The Cute Baby Contest

My sister Misty recently claimed that because she won a cute baby contest, she’s the cutest baby out of the five of us. I called bs on that, because as we are so far apart age wise, it’s impossible to compare us. Until now, that is. Misty helped me compile some adorable baby pictures of the five of us, and now we’re going to throw down and find out who was the cutest, once and for all. Here are the rules:

1. You can only vote once.
2. If you know the identity of any of the babies, keep it to yourself. It will ruin the fun if it becomes a who has the most friends contest (besides, I would lose hands down).
3. All you have to do to vote is comment on my blog with the number of the baby you think is cutest. It’s easy, and you can comment as a guest on WordPress.
4. At the end of the week (or at when we’ve gotten a substantial number of votes) the winner will be announced and given the coveted title “Cutest Baby” and maybe a certificate or something. We’ll see.

The Babies:

Let the voting begin!

-Val

Kill Bill

I have four older sisters, but I didn’t live with all of them at the same time for very long, partly because we have such an age gap (I’m the youngest, and my oldest sister and I are 14 years apart) and partly because of my parents’ divorce.

Before I go any further in this story, I feel the need to explain my bizarre and dysfunctional family tree. Basically, all of my sisters and I have the same mom, but the older three have a different dad, who my mom divorced and then married my dad. She divorced him too, but that’s not really the point. Here’s a picture.

Behold the confusion of my family

Anyway, I don’t remember much about spending time with my older sisters as a kid. That said, I do have a few memories that stand out in my mind as “sister” memories, like the time Danielle and I put Marie’s lipstick on the dog to prove to our dad that she had lips, or the time I snuck into the pantry the night before Danielle’s birthday and ate all of the frosting that was supposed to go on her cake. There are many stories of my sisters and I terrorizing each other as children, but not very many of them involve Misty and I. The following is one of the few that do:

When I was really young, maybe three or four because I wasn’t in school yet, Misty had a couple pets: a crawdad named Fred and a goldfish named Bill. Bill and Fred were tankmates. Misty liked Bill and Fred a lot, which is weird to think about now because she hates things that crawl (like crawdads). Bill and Fred’s tank was in Misty’s bedroom, along with a lot of drill team junk, including a giant ceramic boot full of Tootsie Rolls. This is significant because when I was a little kid, I loved Tootsie Rolls a whole lot. They were up there with dinosaurs and coloring books in my world. So every now and then, when Misty wasn’t home, I’d sneak into her room and eat some Tootsie Rolls. Looking back, she probably knew about it. If not, surprise, Misty, I ate your Tootsie Rolls.

Anyway, one day I went into Misty’s room for my usual Tootsie Roll heist when, horror of horrors, there weren’t any in there. So I recruited Danielle, who was my partner in crime (though I didn’t share the Tootsie Roll idea) and we decided that the cure to our boredom would be to drop a whole bunch of random shit into Bill’s tank. I remember lots of fish food, a deck of cards and probably a bunch of legos and small toys made their way to the bottom of Bill and Fred’s Tank. I don’t know if it was the massive quantity of fish food or just the trauma of having army men dropped on his head, but by the time Misty got home, Bill had gone to the big fish bowl in the sky. She was really, really upset, and she brings it up all the time.

In fact, Misty recently bought a cactus for Danielle (we’re gathering cacti for her. No reason, just because it’s funny) and named it Bill II aka Bill the Survivor- provided Danielle doesn’t let it die, of course. Here’s Bill II:

This is Danielle's "Freaky" cactus, Bill II

So that’s how, at the age of four, I became a fish murderer. Don’t worry, PETA, I’ve yet to live it down.

-Valerie

Jousting Badger

Yeah. That's a badger. On a horse. Preparing to Joust.

That’s all.

-Valerie

I’m a Terrible Babysitter

We’ve established that when I was a kid, I was kind of a freak. (Seriously, who bites their stuffed animals?) But here’s something else you should know about me: I don’t like kids. In fact, I can’t stand them. You wanna know what’s worse than kids? Babies. They cry, they eat, they puke, they poop, and then they poop and cry some more. I’ve yet to see what everyone finds so endearing about these bundles of womb projectile because to me, they’re just gross (almost as gross as the term “womb projectile”). Also, they make me really uncomfortable. People are always like, “HOLD MY WOMB PROJECTILE” and I’m like, “ehhh… ok.” This is kind of a problem, because as you may know, I have six nieces and nephews.

