the 2nd annual loser family chili cook-off...

is what we used to call it when, after putting the then-toddler twins "in bed" (i use the term loosely, since what we really did was throw them into the farthest corner of their bedroom, shut the door before they could make it back to the doorway, and walk away high-fiving as they howled in righteous outrage) we would hear, for the next 30-60 minutes, the booping and beeping (and occasional crashing) of their magic talking kitchen as they sauteed and blenderized and microwaved and giggled (and occasionally screeched... like that one time, after several rounds of rhythmic silence-crash-screech, silence-crash-screech, we cracked the door to find that spazmonkey was climbing to the top of the magic kitchen and jumping off it to the mattress, and generally both missing the mattress and bringing the kitchen down with him, which dramaqueen helped him stand back up each time so he could do it again.)

so, like most parents, i've let them help me cook since they were toddlers. and it's been fun - they may have slowed it down, but they could follow simple directions - fill that measuring cup with flour/water/oil, dump it in the bowl, stir, pour - i've even let them break eggs with occasionally non-disastrous results.

now that they're four, though, carefully following my instructions as best they can is no longer entertaining. they need a challenge! they need excitement! and most of all, they want intellectual input into the cooking process, dammit! take, for instance, the perennial favorite: baking cookies.

me: you guys want to make chocolate chip cookies or shapes cookies?

DQ: SHAPES!

SM: i like shapes.

me: (after already making the gingerbread dough with them, which involved a whole lot of convincing them that none of their bright ideas about novel ingredients would really improve the stuff) crap. i can't find my cookie cutters. uuuhhh... so we can make any shapes you want! what shapes should we make?

SM: i like squares and triangles.

DQ: i like octagons.

me: no you don't.

SM: yes he does! and i like mushrooms.

DQ: i want to make a mario cookie.


yeah. so i thought they'd wind up incredibly disappointed (they're not terribly kind when critiquing my play-doh sculpting skills), but it turned out fine. mostly. i can pull off a mushroom shape, and dramaqueen actually did a damn fine job of an abstract mario-face cookie (and i managed to convince him that koopas don't taste good, so we shouldn't try to make a koopa cookie):



decorating them is, of course, the fun part. now, i thought i was being awesomely conscientious when we made whole wheat gingerbread cookies. the nutrition profile was damn near the same as whole wheat bread, so i was pretty proud of myself. that all went out the window at decorating-time, though. i made my own icing, the way i normally make stuff... without a recipe or any forethought at all, with whatever we happen to have on hand. in this case, it was a coconut-almond-buttercream frosting, and it ROCKED. after carefully spreading some on a cookie, dramaqueen dipped a finger in it, and tasted it. "MMMMMMM!"

now, i have to interject something here: you can tell these two are being raised in a house full of four boys, because the second the figure out they have been granted free access to junk food of any kind, they immediately start cramming it into their faces as fast as they can, because it won't be long before a) a brother or three makes the rest of it disappear, or b) mom takes it away.

so, as soon as dramaqueen confirmed that that was some good shit, they both immediately reached into the bowl of icing, grabbed a handful, and started slurping it down. as you can see here, dramaqueen, formerly the toddler known as lunchbox mcloser, actually paused for a moment on the way to his mouth to roll his handful of icing on the pile of raspberry-dark-chocolate-swirl chips before shoving the sugar-bomb into his mouth:



...as trogdor looks on, thinking, "damn these people for not throwing some of that my way. seriously, guys... i'm going to remember this bullshit when i'm 14 and twice as big as you assholes."

so the last couple of nights (which also represent the only two nights in the last three weeks where i have used real recipes to create dinner) we made empanadas. now, the first night - jamaican empanada night - was kind of a clusterfuck. i showed the boys how to roll the dough flat, put a scoop of meat-mess in the middle, fold the dough over, and crimp it shut. and i know they got it (i've seen them do it with playdoh), they just had "better" ideas. and by "better," i mean "more reminiscent of an angry pastry monster using its tentacles to rip some hapless pork to shreds." but the second night - cuban empanada night - actually went pretty well. after a couple of overfilling incidents (i'm sure they've been watching their dumbass father make burritos... if that man can actually stretch a tortilla around his mountain of shit such that the edges just barely make contact, he considers it underfilled and throws more shit on it) they managed to make empanadas that actually looked like empanadas.



