If a phone rings in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Boo!

Are you scared?

You should be. I am.

I turn 30 in two days. 30. Weird.

So, in honor of my upcoming birthday, I hired the neighbor-girl to come babysit three afternoons a week for an hour so I can exercise. (At this point, the only exercise I have been getting is lifting kids into carseats and tossing dirty diapers toward the trashcan.) This started a couple of weeks ago. It took a couple of weeks for me to blog about it cause nothing interesting happened till yesterday.

In some fit of rebellion, I threw out all of my old workout pants sometime last summer. (What kind of incentive is that? "Oh, yeah??? I'll show YOU! I'm never working out AGAIN!!!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!") So I bought some new ones the other day. Pink. Green. Cute ones. That I can look cute in. While I am working out. You know, three times a week.

Yesterday I put the new cute green pants on, peeled out of the driveway when the sitter got there, and headed to my walking spot. I parked, turned my iPod up loud and started that big-steppin', arm-swingin' grandma-athlete walk that will throw your hips out of socket. But guess what? That wasn't good enough.

I thought I should probably give it a little jog. Just a little bit. Well, I actually said in my brain, "Jog until you can't jog another step, then turn around and power walk back to the car."

That is what I did! In my cute green pants. With my cute pink iPod and cute pink Nikes. I got really far for someone who hasn't moved that fast since the last century. I petered out after about a mile. My head was pounding with the quarts of extra blood that was being supplied to my brain by my panicking body. My face was bright red. You could visually count the pulse in my neck if you drove by me at 30 miles an hour.

So I slowed down, then started walking. Got ready to turn around and head back to my car. Gripped my keys in one hand and brushed my pants pocket to check on my phone.

My cute, green pants pocket. My cute, green, shallow, empty pants pocket.

Seriously? Yes.

Remember the almost-thirty-year-old who had just run as far as she possibly could run, and was now ready to power walk? She had to run more. Like a maniac. Like Phoebe.

All the way back to my car. With my head down and my eyes on the road. Looking for, and praying for, my phone. Not because I love my phone so much, but because my husband wants me to not lose things. Not small things, like pens. And certainly not big, expensive things like cell phones.

I didn't find it.

I got back home, super-annoyed. Neighbor babysitter greeted me at the door with this breathless, teenage method of communicating that I am sure I used to be good at, but now I just stare blankly. Cause I am almost thirty. In two days. Twice her age. Seriously???

"Amanda? Your phone? Did you find it? Cause some guy called! And he found it. And he didn't know what to do with it? So he buried it at the intersection of Pine and Raguet? By a fire hydrant? And I told him to cover it with some leaves. So no one else would get it? You know? Go! Go get it!"

So I drove back to that intersection. I looked for newly disturbed dirt. I looked under leaves. I stopped random people in the area and asked them to call my phone so I might hear it ring. I kicked some more leaves. And finally, I wasn't kicking leaves to look, I was kicking leaves because WHO BURIES A CELL PHONE THAT YOU FIND????? This isn't Treasure Island, and I am not a pirate.

Even if it is Halloween.

And almost my birthday. In two days. So much for Botox. Guess what I want for my birthday?

Correction

Dillon, from his new favorite perch on the arm of the couch: Hey! Miss Mama!

Me, from my office, aka "the kitchen": What did you call me?

Dillon: Um, Miss Mama?

Me, laughing: Why did you call me that? My name isn't Miss Mama!

Dillon: Oh.

Silence, then...

Dillon: Hey! Miss Mommy!

Who are THEY, anyway?

Guess what! There is something new I don't like!

Okay, so it isn't new. It is just freshly annoying to me. My least favorite thing about technology is when something is installing or downloading or unzipping on the computer and you get the little bar that shows the percent completed? And it gets to 99%? And stops? For a really, really long time.

That is it. My least favorite thing.

You would think that whoever does computers ("THEY") would figure out that it is much less irritating to have each percentage point truly represent a percent of the time the procedure is going to take so that the computer user ("ME") can accurately predict how long he or, well obviously, SHE, is going to sit there waiting for completion. If it rockets through to 88 percent, then zooms to 95, then jumps to 99, of course SHE is hopeful that it will leap up to 100% in no time. But that is not how THEY made the program.

