The Brattychick

"Oh no, I just dropped a piece of hot chocolate on Zachary Taylor ." (He has a place-mat with the US Presidents.)

"I just cracked my buttlick."

"When we get to my class I'm going to give you a hug and a kiss on the pants."

"If you are spitting out meat at the foot of my bed, then we're going to have a problem. Do you have meat in your mouth? Do you have meat in your hands?! Then get out of my room!"

...of what I am dealing with when it comes to Dexter . This is just to give you some idea of the scope of the madness. I caught this act of lunacy with my phone the other day at the Merrifield Festival. Yes, that is a cowboy hat on his head. He insisted.

"Mommy look at my choo-choo trains. They're going to the promised land!"

Today Miles turned six. Today is Friday the 13th, the first one since Miles was born 6 years ago on Friday the 13th on a full moon in October. We tell him it's a lucky day in our family. I knew he would be born that day for some reason. When he came out he had a birthmark in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead. He still has it, but it's so faint that really only he and I know it's there. I remember thinking to myself, 'Man, what am I in for with this lightning bolt child?' Now I know. As a baby, Miles' was incredibly engaging. We called him 'Prince Charming'. He was obsessed with food from the beginning. Most babies start getting a little fussy when they're hungry and you have a few minutes to get the bottle ready. Miles screamed bloody murder the moment he felt the first pang of hunger and if I didn't whip my boob out fast enough, he would refuse to eat and scream for 20 more minutes just to let me know that that? That was unacceptable

"Dear Heavenly Father, thank-you for this day. Please help me to be good and not to say rude things to Mommy and Daddy and Cole and Miles. Please help me feel better and fix my boo-boos with your magic. And I say these things, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Play the guitar, sing, and wear eyeliner. This is Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day . He also often wears skinny new wave ties while rocking the guyliner and this makes me have difficulty breathing.

Ugh. I need to make a tee shirt that says: ATTENTION: I DON'T HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU, POMPOUS ASS I am a very friendly and jokey person with everyone. This does not mean that you make me swoon. It probably just means I think you are cool. I am married. Even if I happen to tell you I have a crush on you (which I did not), I am exaggerating. It does not mean that I am in love with you. Unless you are Amanda . I am totally in love with Amanda. So don't be an idiot, you moron. You're so vain. I bet you think this blog is about you. Don't you? DON'T YOU? Dumdum.

Wear hipster glasses, sing and play the guitar. This is Rivers Cuomo of Weezer . He's got electric guitar and a 12-sided die. I love geeks. Really.

"Inside your nose there is a thing and it's shaped like a spider web and it's boogers."

"My fwoat hurts. I have a fwog in my fwoat. But I'm just kidding."

"If we go to the movies then I don't have to use my imagination."

"You're the baddest Mommy I've ever had!"

I fished with Daddy yesterday. Mor Mor brought me some cards. And at the fishing place I made a friend. And I saw a huge turtle, I think it was a snapping turtle. This friend's mother and father were getting married at a fishing pond. I went to the beach for a week. It was very great. Every adventure I go to, I'm the person who will help the person who calls me and make them not lonely by going with them. My days that I have are very grateful. I love my mother and father (Jamie and Heidi) as much as their favorite stuff. I love my family so much. I went to church today. I was a little reverent and I hope everyone gets this message. I played on a video game for an hour with Granddaddy. He helps me by helping me play the game. It was a great day.

This movie theater near us is playing free kid's movies on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at ten. They're all old, but we sure don't care. We went to see Fat Albert last week. This teenaged girl cries a teardrop onto the remote control while watching a Fat Albert rerun and the characters all come through the TV to help her out. Initially it seems that she is upset 'cause she doesn't have any friends and because her foster sister is cuter and more popular. Then the movie took an unexpected turn. We find out that the girl's grandfather has died and she hasn't been the same since. Then Fat Albert visits Bill Cosby who tells Fat Albert that his character is based on her grandfather. At this point the movie starts hitting a nerve inside of me that I wasn't prepared to protect with my Walls That Defend Sensitive Things. One of these Sensitive Things being that when all the pieces go together to make up me there's one missing where fatherly love goes. I

Handing Jamie a banana... "Can you cut it for me?.....Cut it like a Polaroid picture?"

