Episode 31 - Inspiration

Ya gotta take your inspiration from wherever it comes, I tell ya.

This is something that often happens in our house, at least on the evenings that Michael is home. He takes the kids off my hands for a while so I can squeeze in a little more work. He's good like that. He gets the girls ready for bed and reads them stories and sings them songs and hands them monsters (we've been pulling imaginary monsters out from under the bed and handing them to children ever since Princess first started sleeping in her big-girl bed).

But the girls do not make it easy on him, and quite frequently there's lots of squealing and screaming and giggling and misbehaving, and that always leads to Michael shouting at the top of his lungs, at which point I usually step in to intervene because I honestly believe that only one of us should ever have to traumatize our children for life and that has been my job since day one.

Anyway, all of this is just the long way of saying this week's cartoon is drawn from real life and yes, I have actually heard Michael shout, "Get that bucket off your head and get into bed now!"

But only once was he saying it to me };)

Episode 30 - Obey Me!

File this one under "things that actually happened." In real life, it was a two-year-old Princess, not Pixie, who ran around butt-nekkid, refusing to squat on the pot and do her duty. It was one of those hair-pulling days where no matter how many times you yell, your kid still doesn't listen. After believing I finally had Her Royal Tookus ensconced on the potty-throne, I called up my best friend, Mary. Wouldn't you know it, just as Mary picked up the phone, Princess came streaking through the kitchen in her all-together. It's a phone call Mary says she'll never forget.

But Mary understands. Mary's been there with her own darling little boy (he has the cutest brown curls!). And many times when she calls me, she gets just as distracted by her offspring as I do while on the phone. Our phone conversations usually run something like this...

Mary: "Hey Helen, what are you up to?"

Me: "Just getting dinner to-- Will you put that down? No, Daddy did not say you could play with the steak knives! Go play in the living room! Sorry Mary, what did you ask me?"

Mary: "I forget. Probably wasn't important. Hey, have you seen the ads for the new display at the museum? I was thinking-- Young man! Get down off that table! I swear, you're going to crack your head right open and I'm just going to point and laugh when you do! Sorry Helen. What was I saying?"

Me: "Uh... The museum! Yeah, I saw the disp-- Pixie! Quit hitting your sister with the frying pan! And take that spatula out of your underpants! I need it to cook dinner!"

Mary: "No, you may not have ice cream for dinner. No, not for breakfast either. Because we don't have any ice cream! Mommy got so stressed out after you tried to feed the cat to the dog that she ate it all in one sitting!"

Me: "Princess! Quit swinging your sister around by the ankles like that! You're going to smack her right into the wa--"

CRASH!

Pixie: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Mary: "--and quit sticking your finger up your brother's nose! There's no ice cream up there either!"

Me: "I don't care if you didn't mean to do it! She's your sister, not a crash test dummy! And look at the size of that hole in the wall! Could it be any bigger?"

Mary: "Helen, I have to--"

Me: "--go. The kids are completely out of--"

Mary: "--control. I swear I'm gonna--"

Me: "--pull out all my hair if they keep this up! I'll talk to you--"

Mary: "--later, when things quiet down. Maybe in about--"

Me: "--fifty years or so?"

Mary: "Yeah, that sounds about right. Talk to you then. Young man! Put that hammer down!"

Me: "Bye. Princess! Pixie! Put those scissors down NOW!!"

Click.

And that's what a phone call is like when you have kids in the house.

Episode 29 - Thunder Pants!

We are actually mostly finished with Pixie's potty training. She's been in "thunder pants" for a few months now, only wearing a pull-up at night. Potty training is one of those things that as a parent you never think is going to happen, and in Pixie's case I was starting to wonder if she'd still be in pull-ups on her wedding day, but we eventually got things straightened out. It seems that so long as she was in a pull-up, she'd pee in it no matter how many times a say I sat her on the potty. Once I switched her to underpants, that quickly stopped.

Regarding the potty, does anybody else have a singing potty? Ours sings all sorts of little songs depending on what the occupant is doing. There's one song for lifting the lid, another for sitting on the pot, a third for actually making a deposit in the pot, yet a fourth song for rolling the faux toilet paper roll attached to the pot, and then a final song for closing the lid and pushing the little fake handle. It's all a bit much, in my opinion, and the whole singing potty thing really started to creep me out when the potty developed a short circuit of some kind and started randomly singing in the middle of the night while the Hubster was away on business. Nothing like waking up in the dark to the eerie strains of "Let's all sit on the potty!" Needless to say, I didn't bother to switch out the batteries when they died.

I'm headed out this week for a visit to Arkansas to see my folks. We're really looking forward to the trip, but alas I'll have no internet access while I'm there, which means yet another wait for the next cartoon. I'm starting to clear stuff off my plate however, and hope to get back to a schedule where I can turn out a cartoon a week, or at least every ten days. I'll get there by this summer, I promise.

In the meantime, you'll be seeing some changes around this site and my other sites as I merge all three blogs and websites into one mega-super site. I'm just spread too thing between the mommy blog, the cartoon blog, the writing blog, and the supporting websites. I figure if I get it all into one place, I'll be better able to keep up with blogging and you'll have an easier time keeping up with all the crazy wacky fun I have to offer (insert canned laughter here).

Have fun over the next week or so, and I'll be back with another cartoon as soon as I can!