That irritates ME.

I'm just sayin'.

Food concerns

When Dillon was a baby, I remember delighting in dinner time. I would "share" a jarful of baby apricots with him. I would get excited when he was having Hawaiian Delight, cause I knew that mostly, I would be having Hawaiian Delight. I loved the tropical fruit medleys, the fancy mixes of raspberries and peaches, the sweet apple pie flavor of the apple custards.

My question is, where did all of these foods go? It is almost impossible to find baby desserts (and I know cause I have look at all of two local grocery stores.) How am I supposed to carefully cultivate Korenna's sweet tooth? And how am I supposed to kill my own before-dinner snacking urge if I can't squelch it with some pureed fruit n' sugar?

Have we really become that healthy that we can't feed our babies good ol' desserts? What do I give her if she finishes her peas? A nice treat of .... carrots? Squash? And most importantly, what do I give ME? Cause baby raisin granola is not where its at. I might as well have a puffy star or two.

A Day Out with Thomas

We took Dillon to A Day Out With Thomas yesterday. We have been talking about it for over six weeks, and for the past month we have been putting an X on the calendar days. He has told everyone he knows at school and at church about going to see Thomas. Needless to say, he has been pretty excited and I bet he didn't sleep one full hour on Friday night.

My mom kept Korenna, so it was just Dillon, Daniel, and me. The weather was perfect. We got a little map of the park, and went and did several of the activities. Dillon got a Thomas tattoo on his hand. We perused the Tent of Really Expensive Thomas Toys. We watched a movie inside, till Dillon realized that he gets to do that all the time, and that wasn't anything special. We listened to a kids' entertainer sing songs, till Dillon realized that the songs had nothing to do with Thomas. We took a picture with Sir Topham Hatt ("He wuns da wailwoad, Mama!") and colored pictures. He played with trains on miles of plastic track.

Of course the highlight of the whole day was riding on Thomas. Dillon told us throughout the morning that he was "weddy to wide on Somas!" but our tickets were not until 12:15.

When it was finally time, Dillon could barely contain his excitement. Daniel and I, being the insightful parents that we are, just knew that he was going to ask for repeated rides on the train.
We envisioned tantrums as we pulled him away from the big blue engine. We just knew that he would have to be carried away, sobbing. We talked to him about riding the train just one time, so that other friends could have their turns. He seemed okay with it, and really had a good time riding.

We finished our ride, and took Dillon's picture with Thomas. He waved and said "Bye Somas!" as we walked back toward our van.

Daniel and I looked at each other and breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes you just get off easy, ya know? Especially when you are prepared for the worst.

I was buckling Dillon in and I asked him if he had a good time. He told me that he did, and that he loves Thomas, and that he wants to tell everyone that he really got to ride on him! Then he looked at me, serious hazel eyes wide and full of the magic of the day.

"Momma?" he said sweetly.

"Yes, baby?" I said, anticipating his request to return to the big blue engine.

"I tink I want to go see da Wiggles now."

Three trick pony

Korenna is gaining more and more useful skills! It is amazing that she still needs her mama, as she can now:

1) clap her hands using huge circular arm motions that result in an occasional collision that you can hear if there is no other sound in the room and you are not breathing.

2) say "buh" about everything, including "buh buh" for "bye bye" and "buh buh" for "bubba" and "buh buh" for Big Bird, and sometimes just "buh buh" for "mama."

3) fake cough, which comes in very handy if no one is paying you a lick of attention and you STILL CANNOT CRAWL in order to place yourself in someone's direct line of sight, and you need someone to LOOK at you, so you muster up a fake cough, which sounds pitiful, and makes everyone look at you with great concern, until you have done it thirty times, and then everyone just goes back to ignoring you since you STILL CANNOT CRAWL in order to place yourself in someone's direct line of sight.

The skills, they are amazing. It is a wonder she hasn't moved out into her own apartment by now.