I like the Embroidered-Flower Tankini from Old Navy. I wish it had regular tank-top straps rather than a halter top, but I still like it.

I like the Floral Tankini from The Children’s Place even better, but I wonder if the top might float up in the water?

The Circo Rashguard suit from Target seems sensible: not only a 2-piece, but less sunscreen to apply and no shoulder straps to fuss with.

I like the Sea Spray Skirted Two-Piece from L.L. Bean so much, I was just going to go ahead and order it ($8.99 down from $24.50!)—but the largest size it comes in is 3T, and Elizabeth wears a 4T.

Lands’ End has a nice Scrunchback Tankini, which is not only adorable but comes in about a dozen different pretty fabrics—it’s tempting to buy two for mixing and matching.

I recently huffed and gasped my way through a 5K, and these are the songs kept me going:

M79, Vampire Weekend. (Not their official music video). Poppy and happy and swirly and all-around cool.

Disturbia, Rihanna. I think this is the only Rihanna song I’ve ever listened to. It’s AWESOME.

Salute Your Solution, The Raconteurs. Loud and fast and choppy and shouty and kind of screechy, this one begs to be played at top volume.

Put Your Hands Up for Detroit, Fedde Le Grand. I have some ridiculous long extended mix of this techno/dance song and I swear I could listen to it all day.

Supermassive Black Hole, Muse. I recently fell in obsessive love with the Muse album Black Holes and Revelations, and this is just one of the many kickass songs that helps me pick up my feet when I’m dragging. You may know this tune from . . . uh, Twilight. Cough.

That’s Not My Name, Ting Tings. This song makes me do a goofy little hop while I’m running, and mouth the lyrics even while I’m huffing and puffing. So catchy!

Tamacún, Rodrigo y Gabriela. Someone recommended this song to me recently and I am eternally grateful they did—I was listening to the last minute or so as I approached the 5K finish line and I actually found the energy to pick up my pace and finish at a sprint instead of a crawl.

Boom Boom Pow, Black Eyed Peas. You know this song. I know this song. We’ve all heard this song. I don’t want to like this song. I especially don’t want to purposefully listen to Fergie. And YET. I cannot help but LOVE THIS STUPID SONG.

(Man, I had little YouTube videos embedded for EACH of these, but they aren’t displaying. Lame.)

Your turn! What music helps you find your second wind while you’re exercising?

This is the spider plant that dominates the living room.  Back when my oldest child was in preschool, his class went on a field trip to a greenhouse.  Each child was given a baby spider plant.  I didn’t try real hard not to kill it:  I don’t like spider plants.  Of course it is thriving, and has thrivened for years, and when I am an incapacitated invalid it will be moved to my hospital bedside because my caretakers will imagine that such an old and healthy plant must be special to me.

I bought a peppermint plant this year for the kitchen.  It has two jobs.  One:  Ant control. I’d read that ants don’t like mint.  (Do you see that tiny little black thing on one of the leaves?  IT IS AN ANT.)  Two:  Boozy infusions. I’m hoping to make peppermint-flavored vodka.

I bought a little “Christmas Tree Kit” from Target’s dollar section last Christmas.  This is the third pot of them I’ve started, chosen for this photo based on cuteness:  the bigger ones are less twee, more tree.  I keep them on my kitchen windowsill, not on the outside railing, but the kitchen windowsill had very poor light for a portrait.  My plan is to plant all these trees in the yard eventually, for shade and windbreak.

This basil, too, resides on the kitchen windowsill when not posing for its portrait.  I started this on a whim, because Paul loves pesto.  But…now what?  They need to be transplanted, but I’m really more about the “putting seeds into the cute pot” and less about the “weeding and tending.”

I love jade plants; they’re so shiny and pretty, in a way the photo doesn’t do justice.  They’re extremely easy to propogate:  you just snap off a stem piece just above a two-leaf spread, and stick the stemmy end into the dirt.  Or, if you want to be all botanist about it, you can first balance it in a little dish of water until you see roots, and THEN plant it.  I had a jade plant in college and I gave away its babies to everyone I knew.  Then the jade suffered a dorm-related accident, which shouldn’t have been fatal but was.

ANYWAY, so when I was at the vet’s office and saw they had a large jade, I snapped off a baby and put it into my purse.  Then I FORGOT ABOUT IT FOR TWO DAYS.  When I remembered about it, I planted it more on a whim than anything else:  I’m no botanist, but I know you can’t typically take a cutting and then leave it in a purse for two days.  And yet–it rooted and it put out those two littlest leaves you see on the top.

