by Jen Logan | Jan 7, 2018 | Life, Parenting
“I am on a curiosity voyage and I need my paddles to travel.”
Kids are kind of creepy. Once they finally stop spewing bodily fluids out of every orifice after those toddler years, they start spitting out teeth like an MMA fighter. My six year old lost her top two teeth this week after horrifying her grandparents for the week prior when both teeth were flopping around like a pair of swinging doors. This amused me, mostly because my dad is very rarely squeamish and he was just that every time his favorite little body came running at him with her tongue pushing her teeth in and out of her mouth.
Somehow I remember losing all of my teeth within a short time period. Maybe it was because I was closer to puberty than kindergarten when I finally lost my baby teeth. My daughter lost her bottom two middle teeth a year ago and hasn’t had another wiggler since then. When one of her top teeth started wiggling a few weeks ago I was a little surprised that the other didn’t join in the fun. It took lefty a full week to get on board the getaway train.
The first of the teeth to go was pulled out by a piece of ciabatta when we decided to get a takeout from a local Italian restaurant. She immediately spit out the bread that was in her mouth and shoved it into my hand. So much for the end of wet slimy things in my hands from my kid’s body. We spent the next ten minutes sifting through the pasta, chicken and bread on her plate and even the salad that was a foot away when the tooth came out. We never found the tooth and determined that she must have swallowed it. She immediately asked how we would get it back. It was somehow confusing to her when I said we wouldn’t get it back. She was incredulous that I would not be spending the next morning sifting through her poop for the tooth. I think she may have actually been testing me a few hours later when she stood up in the middle of our Friday night movie and said “I have to poop!” Instead of jumping right up I replied “I hope that tooth doesn’t bite you on the way out.” The poor kid actually looked frightened for a minute. I told her I was just teasing her and she relaxed until her Dad jumped on board and started making jokes. Sometimes he is a little late to the party. After we promised repeatedly that nothing was going to bite her little butt she finally went into the bathroom but not before asking one last time if I was sure I didn’t want to look for her tooth. The kid is nothing if not persistent.
Mini Nanny McPhee!
The stubborn tooth stuck around for a few more days. We spent New Years Eve making jokes about our little Nanny McPhee while I tried to get my hands on the wobbly tooth and give it a good yank. By New Years Day night I was getting worried that she would be swallowing yet another tooth, this time while she slept. As we were getting ready for bed she was playing with the tiny tooth now hanging by a string constantly. I couldn’t clear my head during our nightly meditation, instead I was plotting how to sneak back into her room and yank the tooth without waking her up. Luckily I didn’t have to plan for long. Right before I left her room to let her doze off she jumped up and spit her tooth out into her hand. She said she had sucked on it until it finally came out. The fact that there was no blood at all was proof enough that it was long overdue to make it’s escape.
After getting her tooth ready for the tooth fairy she climbed back into bed and asked if the tooth fairy would know about the other tooth that was swallowed. She wanted to make sure she was going to get paid for both, even if she wasn’t going to turn over both teeth. This kid is going to be a union steward or attorney when she grows up! She went on to say “that tooth can’t defeat all that water and juice and blood in my stomach!” as if to reassure herself that the tooth would not in fact bite her. Or maybe she was emphasizing that her stomach was to blame and not her negligence, just in case the tooth fairy had any doubt. She finished with “It’s like a super storm in there!” Strangely enough, the tooth fairy not only paid her for both teeth, she also left a note saying she was sorry little Nanny McPhee swallowed one of her teeth and assured her it would not harm her in any way. Man, that tooth fairy is even better than Santa Claus – generous and observant!
I wrote most of this post while listening to:
by Jen Logan | Jan 4, 2018 | Being Awesome, Life
Nothing like a cake to feed 30 for a party of 15!
