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 | 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 28, 2017 | Being Awesome, Parenting
My husband and I agree on most parenting decisions. One thing we differ on is where we eat meals. I let my kid sit on the family room couch and watch television with a bowl of cereal on most mornings. It is how she eases into her day. I know it is being lazy but I’m not willing to have the battle with her every morning. I am already geared up for the tooth brushing battle, the Mom packs the worst lunches battle and the epic hair battle to which I show up with an arsenal of clips, ties, brushes and two types of detangler. If she has to eat at the table, she will forgo breakfast and go straight to school with no food in her stomach. I pick my battles. We eat dinner at the kitchen table together every night, breakfast isn’t a meal I’m willing to die by my sword over. My husband on the other hand is willing to stand his ground on the all meals should be eaten at the kitchen table rule. So if Dad is home, we eat at the table. (more…)
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 | Nov 5, 2017 | Lemonade out of Lemons, Parenting
Bring your A game!
I volunteered to read at my daughter’s school the other day for their Halloween event. They do a lot of really nice events for the kids and they have a lot of property around the school including woods so on Halloween they have parents come read stories to the kids out in the woods. I thought since I am no longer at a nine to five job, this would be a great time for me to get more involved, so I signed up to read. I picked my book – The Night Before Halloween which is about a witch and a bunch of monsters getting ready for all of the kids to come trick or treating and when the kids finally do they are scared of the witch and monsters and they run away. It’s a cute story for the littles, and not too scary. I received an e-mail from the coordinator of the event not to bring any food treats and that other treats were not necessary – that the kids were happy just to have the readers there. I was relieved by this because I didn’t really have a lot planned. I had a book and a costume and few blankets. (more…)
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