The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Looking for Bugs

Overheard this Morning

I sent the kids into the bathroom to start brushing their teeth while I tried to add a few more lines to a post I've been trying to write since yesterday...

Both kids in unison:  "Shake yer BOO-TAY!  Shake yer BOO-TAY!" over and over.

Me:  "BRUSH YOUR TEETH!"

Alex:  "But Mom!  We're shaking our booties!"

(This is why Bill gets migraines.)

Overheard

Bill:  "Alex, what's the name of the girl rat in Flushed Away?"

Alex:  "Her name is Ree-tah.  And the boy rat is Rotty."

Bedside Manners

Yesterday I left work early with a skull-crushing headache.  Tension and stress, plus the change in the weather, and I was down for the count.  I came home, where Bill was with Julia.  Julia, as I think I mentioned the other day, came home from daycare Tuesday with a 104 degree fever.  She wasn't allowed back until she had been fever-free for 24 hours, so Bill stayed home with her on Wednesday.

When I arrived, he was cleaning the music room and Julia was playing with legos.  I pretended to be interested in what was going on until Bill told me to just go upstairs and go to bed.  That seemed the sensible thing to do, so I said goodnight to Julia and headed to bed.

A few minutes later, as I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to release all the cast iron bars of tension that had formed across my shoulders and up the back of my head for days, my bedroom door opened and Julia came in and got up on the bed.  She gave the cat a few energetic pats on the head and then a slightly more gentle hug, and then looked at me with great concern as she felt my forehead and my cheek, as I had done to her the day before.  She comforted me a bit more, and then hopped off the bed and left the room, "bye bye mommy" as she closed the door.  That was nice.

I could hear the vacuum cleaner going - Bill had cleared up all the sheet music and located the floor, apparently.  That's okay, it wouldn't last long and it was just white noise anyway.  So I concentrated some more on trying to release tension and loosen my jaw - I noticed recently that I've been clenching my teeth a lot - and then the door opened again and my perky little attention-craving daughter climbed back on the bed.

"Mommy?  Can I draw?"

"Sure, Julia, go downstairs and ask Daddy for some crayons and paper."

"Noooooo, I want to draw with marrrrkerrrrrrrrs!"

Fine.  Bill was still vacuuming and wouldn't hear her anyway.  I got her a sketch pad and the washable markers she is allowed to use on the bed, and she settled down at the far corner and chattered on as she scribbled.  My participation wasn't required - she was apparently talking to herself.  So I closed my eyes and, again, tried to relax.

"Mommy, I'm done."

"Okay sweetie.  Go ahead downstairs.  And could you please close the door?"

"Okay Mommy!"  And off she went.  She's so cute sometimes.

Next, Bill got out the FloorMate so he could clean the hardwoods.  When he's on a mission, he doesn't stop.  More noise.  But whatever.  It's not a big room.  I rolled onto my side and squished the pillow into a better position under my head.

"Mommy?  What are you doing?"  She came trotting around to my side of the bed and looked at me with a huge smile. 

"Mommy's head hurts.  I'm trying to sleep.  Could you go back downstairs and play with the legos some more?"

"Oh, sweetiepie, you don't feel good?"  All concern as she patted my brow.

"No, Julia, I don't feel good.  I really need to sleep." (hint hint.  which is a complete waste of time with a three-year-old.)  Could you please go back downstairs so I can take a nap?  I'll see you later."

"Are these your glasses?"  She picks them up from the nightstand and gives them to me.

"Is this your clip?" She hands me a hair clip that is actually hers, but I was using it to keep bangs out of my eyes earlier. 

"Is this yours?"  She hands me a coaster from Red Hook Brewery in Seattle.  Bill and I went there nearly 10 years ago.  I thank her.

"Okay, sweetie, I REALLY need to take a nap, and you REALLY need to go downstairs.  Okay?"  I am pleading.  I am desperate.

"Okay."  She reluctantly leaves the room.

"Julia?  Could you please close the door?"

"Okay."

I take deep, slow breaths and uncurl my fetal-positioned legs and arms...I uncurl my carpal-tunnel-clawed hands.  RELAX.

"Hi Mommy!"  The tornado spills back into the room.  Her bare feet slap determinedly on the floor as she rounds the foot of the bed to look at me.  She is smiling, and I hate to spoil her fun, but this is NOT helping and my HEAD HURTS and I REALLY need to take a nap and WHY can't Bill notice that she KEEPS DOING THIS TO ME????

"Julia," I groan, "I really, really need a nap.  You NEED to go DOWN STAIRS so I can sleep."

"I don't want to!"  She stares at the little ceramic duck and goose on my bureau.  My mother made them when I was little.  She took ceramics classes back then and glazed a lot of greenware for everyone over the years.  The goose's neck was broken once, but still it survives.  Julia thinks if she ignores me, I will be quiet and let her stay.  Not this time.

"Julia.  You need to go DOWN stairs NOW.  PLEASE.  NOW."  I feel mean, but my head hurts and I need sleep.

She still won't look at me.  "FINE!" she hollers, and I fast forward to her teen years and a cold chill runs down my spine.  She stomps out of the room and closes the door behind her.

And then, less than a second later, she opens the door again - and SLAMS it shut.

Exclamation point.

I can't help but laugh.  And then, finally, I sleep.

Snippets

"All of my stuffed animals are circus animals...even me!" (Alex)

Yesterday I got a call at work around noon - Julia had a fever of 104 - so I changed my voicemail and sent a quick email to people to let them know I had to leave.  When I arrived at daycare, all the other little kids were asleep on their cots, covered with blankets, except Julia.  She sat on a little chair, a blanket across her lap, waiting quietly.  They had given her tylenol, but it hadn't kicked in yet.  She still felt hot when I carried her to the car, and she was sad-sounding "Mommy, I don't feel good...."

We hung out on the couch and watched Dora and other movies until we both dozed off.

Today she's still warm - 101 - so my husband is staying with her for the day.  And Alex has to go to kindergarten.  Bill's downstairs explaining this to him now.  Wonder how that will go.

Okay, I thought I'd be able to post more, but apparently not.  Gotta go get Alex moving along.  And me.

The Call of the Wild Julia

I really wish Julia slept.  I mean, she sleeps, but she doesn't zonk out for a solid 10 hours like her brother does.  Of course, he didn't always sleep like this either, so I'm hoping this is just a phase.  A long, endless, coffee-necessitating phase.

Two nights ago around 2:30 in the morning, Julia started calling "Mommmmmmyyyyy....Mommmmyyyyy...."  She, like the birds and other wild creatures, has different tones that indicate different things.  In this instance, it's kind of a blend of Moan and Whine with a bit of Crabby Girl stirred in.  I go into her room and see what I expect to see when I hear that sound:  she is in her bed, eyes shut, on her side, blanket on the floor, and her legs and arms swim in arcs across the surface of her purple Dora sheets.  She is in constant motion, 3/4 asleep, and in need of something.  She doesn't know what it is.

I try.  "Do you need your blanket back on?" I ask, tucking it around her swishing legs.

"Nooooooooooooooooooooo" she Moans/Whines in sleepy irritation.

"Do you need to go potty?"

An insult, apparently. "NOOOOOoooooooooooooo, I don't need to go pottttttyyyyyyyy!"  She sort of sounds like a ghost too.  She keeps writhing slowly, like a willow tree in a brewing storm.

"Are you thirsty?"  This is it - it's usually one of these three things.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"  She thrashes around now, and somehow works herself sideways across her toddler mattress, jamming herself temporarily between the back of the former-crib-now-big-girl-bed and the safety rail in front. 

I try sense.  (Apparently I lack any myself.)  "Okay, Julia, if you aren't going to tell me what the problem is, I'm going back to bed."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"  More thrashing and flailing.  The storm's picking up.  "I DON'T WANT YOU TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

"Julia, you need to be quiet, you're going to wake up Alex and Daddy."  (Like she cares.)  "Now what's the matter?"

I try the three main questions again, all of which anger her more, and she becomes louder and more thrashy.  She turns a complete circle, lying on one side - sort of like Donald O'Connor did on his arm in the "Make 'Em Laugh" scene of Singin in the Rain.  But there's no laughing here.

I start to leave.  I'm tired.  She screams "NO MOMMMMYYYYYYYY" and, obedient puppet that I am, I swoop back to the crib and hiss at her to be quiet. 

She just gets louder, and I'm tired of standing bent over the bed, so I say "Okay, we're going downstairs."  Which is something she normally would love to do in the middle of the night, but since it wasn't her idea, then no, it is not a good idea.  She shrieks.  "I DON'T WANNA GO DOWNSTAIRS!" I pick her up and she is heavy with sleep and her eyes are still mostly shut and she starts writhing and flailing and I don't even know how to describe the sound of her voice except by saying things like "banshee" and "angry bird" and "Janis Joplin."  Alex, at this point, sits bolt upright in his bed and starts to cry, terrified, no doubt, by the demon in his room.  I tell him kindly to go back to sleep as I carry the wild animal out the door.  She is still shrieking "NO! NO! I DON'T WANNA GO DOWNSTAIRS!" and trying to escape, which makes going down two flights of stairs a bit challenging, but we make it to the basement and I put her on the floor and go sit on the couch to wait it out.

She is a tiny monster, her dark blond hair seems to wave around her head like Medusa's snakes, and she glares at me from beneath her bangs.  If she had fangs, she would bare them.  Instead, she continues to shriek at me and tremble with sleepy rage. 

I just watch.  Because I want to laugh and that wouldn't be good.  But it's hard to be frightened of a banshee in pajamas that have oversized pink and purple flowers all over them. 

Perhaps feeling hampered by these benign garments, my little fireball suddenly - still glaring at me, swiftly REMOVES HER PAJAMA BOTTOMS AND HURLS THEM ACROSS THE ROOM!  SO THERE!  She waits to see if I react.  I don't, because I really have to fight to keep from laughing at that little display.  So she looks around and finds a yellow plastic bowl from her play kitchen set, and throws that.  Interestingly, she sees a plastic play knife but does not throw that.  I guess this is all just for show and she has no real interest in bloodshed tonight.

Since the throwing isn't having any effect on me, she shouts "I'M GOING BACK TO MY BED!" at me and heads for the stairs.  I cut her off, and plant myself a few steps up and say, calmly "You need to calm down."

"I DON'T WANNA CALM DOWN!" she shrieks and falls to the floor and flails and wriths and screeches and then it starts...the shrieking begins to change, and the face crumples some, and she starts crying now, and finally the end is in sight, and she is no longer the scary banshee...she is just a tired little girl who was in some strange half and half state of wakeful and sleepy and now she just wants to be one place or the other...so she cries, and I pick her up and hold her for a while...and we just hang out there in the middle of the darkened living room until we are no longer wild animal and observer, but child and mommy.

She goes back to bed pretty soon after that, and the rest of the night is fine.

Now, last night right around 2:30 again, I was awakened by a loud and sad "MOMMY!  MOMMMMYYYY!" - a different sound from the moaning/whining one.  I went into the room and "Mommy, I fell out of my beddddd!" she wails from the floor.  She is tangled in her Dora blanket and not hurt, but not all that thrilled either.  I get her untangled and back to bed pretty quickly.

And then about 5:00 or so this morning it comes again:  "MOMMY!  MOMMMYYYY!!!!!!!!!!" And I go in again, expecting to see the same purple and blond lump on the floor, but no, she is in her bed, and crying. 

"Julia!  What's wrong???" I ask.

"Daddy ate my cheeseburger!" She wails.

