Today is the day my favorite cartoon character was born.    Garfeild?  No.   Mickey Mouse?   Nope.   One of the Pokemon characters?   Good Lord, I’m sick of them and if it was their birthday I certainly would not be celebrating it.

No, today is the day Miss G made her first appearance in this world.    What?  You say she’s a human girl and not of the animated species?    I tell you to look at these pictures and tell me I’m wrong…

Somebunny loves me…

Fashion.  It’s an attitude!

Artiste at work….just remember, I warned you about tattoos  at such an early age.

You are SUCH a good friend!

You can be a discerning food critic….not that I blame you after that meal…

…and sometimes you put on an act that NO ONE is buying…

But above all, my sweet girl, you are the light of my life and your smile can light up an entire city!

Happy, Happy Birthday,  Miss G!     Your Dad and I look forward to many, many more years of your antics and silly faces.    You make us laugh and smile every day….you are our sunshine!

We love you!

PS:  So does your brother, even if he’s too cool to say it right now.

Sorry.

So since I can’t share any shiny pictures with you, I’d thought I’d share some of my parenting tips for summer so that you can feel better about yourself as a parent. You may thank me later…or take me off your reader, your call.

Summer always starts with the best of intentions. We will get the children out of bed at a reasonable hour, we will take them to do one fun thing each day, we will work to ensure numerous playdates and above all, we will encourage them to partake in the endless bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables available this time of year. It’s nice to dream. Below is a list of what summer really turns out like around here:

• Starting off with that “endless bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables” nonsense….we think it’s a great idea.    The children, however, would beg to differ.   The only fruit they are eating is strawberries and the occasional watermellon.    Miss G will happily snarf down cantelope if I can muster up the energy to cut it into just the right size bites but will think twice after her brother pronounces it “slimy”, “gross” and “weird colored”.   (Did I mention he is color blind?    We call it orange, he calls it a shade of “blech”.)
• Bathing is optional.    Days can go by without these children meeting a bar of soap.   We know we’ve let them ripen past their due date when they begin to smell slightly like stale corn chips.    Then it’s a one hour negotiation session to get both of them to shower and wash their hair.
• The pool counts as a bath.   But only before they smell like corn chips so like days 1 and 2 of not bathing.    And sometimes day 3.   But never 4 because that would make me a bad mother.   Oh wait.
• Prior to summer, the bottom half of our house is all mine.   Things must be neat and tidy, crumbs from cookies, pretzels and pop tarts are not allowed in my area.   Neither are sadly deflated juice packs.   In summer, you could forage for a week in our den and manage to gain weight eating the leftover bits left on the floors, thirst would not be a problem either because there is absolutely no reason to drink all the juice in the Capri Sun package even if your Mother reminds you that there are children who would love to have a luxury like a cold juice.
• Regarding above guilt trip, it doesn’t work in the summer.     Or any other time of the year for that matter.
• Bedtime?  What bedtime?    At some point, The Man and I are laying half dead on the floor covered in cookie crumbs and exhausted from trying to force them to eat when they finally migrate upstairs….which I might add is neater than downstairs now.    (Trust me, the visual is frightening….)     It’s never before 9:30 or so which leads me to my next point.
• Early to bed and early to rise.    We’ve covered off on the early to bed thing, let’s talk about mornings.   Or mid mornings.   Or whenever they manage to migrate back down to the bottom of the house, smelling of corn chips with dragon breath and demanding a sugar coated breakfast.    Shortly after breakfast, the sugar crash sets in and mayhem erupts right outside my office door and usually when I am on the phone with a client.
• We have a general rule in this house that after you whine eleventy million times, “I’m booooored” all fun is immediately halted.   I’m happy to announce that they reached their limit on week two of summer break and we are now officially giving the finger to any form of entertainment that might present itself.    We may revisit this again in a week or so.

So there you have it, a partial list of my summer parenting skills.   Now…go give yourself a pat on the back,  print out this post and use it as a threat against your children should they start to act up.    I promise you they will straighten up at the thought of going to live with  Aunty Stiletto for a week or so.

You’re welcome.

Not a bad one, and not one that was unexpected…just…just…I wasn’t quite ready for this one.

Granted, I’ve had the unmitigated pleasure of having not had to face this line of questioning for far longer than I thought I would. We had a few near misses with this delicate issue, I’ve danced around it as best I could. But finally the statement I didn’t want to hear…

“Mom, there is no Santa Claus.”

