To all the people at Holiday Inn Seaside...I apologize.

This is my angelic little prince:

Here is my angelic little prince on vacation:

 

I'm here to say I shouldn't have sold my soul to the devil for that "One last blizzard" while pregnant with him because he chose this trip to claim his spawn.  Well played devil, well played.  I lay my golden fiddle down because I know I have been beat.

This is how the vacation went in my head:  the monkey, prince and I would go have yummy pancakes to gear up for our fun filled day, play at the beach, go back to the hotel for naps and well deserved mommy reading time, have more yummy food, perhaps hit some shops while they calmly sit in the stroller, play a little more, meet daddy for dinner (who was on a work trip), read stories and go straight to sleep.  Ah, sweet vacation bliss.

This is how the actual vacation went:  after paying $6 each for my children to get hopped up on peanut butter & overflowing jelly sandwiches and tater tots (dear lord, please forgive me for how I feed my children.  And I pray forgiveness from the monkey for feeding her brother things she had to wait three years to taste.  And while I'm at it, I pray for a new car that fits the monkey, prince, husband and grandparents who are flying half way across the country to see them.  Amen.)  Return to hotel room, get everyone ready for bed and commence the longest crying spell in human history.  Seriously, I should call Ripley's.  Cue all surrounding rooms calling down to front desk demanding we be evicted from the premises.  Finally drive the prince around foreign city braless, licenseless and glassesless.  Finally get him to sleep only to have him wake up again as soon as the engine stops.  Call uncle, put back in hotel and return to longest crying spree part two.  Go to sleep around midnight when he finally gives up but decides he is rising with the sun.  Thank gawd for hotel coffee machines.  I would have drank black tar and liked it.  In fact, I might have for all I know.  Go to work breakfast with daddy only to have the monkey ditch us to go eat pancakes with co-workers (did she not pay attention to my vacation plans at all?  Pancakes were in my version!).  Try to go back to hotel for naps but the joke is on me.  There will be no sleeping evah!  Bribe them with bubbles and beach toys.  Grab a sandwiches at local shop just to have strangers comment on how cute and well behaved they are.  Stare in dumbfound disbelief, smile politely and slowly back out of the door before they figure out they have been fooled.  Go ride carousel only to have the monkey tell me, and I quote "get off mommy!  I want to go by myself!"  Mind you she was on an animal by herself and the prince and I were on a separate animal behind her.  Apparently it was the teenage version of the devil chose to possessed her.  Fan-tastic!  Bribe more with ice cream and head back to beach.  After what might possibly been the longest wait for dinner ever encountered, which the prince refused to eat (What is this woman?  There isn't a tater in sight!) head back to hotel for - you guessed it - world's longest cryfest part 3.  This is the point where I chose to enter vacation mental psychosis and black out for the rest of vacation to preserve what is (arguably) left of my sanity.

So here is how I choose to remember this blissful sugared up pre-detox vacation:

Weekend Glimpses

Sorry for the lack of posts this week.  We have been traveling and oh, the tales I have.  If I didn't have proof of the actual monkey and prince, I'm sure people would think I make these things up.  But alas, I do not.  Stay tuned. 

Hope the weekend treated you with love and respect.

Hair Diaries Part II

I've tried to get myself to write this update since the self inflicted chop and haven't been able to even sit down at the computer.  But here I am with a spoonful of sea salt caramel gelato and eczema covering 90% of my body giving it a go (why do bad things have to taste so good??  Darn you dairy filled deliciousness!).  I'm still beside myself that her hair is gone.  Yes, I know, get over it.  It's only hair.  It'll grow back.  Blah blah, yada yada.  But it's so weird losing the identity of your child.  I mean, she doesn't look like the monkey.  I see other people in her but not her.  We're talking 3 1/2 years of hair minus a couple trims.  I don't recognize this new devilish child that replaced my other devilish child.  Okay, okay, so maybe her personality remains intact.  But seriously, if I lost her in a crowd I don't think I'd be able to pick her out without that mangy mop of unbrushed curls atop her hair.  Yes, possibly the unkempt hair universe has spoken through child proof scissors.  Speaking of, really?  Childproof scissors?  Wouldn't it be better to get a few nicks or cut off an extremity than a child be able to cut their own hair?  Zoinks!  I think I just found my million.  Hair proof scissors.  Genius!  Shark Tank here I come.  (For anyone that doesn't know me, yes, that was a joke.  I've been known to be dramatic at times.  Like all of them.)  Since I just couldn't bring myself to let her rock the mullet, it was off to the hair salon we went.