Mrs. Meyer’s lemon verbena scent is my favorite, and it smells a lot like one of my favorite perfumes (L’Eau de L’Artisan).  (Forgive me, L’Artisan, for comparing your expensive French perfume to a cleaning product.) So when I saw that a lemon verbena plant could be purchased and brought home, I did so.  But…now what?  I took a leaf and kind of squished it up and rubbed it on my neck and wrists, and two things happened:  (1) I smelled like Lemon Pledge, and (2) I itched.  I’m wondering, though, if I could add leaves to a spritz bottle of homemade cleaning fluid, to make it smell a little nicer?

Sunflowers!  These are fun to plant because they grow so fast.  We’re hoping to harvest the seeds to feed the birds this winter, but we don’t really know how to do that so my guess is that the birds will just eat them now.

What are you growing, and why?

This time around I thought I’d focus on a few keepsake-type Father’s Day gifts that incorporate photos. What father can resist photos of his own adorable children? Sure, he may have preferred that fancy stainless steel infrared grill, but hey, it’s not like we got diamonds on Mother’s Day, IS IT?

Commemorative dad’s t-shirt. I did this last year, and it was a cinch even for a craft-challenged person like myself. Using fingerpaint, I got prints of my kids’ hands and feet on a piece of white paper (not a super easy task with a 2-year-old and a baby, but I did it in the backyard so the mess was at least kept out of the house) then photographed the result. I then used the image to create my own shirt design on Zazzle.com, with the hand/foot graphic on the front and “Father’s Day 2008″ on the back.

Photo mug. Slap your kid’s mug on a mug and presto, it’s all meaningful and stuff. Plus: holds coffee. Plus plus: it doesn’t say “World’s Best Dad”, even if he is.

Flip book. These are fun, you just upload a short movie file (of dad romping with the kids, maybe?) to the FlipClips website and they do the work of making a custom printed flipbook for you. I made one of these once and it’s really neat — the picture quality is a little pixellated, as you might expect, but the Presto-Neato Flipping Action makes up for it.

Boston Locket. I love this little gift: it’s a small wooden box that holds a clay photo tile, along with a tiny scrolled paper on which you (or the kids) can write a secret note for dad. You can customize it with a keyring or clasped chain. Unfortunately, Father’s Day rush orders end tomorrow, but maybe something to remember for an upcoming birthday or something?

Dad/Kid old/new photo. Here’s a cute idea I found on the Kodak website: if you have any old photos of Dad when he was little, try and get a current one of the kids in a similar pose. How neat would that be, framed side by side? Especially if they were both doing something awesome like peeing in a bush.

My goal is to spend about $10 for a party gift, and I can get a pretty good gift for that, even though I’m a somewhat fretful person and so my mission is complicated by my wishes to please the child and to please the child’s parents; to give a gift that won’t make a huge mess or end up with little tiny pieces lost all over the house or require intense parental involvement; to avoid sending the message that we watch too much TV and/or that we make inappropriate gender generalizations and/or that we are cheap cheap cheap. Ideally, I like the gift to be the child’s favorite present from the whole party, but also to send the message that we are a Quality Family.  And did I already say I want all that for about $10?

Here are some gifts that have been pleasing successes:

My parents bought the Rubik’s Magic to entertain 8-year-old William and 10-year-old Rob on car trips, and it’s been an enormous hit for every car trip since.  It’s one of those weird puzzles where you bend it in ways that seem impossible: how can it be BENDING there when it wasn’t ATTACHED there a minute ago? Super fun, and hard for anyone to put down.

Several years ago I was out doing errands with Rob and William, and we saw this 20Q (Twenty Questions) thing. I let them try to make it guess something, just to show them it wouldn’t be able to guess anything that wasn’t, like, a noun from an Easy Reader (ball, sun, cow). But it DID guess it. (We were thinking of a flashlight.) Then it guessed the next thing we were thinking of (a camera).

This is so unlike me, but I put it in the cart and I bought it at full price, and it was totally worth it: we all played the heck out of it for weeks. Eventually the kids were trying to make it guess “butt” and “poop” and “snot,” of course, but until then it was really great. I usually tape replacement batteries to the package, in case the batteries get worn out while the toy is still AT the party.

