In which I become a fish owner.

Could someone explain to me how a 2-year-old who has been up since 5 a.m. (FIVE!  FIVE A.M.)  doesn’t fall asleep precisely when his head hits his crib mattress?  Because I’m baffled right now.  And yeah, I know about overtiredness and whatnot, but come on.  COME.  ON.  He’s pretending like his arm is a tunnel and his pacis are a train.  Oh wait, no – now he’s playing with his toes.  Did I mention he’s been up since 5?

Every once in a while, we have mornings like this.  More frequently than I’d like, really, and I’m convinced the only reason we had three solid nights of sleep in a row before last night is the fact that Wilbur and I bribed him by promising him we’d buy him a fish if he slept all night.  Wouldn’t it figure that the VERY NEXT NIGHT after the purchase of said fish, he woke up at 5?  Yeah.

Please note: the fish idea was not mine.  I had fish in college (RIP, Mortimer and Aloysius) and they were a pain in the ass.  I never in a million years would have suggested we purchase our son a fish, but there I was, saying, “Okay, Bear, if you stay in your bed all night long without crying for mama until a reasonable morning hour, like at least 7:00, we will get you…what will we get you?”  when Wilbur piped up with, “Your very own fish!”  Baby Bear’s eyes lit up at his daddy’s suggestion, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him no way.  Seriously, this kid loves fishies.  The last time we went to PetCo to pick up dog and cat food, we couldn’t tear him away from the tank full of minnows.

You know what’s annoying, though?  PetCo “recommends” against getting pretty much any kind of fish besides a Betta if you aren’t also buying a tank and a filtration system.  It turns out goldfish produce an awful lot of waste (Hmmm, so maybe that’s why Mortimer and Aloysius’s bowl was always totally disgusting…) and it makes little sense.  So we have a Betta.  It’s pretty and all, but it doesn’t swim much, and I’m not wild about having something known as a “fighting fish” in my house.  I know that’s silly and all, but it just doesn’t seem like good karma, ya know?

Please note: I draw the line on pets RIGHT HERE.  Please quote me on this.  I will stand my ground if anyone in this family demands a hamster, an iguana, a snake, a lizard, a bird, or any other animal!  NO MORE PETS, I SAY!

ANYwho!  I’ve been rambling a ton about fish and whatnot when I really should be telling you all that holy crap, my kid is two!  And I threw him a Sesame Street Party Extravaganza!  And let me tell you: it was spectacular!  Since I’ve already rambled a lot today – long enough for Baby Bear to finally fall asleep (woohoo!) and I need a nap, myself, I think I’ll save the longer get-me-famous-on-Pinterest-y kind of post (or series of posts) for another day, but for now, if you want to see some highlights, click on over to the blog of my very talented photographer-friend, Carolyn Clement.  She was incredibly generous and took photos – free of charge! – of the big bash, and provided links to an online gallery with free digital downloads.  How awesome is that?  I won’t share the whole gallery with y’all because it’s all password protected and locked down like Fort Knox (Carolyn’s reasoning is that there are pictures of our kids in there and everything, and there are an awful lot of weirdos on the internet, yo.  This makes sense to me), but please enjoy the snippets!  And also: please ignore my horrible hair!  Oh, and also: I set up about 6 different activity tables for the kiddos: Ernie & Bert’s Rubber Ducky Pond, Abby Cadabby’s Magical Bubbles, Cookie Monster’s Dough Creation Station, Elmo’s Edible Beading, Big Bird’s Bewitching Birdseed Hunt, and Oscar’s Terrible Trash Toss.  Oh wait – scratch Oscar – I ended up just making that the place where actual trash went, instead of crumpling up a bunch of junk mail and letting the kids throw it into the can (What can I say?  I ran out of time.)  ANyway, guess how many of those activities my kid participated in?  ZERO.  He spent the entire time eating and going down this awesome slide, which my sister sent him for his birthday and which had arrived the evening prior to the party.  Whatever – he had fun, and that’s all that counts, right?  Right.

That brings me to another topic: my hair.  It is awful.  It used to curl all cutely and nicely,e xcept on extraordinarily humid days.  Now?  It’s pretty awful most of the time.  Part of the problem, I know, is the fact that I need to get it cut and colored more frequently than I do.  Otherwise, I blame age and post-kid hormones.  I’ve been doing all this crazy stuff like cutting out silicones and sulfates (a la Lorraine Massey’s Curly Girl Method) (link isn’t really to the curly girl method, but is to an article about it) and I’ve gotta admit: it isn’t working.  Nope.  I even went through a phase when I made my own hair gel out of flax seeds.  Seriously, people.  I made my own hair gel.  Sigh.  I’m seriously considering getting myself that Keratin Brazilian blow-out formaldehyde special and just calling it a day.  I used to love my curly hair, but now – NO.  I either over-product or under-product and it’s just stringy and gross.  Sigh.  So yeah – those pictures from Bear’s birthday party show me with greasy-looking hair, when really I just put too much crap in it.  Sigh, sigh, sigh.

Alright, folks, it’s time for me to shut up now, because it’s nap time and if I keep rambling much longer, I’ll miss the chance to take a nap myself.  And you know what?  I’ve been up since 5 a.m. and I need this nap.  And also, I’m knocked up again, so I really need this nap.  (Do you like how I snuck that in there?  That’s my way of saying: hi internets!  I’m pregnant!  It’s super-early and I shouldn’t even be telling people, but if I can’t whine about how exhausted I am during the first trimester here on my blog, where CAN I whine about it?)  (Answer: nowhere!)  Also: yep, I know that means I can’t get the formaldehyde-and-other-chemical-filled Brazilian keratin hair awesomeness.  I shall just continue to have horrible hair.

With that: night night, friends.  Peace out.