the kids have always loved to help us brew beer, too, starting with evilgremlin when he was just two. kind of a steep learning curve there. for me and positiverolemodel, that is. for example, we learned that you never invite a two-year-old to peer over the edge of a large pot of as-yet-unbrewed beer. it's not that two-year-olds don't find a pot bigger than them full of floating grains and hops fascinating... it's just that two-year-olds drool. also, it's not a good idea to let them help daddy wash bottles on the back porch at 11 PM, because that introduces them to the awesome noise of breaking glass (which eg spent the next two weeks begging us to repeat.) but we've got the process down now, and the kids love to grind the grains, peer into the pots (from a safe distance), work the bottle-capper, etc. even trogdor got in on the action for our most recent batch:



he was a little unnerved by the noise of the grain mill until we let him check it out... anything with millions of little pieces to throw around is okay with him.

at some point in the brewing, prm managed to take a picture just as i was spilling some grain i was toasting (that's what happens when i'm in a hurry to flip him off in time for the picture. oops.)



spazmonkey decided, since i wasn't letting him make any decisions about what and how much to put into the beer, to ignore my player-hating and make his own damn beer. he picked up all the barley i'd spilled, got a cup, filled it with water, threw the barley in, stirred it carefully, then demanded an a&w root beer and poured in just enough that it turned the right color. he was quite pleased with himself when prm took a drink and declared it the best beer he'd ever tasted. yep. now them's good parenting skills!

said parenting skills which have nothing, by the way, to do with the following photo:



before one of you self-righteous motherfuckers sics DCFS on us: first he passed out. then the empties got stacked on him. in that order. at no time did he actually consume any beer. and his parents were sober, too. we just happen to have awesomely funny friends who, upon seeing a boy pass out from too much fun, think, "awww, isn't that cute? hey, wait a minute..."

6 months old

and apparently, i didn't need to have a girl to have a kid that looked just like me. i'm sure the effect will be diminished when the baby fat falls off him and the facial hair kicks in, but for now... he kinda looks like my clone.

last night... talkin bout last night.

(mad points if you actually know the song from which i stole the title of this post.)

so last night, my husband said to me, "you should have kicked me when you had the chance."

as you might imagine, the evening degenerated rapidly from there.

and i thought *I* was going to hell...

okay. bratz dolls.



i get it. simple concept. barbie, only dumber, younger, shittier attitude, and a much wider vagina. if i had to choose a toy for a little girl, it wouldn't be my first choice. but, whatever. not my problem.

okay. then they upped the ante. bratz babyz.



what. the. bloody. fuck.

okay, the dolls that look like teenagers trying desperately to get laid by rich older men? riding a line. the dolls that look like BABIES that go to a preschool run by paris hilton and lindsay lohan? crossing a line. obliterating a line. i'd call bratz babyz the horsemen of the apocalypse, except they'd probably try to have sex with the goddamned horse instead of ride it.

i mean, seriously. the teenaged bratz are more hoed up than i have ever been, period - in my ADULT life. it's kind of messed up that we're handing these dolls by the millions to pre-teen girls - dolls with cleavage, snotty attitudes, obnoxious amounts of bling, and jeans that ride even lower than my freakin under-belly maternity pants ever did. but hey, teenagers are sexual beings, whether that makes any of us uncomfortable or not. but the babyz? it's EXTREMELY messed up that the baby version has low-rider, blinged-up DIAPER, texas cheerleader hair, and fuck-me eyes... and parents are actually buying this shit for their little girls, too.

i would sooner hand my hypothetical daughter a playboy magazine - more class, more realistic body image promoted, and goddammit, the articles are awesome, too. isn't this a little scary? i mean, we've found a way to turn little girls into dick-seeking bitches at an earlier age than even child beauty pageants can manage! yay!

now, i'm someone who laughs and rolls my eyes at people who see the impending downfall of civilization in video games, rap music, poor test scores, etc. but, damn. don't we have rules about sexualizing babys? if these dolls were sold at adult novelty stores and called "spank me, daddy!" dolls, people would be in jail. but we call them "bratz babyz," and sell them to little girls instead of adults.

this rant brought to you by the fact that there's a bratz movie coming out. the trailer showed your typical high school girls - you know, ultra-thin, hoed up 20-somethings, prancing and squealing around expensive cars and clothes.



playboy bunny ears. teeny bikini. i wish i was making this up. i wouldn't be surprised if there are stage mothers out there right now dressing up their 18-month-old girls in thong diapers and pasties in the hopes of getting them a part in "bratz 2: babyz turning tricks."

i don't need to say anything bad about the person who invented bratz babyz, since h's already won himself a post as satan's peg-boy... but fuck anyone who's ever bought bratz babyz.