Momzillas

FYI, there's a book that didn't even hit my "I am currently reading" posting on the side there. It is called "Momzillas" and I devoured it so quickly I didn't get a chance to post it on my blog.

Written by an Upper East Side mom of three, it's a novel that I suspect, if I knew the author personally, I would be able to understand which of her so-called "friends" she was basing her characters on.

It was an entertaining read, highly recommend it for any mom. Non-moms might not find it so funny, and if you don't know NYC very well, it might not make as much sense. (At one point the main character is mocked for buying a house east of 3rd Ave...even though it's still Upper East Side. Shocking!). I read it in about 4 hours.

Otherwise I've been extraordinarily tired and still trying to catch up on sleep after what turned into a four day business trip this past week. My flight back on Thursday night was canceled due to weather, and I got to spend two nights in a row sleeping on a 3-inch thick mattress on a roll-away cot, because our room reservations got hosed up.

So I'll have to write more another time...after my nap.

Blog subscription

I just added that sweet little feature that lets people "subscribe" to my blog. This allows them to see on their personal Google, Yahoo, or other such account page when I post to my blog.

My question is this:

If I subscribe to my own blog on my Yahoo homepage, does that make me a narcissist or a peeping Tom? Or just weird?...because I think I'm already that.

Lindsey's Sleeping Buddy

Many kids like to curl up with stuffed animals, blankets, little pillows, etc, when they go to bed.

Lindsey has taken to having our Boston terrier, Dax, sleep with her at night.

I encourage it actually, I think it's really cute, and Dax really likes sleeping with people so it works out pretty well.

However, every once in a while Dax gets kicked out of her room for being a bit too stinky. He (and Bostons in general, in case you're thinking about getting one), are known for their touchy digestive systems, which means that any time he eats anything out of his normal diet he gets the stinkiest farts you've ever smelled.

So last night she asks to have Dax sleep with her and immediately falls asleep with her on one pillow and him on the other. Both of them are sleeping on their side and Lindsey has strategically positioned a small baby blanket and pillow between herself and Dax's butt, which is now directly positioned in front of her face.

Smart girl.

Marissa versus the Popcorn

On Marissa's birthday, we went to the Scott County Fair in Jordan, MN. It was a pretty impressive fair, nicely kept up and clean. And unfortunately for them but good for us, somewhat poorly attended the day we went, as it was threatening rain. But we went anyway and the kids had a lot of fun.

Here's a photo of Marissa's biggest challenge of the day: a very large bag of kettle corn. It's longer than her torso. That's all she wanted to eat all day. All offers of other food, cheese curds, hot dogs, etc, were met with an emphatic "no." By the time we left nearly half the popcorn was gone, thanks to Marissa.

She was past her naptime on the way home and cried most of the way home because we finally let Lindsey take the popcorn bag from Marissa. She got herself into such a state that when we got home she threw up while we were trying to get her down for her nap. Nothing like kettle corn throw up. It smelled like an old theatre.

She did finally settle down after that, got a nap in, and was in a better mood after.

A Doggie Doo Doo Walk

A couple of evenings ago our family took a little walk around our neighborhood. Our kids were fascinated by a couple of displays of large dog poop. You would think that this would be a common sight, but people are pretty conscientious around us about picking up after their dogs. Since we own a dog that weighs all of 16 lbs, our kids are used to the little piles that they need to watch for in our yard, not the big heaps we saw.

Twice they stopped to study for several minutes a couple of piles. Then later on in our walk we encountered a man walking a boxer breed. A boxer looks similar to a Boston terrier, which is what our dog is, but weighs about 50 lbs more. They have the same shortened nose and build, but a lot taller and more muscular. One of their other traits is their bobbed tail, which leaves their behind...well, exposed.

The man and dog walked by us and Lindsey watched it as it went on its way. And then she commented, "That dog had a big hole."

"A big....what, honey?" I asked.

"A big hole in his butt. I betcha he could make those big poops we saw."

Enough said.

Marissa's Present of training skates

Marissa had a good birthday, for just turning three! She had a party on Saturday with some of her friends from KinderCare. Then on Sunday, her actual birthday, she awoke to a load of gifts from her family to open, including one from her Grandpa and Meme Floria.

One of the gifts that I bought her was a pair of training roller skates. She's more adventerous than Lindsey in whole, and I thought that she would like to try roller skating. Much to my surprise it was the least favorite gift and Lindsey gravitated to them.

So near the end of the day as Marissa was getting ready for bed, I told Lindsey that she could try Marissa's skates on outside.

She was clad in knee pads, elbow pads and I held both her hands the entire way. She was slipping and sliding all over, but by the time we were getting finished up she was starting to actually skate one food at a time. I would stop each foot by putting mine in front of her, but she was getting the groove of it.

Then she stopped for a moment to pick her nose, which promptly began to bleed. I went in to get her a kleenex and by the time I came back out she had several drips of blood down her shirt. So we got the skates off and got her inside to clean her up.

Of course, she comes inside with a bloody nose and Wayne assumed she fell and bonked her nose.

But she's the only kid I know who can get a bloody nose from picking her nose while roller skating.

Cake Wrecks

In honor of Marissa's 3rd birthday today (Happy Birthday!), I thought I'd direct you to a newly discovered site that I am thoroughly enjoying: Cake Wrecks.

Click on the link above or newly added to My Favorite Places.

I thought of my friend Renee when I came across this site. She and her sister both took cake decorating classes this past year, with some good and bad results. These are some good ones!

Car for Sale

Slight water damage, was bright red but was chlorine bleached to bright orange. Real cheap, good deal. Call 800-DUMB-BLONDE.

Reading Recommendation

I am nearly done reading "The Grapes of Wrath." What an incredible read. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new book.

I do NOT, however, recommend reading it during a downturn in the economy, or, as I like to think of it, a recession, which we what we are in right now. It isn't a very big leap from where we are today to where the characters in this book end up. At least, it doesn't seem that way in my imagination...

The storyteller

Anyone who knows my dad knows that he revels in and inspires to be a great storyteller. Which, for the most part, he is.

Here he is telling a little ditty about my Grandpa Tom, his former father-in-law. I'm glad I was able to capture my Grandma's reaction, too.

A Morning Skate

This morning, while the girls were amused by Sunday morning cartoons, I went down to Lake Harriet for a little Rollerblading excursion.

I drove down there (yes, I drove; the hills are too steep for me to skate), and began preparing to go skating: doing some leg stretches, getting my water bottle out, putting on my skates and finally my iPod. But it seemed sacriligious to turn that iPod on, it was so beautiful out and the sounds so content. What a shame to drown them out with music that I can listen to at anytime.

If you are one to read my dad's blog(s) (see links to the left), you'll know that he enjoys his morning walks around his property and writes picturesque descriptions of his walk. I have different sights and sounds in the area that I live, but I thought I would share some of my impressions from this morning's skate.

I took in the sounds and sights of:

• A family enjoying breakfast on their patio at their home across from the lake. Laughter, calls for more coffee, and the opening and closing of a screen door as more coffee is fetched.
• An elderly gentleman dressed in his Sunday morning church clothes with a camera bag over his shoulder. As I passed him, he was crouching down and taking a photo of some wildlife by the lake.
• An elderly Asian woman wearing a safari-like hat, briskly clipping along on her morning constitution. She was slightly hunched over but clearly in good health as she passed two young ladies on the walking path. She walked with such purpose she stood out from those around her.
• A young couple walking with their newborn in a stroller, both with coffee in hand, gazing at their sleeping baby as they walked in silence. I can still feel the exhaustion yet happiness that they were probably experiencing.
• A dad with a double stroller, toddler in front and baby in a carrier on his chest. I imagine the mom sitting at home, enjoying a quiet morning with the paper and coffee while takes the kids out for a stroll.
• The jingle of leashes as dogs of all shapes and sizes are being walked. At one area there is a "dog beach," and three dogs were frolicking in the water, happy barks resounding over the water.