I hate when my husband asks questions like “Can I trust you to make a reasonable decision?” I want to respond with a question of my own – Are you new here? Of course you cannot trust me to make a reasonable decision. Reasonable is not exactly in my wheel house. I’m kind of a go big or go home kind of girl. He typically asks these kinds of questions in context to shopping or party planning. I hear questions like this often during the months of November and December when I am Christmas shopping and in the spring when I am planning our daughter’s birthday party. I vividly remember him telling me not to get too crazy about our daughter’s cake for her fifth birthday. I didn’t have to get crazy at all. I am fortunate enough to know a baker extraordinaire who didn’t even blink when I asked for a seven layer rainbow cake with the My Little Pony characters climbing the side of the cake. The inside of the cake was a beautiful rainbow just like the outside and the kids went crazy for it. For some reason my husband was really against us having a kids birthday party the following year.
Because every day is a party in our house – balloon archway and all!
The thing is I grew up with parents who sometimes went a little overboard. They loved being parents and they tried to make my childhood as magical as possible. I am in my 40s and they are still trying to make my life a little magical when they can! This may be one of the reasons I act like a large child in high heels. I am the girl with the most cake.
Last time I went to spend the morning in my daughter’s class, the primary school director said to me “you are pretty popular around here!” as six little girls huddled around my chair. I explained that it’s only because they are not used to seeing kids as big as me in their class. I’m a bit like a performing chimp for the kids when I show up, so they like having me around.
The other factor in my over the top attitude is that I don’t much think about consequences until I am actually suffering them. I never thought much about using all of my vacation days by mid-June when I worked a nine to five job. This was actually a fairly difficult thing to accomplish too considering I did not take any vacation days between the third week of January and April 15. That really spoke volumes about how much I hated my job when I took four weeks of vacation days over a period of ten weeks. We used to joke in my house on a weekly basis that I was sick and would need to stay home from work. Once again, consequences have never played much of a part in my decision making. Refer back, I am much like a large child in high heels.
Yup, a large child in high heels loose in Las Vegas!
Sometimes I wonder how my husband puts up with me and then I remember it’s because I am awesome. It may drive him crazy that he can’t trust me to pick out a simple birthday cake or book a vacation without saying “HELL YES” every time I am asked if I would like to upgrade, but he can also know that no matter what I get my hands on it’s going to turn out better. Sometimes I have to remind him that he is in fact the one who chose to marry a large child in high heels. Just in case he forgets, I periodically send him pictures of me in high heels acting like a child. He is not nearly as amused by this as I am. So, no, he most definitely cannot trust me to make a reasonable decision, but he can trust me to make anything I touch ten times more awesome!
Today’s post was written while listening to:
by Jen Logan | Dec 27, 2017 | Life, Parenting
The whole country wants to be famous!
Over the last year my daughter has become intrigued by YouTube. She started watching a woman who bakes and does silly challenges like “not my arms” and a bunch of blindfolded food tasting. Some of the videos are funny, some are stupid and some actually teach my kid how to do something! I became intrigued when I read that this particular YouTube star made $6 million last year. After reading this I jumped right down the rabbit hole and read dozens of articles about people who are YouTube famous. Sadly, the top earner is a guy who makes videos of himself playing video games. People are now so lazy that instead of playing their own video games they watch other people play the games on YouTube.
After seeing the ridiculous amounts of cash being handed over for these videos I, of course, had to poke around to see what kind of videos were popular. I found some pretty disturbing things including grown women playing with toys and talking in strange little girl voices, children opening toys for other children to watch and get jealous about (also known as consumerism at it’s finest) and channel after channel of people dumping food on their heads and/or eating disgusting things. If the content wasn’t bad enough, some of the videos were so shaky and the editing so choppy that I thought I might throw up if I continued to watch. My husband and I immediately subscribed our daughter to the handful of channels we found to be acceptable and told her the rest of YouTube was off limits. YouTube, like most parts of the internet, can be used for good or to slowly melt your brain and turn you into a bag of rocks with hands.
This lasted for about a week and then she wanted to start searching for her own content. She claimed she had already seen every video on the half dozen channels she was subscribed to. I had a short talk with her about what it means to exaggerate and sat down with her to find more videos after she conceded that she had not, in fact, watched every video on the channels she was subscribed to. On a side note, I don’t know where she gets speaking in absolutes from, I never exaggerate!
