Year: 2008

We call him Unicorno Gigante

I love you all too much to make you wait until after the party is over to see the unicorn.

I mean, seriously, the party is almost a week away and how would you eat or sleep with all the anticipation?

Thankfully, Gulley delivered Unicorno Gigante to our door yesterday morning because I assure you he wouldn’t have fit in my car.

Caroline is in love.

In fact, I think we may just have to throw out candy for the partygoers as opposed to watching Gigante meet his untimely demise at the hands of frenzied children carrying a bat.

Here’s the best part.

Last Christmas, Caroline really wanted a Butterscotch Pony. Santa did not bring Butterscotch Pony because he has principles and standards.

Not to mention that a younger, naive Santa once delivered a pink Pottery Barn kitchen to Caroline that sits idle in our playroom to this day.

Santa learned his lesson about extravagant gifts.

Here’s a picture from the Butterscotch Pony ad.

Butterscotch retails for $254.88.

The way I see it we just saved ourselves $240.88.

Oh sure, Unicorno Gigante doesn’t whinny or talk like Butterscotch Pony does.

But, hey kid, that’s what your imagination is for.
Revelation

So, Third Day released their newest CD today and it’s called Revelation. You may remember that I gave away ten copies about a month ago.

I apologize if you didn’t win one. Just remember, in my eyes, you’re all winners.

Anyway, to celebrate the release of the CD, the guys from Third Day have agreed to answer a few reader questions.

All you have to do is leave your question in the comments. It’s that easy.

I will choose five questions using the handy random number generator. The winners will have their question answered and also receive an autographed Revelation CD.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.

You’ll also receive an autographed Third Day t-shirt.

It’s an abundance of giveaway riches.

In the meantime, if you can’t wait, then you can download Revelation on iTunes.

Oh, and you can also catch them on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight. Set your DVRs!

Can’t wait to read your questions.
I thought the large unicorn pinata was just a myth

Thank you all for all of your comments yesterday. It’s always nice to know that you’re not the only one who is living with someone who is trying to overthrow the current regime and establish her own wee dictatorship.

On the bright side, we have had a solid 48 hours of peace. Oh, she tried to get to me yesterday morning, but I was strong and resisted the bait.

We had a morning full of errands to run and she announced she was going to get herself dressed. I went into my closet to do the same and when I returned to the living room she was wearing a yellow floral skirt, a black and white paisley shirt, turquoise knee socks, and sparkly tennis shoes.

Oh, and a fleece snow hat.

I told her to grab a snack for the car so we could get going. She looked right at me and said, “Do you see what I’m wearing?”

“Yes, you look great. Although you might get hot in the snow hat.”

It’s like I’m a whole new person. A person who is choosing to only see love and peace instead of mismatched patterns and tacky knee socks.

We spent our morning running errands to get ready for her birthday party next week. Our first stop was supposed to be our favorite bakery, but when we arrived there, it was gone. Seriously. GONE.

I called them and discovered they are in the process of moving and will be shut down for the next three weeks. I wanted to yell, “BUT WHAT ABOUT MY BARBIE ISLAND PRINCESS CAKE?!”

Then I remembered that I am full of peace and love.

So we drove to HEB to check out the bakery. I mean it’s not like a bunch of five year olds really care about the cake. All they’re going to do is lick off the icing and drop the cake on the ground for the ants.

Unfortunately, HEB does not make a Barbie Island Princess cake. HOWEVER, they do make a Barbie Fairytopia cake covered in hot pink icing that is guaranteed to stain anything within a five mile radius and cause sugar levels to skyrocket.

The last errand on our list was Party City. We needed to get Barbie plates on which to eat our Barbie cake. Also, we needed to get candy to fill up the pinata.

Speaking of pinatas, I delegated the task of pinata purchase to Gulley’s husband, J. His work often takes him to the South Side of San Antonio where you can get a MUY GRANDE PINATA for very little dinero. Caroline told him she would either like a cheetah pinata or a unicorn.

Because everyone knows that Barbie frequently cavorts with both cheetahs and unicorns.