On my second loop around the lake, I finally began getting tired and turned on my iPod for inspiration. But what a grand inspiration the first loop was!

Child Sexual Offender Caught

This morning on the radio I heard about a child sexual offender who was recently arrested in Michigan. He had been arrested at a home where he had thought he would be meeting a 14-year-old girl for sex.


He showed up for the meeting with the teenager wearing a shirt that said "World's Greatest Dad."



I feel for his kids.

Michigan Vacation Photos

You can see by the above photo why I kept calling Lake Superior an ocean, right? It was so unbelievably gorgeous, and I couldn't believe how still a lake that large could be. Yet even just an average wind sent up long rollers to the shore, crashing so loudly you had to yell to talk over it. What an incredible lake.

This photo of the sunset was taken at 10:30 at night, driving back to our cabin after a day out at Dana Lake with family. Yes, 10:30 pm. It's amazing the difference being just a little further north and on the western edge of the Eastern time zone can make to the length of your day.

As mentioned previously, it was a wonderful vacation, despite a shaky start with a rough ride north. We ran into some severe thunderstorms with, you guessed it, hail. Marissa hid her head under her blankie at one point because of the noise, and we had to pull over to the side of the road. It rained the whole first day, but after that we had beautiful weather.

We rented a cabin right on Lake Superior -- we could follow a little stone path out the back and came out of the woods at the beach. It was our own private beach practically, with nothing but cabins in the area and no one out.

We spent lots of time in Munising seeing family, my Grandma Dolaskie, widowed now for two years, and my Aunt Carol and Uncle Chap, Uncle Tom and Aunt Anne, a multitude of dear and wonderful cousins and, of course, my dad, sister and brother-in-law.

I'll share other little stories here and there as I think of them. Thanks to everyone for their hospitality and for helping us have such a fun Fourth of July!

The Long Way Home

Okay, so it wasn't the long way home, it was the long way to go strawberry picking.

As noted previously, earlier in the year we attempted to go strawberry picking only to have the place be closed when we got there. So after our long vacation we decided to try once again since the season was exceptionally late this year and we normally would've already missed our window of opportunity.

I picked out a place in Hastings, MN, called the number and confirmed their hours and that they were indeed still picking strawberries. So mid-morning on Saturday, July 12th, we set out.

The expected route:

1. 35W north to 94East
2. 94 East to County Rd 15
3. south to 90th St in Hastings
4. East on 90th Street and follow signs.

Expected travel time: 45 mins.

The actual route:

1. Almost got on 35W north, but it was closed for re-paving. Due to one way streets could not re-route to other options to get on to 35W beyond the closure.
2. Got on Portland Ave South to hit alternate route of 494 -- stuck in crawling traffic as it was handling re-routed traffic from 60th Street, which was also closed.
3. Finally got to 494 east. Slow but still moving.
4. Got on 35E north to hit 94 East through St Paul. Lanes went down to 1 lane, so traffic was crawling.
5. Got off on Shepard Rd to bypass through downtown St Paul. Shepard Rd closed 2 miles after exiting onto it.
6. Re-routed through downtown St. Paul, had to hear yelling from the back seat as we passed the Children's Museum but didn't stop.
7. Finally get out on 94 East.
8. Had to stop for much requested water and pit stop. Took Ruth St exit off of 94, only to find that we could not re-enter 94 EAST from Ruth St, we could only go back WEST. Took 94 west to the next exit, go off and turned back around.
9. Took the remainder of the route there and finally arrived.

Actual travel time: 2 hours

Actual strawberry picking time: 45 mins, including the 5 min. tractor ride to and from the field.

Years taken from life due to travel experience: 2

Our Michigan Vacation

Could we have had a better time??? I think not.

More later, but we spent a week in the Upper Peninsula (U.P. for you non-Michiganer's) spending time on Lake Superior, visiting family, and taking in a small town 4th of July parade.

Could we have had more fun?

Only if the kids had slept better at night. But it was a ball regardless.

More later, but here's a tidbit.

Marissa Reprises Lindsey's photo

I loved Lindsey's photo of this, and Marissa was willing to reprise it for me.

"I get married," she said to me when I asked her to hold the peony.

And just in case you forgot what the first photo looked like...

Marissa-isms

This weekend Marissa said a couple of things that had us all in stitches.

The first time we were at a little cafe having breakfast for lunch. Lindsey and Marissa had just been served their Mickey Mouse pancakes and I had cut some of it up for Marissa to eat. She picked up her fork, closed her eyes and moved her head from side to side, saying "Where my Mickey Mouse pancakes? Where my Mickey Mouse pancakes?"

Then she opened her eyes, pointed to her plate and said, "Oh! There dem are." She proceeded to eat while Wayne, Lindsey and I giggled.

The next one happened while we were driving home from this same visit. We were up in Anoka, after a failed attempt to go strawberry picking (yet another story), and we had a bit of a drive ahead of us (45 mins, which is long in our books).

Lindsey was chatting. The. Entire. Ride.

Some people think Lindsey doesn't talk. She just doesn't talk around people she doesn't know well. She makes up for it when it's just the four of us.

So Lindsey was chattering and chattering away and we were listening to this for some 20 minutes or so. Finally Marissa says, "Who's talking??"

She said it as if she'd been tuning out the words and just realized that someone was STILL talking and wanted to know who it was.

Pure entertainment!

Family Photo

Finally got a decent family photo with all four of us in it.

a Photo Pictorial

Hey look, I'm pretending to read the paper with Aunt Sherrie!









I can even lay on the arm of the chair -- lookit me! Lookit lookit lookit! Cheeeeese!






Look, I love the camera, I'm going to lean just a little closer and...hey!! I fell off!



(Note the smile on her face as she doesn't realize she is falling off yet.)

Time Article: Pregnancy Pact by Teens

Click on above post title for the Time article.

The saddest statement of this story has to be:

"They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally. I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."

-- Amanda Ireland, 18-year old graduate of Gloucester High School, who had a child her freshman year.

Amanda theorizes that many girls in the pregnancy pact saw her as a role model and agreed to get pregnant together.

Where are these girls' parents?

Apple: Amazing Marketing

Now that Father's Day is over and Wayne's present has been given (and now has to be returned), I have to relate the experience I had of buying his gift. I found the experience fascinating; those who aren't marketing-minded may not.

I wanted to get Wayne an auto accessory for his iPod so he could play it through either of our car's sound systems. Neither vehicle has an auxiliary jack made for today's MP3/iPods, so something like an FM tuner adapter or cigarette adapter were my only options.

I went out to the Apple website and did a product search for car audio accessories. There were so many options with so little for descriptions that I had to click through many products to figure out if they would work for our vehicle. I was doing this at work over lunch (same way I'm writing this post) and finally ran out of time and closed the page.

A few hours later I check my personal email (company time again, ahem hem), and lo and behold I had received a promotional email from Apple. The subject line was something like "Apple accessories: Make your life mobile!" Of course this piqued my interest and when I opened the email, right there on the front page was one of 9 products specifically for running your iPod through your car stereo. Not their docking accessories, nor their headphone accessories, but specifically the car stereo accessories.