As I have mentioned on occasions prior to this, Dexter is a madman. Last Friday we were at a playground and he was going up the slide (which I have told him repeatedly not to do) and he fell and split his chin open. Off we went to the emergency room, but not just any emergency room, the ER at Children's Hospital in DC. We learned our lesson to steer clear of regular ERs with children roughly eight years ago. It had something to do with a three day old , an IV, and a student nurse that is lucky I let her live. Once we finally got there we only had to wait 4 hours before being seen. The people at the hospital were wonderful, but it was extremely traumatic nonetheless. I almost perished. They wrapped my son in a papoose and gave him some sort of topical anesthetic. He screamed and shook his head and stuck his tongue out in an effort to cover his chin with the only thing that was available. He sobbed and I sobbed right along with him. But the thing that nearly did me in was the pleadi

Heidi: Watcha singin' Dexter? Dexter : It's called 'I Love Myself'. Cole : A song about Dexter, lover of himself.

Heidi: You have to eat some peas tomorrow. Miles : But I don't like peas. Heidi: But we have to see if that's what you're intolerant to. You have to eat a little bowl of peas. Miles: But I want salt on them. Jamie : You can have salt on them. Miles: But Mommy doesn't usually put salt on them. Jamie: She will tomorrow. Mommy will let you do whatever you want with them tomorrow. Miles: Like throw them in the garbage?

I can't believe that this is the year 2006. Some souls aren't allowed to marry the soul they'd like to. People blow each other to bits because of differences in their peace-preaching religion. The feminist movement is moving backwards. We have only had Christian white men in the white house. In fact, it's mostly white men running the show everywhere. I don't have anything against Christian white men, but I believe in moderation and I think diversity in our leaders would be a good idea. White skin + penis = good decision making? Umm, in my experience this is not necessarily so. On the other hand we're so obsessed with being politically correct. Retarded > Mentally Handicapped > Mentally Challenged > Special Needs Colored > Negro > Black > African American Lame > Crippled > Invalid > Disabled We have to keep making up new euphemisms. Sometimes the word really does have a negative connotation, but usually the reason we make up a new word

"Stop putting your tongue water on my nose!"

"I want to tell you that I can't eat my pears because I sticked my finger in my butt."

I have a strict no 'friending' non-friends policy. If we have never met, I can't justify letting you 'friend' me, so please don't ask. I mean, I don't know who you are, where you've been, who you've been 'friending' with no protection. I am not a fake-show-offy-friends collector (no offense if you likey the fake-show-offy-friends). Everyone in my 'friends' including the bands are actually people I know, have met and hung out with. Truly, I am really so glad that y'all like my blog. Please subscribe to it if you wanna. That'd be awesome, but if I don't know you, we're not really 'friends', now are we? I am not trying to upset anyone but I am a very literal girl and a friend is a friend

"My butt is very tooty."

"My hand is pretty tasty."

"That's because I had diarrhea. And my butt peed. Why does your butt pee?"

I think Ali & Ryan are just too cool and fancy and grown-up and classy for myspace. Yeah, you heard me. UPDATE 3/26/2006 RYAN HAS SINCE JOINED MYSPACE! YEAH!

I am so excited cause I have a co-ed slumber party on my calendar. I get to go shopping for something cute to wear and my girl, Yuri, says that we can play twister, which is only the most fun party game ever! my proof about twister being the most fun It gets people all grinding and faces and hands touching inappropriate parts. Okay, totally separate story that just happened. Jamie just read me this quote from Tom Sawyer: " 'Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once.' But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that, and so that cheapened the distinction too much." I cracked up and he said, "Yeah I thought you would like that one, ya licker. 'Cause that's no distinction for your friends either." Yeah. I lick people. What can I say.

Erika Tagged me The Rules: Once you've been tagged you have to write a blog with 6 weird/things/habits about yourself. In the end you need to list 6 other people to tag and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment saying, "You've been tagged." in their comments and tell them to read your blog. 1. I am afraid of animals. I think it's 'cause they can't talk to you. I'm always scared they're gonna bite me or something. I have been afraid of animals since I was a little girl. I am especially frightened of dogs. This does not mean I hate animals or want bad things to happen to them. I just want them far away from me. I will never have a pet because then they will die and it's like a freakin' family member dying and I will be forced to be devastated for a long time. 2. I am often accused of being a huge flirt. I was actually voted "biggest flirt" once. I have a certificate to prove it. Oh, and my mom grounded me because of

"Please stop licking my finger."