I got a free sample of Model Magic in a kid’s meal at a fast food place, I think. I can’t quite remember WHERE I got it, but I do remember WHEN, because I took it home and used it to make a First Christmas ornament out of my firstborn baby’s footprint. So this was, like, nearly 10 years ago. I immediately liked the stuff, and have bought many a container since then for my secondborn, who goes through it at a steady rate.

I don’t think it would be overstating it to say I HATE games. Either they’re LAME and boring, or else they’re ENDLESS and boring, or else they’re FRUSTRATING and boring, or else they’re some MAGICAL COMBINATION of those things. And yet, when Rob brought the SET game home from school, I was willing to play it and play it and play it. I’d still be willing, even now—go ahead, ask me! What’s awesome about it is that it’s a game adults and children can play together without the either group feeling like ending it all (Candy Land, I am looking in your direction).

If that’s true, then the stage around 18 months is like having all the lights on at once, blazing away, while a mad scientist operates the giant electrical switch powering it all. “MOO HOO HA HA HAAAA!” shrieks the apparition in the white coat, hair standing on end and eyes pointing in two different directions. “HA HA HA—WAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Young toddlers are insane, is what I’m saying. They’re physically capable of outrunning you, yet they have no sense of self-preservation. Their emotions are as wild and unpredictable as a storm on the high seas, and the smallest trespass will send them flinging their bodies to the floor in order to throw a tantrum loud enough to detonate an adult’s eardrums at fifty paces. They kick, they slap, they throw things, they scream, they eat things that aren’t meant to be eaten while hysterically refusing things that ARE meant to be eaten.

Thank god they’re still formed entirely of Pillsbury thigh-rolls with baby-soft faces and the occasional desire to cuddle, because in my limited experience this is the age which most strongly begs the question, Would It Be Wrong To FedEx My Child to Octo-Mom, Since She Apparently Can’t Get Enough of this Crap?

So! Let’s talk about ways to survive the 18-month zone, and by that I mostly mean “let’s open up comments because I sure don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

Dealing with the meltdowns:

My personal (adorable!) hell-beast is 15 months as of this writing, and while we do tell him no (often many times per day), it isn’t really what you would call an effective technique if what you’re going for is acquiescence. His usual response is to make a little round O with his mouth, lock eyes with one of us, and immediately repeat whatever action he was doing. You mean THIS? he seems to be saying. This smashing the cat with a soup ladle? Why on earth should I stop doing something so immensely satisfying and entertaining?

I find that distraction is the only thing that really works, and my husband and I can often be found yelling “Ball! Ball! Dylan, where’s your BALL?” in order to pry our young son away from whatever unsavory activity he’s engaged in.

Sometimes the only thing to do is pick him up and physically re-locate him, although that approach often results in a Massive Screaming Fit.

Dealing with the food issues:

For a while there Dylan was eating anything and everything, and I thought we’d escaped the pickiness that was such a trial with our older son. Ha ha ha ha NO. Wrong. He just hadn’t had the food-light come on in his brain yet, and once it did, forget all that sweet potato noise. Now he rejects things based on some sort of complicated, ever-changing set of criteria that only he is privy to, which is especially maddening when a food staple that was greatly loved for an entire week (Eggos) suddenly gets re-filed on his S list.

For us, we find that the old spoon-as-airplane standby does occasionally work, as long as you get dramatic about it and add many sound effects. It sometimes helps to hide beneath his highchair tray and pop up in a comical, startling fashion, and stuff the food in his mouth when he laughs. Every now and then, he’ll eat something only if it’s offered via chopsticks, which . . . look, I don’t know, okay? It’s weird.

I know people say that children will eat when they’re hungry and not to resort to special techniques for “tricking” them to eat a meal, but I don’t think those people have dealt with a cranky, food-deprived toddler who doesn’t understand that eating will greatly improve their outlook on life.

Dealing with the violence:

Oh, there’s nothing quite like spending a year and a half of your life tending to someone’s every need, only to have them reach out and smack you across the face because you dare to change their poop-filled diaper.

I think this is one of the hardest behaviors to deal with, mostly because of the knee-jerk emotions it stirs up in me. I feel hurt, betrayed, and of course, angry when my child hits me.

The only thing I know to do here is grab their hands/feet, hold them securely and tightly, and tell them NO—using the Voice of God— right to their furious little face. Then finish what you’re doing and put them down, even if they’re blatting and screaming about it. I have also made good use of the Put the Child in his Crib and Let Him Freak Out On His Own While I Count to One Hundred technique.