I bring her into our bed, show her that no, Daddy is sleeping and didn't eat her cheeseburger, and she falls back to sleep, snug between us.  Peace.

Kindergarten Update

Alex loves kindergarten. 

He doesn't, however, love daycare. 

More specifically, he hates going there first in the morning.  It's been...challenging...to drop him off without a long, dragged-out drama.  He just doesn't want to be there.  He says he doesn't like some of the kids, some of them tease him, there are too many kids...and that's all true.  In the mornings, before the kids are carted away to the local elementary schools, it's loud and chaotic and stressful.  There are "older" elementary school kids there too - just waiting for the ride to their school - but still, they're bigger, they seem tougher, and they are - not always intentionally - intimidating.

And this is no different from how it was at Alex's original daycare.  The difference, I believe, is because Alex started going to that first place when he was three months old and left shortly after he turned five.  Sure it was chaotic, but he had his place there.  He was part of the fabric.  He was family. 

Here - he's the new kid.  He started going here in mid-July - and only three days a week, if that - and other friendships (and gangs of pint-sized thugs) had already been formed.  He was the odd kid out.

And he can be shy in certain situations.  Like chaotic mornings at a new daycare.

And - to add to the fun - Julia is picking up on his misery (oh yes, that's an accurate word) and now SHE says she doesn't like daycare. 

Yesterday morning - both kids were in TEARS in my care before we even pulled into the daycare parking lot.  I've had to peel my little boa constrictors off of me and hand them off to teachers and leave the buildings listening to the sobbing and the "Mommeeeeeeeeee" that chases me out the door.  It sucks.

And yeah, I've read the articles.  I know - I'm supposed to be brisk and upbeat and cheerful and quick about it.  They may cry, but I'm not supposed to acknowledge that really, at least not with hugs or kisses.  No, I'm supposed to, I don't know, pat them on the head and shake their hands and march off.  Somehow this will teach them not to be upset.

I'm not good at that whole thing.  Very not good.  I try.  I have really tried.  But yesterday - yesterday just about did me in.  I was carrying Julia out of the building Alex is in (the pre-K and K kids are in one brick building; the pre-school and toddler and infant kids are in the other brick building) and he was clinging to me and sobbing and rubbing his runny-nosed, drooly, tearful face all over my shirt.  Thank goodness it was a "casual day" at work and I didn't really need to look perfect.  And the snot blended well with my gray tee. 

The worst of it was when I got on the other side of the little gate and gave him another hug and let him rub more mucus on my shirt - all the while lugging Julia in one arm - and I started to walk to the door - and he did a "STELLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" kind of thing behind me - so loudly and so raw and tormented that other kids paused and stared and teachers stared and Alex's face was red and wet and miserable, and as he verged on agonized hysteria I just wanted to wake up and look at the clock and realize it was all just a hideous dream. 

But no.  In the next moment, as Alex burst through the gate, the assistant director awoke from her trance and hustled over and took him back into the room and said firmly "No, we're not going to do this every day."

And - I fled.  I felt entirely rotten.  I felt sick.  I hated the whole episode on so many levels and for so many reasons.  I don't even WANT to have to bring them to daycare.  I don't WANT to be brisk and upbeat and cheerful when I'm NOT feeling that way.  It's fake.  I don't see that it's beneficial - my kids aren't stupid.  And let's face it, I'm really not a good actress anyway.

I carried Julia - who had started to whine - to the other building and tried to make a smooth transition there, but no, she was already primed and ready - tears, sobbing, the hand-off to the teacher - and I dragged myself out of that building and across the parking lot and into my car.  I wanted to cry.  And quit my job.  And yell at people.  And go home and curl up in a ball and pull a blanket over my head.

But no, I went to work instead.  Joy joy joy.

And I stewed about it for a good chunk of the day.  And I thought - dammit - I don't see how a stressful, tear-filled morning is good for ANY of the three of us.  I need to do this differently. 

And I was figuring that after a while Alex is going to make friends.  I'm not as worried about Julia - I think she's following his example, and if I can figure out to ease this a bit for him, she'll chill out too.  I just feel this in my gut.  And I'm trusting that gut - imperfect though it may look - more and more over time. 

So I told my boss about the hell of that morning, and told her I wanted to come in to work later for a while.  I'm going to bring Alex to kindergarten and the van can bring him to daycare for the afternoon.  And in doing this, I'll also be bringing Julia in later, and odds are more of her little classmates will arrive and she'll have more kids to play with.  And also, if he's happy, she's less likely to decide to be unhappy.  My boss - who is also a friend - said to go ahead and not worry about the hours.  And so that's what I did.

This morning I got the kids ready to go by their normal leave-the-house time - about seven o'clock.  Bill leaves before that, so if I get them just about ready by the time he leaves, things fall into place pretty well.  Anyway, I got them ready, they waved out the window to Bill as he drove away, and then...

I told them the new game plan.  I told Alex I was bringing him to kindergarten - not to daycare - and that he'd go to daycare in the afternoon.  He brightened up at that.  Score one for Mommy.  And I told Julia I would bring her in later, so there'd be more of her friends to play with.  She still didn't sound enthused, but she didn't get upset either. 

BUT, I informed them - if you're going to go in later, then you can do some things around the house.  You can't just sit around and watch a movie or annoy each other.  You need to WORK!

And you know what?  We got SO MUCH DONE!  I emptied the dishwasher and re-loaded it and washed the other stuff and they picked up toys and books and put stray articles of clothing in the hamper in the bathroom and put their shoes in their shoe bins, and we went up to the bedroom they share and I put a load of their laundry away while they picked up stuffed animals and dolls and books and put them where they belonged.

And - even more thrilling - they were cooperative - not only with me, but with each other!  It was kind of fun, even!  Tomorrow morning we'll attack the basement (the family room area - with more dinosaurs roaming the carpet than ever walked the earth) and after that - who knows?  Maybe I can teach them to iron...

And the drop off?  We brought Julia in first - and she cried a bit, but not...not with anguish, if that makes any sense - and I handed her over and left quickly - hurrying Alex along in front of me.  One down.  Then we zipped over to the elementary school, and I brought Alex into the gym where the other kids in his class were - all sitting along one wall, one girl eating a banana.  The teacher and assistant teacher or whatever she is were there, checking kids off as they arrived.  Alex wanted me to walk him all the way over to THAT side of the gym before saying goodbye - fair enough.  I did, the teachers greeted him happily, and Alex and I did the hug and kiss and high five routine - and he gave me a little smile - he didn't look perfectly relaxed, but he didn't look tearful, either.  Works for me.  We said see you later - and that was it - I was out the door!  Walking to my car!  Waiting in my car for the other parents dropping off their older elementary school kids to move by so I could pull away from the curb!  And on my way to get coffee!  And an egg and cheese sandwich on an english muffin!  And the newspaper!

I was kind of amazed at how well it went.

I know that's no guarantee that it will always go well, but there are no guarantees, really, in life, anyway.  So I'm not going to stress about it.  I'm giving it a shot.  I'll see how it goes, and eventually if I can or need to make another change, I'll do it. 

At the very least, the house will get a good cleaning.

My Boy

June 27, 2002:

(taken with the first very cheap digital camera we had, so please excuse the poor quality)

And that same creature...first day of Kindergarten:

I did more traditional standing-at-the-front-door shots, but on the way back into the house, they wanted to run.  Fortunately no knees were skinned during the photo shoot, and Alex was neat and tidy for his first day at elementary school.

Alex and I drove Julia to daycare and then drove back to the house.  Alex wanted to walk to school.  So we did - me with my keys, he with his enormous backpack.  Holding hands.  Looking both ways before crossing the street.  Avoiding the dog poop on the sidewalk when we were almost there.  Watching all the other families walking with their kids on this first day of another school year. 

And no, he wasn't excited at all - I only had to run (in heels), practically, to keep up with him.  I brought him into the gym, as instructed when we went to orientation the week before.  There were a few other little backpack-bearing kids sitting cross-legged on the floor along the wall, and a very cheery blond woman took Alex's name and checked him off the list.  The teacher arrived a moment later, greeted Alex and the other kids...more new kids arrived...and there was nothing left for me to do but hug and kiss Alex, exchange stinging high fives with him, flash him a big smile (he smiled back) - and...leave.

I've left him before - he's been going to daycare since he was three months old...but still...Kindergarten. 

This is the official start of big kid school.

It's the next milestone.  So many gone by already...so many to go.

I'm excited for him.  So much to learn, to explore...he will eat it up. 

I wished I could go with him into his kindergarten class. 

Just to watch.  He doesn't need me there, however.   

He doesn't need me every moment. 

I guess we're doing our jobs right...preparing him to give us high fives and hugs and go out there on his own.  Without us hovering over him, ready to catch him or wipe his nose or clean up his scrapes and tears.  It feels, at times, like he was born, we got to hold him for a while, but in the blink of an eye, we're letting him go...helping him to stand...walk...run...ride a bike...go to school...go out into the world...go his own way. 

I walked home alone.

I held my house keys in one hand.

In the other, I held the residual warmth of a stinging high-five.  Tightly. 

Camp Song

We went camping Friday night - just the one night is enough while Julia is three.  She...well, she's Julia.  She wants to be carried.  I don't want to carry her.  So she will stand there.  And I'll say "fine, stay there" and start to walk away.  And she'll holler out "MOMMY!!!!" and I'll turn back to her and say "well then come on!" and she will move her left foot forward half an inch, then the right, then the left, all the while looking at me like "Okay, Mom, you want me to walk?  THIS is how I'm going to do it!"

It's fun. 

But anyway, apart from that aspect of it, things went pretty well.  Alex had a blast.  His favorite part?

Going fishing...

and catching bullfrogs.  Meet Jeremiah.

You can see a few more of the camping pictures on my flickr site.

The best part, of course, is all the camp songs.  The singing together.  Bill brought Julia's pink ukelele and pretty much kept all the wild animals far away from us while we were at our site.  And on the ride home, Alex and Julia took turns playing tunes and singing the words to the classics at the top of their lungs:

Southwick's Wild Animal Farm

Last week (okay, I know I'm supposed to recap more of July, but forgive me, I'm skipping around anyway) we brought the kids to Southwick's Wild Animal Farm - Alex has called it "The New Zoo" for some time now, because it is (or, rather, was) the NEW zoo as opposed to the OLD ZOO.  It was Tuesday.  I was heading off to work and they were heading off to have all the fun.  So at the last minute, I called in to say I was taking a mental health day, and that was that.

The best part of Southwick's is their deer forest.  You buy dried corn and bring it in with you, and the deer are all out and about and many of them come up to you to mooch food.

Julia adopted this one.  This deer was apparently the greeter - it met us at the gate and escorted us into the forest to meet all the other deer.  Julia fell in love, and walked like this, her hand on the deer's back, for quite a while.  After we'd fed deer for a while...

Julia started walking away with her buddy...

When asked where she was going, Julia replied "I'm bringing her back to her mom!"

Julia dropped her new friend off right about here, and that was that.

Later on we went into the farm animal pen...it's mostly an assortment of goats.  There were a couple of llamas in a separate pen, and a rabbit in a hutch...but the goats were the ones ready and waiting for food when we got there.

There was a little barn at one end of the pen, and more goats hanging out in the shade inside.

Julia headed straigh in to join them...

 

But wait...

Hey little guy, why are you all alone?

You wait right here...

HEY!  He can't find his mom and dad!

Once we reassurred her that the goat's parents were around somewhere and that he was okay, she went into the barn to greet all the other goats and make sure they all knew where their moms and dads were.

She's very sweet like that.

Alex, meanwhile, was thrilled to see the rhinos...