As opposed to Bratz dolls who spend all their time perfecting the art of looking like a hot, trashy mess and putting on another coat of mascara before they go pierce their bellybutton. For the third time.

Anyway, I had a message on my cell phone from J. yesterday afternoon. “Mel, I’m down here on the South Side looking at a white unicorn pinata with a pink, yellow and purple mane. I think it’s a good choice so I’m going to go ahead and get it IF IT FITS IN MY CAR.”

J. drives an SUV.

Gulley called after J. got home and informed me that I am the proud owner of one of the largest pinatas she has ever seen. In fact, her youngest son, Will, was currently sitting on it.

I’m afraid we may have to take out a second mortgage to fill it with candy.

Or maybe I’ll just pray that the kids will pass out from the sheer exhaustion that can only come from beating the heack out of a gargantuan piece of papier mache’ and will fail to realize they only got one Starburst and a pack of Nerds for their efforts.
Battle of the strong wills

To give you an idea of how my weekend went, I’ll tell you that I spent Saturday night searching for my copy of “The Strong-Willed Child” because I was clearly in need of some serious parenting assistance.

I finally found it in the bottom drawer of my nightstand along with an issue of People magazine dated August 4, 2003. It’s the issue I brought to the hospital when I went in to deliver Caroline.

I keep it for sentimental reasons and also because the cover story is about Angelina Jolie, long before she ensnared Brad Pitt and had fifty-eight children.

Anyway, I originally purchased “The Strong-Willed Child” when Caroline was about ten months old. Oh, what a sweet kid I was.

I thought my ten month old was strong-willed and was all like “Help me, Dr. Dobson. My baby will stand up and hold on to her crib railing for hours and refuses to lie down! What on earth do I do about this huge problem?”

I’d like to go back and slap some sense into myself. Rookie.

Now I’d be like, “Hang on to those crib rails all you want, sweet girl. You’ll get tired and fall down eventually. It’s called GRAVITY.”

Caroline will turn five in one week. And, honestly, if the last three weeks have been any indication of how five is going to look, then let me say for the record that I am really going to miss four.

Four has been mostly delightful. Five is starting to seem like a visit from an obnoxious relative who eats all your chocolate and then kicks the dog.

On Saturday she threw a fit of epic proportions filled with more drama than Scarlett O’Hara fleeing Atlanta. I’d like to say that I handled it with dignity, grace and patience, but I was fresh out of all those things. I’d had it.

In fact, P had to send us to our separate corners so that we could both calm down.

It was ugly.

And it made me feel like a failure.

I spent most of Saturday night trying to figure out where I’ve gone wrong. Am I too hard on her? Am I not hard enough? Am I not teaching her the right things?

Then, about midnight, I heard her little voice over the baby monitor.

“Mama? Mama?”

As I walked in her room, she immediately stood up on her bed, reached for me and said, “Mama? I love you.”

I held her close, breathed in the scent of her damp hair, and said, “I love you, too. You’re the light of my life.”

And for that moment she was ten months old again, not holding on to crib rails for stability, but to me.

That’s my job. Even when it’s hard.

Even when I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.
Just a few things

So last night, after our traditional Friday night dinner of Mexican food, Caroline decided she wanted to spend the night with Mimi and Bops.

All of a sudden, P and I found ourselves child-free on a Friday night.

We celebrated by going to HEB, where he bought some Golden Mini-Oreos in honor of his thirteen pound weight loss this past week, and I bought the new InStyle and some Dreyers Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream because I haven’t lost thirteen pounds in the last three years and so why start now?

After HEB, we came home, put on our pajamas, and I spent the next three hours ordering pictures off Shutterfly. I haven’t placed an order for pictures since Easter of ’07.

FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE pictures later, I finished my order.

Can you say ONLY CHILD?

We spent the rest of the evening watching bad movies starring Ashton Kutcher and flipping through the channels 892 times.

I don’t know how we manage with such a full social calendar.

Anyway, here are a few notes of interest that may or may not interest y’all.

1. Beth Moore is coming to San Antonio on August 22-23 for a Living Proof Live event. It’s not too late to register and if you are anywhere near San Antonio I cannot stress enough how awesome it will be. You should seriously make the drive.