Coincidence? I think not.

I think there is some very smart marketer on the other end who saw my IP address land on the accessories, look around a little and close out, then had their software program evaluate which of several hundred canned promotional emails would be appropriate for me and followed up to my inbox in an appropriate amount of time to not make me suspicious that someone (other than my employer, perhaps) is tracking my online activities.

Smart smart smart.

Of course, I purchased the accessory right from that link via the email, affirming in Apple's database the fact that this is indeed a smart marketing strategy.

Now I'm going to screw them up when I return the product because, despite my having read the description as closely as I could, I STILL ended up buying one that needs an auxiliary jack in your car to run the sound through the car stereo.

Now if only they could work on their product descriptions, they would be perfect.

Photos from our weekend visitors

Had to post a few pics of the fabulous weekend we had this past weekend when my friend Amy visited with two girls in tow. I realize now that I don't have too many photos of Molly, and didn't get a single one of Amy and I together!

The story of the weekend (outside of Marissa having at our couch and her books, previously told) had to be how Amy surprised her former neighbor Marilynn, who was the highlight of the weekend. Marilynn was like a grandma to Amy and Jim's two girls, and she turned 80 on Friday, June 6th. The whole reason for the visit was to attend Marilynn's 80th birthday party on Sunday.

On Friday Amy landed at the airport and was driving to our house with the girls when she gave Marilynn a call on the phone to say "Happy Birthday." Marilynn, who describes herself as "long winded," was still chatting away when Amy pulled up to Marilynn's house. Amy got out with the girls, walked up to the door and rang the doorbell.

Marilynn says to her, "Oh Amy, someone's at the door, just a minute, I have to see who it is." She drops the phone, opens the door, and drops her jaw. Then the tears started.

She had such a hard time believing that Amy was actually here that later on that same evening she walked down to our house just to make sure they were still there and she wasn't dreaming. It couldn't have been scripted better.

Doesn't Marilynn look great?! I can't believe she's 80, I would have never guessed it.

Top 'Er Off

Yesterday I was going by a gas station near our house and decided to top off the Civic even though the tank was three-quarters full. After all, this particular gas station was a full 12 cents cheaper than every other one around us!

So I put $16.08 worth of gas into the Civic, which was 4.05 gallons.

$3.97 is now a "deal" for gas.

She continues to amaze us

This weekend we have friends (former neighbors) from Buffalo, NY visiting. On Saturday I hosted a ladies night out at my house, for all the neighbors to get together and visit with Amy.

The party was supposed to start at 7:30 -- Wayne had left a little before 7:00 to go see the new Indiana Jones movie and avoid the estrogen fest. So it was just Amy and I prepping appetizers and doing last minute cleaning to get ready.

At 7:15, I come downstairs from doing I can't remember what and see Marissa sitting on the couch saying, "Mommy, look what I did..." in that same tone of voice she uses when she's done she wasn't supposed to do. Here on the couch are 8 beautiful vertical lines, drawn in our guest's non-washable crayon. Amy's jaw dropped -- she'd only been out of the room for less than 60 seconds.

So I put Marissa in her room for a time-out while I washed up the couch. I heard bumping and thumping from up there, and knew that she was emptying her bookshelf of her books. She usually does this then carefully puts them away when you go to get her out of her timeout. But it took me a bit longer to clean the couch, and by the time I got upstairs she had pulled EVERY book off the bookshelf...and then peed on them in the middle of the room.

It is amazing the child is still alive.

By this time people are arriving and I am spending more time upstairs attempting to get this child calmed down than greeting people.

I pulled all the books out of her room and put them into ours -- she lost the privilege to have books if that's how she's going to treat them, and she's going to have to earn them back. Then I put her in her pajamas and told her that she is going to bed. I closed the door to her screaming and crying, and checked back in 10 minutes.

I check back, amazingly so, Marissa found one other area that I didn't think of to mess up, and that's the remnants of her diapers and wipes, which she pulled out and put all over the room. So once again, cleaning up a mess and scolding her at the same time, then putting her back in bed.

By this time she was finally accepting of the fact that no matter what, she was not getting out of her room, she was not going downstairs, she was going to go to sleep. And within a matter of minutes she was asleep.

Great. I went downstairs, got myself a glass of wine and sat next to the damp couch cushion so I could warn people not to sit there.

Whew!

5 Shots for the 5-year-old

This past week I had the dubious honor of taking Lindsey in for her 5-year check-up. I knew that she was due for a minimum of four shots at this visit, and it wasn't going to be a pleasant one.

We got a surprise when we got there that she's actually due for FIVE -- Minnesota now also requires a booster for the chicken pox vaccine prior to entering kindergarten.

God bless her, she sat down so well and did the shots so well. She didn't even cry until after they were all over, probably from the relief of being done. Her reward was a trip to Target for some lip gloss and a Hello Kitty DVD ($5.99 in the bargain bin).

I was so proud of her, and had to retell her the story of when I was a little girl and had to get shots. I think for one visit I had to have three nurses hold me down. Yowzaa.

Scary Experience

Today was predicted to be a beautiful day for most of the day with scattered thunderstorms later in the afternoon. Little did we know that one of these "scattered thunderstorms" would turn out to be more than just a thunderstorm.

We were down at Lake Harriet late in the afternoon, more like early evening. We'd been there for some time, enjoying the sights and having some ice cream and popcorn by the Lake Harriet bandstand. We decided to take a trolley ride, a historic trolley line that just goes between lakes Harriet and Calhoun and back. The trolley got as far as Calhoun and stopped, and then we saw some dark storm clouds over Lake Calhoun and a severe thunderstorm siren went off. So the trolley traipsed back to Lake Harriet and we started hoofing it home, hoping to beat the storm home.

Today's technology allows the warning systems to be sounded with more than enough warning...provided you drove somewhere and can get back in a car and drive to safety. But we did not drive, we walked. So we are walking as speedily as possible with Wayne pulling the two girls in the wagon (they were very happy to comply and stay in, as opposed to wanting to walk themselves). Pretty soon the storm cloud blots out the sun, and we start trotting. We get as far as 45th St and start feeling some sprinkles. We increase to a run. A woman offers to have us wait out the storm in her house, but we turn down her request, since we're so close to home.

Big mistake.

We turn the corner of her block and the hail begins. And gets bigger. And harder. And bigger. Within half a block you can hardly see across the street, or anything else for that matter. The girls went from laughing as we ran to screaming as ice pellets hit them on their heads. Wayne pulled them under an overhang at Southwest High School (two blocks from our house) and yells to me over the noise, "I'll run home and get the van, wait here."

God bless him, he took off in the hail, running as fast as he could considering the conditions. Not a minute after he leaves the wind turns and comes straight at us under the overhang. I instruct Lindsey to put her head down in the wagon and pull one of the seatbacks of the wagon over to head to protect her from the hail, while I hold Marissa and turn towards the building to protect her. It was beating on my back, against the backs of my legs and everything and I wondered how long this would last before it turned again. Well, it did turn again, this time it came from the side. So we scooted over a little bit more and turned away from the new direction. Finally it let up some, but got just as heavy again (thankfully this time just straight down) before Wayne finally came up in the van. We rushed the two girls into the van and took off, leaving the wagon abandoned by the side of the high school.

The girls had been crying and screaming all through this. Poor things are now absolutely traumatized by storms. I suspect that our girls who used to sleep through every storm, every booming thunder and sizzling lightning will now be up and in our beds at the slightest hint of a storm.