And he was so impressed, he directed me to take one more picture to remember them by...

(keep in mind he's a five-year-old boy)

And all I could do was laugh

We took the kids to a small Art Festival just over the Connecticut line this morning - a friend of a friend was selling her photography and I wanted to go there and see her work.

By the way - and this has nothing really to do with my story - it's really hot and really humid. 

Anyway, we got there and ventured reluctantly out of the air-conditioned car to see the various displays.  It was a pretty small event.  And the photos were clearly the best examples of talent and all that.  I bought one.  But I digress.

Of course, neither kid wanted to be out in the hot sun, and Alex began complaining immediately as we trudged from the car to the first exhibit. 

I was carrying Julia.

While the woman at the first display showed us her painted boxes and things, we listened politely and Alex complained some more about the heat...and then Julia sneezed. 

Let me interrupt here to show you this picture:

I got Julia those festive hair things for Easter this year, and she finally wore them again today.  I have been desperately trying to get her to wear her hair up in pony tails or something, because I personally can't stand to feel my own hair sticking to the sweat on the back of my neck or across my face in this hideous weather.  But she doesn't seem to care.  And so I almost fell over this morning when she consented to my offer to put her hair up.  I took full advanage of the opportunity to do the girly thing, and so even though they didn't really match what she was wearing, I put these bright, frou-frouey bejeweled things in her hair.

Okay, back to the Art Festival.

Ah yes - Julia sneezed.  She's had a bit of a cold or something, so her sneezes are, shall we say, productive.

First thing I saw was some of that productivity dripping from her left nostril.  But I was soon distracted by what her right nostril had produced.  And I showed Bill.  And then I just burst out laughing and carried her back to the car to clean her up.

And if you dare, you can look below to see what I saw...

Blur

From an email to my sister recently:

A new word - this morning Julia was hanging out on my bed for a while, before I took my shower, and the cat was on there, and she (Blur) stretched out one paw to touch Julia, and I guess a tip of a claw made contact with skin, because Julia pulled away and said "She's trying to get me with her THORMS!" 

In case I've never posted a picture of her before - this is Blur:

She's about sixteen years old, and yes, she only has one eye.  When she was a kitten - not too long before I adopted her - she was hurt somehow and a friend of mine who, coincidentally and fortunately, worked at a vet's office, nursed her back to health.  She'd had injuries to her radial nerve in her front left leg and to her right eye.  The vet was afraid she'd lose mobility for good in the leg, but actually that healed quickly.  But I am jumping ahead a bit.

At the time I already owned four cats.  I was waitressing a lot and that was basically my life at the time.  A friend of mine waitressed with me and she knew I had some cats...one Sunday - it might have been Easter, actually, she told me about this kitten - they'd named her Blur because before the accident she would hide under the furniture and dash from one hiding place to another.  She was just a tiny gray blur...

Anyway, at this point, Blur had been hurt and was recovering at the vet's office.  My friend couldn't keep her - the place she was living didn't allow pets.  So she figured, since I already had four...

Well, she worked on me all shift, in between serving meals and collecting tips, and by the end of the day, I had caved.  We agreed to meet the next morning and she'd introduce me.

Blur was just a little thing, around 8 weeks old or so - who knows.  She was a foundling.  She lay in the cage and showed no interest in me or anyone else, that I can remember.  We opened the door to the cage and I very slowly reached in and let her sniff my fingers.  She didn't shrink away or bite me, so I started very gently rubbing her cheek.

Bit by bit, she accepted me.  I moved on to scratching under her chin, and smoothing the top of her head, and petting from head to tail, and by the end of an hour, she had rolled onto her back and I was rubbing her white tummy.  She had adopted me.

I think I brought her home a little later in the week.  I kept her shut in my bedroom while she healed, and while I tried to keep her right eye lubricated with the drops the vet had prescribed.  But the tear duct had been damaged beyond repair, and since I couldn't put the drops in around the clock, the surface of her eye got dry and ulcerated.  So the eye was removed.  She healed from that, and then it was time for her to get acquainted with the other cats.

They all certainly knew about her - they would hang out at the door to the bedroom, sniffing...one of them would reach a paw under the door to try to touch this new thing I was hiding.

One day I shut the other cats in a bathroom or somewhere, and let Blur out to explore.  She crept slowly through the house, sniffing everything, getting familiar with the layout.

I think I did that a couple of times, and then it was time for all of them to meet.  On someone's advice - I don't remember if I'd read it or if someone told me to do this - I put the cats' breakfast down on the floor in the kitchen, and while the original four were eating, I opened the bedroom door and waited.

Blur came slowly down the stairs and followed the smell of food.  She really didn't seem interested in the other cats at all.  She just marched in like she owned the place, and started eating.

And that was the beginning.

Now, we only have one cat (and two lizards and a bunch of fish) and that's plenty, since the two small humans are more than enough to handle at the moment.

Blur's been great with them - very tolerant of the rough handling when the kids were little (okay, they're still little...but when they were LITTLER.) and quite comfortable with them now.  The kids, in turn, have learned to be gentle.  They carry Blur around, they pet her, they hug her, they kiss her - she gets all the attention she wants, and they have a real live furry animal to love.

Blur likes to snuggle up next to Alex when he goes to bed.  She lies there and purrs...there is nothing that says "contentment" more than a happy cat.

Blur would snuggle up next to Julia, too, but Julia is still leery of the thorms.

For now.

You're not the boss of me

Kindergarten Here We Come

Alex's preschool graduation was today.

Yes, I know - preschool graduation.  What next?  Newborns will be switching their tassles over from one side to the other right after the nurse weighs and measures them.  Congratulations!  You've graduated from the womb!

But anyway.  They had gratuation this morning, complete with little red borrowed caps and gowns.  They get to keep the tassles.

Before the ceremony began, the kids got to run around and blow off some steam up on the stage.  Julia, who isn't aware that she's Alex's younger sister, was up there running around with them.  In fact, even after Alex's little group had been pulled off the stage to don their robes in another room, she was up there, chasing around with some of the other siblings.

And then it was just about time for things to get underway.  So we parents got our wild animals children back to ground level and dragged them back to sit with us. 

But things still hadn't started yet.  And Julia, ever-fidgety, needed - yes, needed - to race up and down the aisle between the rows of chairs.  Fine,  let her wear herself out a bit more; it will do everyone good.

And then, when things were one step closer to starting (you could tell by the merging and parting of all the preschool teachers over by the door) Julia decided to go back up on stage, solo, and run around and jump up and down and basically ignore her idiot mother standing at the edge of the stage hissing at her to GET OVER HERE NOW.

She'd come running toward me, giant grin on her little face, and then stop JUST out of my reach, drop on her knees and lean back a bit, then spin around and get up and race back across the stage.  I am a useless parent, obviously.  Bill finally couldn't stand the stress of it all and got up and caught her and carried her outside to have a chat.  When they came back in, she was pretty obedient.  Yes, my usefulness ended once each one was weaned.

Anyway, shortly after Julia was finally parked in a chair, "Pomp and Circumstance" (yes, I know...for pre-schoolers...hahahahaha) started blaring from a portable sound system, and in came the tiny graduates.  They marched up the stairs, across the stage, and were formed into a line by height - with the shortest kids at either end, and the tall ones in the middle.  Just like the Rockettes.  Alex looked very serious until he spotted us, and then he relaxed and waved a lot.

They began their show with the Pledge of Allegiance, and went right into "Yankee Doodle Dandy" afterward.  Alex and his best friend Chad, who were about 3 or 4 people away from each other (because Alex is tall and Chad is not) both kept their hands on their hearts through "Yankee Doodle" and into "This Land is Your Land" as well.  It was cute and patriotic.

Next - onto the summertime song - a rousing rendition of "Take Me out to the Ball Game."  Little hand gestures had been choreographed into the song, and my favorite was "For it's one, two, three strikes you're out" and watching all the kids staring at their hands as they carefully held up one..then twwwooo...then......THREEEEE! fingers. 

And then they chanted "Kindergarten Here we Come" which I don't remember at all, and followed that with "It's time to say Goodbye to our Friends" which I also don't remember - I think they were poems.  OH - no, I know why I don't remember those - it's because in between them, Julia decided she had to go potty.  So we dashed out of the room (in front of everyone, with Julia jumping loudly along behind me) and found the bathroom.  Took care of things, and by the time we got back, they'd started handing out (yes) diplomas.  Alex already had his, in fact.

I found out later that before that part began, during the SILENCE, Alex called out from the stage "DADDY, DID JULIA HAVE TO GO POTTY?"

After they were awarded their diplomas, they were free to go, and refreshments were served in the basement.  (This all took place at a church, by the way.  Not that it really matters, but I just like to keep people informed.)  Alex was happy to get rid of the cap and gown - it was pretty hot in there by the end of the ceremony.  We headed downstairs and the kids ate pizza squares and cake and watered-down apple juice and then chased each other around until Bill was ready to leave.

We headed off to the car, and then went to the pet store and bought a Cuban Night Anole to keep our Plain Old Regular Cuban Anole company.  Or to start a turf war - one or the other.  Stay tuned....

Oh Naturale...

One day last week Julia escaped from Bill at the midway point between getting undressed and getting dressed.

We found her standing on the back of the couch in the living room, which is below the GREAT BIG WINDOW that faces the street.  She stood there, unclad, leaning against the window, for all the world to see.

And on Saturday morning, the day of Alex's birthday party (as described in the previous post), he came out of the bathroom without a stitch of clothing on. 

"Go get your underwear!" I hollered in mock horror, to which he explained:

"But when my friends get here I want them to think I'm silly!"

Milestone

My firstborn child, my son, my little man, my baby boy...he turned five yesterday.

Five. 

We had a party for him on Saturday, with some of his friends and their parents and some relatives.  Of course, it rained.  Last summer we had a party for him and some of his friends and it rained then, too.  Probably because the main kid activities were to take place outdoors.

They still did.  Rain does not stop US! 

We had a dinosaur egg hunt - complete with thin plastic safari hats - and then the little kids played in the pool while the older kids filled water balloons.  The highlight was the THROWING OF THE WATER BALLOONS AT ALEX'S DADDY.  Bill's not so nuts about it because the little kids don't quite have the muscle power to throw a balloon hard enough so that it breaks on impact.  In my good sport husband's words "They never pop, and they hurt!"  We may not continue the water balloon tradition.

In addition to all this fun - plus all the running around up and down the stairs and in and out of every room in the house - loudly - we had good food.

Bill smoked 4 racks of ribs, made 3 beer can chickens, and grilled up a few hot dogs for the pickier eaters.  I made an enormous pasta salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, ham, soybeans, and red, orange and yellow bell peppers sauteed in a roasted garlic/olive oil puree.  I also made 3 family-sized boxes of Velveeta macaroni and cheese because I wasn't sure how many people would want that and because I'd rather have leftover food than not enough.  My sister brought a fruit platter, my cousin and his wife brought a vegetable platter...and we put out guacamole and salsa and chips and pretzels.  We also supplied juice and water and Bill's latest batch of beer.  Wine was available, but no one had any. 

The party ran from around noon until around six.  I hadn't really specified an end time for things...I just told everyone "come on over any time from noon on...."  As a result, arrival times and departure times were pretty staggered.

