WANTED: BEARY SNEAKY PERSON(S)

It is my 32nd Birthday today. It is sunny and warming up and I am taking the family ice skating.
I just didn't plan on dealing with an infestation on my birthday. Against all odds, our house is having a pest control problem... with bears.
Let me show you what I woke up to on my front lawn:

Don't worry.  They appear very tame and docile.

So would the owner of sixteen plastic bears please give yourself a big hug and a pat on the back for making my day?  Thank you.
I love you, too.
Whoever you are.

p.s. This is one stylin' bear!

Adventures of Raccoony

I don't know a lot about Raccoony's past. He could be concealing secret government files or hiding a wife and kids somewhere. He didn't sneak into our lives until he smuggled his way into the Cowgirl's heart at a garage sale. 

Oh, he milked it! Scruffy, skinny neck, disheveled whiskers, plaintive eyes. She fell for him hook, line and sinker. So for a whopping quarter he was given a new identity (Raccoony the raccoon) and a new safehouse. He had a good thing going here.

Until the day the Dancer took him on a shopping trip with mom. Lots of smiles, inside jokes. They were living it up inside Marshalls. But when we were halfway home,

Mommy, where's raccoony?

I tried to put it as nicely as possible that Raccoony ran away to a better home, because it was one of those days when I just was not turning around for a twenty five cent, scruffy stuffed animal.

Two months later our family was back at Marshalls to pick out a birthday present. The Cowgirl was rummaging through the stuffed animal display and came running up to me and said, "Mommy, doesn't this look like Raccoony?"

I looked down at the floppy animal with a price tag pierced through his scruffy ear for 14.99!!

It looked so much like Raccoony that there was no mistaking that it was Raccoony.

Apparently a pretty dapper Raccoony, because he was demanding a pretty steep price.

I went to the service desk, explained our strange predicament and thirty seconds later-

All is right with the world.

Lucky little Raccoon. Lucky little girl. Bemused Tapper.

Take Two!!

Remember the traumatic first-ever school picture fiasco?

Are you refreshed now?

Whenever I took a photo for a month I would tell the Dancer to smile and she would give me a strained grimace and say, "I am not going to pee."

And in the quiet mother-daughter moments she would often look up and say, "Mommy, do you remember when I took my picture..."

Thank goodness for retakes.

A little reminder that sometimes we don't get it right the first time.

But that doesn't mean we don't get it right.

So here is proof that the second time can be the charm.

Cheese!

It's about discovery

Tapper in her "laboratory"

Motherhood.

It's just one loooong adventure, isn't it?

With millions of discoveries. I'm a regular Marie Curie over here making breakthrough after breakthrough (sans the radiation).

Because the quest is fraught with peril (and snot, and crayons on the refrigerator and lots of tummy-aches) I will not keep any of my discoveries to myself, but share them happily.

A few of the thousands of things I was learning while I neglected this blog:

1. Calling it "tippy toe" tag doesn't make it any quieter or calmer. I had to declare the linen closet an emergency base while I caught my breath. And the artist had to check on what was shaking the house down two stories above him. I seriously thought if we stayed on our tippy toes it would be more manageable. On the upside, awesome work out for my calves.

2. It doesn't matter if they can taste the spinach or not- it's the existence of spinach that is the problem.

3. Fruity pebbles (or any flavor pebbles, for that matter) will harden to the consistency of concrete by lunch time if you don't rinse out the bowl. Upside, I know how to build a load- bearing wall out of cereal if I'm ever in a pinch.

And this one is off the record, but it doesn't matter if your four year old has a head that smells like heaven dust and angel wings (Do you inhale your kids' heads, too?); her smelly feet are just shy of requiring hazmat to remove her shoes. Our little princess can clear a room at the first sound of velcro unfastening.

So mothers, if you uncover any fascinating facts, make sure you share. Remember, we're all in this together!