Cat in Heels

Why are four letter words so easy to say? I mean for us adults they just roll off the tongue in a variety of situations. I haven’t counted how many I use in a day, but it’s up there. I tried to stop once but it turns out not swearing is bullshit that other people do. It’s like cooking or running marathons. Great for some people, but totally not for me. It turns out that four letter words are equally easy to for toddlers to say. How is it that the kids say “beek-a-poo” when playing peek a boo, but “Fuck” is loud and clear. Monkeys are commonly referred to as “on-keys” but “oh shit” doesn’t seem to be tripping them up. Husband said in their defense we probably say “fuck” a lot more than “peek-a-boo.” I'm not sure about that, but the two may be neck and neck. My two-year-old twins are dropping f-bombs at the dinner table while I have a post-work cocktail. They have also recently learned to growl back at the dog when playing tug, which means at least we’re not the only...

What the fuck universe? I’m tired of opening Facebook every morning at the train station and seeing someone who died. The last 30 days has been a bad time to be a celebrity, particularly if your British and I am a fan of your work. First it was Lemmy, the Motorhead frontman who prided himself on how much he could drink and toured right up to the end, passing away from an aggressive cancer just before the new year. The Goblin King watches over my babes Next we famously had David Bowie. When I saw it I thought it was an internet hoax, and after some frantic Googling I realized it was real and choked back tears as I sat waiting for a late train on a bitter cold Chicago morning. Now Alan Rickman . The voice of God. The bad guy from Die Hard. The Sheriff of Nottingham. Most famously, Snape. This is a really long list, so I’ll end with that one since almost everyone but me has seen all the Harry Potter movies. All three great. All three taken by aggressive cancer before...

Trips to Target are practically a weekend ritual at this point. I obviously need laundry detergent, hand soap and a new coat all at once, and it’s a one stop shop for almost everything. This weekend I tossed the girls onto a cart, one in the seat and one in the basket, and headed inside (where I found the only double cart occupied by one kid). I gave a brief look through the clothes and where they leaned out of the cart in an effort to touch  everything , and we headed to the shoe aisle. Cute stuff but nothing earth shattering, let’s move along. They really liked these .  Oh, S needs winter boots, let’s check those out here. As I slowly navigated the cart into the children’s shoe aisle both girls started getting visibly excited. They stood up in the cart, leaned over, and then both started yelling “SHOES, SHOES!!!” in screechy toddler voice while desperately grabbing at all the shoes they could reach. S pulled her shoes off and threw them to the floor. The ...

Daylight savings time is nothing to parents. Except maybe a pain in the ass. It’s just another day where things are all screwed up from the first squawk out of the baby monitor, which is an hour earlier than they normally wake up no matter what kind of crazy voodoo you’ve been trying to work the previous week to make sure they’re on a schedule. This year was particularly bad on Sunday. Maybe it was a Halloween hangover or something, but I walked in the twins’ room and S, who is the Houdini of diapers, is rocking the deep v Elvis look and I marvel at how cute she is before realizing the reason she looks like that is because she has figured out how to work zippers overnight and taken her wet diaper off. What the hell is she doing? The whole day pretty much stayed on that trajectory and I found myself saying some really insane things. “Stop coloring on your sister.” “Why is there ham on the dog?” “Who pooped?” “Did you seriously just poop in the tub?” (She did. My bathroom ha...

I've come to the conclusion that toddlers have a lot in common with pets. Both are entertaining, loving and generally mischievous. Especially the toddlers.  The second you're not looking is when they get into something, and with twins it's really easy to not have one in your sights at all times, which means someone is into something at all times. One kid is trying to dig in her diaper, so you focus on that one and preventing the impending gross event and the other one is eating a dog treat.  One is running around with a dirty sock in their mouth, and while you’re trying to catch them the other one is chewing on a book.  One has managed to open a container of wipes and is pulling them all out and the other one is dumping out a toybox.  We may be spending too much time playing with the dog if this is how we carry toys. I could go on, but you get the idea. There’s more too.  One minute they’re all fun and cuddly, and want to sit on your lap, and th...

This year I got an office for my birthday. OK, so it wasn’t actually for my birthday, but the day before my birthday the IT guy came over and moved my computer and phone, gave me a bigger monitor and a keyboard with one shift key that only works if you punch the hell out of it, and I had to gather up my piles of paper and my drawer of shoes (how does that keep happening?) and moved into my own private space. Now I have a door and can shut it for conference calls, or so I can eat lunch in private. Now I can hang my coat on the back of the door instead of in the community coat closet where it comes out smelling of other people’s perfumes, cigarettes and other general odors. This would be a great picture if someone wasn't crying and everyone would look at the camera.  Now I have four white walls staring at me, reminding me that I’m a crappy mom who can’t get her shit together and get some damn photos of her kids for her office. I have a phone that is bursting with pho...