While the majority of the guests were at the house, we did the birthday cake.  Here's a really bad, rushed picture of it:

Please, first of all, excuse the mess that surrounds it - we left the dishes for AFTER the fun.  Anyway, in case it's not completely obvious, this is the "dinosaur cake" that Alex requested.  I'd made one last year - I must have a picture of it somewhere...Anyway - this year, because I knew we'd have around 30 people or so at the house, I went vertical with it.  That top section is a volcano...sort of.  There's the old, cooled black lava, and the newer, fiery red lava spilling over it.  The lighter green blobs (they looked a tiny bit better in person) were clumps of grass or bushes that had not, as yet, been touched by the liquid fire.  The dinosaurs you see are most assuredly out of proportion and drawn from every dinosaur period with no regard for timelines.

Alex saw the cake as it was assembled.  Inside, it's layers of pound cake with chopped cherries, strawberries and blueberries smashed in between, and vanilla (canned) frosting mixed with strawberry jam.  That stuff that I covered the cake with is called fondant.  It's like modeling clay, just to give you an analogy if you haven't encountered it before.  It tastes like blech, but it's fun to work with.  I didn't get tidy or fancy with this one - it's dinosaurs - they rough it.

Anyway, at some point during the contstruction of this cake, probably toward the end, Alex suddenly hugged my legs and told me I was the best mommy in the world.  I'm so self-critical about everything...it's nice to be reminded that I don't have to be perfect in my own eyes to be exactly right in someone else's.

Anyway, it was a good party.  The best part, for me, though, was earlier in the day when Alex woke up.  Julia and I had been up since before six or so...Bill was in the shower...and I could hear Alex starting to wake up on the monitor.  I heard him moving around on his bed, and then silence, and then, in a whisper, "party!"  He scurried from his room and started down the stairs, and I heard him, once more, still in a whisper, "party!" 

The next morning - Alex's real birthday - I made pancakes and we gave him presents from US, and of course he grew tired of new clothes pretty quick, but he liked the other stuff. 

Later in the day Bill took Alex fishing.  Big Manly Man fishing in the canoe.  Here they are, about to set off on their adventure:

They didn't catch anything, but Alex learned how to cast from a sitting position in the canoe without whacking Daddy in the head with the tip of his pole or the lure.   

All in all, a pretty good weekend.

An hour and a half

That's about how much uninterrupted sleep I got last night.  The rest was in ten or fifteen minute naps on the couch, whenever Julia stopped crying and crying and sobbing and sobbing long enough to doze off for a few minutes.  And all this with the background of Dora-the-Slora running in endless loops on the TV.

And as I was watching Dora's Mami and Papi kiss Dora and Boots goodnight in the living room so Dora and Boots could wait up for Santa and give him a present on Christmas (I know...it's May...) it occurred to me that Dora must have been a really difficult delivery for Mami.  I mean, take a look at this family portrait:

(sorry for the blur - I don't think their photographer was using a tripod.)  Notice Mami's normally proportioned hips.  And noticed Dora's freak head.  And I thought my kids' heads hurt!

It's also possible that Dora was adopted by Mami and Papi...after, you know...the unspeakable tragedy....

Anyway, that's the sort of stuff that drifts around in my head when I'm tired and trapped on a couch by a child who won't stop crying.  Bawling.  Sobbing.  Wailing.  Out of breath gaspy trying-to-talk-but-completely-incoherent crying. 

Sometimes she'd say her belly hurt.  Other times she'd say her mouth hurt.  I had a sore throat not too long ago, so I thought maybe she had one...gave her some tylenol at some point once she finally consented to take it, and that helped a tiny bit, but for the most part it was a non-stop ride of crying, wanting juice, wanting to lie down on the couch on top of mommy and watch Mowgli, wanting to go back in her crib, wanting to go downstairs again and lie down with/on mommy and watch DoratheSlora, wanting to go potty, wanting more juice, wanting to writhe around on the floor speaking in tongues and the occasional bit of American Toddler English, wanting to be held, not wanting to be held, wanting to go back in her crib, wanting to lie down on mommy's bed, wanting to go back in her crib, wanting to go downstairs again, wanting to go upstairs again, wanting to watch Diego Saves Christmas, and on and on and on.

Both my sister and a friend of mine suggested this morning that maybe she's teething.

Aha.  Hadn't thought of that - I was only thinking ILLNESS.  But a little while ago I looked in her mouth with the flashlight again - and by the way, for someone who can yell really really loud and stuff an awful lot of lo mein noodles and shrimp in her mouth, she won't open wide for flashlight exams.  But anyway - throat was normal color - but AHA - yep, there we are.  I could see the new teeth coming up on her lower gums.  I could feel them too, so they're not that far down and that really explains the misery and the pain.  I'm lucky she didn't bite my finger off.

So anyway, we are home, the kids and I.  And I can't say I'm unhappy about it - I have pink irises opening up on the front walkway and I got to run out there and take pictures several times already this morning as they open.  And the peonies are opening, and Mr. Lincoln (the rose) is opening...it's an exciting day in the land of flora here.

But for now, this is all.  I'm going to go downstairs and have the kids help me clean up the mess of toys and maybe even GET RID OF SOME!!!  I know.  I'm getting giddy.  Must be the lack of sleep.

And if I'm very lucky, when Julia takes a nap, I'll be able to take one too.  Alex won't, but he'll let me sleep on the couch if he's got a good movie to watch. 

That's a few hours away, though.  Maybe some more coffee would be good first....

Back in the cage

Well, it worked for one night, at least.

Last night Julia got out of bed four times - within 5 minutes - and when I told her that if she didn't stay in bed, I'd have to turn the bed back into a crib, she said "I want my crib." So...I put the crib rail back on.  We'll try again some other time.

Taking our lives in our hands...

We have converted Julia's crib to a toddler bed.

She loves it - "because I'm a BIG GIRL!!!"

And she is also well aware that she can get in and out of it on her own.  She demonstrated this to me when I put her to bed tonight.  Three times. 

"I'm not tired!  I want to watch a movie!" she said, standing by her bed.

I basically told her that if she can't stay in her big girl bed, then I'd have to make it into a crib again.

I really hope that convinces her to stay in bed.  I don't feel like putting the crib rail thing back on.  I like how it looks as a toddler bed.  And I got her new Dora-the-Slora sheets and everything...

We'll see....

New sprinkler

Bill bought a new sprinkler today.

And Julia enjoyed it...

And Alex joined in...

And he got wet, but not soaking wet...

like Julia did.   

Hollering

I get home and do dinner and dishes and bedtime with the kids...and by the time I get to sit down and type anything my brain has shut off and I sit here drooling on the keys for a while.

Since I still don't have anything new or exciting that I feel like writing about at the moment, I'll post a couple of pictures I took the other day.  I was mostly going around taking pictures of little green things coming up and little flowers blooming and so forth.  Alex was outside playing with a plastic TMNT that he got in his most recent Cheeseburger Happy Meal, and so I asked him to run from one end of the yard to where I was.

And so he went over near the back of the yard, where the vegetable gardens are...

And he started running...

And running...

And all the while...

His mouth...

Never closed, and he never...

Dropped his turtles.

Picasso

...has had an obvious influence on Julia's budding style as an artist.

Hoppy Easter!

When Fathers Dress Their Toddler Daughters...

And later...

And then...

And finally...

TA-DA!

Admonition

"But you're a ballerina, so you shouldn't be on top of the house."

(Alex and Julia are playing with Julia's "Little People" dollhouse.)

Bits and Pieces

Yesterday afternoon Bill took Alex to Lowe's to get some more gardening supplies.  While they were walking around the store, Alex said to Bill "Daddy, can we get some pretty flowers for Mommy?"  A woman walking by looked at Alex and said "OH!  How sweet!"

He's a good little boy.

*

Yesterday morning Bill was coaching Alex (within earshot of me) in things to say to make Mommy want to cook breakfast for them.  Things like "Mommy, your hair looks really nice!" and "Mommy, you're so pretty!"  Then they came downstairs with their Bambi eyes and tried it out.  Pathetic as they were, I cooked for them anyway. 

This morning we were all sitting around in the living room and I'd been reading to the kids.  Julia was starting to turn to the dark side - throwing her elephant around the room, pretending to burp, and so forth.  So I asked Julia if she wanted to watch a movie and she yelled "Yes!" but Alex said "No, I'm hungry, I want breakfast, I'd like some oatmeal, and your hair is pretty, Mommy."

*

Speaking of elephants...

First I have to mention that I read Dooce faithfully every day.  Part of the appeal for me is that her daughter is just a few months older than mine, and it's nice to read about other families going through the same things.  Like the whole Dora obsession.  We have Dora books, Dora toys, Dora DVDs and Dora songs endlessly playing through our collective subconscious. 

One of the recent additions to the DVD collection is Dora's World Adventure, in which she and Swiper the Fox travel the world, unaccompanied by any adults, to return all the friendship bracelets that Swiper swiped before the start of the show.  This is important, because it's Friendship Day, and all Dora's friends around the world are supposed to wear their Friendship Bracelets at the same time so that they will sparkle and glow (the bracelets, not the friends) and "rainbow colors will light up the sky!" 

So anyway, apparently Swiper stopped in France, China, Russia, and Africa when he was on his bracelet-swiping adventure, so this is where we go to make things right.  Dora has appropriate costume changes for each locale...and a cheery song with which to greet the locals. 

When they're in Africa, they meet up with Dora's African Friend - a little boy whose name I've forgotten.  He's glad to see her and the bracelets, of course, and offers to bring them to the mountains in the distance to dole out the bracelets to all the other kids.  But first, he cautions, they have to go through the wild animal park.  He offers to let them ride on his elephant.

I just need to pause here and mention the whole thing about accents.  Dora, if you don't already know, is fluent in Spanish and English.  It's great, because my kids have learned to count and identify things like owls and snakes and rats in both English and Spanish, which will no doubt be helpful at some point in their lives.  Her French - not so great.  "Bonjour" is pronounced "bon-jer" throughout the whole song, even by the regular French-speaking people she encounters on her stroll through Paris.  So I have my doubts about the authenticity of the rest of the accents in the movie.

Back to her little friend on his elephant.  He has an accent too.  I don't remember what country in Africa he is from...but I suspect he has a generic African accent that someone dreamed up.  And when he says "You can ride on my elephant," it could out as "elly-phahnt."  I don't know if this is accurate, but that's what we've got to work with.

Julia has picked up on this. 

So now her favorite stuffed animal - a pink elephant that is so loved that it no longer has any sort of skeletal structure and can't walk and must be carried everywhere - is now her "elly-phahnt."  It's especially funny in the middle of the night when she wakes up and she can't find it in her crib because it feels just like her blanket, and she hollers "MOMMY, I CAN'T FIND MY ELLY-PHAHNT!" in her shrill little American girl voice.

Gracias, Dora! 

 

 

Untangling the Snarls

Our work week morning routine is pretty well established by this point.  It runs something like this:

I hit snooze several times because a) I've usually been up with Julia a couple times during the night and I still need more sleep and b) because I'm one of those people that sets the clock ahead fifteen minutes just so I can do math while I'm 90% asleep.  Exercise is good for the brain.  Oh, and c) I set the alarm clock for when I'd like to get up if I was living (and sleeping) in an ideal world.  In my real world, I need the snooze button.

At five thirty, I tell my husband he's got fifteen more minutes.  While I'm able to spring out of bed like a clown out of a cannon at any hour of the night, my husband prefers to ease into his wakefulness.  The snooze button gives us another seven minutes, at which point I tell him he's got seven more minutes.  After one more slap at the snooze button, it's time for him to get up and go take a shower while I go downstairs and do the following:

pack lunch for my husband

pack lunches and snacks for the kids (which includes putting each child's initials on each juice box and cereal bar and clementine)

wake the kids up and pick out clothes for them to wear

wake Alex up again

Bring Julia downstairs

Tell her five times that no, she cannot watch a movie

Wake Alex up again.

