HRH - His Royal Highness

Today, the kids and I visited with two of my friends and their four kids and walked to this fantastic beach. We set up camp beside "the creek" where the water is warm as it rushes back from the salt marshes to the ocean as the tide goes out.

We played for several hours with five other pre-schoolers and saw bigger kids catching shrimp, fish, and crabs in nets and inspected them in their buckets. We built sand castles and climbed on huge boulders and ate mostly junk for lunch. On the way home, we went to Brighams Ice Cream because we had missed the ice cream truck at the beach, where he had vanilla ice cream AND M&Ms.

After that, I had to go to Costco to pick up a few things for our vacation and then to Babies R Us as Roger Clemens was wearing the last diaper in the house. HRH in particular was horrible in the store and as we were leaving, requested a gumball from the machine. I said no, at which point he began to cry. The subsequent conversation went something like this:

Me: If you don't stop crying, you can go in timeout when we get home.
HRH: I'm not crying, I'm whimpering.
Me: Same deal; knock it off.
--- Pause ---
HRH: I hope I never have a bad day again.
Me (incredulously): Which part of today do you think was bad, because I thought today was pretty terrific.
HRH: It was kind of terrific. But not really terrific.
Me (warningly): HRH....
HRH: (Sigh) Okay...it was really terrific.


You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. But you'll never please my son.

Partial list of things to know/do before creating blog:

1. Think up clever name for blog.



2. Find out HOW TO CREATE BLOG.



3. Decide if can be quick-witted on command and on a semi-regular basis.



4. Think up clever pseudonyms for commonly referred-to family members and friends. So far:
   Andy = Andy – have to work on that one. Wonderful husband of seven years with terrific sense of humor and unnatural fear of woodland creatures.
   Note to self: check copyright issues relating to borrowing The Huz, or The Man
   HRH = Child number 1, four-year-old boy. My starter child. First locally grown grandchild on Andy's side of the family. The one who never has any doubt that the sun rises and sets on him - and has the toys to prove it.
   Roger Clemens = Child number 2, two-year-old boy. Answered the question “How can I possibly love someone as much as I love HRH? Answer: easily. Will someday be starting pitcher for the Red Sox provided they give up those silly baseballs and start throwing Hot Wheels and dinosaur chicken.



5. Email Motherhood Uncensored and The New Girl to make them feel honored and homaged not molested and plagiarized



6. Convince husband blog will not lead to future feature story on Dateline with Chris Hansen

Sometimes Material Just Presents Itself

Friday night, just as I was “preparing” dinner - leftovers if you must know, Andy arrived from work announcing "we have visitors." It was my neighbor and her 3-year-old and 9-month-old, having just locked herself out of the house. Andy immediately left to try and break into her house via sliding door using a coat hanger.

HRH, Roger Clemens, and 3-year-old-neighbor-girl decide to play tag, running around my house - living room, dining room, kitchen, hall. Somewhere in the second lap, HRH wipes out while making the transition from dining room rug to kitchen Pergo. On the way down, he slams his head on the bottom drawer of the stove.

To be honest, we'd been in the house for most of the afternoon and HRH and Roger Clemens had been at each other's throats, so the crying really didn't resonate. I walked away from pleasant chit-chat with my neighbor to oh-poor-baby-you're-okay HRH (in HYSTERICS) to discover a gash in his head about an inch above his left ear.

I pick him up, examine the wound, and and show my neighbor (a nurse practioner), to get her opinion, already knowing the answer. She says "yeah." I call my mother-in-law -- for the second time in three months -- to ask her to come over immediately to look after one while I take the other to the ER.

So here we all are, me anticipating MIL’s arrival, awaiting Andy breaking into my neighbor's house, and my SCREAMING, jumping-up-and-down, refusing-to-let-me-put-ice-on-it, four-year-old.

While I'm gathering my purse, his special blanket, etc., HRH decides he wants to go tell Daddy and actually leaves. I spot him through the front windows heading across the street and run after him. Luckily, Andy has broken in and is exiting the neighbors’ via the front door and meets up with me as I catch up with HRH.

MIL arrives, neighbor et al can get into her house, and Andy, HRH, and I are off to the Emergency Department.

After much histrionics, and surprisingly, no visit from DSS (the 'childlife specialist' assigned to us did ask HRH what had happened), my boy now has exactly one staple in his head due to be removed the day before we leave for week at the beach.

In a bizzare case of de-ja-boo-boo, we had the same nurse, same doctor, and same room as we had with Roger Clemens' head injury/stitches at the end of April.

My sister, reminded me this morning that none of her five children has ever had stitches. I remind her that her BOY is only three...or maybe I'm just over my limit.