More Words You Didn’t Know You Needed

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Piper continues to add to our family vocabulary. You may want to catch up on the vernacular with the first Words You Didn’t Know You Needed before trying out these new ones.

noodle-slized.  Go ahead and say it fast. You may get it that way. As in “Mom, I noodle-slized that my birthday is coming up. Let’s play Candyland.” I just noodle-slized she means “realized.” 

structions. Piper gives a lot of these. We always like to read the structions before we play Candyland. We’re hoping one day to discover a point to the game. Until then, we just do what we’re told.

Milton Bradley - CandyLand

nusually. When something happens often, it nusually happens. Piper nusually picks up after Candyland, but I noodle-sized she left the pieces all over the floor when I stepped on one in the middle of the night. Clearly, my structions weren’t clear.

chotskies. The girl loves a veggie sausage. We don’t have any idea how these became chotskies, but that’s what they are. Piper loves to munch on chotskies while playing Candyland.

Finally, I regret to inform Piper’s fans that lemolade may be a thing of the past. Blame it on Sissy.

“Piper, you know you’re drinking lemoNADE, right?”

“Yep,” Piper said, licking her lips. “I love lemolade.”

“No. It’s lemoNADE.”

“Oh. LemoNADE. Got it.”

We were considering grounding Sissy for her trespasses, but then who would blog and make Star of the Week posters and other things that Piper’s mother really should be doing?

Dam the Monster Update

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The other night I wrote a barely coherent post at 3 a.m. regarding the invasion of monsters in our home and sleepless nights. You can read it here. I was up anyway. Might as well write.

My fabulous cousin, Margee, wrote me immediately with a remedy.  I think she felt sorry for my blubbering helplessness. I’m grateful. Margee recommended that we whip up a batch of Monster Spray which rids the house of said pests. This sounded like a perfect challenge for the Sissy. I can surely mix lavender (which monsters hate, don’t you know) with water, but Sissy said it needed to look authentic. She grabbed one of her American Girl spray bottles (by the way I didn’t know that AG girls even needed spray bottles for their hair but apparently this is another department in which I fail) and made a label. I taped it on. That was my artsy contribution. There.

Piper loved it. You’d think it was Christmas around here. She was so excited to have the Monster Spray. She sprayed the beds. All of them. In case she went wandering bed to bed in the wee hours, for which she’s famous. Then she sprayed the windows and doors. These are clear entry points for monsters. Then she sprayed her pajamas. The house smelled like a spa. We were all ready for sleep.

As I was tucking her in, Piper asked, “Is the monster spray real?”

I sort of avoided the question. “Monsters aren’t real, Piper. Remember?”

“Yeah, but I like the spray. It smells good. Let’s pretend they’re real so we can spray them.”

Then Piper slept twelve straight hours.

Margee is a genius.

Guest Blogger: Raold Dahl a.k.a. Sissy

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Our guest blog is brought to you today by Sissy. Enjoy!

Okay. There’s no denying it. I love to read. I mean, if this were possible, I’d stop eating, sleeping, and going to school just to sit at home and read. Naturally, with a family full of academics, Piper’s should go on to be a great reader. But with a Piper, you can never tell.

Anyway, Piper’s certainly on the right track. Ever since I decided to be the author Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, Matilda, and more) for a school project, she’s become semi-interested in his books. Here’s me as Roald Dahl for the project, the wax museum:

The other day I decided to introduce Piper to one of Dahl’s less famous books, The Giraffe and The Pelly and Me.

Piper was enthralled. She loved every minute of it; the singing animals, the rich duke, the singing, the diamond burglar, the sweet shop, and all the singing (did I already say that?). Strangely enough, her favorite part was the robber.

“Why would he want to steal? He’s going to get caught. Duh.”

I answered as gently as I could. “Well Pipey, some people don’t make good choices.” Evidently, I didn’t need to.

“That robber should be locked up. Why didn’t his mommy yell at him?”

Well, just FYI, our mom does not yell. Don’t know where Piper got that. But evidently, in her mind, that solves everything.

Anyway, the book was a hit. She begged for me to read it every second of my free time and we finished it in three days. She asked me to re-read it the second I finished and wanted to borrow it. I still haven’t gotten it back. I’m now starting another Dahl book with her. Wish me luck.

-Sissy

Dam the Monsters

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It’s 3 a.m. and I’ve just spent the last ten minutes constructing a “monster dam” in Piper’s bed. What’s a “monster dam” you ask? It’s when you pile up all your pillows and the 200 stuffed animals from your bed into a barrier, like a beaver dam, that blocks your bottom bunk from the entry point of monsters. Monsters can’t climb over a pillow mound, apparently.

Isn’t this the same little girl who Wanted: One Monster Under the Bed?

“Every time I fall asleep my imagination sends scary stuff,” Piper whimpers.

I hold her close, willing away the monsters. “Let’s try to think happy thoughts instead,” I suggest. “What makes you happy?”

“The beach, ice cream, Sissy, when there aren’t monsters in my head.”

Then I do what moms have been doing since the advent of the first monster dream, I bring her to bed with me. It’s a desperate move. I’m sure it’s one I’ll regret in the morning. Right now all I want is sleep. I’ll take a snoring little girl with a foot in my face to get it.

“Mommy, if I close my eyes are you sure I won’t see monsters?” I’m not. But I have to say I am or there won’t be anymore sleep and we’ll both be nightmares tomorrow.

