What? You're not Irish?

I am Irish.  I'll wait till the severity of that sinks in.  

My dad came from Ireland and for my whole life, I've grown up around hot tea, wool sweaters and mashed potatoes with every single meal.  I've heard enough hornpipe and bagpipes to last a lifetime and I also know how to do a jig and a reel in my sleep.  If push comes to shove, I can slug out a steady stream of cuss words in full accent, always starting off with, "Bloody Hell..."  I do it much better, however, when I'm piss wasted, just saying. 

    

Anyway, my mom gears up for the Holy Day like no other.  Lizzy does Irish dance and she's been prostituted out like a French whore to every old folks home in Kansas City for the past two weeks.  She danced for miles and miles in parades and snow and she just keeps on going.     

I have danced my ass off.  

But what tops our St. Patrick's Day festivities is the clothes. Aside from walking around in green for the last two weeks, my mom tries to get anyone she can to dress in green with her.  Since the three year old is still young and vulnerable, and she doesn't run fast enough, she gets stuck wearing what Grandma puts her in.  And Grandam bought Gracie this cute little green shirt.  See that thing down there?  My mom kept telling me about the, "Adorable little shirt," she bought for her.  She failed to realize that all the white shamrocks, when put together, made a shape.  

A SKULL.  

My mom bought the girls skin-head tee shirts for St. Patrick's Day.

I have no earthly clue what she is doing.
Practicing to lead jets down the jetway, I guess.  

All they needed were a few tube socks full of rocks and they could go out and raise hell, in true Irish fashion, with their brother.

Only fitting I put Creeper heads on the girls.  Bonus points because they are green.  

And then I made this:

Anyone sends this to Cake Wrecks and
I'll find you and gut you.  Fair warning.  

An Irish Lamb Cake.

Normally in our house the Sacrificial Lamb Cake is reserved for Easter but I wanted to get an early start.  Nothing says, "Happy St. Patrick's Day!" like cutting into the green guts of a lamb.

And go read this right here, if you want to hear about our past Easter fun but I suggest you stop drinking your soda because we don't do holidays in the normal fashion around here.  You've been warned.

I already know, I totally fucked up the icing.  It got all droopy and was a bloody mess.  The kids thought it was hysterical, renamed it George, and instead of a lamb it was now a sheepdog.

Whatever.

And what did Alex do for St. Patrick's Day?  He played Minecraft, watched YouTube videos about Minecraft, downloaded mods for Minecraft, made Minecraft skin, new Minecraft worlds, found emeralds and redstone and generally talked my ear off about?  Minecraft.

I went with it.

I can't think of a good title. Anybody? Anybody???

We're still on a Monopoly bender in this house.  My kids are watching TV and I think I'm slowly going insane watching all the old cartoons on Boomerang.  They have found Tom and Jerry and Scooby Do.

I'm in hell.

My kids think the Mystery Mobile is fricking awesome and thank you very much Tom and Jerry for introducing my kids to the phrase, "Come here little pussy, pussy, pussy."  Now they are chasing the baby around calling her a little pussy.  They think its frigging hysterical and I'm less than impressed.

(And I know what the p-word is going to do with the search engines.  Every frigging wack-job is going to come her looking for some action and boy will they be sorely disappointed.  I don't care, I'm that worn out.)

I got so desperate to get out of the house that when we ran out of popcorn, I schlepped them all up to Target and I bought a popcorn maker because my kids eat popcorn like Jerry eats cheese.

All the frigging time.

And since I bought the popcorn popper I had to buy the popcorn, and because I bought the popcorn I had to buy the seasonings, and because we had the seasonings, we had to have something to put the popcorn in.

And that is how it came to pass that I have about three million pictures like this:

I can't show you the first few pics---I burnt my arm on the
steam, dropped my phone, cussed a few good ones and
now I have pics of the ceiling....

And this:

Don't let the pic fool you--there was
popcorn everywhere...

And now I have to go up to Target to get more popcorn because my mice ran out of cheese and in a house full of mice, a girl can never run out of cheese.

On the upside, I finally beat Alex at Monopoly.  It was the worst example of social skills ever.  For both of us.

I may, or may not, have said something along the lines of, "BOO-YA!  Sweet Jesus I did it!  Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.  I did it, I did it, I well and truly did it."

And I may, or may not, have done a victory dance, or three, around the basement.

I will never tell.

The sacrificial lamb has been eaten.

We're ramping up to another holiday this Sunday and while I'm not of the Church-going variety, my kids latched on to the idea that a big tricked out bunny coming over to the house and dropping off an ass-load of candy wasn't such a bad idea.

That and I'm a whore for ham.  Not like Dairy Queen mind you but I do like a piece of pig ass every now and again.  And deviled eggs.  I love deviled eggs.

Anyway, we have this tradition in our house that we have a lamb cake for Easter.

See?

Circa 2006.  Ignore the melting icing.
Yup, that's me and the kids in the picture back there.  

Everything was all well and good until one year my sister hacked into the poor defenseless lamb, chopped off it's head and exclaimed in her best lamb voice, "ACCCKKK!!!!  I'm dying!!  I'm bleeding!!!  Help, help me!!!  Baa.  Someone chopped off my head!!!!  Ouch, my head hurts!!!  Baa.  Anyone see my body?"

While she was saying all of this, she had the lamb head in her hand and moving it up and down on its body like it was talking, all the while still going, "Accck!  My head hurts, has anyone seen what's happened to my head?  Baa."

She thought it was funnier than shit.

Circa 2005.

This is the point in the story where my son Lost His Fucking Mind.  He damn near had a stroke.  He started screaming, flapping running around senseless all the while uttering,   "ACCCCKKKK, you killed it!  YOU KILLED IT!  Put its head back on Aunt Nichole!  Oh no!  YOU KILLED IT.  Please, please, please Aunt Nichole give its head back!  Its going to die!  Please give it the lamb back it's head!"