When Bill comes downstairs, all cleaned and pressed, I hand Julia off to him (some days she just does NOT want me to take a shower until SHE decides it's time.  Then she'll take my hand and lead me to the foot of the stairs and tell me to go take my shower.) and go wake Alex up again.  It doesn't always take this much prodding to get Alex out of bed, but sometimes it does.

While I take my shower and iron clothes for work and scribble eyeliner on and rake mascara over my invisible eyelashes, Bill gives the kids breakfast and gets them dressed, or at least gets the process started. 

Back when we were trying to convince Alex that he's old enough to get himself dressed, Bill came up with the idea of making it a competition.  Never mind just getting dressed - you have to get dressed FAST.  So it has become a one-sided race between Alex and (in theory) Julia.  Of course, Julia needs more help than Alex, which slows her down.  And she also couldn't care less about getting dressed faster than him, so he pretty much always wins.  And he used to get incredibly upset if we got Julia dressed first.  He pouts, he cries, he complains, he sits down partly dressed and sulks.  He is much like my husband in that way.  Not a graceful loser.

This morning while I was packing up my own lunch, after my shower, Julia didn't want to get dressed, and Bill was trying to change her mind for her.  Now, she's not easily convinced to change her mind.  About anything.  So we have to be creative. 

I'm standing at the kitchen counter, and Julia is on the floor, having made it quite clear that she doesn't want to go in the other room and get dressed.  Bill says "okay, fine" and heads into the living room where the clothes are. 

And here's where it gets weird.

"Okay Julia," he calls in a sing-song voice, "ooh, I wonder what underwear you have today!  I bet it's pretty!  I wonder who's on your underwer today!  Ooh!  It's DORA!"

He has her attention, but she is still in the kitchen.

"Okay, fine, then I'm going to wear them!  Yup!  I'm gonna wear them and then...put them in my pocket!"

"NOOOOOO!"  Julia finally races into the other room to stop Daddy from stealing her undergarments.  Game over.

Through the whole thing, I was standing at the sink just listening and shaking my head and thinking this just sounds so wrong....

So anyway, after the kids are dressed it's usually about time for Bill to leave for work.  The kids wave to him out the front window while I move my car out of the way of his truck.  After all that, we do the brushing of the teeth and the brushing (or combing) of the hair.

Julia's hair, as you can see from the pictures, is getting long and is straight and fine.  It tangles easily.  It tangles voluntarily.  With abandon.  Especially if she gets oatmeal in her hair.  And it dries before anyone notices it.  Which is most of the time.  So combing her hair is painful for her and frustrating for me.  We've reached a compromise, though.  She'll hold pretty still for me if we do the combing on the couch in front of the big living room window and I squirt her hair with water frequently through the process.  She usually only takes the comb away from me once, and can be convinced to give it back without too  many threats.

So that's what we were doing this morning.  Sitting on the couch trying to get through the tangles without bloodshed.  Any time I hit a snarl, she'd yell out like I was ripping her fingers off, and I'd apologize and lie and say I hadn't seen that tangle, and she'd tell me to comb s-l-o-w-l-y. 

We also talk about things...airplanes or birds we see flying across the sky, or squirrels racing across the trees ("that squirrel is sad." "why?" "he miss his mommy and daddy.") or whatever.  Somehow this morning we got on the topic of things that are silly.  And I asked her what she thought was silly, and she said "Daddy's silly."

"Daddy's silly?" (no kidding) "What does Daddy do that's silly?"

And as I asked that...I just knew...

"Daddy wears my underwear!"

"He does?"

"He wears my underwear and puts it in his pocket!"

I can't wait to hear about this from the teachers at her daycare.

 

By...

I get back in the car after putting $20.00 worth of gas in the tank. 

While I'd been standing outside, I saw the signs that there was conflict broiling between the little daughter and the little son of mine.  Julia's smug grin...Alex's furrowed brow...who had done what now?

As I buckled myself in, Alex announced "Mommy, Herky's on the floor but I didn't do it on purpose I was trying to give him to Julia."  Herky - short for Hercules - is a little brown and tan stuffed animal pug.  He's named after the real live version owned by our nephew Joe and his girlfriend, Emily. 

Alex continued to bombard me with explanations of how he didn't mean to have Herky fall on the floor, and it was by an accident, and could I please give Herky to Julia?  I told him I believed him and that he didn't do it on purpose.  Sometimes Alex lets things bother him a bit more than necessary.

Alex:  Yeah, well, Julia thinks I did it by on purpose.

We pull out of the gas station parking lot and onto Route 2 going North.

Alex:  Julia, do you think I did it by on purpose?

Julia:  Nope!

Alex:  Well, well do you think I did it by accident?

Julia:  Nope!

Alex:  Do you think I did it by mistake?

(He is sounding more and more...I don't know, not frantic, but something like it)

Julia:  (pertly) Nope! (I can just tell she's grinning.  I hear Alex sigh loudly.)

Me:  Alex, I don't think she really understands what those words mean.

Alex: Well then Julia, what do you think it was by?

Julia:  By a tree!

Know Thyself

This morning everyone left the house.

It's been a while.  But Alex and Julia were surprisingly cooperative about going back to daycare.  Maybe they were looking forward to playing with kids other than each other.

Of course, the morning never runs without a little bump or two. 

Julia was being mildly ornery while I was trying to get her shoes on, and I said, "Julia, you need to be nice."

And she said,

"I not a be nice girl!"

Moments Ago

"Mommy, open the fridge and give me an ice cube so I can put it down Daddy's pants because he put an ice cube in my underpants!"

Forty Three Degrees

Well...Sid's not going to last much longer.  It's been warming up, and a little while ago I noticed him leaning backwards, gazing beseechingly at the sky, wondering about the meaning of his all-too-brief existence.

I just looked out again. 

His head has fallen off.

I don't know why, but I sort of find the whole thing a little funny.

Alex doesn't, though.  He really wanted Daddy to see the snowman.  I showed him some of the pictures I'd taken (but not this one - the pictures from a happier time) and said at least we can show Daddy the pictures...but that didn't help. 

He wandered around the kitchen, quiet for a moment, and then he said "But I wanted to show Daddy a REAL snowman and if we show him a picture of a snowman it's not the same thing because a picture's not REAL!"

Happy, Jolly Soap

Two weeks ago we had a tiny bit of snow one morning.  I was buckling the kids into their car seats, and Alex was singing his version of Frosty's theme song:

Frosty, the snowman, wid a happy, jolly soap, wid a conconpine an a buddin nose and two eyes made out of cold...

I went to the other side of the car to buckle Julia in, and she began to sing:

Frosty, the snowman, wha - happy, jolly SOAP, winaconconpie...an a nose and nose...and....a nose....

At which point Alex hollered out: NOT SO MANY NOSES!

Anyway, we made this snowman a little while ago.  Just so you know, Alex stuck in the arms, I did the face, and Julia placed the hat and then added a third arm sticking out of the snowman's back.

Alex wanted to name him Frosty.  I said okay, but I think he looks more like Frosty's less dapper cousin, Sid.

Mediator

...we're home today.  Again.

I was home for chunks of the week last week - Julia had a fever and a double ear infection (which  probably was partly responsible for the fever, but we didn't know about the ear infection til we brought her to the Dr because she just never complains about her ears, no matter what.  She's tough like that at times.) and so Bill and I sort of divided the child care stuff depending on our schedules.  Plus I had all the night shifts.  Brought me back to the days when she was a newborn and did not believe in sleep when it was dark outside.

But anyway.  So we're home again today - the children and me - the original antibiotic the Dr put Julia on gave her rather drastic plumbing problems.  If you really want the details, go ahead and email me.  Otherwise, I don't want to be too graphic.  But in a nutshell - it was REALLY REALLY ICKY.  ESPECIALLY WHEN IT LEAKED OUT OF HER PULL UP AND DOWN HER LEG AND ONTO THE FLOOR.  Right near Bill's new shoes.  heh heh.

So - I can't bring her back to daycare until THAT issue clears up.  And I kept Alex home too, today, partly because he can keep Julia entertained (or annoyed) and that gives me time to do other things around here, and also because - finally - it has SNOWED!!!

I shoveled the driveway this morning, and the front walk, and cleaned off the car and the truck, and threw a lot of snowballs at various windows - much to Alex's delight.  A bit later, I'll get the kids dressed and let them go out and play in it.  Who knows if we'll get any more snow this season - we've hardly had any, while other parts of the country have been inundated.  But the point is - it's SNOW!  Good, wet, snowman/snowball snow.

But meanwhile, the kids are downstairs playing and watching "Shrek 2" and, of course, feuding over such priceless things as a roll of paper towels and a nearly-deflated balloon.  So just a moment ago I heard screeching (Julia) and loud, indignant whining (Alex) and figured I should see what was up.

It was the paper towels.  For whatever reason, Alex had a roll of paper towels, and he was running around the basement with them, smiling, and not letting Juila have her turn with them.  So she'd hit him, and that's what all the noise was about.

So first I reminded them that if they couldn't get along, they couldn't play in the snow later.  That got their attention, and some groans and cries of protest.

Then I told them they had to share, which is never a popular idea, and since they couldn't do that on their own, I'd set a timer, and when the time was up, whoever had the paper towel roll had to give it to the other.

At war over paper towels. 

I can't wait to tell them about this some day.

Stern

Static Electricity

Multi-Lingual

Alex and Julia are watching a "Go, Diego, Go!" DVD - "Diego Saves Christmas" - (thank goodness.  What would we do without that boy?)

Anyway, for those of you who don't know the whole family tree, Diego is Dora-the-Explora's cousin.  They don't look alike to me - Diego looks like a relatively normal cartoon character and Dora, by comparison, has a freakishly large and out-of-proportion head.  But she's really cool in every other way, so I try to overlook that.  (Actually, according to her theme song, she is a SUPER cool Explora, Dora.  I didn't mean to diminish her.)

Anyway - before I get to my point - which always takes longer than necessary - on the cover of the DVD case wherein Diego saves Christmas, there is a picture of Diego riding on the back of what I thought was a goat. 

I just realized, after listening to Julia saying "Glomma" a few times downstairs, that Diego is, in fact, riding a Llama.  Not that it makes all that much more sense to me, but then I haven't watched these stories yet. 

I bought the DVD to keep my kids distracted yesterday (while Bill lay on the couch immobilized by a migraine) so that I could keep working on the cookies.  The endless cookies.  I admit it.  I bought the DVD to babysit the kids.  It worked.  I love Diego and Dora.

So onto my point.  I was sitting here a couple of minutes ago checking email - we just got back from a trip to the kids' doctor - Julia has pink-eye.  Yippee.  So anyway, they're downstairs reliving the thrill of Diego saving Christmas AND learning Spanish words at the same time, which is the coolest thing about these DVDs, to me.  My kids are learning to speak another language.  Dora and Diego will share a word in English, and then say the Spanish equivalent, and then ask the children watching them to repeat the word back to them.  My kids join right in.  With enthusiasm.  It's pretty cool (or super cool). 

In this particular moment, apparently there was some sort of danger lurking about, and Diego was telling them to be careful. 

"When we want to say 'be careful' we say 'cuidado!' Say CUIDADO!"

Dora and Diego holler a lot, by the way. 

But anyway - like good little students, Alex and Julia authoratatively holler the word back at the TV:

"Gwee-gah-go!  Gwee-gah-go!" 

I wish it was cold and snowy and icy outside right now, just so I could yell "Gwee-gah-go!" at someone.