We got home and were surprised to find one of the neighbor kids, a teenager from next door, in our house. He had been home alone and it was a bit much for him to take, so he came over to seek some company to ride it out...only to find an empty house. (We left our house unlocked when we left.)

We took the girls upstairs and everyone changed clothes into dry ones, wiped tears and combed out wet hair. Devon stayed at our house until his dad got home (he'd been a ways away and had to drive home through the storm), and we didn't end up eating until after 8:30 at night.

Lindsey insisted on someone staying with her until she was asleep, and Marissa did the same as well. We're just very glad that everyone is home safe and sound.

On this last photo, I was amazed to see the mist rising up from the hail as it evaporated not even 15 minutes after the storm ended. The patterns within the hail on the street is caused by the rivers of water that had been running -- I had never seen rain fall that fast that hard, and the water in our street had been up to the curb.

Lindsey's imaginary friend

Before I go on to post about the biggest news of the day, I had to remember to capture a little tidbit I found out today.

Lindsey has an imaginary friend. Her name is "Curdy" as close as I can tell. According to Lindsey, she looks exactly like Lindsey, same hair color and everything, but can't sing well while Lindsey can.

I had to record this one, it's an important development as far as child psychology goes. And it could be a sign that we need to set up more playdates since the girls started staying home with Elizabeth during the week.

A Tale of Two Towers

I tell people frequently how very different our two girls are. I now have some photographic proof, displayed during our block building play time this morning.

Here's a picture of Marissa with her tower. Note the use of a single pillar at the very bottom with a cantilever, which then required that each piece after be placed carefully on the cantilever, and also be placed with a counter balance on the other side to ensure that the whole thing didn't topple over. (The two red blocks are just on the ground next to the blue "pillar.") I did not help her with this, she did a pretty good job balancing everything on her own.

Then...we have Lindsey. She did not build a tower, she built a town. A very, very symmetrical town, with the same colored blocks across the bottom in symmetrical pattern. The towers are symmetrical, the arches, the colors...everything.


I think that if the two girls were partners in an architectural firm that Lindsey would ensure that the design was functional while Marissa would add the modern flair to it. A cross between Michael Graves and...Dr. Seuss, perhaps.

Snow Blossoms

Oh how I wish wish wish I'd had my camera when we went to the park this morning.

We're experiencing a late spring in Minnesota and consequently the crab apple trees are just finishing up while the lilacs are just getting started. We've got lots of crab apple trees in our neighborhood, especially in the park where our kids play.

This morning we went down to the park and a brisk wind was blowing the blossoms from the crab apple trees at a goodly pace. The dainty little petals had all gathered around the fence for the wading pool and were thick on the ground. The girls got their little sand buckets out and filled their buckets with blossoms. We spent the next 10 minutes throwing little pink blossoms at each other, making it "snow." It was so much fun and something that you know has a very short window of opportunity. We were back down to that same park in the afternoon and the blossoms had all been blown away. I'm glad we got a chance to play with them when we did.

Terms of Endearment

I have heard of kids who call their parents by their given names. It seems disrespectful to me.

Some time ago Lindsey decided she was going to "try out" calling me by my name. She said my name and looked at me out of the side of her eye, waiting for a reaction. If I just told her not to call me that, that'd be all the more reason to try it out. So instead I told her this:

Anyone in the whole world can call me by my name. My friends, people I work with, even people I don't even know can call me by my name. But only two people in the entire world have the privilege of calling me "Mommy," and that's you and Marissa. And that makes that name VERY special.

She never tried calling me anything other than variations of "mommy" again.

When if ever?

Tonight we were all out walking the girls around the block while they rode their bikes. As I walked along between the two girls, with each of them calling "Mommy" at different times, I wonder if there comes a time in your life as a mom that you tire of your children calling you "Mom." I suspect the answer is no, unless it's in the middle of the night and it's "Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?"

I remember when the girls were little babies and a word here and there was the extent of their vocabulary. First words for both was "Dax," followed shortly by "Daddy," then eventually "Mommy." When both of them started saying Mommy, it warmed my heart whenever I heard it.

Five years later, it still warms my heart. I'm pretty sure that when I'm 60 and my kids call or stop by and say, "Hi, Mom!" that it'll warm my heart then, too.

"It's Just a Flesh Wound"

Lindsey was leaping onto the top of the couch tonight, despite the 2,104 warnings we've given her previously about that behavior. Just as Wayne and I were about to tell her to get off, she fell off backwards and smacked her head pretty good on the play shopping cart behind the couch.

I picked her up and was holding her when I felt stickiness coming from her hair. I couldn't tell where the cut was, but clearly there was a cut on her head. Wayne ran and got a washcloth and I held it to her head. She was crying like it was a normal kind of hurt until she took her hand away from her head and saw the blood on her palm, then she started really bawling.

So we hung out for a while and rocked and held a washcloth to her head. We were finally able to wipe away enough of the blood to see how big the wound was, about a half-inch long gash. But now it wasn't bleeding, it was just oozing.

Three hours later it is still oozing. I'm sure if we took her to a doctor s/he would say she needs stitches. If it were on her face, yes. On her scalp, well...we'll see how this looks in the morning. The last time she had to get stitches was so traumatic that she remembers it clearly, even though she was only three.

I was talking with my friend Amy the nurse about it this evening and she also seemed to think it didn't sound too serious. (Thanks, Amy!) Most reassuring of all is that Lindsey probably won't be leaping on the couch like that again. As we were sitting on the couch holding this washcloth to her head, she was reprimanding Marissa by saying, "See, Marissa? That's why you can't jump on the couch." Apparently Lindsey just needed to put a gash in her head to understand why.

Marissa Sings

This was just too good to not post. I need to get a bigger memory stick for my camcorder, so excuse the choppiness.

A Break from KinderCare

This week we had a nanny start watching our children, instead of having to take them to KinderCare every day.

A nanny, you say?

Well, okay, so she's the fiancee of Wayne's nephew, so it's not like we took out a listing and interviewed a whole slew of college students. But she knows the kids, they know her, she's very responsible and is going to school to be a pre-school teacher, what more could we ask for??

And I have to say how WONDERFUL it is to not have to get four people ready to leave the house every day. This morning Marissa slept in extra late. We woke her up right before we left just to say good-bye, and we left. No battles over putting clothes on, no crying and not wanting to get buckled in to the carseat.

We are going to be extra spoiled by this summer and are going to have a difficult time re-adjusting to dropping kids off this coming fall. And it will be exasperated by the fact that we'll have to drop two kids off at two different places -- Marissa at KinderCare and Lindsey at Minneapolis Kids, the before and after school program at her kindergarten. I just won't think about that right now.

2021

On Thursday of this past week we went to Lindsey's kindergarten orientation. We found out about transportation, the PTA, the school nurse, social worker, etc, while Lindsey got to go to a classroom and get to know a teacher better and check out the classroom.

They started the presentation by saying "Welcome to the class of 2021!"

20...what was that?

Unbelievable.

Happy Birthday, Lindsey, our big five-year-old as of today!

Thank you from the March of Dimes!

I'll be taking down my March of Dimes badge soon, but I wanted to leave it up for a while so people can see how much money I raised.

Or, I should say, how much money YOU all raised. If it weren't for my very generous friends and family, I would not have raised nearly $800 for the March of Dimes, a new personal record for me.