Grrr! I have been wanting to blog for a week, but Myspace was taking 18 minutes to load each page. When it finally did load the pages they were so full of errors it was hard to even navigate. After about an hour when I was able to get to my blog, it wouldn't let me type anything. ROAR! Ahem. Ok, so the sad new picture is simply the face I make when it's time to go home, or if someone else has escaped my clutches to try and force them to stay at my house. Eric Escaping My Clutches Yeah, so I have this problem. I never want people to go home. Not at midnight. Not at 3 AM. Not the next morning. Once I laid under Jeff and Nikki's car so that they couldn't pull out without killing me. Another time I hid April's purse in my closet so that she couldn't leave. It got so bad that Jamie came up with a slogan for me; "Heidi goes all the way if you promise to stay." Not true, but I really don't want people to go home. It's cool that my girl, Ali, suffer

Dexter recently got potty trained. This is a HUGE EVENT. I have been changing diapers every day of my life for 8 years now. For many (if not the majority) of those years I had two children in diapers. Now, all of a sudden, I don't have to change diapers. I do still have to wipe butts, though. That's another blog altogether. On our third day at Disney, I had arranged for a surprise for my family. I chartered a private boat to take us to go see the fireworks. We had to meet the boat at Disney's Contemporary Resort . There was a huge mix-up. It's a long story and not enough time has elapsed for it to be funny, so I won't get into it, but Dexter wet his pants. We didn't have a change of clothes and our hotel was a good 15 minutes away and the boat was supposed to be there any second. So we took Dexy's pants and undies off, and put an over-sized fleece on him. No one could tell he was going commando under there. The boat was awesome and so were the fireworks. T

"Stop drinking the ketchup." Dexter 's response was "Why? Is it gross?"

I'm in this band called The Spins. We don't play much anymore because our drummers are transient, and the rest of us are having babies and such. Anyway, I guess we could replace the drummer, but it's actually more important that you fit in than whether or not you can play the drums. Finding someone who fits in seems to be much harder than finding a drummer. It's not like we're super cool and picky. We're actually super dorky and immensely strange, but in a similar way, and you must also be strange in this particular way. We may have to go to the circus for a drummer. A monkey would fit in perfectly. In fact, one of our old drummers, Dylan, was a monkey. Jamie could play the drums instead of bass, Ryan could play bass instead of guitar, and I could play guitar, but Ryan says it's not ladylike to play the guitar. And I guess I am supposed to be a lady...albeit while singing lyrics that state "It's my first time, please be nice", and "I'

I've finally decided on a name for my Apple iBook. Peaches. Peaches is white, shiny, quiet, and 12" (just how I like my men). The iBook love started about a year ago. I had a broken leg and couldn't get to our computer upstairs. Jamie was using our laptop to work from, and so my brother Jonathan lent me his iBook. I loved it so that I tried to buy it from him, but it turned out that he also loved it. Psst...by the way, have you ever noticed that no one ever loves their PC? Anyway, Jamie and I were sitting in the living room about five months ago and we had a conversation that went like this. "I would love to have an iBook." "Geez Heidi, those are really expensive." "I know. I'm just saying that I would love to have one." "You are such a gadget girl." He is referring to the tremendous cravings I have for various gadgets and my intense love for my pink Kitchenaid mixer, pink flip phone, pink glittery electric guitar, pink iPod,

Can someone please explain the Tila Tequila thing to me? Like, is she a singer or a model or a designer? The big fascination is that she's naked, right? I mean, it's not her music, is it? Don't get me wrong, I love pretty half-naked chicks as much as the next guy. I am just confused because they're sort of a dime a dozen on myspace. I mean look here , or here , or over there . So, I am trying to figure out what makes Tila so much more interesting than all the other nearly nude model/actress/singer/waitresses out there. Is it cause the professional-ness of her pictures is better than the other leading brand? There is definitely something, because she apparently has the most popular myspace page of all time. In case you're like me and are not one of the 852,000 people that have 'friended' her, you may not know, but she is on the cover of 'Stuff Magazine' this month. I bought it yesterday to try to get some sort of history or a grasp on what exactly

Someday I am going to have a serious talk with the Guy In Charge about this ridiculous procreation plan. This is completely unprofessional. Here I am minding my own business, then WHAM-O! I'm sorry, this week the part of Heidi will be played alternately by the Weepy Mess, and the Overly Irritable Psychotic Bitch. Please call back next week when she has returned to her normal self...who is still pretty irritable, but not as bitchy, only psychotic after midnight, and only weepy at the commercial for cell phones where the mother takes her son to college and she sits on the dorm steps after dropping him off and recounts all these memories of him from his childhood and then he sneaks up behind her and gives her a kiss on the cheek. Oh man, I can't even look at that one. This means for one out of every four weeks of my life between puberty and menopause that I will not be myself. Oh, and I had conveniently forgotten that the PMS is worse when I am off of the birth control . My point

I put Dexter  down for a nap and he asked me if I could snuggle him. When I walked in there he beamed at me and said "SCOOT!" as he scooted over to make room. "I love you." I said. "I wove you too. What does I wove you and I wove you too mean?" He asked. "It means I think you're so special and I am really happy I have you and I am so glad you are my little boy." He inhaled quickly and his face lit up. He said "I WOVE YOU! I AM gwad you are my wittle boy and I don't want you to die and I wove you so much I could SCWEAM! AHHHH!" Then he tucked his blanket around me and he threw both arms over top of my neck in sort of a two-armed-one-sided hug. He fell asleep like that in under two minutes with loud three-year-old snores that would make my Pappy proud. Sigh.