Now, I KNOW some of you guys have been through these issues and more, and have some trips and tricks to share. What helped you deal with the more challenging aspects of young toddlerhood? I know it’s just a stage, but despite having gone through it all a couple years ago, I’m finding it exactly as hard as before this time around, and maybe even harder. Any wisdom is more than welcome!

I am not much worried about the four-year birthdays. I idly asked what they were hoping to get for their birthdays, and Elizabeth answered that she wanted a pink CD player for her room, and Edward said he wanted a new game for the Wii. Well, that’s easy.

Here’s Elizabeth’s present: the Sony CD boombox in pink. (It’s funny that they’re still called “boomboxes,” isn’t it? I can’t say that word without verbal air quotes.)

And for Edward, some sort of Wii game, probably Elebits.

So THEY’RE all set. But for Henry? I have NO IDEAS. Two-year-olds are very difficult to buy for. They’re too old for baby toys, too young for all the 3+ stuff.

The LeapFrog Fridge Farm would be PERFECT (it’s like a bunch of silly, 2-piece puzzles with songs)—except my mom already has it at her house, and we have the vehicles version at ours.  (Both are GREAT.)

Ooooh, blocks! And I love Melissa & Doug stuff! Perfect! …Er, except we still have the set of Melissa & Doug blocks we bought when our 10-year-old was little. And the food-cutting playset. And the Lego Duplos. And the LeapFrog Alphabet Drum. And the chunky puzzles. And the musical instrument set.

In fact, now that I think of it, it isn’t TWO-YEAR-OLDS who are so hard to buy for, it’s FIFTHBORNS. Poor little rich fifthborn: he already HAS most of the basic toys. Oh, and, uh, I just now see that some of these sets are for ages 3+. Yoops. Well, we’ve probably long since lost all the pieces small enough to choke on.

He loves Wubbzy, so my parents are getting him this talking, musical, poseable Wubbzy toy. It is going to be hard to find anything that will trump THAT.

Because Henry is too young to resent it, I’ve been thinking of giving him something non-toy, such as clothes, or a picture for his wall.

He loves dinosaurs, so I considered these wall stickers (they don’t take up space! they can be used to cover the walls that need repainting!)—but Henry’s love of dinosaurs is tempered by his fear of dinosaurs, and some of these are scary.

Maybe something more like this Dinosaur Parade print.

I’m also looking for dinosaur shirts in the under-$10 range: he has one dinosaur shirt and asks for it EVERY DAY. Considering how many children like dinosaurs, I think EVERY clothing line should have a selection. (And the first company to make a girly dinosaur shirt for my almost-4-year-old girl who likes girly stuff AND dinosaurs, wins my heart. I want a dinosaur in a tutu, and I want it NOW.)

And incidentally, if YOU are looking for a nice dinosaur toy for a child, I strongly recommend this Cuddlekins Triceratops. It is an enormous hit at our house, not just with Elizabeth and Henry (the two who like dinosaurs), but also with ME: it is so soft and cute and snuggly, I often….I mean, I DON’T hold it on my lap and pet it and cuddle it, because THAT would be ridiculous.

I need more ideas! What do YOU suggest for Henry?

Today I’d like to talk about evening routines, and what sorts of things help mitigate the chaos. As a quick primer to my thrilling home life, we have two boys: a 3.5 year old and a 15-month-old. Here’s our typical end-of-day routine, along with the items I’ve come to rely on:

6 PM or so: DINNERTIME

Take & Toss cups/bowls. I wish there was some great product that magically made dinnertimes easier, like somehow ensured both my kids actually ATE something with nutritional value instead of smearing crap all over the place (the baby) and refusing everything but peanut butter crackers (the preschooler), but these plastic cups and bowls have long been a staple in our house. They’re great for storing/serving snacks, they’re spillproof, they last forever despite their “disposable” description, they’re BPA-free if you care about that, and they stack nicely so they don’t take up a ton of room.

6:30 PM - 7:15 PM: WITCHING HOUR

Oball. Oh, you know the witching hour, right? When it’s too early for bed and dinner’s over with and the kids are just sort of craaaaaaaazy and your husband insists on trying to watch the news? Well, there’s no one toy that keeps my boys entertained during this vein-bulging time of day, but they are both obsessed with balls and will chase this Oball all over the house for entire minutes, at least until someone bonks their head on a table or something and starts screaming. Every kid needs an Oball, they’re perfect for little hands and it doesn’t hurt to get smacked in the face with one.

