This year a friend suggested a joint trick-or-treating gig, and never one to decline a social invite, I agreed. Our kids (who’ve known each other since babyhood) were thrilled, and the deal was sealed. We marched over there around 6:00-ish (on a side-note, how weird was it to start Hallowe’en before dark this year???) and hooked up for what qualifies as the best Hallowe’en ever! The kids had so much fun going out together, and we moms just strolled along the roadside, hot travel mugs of green tea in hand, and chit-chatted (something we two particularly do exceedingly well!).

It’s nice that all four girls are old enough to run up to the doors and ring the doorbells on their own now, and with the four of them the excitement was at a fever pitch. We pulled in about twice as much candy as last year, which was fun for the gals.

On the other hand, Dad reported that there were only eight, count ‘em EIGHT trick-or-treaters in the hour-and-a-half we were gone! And only three more after we returned. We still have one whole box of mini-candies left over, which I’ll try to return to Wal-Mart (sans receipt…what are my odds?)

Anyway, the girls got right to work sorting the haul (they always combine their candy…nice, eh?) into a “keep” pile and a pile for the Hallowe’en Witch. This is a make-believe character we have invented who comes to the house a day or so after Hallowe’en and if you leave out half your candy for her, she will give it to kids who were too sick to go out trick-or-treating (or some other similar calamity that would require candy). In exchange, she gives you a toy, or a DVD or somesuch reward.

I love that my kids are still interested in the Hallowe’en Witch.

Well, time to get those ankle-biters off to bed before they barf from junk overload!

Pics tomorrow of the super-cute mummy gingerbread men I made for Girl2’s preschool party, as well as the super-cute bat and ladybug.

I have insomnia. Well, maybe it’s not really insomnia, because it’s not like I can’t sleep (I can), and more like I don’t want to sleep. Or actually, I don’t want to fall asleep.

It’s not like I think I won’t wake up in the morning or anything, or that I have too many worries rolling around in my head (although as a mother that does tend to happen to me sometimes). No, it’s just – I dunno. I want to fall asleep doing something. Watching TV. Reading a book. Listening to my iPod. But something. Not just putting my head down on the pillow and closing my eyes.

Weird.

It’s possible that it’s a symptom of depression, a mental illness that I have a bit of a history with. But apart from the falling asleep thing, I don’t have any other symptoms of the disease.

Right now, it’s 2:22 a.m. where I am. And I have not yet slept. Why? Because I prefer to sit up writing until my eyelids droop and my head nods.

Help?

One of the great joys of mothering, in my humble opinion, is baking remarkably attractive goodies for my kids to share with their friends. In the same vein, one of the great joys of having a child whose birthday is four days before Hallowe’en is baking really, really cool Hallowe’en-themed cupcakes for her to bring to school on her birthday.This year I had a lot of plain white rolled fondant left over from a cake I’d made a few weeks earlier for a friend’s baby shower, so I surfed around searching for spooky cupcakes using rolled fondant. Surprisingly, there were several options, but Girl1 and I settled on these cute cakes.

They were so easy to make, too! We baked 36 smallish devil’s food cupcakes (Girl1 liked the idea of devil’s food for Hallowe’en) and frosted them with chocolate buttercream icing (dead easy to make from scratch, too). Then we rolled out very thin circles of the rolled fondant (I’ve never made this from scratch, always just bought the Wilton pre-made stuff), draped it over the cupcakes and used a straw to poke the holes, which look like the ghost’s eyes.

Of course, we both got rave reviews from the students, teachers and other moms at the school and that, by the way, is a not insignificant reason why I go to such lengths to make these amazing goodies for my gals.

Tips for anyone who’s thinking of reproducing them? Make sure your fondant circle (the ghost itself) is big enough to cover the frosted part of the cupcake, but not so big as to cover the entire cupcake. I realized this too late and used waaaaaay too much fondant. Talk about sugar overload…the kids ate it all (except my girl who didn’t like the way the chocolate buttercream had touched the white fondant…memories of myself and gravy touching peas…). Were I to make them again (next year, maybe?) I would use a leftover paper cupcake liner (flattened out) as my template. I think it would be just about the perfect size.

Here’s the provenance of our particular ghosties:
I found a recipe idea here, and she seems to have gotten her idea here.

Can it possibly be seven years ago yesterday that I gave birth to my first child?

And why does seven strike me as such a momentous anniversary? None of her other birthdays have affected me this way, but suddenly, I have a seven-year-old daughter, and the world feels like a different place.

This little marvel of a child who can read and write, add and subtract, make friends and good decisions on her own — that I had a hand in the making of her — that has blown my mind.

I’ve spent the last few days (in-between all the hustle and bustle of birthday parties and their aftermath) slowly digesting the fact of her birthday; really now entirely her birthday, and not the anniversary of the day I gave birth (at least not to anybody but me anymore).

But since this blog is about me, I’m going to indulge this instinct to revel not only in her beautiful and marvelous seven-ness, but also to indulge in the reminiscence of the day of her birth. So, we go back in time: seven years and three days ago, to the late evening of October 25, 2000, Year of the Golden Dragon. Read the rest of this entry »

Am I evil?
Yes, you are.
Truly evil? I mean, truly, irrevocably, evil?
You want to kill your own children, don’t you? It doesn’t get much more evil than that.
*sigh* you’re right. I guess I’ll just have to control that murderous urge…if only they would just LEAVE ME ALONE for ten seconds!

My children, my beautiful, adorable, lovable daughters, do not know how to listen to their mother. Particularly when listening to said individual means leaving her presence for a defined period of time so that work (paying work…food on the table roof over your head clothes on your back kind of work) can. Finally. Get. Done.

I have been waiting all day for a DVD to arrive so I can upload some video to urbanmoms.ca (that’s the paying gig I got me, and a fine one it is, too, so check it out). And at 6:30 or so it hits me…I should check the mailbox for it. I was expecting it to come to the door (couriers usually do) and I had checked there several times, but we do live way out in the beyond of suburbia, so we have one of those infernal “superboxes” (there’s nothing super about it, trust me) where you have to walk up to this blight on the landscape and use a very-likely-to-get-lost key to open your mailbox.

In any event, I opened the box and there was the “courier” package with the DVD. That’s what you get when Canada Post runs a courier service…delivery guaranteed by noon – to a mailbox a block away. Arrgh.

So now, we’re back home and it’s too early to just pack them off to bed (they are 7 and 4.5 after all) so I very clearly explained to them:

“Mommy has to do some work now. I have to put this movie on urbanmoms. That means you have to find something to do on your own until bedtime so I can work. And if you need anything, you’ll have to ask Daddy. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“Yes Mommy. We understand.”

They most definitely do not understand, for within 1:30 of loading the video (I know this, because my computer times these kinds of actions) both girls were in my office, in my face, trying to climb up onto my lap, asking for chips (huh? chips? after dinner? wha?) and needing to show me their homework.

Do they forget that they have a male progenitor who is also an adult and capable of 1) getting them chips (although I feel justified to question his judgement if he concedes to that demand) and 2) checking grade two spelling words? No, but they do forget that I have placed him in the role of primary caregiver for the next hour.

I know, I know. Not unusual, and not that bad in the grand scheme of things. It’s just, right now, at 7:15 p.m. on a Tuesday night, I have the proverbial one nerve left, and EVERYBODY’S getting on it. Yes, even you would be getting on it if you were here.

*sigh*

Should I have a glass of wine? Or Baileys? Wait a minute, do I have a glass of wine, or Baileys? No? Well, I guess a fresh can of Diet Pepsi will have to do.

Until next time!

Most of the time we actually do love each other!