So THANK YOU all so much, to everyone who donated to my walk this year. Your generosity is greatly appreciated, and I thank you for supporting a cause that means so much to me.

Doggy Scissors

This evening Lindsey and I were driving to Target to get a birthday present for an upcoming birthday party (not her own). On the way we saw a man walking a golden retriever with three legs. One of the front legs was missing and the dog hopped along beside his owner, happy as could be.

Lindsey wondered and wondered about this for some time, and then I made the mistake of telling her that once her Grandpa Horsman had a dog with three legs.

L: Why'd he have three legs?

Me, outside voice: Well, he had an accident with a car and hurt his leg so badly the veterinarian had to cut it off.

Me, inside voice: Why did I just tell her that?! What a horrible visual to give a child! I can't believe I just said that!

L: What did he cut it off with?

Me, outside voice: Uh...uhh...

Me, inside voice: Think faster!! You do NOT want your child waking up at night screaming about a saw.

L: I know, maybe he used doggy scissors.

Me: That's a good idea, maybe he did.

L: Was the doggy asleep so he didn't feel it?

Me: Yes, yes, honey, that's exactly right.

L: And was the doggy happy?

Me: Yes, he was a very happy dog.

L: Why doesn't Grandpa Horsman have him anymore?

Me: Uhhh...Look! We're at Target!

Biking "Accident"

It's become clear to Wayne and I in watching Lindsey and Marissa attempt to master a bike (with training wheels, mind you), that Marissa is the more coordinated and fearless of the two of them. Thus, it takes two parents to take two girls out riding, as Lindsey wants someone to hold on to one of the handle bars with her, just in case, you know, while someone needs to be with Marissa as she races recklessly down hills, laughing the whole way.

This evening I got a jump start on dinner while Wayne attempted to take the two girls down to the park on their bikes. This involved helping one girl down one section of a block, having her wait at the corner, then running back and helping the other girl go down the city block.

The last little block we go down has a bit of a hill but not much. Still, for a novice biker you can gather speed quite quickly, which Marissa LOVES to do and Lindsey does not. So Wayne was going to help Marissa get down the hill first, since he wasn't confident she was going to wait patiently at the top of the hill, and then come back for Lindsey.

Wayne was halfway down the hill with Marissa when Lindsey decided she did not want to wait for him, so, being the conservative, conscientious little girl that she is, she got off her bike and began walking it carefully down the hill.

Through careful coordination, she managed to trip while walking and fell anyway, the bike rolling off into the grass on the other side.

She is the only girl I know who can have a biking accident while not actually on the bike.

When Wayne told me this story I laughed so hard I cried.

Biking!

After receiving a two-wheeler (with training wheels) for her 4th birthday LAST spring, Lindsey is finally showing an interest in learning how to ride her bike.

One of the last times she rode her bike last year resulted in a spill in front of neighbors who were gathering for our block party. She was instantly embarrassed and hurt at the same time, and that was it for bike riding for her. No amount of cajoling or enticing could get her on it the rest of last summer (our block party was in June).

But apparently the sight of her little sister on a bike herself will do the trick.

We were out walking one evening and a neighbor of ours asked us if we would take a little bike off their hands. They had gotten it from a different neighbor after her kids had outgrown it, and it was used by their grandkids when they came to visit. Their grandkids were bigger now, and they thought that perhaps Marissa would like it.

Marissa took an instant liking to it, and an instant knack for getting around on it. She rode it the rest of the way home, at which point Lindsey wanted her bike taken down as well for riding around the neighborhood as well.

All weekend this past weekend the girls were riding, several times a day. They were both doing great! I'm hoping this becomes the summer that Lindsey learns how to ride a bike.

Heck, maybe Marissa will too.

Home Improvements

In our typical fashion, we budgeted some money this year for home improvements and have spent it by May. Patience? What patience?

The two things we had done was we had our bedroom painted and we had closet organizers put in four of the five closets in our house.

The bedroom painting project turned out phenomenal, and we clearly see the benefits of paying professionals to come do the job right. The walls had so many plaster cracks and they found them all and plastered over them. They also removed the "crown molding" around the room (read "cheap-ass 1970's floor molding that some do-it-yourselfer nailed to the wall but not quite all the way to the ceiling and called it crown molding") and smoothed it out all the way to the ceiling. Oh, yeah, and the ceiling and walls had literally cracked apart from each other, and they filled that too.

Then they proceeded to paint three walls a medium blue and one wall a chocolate brown. It looks so warm now! We are very happy with the results.

We also had them paint our fireplace -- who thought a white fireplace was a good idea? Yeah, let's show every soot mark and smoke stain when we use our fireplace. So the same chocolate brown went on the fireplace as well. Here's a photo of the fireplace. The highlight has to be the two girls in front of it, of course, wearing their spring dresses because it is finally getting nice enough out that they can.

Lastly, we had closet organizers put in our closets. This turned out to be the bigger project, ironically, because we decided to do the prep work for this transformation ourselves. What were we thinking?! Wayne took two days off work, I took one, and Wayne still had to spend half his Saturday finishing it up. Prep work meant taking everything out of the closets, then dis-assembling whatever shelves/rods were in them, patching, sanding, then priming and painting the walls, and while we are at it why don't we touch up the woodwork too. Whew!

And what the hell do you do with four closets worth of STUFF when you only have five closets to begin with?? We ended up piling a lot of our clothing in a big file in our family room until we could hang them back up.

And better news of all is that our rummage sale pile is substantial!! That's the one really good thing about being forced to take everything out of your closets -- you finally go through it and decide not to put everything back.

Home improvement projects are very different now than when we used to tackle them pre-kids. On Thursday we dropped off the girls at daycare and Wayne raced the clock to get as much done as possible before we had to pick them back up again. He has an incredible work ethic and used to work hard before we had kids -- you should've seen him literally racing around the house these two days!

Same thing on Friday, and then I played parent while he finished up on Saturday. We used to enjoy these projects, stretched them out over a weekend just for something to do. Now we've got much more important things to do, like play hide and seek, Old Maid (Lindsey's newest favorite card game), or teach Marissa how to ride a bike. (She may learn before Lindsey does!)

Fundraising Candy Bars

This morning I walked into our breakroom and came across a box of candy bars, with a note asking people to buy one for a dollar to support a co-worker's daughter's la crosse team.

I was immediately swept back in time, about 20 years or so when we had to sell candy bars as a fundraiser for my high school band. I never put much effort in to it and could never convince my dad to take the candy bars to work, which is how many of my friends made many of the "highest fundraisers" prize list.

So instead I was resigned to walking around our neighborhood selling them door-to-door, or selling them to my own family.

And by my own family I mean me.

I believe that by the last year we were selling these damn candy bars I finally just plunked the box of candy bars in a corner of my bedroom. Whenever I wanted a candy bar I plunked 50 cents into the envelope and took one.

By the time our fundraising timeframe was over I had "sold" half the box and had $30 to turn in. I'll do the math for you: that's 60 candy bars, folks, one a day for every day of the two months of fundraising.

If only I had known then about Team in Training, I would've worked those 60 candy bars back off.

The one take-away I had from this experience was the power of saving just a little bit, every day. Hmmm....if I set aside 50 cents every day for 60 days, I would have 30 dollars! That's a lot to a 16-year-old in 1987. That means I could have:

1. Gone to the movies 5 or 6 times.
2. Bought three pairs of jeans and a pair of shoes at the thrift store at St Vincent de Paul, my favorite store at the time.
3. Rented 10 movies at $2.99 each (including tax)
4. Gotten my blonde streak in my hair re-bleached. (Note, I have naturally BLACK hair)

At least I didn't do what my one friend did. Her mom finally refused to bring the candy bars in to work, and instead of getting prizes for being the top fundraiser, she turned in a half a box of candy bars with an IOU that said, "I owe the band $30."