I also recommend putting on music and dancing during the witching hour, especially if the kids have driven you up a wall and you’re about to go nuclear. It’s a stress reliever and the sight of a toddler shaking their tiny butt never fails to diffuse frustration. A current favorite in our house is Fatboy Slim’s “Wonderful Night”, which is especially awesome if you and your kids watch this video together.

7:15-7:45 BATHTIME

Dr. Bronner’s soap. I love the Dr. Bronner brand because they’re all natural, they smell good, and of course the bottle is pretty entertaining reading. I’m not really a rabid consumer of organic personal-care stuff but there’s been some creepy news lately about kids’ bath products containing formaldehyde, so . . . you know, there’s that. Dr. Bronner contains natural oils and fragrances (not GHB!) and the company is really kind of fascinating. Did you know the founder was institutionalized in an insane asylum in 1945, undertook shock treatment, and escaped before creating his soap company three years later? Kind of explains a bit about the kooky stuff on the label.

7:45 BEDTIME FOR THE TODDLER

Carter’s “Super Comfy” Pajamas. I can’t seem to find these exact pajamas online, but they’re really soft fleece footie pj’s with no-slip feet. They’ve been great for cool nights and they make Dylan all snuggly and extra-nommy.

8:30 BEDTIME FOR THE PRESCHOOLER

The Going to Bed Book. This has been one of my favorite books to read to Riley at night. It’s really short, so now that he’s older I’ll often read something else first, but we like to turn each page and say the words together. I love the soothing bit at the end:

The moon is high. The sea is deep.
They rock
and rock
and rock
to sleep.

Okay, tell me about evenings in your house! What sorts of things are a part of your routine?

This is the fourth in a series of periodic posts in which I test out easy, inexpensive, low-mess, low-parental-involvement activities for young children to do. In the first, I tested, um, dry pasta in cake pans. In the second: painting with water. The third: marshmallows and toothpicks. Today’s test: unspilly stuff in a bowl.

Intention
The preschool-aged child will satisfy her seemingly endless Stirring Impulses, without wasting food or getting any more flour behind the cupboards.

Supplies needed
- one large unbreakable mixing bowl
- one big stirring spoon
- a dry, multicolored, non-powdery, non-perishable substance: I used jellybeans the first time because I had a bunch I got on post-Easter clearance; later, I used mixed chocolate and butterscotch chips

Pre-activity time
Less than one minute: I took the bowl and dumped stuff into it.

Time activity lasted before someone was whining again
I lost track: she went back to it many, many times per day for many days.

Parental assistance required
Between uses, I moved the bowl to a more out-of-the-way location, and once Ant Season began I started putting the stuff into a plastic container instead of just leaving it out.

Mess
Very low

Noise
Medium. Jellybeans in a plastic bowl are clattery, and can be a little annoying over the long term.

Clean-up time
One minute: I dumped the stuff in a plastic container for later, and I rinsed the bowl and spoon. Another day, I used the chocolate/butterscotch chip mixture in cookies (2 cups = one 12-ounce bag).

Unexpected complications
The other adult in the household ate all the jellybeans, so I tried chocolate and butterscotch chips, which then I kept picking at. And on one occasion, I had to remove a fistful of jellybeans from a toddler’s mouth: there had been a spill unnoticed by me and by the preschooler, but immediately noticed by the toddler.

Next time
I’ll see if I can find a less-delicious substance for her to stir.

He doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record with this holiday, is what I’m saying. To his partial credit, our wedding anniversary is on May 5 and I’m sure it’s difficult to remember that he’s supposed to turn right around and be all nice to me AGAIN just a few days later, but jeez, come on. Mother of your children over here! Carried them in my body! Have permanent belly-flap as a result!

Well, my husband may need a little prodding when it comes to a good gift idea (babe? Spa gift certificate. Click, buy, bada-boom bada-bing you’re done) but at least he didn’t do what the husband of a friend of mine did, which was to look confused on the day in question and say, “What, I’m supposed to get YOU something? But you’re not my mother!”

Have you ever received a Mother’s Day gift that made you weep—like, not the tears-of-joy kind, but the oh-my-god-my-partner-is-clueless kind? Share your worst Mother’s Day gift story in the comments, and next week we’ll randomly pick a winner to receive a $25 Amazon gift certificate. Hey, now you’ve got a shot at getting something you actually want this year.