2. There is a really great giveaway on LifeWay Allaccess right now. We’re giving away ten copies of Vicki Courtney’s book, “Teen Virtue Confidential” which just won a Christian Book Award.

3. I hate to tempt skincare fate by revealing this information, but I have been using the olive oil/castor oil mixture to clean my face about two to three times a week for the last month and my skin has never been more clear. I am a fan.

**Edited to add that on the days I don’t use the oil cleansing method, I wash my face with Cetaphil. I also use my L’oreal Microdermabrasion kit twice a week.

4. I still haven’t bought any new sheets because I’m waiting on a Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon to arrive in the mail because I’ve decided to try these Pure Beech sheets and I must receive my 20% percent off.

They came highly recommended by several trusted sources, so I’m going to give them a whirl. I’ll let y’all know what I think.

5. I saw this darling jumper by Miniboden and could just picture how cute Caroline would look in it with some brown boots and a brown turtleneck. When I showed it to her, she looked at it and told me, “I don’t do brown”.

I think I’m going to buy it anyway because I am an optimist. Or just in denial.

6. I’m pretty sure that some creature from the phylum rodentia went under our house to breathe its last breath. The smell is seriously causing me to gag just a little.

Can’t wait until the temperature reaches 108 later today. That sucker is going to be ripe.

On that cheery note, have a happy Saturday!
Edition 35: Fashion Friday, the great and mighty purse

I’m going to make a confession.

As much as I care about other aspects of fashion, I don’t really care about purses. Now before you start in on me for talking crazy talk, let me explain.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate a good purse because I do.

In fact, the Christmas I was fifteen will go down in history as one of my favorite Christmases ever because it was the year I got my very first Dooney and Burke purse. In hunter green.

Oh 1986. You were so funny with your hunter green and navy accessories.

Since that time I have carried all manner of handbags, ranging from expensive designer bags to inexpensive knock-offs.

Here’s the truth, I can’t really tell the difference.

I had this beautiful Fendi bag when I was in college and it began to fall apart after a fairly short amount of time. So I marched myself and my cool bag into the Fendi store and explained my dilemma only to be told that “the Fendi purse isn’t for everyday use”.

Well sure.

Why would I expect a fine Italian leather handbag to hold up better than the $50.00 Liz Claiborne purse I carried throughout most of junior high?

After my Fendi experience, any real love I had for a specific purse kind of died. Oh sure, I went through a period in the mid-90’s where I had to have the Kate Spade black microfiber purse shaped like a box, but I’ve never been a girl who cares all that much about a new handbag purchase.

Then, last fall, I saw this gorgeous purse by Kate Spade. It was this gorgeous chocolate brown suede with hot pink lining.

When I saw it, I felt like a girl of fifteen again.

However, it was slightly above what I’m willing to pay for a purse that will inevitably become filled with a mixture of animal cracker crumbs, grape juice and hand sanitizer.

And really, I don’t know why I’m telling y’all all this other than to lead into today’s question.

1. Christine asks: “I need fashion help. I need a new purse. I’m very particular about my purse, probably because it’s the one thing I wear every single day. I’m willing to spend about $100. Like a good pair of shoes, I’ll keep a handbag for awhile. But I find myself going back to this year’s version of the same boring black leather bag over and over again. My habit, generally, is to buy a nice bag and carry it thru all seasons as opposed to cheap bags that I rotate out as they fall apart and/or are out of season. Any suggestions?

Well now that you know my purse history, you may decide that I’m not the best person to be doling out advice on purses.

And you’d probably be right.

However, I did find a couple of things that are in your price range that I think are really cute.

I love this braided-leather strap hobo bag and it’s on sale.

I also like the giraffe-print hobo.

Here is a brown woven bag and a fun ethnic print hobo bag.

Honestly, it’s not easy to find purses online. Most of the things I found were either $20.00 or $400.00 with not a lot of in between. Your best bet may be to head to TJ Maxx and look around. I’ve seen some really great purses there for about half the price.

What about y’all? Have you seen any cute bags lately? Do you switch out your purse according to the season or just carry the same one all year round?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Or at least I would like to know.

Y’all have a great Friday!