"Stop gluing your bellybutton together and finish your homework."

Okay, so it has come to my attention that I may have inadvertently offended someone recently. It's a long and uninteresting story why I have to post this on my blog, but I do. Sooo this is for the person I believe I may have hurt unintentionally. I want to tell this person that I never intended to offend them by what I wrote. I have never wished any ill on them and have only hoped good things for this person. I was truly saddened to learn about their trouble and am glad to know they are feeling happy and where they want to be. I think this person may have thought I was passing judgment on their choices or where they are in life or something like that, and that is not the case. We're all on our own journey, learning our own lessons and everything happens for a reason. I remember you fondly, friend. Heidi

Cole, 1 year My firstborn son Cole turned eight today. Around midnight last night I climbed in bed with him and kissed him on the cheek to say good-bye to the seven-year-old Cole. He is so amazing. His current fascination is chemistry. We got him a periodic table of elements and some sort of rector set that he can build molecules with. Jamie promptly built a benzene molecule with it, which Cole recognized immediately as such. Not only can I not build any molecule, I couldn't even figure out how to make an equilateral triangle with the thing. Last night we arrived home from a week in Orlando with my parents and my brother, Thomas . We spent five days at Disney and one at Seaworld. This was very tiring, but my children were so taken with everything that it made all the exhaustion worthwhile. Every solitary thing at Disney is to make children happy. Highfive. Dexter loved the parades. He just kept waving and saying "HEWWO!!". Occasionally, he would turn around and say &qu

I need a nap. The pseudovent and caffeine didn't wear off yesterday until FOUR IN THE MORNING. For some reason it's like Lord of the Flies over here today. Dexter somehow misplaced all the clothing on the lower half of his body and he is trying to force-feed Miles plastic ice cream. Cole just stabbed Miles in the nipple with a pencil. Miles took all the bedclothes off of not one, not two, but three beds in the house today. I don't know why he would do such a thing, but I can only assume that it's because I am freaking stressed out because of the BIG DEAL THING-Os coming up in rapid succession and he is trying to make me crack under the stress. Every once and a while I look and my children and ask them "Where are your parents? They should come pick you all up because I have been babysitting for a REALLY long time now!" They just stare at me blankly. No one in my house thinks I am funny. Other times I try my luck at confusing someone else into thinking that

I am so hepped up on caffeine and pseudovent today that I can't decide on what to blog about. Should I talk about how I shouldn't even be on this website right now because I have THREE BIG DEAL THING-Os coming up in rapid succession? Should I say that I am really freaking busy and told myself that I would only look at email for 10 minutes this morning because I procrastinated for the last week and now I have all these BIG DEAL THING-Os that need to be worked on? BIG DEAL THING-Os 1. COLE 'S 8TH BIRTHDAY PARTY 2. COLE'S BAPTISM 3. A VACATION TO ORLANDO FLORIDA Should I tell you how I am freaking getting old because when I was 17 I lived in California for 3 months and I met these awesome boys Zachie and Keith (if you are a single girl in Southern California I would recommend that you find one of these boys and get them to fall in love with you...NOW). Anyhoo, I had to move away due to circumstances beyond my control. It was sad to break up our gleesome threesome becaus

So I recently went off birth control. It's something insane that I do from time to time so that I can have my sex drive back and also so I can make my husband nervous. I don't think I am going to go back on it. I mean, I kinda sorta really love my sex drive. I have missed it SO. I forgot how much I loved it. We can live with condoms....right? RIGHT? I think I should be allowed to have my sex drive...and my shopping spree.

My Dearest Friends and Family, As I sit in the preschool parking lot pondering 2005, I realize that we've learned great lessons this year in overcoming obstacles and I'm left with a feeling of thankfulness for all that we have. For our seventh anniversary in February, Jamie and I headed to the Shenandoah Mountains for a weekend of skiing. On our last day (which just happened to be the day of our anniversary), we were skiing on the easiest slope on the mountain when I fell and broke my femur in to lots of little pieces. To make a very long story not quite as long, I had to have surgery and get a titanium rod put in my leg. I spent a week in the hospital and five more weeks on crutches and not able to drive. We were obviously hamstrung (no pun intended), and worried about how we would get by and also how we would get through airport security for the rest of our lives. Fortunately, the long road to recovery was made much sweeter and tons easier by many of you, our friends and fam