Look what I the kids got for Christmas! I’ve waited a long time to get for the kids to be old enough to get an Easy Bake Oven! I remember how much I loved mine as a little girl, foisting impossibly tiny cakes on my parents.

Now that I’m the Mommy, I realize just how awful those little cakes really taste when you aren’t bursting with that I-made-it-myself pride.

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My family has always called me a night owl. My college roommates would concur. My children have actually come in and yelled at me for keeping them awake (or waking them up) by typing in the middle of the night. In my California days, I consulted with a nutritionist who said I had the most whacked out Circadian rhythm she’s ever seen.

I don’t sleep well at night.

There are different types of insomnia, but essentially there’s the kind that means it is hard to get to sleep and the kind where you fall asleep but once you wake up, you can’t go back to sleep. I have both of those. Yeah, it’s a b*$ch. And I’ve had it all my life, as near as I can tell. It gets worse if I am worried or anxious about something. And even worse if I’m sick or having any sort of pain. Pregnancy was a ton of fun!

If I am allowed to, my best hours of sleep are when the world doesn’t want me to — between 7am and 10 am. And my most productive hours are between 10pm and 2am. Not really a terrific schedule for work or a mother. So I cope. And I sleep very little, something I’m used to.

But sometimes my body really rebels and I get virtually no sleep. The clock keeps going by and I watch as it is 3am, 4am, 5am, 6am, my mind and body tensing as I know I will be a grouch with no sleep, and yet I know the day is about to start. This week has been one of those weeks.

Over the years I’ve talked to various doctors about it, who sort of shrug their shoulders, tell me to exercise more, cut out caffeine, maybe prescribe a sleeping pill. This is the year I’ve decided I can’t live this way any more. This is the year I’m going to hunt down someone who really understands this kind of a problem and helps me find a better way.

Because I love interacting with all my West Coast friends on Twitter and Facebook in real-time. But I’d love a “normal” night’s sleep more.

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Usually he’s busy asserting his independence. Although he’s 5, he reads at a second-grade level and his father and I can no longer use spelling as a secret code. And yet, today, as he languished in bed with a high fever, JavaBoy seemed more like my baby boy again than the boy who has been losing teeth and growing legs longer than his pants.

He needed his Mommy today.

I hated watching how pathetic he looked, at times complaining about how hot he was and other times feeling chilled. Too sick to be interested in food — much different from the child who says, “I’m hungry” practically every 10 minutes including yesterday.

As I snuggled up next to him in bed, and scratched his head and buried my nose in his hair, I almost felt like I caught a whiff of that scent babies have — a scent JavaBoy lost long ago now that he’s a Big Boy. But I remembered all those nights that I held him in my arms, rocking him or just snuggling him at night, worrying about the things new moms worry about, while taking in that baby smell.

We play a game, where I sometimes try to scoop him up, long legs and all, and I say, “Ohhh, where did my baby JavaBoy go? Where did he go? Can I smoosh you all up back into a baby and stick you back in my tummy?” He finds this quite hysterical because of course this is quite ridiculous — the thought of him ever being that small seems so very silly. And yet he knows he’ll always be my baby boy.

I look at him tonight, fever temporarily quashed with Tylenol, but fitful in his sleep, and I realize that Moms still worry, even when they aren’t new moms anymore.

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You’d really have to be hiding under a rock not to know that Sesame Street has hit the big 4-0. The media blitz has been quite impressive, with the Muppets taking over game shows, talk shows (did you see them on The Doctors?), even being honored with their own Google logo. Naturally this required the release of a 2-DVD set Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days. Heck, JavaDad turned 40 in the same year and even he had a DVD — albeit made by his brother.

When the PR folks behind the blitz asked if I’d like to review the DVD set, it took me half a second to give a resounding YES, and I apologize that it has taken me this long to write to tell you about it, because it is terrific. In fact, it is going to become my favorite gift to give in 2010 for children and adults alike.

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The Floridian in me never ceases to be amazed when it snows enough to actually stick to the ground. I just love looking at the whole world being draped with a nice, white blanket of snow. And of course, the JavaKids and I have to find a way to turn it into a way to make something in the kitchen!