OH. MY. GOD.

I was so not prepared for this though I should have been. Mr. C is ten years old, how we avoided this topic for so long astounds me. But there it was, and I had to deal with it. His very best friend shared this information with him yesterday. He had heard it before, but never from such a trusted source.

I remember when I started to question. I was about his age, maybe a little younger. My Santa wrapped the gifts, because in the 70′s, he had time to do that. (Why did he have more time then? Because he wasn’t on facebook or twitter all day, that’s why.) But one day, I was looking for a misplaced toy or something in my parents bedroom and I looked under the bed…only to discover the wrapping paper that Santa had used the year before, because obviously he wouldn’t have the same paper in the North Pole as the rest of the gifts under the tree in Texas, right?

Right.

So I walked out into the den with the wrapping paper in hand, lip quivering, thinking I had been lied to all these years about a jolly fat man sliding down the chimney and you know what my Mother said?

Nothing. Nothing at all. She refused to admit or deny the fact that he existed. She just sort of blinked a few times then wandered off, lit a cigarette, and poured herself a stiff drink. (Hey, it was the 70′s…) Finally after pressing her for weeks like a tiny Perry Mason and brandishing the suspect wrapping paper in her face, she came up with this gem: “To receive, you must believe.” And trust me when I tell you the look on her face let me know we were not to speak of this particular incident again.

So when my oldest child came to me yesterday and said that his best friend had told him that there was no Santa, and that in fact it was Mom and Dad who put the presents under the tree, I immediately morphed into my Mom (sans alcohol because sadly it’s not the 70′s anymore, and also, it was only 3:30) and said,

“To receive, you must believe…”

Sure, he has doubt in his mind much like I did so many years ago standing there with nothing but a roll of wrapping paper as evidence. I guess I want him to believe in the spirit of Santa still more than anything. I want him to understand that at times people will give you gifts for no other reason at all than you are a good and loving person and even sometimes when you don’t deserve them at all. These gifts can come in a varying array of fashions…compliments, hugs, friendships out of the blue or just a simple pat on the back. I’m not ready for him to let go of that thought. And I hope he never does. I never did.

Of course, the good stuff on Christmas morning doesn’t exactly suck either.

You say there is no Santa?

I say I don’t believe you.

This is Mr. C sitting in The Stanley Cup.

The year was 1999…the Dallas Stars won The Stanley Cup in one of the longest final games in history. We had a bunch of friends over and I have no idea what time it was when the game ended…all I know is I was the only one left awake in the room and I whispered “GOAL!!!!!!” at the top of my weary lungs at which point a middle of the night party ensued.

When a team wins The Stanley Cup, each player is allowed to take the cup home or on some type of adventure for a day. I’ve heard stories of roller coasters, spaghetti feasts, all sorts of things. Brian Skrudland, who played for The Stars that year, lived two doors down and he was a total family man so he was all about bringing The Cup home. Such an amazingly nice guy, and I will always remember his little daughters swimming when it was 40 degrees outside because this whole Texas winter thing where we all sat around shivering? For them, not so much. The would literally laugh at us as they ran down the street to a friends house with a little pink towel wrapped around them. Canadians, I love ‘em.

A few weeks after the big win, were minding our own business one afternoon when he unleashed his three adorable girls on the street to tell everyone The Cup had arrived. None of us knew he was going to do this so it was pretty shocking to hear his little girls yelling, “The Cup is here! The Cup is here! Party at our house!!!!” We all ran outside to watch it being unloaded from it’s crate, complete with VERY. HEAVY. SECURITY.

Needless to say, yet another party broke out with everyone posing for pictures with The Cup. In the picture above, Mr. C was six months old and I’m going to go out on a limb to say he may never have a cooler moment in all of his sporting life. We took tons of pictures, many with me in them but if you think for one moment you are going to see a picture of me six months after having that fat baby? You….are insane.

After all the posing and cheering that went on, the men gathered to drink champagne from The Cup. That’s right…The Man has actually gotten a buzz drinking from the very Cup that about half the country is in a frenzy over right now. The party didn’t wrap up until the wee hours of the morning so when I tell you I’ve lost a lot of sleep over The Stanley Cup? I’m totally not kidding.

While The Stars rarely show up for this particular party anymore, I’m still a huge hockey fan and hope all of you that are following the final games are enjoying yourselves!

