Birthday cinnamon rolls in the making

Today was utterly rogue, y'all. I caught the boys up at 5:12am playing Legos, screeched that they must return to bed NOW, fed the insistent kitty, angrily shoved ear plugs into my ears and then SHIT, it was 7:40am. We'd all fallen back asleep and had to leave for school by 8:05. All was well but I think my honeys were tired this afternoon, and since I was still nauseous as get-out decided we should all take it easy. Once home, I sent Ol down to watch Word World -"MOM, I can spell TENT!!!!"- while I sat with J and did my "homework" as he did his. The hour was one of those glorious times in which I felt like a great mother, he felt like he got every ounce of support and help and teaching and guidance and jokey tough love he needed, and the work we both did was swell. I even convinced him about the value of supporting sentences rather than just one in a good answer. After he'd repacked his bag, I said he could grab his game pad and veg out on the couch so seriously that his brain fell limp and he thought his name was computer. This was a thrill.

Meanwhile, Oliver and I got to work on cinnamon roll dough for Tom's birthday breakfast tomorrow. Ol is such a boy after my own heart when it comes to things culinary. He poured flour, helped me knead, and tried to sneak-eat straight sugar. You should see that kid go to town licking beaters and scraping a bowl clean with a spatula; I never missed such an opportunity when I was a child, and he doesn't either.

We left the dough to rise, T came home and gave Ol a haircut, and I made a wonderful, simple dinner of spaghetti all'Amatriciana, a deliciously creamy sauce made of slowly cooked bacon (or, more traditionally guanciale though I used speck), tomatoes and pecorino. I opened my last quart of tomatoes I'd put up last summer -just a lonely pint remains- but happily so, knowing they'd made this sauce all the better. Perfetto!

And then back to the rolls. I used Nanny's rolling pin to shape the dough from this perfect mound into an enormous rectangle, rubbed it liberally with butter before sprinkling it liberally with brown sugar and cinnamon and finally rolled it tightly before slicing. This recipe is unbelievably delicious. Double it and you'll have a batch of precooked rolls for your freezer! You'll thank yourself later.

The next three months will constitute the one time of the year in which Tom's age suggests that we're only a year apart. He's younger. He likes to harass me about all the shenanigans he'll pull when I turn 40, but I just smile and think to myself, "Dumb idea smart man because as you turn 40 after me, I can get you double!" Tee-hee.

Things I'm letting go of...

including, hopefully soon, this profound ick I have going on. Bleck. If I even think about how queasy I feel, I get queasier. My tastebuds are a hot mess which is obviously a complete tragedy what with lemon curd in the fridge. Also, tomorrow is T's birthday, and I intend to make some magnificent dessert concoction: homemade Boston Cream Pie?? I have also planned a fabulous Belgian beer crawl for T tomorrow night (don't worry, he doesn't read this) and really think it will be more fun if I can imbibe with him. The cat is being profoundly high maintenance right now which is all the more irritating considering yesterday's ESCAPade. Not an hour after I recovered him, I got both boys packed in the car as I needed to drop J at an activity. No sooner do we arrive than I get a call from DC Public Health: "Percy was found on Mass Ave and is now with a neighbor. They would like him picked up very soon or he'll be transported to a shelter."

Mother of...Oliver and I scrammed home to bring back my second pet-break animal. I'm over the pets today, people. Over them.

But back to the things I'm letting go of.

For starters I have decided that I quit re: Jack's Legos. I have, four or five times, sorted thousands of them by shape: planks, skinny planks, bricks, wheels, people, landscaping... The first time was a wonderful way to avoid Thanksgiving. The second time may have been in a fit of hormonally-induced nesting. I can't recall if I spent any of my pneumonia tenure wading through the damn Legos, but enough is enough. He can sort them if he wants to. Otherwise, if he spends an hour stuck under the mountain of them that crashed down over him, maybe he'll rest. If he loses time and his hands go bloody digging through eight feet of them, well, perhaps he'll learn something. Then again, he might not give a rat's ass, and so now, neither do I. Even if that means I have to close my eyes when I look into his room.

Secondly, I have decided that I no longer care what the children choose to eat together, by which I mean at the same time. Yesterday for breakfast, Jack requested honey nut O's and milk with a side of garbanzo beans straight from the can. Meanwhile, Oliver likes to mix milk and seltzer. Both of these marriages make me want to puke, but if they're eating, I'm not going to say a word.

These probably seem enormously self-evident to y'all, but I say, two steps forward!

What do you think?

So this morning, things got off to a slow start, and with T out of town, I was down two helpful hands. In an attempt to both motivate the kids and have a bit of fun, I issued Morning Get Dressed  Challenge: who can get dressed in the most handsome outfit? Both boys scurried off, trash-talking each other the entire time. "Don't look at me, Oliver! You can't see my outfit yet!"

"I'm NOT, Jack. Mom, where is my dinosaur shirt?"

Fast forward 5 minutes (Oliver) and another ten or twelve (Jack) and these visions are before me: Ol is clad in navy sweatpants -admittedly they are nicer looking sp's- the aforementioned dinosaur shirt, brightly colored socks and orange shoes; Jack is in dark jeans, chic brown boots, a plaid button down tucked in and a glen plaid flat derby cap. They both looked absolutely precious but in my opinion Jack looked more handsome, even though he later admitted that the hat was just a prop and he didn't actually intend to wear it. Clever!

"Who won?? Who won??"

I paused because just after I posed the challenge to them, I started to think about the subjectivity inherent, to some degree, in handsome (or any such word). Did I want to suggest that one of them was more handsome? Would the "loser" know I was only judging his outfit? On the flip side, today's tendency to let every child win all the time drives me batty and seems so short-sighted. People have got to know not only how to fail but also how to do so graciously and to see all the ways in which failure can be the greatest of learning opportunities.

I then started to tire of my mental dialogue, and really the boys did too because they just wanted to know who won, and so I decreed that they both won because they each gave me their best interpretation of what handsome meant to them. They each felt handsome, and that made me feel great.

What do you think? About this situation but also more generally about teaching children to both win and lose and how to have a healthy competitive spirit...