Transitioning

I'd been wondering lately when daycare might start bringing Julia into the Early Preschool classroom.  She's in Older Toddler now.  When they transition the kids, they usually start putting them in the next room for a few hours in the afternoon, then for the whole afternoon, and finally all day.  I knew some of her little friends had begun to move up, and she's been doing really well with potty training, so I figured it might be soon.

The littlest kids - infants through older toddlers - are on one side of the building and have their own fenced in play yard.  And the older kids - early preschool and preschool - are at the other end with their own larger play yard (with larger toys).  The kindergarten kids (whose rooms are downstairs) play in the bigger kid yard.

Sometimes they'll give you a little notice that your child is going to start transitioning, but it doesn't always happen before the transition starts.  Today Julia spent the last 3 hours of her day in the early preschool room.  So it's beginning....

I went in to Alex's room first, as I usually do, after work today, and he came running over to me hollering "MOMMY!  JULIA PLAYED OUTSIDE IN MY PLAY YARD TODAY - AND SHE DIDN'T HURT ANYONE!!"

Another email snippet

Also in an email on 10/26...

Meant to tell you...alex decided we should tell each other stories "about our mouths" last night - I think he meant made-up stories, not stories from a book.  He told me to go first, "because you're better at it than me" (good boy - mommy likes flattery!) so I asked him what he wanted the story to be about, and he said "hat trick" - which translates to "Patrick" - the star fish best friend of Sponge Bob.  So I made up a story based on stuff Alex had told me about his day, and finished it up - "The End!" And he smiled, and I said it was his turn.

"Once upon a dime....there were three friends:  J L, C, Me, A, B, and J..." - that's how it began.  I tried to memorize bits of it so I could retell it to someone, but it went all over the place and I just couldn't do it.  But at one point, for instance, someone opened up a boat and the THING fell out...and then...(he goes crawling across our bed to the night table on Bill's side) "the watch...(he holds up bill's wristwatch)...................fell APART!......and...um...um....um....um....." and various other strange and exciting things took place, including the cat arriving, but with TWO eyes (not like our one-eyed version), and S (a girl at school) chasing all of them, and on and on...until..."The End!"

From Sept 7th...

this morning julia took off out the door so she could run into the front yard to see if elmo was in the window.  (since no one had put him there before we left the house, he wasn't.)  And I ran behind her yelling at her to come back to the car but of course she ignored that.  I went over and stood in the driveway and glared at her, and she stood across the yard and glared back at me.  I mouthed "Come HERE" and she mouthed "NO" so I said "okay, bye!" and walked back to the car.  she yelled "NO!" and started to come back. I buckled Alex in and went to make sure she hadn't run to CVS or something.  She came marching in my direction, NOT looking at me, marched past, looking at the ground with a grumpy face...marched toward the car, and then took off toward the little flower garden near the garage.  "have to get a flower!" she yelled.  so she picked a black-eyed susan and brought it back and when she got near me she looked up with an angelic smile and said sweetly "for you, mommy!" and handed me the flower.  then she ran back to get more...she picked one of the cosmos...and then tried to pull off another black eyed susan but the stem was fairly thick and wouldn't break.  she selected a different flower, and I watched her pulling hard on that - saw the whole black eyed susan bush being tugged in her direction - and then suddenly the stem broke and she whacked herself in the forehead with the flower.  she didn't cry - she just yelled "OH!" in a surprised little voice.

I had to turn away so she wouldn't see me laughing at her.

Snippets from the past week or so

From an email to my sister on 10/26...

my mouth hurts. 
when i got home yesterday nothing nothing nothing had been done - the kitchen was a mess, bill was still lying on the couch with his migraine, and oh yeah, alex was pitching a fit in the car because i wouldn't let him stay in there and listen to his dinosaur cd til the very end.  i had to remove him from the car, maneuver him into the house, pull his shoes and coat off while he writhed on the floor like a...a....a tantrum-throwing-4-year-old-boy, and then carry his flailing angry little body up the stairs and dump him on his bed.  Oh yeah, while he was still in the car trying to elude my grasp, he looked at me and said "Stupid!" which, as we all know, is not nice.  He stayed up there shrieking and wailing until I felt like dealing with him, and he finally apologized and that was it, and that stuff i made didn't come out as good as i'd hoped - good thing i made plenty of guacamole.  julia needed to go potty only 4 times or so last night.  the last time i was just at the end of my patience (there isn't much to begin with it seems) and i asked her "are you all done?" (from doing nothing but singing and swishing her hair) and she said "nope!" and I said fine, i'm setting a timer.  You have one minute to do SOMETHING.  After that - back to your crib.  I'm sure there are parenting magazines and experts who don't recommend setting a timer for your child on the potty - so fine, she'll need therapy for something ANYWAY...so the timer goes off, she has done nothing but sing "the wheels on the bus" and swish her hair, so I tell her it's time to go back in her crib, and I lift her off the toilet, and ALL THE TORTURED DEMONS OF HELL SCREAM FROM HER LITTLE MOUTH.  And then she flops down on her knees and cries, because i am so mean, and so fine - FINE - I put her back on the toilet and I swear she used every ab muscle in her little body to squeeze out one single drop of pee - basically a big F.U. Mommy - and then back to her crib, quite agreeably.  And then - Mommy - I need some juice....so I grabbed the cup from her in the dark because FINE - and she laughed.  LAUGHED AND LAUGHED.  And I brought it back to her and she laughed some more.  Mere, did I do something really bad to someone in a previous life?  I must have.

Oh my...uh...oh my.  I dont know what to say.  What do you do in that sort of situation?  You cant laugh, because then she will think you think its ok to have fun  in the middle of the night when youre supposed to be sleeping.  I just dont know. 

I don't know either, Mere.  I don't know.  I don't know.  I feel my sanity just slip-sliding away in those moments.  She just laughs if I get angry.  They both think it's hysterically funny.  I don't know what to do.  Well, this morning they were both saying "No!" to everything - come on, it's time to brush your teeth, hold still, let me brush your hair, etc.  No no no no no.  With smiles.  Julia sat down on the little stool in the bathroom with her back to me - didn't want to put her pants back on after going potty.  No!  And she plunked down with a proud little grin.  So I finally got them out the door and into the car.  Then they wanted to listen to the dinosaur CD.  And I said no, because they weren't doing what I'd asked them to do earlier, so they couldn't listen to this now.  Not much reaction to it.  Then when we were driving by Toys R Us, Alex said (as he does every time) that he really wants to go to the toy store soon.  And I said "yes, I know, but this morning when I asked you to come brush your teeth you kept saying no, so if you're not going to do the things I ask you to do, you're not going to be going to the toy store any time soon."  Kind of a long speech, but I kept the words simple, hoping it would hit home.

There was a bit of silence, and then he asked "Is it closed?"

From an email on October 25...

Julia is thrilled that I moved my rolltop desk upstairs...she likes to go hide in that corner now...and crawl under the desk and peek out with her impish little smile.

She really knows how to use her eyes, too.  Not just to see with - but the LOOKS she has mastered already!!!!!  She is such a ham.  She was singing in the basement the other day...I think she was singing ring around the rosie or something...and in the middle somewhere, she'd just stop and say "I'm dead" and fall, face down, on the floor.  And then laugh.  And get up and do it again.

She was singing "baa baa black sheep" last night - "...one for the after and one for the day..." something like that. 

Halloween

Never mind Robin...

Happiness is...

When I picked up Julia today at daycare, one of her teachers suddenly started to laugh and said she had to tell me what Julia said.  I was a little worried, because I know if anyone gets written up for foul language, it will probably be my daughter.

Anyway, Miss G said all the kids were sitting around a table drawing the things that make them happy (okay, they are two - they were scribbling...but that's okay.  Because they are two.), and the teacher went around the table asking each child what made them happy.  She said they were saying things like "My mommy makes me happy" and "My kitty cat makes me happy" - your normal two-year-old stuff.  And then she got to Julia, who said "My humpback whale makes me happy."

SleepTalking

Last night we put Alex to bed on our bed because Julia was still kind of awake, and if they start talking, then they will start laughing, and throwing things, and jumping up and down, and they will never get to sleep.

Later on, when we went to bed, I went upstairs first, and Alex was asleep but he was a bit restless, and muttering to himself.  I couldn't understand what he was saying, but he seemed a bit agitated about something.

And then, clear as anything, he said, "But I want to eat my pterodactyl!"

No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!

I meant to write this one a couple of weeks ago, but with Bill in Seattle for 10 days and me with the kids and work...it didn't happen.

Of course, that's no excuse - it really started BEFORE Bill left, but...whatever...I'm still using his trip as my excuse.

Anyway...I should have known something was going to happen that day...

I decided that all the stuffed animals should "live" upstairs, unless they were being played with.  So after work on a Tuesday I summoned my children and told them I had a FUN PROJECT for us to do!!!!!  (It's all in how you pitch it to them...okay, not always, but sometimes overenthusiasm IS catching.)

I told them my idea, and showed them the little area in the corner of their room where the animals could all sleep or hang out or whatever they all do when we're not looking.  I said I would throw the stuffed animals up the stairs, and they (Alex and Julia) would catch them and bring them into the new stuffed animal spot.

They were very enthusiastic, actually.  So we began.  Two at a time (so each child could catch one and there would be no tug of war at the top of the stairs) I threw the stuffed animals up the stairs, and my kids laughed and giggled and raced back and forth transporting the toys to their new home. 

When we had done all of the ones in the living room (collected from the whole ground floor), I sent the kids down to the basement/living room area to see if there were any down there.  There were, of course, so they brought everything up to the foot of the stairs and then went up to the second floor and I threw the rest of them up.

Then Alex decided he wanted all of HIS animals on his bed so he could sleep with them all.

I remember doing this when I was little...I also remember being VERY careful to arrange all my animals so that they faced UP - so they could breathe.

Anyway, Alex put all his animals on his bed and threw a lot of Julia's into her crib - which she immediately tried to pull back out - she doesn't like to be crowded in there.  It kept them busy.

And such was the enthusiasm about this change of scenery for the stuffed animals, that when it came time for Julia to go to bed, Alex VOLUNTEERED to go to bed too.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

So - okay!!  So up we went, Alex went potty, I changed Julia's diaper and got her in her jammies, Alex got in his...and there we were, on Alex's bed, for story time.  I started to read "Where the Wild Things Are" - and yes, the wild rumpus started.

Julia loves to jump.  Jump and jump and jump.  On anything.  And doesn't care about silly parents telling her not to.

So she jumped.  And I kept saying "Julia, sit down.  Julia, sit DOWN!" and she laughed at me and jumped that ONE MORE TIME...behind me...and sprang forward...and her mouth met the footboard with a yucky soft thud...and then the silence...and then the screaming.

And the blood.  She'd split her lower lip inside and out.  A real gusher.  Brought her downstairs and hollered for Bill to come and help, though there was really nothing for him to do as she wouldn't let go of me and after mopping up her mouth with my other hand (and paper towels) the bleeding slowed down considerably, and she stopped crying.

But still - that gash on her lip...so off we went, Julia and I, on our first (and probably not last) trip to the emergency room. 

It wasn't too busy, fortunately.  And Julia pitched a little fit when I wouldn't let her play in the ladies' room...and I let her yell.  Yes I did.  I didn't try to shush her at all.  I figured the noisier she was, the sooner they'd see us.

And it seemed to work.  Pretty soon some guy in greens called out Julia's name and we followed him to the pediatric ward.

I would make a suggestion to the decorators:  MORE DISTRACTING STUFF ON THE WALLS PLEASE!! 