You decide.

Got up to gorgeous Texas weather….blue skies, 70 degrees.

Took the kids for a walk on the nature trail around our neighborhood. After a few minutes of fighting, they were able to agree on a name for it, The Amazing Full Moon Forest. I almost burst with pride, the words “stupid” and “Jeez” were only used once or twice. And we were off…

There were trees to climb…

And sticks to find….

Oddly enough, this particular time the sticks were not used as weapons of destruction between Mr. C and Miss G…they were used to make “leaf snow”. One stick bearing child would hit the branch of a tree of his or her choice while the other one stood under it and leaves fell all around them giggling with delight.

After an hour or so, it was time to head home….

Whatever is in the Amazing Full Moon Forest needs to be bottled up and sold in the open market because I have never seen two such well behaved children. And especially not mine...

…and there are no pictures of Mr. C because he was more interested in watching Total Drama Island and popping in and out ocassionally to supervise myself and The Man.

Almost two hours later with sore arms and covered in pumpkin guts “the kids” had finished their pumpkins.

Not bad, huh? And it was all worth it too, because now I am a hanging with the cool kids over at Sprite’s Keeper in her weekly Spin Cycle. Happy Halloween you guys…hope it is a safe and happy one with lots of treats and not too many tricks!

I got to school on picture day and after enduring an awful lot of laughter over my stylish dress green polyester frock, I looked around and realized all the “popular girls” had bangs while I did not. My mom prided herself on not having given in to cutting my bangs despite my begging her…I had long wavy brown hair that she could do all sorts of things with to make me look even more like a middle aged 70′s housewife. (And not that there is anything wrong with housewives, but honestly, do any of you want to look like your Mom did then? Hip and cool were so not in vogue then in middle America…)

Well, I showed her a thing or two. Everyone, please meet Stiletto Mini, the 6 year old version of The Stiletto Mom.

See those crooked bangs? Yep, those were clipped by yours truly in Sister Mary Catherine Francis Angelica Margaret Elizabeth Anne Catherine’s (bc you can’t have too many Catherine’s) class with a pair of little kid safety scissors. Look at that uneven line…but more importantly, look at that evil gleam in my eyes. VICTORY! I may be dressed all wrong but man…I showed her….I totally jacked my hair 5 mintutes before pictures…take that! Also? While it looks like I have a missing tooth? I don’t…it’s a SPIT GAP. Ok, so let’s put all this together, chubby kid, dressed like a 1970′s polyester wearing forty year old, uncool hair plus spit gap equals??? You got it, six year old meltdown with safety scissors. Granted, it could look worse but there was a good four minutes spent trying to make them appear even for the picture with tremendous amounts of nun spit and I believe Elmer’s Glue…though I can’t be sure.

When my Mom came to pick me up that day, the nun stoically marched me out to the car and handed me over to my horrified Mother. I’m not sure, but I think they could hear her scream all the way up in Oklahoma, “OH HOLY MOTHER OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY!!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR HAIR????” And what did I say? “I fixthed it Mommy.”

So when Oklahoma heard these very words come out of my mouth some 37 years later this weekend, they should not have been suprised. None of this should be a shock to me either because Miss G is a carbon copy of me. (Wanna know what she looks like? The picture above, with blonde hair….evil gleam in eye is the same)

Keeping in mind tht Miss G’s circumstances are totally different…she has a the tiniest bit of a spit gap, is very fit, wears super cool clothes and is generally popular, the thing I learned this weekend is bad hair happens to all of us.

Apparently, it went down like this. She had a headband and put it in her hair. Her hair, however, did not want to cooperate and would not form the perfect swoopy on her forehead. So doing what any logical 6 year old girl birthed by me would do…she got out the scissors and went to town. While she did not create the full bangs like I did, she managed to take a huge chunk of hair out of the middle of her face and elected not to tell me but to tuck it into the headband (you know, because I’d never figure it out right?)

Well I did figure it out. While I was on the phone with my cousin (who knew my mother all too well) all of a sudden Oklahoma heard from a crazed Catholic Mom from Texas one more time…“OH HOLY MOTHER OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY!!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR HAIR????” And what she say? “I fixthed it Mommy.”

Well, of course you did. And now, Miss G, you have bangs just like Mommy did in first grade. You enjoy growing those out honey.