I’m linking you to a post from earlier this year for snow cream and snow candy — both delicious and easy to make! I was going to add photos, but to be honest, unless you a professional food photographer, snow candy while still in the snow does not look much different than — uh– yellow snow from a dog — and once you lift if out of the snow, it is in a child’s (or Mommy’s) mouth so fast, you can’t get a photo of it! Snow cream doesn’t look like much more than white mush in a photo!

You can also mix up a little food coloring and water and get out there and do a little snow painting. Or just go out and roll around in the white, fluffy stuff! Just have FUN!

When you come in, mix up a huge batch of my favorite hot chocolate, read a good book, indulge in a bit of Robert Frost, and relax! (Until it’s time to deal with those sopping wet jackets, snow pants, boots, mittens and so on….)

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted a fun treat. Here’s my “oh my goodness, I need to make 42 cupcakes” solution for some Halloween fun. I did not invent these, in fact a friend described to me that she was making spider cupcakes and I did a quick search on Google and found tons of variations.

Sadly, my digital camera decided to die a sad Error 18 death this week, so this grainy photo from my phone will have to do. Note that these are not up to Martha Stewart’s standards as my children insist on helping (can you imagine?!) and I have long ago decided that family fun far outweighs aesthetics. Oh, and my son was quick to point out that spiders have eight legs, but as many people mentioned in their instructions, eight legs get a big cumbersome on a cupcake. My son said spiders also have multiple eyes, but I informed him we were sticking to just two.

What you’ll need:

• cupcakes (we made Devil’s Food — I recommend some form of chocolate so you don’t have to do a perfect job of frosting them)
• chocolate icing of some sort (we used a chocolate fudge icing)
• something for legs — if you can find shoestring licorice, great, we couldn’t find that so we used pull apart cherry Twizzlers.
• something for eyes — we used M&Ms

Make the cupcakes and allow to cool. Recommendations online varied about doing legs before or after frosting, but we chose to do them before, poking them into the cupcakes themselves. I recommend putting them as close to the edge as possible and poking them downward (instead of at an angle) and then trimming so that the bottom hits the same point as the bottom of the cupcake. You can cut with kitchen scissors.

After that, smooth on icing with a knife or small icing spatula. You can just roll it right over the tops of the legs and don’t worry about icing underneath the legs (see the beauty of having chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing?) It does NOT have to be perfect — kids will eat these in a nanosecond. Plop on two eyes and you are done. I personally prefer that the Ms of the M&Ms are hidden, JavaGirl insists that they are face-up.

Some people like to add candy corn fangs to the front.

Other suggestions for legs are: pretzel rods, fat black licorce (these would be fat legs that stick straight out), and pipe cleaners (non-edible, of course).

The whole family was able to get involved – JavaDad attached legs, I frosted, and the kids added the eyes. The whole family was able to get involved – JavaDad attached legs, I frosted, and the kids added the eyes. JavaGirl was thrilled to take them to school today and JavaBoy can’t wait to take them to his class tomorrow. Seeing the pride in their eyes makes me glad I didn’t succumb to the temptation to just buy store-bought cupcakes.

Enjoy!

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When’s the last time your family really sat in close proximity with all screens (TV, computer, cell phone, etc.) off, and had a really good time together? Are you looking at your watch… or are you looking at a calendar? Or can you not remember it at all?

Every summer we go on a trip to a huge beach house with several families and though I love the sea and the sand, one of the things I most look forward to is playing games together in the evenings. It’s actually the adults who play, after the children are asleep, but it won’t be long until the kids will be old enough to join in. These evenings remind me of countless rounds of Parcheesi, Monopoly, Yahtzee and card games my family played while growing up. I can’t remember a Thanksgiving that didn’t end with a rousing game of some sort.

It’s these simple pleasures, these unplugged moments that are the inspiration for National Family Game Night on September 23, sponsored by Hasbro Games. Of course they have a reason to encourage game play, but in an age when the economy is tight and technology sometimes makes us forget to look at each other, isn’t the idea of spending a night of old-fashioned fun a bit appealing?

