My sis eating cake at her first birthday.

***

Yesterday Eliza was telling me she loves me, and I asked who else she loves.

“Wuff Auntie ‘Hanna!” she said.

***

Today is Auntie ‘Hanna’s birthday.

My parents had hoped to have their children spaced closer together — there are nearly 6 years between us — but Auntie ‘Hanna had other ideas. As we were soon to find out, this was typical. Auntie ‘Hanna will do it her own damn way on her own damn time, thank you muchly.

Needless to say, as the humorless control freak good girl older sibling, I did NOT know what to make of this creature.

When they tried to toilet train her, she decided the carpet in my room was the best place to, erm, practice. Potties are for chumps.

A few years later, she decided that she wanted to paint, hauled out my watercolors, and redecorated my carpet (what IS it with you and my carpet?).

Then came the infamous window screen incident, which I personally think, 20-some years on, is hilarious. Mom had decided that she wanted us to practice our reading and writing skills over the summer – English for Auntie ‘Hanna, Dutch for me. Mom left to run some errands and left us to our work.

Needless to say, we were both irate over the injustice of homework! during the summer! that wasn’t even school-assigned! However, I am the humorless control freak good girl older sibling, and sucked it up, seething inwardly. But Auntie ‘Hanna was all, “You must be crazy if you think I’m doing homework during vacation.” First, she tried to convince me to do it for her (to no avail — remember, humorless good girl, and also, prissy goody-goody). When that didn’t work, she decided that the best way to protest would be property damage, and unlocked, then pushed out her window screen, which plummeted to its death 10 feet below on the driveway. I was aghast and spent the rest of the day weeping; she was triumphantly unrepentant.

My parents decided to punish her by taking away her collection of “Lincolns,” as she called pennies. A couple of days later, Auntie ‘Hanna went over to her friend H. to play, and H. had some money out on her dresser — which Auntie ‘Hanna took, figuring, “Hey, someone took mine, I’ll take hers.”

The best part? We did not have any more homework that summer — Auntie ‘Hanna’s methods are brutal, but effective.

Lest you think the woman is totally lawless, I hasten to add that she has since developed a very stable moral compass indeed.

I remember proudly the way she shouted down her social studies teacher twice: once for sexist comments, the other time when she realized that he was not discouraging the school-girl crush one of her friends was developing on him. I would never have been brave enough to stand up to an authority figure that way, at that age.

Auntie ‘Hanna is also pretty awesome with the people skills and the crisis management. Her job is about constantly preventing and putting out metaphorical fires, and about keeping the various ‘zillas (Bridezilla, Momzilla, Groomzilla, etc.) from devouring each other. By all accounts, she is aces at it. Every quarter, she calls me in a dither because she’s worried about if she did well enough to meet her sales projections. And every time, two weeks later, she calls me in relief because once again she’s hit the very ceiling on what she could be expected to do. For the record, Auntie ‘Hanna, every time we go through this ritual, I say to myself, “Well, duh!”

Auntie ‘Hanna is also allegedly a proud mama to two kitties. I say allegedly, because one of her kitties is so shy I have never seen her in real life. I remember her panicked call, about 2 days after she brought Maddy home, because she couldn’t find her. “Is there poop in the litter box? Is the food disturbed?” I asked. “Give her time.” She did, and she is an awesome kitty mama who calls me up to let me listen to her kitties purr on the phone.

Auntie ‘Hanna alleges that she is a grumpy person, but it’s an act. She is capable and kind and funny and has never been told by her boss to knock it off with the eye-rolling.

Wuff you, Auntie ‘Hanna!

… but I am sad about Barbaro.

I was one of those girls who was obsessed with horses as a kid. And even though I haven’t read a Black Stallion book in years, and even though when I actually got the chance to ride a horse I was terrified, I was really hoping he’d make it.

I have an idea for a new reality show:

When Toddlers Choose Their Own Clothing

Auntie Johanna has been promising a visit for about a year, but kept begging off for various work committments. Secretly, I think she was trying to get us all along to do exactly what we ended up doing, which is get off our impatient duffs and come visit her instead. Well played, mon amie, well played!

We have no pictures yet because I cannot get the photo function on the video camera to talk to the computer. In the meantime, here is:

The Good

1. Auntie Johanna, of course, was a highlight of the trip. It was great to see her in her natural habitat. Girlfriend was MADE for her job, which is all about charming the socks off potential clients (which include a lot of brides-to-be, so you can just imagine…) and putting out fires of a metaphorical variety, as well as being all hostess-y, let-us-throw-you-a-party-ish. I would so totally give her my business if I were going to have a big wedding in a mountainous climate.