Potty Training Marissa

Marissa made some big strides this past weekend in potty training -- she finally went poopy on the potty!!

I kept telling her all week that if she went poopy on the potty she would get a special prize. So this weekend, while visiting Wayne's folks in Tracy, MN, she decided to go poopy on the potty. As she got off the potty, having successfully completed her mission she said, "I want a sucker."

Sure, absolutely...except we don't have any suckers. So a trip in to town to get a bag of suckers. Each time she (and Lindsey) went poopy on the potty they would earn a sucker.

It got to the point that if any family member used a bathroom, when they returned from the trip someone would inevitably ask, "Did you earn a sucker?"

Now, just to help her understand how to use toilet paper to wipe...

Lindsey's Drawings

Lindsey was given as a gift a little notepad of "scribbles." Each page's scribbles are slightly different, and the idea is that it's the start of a creative process, by which a child can make a drawing of her own imagination. Some of the examples showed a scribble of a squiggly line, which then became the forehead and upper jaw of a dinosaur, etc.

Then...there's our mathematically astute child.

Lindsey methodically went through the entire pad in one day, drew on each piece of paper and tore it off. She simply connected the line to itself in the most straightforward fashion.

I thought, "My child has no imagination, we need to get her out of that math class and put her in an art class!"

I took photos of a couple of her creations. The first one she told me about was this one:

"What is it?" I asked her.

"A banana!" she says, like I'm crazy for not knowing that.

But then she goes on to tell me a story about how this particular banana was eaten by a monkey who was flying on a flying trapeze, and he almost fell down because his hands were slippery from the banana, and then...etc etc. When Lindsey starts telling stories, she doesn't actually end sentences, they just flow into the next sentence with the words "and then."

The next picture was:

This one I was informed is of the tiger cave at the beginning of the movie Aladdin, the one that the thief goes into and never comes out of, that Aladdin is later stuck in. She talked about how he roars and moves around and then disappears back into sand.

Hmmm...perhaps no drawing skills, but definitely no lack of imagination!

Amber Alert

A few weeks ago, as Wayne and I were driving home from work, we saw that there was an Amber alert on one of the highway signs over the road we were driving on. It said that a girl had been abducted, and gave a very detailed description of the vehicle she was taken in, license plate included.

By the time we turned on the news that evening the lead story was that the perpetrator had been caught: story on next after the break.

"Good," I thought, "I hope they put that perp in jail."

Then the story came on, and the photo of the suspect was the spitting image of the girl who had been abducted.

It was the girl's noncustodial mother. She had just lost her custody battle the previous week.

Granted, the mom is all of 19 years old, meaning that she would have been 15 when she had her daughter. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons why she was not awarded custody. But it still makes me sad that the mother felt impelled to steal her daughter, and that the 4-year-old now thinks her mommy's a criminal. Maybe she is, but it's still sad.

Winter Days

We are truly TRULY looking forward to spring. We got more snow this past weekend (Easter weekend) than we'd gotten in several weeks. The only good thing about it this time is that it was warm enough to actually go out and play in it, and we were actually home to enjoy it. So many times we've had perfect snowman making weather during the week, when we're all at school and work, and it's too dark by the time we get home to make one. So I was happy to be able to make one with Lindsey on Saturday. It lasted all of about 10 hours -- it was melting and falling sideways by 6 pm.

Can you tell which photo is from last winter, and which is from THIS winter? I can't believe we found that same snowman kit with all the snowman making trimmings.

We awoke Easter morning to even MORE snow, still in the 30-degree range. Great packing snow for a snowball fight! And that's promptly what we did, until I accidentally hit Lindsey in the face. (I meant for her back, but she turned around.)

I'm including this photo of the two girls reading books because I think it's so sweet.

Swimsuits in March

This is what happens when winter goes on...and on...and on...

Last weekend we went to Wisconsin Dells to spend some time with my side of the family. We stayed at a hotel that had a pool and knew we'd have to break out the swimsuits. We weren't quite sure if they fit from last summer (sure enough, Marissa's didn't but Lindsey's did). We ultimately ended up settling on two matching swimsuits. I had bought both of them for Lindsey last year, not sure which one she would fit into. It turns out that the best fit was for Lindsey to wear the 3T bottoms and the 4T top, and Marissa fit best into the 4T bottoms and the 3T top. So this was the photo at the end of the fitting session, when we finally decided on who was wearing what. They wore their mittens because they were cold.

Remember that post about "Baby got Back?" Proof positive.

After these photos were taken we ended up somehow in a game of naked potato sack racing around the house. I have pictures of that too but am not posting them.

Geek in training

On Thursday of last week Wayne's nephew and fiancee watched our girls for the day instead of our having to take them to daycare. (Truly, what 19-year-olds do you know of ASK to watch toddlers/pre-schoolers while on their spring break?)

We got home and ordered a pizza for everyone (we spare no expense, no frozen stuff for them!) and Trav and E told us about the day.

E told us she was creating a connect-the-dots picture for Lindsey to connect all the dots on and make. She didn't realize that Lindsey was going to count all of the dots as she drew between them. Lindsey counted to 33.

I couldn't believe it. Wow! We have an official geek in training, I'm so proud.

Who cut the cheese??

This past weekend we had a lovely time in Wisconsin Dells visiting with my side of the family. Marissa and her cousin Paulie are very close in age, just two weeks apart. While you would think that would make them the best of pals, the girl/boy thing has already intervened -- Paulie cannot be separated from his cars, Marissa wants her dollies.

Once over the weekend my mom thought she smelled something poopy and asked Marissa if she had a poop in his pants. Marissa replied, "No." Then my mom asked, "Paulie, do you have a poop?"

Paulie replied, "No, she do," and pointed to Marissa.

Boy it starts early, doesn't it?

Apparently no one cut the cheese. At least...no one under three.

"Family Day" at the MIA

Once a month or so the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has "family day" and we finally took advantage today for the first time ever. It's a time when they have special kid functions throughout the museum that play in to the latest exhibit. Today the theme was "Cherry Blossoms and Cranes" and the focus was on Japanese art. You could watch a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, try your hand at folding origami and try to paint Japanese characters (our two did the latter).

With Marissa being partially potty trained and we not wanting to take a step backwards, she wore underwear today to the museum. I kid you not, I saw the inside of every bathroom on every floor that we visited. I believe we visited a bathroom a total of 5 times in the 1 1/2 hours we were there. I saw more toilets and sinks than I saw art.

It's not like you're going to say to her, "Marissa, I know you don't really need to go, you just want to play in the sink and see another bathroom." She would retaliate by looking you right in the face and peeing her pants right then and there, however little liquid she could conjure up. So off we traipsed at every request to find a bathroom to have her put two drops in the toilet.

The wide open spaces everywhere were very tempting to Lindsey and Marissa, who felt the need to race each other up and down every corridor, and play "peek a boo" around pedestals of scuptures.

Who knew that family day involved having three different security guards tell us that our kids need to "slow down?" Even at full speed they are barely doing a fast walk. And..ummm...isn't it family day? Who the hell cares? Everything's behind glass anyway, it's not like they're going to knock something over.

