I know. I’ve been a total Slacker Blogger. Sorry. I’ve been spending my blogging time…sleeping. Yeah, I haven’t done that well the last week or-so with getting up early on my writing mornings. Naughty, Jenny. Very naughty. The sleep’s been good though.

I’ve also spent the last week or-so doing things like falling down our stairs [not that I did that for the whole last week or-so; I did it once and learned my lesson – stairs are a dangerous, dangerous thing especially in slippy socks]. I semi-sprained my ankle, bruised my butt-bone something fierce and looked all around like a total buffoon. What is a buffoon anyway? And actually, the Blogger-spell-check-speller just told me to spell is buffoon; I was totally going for bafoon. What the heck? Anyway, I sat there on the bottom of the stairs whimpering and debating on whether or not I should actually cry. Matthew came down the stairs and rubbed my back saying, “It’s OK, Mom. It’s OK.” Zach came running out of his room with Mike and stood at the top of the stairs asking, “OK, Mama? OK, Mama?” I do have very sensitive boys.

I managed to gimp through my wounds (they weren’t that bad) and had a splendid book club get-away on Saturday. We shopped at the Premium Outlet Mall. Yes, swanky, indeed. And despite vowing that I wouldn’t be able to (or didn’t want to) afford a thing at these upscale places, I actually did some serious damage. And on more than one occasion a few of my booky friends had to wait for me outside of a fitting room. I really did need new clothes though. The great news is that I’m slimming and trimming and slowly but surely turning my outer into my inner hot mama. Anyway, I needed smaller pants, so I did have a good reason for shopping. We spent the afternoon basking in the sun at Kendra’s beautiful house. We even decided to play badminton where I proceeded to stomp the competition to smithereens. (Though we weren’t actually keeping score, so that point could be contested. Our main goal was to keep the birdie going back and forth more than six times which was our record.) I somehow got a wee bit too into the game and tried to semi-dive for the birdie a couple of times. My gimpy ankle did not love my new found competitive nature.

Kendra’s husband, Eric, took it upon himself to be our man-slave for the day. Shoot. If only there’d been a pool. We could’ve called him “Pool Boy.” Eric was in the kitchen preparing our dinner plates when I stopped in for a chat. (I took it upon myself to stoop to speaking to the hired help. Kind of me, huh?) He said he was having a blast being the fly on the wall of our get-together. I can only imagine how difficult it is to (attempt to) keep up with a conversation of eight women…when you’re not even in the same room. When we finally sat down for dinner someone had the audacity to suggest that our book club actually discuss the last book we read – the nerve! Eric flew into the room saying, “Ha! Eight and-a-half hours! You’ve been together for over eight hours, and you’re just now talking about the book!” Molly said that her husband actually thinks the ‘book club’ title is a guise – we’re really a drinking club who occasionally discusses books. I’m not sure what Mike thinks. All I know is book club night is the one night a month when he and the boys routinely get to have McDonald’s for dinner.

On Monday, the 28th, my baby turned two. TWO! That’s so not even a baby anymore it’s upsetting. And he’s so two! He throws a mean tantrum, let me tell you. To celebrate his two-ness, we went to the Rainforest Café for dinner on Sunday night with my parental units and brother, Chris. Zach, of course, loved it. Matthew, of course, sat covering his ears through half of the meal. We came home to have cupcakes and open a few presents. Zach so enjoyed ‘Happy Birthday’ being sung to him, that we sang it through about three times. Then, during breakfast on his actual birthday, I break into a rousing round of ‘Happy Birthday.’ Zach holds up his hand, shakes his head and says, “No singing, Mommy. No…singing.” (Was he a little hung over from the previous night’s excitement or something?)

Monday afternoon, my oldest friend Rachel came over to hang out. (Again, oldest not in age but in years of our friendship.) Being the overachieving (and great!) Auntie that she is, she brought gifts for both of the boys. Within five minutes of her arrival my little people were a gift-giver’s nightmare! Matthew threw an awful fit because she hadn’t brought a John Deere Harvester. (There are other things out there in the world, son…beyond the realm of John Deere). And Zach thought Rachel was funny when she put on the pirate eye-patch but then decided, ‘Mmm, actually, no. I’m terrified. That’s like the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.’ I think at some point both boys were wailing. Poor Auntie Rachel. Poor me. Oh, and sorta poor boys, but not really. They did this to themselves.