2. Grandma Texas, who also joined us, is completely, shamelessly rising to the grandparenting challenge, by which I mean, bribing the Crazypants to do her bidding by introducing her to jellybeans and gummibears, for which she rapidly developed a deep and abiding love. One night Eliza was doing her now patenting stalling techniques at bedtime and running through the list of what she needed:

E: “Need a gummibear WIGHT NOW!!”

AM: “No, we’re going to sleep now.”

E: “Need jewwybeans! WIGHT NOW!!!!”

AM: “No, we’re going to sleep now.”

3. As you can imagine, staying in a hotel that employs a relative = perks. Like half-price food, ridiculously cheap rooms, and an opportunity to meddle in your relative’s business affairs. Grandma Texas and I volunteered to be the artistic advisors to an in-house promo video my sister was shooting, in which she had to dress up as the bride of Billy Idol. I feel we made some excellent contributions to the project, most notably in convincing “Billy Idol” not to a. smoosh cake in my sister’s face or onto the borrowed $835 wedding dress or b. spray her and the dress with champagne. It’s possible that he acquiesced to get me to stop talking about the cake-smooshing being a vestigial custom belonging to the patriarchal property transfer that weddings originally were. I felt like a feminazi out there, because boy, does that city love the family values. There are billboards all over purporting to speak for God, who denounces various things as “WRONG!” in all caps and exclamation points. I prefer less browbeating in my spirituality, thank you.

4. Jim and I got 4 hours of a proper vacation, by which I mean no kiddo to take care of, nothing to do (those who know will agree with me, I’m sure, that going on vacation with a toddler is on many levels actually less relaxing than the daily work/home/sleep grind).

We had thought about skiing, but that seemed like a lot of work, so instead we went to a hot spring. We made the decision partly because it was clothing optional and we decided that this was too tempting a potential blog posting to pass up. It was a very family-friendly environment and I chickened out anyway, so it is nowhere on the order of the Thumbscrews visit to the swingers colony of last summer, but it was unbelievably relaxing. We hung out in the water (Unchlorinated! No stinky!) for an hour, maintaining a non-threatening distance from each other and the retired grizzle-haired bikers, got out, drove down the road to a local winery, tasted every wine they had, ate some food, drove back for another half-hour soak, and headed back to reality much refreshed. I highly recommend it!

The Bad

1. A time change of two hours with a toddler is just a flippin’ disaster. It’s big enough to wreak havoc in her daily routine, but too small, especially during a week-long trip, to warrant pushing said toddler into a new one. As a result, Jim and I took turns being the lucky duck to get up at 5 a.m. and wander about the hotel with the rugrat. We also ate meals at random times and were putting her to bed at 6 p.m. because she simply couldn’t go any further. I don’t know that Auntie Johanna got the full dose of Eliza winsomeness. There was a lot of “Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

2. We forgot to bring with us a baby-conveying device. This was mostly my fault. I didn’t want to deal with yet another item to lug around, since we were already traveling with the two-body suitcase to accommodate all the ski clothing we did not use, not to mention the car seat. I meant to bring the ergo baby carrier, which Eliza loves. But I didn’t. And I meant to call Grandma Texas and ask her if she’d bring her stroller. But I didn’t. Heavy toddler who refuses to walk anywhere plus high altitude means 24-7 cardio training, but not in a fun way. Although on the upside, I fit better into my pants that I should for the amount of bacon consumed.

The Ugly

1. The previous posts have probably given you an inkling of the intestinal adventures we all experienced on this trip, but let me be graphic about the one that traumatized me most.

After our visit to the pediatrician with Eliza, we decided to go. I followed the doctor’s advice about giving her starchy foods, clear fluids, and no milk products. Shortypants was ravenous and thirsty, which I took as a good sign, and by the second leg of the flight, I was feeling confident enough to let her have some apple juice with her nutritious array of crackers and cookies.

“Ha!” laughed God, as we hit turbulence on the descent.

“Need ‘notha binkies!” Eliza sobbed, suddenly in distress about something. I thought her ears were popping, but no sooner had I formed the thought that she spewed forth apple juice and crackers. It was not unlike the fat dude in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. (Aha — I looked him up: Mr. Creosote.)

I was at this point that I realized that though I had been smart to pack a spare outfit for Eliza, I had overlooked the possibility that there would be collateral damage. Such as the parent on whose lap she was sitting.

There will be no apple juice in this house for a very, very long time.

Jim: I was just upstairs Googling my disease.

AM: And? Do you have Yellow fever?

Jim: No, but I think I have an ulcer.

AM: An ulcer? You’re not a very good hypochondriac. I would’ve AT LEAST gone for cholera.