My oldest nephew Christian was born when I was about six or so, and I’ve realized that this may be part of the reason that I’m going to give children apples or wax candies every Halloween. See, my older sister Danielle was always in the limelight, and I had grown to accept that. I guess I just figured that after you pop out four offspring, you’re about spent on your attention budget. But then womb projectile #1 came along, and everyone was all, “OMG BABY!” and I was like, “WTF?!?” So yeah, might have been harboring a bit of resentment.

This turned out to be a problem one March night when Misty (Christian’s mom and my oldest sister) was going to have Danielle and I over to spend the night. She was driving us home with Danielle in the front seat and me in the back next to the three-year-old Drool Master 3000 when we decided we were hungry. We stopped at a Sonic, because I was too young to realize that the only redeemable thing about Sonic is their drinks, and grabbed some kid’s meals. This was in the days before they had milk and bananas at fast food joints, so I got a cherry limeade and Drool Master got a Hi-C, both of which were in the standard Styrofoam cups. Misty asked nine year old me to supervise the Drool Master and make sure he didn’t throw his drink at her head or anything. I said OK.

So we’re driving down the road a while and then we start to hear the unmistakable sound of a straw being removed and reinserted into a plastic lid. It was all, “skah-week ska-week ska-week” and Misty was all, “are you watching him?” So I looked over and sure enough, Drool Master’s squeaking away at his drink, just as happy as can be. So we drove for a while with the “ska-week ska-week ska-week” all the way along, when all of the sudden the “ska-week” stopped and the Drool Master turned into Captain Waterworks.

So Misty pulled over to find that sure enough, Captain Waterworks had poked a hole in his cup and was now covered in Hi-C. Misty was like, “I TOLD YOU TO WATCH HIM” and I was like, “I did watch him!” And she went, “you watched him POKE A HOLE in his cup!” And I probably said something like, “you didn’t tell me to DO anything about it,” because yes, nine year old me was kind of an a-hole. She was really mad, and it probably didn’t help that I was cracking up. I couldn’t help it- it was like when someone loses a scoop off of their ice cream cone- you can’t help but laugh.

She’s still mad at me for it and brings it up every chance she can. And I laugh every time because I still think it’s hilarious. (Note: So does said nephew, who doesn’t remember the incident). Moral of the story: I’m a bad baby sitter. Other moral of the story: don’t ask someone who doesn’t like kids to supervise your womb projectiles.

-Valerie

Note: Though I don’t like children, I do love my nieces and nephews. I’m not a COMPLETE a-hole.

I Was an Odd Child

In case you have ever thought, “man, Valerie’s kind of weird,” I’d like you to know that this is not a new development. I’ve been kind of an odd one all my life- I think I’ve just gotten better at hiding it. In order to better illustrate my point, I’m going to regail you with some of the tales of my childhood.

Let us begin. The accepted wisdom in my family is that I lost my first tooth eating spaghetti. In truth, this is only kind part of the story, but until now I was the only one in my family to know the whole story. What actually happened was that my sister Crystal was supposed to be watching me. In retrospect, she wasn’t the best babystitter. She was the one who let my other sister, Danielle, fall off of the kitchen counter and faceplant into the linoleum (she was fine).

Anyway, while Crystal was watching TV or dancing in her room to Boys II Men or rearranging her monkey collection or something, I was in my room playing with my stuffed dalmations (I was obsessed with 101 Dalmations). I guess the one that I had decided was “Rolly” had sassed me and five year old me wasn’t gonna take that shit, so of course the most logical course of action was to bite his little plush head. Hard.

This was a mistake. Apparently, when it comes to biting stuffed animals, it definitely hurts you a lot more than it hurts them. I learned that the hard way, as I had drastically loosened one of my two front teeth. Naturally, I was very upset with this turn of events, so I ran downstairs crying.

Obviously, Crystal had no idea what was wrong with me because that would require her actually watching me. But I was also a pretty savvy five year old and knew that if I told her that I had bitten my dalmation, I would either get in trouble or made fun of, and didn’t want either of those things. So when Crystal asked what was wrong, I said I was really hungry and wanted some spaghetti. She totally bought it.

So I got my spaghetti and Crystal got to be a hero (a really, really gullible hero). To everyone’s suprise but mine, I lost my tooth eating spaghetti. This story spread far and wide to family and friends, just because losing a tooth in spaghetti is so absurd. And any time anyone would tell it, I’d just sit there feeling like I pulled off the scam of the century. Which I pretty much did. I mean, no one really knew why I really lost my tooth until today. Suckers.

-Valerie