Then he curled up into a fetal position on the kitchen floor and started wailing and rocking.  

Doesn't matter the lamb was already dead and, stay with me here, it was a cake and we were all going to eat it.

Oh no.

Aunt Nichole brought the damn thing to life and killed it in one fell swoop.

Didn't help the lamb cake that year was read velvet.  Didn't help one bit.  So as she was banging its head on its body "talking," pieces of it were falling off making it look like it had its throat slit and blood was pouring out it's neck.  

I have no Easter lamb pictures for 2007, the year the lamb came to life.  We were too busy looking for ways to kill Aunt Nichole, cleaning up puke and binge drinking.

Circa 2009.

And the irony?  I still have the cast iron lamb mold and I have yet to make this years cake.

It probably worked out for the best, I'm sticking with vanilla.

Happy Easter everyone.

The art of a good breakfast negotiation.

Mornings in our house are always a bit of a cluster.  I've finally managed to get a handle on things but at a cost.  The older two come downstairs already dressed and they know they're supposed to pack snacks in their lunch bags.

It requires some give and take on my part.  That means if Lizzy shows up wearing a party dress, tiara and pink sparkle leg warmers over Rainbow Dash leggings, I go with it.  It also means if they don't help pack their lunches then I get to stick in whatever I want.  That means bagged carrots, a yogurt tube and an Uncrustable.  It's happened once to each of them and they've wizened up pretty quickly.

We stopped printing out what they are serving at school since both are pretty reluctant to eat what they are serving in the cafeteria.  What we do for school lunches is a whole other post....

At first blush this picture of breakfast seems pretty mundane, boring even.  Look closer.

Can you see that each kiddo has their own electronic?  Each child is eating a different breakfast?

The baby is eating scrambled eggs, Lizzy is working on Nutella and bread and Alex is working on "grandma style" pancakes.  That translates to homemade pancakes with a shit-ton of dark chocolate chips in them.  Specifically Ghirardelli large chips, 65% cocoa.

See how I've not yet managed to get drinks or silverware on the counter yet?  And I've given the environment the middle finger and they're all eating on paper plates?

My sacrifice to keeping the calm in the morning is to let them use their i-things while eating so they all quit yelling/arguing/shoving each other long enough to pile in some breakfast.

The kids and I have come to an agreement, a truce if you will.  My son presented a solution for the three of them:  They get to play their electronics and agree to quit hassling me long enough so I can get a cup of coffee in.

It's a compromise.  A negotiation.  A life skill in bartering in which we all win.

Never in a million years did I think I'd be negotiating 'coffee time' with my eight year old child.  Honestly, I think he had it all figured out before he came down to breakfast that morning.

And my boy runs a pretty hard bargain.

They get their electronics, food of their choice and paper plates.  I get my coffee.

I'm happy with the deal I made.



Note:  Tuesday I'll be at SPD Network talking about our OT Room.  Please spread the word if  this would help anyone you may know.


And I put links to the Uncrustables and chocolate so you know what they are.   I have some friends over-seas who may not know what I'm talking about.  The links are informational only. 

Winter Break in Cookies...

I have a bunch of nothing today.  Instead, I give you this.  

These are all the cookies I made and then ate for the cause of that Fat Bastard called Santa.  

I ate every single one of them including those birds, chickens or whatever they are.    

No, I do not have any self control.  I also ate some for that other douche, the New Year's Baby.

I'll be back on Friday with something more substantial.  I think.  Who knows, I may be making more cookies and growing my ass.

This is one hell of a bender.

In our house we stir by hand.

It's amazing what pops into my head and when.  My daughter and I were baking a cake today and it dawned on me.  I never use a blender.  Ever.  It seems so, dare I say it, normal not to use one. 

The first time I used a blender to make a cake with Alex, I darn near peeled him off the ceiling.  It was instantaneous.  He screamed, wriggled and tried to claw his way out of my arms like a feral cat.  Torn between trying to get away from the offending noise and stay in the security of my arms.   Cake batter went flying everywhere because, stupid me---I couldn't make the connection.  So like an idiot, I got things cleaned up and turned it on again.  Let's just say two was the magic number.

I cut myself some slack on this one since he was only about 12 months old at the time.  Hindsight's twenty-twenty, right?

Over the course of Alex's life I've found out the hard way some of his hearing sensitivities.  Basically, it's anything with a high pitched wine, excluding his sisters.  Here are some of the most offending noise makers in our house:

Beaters                                         Blender
Coffee grinder                                 Knife sharpener
Pencil sharpener, automatic            Electric toothbrush
Hair dryer                                       Lawnmower
Weed whacker                               Sirens

Well, needless to say, seven years later and I still stir the cake batter by hand.  I'm OK with that.



In our house, Tink lives in a castle.



star cookies...

So I did a cookie experiment (no kids involved) and here's how they turned out.  I have this thing about having the kids helping the kitchen--if food has the potential to be consumed by someone other than a family member, they're out.  I've had one too many sneezes in the banana bread bowl... 

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Here's the recipe if anyone's interested. 

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 cup unsalted butter

1 package (8oz) cream cheese

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond extract

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

Heat oven to 375.  Cream sugar, butter & cream cheese.  Add egg, vanilla & almond extract.  Add flour and baking powder to sugar/butter/cream cheese mixture.  Place dough in refrigerator overnight.  Roll out and bake in 375 oven for 7-10 minutes. 

Ice with confectioner sugar icing (confectioner sugar, butter, milk and almond extract) and add sprinkles or sugar.   

Happy Baking!