My Thanksgiving

I am so thankful for my friends who are like family to us. This only child has somehow managed to collect a great brother and some amazing sisters along the way - thanks for being in my life.

We had a riotous family photo shoot last Saturday. If you make it to the end of the slideshow below, you will see the quick descent into insanity that prompted one of my blessed children (take a guess which one) to not get their promised cookie reward. But despite the craziness, Jamie managed to get some great first family pictures (Thanks!). So, this is what I am most thankful for this year - all of my little fabulous chicks home, and AMP who is laughing all along the way with me.

The Good Egg

Fell asleep at 8pm with wee Chickens. Awoke just now at 10:45 to find AMP cleaning house and the toilet back in the house. Despite all the best laid Chicken/Lisa plans of painting tonight, and progressing towards resuming our social activities, our trashiness quotient is receding (thanks only to an industrious husband installing that toilet), and the measure of our laziness (okay, I own that one) is only climbing. While AMP is now vacuuming (what a good Egg~), this Chicken is heading to bed. Goodnight. High hopes for tomorrow.

Hipster Flair

I have spent the last two weeks in a last ditch effort to increase my coolness factor, and reduce or at least attempt to mask my mom-of-3-ness. I go back to work on Monday, to a whole new department, where I will be buying bath and body product (who's excited?!?! I only shrieked in excitement in the ear of my former boss when he called and told me - super professional and so cool of me!). I need to be as hip as this nerdy, lost somewhere in post-29 world mom can be. In a classic example of just how truly nerdy I am, I was out for coffee and dessert last night with two good friends (Happy Birthday B! and S, I would be happy to be friends with the good twin), in the hippest section of of the city, at 11 o'clock at night, and we spent the better part of three hours discussing theology and the Council of Nicene. But I digress.

So, I have been on a small shopping spree at all the hippest places - TJ's, Marshall's and Target obviously! I have bought sweater dresses/tunics and leggings, worn knee boots out of the house, tried skinny leg jeans and dress pants and all manor of long, wrappy sweaters. However, in the flurry of trying to shop while flailing frantically at the three small, store-destroying, scene-causing children, I bought a pair of jeans that looked as if they were identical matches to another pair of jeans I own, only down a size. It was only upon arriving back at that house, as I reached to remove the tags that I saw the two little words that are so not cool: Easy Rider. I had bought Mom jeans - I cried, but I kept them because they were so crazy comfortable

I had my nails done and my hair cut and colored - though there is no way to mask the damage done to my hair by Chicken Nugget. Absolutely no one tells you that after having a baby, large sections of your hair just, fall out! and have to regrow. I am either growing out thick bangs, or just living and loving my mullet - and please note that hair stealing baby is 2 years old and the damage is still very visible!

I have been watching trash TV - Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice and Gossip Girl by the hour (all while the children are sleeping of course - this is serious trash, in my book at least). But honestly, besides loving the fashion (that I could never fathom wearing, but hey, I am not Blake Lively and I, and thankfully, my husband have accepted this fact) and the true City feel ( I miss it!) I truly don't understand how they all so connected and ultimately disconnected by these "blasts" of gossip from some anonymous person. There is lots of dramatic pausing after dramatic text reading. This leads me to my most unhip trait.

Texting. When texting started, or at least when it started registering on my radar in 2004, I thought I could age gracefully past this phase, and join the world of post 29year olders who had no need for and no clue about texting. I make phone calls. I live for the phone, in fact, but I don't type on my phone. Unfortunately, everyone else my age did not make this decision to leave the texting to the younger folk. So now, I find texts 3 days later, I am constantly trying to text back in that ridiculous limited character space to friends about dinner plans that already happened, or the fact that they are running late (or more likely them finding out where the late Chicken is). Last week, I sent the exact same text to a person 6 times, and in the end, it actually wasn't a text to them. Add coworkers and bosses instant messaging me on my blackberry, and I am really in trouble. So I give up. I am not texting cool. I will DVR, blog, email and talk to my friends on my smartphone, skype, check my three sets of voicemail, facebook message and wall and chat, and even mobile upload from my ipod touch. I am as connected as I can be, but I will not text. That is my new line in the uncool, unhip sand around my streaky hair, mom jean, appliqued sweater wearing self.