I want my kids to be comfortable in places like museums and libraries, but I think they are a few years off from visiting. Perhaps if I took Lindsey on her own she would behave herself better, but the two of them egg each other on.

I'm exhausted.

Baby Got Back

We've been in the process of potty training Marissa of late. She's been doing pretty good, she's been wearing underwear for two weeks to KinderKare now, though she clearly does not like pooping on the potty and that has led to some issues. She's wearing a pull-up or diapers during naptime and night time, but she's getting there.

The interesting part about going through this experience with Marissa as opposed to Lindsey is that Marissa is MUCH more easy going and with a big sister leading the way, she's very interested in getting rid of her diapers.

Another interesting part is that when we were potty training Lindsey you could always tell when she was wearing pull-ups, diapers or underwear. Her butt was so petite that it was always obvious when it wasn't covered with a thick, bulky diaper.

Marissa, on the other hand...well, this baby's got back.

Wayne almost put her down for her nap today in underwear because you can't tell by the size of her butt if she's got a pull-up on or not. She and Lindsey are both wearing the same size underwear -- 4T.

Gotta love that baby!

My Self Help Group

Around 3:00 this afternoon, I had a vision of myself at a self-help group:

Me [Standing in front of a room of people]: Hi, my name's Jenny.

Group [In Unison]: Hi Jenny!

Me: This afternoon I ate a whole box of Girl Scout cookies in one sitting.

Group: Oooo! So sorry.

Me: I resolve to NOT eat an entire box of Girl Scout cookies tomorrow.

Group [Various calls of encouragement]: Take it one day at a time. We're here to support you!

Me: Okay, maybe just one cookie...

Group: No! Don't do it!

And in case you are wondering, there are 1,125 calories in a box of Tag-a-longs.

My and my treadmill are going to be getting along famously tomorrow.

"Neighboring," the Verb

Last Friday night we had our neighbor Marilyn over for dinner. She has lived in her home here on Ewing for over 50 years and is a wonderfully spry and generous soul.

We had lots of fun visiting, and she brought over ice cream sundae makings which the girls thoroughly enjoyed. She shared with us that she had been a "soda jerk" back in the day, and obviously had not lost her touch! She even provided her own classic ice cream soda glasses!

We also learned another new word from her -- "neighboring" as a verb. She would say something like, "They were so good at neighboring!" And by that she meant that they were wonderful neighbors.

Here are a couple of photos of the girls making ice cream sundaes with Marilyn.

It was lots of fun, we'll have to do it again some time soon!

New Neighbors

As you may know from previous blogs, we had some riff raff in the neighborhood previously. While we begrudgingly spent time with them because our children seemed to like their offspring, they were too low brow and blue collar for our neighborhood.

Thankfully they moved away...far, far away, and we've finally got some pedigree in the neighborhood.

The people who moved into their home are the kind of people that we are proud to call neighbors. The husband is the newly appointed executive director of the James Sewell Ballet Company. They always park in their garage, never on the street, and the home already has the nice and tidy appearance of people who don't have those darn offspring around, messing up the crisp snow by making pesky snowmen and forts.

I know that that low-brow lady who moved out reads my blog...and I'm sure she takes this posting in the spirit in which it is meant: we miss you guys!

What's appropriate...in the bathroom?

A couple of nights ago Wayne was giving Marissa a bath while Lindsey and I were still downstairs playing indoor hopscotch. (It can be done, especially in Minnesota!) Lindsey suddenly announced that she had to go potty and ran upstairs to the bathroom Wayne and Marissa were in.

From downstairs I hear her enter the bathroom and announce her intentions. A few seconds later, I hear Wayne say loudly, "Lindsey, are you going poop? Don't go poopy while other people are in the bathroom! We don't want to smell your poop. Go use the downstairs bathroom. Oh, ugh, P.U!"

To which I hear Lindsey's musical voice reply, "Toooooo late!" as the toilet flushes.

I hear the water in the sink run, then down she comes, skipping down the steps, ready to resume our game with nary a care of the stinkbomb she just left in the bathroom for Marissa and her daddy to smell.

I laughed my ass off.

Glasses??

Marissa and Lindsey's cousin Paulie has glasses due to far sightedness. His glasses are cute little toddler glasses, perfectly fit for his face.

Both Marissa and Lindsey like to try on our glasses at various times. I'm surprised by how well mine actually fit Marissa's face. Just a little wide, not too much!

She liked looking at this picture of herself and then the one of Paulie on our fridge. She would say, "I wear glasses too!" very excitedly.

Fun with Vocabulary

This past weekend I couldn't believe how much Marissa's vocabulary has improved. Not just sentences, but full sentences, 5 and 6 words each. She can very clearly articulate what she wants and is learning new words every day.

She still has a few idiosyncrasies, though, that I just love. She still drops the "s" when it is paired with another consonant at the beginning of words. So she says "tool" for stool, "tink" for stink and so on. The other one that she does is she substitute "p" for "c" at the beginning of words. I found this one unusual and it took me some time to find the pattern of the substitutions. But now it's clear as day.

"Mommy, help me put the pap on." (Holds out a bottle of milk and cap.)

"Pomming, Dinzee!" ("Coming, Lindsey!")

The best one came last night when I was making wild rice soup for a potluck at Wayne's work. She wanted to see what was on the stove in the big pot, so she held up her arms to be picked up and says,

"I see poop?"

Happily, the soup did not taste like poop.

Slowly starting to warm...

We may finally be getting out of the deep freeze. A couple of things have tipped me off to this...

1. This morning was the first time in I don't know how long that the temp was in the double digits when we left the house. As we walked to the garage Lindsey took a deep breath, breathed out and looked at me excitedly. "Mommy!" she said. "It doesn't hurt to breathe!"

2. This afternoon as I was driving around doing errands over lunch, I cracked open the sunroof on the Civic. It was so nice to smell fresh air, and at 24 degrees, it didn't seem that cold!

Sad, but true.

My Avatar...

Would have changed, by the way, had anything of interest happened. But it is still effing cold, and that fact currently presides over Valentine's Day and St Patrick's Day.

It was 8 degrees BELOW zero at one point this weekend, windchills in the -20 zone.

WTF?!? Where is this global warming thing?!

Can't wait to start reading...

East of Eden.

I just got done reading "Heyday." It was...mediocre. It's been on a lot of best seller's lists, I read an excellent review of it, I couldn't wait to dig in.

I didn't get in to the character until halfway through. Actually, I couldn't keep the characters STRAIGHT until about halfway through. Then when they finally all joined up and went on their adventure together, which happens about two-thirds of the way through, I finally became intrigued.

I couldn't decide which way the novel was going to go -- a tragedy or no? As it turned out, it was a tragedy for some of the main characters but some got what they wanted in the end, so the ending in my mind was overall satisfactory. But even during the most tragic parts my only sentiment for the one main character who bites it was, "Gee, that's too bad."

At any rate, so I am now starting "East of Eden," a book I have never read, and I cannot wait.

I had to read "The Grapes of Wrath" in high school, and to be honest, I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the book. I also read "The Red Pony" in jr high, but both, being required reading, were approached with some tedium and trepedation.

Now, having recently read, "Travels with Charley," a semi-autobiographical account of John Steinbeck's travels across the US in the 1960s, I feel like I know him as a person. I'm more interested in what he has to say as a writer. And...now I realize that the 60's weren't in the same time period as the dinosaurs, as I once thought as a youngster. I realize that they are very recent history, that he is a very recent author, and that he is writing about America, a relatively recent country in the history of the world.