Everything’s Better With Glitter

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Piper came home from a birthday party with a craft kit. It was packed full of all the objects I forbid in this house: glitter, pom poms, multi-colored pipe cleaners, glitter glue, sparkly stick-ons, plastic straws, more glitter.

These things terrify me. I don’t get what you’re supposed to do with them. Art projects are beyond me. See Piper’s Star of the Week poster if you don’t believe me. Piper had big plans with her craft kit.

“I’ve been plotting,” she began. “I know what I’m going to do with this stuff.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “What?” I braced myself at the kitchen table for the bad news.

“My plot is to make a glitter family. Of us.”

Sissy interrupted. “I don’t think you’re using the word ‘plot’ correctly.”

“Plot means to plan,” Piper answered. “I’m planning to make a glitter family. Of us. That’s my plot.”

She had us there. Protesting seemed futile. So, I did what parenting a Piper had taught me to do: I rolled up my sleeves and sat down to learn.

And a sort of glitter family indeed emerged from this craft box of foreign objects.

The likeness is uncanny.

“See, Mom,” Piper said, packing up her craft kit. “My plot worked!”

Extreme Slow Food

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We had to call an emergency family meeting tonight. It was about this whole slow food “issue.” I’m not talking about this:

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I’m in to all that. I’m talking about Piper and Sissy’s propensity for taking so long to finish a meal that breakfast runs in to lunch and lunch runs into dinner. We call it brealunner for short. There’s nothing short about it, though. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy a leisurely pace. I like that we talk so much at meal time. I like that Piper cracks us up. Sissy tells us about her day. Important questions are asked and answered. Meal time is awesome for the first hour. You heard me right. It’s just that we can’t seem to do anything else in our house but make meals, eat meals, and clean up after meals. At this point we’re going to have to start bringing our pillows to the table.

So, we brainstormed (post rant, of course). Sissy suggested a new seating arrangement for less distraction. Done. Piper suggested we all stand up while we eat and stop using utensils and napkins. Vetoed. I suggested a timer simply to make us aware of a reasonable passage of time. Motion carried. Dad suggested we cut down on snacks between meals. Split vote. It was a productive conversation. We began eating.

At the end of our meeting and our successful thirty minute meal, I asked if there were any other issues to discuss. Piper had one.

“You guys are kind of bossy. You’re always telling us what to do. I think you both should work on that. Your bossiness, that is.”

Duly noted.

Maybe I should have sent her to bed without her dinner, but A. she’d already eaten it and B. I was laughing too hard.

Spider-Man to the Rescue

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The last time Piper went to Sissy’s piano recital, it wasn’t a complete success. I’m not a total rookie. I know that it’s hard work for a four-year-old to sit still and be reasonably quiet for an hour and a half. I brought along what I call “the quiet bag.” I filled it with stuff that-you guessed it-is supposed to help you be quiet. Crayons, coloring books, suckers, goldfish, books, etc. Each activity occupied Piper for three seconds, so by after the first minute of the recital, she was miserable. We survived, but I’m sure you can imagine how much we enjoyed it. Not much.

What a difference six months and a superhero make. This afternoon, on a whim, I picked up one of these at our neighborhood toy store:

It’s got stickers. You make a picture on a grid. Match up the number on the sticker with the corresponding 1-30 numbered grid. Voila. You have a picture of Spider-Man doing something awesome or fighting off someone evil. Piper completed 8 grids during the recital. She didn’t move a muscle except for her little pincher fingers as she peeled and pasted. I actually listened to piano music and watched Sissy perform three songs without interruption. Sissy played beautifully. Piper seemed to be listening. She was quiet, at least. I was a proud Mama.

“Can we get more of those number puzzle things?” Piper asked on the way to the car.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Spider-Man saved the day.”

It’s Pho-tastic

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We took Piper out for her first experience with pho tonight. She promised to at least try everything. First, she ordered fresh spring rolls “without all that green stuff, please,” which meant no lettuce. She basically had a vermicelli noodle and tofu stick left, but she was happy.

Then, came the pho.  We’re vegetarians, so it was your basic bowl of broth, noodles, and veggies. With sriracha sauce, of course. Yum.

Piper peered inside her bowl and asked, “Why is my food all wet?”

Then she began digging around separating the stuff she liked: carbohydrates from the less desired: vegetables. She agreed to the broccoli, though. Piper thinks anything you can eat with chopsticks and cool soup spoons is good. “It’s pho-tastic!” she declared, proud of her little funny.  She ate fistfuls of fresh mint, too.  We tried explaining that it was a meant to complement the soup, but she considered it a main dish. At least her breath was fresh.

“What was your favorite part, Piper?” I asked.

“The bathroom!”

If I Was President

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During this presidential election season, it seems only fair that I share Piper’s first official campaign speech. At least that’s what we think it was. It happened during dinner. Sissy asked how Piper’s day was and this is what she got:

“If I was President, I would tell everyone to respect each other and to spend less money on toys. They’re wasting all the city’s money on toys. And guns,” Piper said. I think she even slammed her fist on her napkin for emphasis.

“Um,” Piper’s dad replied, “how would you do that?”

“Well,” the candidate began, “everyone should be kind and no one should fight.”

“And how do we stop people from fighting?” Sissy wondered.

“Like I said, they fight over toys. And guns. So, let’s take those away and no one will fight anymore.”

Candidate Piper managed to avoid the original question, but she won my vote anyway.

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