Renae du Jour

Some people say they don’t eat anything with a face. At our house we try to stay away from anything that has a belly button, but we can not help ourselves when it comes to bacon. We are crazy for bacon. Crazy.

LK has a new favorite place and it’s the Honey Potty.  

She’s not sure where they keep the honey, but she’s willing to keep looking.

This is my new favorite summer coffee drink and it has officially made me one of those people that I used to make fun of. It’s D’s fault because he is one of those people.

This is an iced, grande, Starbucks-double-shot, no classic, sub sugar-free vanilla with soy milk, please.

Seriously. I had to write down the order because I will never remember it. It takes longer to say than it does to drink.

Feel the excitement of the Starburst Jelly Beans.

I think LK was more excited about her big bowl of candy than she was about Christmas. She had tons of questions: Where does the Easter Bunny live? (Palm Springs, of course.) How does the bunny get into our house? (He breaks in.) Can I meet the Bunny. (No, because the bunny only breaks and enters when everyone is a sleep. Now go to sleep. Go to sleep. SLEEP.)

We thought Easter was long gone, but then the star player, Bunny, made an appearance at the Alderwood Mall a FULL WEEK after we’d eaten all the jelly beans. LK acted as if she’d met President Obama. Her celebrity encounter outside the local Build a Bear started the entire Easter Bunny conversation all over again.

This time, D told LK that the Easter Bunny becomes Hassenpfeffer after Easter. He was making a joke, but Lena backed him up: apparently in her village it’s an Easter tradition for children to chase after wild rabbits with a pepper shaker. I can not make this up.

In Germany, the Easter Bunny really does turn into Hassenpfeffer.

After more than two months of quietly observing our family, S.A.M. has agreed to answer a few questions. The following conversation took place last night at 8 PM.

Me: So, what do you think?

S.A.M.: It’s cool.

Me: I’m so glad you think so because I’ve been a little worried about…

S.A.M.: Except the one with the squeaky voice. Dude, she’s got boundary issues.

Me: LK?

S.A.M: Yeah. Can you ask her to stop cleaning my toes?

Me: We’ll work on it. Other than that, everything good?

S.A.M.: The milk. The milk is good. Do you have the milk? Where’s the lady with the milk?

Me: Uh… that’s me. I’m your mom.

S.A.M: That’s what I said; I said I wanted the lady with the milk.

Me: OK, let’s wait awhile on the milk.

S.A.M: MILK, MILK, MILK, MILK, MILK, MILK.

Me: How about daddy? Do you want to see daddy?

S.A.M.: The tall one? Does he have milk?

Me: No

S.A.M: No more questions please.

In mid-August we were joined by Lena, a foreign-exchange student from Germany who does not like seafood, rice, Thai-food, peanut butter or root beer.

This is a picture of Lena, who was politely eating seafood during a visit to the Seattle waterfront. 

Even though she dislikes some of our favorite foods she does like cheese and chocolate and shares her care packages full of Gummi candies, so she’s clearly OK. When she leaves in June we will be very sad and immediately phone in an order of crab legs.

In early February S.A.M. joined us. He was more than a week late but, once labor began, arrived within three hours, just in time for LK’s bed-time snack. He has already proven himself to be extremely polite and will likely do all of LK’s bidding.

There’s always a pile of children around somewhere. 

LK loves S.A.M., so much so that we spend a lot of time and energy saving him from suffocation by hugging. It makes us all a bit tired.

That is, everyone is tired except for LK, who is ramping up for the coup. She’s hoping to topple the ruling king and queen so that she can become family dictator.

Once she’s in power she plans to take control of the brownie supply to fund her addiction to chocolate.

I say it’s a good time to stock up on chocolate.

It turns out that my memorial for the neighborhood chicken, the one I posted back in AUGUST before I stopped writing my blog, doing dishes or ironing, needs a correction.

NOC will quote Mark Twain: “The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

Or, if you prefer the newspaper approach: “An earlier posting implied that NOC, a neighborhood chicken, died of injuries obtained while fighting with a neighborhood dog. While severely injured and slightly humiliated, NOC survived. We apologize to NOC and her family for any inconvenience in this matter.”

A few weeks after my memorial post NOC wobbled into our back yard. She was missing all her tail-feathers and looked as if she might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This was a chicken in need of Prozac. I ran for the camera but NOC, apparently tired of the paparazzi, ran away.

The neighbors built a chicken coop and she’s now on lockdown, waiting for her call from Dr. Drew. I can’t wait to see her on the next episode of Celebrity Rehab, snuggling in Andy Dick’s bunk bed.

NOC, our neighbors’ trespassing and highly entertaining chicken, has reportedly died after a tussel with a local dog. They were evenly matched for weight, and while NOC might have had more gumption she had less teeth.

After the fight NOC disappeared and there’s a small chance she’s hiding until the neighborhood situation cools down.  She’ll be wearing a neck brace, so please let us know if you spot her.

We should have seen the warning signs– tresspassing, public defecation, defiant jay walking – all leading to a confrontation that ended badly.   I hoped for eggs but had no idea we D would ever need to use a shovel to remove chicken droppings from our backyard. 

NOC was becoming the Lindsay Lohan of the neighborhood bird world. We really should have intervened.

Her owners woud know what happened, but I don’t want to ask.  We only recently met them and I’d hate to see them cry, or worse yet learn that they’ve recently had chicken dinner.

NOC, our thoughts are with you. 

LK decided that she wanted to cook dinner so she made us some Necco Wafers. We thought they were a tad chalky and no one ate the licorice flavor, but the yellow, pink and orange were big hits.

Next week LK plans to cook up some fusion with Lifesavers and Tic Tacs. We’ll keep you posted.

I’ve been eating a lot of pickles, sleeping much more than normal and have had little desire to cook. There’s a reason this isn’t a blog that’s strictly about pickles and sleeping– I just didn’t think it was enough material. 

While I was buying my latest jar of pickles, I noticed something I found funny: the store had listed all of its notices for free prenatal vitamins directly below the kosher dills. Then it hit me– here I am buying pickles, and sure enough baby two will be here in February.

We’re all very excited, although LK is a bit uncertain about the situation. She’s already requested that we have a mouse baby, which seems unlikely. Her next request was for a black baby and if that happens D will be very surprised.

This pregnancy has been very different than when I was pregnant with LK. Then I craved fruits and vegetables and had plenty of energy. Now I want chocolate and pickles (so far not together, but I’ll keep you updated) and am napping in my car at lunch. If you work with me please ignore the sleep lines on my face and the dill on my breath. 

There you have it. Pickles are responsible for my absence from the blogging world. The end.