I am one chapter in, and cannot wait to get back to it. I'll let you know if my enthusiasm holds.

First Dental Appointment for Lindsey

I finally got Lindsey in to the dentist -- about a year after she should've had her first visit. Hey, nothing like starting to postpone those dentist appointments early in life, right??

It was an 8:30 appt and she, Marissa and I hit Bruegger's Bagels first for a special treat, then ate our bagels on the way. (Also a good idea, eat lots of chewy bread before going to your dentist -- dental hygienists LOVE that!)

To sum up the visit, Lindsey was a DREAM. She sat very still in the chair, she did exactly as they asked her to do, she was incredible. She was a little scared at first but when she realized that I wasn't going anywhere, she sat very still and just held my hand. Marissa was having fun looking into Lindsey's mouth with the big light on it, and the hygienist let her play with the suction tool -- she thought that was lots of fun!

The best news of all...no cavities.

I was so proud of her!

Yeayyyy Lindsey!

Request for housekeeping advice

Marissa had an accident at Kindercare today, the kind that hurts her pride and not her physical being.

She's been doing so well on the potty that they forgot to put a pull-up on her at naptime today. She awoke from her nap with a poop in her pants.

Except this time her "pants" were underwear.

So they did like any good caretaker would do, they changed her poopy clothes, put her in other clothes and sent her dirty stuff home in a bag.

It wasn't until AFTER I saw the poop floating around in the washing machine that I realized that they did not actually REMOVE the poop from her underwear, they had just wrapped it up in it. I, of course, had just dumped all the clothes in the bag into the wash without even looking.

So...here's my request for advice:

We no longer keep bleach in the house as it is not environmentally friendly. I've been using vinegar in my laundry along with a laundry detergent when I wash clothes. So...what do you recommend I use in the laundry tub to make sure it is fully sanitized before my next load of laundry??

Or should I go knock on a neighbor's house and ask for a cup of bleach?

Thanks!

The girl took the house!

She won for the ultimate irony.

Amy Winehouse "cleaned house" at the Grammy's, taking 5 of the 6 Grammys she was nominated for, including:

• Record of the Year ("Rehab")
• Song of the Year ("Rehab")
• Best New Artist
• Best Female Pop Vocal Performance ("Rehab")
• Best Pop Vocal Album ("Back to Black")

If you haven't heard the song that won the most, the chorus goes, "They tried to make me go to rehab and I said 'no no no.'"

Ironically, she could not attend the Grammy's as she was recently released from rehab in London. She has a phenomenal voice if you haven't heard it and if you can get past all the crappy celebrity trash on her. You go girl!

Frozen Grand Central

What an awesome experiment! This was fascinating to see ordinary people's response to this.

A Marissa Moment

Tonight I was reading Marissa "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" while sitting on the couch. We got to the page where the hungry caterpillar eats all the junk food, including an ice cream cone. Marissa climbs down off the couch and goes over to the big bin of playfood, searches through and finds the play ice cream cone.

She comes back over and holds it up to the page -- it is almost the same exact size as the ice cream cone on the page. So we pretend to eat the ice cream cone, we pretend to lick the lollipop, etc.

Pretty soon she pops the ice cream off of the cone part (they come apart and go back together), and I put the cone part upside on Dax's head as he lies next to me, perfectly still. Of course it stays there, and Marissa starts to sing:

"Happy Birf-fy to you...happy birf-fy to you...happy birf-fy to Dax, happy birray to you!"

And she leans forward and "blows" on his ice cream cone hat, which also bears an uncanny resemblance to a candle.

It was awesome.

I am on my way back to Minneapolis after an interesting trip out west. I don’t often get a chance to go west, and honestly don’t usually enjoy it, as the two-hour time difference really screws up my sleep schedule. (Oh yeah that’s right…what schedule?)

I got to spend a lot of time in Las Vegas, a city I have successfully avoided up until now. I don’t enjoy gambling, and the “shows” in the past have been more like peep shows that entertaining shows.

For once I had some free time on this trip. My traveling companion’s husband flew in to town, so they went their own way and I got to spend the evening on my own.

I walked up and down the strip a little bit. I felt like a little kid, so small compared to the buildings. I couldn’t believe all the people walking up and down, taking photos of “fake” architecture. Because that’s the only way I could describe it – a “fake” palace, a “fake” pyramid, a “fake” canal.

I felt small in comparison to the buildings, to the expanse between them. Even the sidewalks made me feel small – the city no longer allows pedestrians cross at the intersections; you have to take an outside escalator and go on bridges across the strip – large, wide bridges with glass walls so that the walls do not obstruct the pedestrians’ views of the rest of the strip.

Caesar’s Palace looks like a palace, but the “architecture” is made of cement, painted to look like granite. Instead of the architecture being made by artisans it’s churned out by machines and then put up by low-paid low-skilled workers, not like the true artisans who made the original works.

When I was a little girl I liked to play with toys that made me feel like a grown-up – a BIG playhouse that I could actually walk into without hitting my head, a pretend kitchen that made me feel like I was really cooking. I think that the tourists walking around Vegas get that feeling again, of being a child in a playland that is just a bit oversized for us.

This was evident to me as I people watched during my dinner. I ate at a restaurant called Canaletto, and it was set up as a patio just outside the “canal” at the Palazzo casino. To keep this fakery theme going, when I approached the hostess station to be seated, she asked if I wanted to eat inside or “outside, on the patio.” Keep in mind that the patio is actually a large shopping center, with fake building all around to be the Palazzo in Rome. There is a fake canal that runs through it, and the ceiling is painted like the sky, blue with puffy white clouds and a sunset beginning in the corner of the sky. Outside?? Um…yeah, let me leave the building then…

Anyway, while I was sitting there, enjoying my quiet dinner by myself, I saw two elderly Chinese men walking around, licking ice cream cones. They had pure white hair and shuffled while they walked, wearing matching tan Members Only jackets. They were so happy, the pleasure on their faces was evident for all to see as they walked around the square, taking in the sights and sounds of the fake Venice. After all, had we really been in Venice, the canal water would have been muddy brown or green, not sky blue, and the stench would have put the restaurant I was eating in out of business, or at least farther removed from the canal.

So then the question begs to be asked, “Is happiness at fakery authentic happiness?” And I guess the answer is “yes,” because these two men were taking in the human-made marvels that honored an older time, artisanship that is mostly lost, and preserved it in a sad, pathetic, commercial way. But they were genuinely happy and perhaps that is all that mattered.

Counting my blessings

Today we took the girls to the Mall of America, just to get out of the house and get into some large open areas where they can really move. Lindsey isn't as enamored with the rides as she used to be -- she now wants to hit all the little toy stores around the amusement park and beg relentlessly for us to buy her product x, y and z.

But I did get her to go on the merry-go-around. She was all settled on her seat ready to go when I had to move over to make room for a mom getting her son on the horse next to us. He was probably 6 or 7 but was obviously suffering from low muscle tone as she had to lift him into the seat. He was blind and she was "showing" him the horse by putting his hands on it. He never spoke, he never showed any emotion, and the longer we were near him the more I realized how profound his issues probably are.

The ride started and the mom did all the things any mom does with her kid, asking him if he was having fun, pointing to family members along the way every time they went around. "Look! There's Grandma and Evan!" I look to see who she's pointing to, and there's a slightly older lady with a baby in a stroller in front of her, waving emphatically. The baby very clearly has Downs Syndrome.

I held Lindsey tight and counted my blessings, while praying for their family to have the strength to deal with theirs.