Because the day was traumatic to begin with and I was numb to child hair pain, we went ahead and got the prince a chop too.  Goodbye little dark ended moppy boy.  Hello respectable cleaned up kids.  They're going to be very confused when people don't run from them in a dark alley any longer.  I can hear it now, 'Mommy, why do people want to be our friends now?'  Poor dear confused kids.  Maybe I can throw a bandana on the dude to toughen him up.

We celebrated Devastated Parents Day with frozen yogurt. 

I asked the monkey if she liked her hair and her answer was yes.  When asked why she replied, "because I did it myself".  I should have named her trouble.  Today at the library I was telling her they had a crafts class we can look in to signing her up for and she asked if there would be scissors 'like to cut paper?' when I answered yes, what did trouble say?  "Good then I can cut off a little more of my hair right here (holding up her miniscule bang that is hugging her skull)."  Pretty sure that class just got cancelled.  We'll call her Double Trouble from now on.  Come to think of it, I am going to sign off now to make sure she isn't sleeping with smuggled scissors under her pillow.

Revenge is a b*tch

Let's revisit the previous post about hair cut day.  Brief recap: monkey decided she wanted a haircut, said she wanted it like a boy, hairdresser didn't ask how she wanted it cut, just trimmed, mom ecstatic.  Jump forward to this morning when the monkey was "crafting" supposedly making things to decorate grandma and grandpa's room for their upcoming visit.  Did you catch the word supposedly in that last sentence?  I sure did.  That girl can not be trusted.  Why would I trust her to do the same thing she always does and sit quietly doing art?  Pure insanity.  This is what I walked in to:

Yes, she was smart enough to try to hide the evidence.  I'm pretty sure this bag was heading to the bottom of the lake in a clever maneuver to plead innocence and try to make the prince take the fall for this one.  Since she was busted red handed, I present to you the mug shot.  Hold tight and try not to scare the person sitting next to you with the blood curdling screaming welling up in your throat.

Apparently we can now move to the back woods of Texas and live off the land.  Or return to the 80's and don parachute pants.  Or contact Hollywood and lobby for her to be cast as David Spade's offspring in Joe Dirt 2.  She's a shoo-in.  Famous away little girl.  In the meantime, this mama can't stop crying.  I loooooved that curly hair.  It made me smile.  There isn't enough coffee in the world to take this day out of the red.

 I hate Elmo right now.

Weekend glimpses

 Cheers to the weekend!

End of School Daze

This was the last week of school for the monkey and the prince.  Insert tear.  Followed by panic attack and massive freak out.  And a shot of whiskey.  Crap, out of whiskey; practice breathing techniques.  Breathe in red, breathe out blue.  In red, out blue.  Repeat mantra 'I got this'.  Moving on...Don't get me wrong, I love these little kids of mine.  I mean loooove.  But staying home with them?  Day after day?  Never dreamed that little picture.  Since I'm so not the planner, I am depending on the three year old monkey to keep things in check.  Nothing like a little adult responsibility to teach her about the real world, right?

We celebrated the week with all sorts of awesomeness like...

 Painting nails multiple times.  I don't know where she gets her indecisiveness from.  

Or maybe I do.  No, I don't.

Covering herself in One Direction stickers.  Because she's awesome like that.

 Eating breakfast in the corner on the floor.  Why use that chair two feet in front of me at the table?  That's crazy mom.  I'll eat my food here on the floor where the dog can get to it and I can cry about him taking it.  Like I do ever day.  Pavlov?  Who's Pavlov?!?

Practicing super hero moves, because you never know when that monster, lion, tiger, bear, giant head, garbage truck, sun, or any other random thing will really come in her room at night.  

Like really for real.

 The monkey's awesome school threw her a last day party.  She will miss her teachers and friends so much!  The little prince too.  We're all so sad they will not be going there anymore.

On a positive note, they both got a taste of the deliciousness called cake.  I'm pretty sure the prince's world changed today with each tasty tiny morsel he devoured.  I'm hoping he doesn't master this new word in his sleep tonight and wake up demanding his breakfast be cake...but then again, if someone were to make it and drop it off at the house (ehm, hint, hint), who am I to refuse him?  I would gladly be his humble cake servant.  And hers.  And mine.  Mmmm, cake.