After watching the first ten seconds of about a hundred videos and declining to allow her to continue watching she came across a video of a little girl, not much older than herself, painting her own face like a Disney character. I was even impressed with this kid’s ability to paint her face evenly and with skill. I was not so impressed with the fact that she couldn’t find the word she was looking for when trying to describe the consistency of a product and ended up saying “texture” instead. I am thinking Mom and Dad might want to buy this kid a book every now and then instead of a bag full of makeup. But who am I to judge? My child was reading at age five but still can’t grasp the concept of an organized sport like soccer. We all teach what we know. After watching a few of these videos I realized that the Mom is also skilled at makeup and face painting so I guess she IS teaching what she knows. If only we could find a million people who wanted to watch a Mom and daughter sitting around reading we would also be YouTube famous!
Since my daughter thinks she can do anything that she sees someone else doing, her newest obsession is face painting. She has a pretty healthy ego. She started by painting my face, her Dad’s and then her Grandparents’. She moved on to painting her own face within a day and started using both face paint and makeup. Luckily I don’t really wear makeup but I own a lot of it “just in case” I ever need it. I have pallets of eye shadow with blues and yellows, silvers and gold. I have brushes and bronzers, eyeliner pencils, pens and liquids and lip glosses in every color. Most of my makeup has been relocated to the little one’s vanity table along with her train cases full of face paints. She even asked for more face paint and an 88 color eyeshadow pallet for Christmas. What she got was the paint, the makeup and a mannequin head to work on. I guess my parents were also sick of being her dummies!
She may have a future in Hollywood or Hot Topic, it could go either way…
For the last two days I have observed my daughter sitting in front of anyone who will listen pretending to be filming a video. She has been performing makeup and face painting tutorials along with inserting product placements explaining what makeup she is using and where it can be purchased. She has actually begun to explain pretty much everything she is doing, whether it be building legos or painting, in great detail as if her entire life is a YouTube video. The kid is a natural.
I have been telling my family for the last year that we should have our own reality television show. Some days it’s hard to believe the conversations my daughter and I are having are actually taking place. Throw in my parents and it would be ratings gold. I guess mini-me feels the same way!
Today’s playlist:
by Jen Logan | Dec 20, 2017 | Being Awesome, Life, Parenting
Riley’s body weight in sushi!
The kid loves her little box of sushi!
When I was a little girl one of my favorite things to do was go out to dinner at fancy restaurants. My parents and their best friends traveled together often with me and my “cousin” who was a year older than me. We ate lavish dinners while on vacation in places like Cancun Mexico, New York and the Playboy Club Resort somewhere in the midwest. You know, because Playboy was known for their family friendly vacations in the eighties! The children were always allowed to order whatever we wanted whether it be filet mignon or chocolate mousse. I don’t know if I ever saw a kids menu as a child – I certainly didn’t order from one!
We also spent many weekends in town going to restaurants like the London Chop House and Machus Red Fox. I was a precocious child and an adventurous eater. I was a foodie before there was such thing as a foodie. On any given dinner outing I would order three or four appetizers instead of an entree. I almost always ordered a shrimp cocktail along with escargot or mussels. I vividly remember ordering octopus for the first time at Pegasus in Greek Town after hanging out backstage at an event at Cobo Hall and getting hypnotized by one of the performers. My “Uncle” Bob used to love to tell the story about the six of us going to a sushi restaurant in the late 70s and me devouring all of the food because the rest of them were more meat and potatoes kind of people. I probably ate my body’s weight in raw fish on that trip to Chicago.
As an Indian Princess I spent many dinners freaking out the other girls with my choice of food. I ate frog legs and eel and anything else that made the other girls gag in disgust. I cracked king crab legs like an Alaskan fisherman as my fellow eight year old diners scarfed down macaroni and cheese and battered chicken lips and buttholes. I gagged right back at them as they ordered what I viewed as food unfit for consumption.
Apparently the foodie gene runs deep. My daughter has been eating sushi since she was two. She has also been ordering her own food since she could talk. The waitstaff at restaurants is still often surprised when she orders for herself at the age of six. I get more compliments about her ability to articulate what she wants than I do about the fact that she was reading the menu before she was five years old! The other night our waiter commented that we could probably drop her off at the door with a twenty dollar bill and she would do just fine dining by herself and paying the bill. I agreed except for the fact that she would order a soda which is strictly forbidden in our house (we don’t consume what we can’t spell).
