.

“What’s the doctor’s name?”
“I don’t know.  We can ask when we get there.”
“Is it Rosa?”
“Probably not.”
“Is it Dora?  It might be Dora, but it wouldn’t be the same Dora.  And there might be a doctor named Boots but it wouldn’t be the same Boots.”

When we reached the clinic, she marched in with her Little Lamb and her enormous blanket.  The staff was immediately taken with the bouncy little girl in pajamas, and I heard, “Oh, you ought to come look at her, she’s adorable.” 

She looked around with interest at the colorful room and the large TV as I spoke with the receptionist.

“I called a little while ago about having someone look at my daughter’s chin.  She tripped and fell into a chair and it seems to be a fairly deep cut.”

When we were quickly ushered into Room 8, her demeanor changed.  Her well-founded suspicion of doctor’s offices was aroused, and she suddenly became very clingy, trying to hide behind my legs.

She struggled and cried through the rinsing of the wound and the doctor’s examination, despite the sweet words and “magic wand” offered by the nursing staff.  The verdict was as I feared: she needed stitches.

They had to strap her down.

She cried.  I held her hand.

She screamed.  I stroked her hair.

They stuck a needle directly in the wound again and again to administer the anesthetic.

The screams turned into sobs.  “Please stop hurting me… Please, please stop hurting me…”

I offered useless words of comfort and tried not to look away as the needle made the blood flow again.

As the anesthetic took effect, her hysteria lessened.  But the fear of pain, the fear of the unknown, did not.

As the doctor stitched, she whimpered again and again, “Is it over yet?”  And each time everyone would tell her “Almost.  We’re almost done,”  followed by a question for the sake of distraction.

“How old are you?”
“Two.”
“Do you have a brother or a sister?”
“A brother.”
“What’s his name?”
“Koren.  He fusses all the time.  Ow, you’re poking me!”

The anesthetic hadn’t sufficiently reached that part of the wound.  The tears came flowing out again.

One, two, three, four stitches.  It felt like entirely too long to have only been four stitches.

The moment when I could answer “Yes, it’s over now” was like reaching the surface and taking a breath of air a millisecond before drowning.

She got a popsicle.  And a toy.  And four stickers.  And a lollipop.  And she got to sit in the lobby and watch Lilo and Stitch while I filled out paperwork.  By the time we left she was exhausted, but smiling.  On the way out the door she asked all the doctors and nurses what their names were.

We climbed in the car and I buckled her in the back seat.  I kissed her on the head and told her what a good girl she had been and how proud of her I was.  She smiled and closed her eyes.

As I started the car, I exhaled for the first time in an hour.  There, in the safety of darkness, I wept. 

I’m still weeping.

(opening the English-Spanish translation dictionary that she thinks is a Bible)
Kaelin: God says, ‘Ee-oh Ee-oh Ee-oh, I love you very very much.  And please bring me a banana.’

Jens usually does the breakfast thing for Kaelin because he’s got the morning shift while I try to catch up on some of the sleep I missed overnight.  But last night was a bad night for him, so I took over this morning to allow him a few extra hours of sleep.

I warmed a biscuit and doused it with honey but no butter, just like she likes it.  I peeled and de-yolked a boiled egg.  I poured some milk.  And I dumped some mixed berries onto her plate.

At that, she looks down at her berries and back up at me with one eyebrow raised.

“ONE strawberry?” she asks, with a tone that is less a question than a statement of disapproval.  A tone that says it’s a good thing you have some redeeming qualities woman, because you totally fail at breakfast.

“I wanna play on the computer.”
“It’s not time for the computer right now.  It’s bedtime.”

She looked at me and squared her shoulders.  And then with all the gusto of a sixteen-year-old in the prime of you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do rebellion, she says, “Well I’m going to play on the computer anyway.”

Yeah.  That went over well. 

Suffice it to say she’s probably marked that off her list of “Things to Try When I Want My Way.”  Though I fully expect to see it surface again in another 10 years.

[Updated to add: I’m going to leave this entry at the top for a week.  For more recent posts, see below.]

Um.  Hi.  Can I ask a favor?  If you know me in real life and read this blog semi-regularly, can you please leave a comment on this post? 

See, I have this problem…

Among the drawbacks of publishing the details of my family’s life here is the fact that it’s a bit one-sided.  Meaning that if you read this blog, you know more about me than I know about you on a daily basis.

See, it happens all too often that I’m having a perfectly two-sided conversation with a friend and telling them about the latest stunt Kaelin pulled or the latest way Koren has found to keep me from sleeping, and the response is, “I know.  I read your blog.”

And then the conversation just falls over and dies at my feet while I stand there trying to remember what ELSE they already know from the blog because HEAVEN FORBID I REPEAT MYSELF.

I hate repeating myself.  My life is hardly interesting the FIRST time around.

So if I know ahead of time that you are already caught up on the latest details via this blog, then I can avoid that awkward what do I say now point of the conversation and it would make me feel like much less of a social failure. 

So humor me?  Just click the “Comments” button below this post and fill in your name (or enough of your name that I can tell who you are) etc. in the popup window.  Thanks!

PS… I will soon be adding a segment in the sidebar for businesses we support.  If you have your own business website and you would like to be added to that section, be sure to leave the address in the comments as well.

PPS… Is anyone around here using Similac Advance formula?  We bought a bunch just before we had to switch Koren to the soy version, and now we can’t take some of it back.  Any takers?

UPDATE:  As a point of clarification, I’m not asking you to comment on every post from here on out (although, if you want to…).  This is just a one-time request so I can make a mental note that, “Ok, this person reads the blog so I shouldn’t repeat all my blog stories when talking to them and expect them to act like it’s new information.” kthxbye.

It could be too early to make this assertion, but I have a feeling that this little thingamajig* is going to be a favorite pastime in the near future.

Now if we can just keep a certain someone from playing “Spin the Monkey,” all will be well.

* Does anyone besides me find it odd that spell check has no problem with the word “thingamajig” but balks when I try to type “thingy”?

Figured it was finally time to clean off my memory card…

Playing the “stand-up” game, his favorite pastime.

This was just before he burst into tears at the injustice of being put on his tummy.

She’s still smitten with him.

I LOVE this thing. It’s like a bassinet that’s slightly elevated and moves back and forth. SCORE.

BabyCenter sends me all the latest news when it comes to parenting.  THIS JUST IN:

Fast-food kids’ meals shockingly unhealthy!

Kid’s meals at popular fast-food restaurants deliver more than a quick lunch or dinner — 90 percent of them have far more than a meal’s worth of calories and many are loaded with fat and salt too, according to a report released on Monday.
“Nearly every single possible combination of the children’s meals at KFC, Taco Bell, Sonic, Jack in the Box, and Chick-fil-A is too high in calories,” [The Center for Science in the Public Interest] said in a statement.

Ok, really?  Is there actually anyone on this planet that would consider this news? 
Who is the parent that reads that and thinks, “Well I’ll be darned, you mean all those greasy nuggets and fries I’ve been feeding Junior every day aren’t part of a balanced, nutritious meal?”  Because I would like to meet that parent and bop them over the head.

The other day Jens and I were having a conversation about something or other when Kaelin interrupted…

Kaelin: EXCUSE ME.
Mama: Yes, Kaelin?  What would you like to say?
Kaelin: Why do you talk so much?
Mama: Because we like to talk to each other.  Why do you talk so much?
Kaelin: Because I want you to pay attention to me and not Daddo.

At least she’s honest about wanting to be the center of attention…