Whether you just dust off some games you already own, or decide to go out and purchase some new ones — consider indulging in National Family Game Night this Wednesday and then turning it into a regular habit. If you want to go all out, Hasbro even has some tips for planning game night on their web site.

We actually held ours a little early — we tried two new games, Bop It! and Connect 4X4. Bop It! is this crazy little device that issues commands to press a button (bop it!), twist a knob, pull a knob, or yell into a microphone, in a rapidfire succession in a random pattern. We are clearly a very uncoordinated family and this generated tons of laughter! Connect 4×4 is an updated version of Connect 4 where there are two grids side by side and you can get your 4-in-a-row in all the traditional ways but also by weaving between the two grids. This was a HUGE hit with the kids. They are already clamoring for another game night and I’m happy to indulge them!

In every situation where I have played games with people — whether my own family, as part of a team-building exercise at a business retreat, with a group of grown-up friends — I have found that the after-effects last far longer than the game itself. People always seem to feel more closely bonded, more patient about listening to each other, more interested in working through things. Which makes me wonder, during these times, what would happen in this nation if we dumped a truckful of Bop Its outside the US Capitol building? (Oh no, I fear this post could take a dreadful turn for the worse… perhaps I should’ve suggested Cranium?)

I was at a retreat of local business leaders and when asked to “dream blue skies” about things to change in the county, one thing each round table came back with was that we don’t have enough fun as a society. How sad is that? We all agreed our county had terrific parks and recreation centers, and yet people were feeling like there was never any time for fun. The barrier wasn’t access to fun, it was prioritizing fun. CHOOSING to have fun.

Will you choose to have fun? Whether this Wednesday or another night, will you participate in some form of a game night in the near future?

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Bop It! photo is from the Hasbro Games web site.

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I had to laugh when I realized what the topic at JuiceBox Jungle was this week — giving up the pacifier.

More parenting videos on JuiceBoxJungle

It was almost exactly a year ago that we went through this very battle in our own household and wrote a post on our private family site. I honestly didn’t think we were going to get through this part of childhood, so for your amusement, I’m sharing my angst-ridden post of a year ago to our family:

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They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They? was the title of a 1989 episode of a TV show called Designing Women. In the episode the character played by Delta Burke, Suzanne Sugarbaker, always proud of her beauty queen looks, realized that she was now seen as “the fat girl” by her friends at a high school reunion. She was awarded the “Most Changed” trophy at her fifteen year reunion, as a snark at her physical appearance, and she accepted the award with a lovely speech letting everyone know that she was going to take it as a testimony of how she has changed from shallow beauty to a woman of intellectual and emotional substance rather than the hurtful comment on her weight gain it was originally intended.

I remember reading an article about this particular episode a long time ago, because the episode was written specifically to address Burke’s real-life weight gain. She was a gorgeous, sexy slender woman when hired, and her weight gain became a problem on set between Burke and the show’s producers/writers. Burke’s weight gain was due to a combination of physical and psychological issues and the more she felt pressured about it, the worse it got. Since then, her weight has see-sawed and she has launched a line of plus-sized clothing. At some point she shifted from running from her weight to trying to help others who were heavy feel better about it.

I’m outing myself as a fat woman. I have been terrified of old friends seeing photos of me online in the shape I am in currently and I have decided to end the terror now.

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I still feel a thrill every time I get ready to go on a trip. Maybe more so now that I’m a stay-at-home mother — the last couple of years of my career I didn’t travel as often as I did in previous years and I miss that. So I’m in that adrenaline high right now of packing up for a plane ride… BY MYSELF. Let’s face it, it is much different packing up to go on a (quasi) business trip than packing up to go on trip with the family. I’m headed off to BlogHer and I won’t be taking a car seat, a portable DVD player, Matchbox cars, crayons, any Leap Frog toys, etc. Just my own overstuffed suitcase.

But the question everyone asks me is, “How are the kids going to handle it?”

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