Costuming

We put lots of thought into our Purim outfitting this year, and have come up with some wonderfully subtle costumes.

I am dressed as an exhausted mother of twins. This costume is similar to that of an unemployed lawyer, but varies from the latter in that I am not carrying around a dog-eared law review and casually hidden stack of business cards with my contact information on one side and a miniature resume crammed onto the back.

My husband will be going as a working-from-home engineer. This costume is distinguished from that of a working-at-work engineer by the absence of an employee identification badge; all other aspects of dress and personal grooming remain the same.

My daughter is dressed as a boy, because when she woke up this morning, the cutest clothes remaining in the dresser were all in shades of blue. Never mind that we dress her like this on a regular basis.

My son is an abstract representation of a backyard organic vegetable patch, in that he is wearing a brown shirt with a carrot on it, captioned: "Home Grown." The effect is somewhat diminished by the presence of ice blue pants, but in order to enhance his costume we plan to allow all dirt that accumulates on his face and hands to remain there for the duration of the day.

Chag Purim sameach!

My Ki-gdom for a...

I have just discovered how difficult it is to live without the key to the left of M/to the right of B. Stupid opposite-of-old laptop.

A Special Kind of Dumb

Scene: Trader Joe's, me with the kids in their stroller.

Random woman walks up to me and says, "So I recently read that mothers of twins really get tired of people stopping them to comment on how adorable their children are." Pause. "Your children are adorable."

Oh, and then she kept talking...

Everything Old is New Again

As I'm sure many of you know, cloth diapering is gaining popularity among several segments of the population. There are the thrifty types who calculate how many thousands of dollars they will save over using disposables (especially for more than one child). There are the environmentally-conscious folk who want to keep disposables (and human waste! poop goes in the potty!) out of landfills - a worthwhile goal for most of us, though questionable for those who live in regions with lots of land and not so much water. There are the parents of babies with sensitive skin who want to keep perfumes, bleach, and various other artificial stuff away from their bums. And then there are those of us who just think that today's cloth diapers look cute.

Okay, fine, I'm a crunchy environmentalist, too.

The financial aspect doesn't hurt, either.

I'm also not a fan of perfumes and bleach, but we've been using Seventh Generation diapers and wipes since the kids were a couple of weeks old, so that was really a non-issue. We're not going all-natural here, either; for the kids' comfort (and our own sanity) we are opting to use a "pocket diaper" system, wherein a polyester fleece or suedecloth layer is closest to the skin, wicking away moisture to be absorbed by whatever sort of insert we stuff the diaper with.

Right. Maybe more details on the thought process later. This post is just to say that we have our six trial-run diapers (two each of three different brands), a few hemp inserts to play around with in addition to the freebie microterry ones that came with the diapers...and we are washed, locked, and loaded, ready to give thiings a whirl tomorrow.

Erm...today. It's pretty late, isn't it?

Lesson Learned

Generally speaking, it's okay to give your nine-month-old babies the food you are eating.

Generally speaking, it's okay to chop up a bunch of chili peppers and add some greater-than-called-for quantity to the mushroom curry you are making (for the first time).

However (generally speaking), it is not such a brilliant idea to combine those two practices.

Poor kiddies. After some tears (and nursing) they ended up having just beer bread and baked apples for dinner last night. Not that I think they minded much in the end...but it's a shame, since Rita at least seemed to be digging the saag aloo before she got a mouthful of the hot curry.

Rumble In the Darkness

Nope, not a really big substantive post here (yet). If I don't get this up now, I never will. With thanks to One Tired Ema for the tip, I direct you to The Great Virtual Breast Fest. I have no pictures of my own to contribute (and, even if I did, I'm not sure I'd put pictures of my children online without password protection), but I hope that by putting up a link I can do my own little part to desexualize and normalize attitudes toward breastfeeding in our culture.