We looked at the stars-and-moons border and counted moons vs stars and noted the colors...but that didn't take very long and Julia really wasn't all that excited about them...especially after Mommy (for the fifth time) "LOOK!  MOONS!"  Yeah, mommy, the same moons you were so excited about two minutes ago....

Various people came in and gathered information from us and looked at Julia's mouth and asked about what happened.  Then, finally, the doctor and his mini-doctor came in.  The doctor was an older gentleman and he was nice enough, but he was too slow.  Enough with the explaining what had to be done - I'm not going to get all hysterical about some stitches - I'd just like you to do them so we can go home and my up-past-her-bedtime child can maybe go to sleep before she beats me to a pulp in her angry tired frenzy.

But no.

He would say something.

And pause.

And then say something.

And pause.

I don't have a lot of patience.

And meanwhile, the intern was a younger man who SMILED REALLY BIG AND A LOT.

While the doctor was GRABBING MY DAUGHTER BY THE MOUTH and telling me (surprise!) she needed stitches on the outside, Julia looked around the rest of the room and announced:

"I want cheese!"

See that, Mr Slow Doctor?????  She's hungry now!!!

Julia, we don't have any cheese with us.

I want CHEESE!!!

The doctor and doctorling hurried out of there to go announce the plans to the rest of the staff...and Julia continued to demand cheese.

Julia, there's no cheese!

And then she pointed to the corner of the room and said "I want cheese stick!"

There was a cannister of individually wrapped swabs with the little plastic tube that you put the swab into after you swab the inside of someone's mouth (or wherever).  And yes, they kind of looked like individually wrapped cheese sticks.

Boy was she mad when I told her they weren't cheese sticks.  While she was screeching about that disappointment, the doctors came back in.  The doctor looked at me when Julia babbled "cheese stick" again, and I pointed and said "she thinks those are cheese sticks."

He looked at her for a moment and she glared through her little tears.

He looked at the swabs.

He said to Julia, "You want a cheese stick?"

She said "Yes!"

And so he gave her one of the swab-and-tube things.

And, lo and behold, she was happy.  The doctor scored MANY points with that.

Anyway, eventually the show got on the road and they did, indeed, stitch Julia up.  But first they had to swaddle her in a big sheet - like you do with newborns to keep them from flailing around and upsetting themselves...and THEN they had this heavy duty velcro thing that they strapped her into - to further immobilize her.  Her sheet-encased toes stuck out one end, and her loud, open-mouthed head stuck out the other.  The nurse had to sort of lie on top of Julia to hold her still, and hold her chin up at just the right angle so the doctor could inject the novicaine.  (however that's spelled).  I held Julia's toes and patted her on the shoulderish area and kept telling her over and over that she was being a very good girl and the doctor was going to make her all better and it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, pretty soon we'll go home and see daddy.  And the smiling intern stood there not really knowing what to do until the nurse basically grabbed his hands and made him help hold Julia's head still.

She screamed a lot.  "MOMMY! MOMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYY!" and when I mentioned the part about seeing Daddy soon, she changed that to "I want DADDDDDDYYYYYYY" (because obviously Mommy's not doing much to stop this man from sticking a needle in my lip!!!!)

It was probably over in a couple of minutes, but of course it seemed longer.  And partly because impatient me felt like the doctor was taking forEVer to make those three little knots.

But anyway, eventually he was done and Julia was freed from her straightjacket thing, and she even was given an orange popsicle, which she enjoyed immensely.

She learned nothing from the experience, however.  She tried multiple times in that room to jump up and down on the gurney.  She still jumps wherever she can here.  But she is only two.  She doesn't associate the jumping with the pain.

Now...cut ahead a few days...the doctor told me to bring her back in about 4 days to the express care wing and they'd snip the stitches.  Okay fine.  I figured I'd do that on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday morning I wrote about below - somewhere - where I took Bill to the airport.  Later that morning when Julia woke up I went in to get her out of her crib...and the stitches were gone.

Gone.

I looked all over her mattress, on the floor...gone.

"Julia?  Where are your stitches?"

"I got a boo boo!"

"Yes...I know that..."

My sister suggested that Julia chewed them off.  That makes sense.  She was playing with them a lot and sort of chewing on her lip.  But still.  All three stitches, gone.  And no - they were not the dissolving kind.

Well - no complaints here - saved us an afternoon trip to the hospital.

But still.  She chewed them off....

And here she is, the morning after the accident.

It's kind of hard to see the actual stitches, but you can see the swollen lip.

Oh - and that night?  When we got home from the hospital?  We watched part of one of her "Dora the Explorer" DVDs...and Julia hurled herself off the couch at the end so she could dance with Dora and Boots the Monkey after they'd accomplished their mission for the day.

Jumping up and down, singing along, and laughing.

And it's not even spring any more...

On the ride in to daycare and work the other day, Alex announced:

"Mommy!  I saw a humpingbird!"

Bloo-foe

A few weeks ago I took Julia with me to the grocery store and Alex stayed home with Bill.  I can't remember what exactly was going on that day...but for some reason I was stressed and in a hurry.  Good thing I had Julia with me.

First of all, she didn't want to sit in the seat part of the shopping cart, and because I am stupid, I gave in and let her hang out in the big part of the cart.  I told her as long as she SAT DOWN THE WHOLE TIME, she could stay there.

Well it was an adventure.  She sprouted extra arms and reached for everything.  I put a package of blueberries in the seat she should have been strapped into; she wanted to hold it and grabbed it and after a brief tug of war, a few berries were freed, but I got it away from her.  She wanted to hold all the produce...the cheese...the chicken salad...the salsa...the juice.... 

We stopped in the seafood section so I could buy something...again, I can't remember that either.  She wanted to look at the lobsters.  I think she was pronouncing it "wossas" that day.  She scored points with the seafood manager - he asked if she liked to look at them or liked to eat them, and I told him "both" - which is quite true.  She loves lobster.  Alex does too.  Anyway, Julia looked and pointed and talked to the "wossas" and then said "bye bye wossas" as I rolled her toward the front of the store.

On the way to the checkout line, a small dark-haird man clad in black approached from the frozen foods aisle and I carefully did not make eye contact because I didn't have time for a free sample or a survey.

In an over the top Italian accent he accosted me with "Would you like to try some gelato Italiano?"  He said it musically - geLAHto iTALiANo - with emphasis, and with expressive sweeping hand gestures.  I smiled grimly and shook my head while Julia tried to climb out of the cart.

"We 'ave limone, coconut, and peanutbutter!"  He called enticingly. 

Peanutbutter?  Peanutbutter "gelato Italiano"?  - there's just something that doesn't seem right about that, but maybe it's me.  I shook my head again and said "No thank you" as pleasantly as I could.

"I know you like it!" he called after me, smiling sadly at my foolishness.

In the checkout line I had to hold Julia and then carry her out to the car in one arm while I pushed the cart with the other hand.  She squirmed and thrashed and wailed angrily on the way to the car and yelled while I put her in the car and put the groceries in the back. 

I got in and she was wailing "I want bloo-foe!  I wanna bloo-foe!".

I've had only two CD's in my car for the longest time, and we've been on a Beatle's kick for months, it seems, so I hit play and "Love Me Do" started playing.

"NOOO!!!  I want bloo-foe!  Wanna hear BLOO-FOE!"

I'm trying to back out of the crowded parking lot without killing anyone and at the same time trying to figure out which song she was talking about.  I was hot because the AC was just getting started, and the shopping had been hurried and tense with Julia and her octopus arms...and she was yelling and crying and saying "I wanna hear BLOO-FOE!!!"  over and over in between sobs of anguish.  Why was I torturing her????!!!

I'm driving up the road, praying for the lights to turn red so I can look at the back of the Beatles' CD and look at all the titles and try to remember where "bloo-foe" came from.  Since the lights insisted on staying green, I tried asking Julia for a little help.

"Which song do you mean, Julia?  Which one?  "From me to you?"  That one?  "Yellow Submarine?"  Do you want to hear that?  Is that what you mean?  Julia?  Julia, which song are you talking about?  JULIA I DON'T KNOW WHAT BLOO-FOE IS!!!!"  All this as I'm trying to be a responsible adult and just focus on DRIVING the car SAFELY.  And during all this she is still wailing and saying "I want BLOO-FOE!" and "NOOOO" to every song I suggest.

We are nearing the turn onto route 113 and she suddenly changes tactics and yells "I wanna hear issteenagella!"

Ah.

It was like sun breaking though thunderclouds.

It was like diving into an icy lake on a hot day.

It was not a Beatles song at all.

It was "Beautiful" from my Christina Aguilera CD.

Bloo-foe.  Beautiful.

I said "Julia, you want to hear Beautiful?"

"YEHEHEHEHSSSSS!" she cried and laughed at the same time.  She was as relieved as I was.

So I put that CD in and skipped ahead to song #11.

And when she heard the music start, Julia chuckled and wiggled in her seat.

We listened to it twice through.

Beautiful.

This is Julia smearing guacamole on her face.

She told me "I do ice-keems!"

"Ice cream" is what she calls sunscreen.

Bloo-foe.

For Beth, just because I know you'll get a kick out of these.

I was in the kitchen this morning putting away groceries.  The kids were downstairs watching Shrek or something...and Bill was upstairs sleeping with a hot water bottle on his head and the AC blasting and wishing the migraine pain would go away.

Julia came up the stairs and spotted the juice boxes I was putting away and immediately wanted one.  She is not always trustworthy with a juice box, so I told her she would need to sit in her high chair if she wanted one.  She agreed and attempted to help me drag the high chair (booster seat with a tray, actually) into the kitchen.  I picked her up and strapped her in, clicked the tray in place and got a juice box.

"I do it!"

She wanted to rip the staw off the box herself and try to poke it through the little foil hole.

I handed her the box.  She wrestled the straw out of the little plastic thing it's stored in and threw the pieces of torn plastic on the floor.  "Here Mommy.  Get it." 

She needed just a little help pushing the straw through, and that was it.  I went back to putting juice boxes away and I was thinking about other things I wanted to do while I was home, just to feel like the day was a productive one, and so I wasn't exactly listening when she called my name at first. 

She would not be ignored.

"Jayne!"

She sounded like a teacher...I felt like I'd been caught passing a note in class.

"Yes, Julia."

"Jayne!"  (just trying it out again)

"You call me Mommy."

She ignored that and pointed at a small drip of juice on her tray.

"Get it!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday the kids were at the dining room table coloring with their crayons and getting along for the moment, which gave me a bit of time to do something fun, like the dishes.  The peace and quiet didn't last long - I heard a little bickering about who took whose crayon, but nothing too terrible until I heard Julia hollering

"BE QUIET!"

"BE QUIET!"

"BE QUIET!"

Only thing was, Alex wasn't saying anything.  I tiptoed to the doorway to peek at them.  Alex was lost in thought, drawing what turned out to be a dinosaur skeleton. 

And Julia was standing up in her chair, holding a crayon and staring out the front window.

"BE QUIET!"

"Julia?"

She pointed out the window just as Peaches, the Collie across the street, barked again at a squirrel or something.

"BE QUIET!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was in the kitchen this afternoon.  She had said she was hungry, and wanted toast, so I was waiting for the toaster to comply with that demand and reading something on the laptop.

I had told her to go downstairs (it's cooler there - I just think that's where everyone belongs if they don't really need to be in the kitchen) and I would call her when the toast was ready.

Suddenly I heard her little voice:

"Aaa-lex...time to eat!  Aaa-lex...time to eat.  ALEX!  Time to eat!"

And from the depths - "It's NOT time to eat, Julia!"

