An emotional outburst...

Forgive the rambling nature of this post, as I can't believe I am even up writing this at the ungodly hour of 10:30 at night, considering I have spent the whole day fantasizing about the moment I would finally, finally, snuggle in under the covers, read my book for three minutes, then turn off the light and fall immediately to sleep. But reading said book, the main character was talking about her version of heaven, interesting since I recently delved into that topic myself. The very last thing the character listed in her heaven was it was "filled with children who never got older than five" and, dear readers, I was crushed under the weight of a wave of grief the intensity of which I have not felt since I lay in bed during a depressing trip to England with my father and sister, trying to run away from our own brokenness after my mother's recent death. That is how I felt tonight thinking about my children getting older. And I know I have written about this before, in varying degrees, so please also forgive me my repetitiveness.

I'm sure you are laughing out loud at the absurdity of this as I spend ninety percent of my time on this blog bitching about how overworked and tired I am dealing with three children under the age of seven. But even I, with my acidic sarcasm know how fleeting this time is. My oldest, even now, having just a few weeks ago been allowed to start watching Hannah Montana and High School Musical is starting to lose some of the doe eyed openness of early childhood. She has acquired a new, more mature speech pattern that leaves me speechless as she describes an interaction between two classmates with one hand on her hip, a miniature reflection of my own stance during conversations at the kitchen counter with H. How much longer do I have when all my children can be called "little"? How many more Sunday mornings do I have when they are all three so excited to climb into bed with us that the bed frame creaks in protest at the staggering weight of my abundance? Will it be a clear turning point one morning when they no longer crave this closeness or will it be a gradual falling away I don't realize too late it's gone?

Before I dragged the laptop into bed with me, I went into their rooms to kiss them desperately on their foreheads. I regretted earlier in the day when I was unable to let #1 sit in my lap at the dinner table because I was monitoring her brothers consumption of an entire piece of pizza (not cut up in pieces, another step forward). I stood there wondering when #2 would stop saying," Ummm....I LOVE YOU!" when she has forgotten what she called me into the room for. Standing there in the dark of their room I wanted to scream, "STOP! Stay. Don't go. It's so much nicer here and now."

Perhaps a lot of this is being brought on by the impending move. Giving away baby gear and clothes. Packing away small tokens of each of their infant selves as remembrances, wondering how they were all ever small enough to be held in the crook of my arm, holding their fuzzy tennis ball heads in my palm as they nursed. This house has been my nest and leaving it I feel like we are embarking on a new stage in life and while I welcome the diaper free existence that will eventually bring, I am already grieving for this time now, when it was me and my three babies, when this was their whole world.

What's blue and three apples tall?

After being shamed by a comment on yesterday's blog referring to my former Friday Top 5 lists, I have decided to resurrect my beloved list format this Friday. While I can not guarantee Top 5's will become the Friday staple they once were since they usually require a week's forethought and I barely have time to eek out nine posts a month (Really? Nine in April? I am ashamed of myself), I hope you enjoy this Friday's list which has been inspired by my discovery of the vintage cartoon network Boomerang on our digital cable, which is in and of itself a miracle as I can barely find NBC we have so many channels now.

The Top 5 Cartoons of My Childhood

5. Scooby Doo - This cartoon is the 1970's children's cartoon equivalent of Law&Order. Formulaic, adolescent crime drama (there was always that red herring) at its best. The curiously ascot-wearing Fred Jones was the hunky, Ken-doll-like leader of this rag-tag bunch of wanna-be detectives which included his never confirmed, but much assumed girlfriend, the red-haired Daphne, his bookish admirer who never showed her jealousy of their relationship, Velma, and the unbeknownst to me at the time, perpetually stoned and munchy-driven Norville Rogers, aka, Shaggy, who was, curiously enough voiced by Casey Kasem. Oh, and let's not forget the odious canine star of this eponymous show. That stupid, goddamn voice was almost enough to drive me away from this intriguing whodunnit series. But watching those "meddling kids" drive around in their psychadelic van (my first exposure to awesome vans), solving mysteries each week kept me glued to the screen. Even though we never got to see Fred and Daphne kiss.