Oh, how we fool ourselves.

You know those moments, when you realize that how you see yourself currently, might not be exactly how others see you? Well, today, my vision of myself has been altered. You see, I see myself as an extremely young looking mother of two, but who doesn't dress like a mom, or act mom-ish. I am fun, and am lucky enough to have an interesting job that lets me travel and go and do really cool stuff. This is me in my mind- I feel so hip!

In reality, I now realize that truly, I am the 30 year old mom to 3 children, who carries a not so pretty mom bag, drives a 4 year old minivan, and has no idea what The Hills is all about, and is very put off Jersey Shore (both of which are probably so LY, but again, I am not cool enough to know this for sure). I am that woman who showed up at church tonight to help with vacation bible school (one clue that I am probably not a hip, young thing anymore all by itself) with extremely fuzzy hair in a prairie braid. I then enhanced this fabulous look with an oversized white vbs t-shirt and a green polka dot plastic apron.

So how did I reach this image altering realization? Three things happened. First, my oldest daughter lost her first tooth, and I of course cried, and now I am hiding a really gross baby tooth in my jewelry box. Who does this, and how old am I to have a kid who lost a tooth? And seriously, who cries? Second, a nice little boy at VBS called me "The Lettuce Lady"! This was not, however, a completely random statement: I was working in the snack area and gave him flack two days ago for not wanting lettuce on his burning bush snack. Lastly, a little later in the evening, a different sweet young child popped his head in the room and said directly to me "Thanks, Cafeteria Lady." I just might not be a cool as I hoped I was - I am somebody's old mom! But look how cute somebody is!

Saturday mornings at the Chicken Coop

Chicken Little - Dressed up in a sweater dress and practicing her tap dance/clog moves that she learned at Fake Pioneer Hillbilly Town.
Chicken Nugget - "Stinky Monster" (AMP and I are arguing on whose responsibility this is) and she is insisting that I am the "Stinky Mawster"
Chicken - Desperately mainlining coffee. I had to peel myself out of bed at 8:45 this morning.
AMP - Making eggs and biscuits (no gravy) and currently dancing to his favorite song "All Summer Long" while playing a Hannah Montana guitar.
Can't wait for Pollo to join the chaos!

Why Chicken

The nickname started 7 years ago in NYC, when my loving husband began to get slightly frustrated with my persistence in waiting for the light to change in order to cross the road. Ever patient, he would dash wildly across the street in front of oncoming Mack trucks (you should see him drive) and then would tap his foot gently, while he pointed and laughed on the other side of the street. Thus, I became the Chicken that wouldn't cross the road.
My father had always called me Turkey, so I guess I was always destined to have a poultry nickname. The children's nicknames were obvious, Chicken Little for the biggest one, and she named the baby Chicken Nugget while she was still in the oven. Pollo, who has yet to reach the coop, was a no-brainer, given that he currently speaks only Spanish. The Chicken nicknames have not, however, been continued on with my husband, for obvious reasons.

What I love

Let me introduce myself. I am a happily married mother to two children and one on the way, who works beyond full-time at a job she loves, and is not domestic at all (this blog is simply another means of procrastinating on the laundry and the room that needs to be painted, and on and on...) . I love Jesus, but as my smart husband often says, "the long-haired hippie freak Jesus" who preached free love to all - no matter who or what you were or did - and that's it. I love my husband, my wicked smart and funny best friend, because 12 years after meeting him, he is still my favorite person to talk to. I love my children, my oldest rockstar daughter, Chicken Little, and my hysterical baby girl, Chicken Nugget, and my lovely middle boy, Pollo, who I will meet next month hopefully. I love my job, because who wouldn't love a job where they got to spend millions and millions of dollars picking out pretty stuff for peoples houses. I love adoption, because that is how I got to meet my oldest daughter, and how my little boy is coming home as well. I love my friends who have become family, the best aunts and uncles this only child could hope to give to her children. I love to write, and since all of the things I have just listed are taking up a wee amount of the time I would love to set aside to write the next great American novel, this blog will be novel for now.