"Aaa-lex...time to eat!  Aaa-lex!"

"Julia, I'm not hungry and it's not time to eat!"

"ALEX!  Time to eat wight now!  One...tloo...feeeee.  ALEX!  Wight Now!"

I went over to the top of the stairs, and she was sitting about five steps down, casually leaning back on the step above her, one leg sticking off the edge of the stairs, her bare foot bouncing above the fish tank.  She was having a lovely time.

"Aaa-lex...time to eat!  One...tloo...feeee!"

I laughed and she turned around, a big smile on her face.

"I said tloo!" She laughed at herself and went back to the business at hand.

"Aaa-lex...time to eat!  Wight now!  Okay...one....twoooooo....feeeeeeee."

Specifics

The past oh, 5 days or so have been days of heat, humidity, and horrible yucky illnesses.  And the kids had fevers.  Alex first, on Friday, and Julia yesterday and today.  Long, long story.  Bill and I have had a lot of digestive system fun too.

But enough of that part of it.  I am home for the third day taking care of a sick girl, a just-a-little-bit-of-sick boy, and a husband with a migraine.  About an hour ago, Julia woke up from her nap, but woke up cranky.  I think something woke her up and she was basically pissed off about it so she decided to scream and wail and thrash and flail to make sure everyone in the surrounding 5 miles was aware of her displeasure.

I brought her downstairs to the cool, industrially-strengthed-air-conditioned basement and sat on the couch and she flopped like an angry bluefish out of my lap and onto the couch cushions, face down, her hair all stuck to her sweaty face, clutching her pink elephant.  (The only one who truly understands her at times like this.)  She lay there like the dead until I made the mistake of leaning ever so slightly toward her just to see if her eyes were open.  This brought on a whole new episode of thrashing and screeching until she flopped back down and lay still again.

Then Bill came downstairs (his migraine pain and nausea had eased), and sympathetically touched Julia on the head or arm or some other super-sensitive part of her raging anatomy and set off yet another round of the screaching and flailing and so forth.  Bill left to go buy propane for the cajun cooker - he's brewing a big batch of beer tomorrow and buying propane was a perfect excuse to flee.

Julia finally slowed down with the tantrum...I was kind of wondering if perhaps it was her stomach and if she was going to throw up again, so I was already poised and ready to throw her from the couch if she looked like she was going to start THAT again.  I kept trying to get information from her - "Does something hurt, Julia?  Is it your throat?  Is it your tummy?"  She just kept saying "AAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!" every time, so that didn't really help me much.

I finally tried asking her the million dollar question:

"Julia, do you want to watch Mowgli?"

Julia has a huge crush on the original Disney Mowgli and he is who she turns to when she is feeling horrible. 

"YEEHHHHHHEEEEEHHHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!"  (subtext:  it's about time, genius)

So I popped the videotape in and rewound it to the beginning and she finally, finally calmed down.  Then she said "I want a bah-bah."  I know...she should be off the bottle by now.  But sometimes I still cave in, and when she's sick and could throw up out of pure anger, I cave in.  And then I told her - "But you can only have water or juice because milk will make you throw up."  (Not necessarily, but I've cleaned up enough curdly ick lately that it's not worth the risk.)  Well, Julia loves her dairy products, so this didn't go over well, and so there was another round of rage in the works and yes - I caved.  Like I said, we've all been sick over the last 5 days.  I am still in a weakened state.  Plus I figured I could do half milk and half water and she'd never know.

So up the stairs I went, put a couple ounces of water and a couple of milk in one of the two 6 ounce bottles left over from her babyhood, and then brought it back to Princess Julia, where she lounged on the couch with her pink elephant, gazing at Dream Date Mowgli.

I said "Here you go!" in my daffy chipper Mommy Makes it all Better voice...and she looked at me and SCREAMED and THRASHED and WAILED again.

I was trying to cut through the screeches to tell her "Julia!  It's MILK!  It's what you WANTED!  You got your WAY!"  But nothing could penetrate the "AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAABEEEEEEEEEEEK" that spilled out of her angry mouth.

"What?"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAWWWAAAAAAABBBEEEEEEEEEKKKKK!"

"You want pink?"

"YEHHHEEEEHHHHEEEEEESSSSSS!!!"

Ah.

Anything to make her happy.  Or quiet.

Back to the kitchen.  One of the two remaining 6 ounce bottles is clear.  The other, as you have probably deduced, is pink.  So I poured the milk/water blend into the pink bottle and brought that down the stairs.

Julia looked up.  And saw the bottle.  And smiled dreamily.

And sighed, "My piiiiinnnnkkk!"

Just Like the Rest of Them

Yesterday afternoon we went to Alex's best friend's birthday party. 

It was HOT outside.  Hot.  Got that?  HOT.  Miserable. 

Fortunately for the kids, the party included a pool and a slip n' slide with two lanes to slip and slide on.

Fortunately for the parents, there were shady places to sit and cold beverages.

There were, in all, 5 little 4-year-old boys and Julia and a little 11-month old girl who has already elected to have her ears pierced.  One of the boys arrived late, so for a while it was just Alex, J, T, C and Julia.  Well, and the baby, but she's not walking yet, so she didn't really participate.

The pool was the best part - they were all falling in and climbing out and falling in and splashing each other and crying because someone splashed water in their eyes and running back to the appropriate mommy and being sent back to the pool because there was no blood.

These 4 boys in particular have known each other since they were babies, and T's mom and C's mom work at the daycare they all attend, too.  So we're kind of one sprawling extended family.  None of us parents have actual names, either.  We are Alex's Mom and Julia's Daddy, and so on. 

Julia had a great time hanging with the boys.  She's funny...she's very girly at times, but she can hold her own with guys twice her age...no fear.

The best part of the party, besides all the times Julia started climbing up the hill toward the busy street or running down the condo parking lot toward the other street...or Julia running behind the condo where there is poison ivy...and Mommy doing her Olympic sprinter impersonation over and over again to catch Julia before she could play in traffic or eat some interesting foliage ("leaflets three, let it be" - anyone? Sheila?)...and Julia's look of demonic delight every time red-faced Mommy grabbed her by the arm (gently, so as not to dislocate her shoulder or leave any bruises)...oh, I smile at the memories....

Besides all THAT fun...the best part for Bill and me was watching all the other boys cry and throw little tantrums.  Our own had a few crying or fit-throwing moments too, but no more than any of the others.  They all do it!  It's not just ours!  Alex isn't the only little boy who freaks out when someone won't share with him...he is not the only one who turns sulky and flings himself to the grass when he can't have the FIRST turn at Pin the S on Superman.  (That's "S" - not "ass," which is what Bill thought he heard when J's mother cheerily summoned everyone to play.  Bill couldn't understand why no one reacted.) 

They ALL had their monster moments.  (At one point, Alex, in a little boy rage about something, told T "You're NEVER coming to my house!"  Just about the worst thing he could think of to say at the moment.)

And they all returned to normal fairly quickly, and no one held grudges and they parted still friends at the end of the party. 

This morning Alex didn't want to get up at all.  He is his father's son.  Juila usually wakes up frighteningly cheerful no matter what kind of a night she's had.  I don't wake up cheerful, but I wake up quickly.

Alex - and Bill - don't.

When I went in to get Julia, I looked over at Alex's bed (they share a room) and he was sound asleep.  Julia and I had our little morning chat before I lifted her out of the crib, and the next time I looked at Alex, he looked like Bill in miniature.  He had pulled one of his pillows over his head to drown out the light and the noise and the female chatter. 

It took a lot to finally get him up this morning, and when he came downstairs he was actually crying...tears rolling down his face, wailing "But I don't want to get up, I'm still TIRED!"  Poor little guy.  He perked up a bit after his cereal, but he told me over and over in the car "I don't want to go to preschool!"  "Why not?"  "Because I don't!"  He finally gave up.

We got to daycare and T's mom was dropping him off too...and he didn't look all that glad to be there either.

Beware

I took this picture earlier tonight.  After dinner we walked down the street to get ice cream cones...the kids riding in the red wagon.  Alex, Bill and Julia all got small cones of lemon.  I got mint chocolate chip. 

It's pretty hot here (and everywhere, I think) so the ice cream melted pretty fast, and both kids fell behind in the slurping department.  Especially Julia.  Her lemon ice cream dripped everywhere - on her, on Alex ("Mommy!  Julia's dripping ice cream on me!"), on the wagon.  She handed it over to me when we got home and the cone was practically disintegrating.

The sprinkler was on in the back yard and I figured it would be a lot easier to clean them up outside than inside...so they were ordered to run and play under the sprinkler.  Bill ran and played too.

They have a couple of little squirt guns that they got at a birthday party yesterday for one of Alex's friends.  Bill filled them up in the whale pool and gave one to each kid.  Julia's fingers aren't quite long enough or strong enough to actually fire the weapon, but she is quite threatening nonetheless.

Behold: 

A Couple Thousand Words

I have nothing much to say...I updated the picture of myself up there on the left...actually the picture there until now has been one of Julia.  I liked the picture.  I never meant to deceive anyone. 

I was going through pictures I've taken over the last week with the new camera.  And there are a number of my kids that make me smile or laugh.  So I'm sharing.

Here you go...

This is Julia at my parents' house...she was racing back and forth on the couch trying to avoid me...

And...

And Alex, running SUPERFAST, to avoid (and return to) the sprinkler.

Okay, that's it for tonight.  My eyes hurt.

Speed of Light

Last night after dinner I brought the kids outside so they could run around and wear themselves out before bedtime.

I sat on the bench at one corner of the yard...and my children ran.

They ran from the bench to the opposite corner, where the arbor and the gate are.  Alex mostly.  He ran back and forth a couple of times and when he was near me, I told him "Alex, you run fast." 

And he told me "Mommy, I run SUPERFAST!"  And I said, "Yes, you do!" 

And he said - "Because I run like this - " and he grimaced fiercely and tucked his head down, clenched his tiny fists, and pumped his arms back and forth like he was throwing punches at some hapless torso. 

I nodded and agreed that that would help him to run fast.  And off he went...head down, arms pumping.

Julia didn't run with the same sense of purpose.  Instead, she would follow him halfway across the yard, by which time he was at the arbor, and then when he turned and started to run back, she would look at me with a look of mock terror on her face, and run at me, hollering "Alex get me!" and crashing against my legs just before Alex arrived and crashed against her.

It went on like this a little, and yes, I should have had my camera outside. 

Eventually Julia followed Alex all the way to the other corner of the yard and back, but it's a lot more running for her little legs than it is for his, and so she stopped after a few laps.

She hung out near the pool, scooping water out with her little green watering can and dumping the water onto the tomato plants.

Alex came running back toward me again.  And, being a 4 year old boy, he is occasionally distracted.  And so sometimes he will run or walk in one direction, but look somewhere else. 

In the middle of the yard, a little off to the side of his back and forth path, was a little red wheelbarrow.  A plastic kids' wheelbarrow...I think my sister gave it to Alex for his birthday a year or two ago.  Julia plays with it more than Alex does at this point.

And Alex was running.

Something off near the driveway had caught his attention, and as he ran he looked off somewhere in the vicinity of the neighbor's roof. 

Right into the wheelbarrow.  It was a perfect fall, actually.  He hit it just below the knee and flew forward, arms and face onto the grass. 

I admit it - I laughed.  But really fast, and quiet, so he wouldn't know.  And then I went to check him for injuries (none) and soothe the wounded ego (moderate) and encourage him to just move the wheelbarrow to the side and keep running.  Which he did.

Arms pumping, face contorted in a grimace, running SUPERFAST.

And eyes front.