4. The Jetsons - Where is my Rosie? This show set some pretty high expectations of life in the future and I have blogged already about the disappointment of not having a robot housekeeper, a contraption that washes, styles and dresses me and my family or a flying car. While the patriarch of the series, George, was interesting, I found his professional frustrations at Spacely Sprockets to be an annoying distraction from his home life and the fabulousness of his redhead wife Jane with her flippy purple dress and stylish space bangles. Don't even get me started on daughter Judy with her adorable high pony and kicky capris. That episode where she wins a date with a rock star by singing the song "Eep op ork ah ah" was by far my favorite and damn you iTunes for not having it! His boy Elroy? Eh. And yet again, another annoying talking dog with speech impediment. Enough already.

3. The Flintstones - The prehistoric equivalent of The Jetsons with a similarly, somewhat palatable, but more chauvinistic main character who experiences the same 1960's corporate workplace injustices at the hands of a crotchety boss, and equally stylish red-haired wife, drew me in with its interpretation of caveman life. Again, the crap going on with Fred and Barney as they bumbled about at work held very little interest for me. It was the strong, smart-ass Wilma and her adorably giggly BFF Betty who held me rapt as they went about their days washing dishes using a wolly mammoth as a kitchen water source and said pachyderm's offspring as a vacuum cleaner. The show did kind of jump the shark with the addition of the annoyingly sweet-voiced Pebbles and the product-of-overindulgent-adoptive-parents, Bam Bam (seriously, that kid needed a major spanking), but I stayed true until the end.

2. Josie and the Pussycats - "Josie and the Pussycats...Guitars and ears for hats..." Oh how my six year old self rocked out to this theme song and was in love with this show. Similar to the Scooby Do gang (minus annoying sidekicks), this show also involved mystery-solving teenagers, but they were all girls and in a band! And they dressed like cats! And one of them played the tambourine! The lead singer, the red-headed Josie, was my favorite obviously, but as I grow older I can totally appreciate her nemesis Alexandra with her black hair with the premature gray streak down the middle as she was much more badass than the saccharine Josie. The shark was jumpeth when they went into outerspace though, because..do I really need a reason? A cat band in outerspace? Who let them get close enough to a shuttle launch to "accidentally" fall into the cockpit? It insulted my intelligence than and outrages me now.

1. The Smurfs - Yes, it's French, and yes, as an adult I find the show so annoying I'm sorry I ever introduced my kids to it. But what a cultural zeitgeist! The show, the figures I begged my parents for every time we went to the stationery store in town, the totally disgusting, but just had to have it, Smurfberry cereal I begged my parents for and then had to bravely choke down so as not to prove them right in their "this cereal is nothing but a marketing ploy" supermarket rants - it was amazing. The show itself was mildly entertaining and marginally believable (ONE girl? Really? Can we say gang rape?). I apologize to my parents for every dollar they ever spent on this fad, including my "I Heart Washington DC" Smurf tshirt, I am paying with my sanity as my own children beg my to DVR episodes each day to be watched again and again and again.

I hope you enjoyed to today's list. And no, it is not lost on me that four out of five of my favorite childhood cartoons have strong, or semi-strong, red-haired female leads. It's just an accurate representation of the reality. It's our world, people, you just live in it.
Happy Friday to you all.

Is this really necessary in life?

"Hi there. My name is Todd. Don't you dig this totally boss beverage holster my wife got me for Father's Day? I use it when I drink my one token Heineken during the overly-orchestrated, Pottery Barn catalouge-esque barbecues my wife arranges with women from her pilates class so they can come over with their I-wear-pressed-Brooks-Brothers-khakis-even-on-the-weekend husbands, and three hyperactive children who are all allrergic to wheat. Using this baby, both my hands are free to gesture emphatically during discussions about boating and artisinal cheeses.

Did you think this holster was to allow me to chase my kids around while enjoying a beverage? Nah, that's what domestics are for! Just ask my wife. It's two o'clock and she's only had a bottle of wine, so she might remember she has kids. And speaking of my wife, doesn't this rig look a bit like an S&M get-up, with it's tight leather band around my thigh? Yet another reason I love it! Because in my sexless marraige, this is as much kink as I'm going to get. If you don't count my addiction to online porn, obviously."