Local Couple Calls It a Night

An area couple called it a night and put their two children to bed at seven PM instead of their usual eight o'clock bedtime Sunday evening.

P-Dog and Rimarama, both 34, started thinking about moving up bedtime when their children, V-meister, 4, and J-Dog, 18 months, removed their clothing and began running back and forth from one end of the house to the other, bouncing off the walls as they hit them.

"The situation began to quickly deteriorate from that point forward,'" stated the P-Dog, "and we knew it could only end badly, especially after the V-meister tied the little J-dog to the stair rail with a length of knitting yarn."

There are conflicting reports as to what happened next, as there was difficulty in deciphering statements made by the children, but Rimarama is on record as stating that "The little J-Dog lost it when I turned off the Baby Einstein DVD, let out a howl of protest, and tried to climb into the TV cabinet. My husband went to restrain him, but the little J-Dog was quick to retaliate by assuming the 'wet noodle' position, making it darn near impossible for the P-Dog to retain his grip."

After each child pounded a sippy cup full of warm milk, the show was moved upstairs, where the V-meister was instructed to put on her pajamas with a quickness. When she was found ten minutes later still in the buff, talking with Mr. Potato Head about her girl Carrie's upcoming birthday party, her mother tried to speed things up by offering assistance, to which the V-meister replied, "I can do it ALL BY MYSELF, MAMA!", but totally lost it when the zipper of her footed bunny pajamas became stuck at the same moment that the J-dog busted into the room chewing on the end of her new pink hairbrush.

Once the children were in bed, the Ramas retired to the living room where they were seen high-fiving each other while enjoying adult beverages and pilfered Halloween candy over shouts of "Da-DEE! MaMA! Kaka! BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!" emanating from the J-dog's crib.


This post is my contribution to today's Monday Mission, which will be hosted by the lovely Painted Maypole throughout the month of November. The assignment was to write a post in the form of a news story.

Carrie is a Catalog Model

We have one of those mail slots where our daily post gets deposited right smack into the little J-Dog’s Pack-N-Play:


You can just imagine his delight upon occasionally receiving an armload of catalogs and junk mail while doing some light afternoon reading:


When the mail arrives, there is usually a mad scramble by the kids to get to it first.

Yesterday, even though the J-Dog had the advantage of being, um, stationed right in front of the mail slot, the V-meister beat him to it because she is way ahead in the manual dexterity department.

I was in the kitchen, scraping some dried up Gerber meat sticks off the wall when I heard her exclaim with glee:

“Mama! It’s my girl Carrie!”

Carrie, the imaginary friend, was making an appearance.

I ran into the living room.

“Where is she?”

The V-Meister pointed to a youngish blonde in the Sigrid Olsen catalog that had just arrived with the mail:

“Right there! That’s my girl! Carrie!"

Who would have thunkit?

The elusive Carrie, a catalog model.

At least it wasn't a Frederick's of Hollywood catalog.

Carrie, the Imaginary Friend

How do you tell a three-year-old that she is not, in fact, going to the birthday party of her imaginary friend, though you promised she could go after her brother's nap, hoping she'd forget?

So far, "Carrie" has not affected our lives much one way or the other. Vija talks about her all the time and we're always just like, "Oh, really? That's interesting."

We don't mean to be patronizing, it's just that when you don't know the person, what is there to say?

Oh, sometimes I ask her specific questions, such as, "What does Carrie look like? What does she say to you?" etc., etc., because I want to rule out the possibility that she's communicating with the spirit world, as Sylvia Browne instructed me to do. But otherwise, it's been no big deal.

Today, however, I found myself in a bit of a pickle with this birthday business. I mean, Vija had a present for Carrie and everything (a couple of cardboard bricks, but still). And all day whenever she started talking about how she's going to Carrie's birthday party, I told her, "OK, after Jonas wakes up from his nap, we'll go."

Now I see I should have just cut if off at the pass. But what could I have said? "There is no Carrie and there is no birthday party" just seems so gosh-darned mean. If only the birthday party was supposed to be at our house. Then we could all have sat around the little Ikea table, had tea, opened some presents.

But no.

It's at some undisclosed location on our street. Take that back - the street address, according to Vija, is "987665230517."

So, that helps.

Anyway, if there is anyone out there who can offer advice, I sure would appreciate it.


Vija and Carrie