The chopstick pro!
Brunch with Belle at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial
We were at a charity event a few years ago that was a giant strolling buffet with forty or fifty restaurants serving their most popular dishes. As we walked by the Kona Grill booth a waitress who recognized us said “there’s the little girl who orders like a thirty year old!” It’s still amusing to me to listen to my kid order sushi – requesting extra ginger and refusing the chop stick helpers. Nobu Matsuhisa would be proud!
When she was four she almost gave a waiter at Seafire Steakhouse in Atlantis a nervous breakdown when she ordered a $63 lobster duo instead of a $6 kids menu plate of noodles and marinara sauce. He looked from her to me for approval and when I nodded my head he actually pointed at the menu to make sure I was able to read the price. He then looked to her Dad for the same approval and eventually walked away looking a little startled. Of course she couldn’t have chosen the $50 single lobster tail, that simply wouldn’t have been enough shellfish! If I recall correctly she also finished my Dad’s wagyu beef and my tuna before ordering herself a dessert. We set the dining bar high for her in Atlantis when we took her to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill when she was a mere thirteen months old. They had to borrow a high chair from a neighboring restaurant because they had an age limit that I ignored while making the reservation. She was the youngest diner they had ever seen and she was better behaved than many of the adults around us. Then again, she was not imbibing in the cocktails that were flowing like the water wall behind us.
Mesa Grill – Atlantis – Bahamas – The youngest diner!
Our favorite restaurant in Atlantis!
I had a conversation with my chiropractor once about the differences between Atlantis and his favorite vacation destination, Riviera Maya, Mexico. One of the main selling points for him was the cheap food in Mexico. We talked about the meal plans in Atlantis and when I told him that we chose not to partake in the plans because the kids had to eat from the kids menus he almost fell over. He proceeded to tell me how he forced his ten and twelve year old children to order from the kids menu on vacation. I proceeded to send him into apoplexy when I shared the story about the lobster tail duo. To him it was a waste to spend more than $10 on a meal for his kids. To me it was child abuse to force feed a child the garbage available on the kids menus at steak houses and high end restaurants.
My love of food never really crossed over to an ability to actually cook my own food. I often burn toast and destroy pretty basic dishes like soup – as evidenced by my disintegrated noodle soup. I have literally set three stoves on fire on three separate occasions. I am more of a consumer than creator when it comes to fine cuisine. My daughter on the other hand is becoming quite the little chef. She cooks with her Dad every week and she finds great delight in preparing dishes for her family, especially on special occasions. I am grateful for this – not so much because it is good for her, but I will most likely need someone to cook for me if anything ever happens to her Dad. I have just started cooking one meal a week so anything could happen!
by Jen Logan | Nov 16, 2017 | Life, Parenting
CANDY!
We went trick or treating on Halloween night with some friends. Unfortunately my little girl is kind of lazy and her trick or treat bag was a tad longer than her legs so she spent a large portion of the night dragging her bag next to her. I kept trying to have her hold it up around her shoulder but it proved to be too difficult of a task for her to do while racing ahead of the other kids and parents for the first hour of our excursion. (more…)
by Jen Logan | Oct 26, 2017 | Being Awesome, Lemonade out of Lemons, Life
I had a physical last week. It had been a few years since I had gone in to see a doctor since my primary care physician packed up and moved across the country in 2015. As my new doctor and I were discussing concerns and updating my health history he said “you have put on a little weight since you were here last.” I responded with “actually I have lost weight since my last visit.” Apparently the medical assistant had transposed numbers when she entered my weight into the computer. I was taken aback for a minute but then I remembered the woman who was in the hospital bed next to me awhile ago. She was trying to convert her weight from metric to avoirdupois pounds and she couldn’t get the math right. She was really excited that she weighed 144 pounds when she actually weighed 212. I was baffled that she could be so far off and not even realize it. She was also calling the nurse for more morphine every hour so that could explain how she was so unaware. Her reality may have been just a little bit softened around the edges. (more…)
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