Nine days until Christmas

Today Nathan announced as he climbed into the van after preschool, "I have something in my backpack. It's a secret." Then he whispered in my ear, "It's a surprise. For Christmas!" Then he pulled it out of his backpack and showed me a square wrapped present. "Open it!"

But call me a Grinch (or maybe call Alice the grinch, since she was the one crying in her carseat--yes, she does occasionally cry, those who think she's abnormally good), but I suggested we at least wait until we get home.

So, home and unloading groceries and feeding lunch and the usual screams and yells and so forth. And then I made everyone lie down since I was feeling ridiculously tired (I'm only halfway sick so that's pretty good, right?). Nathan let me have twenty minutes to myself in my bed before coming for a snuggle and "Mom, I'm feeling bored because I haven't watched any kid TV." But he lay with me for another twenty minutes before he remembered. He went bounding downstairs and came back with the present that he'd placed under the Christmas tree.

"Open it!" I tried to convince him it looked much better to have one present under the Christmas tree, and that I'd rather wait and have my surprise on Christmas, but he was too excited. But he did let me unwrap it myself, which is progress. It was a tile with his handprint in orange paint, with his name and the year painted underneath. "Mom," he said, pointing to the numbers 2012, "is that my phone number?" He always thinks that numbers coming after his name are his phone number.

Oh, my funny four and half year old. Then he asked me to tell him what his presents were going to be. "But," I said, "if I tell you it won't be a surprise. Then Christmas won't be as much fun."

"Mom, you need to tell me! I will still be surprised ON CHRISTMAS!" He was very angry. It is so hard to wait.

Onward and upwardly mobile

 Well, a month has gone by. And here's what we've been up to--mostly it seems we've been taking pictures of babies.

 She's found some new favorite toys. Nathan's trio blocks have perfect sized holes for thumbs and fingers. These toys never get dropped. But her fingers are getting big enough that it might get tricky getting them unstuck.

 Kids out of the tub never like to walk to the bedroom. And babies don't do stairs. So....what's a mom to do?

 Sneeze!

 And a new level of bedtime wiggles. Look closely...somehow she got her jammies twisted so that her legs were in the opposite legs.

 And crawling! Crawling started about the middleish of November? And it wasn't too long before climbing started happening. Climbing!

She was pretty happy when she finally made it over. She will now get her hands up on something--the bottom stair, my lap, etc. and get up on to her feet.

And she's now working on her first tooth. So what I thought was just the onset of separation anxiety is separation anxiety and sad baby mouth.

So, eight months. It's been a good one.

a super short post...

hi. not dead yet. Blogging from my phone! it is not the most convenient. Last night we watched White Christmas and when the first song started Clara wanted to get up and dance. She danced nearly the entire movie. Nathan even joined her a little and actually enjoyed the movie. I'll get him while he's young to watch musicals. Alice just crawled around and tried to eat things.

The last warm Monday

 Nothing like settling in with a cold one by the fire in your backyard.

 I wanted to get the garden cleaned up. And by the time it was done, it was dark and dinnertime. What to do?

 Hot dogs and s'mores and IBC--good thing we don't eat like this every day.

And Nathan, who refused to wear a jacket, quit it early and took refuge under his "crocodile comforter." I'm not sure where this name came from, but I gather it was in a book he read at preschool.

But I was glad to get some use out of our firepit before winter. We tried to have a fire during the summer and it was so hot no one would sit near it. We didn't have that problem this time.

Reading

I just read a beautiful contemplation of risk and faith and freedom and making choices to live your most meaningful life.

http://www.birdsofashmae.com/2012/10/risk.html

Happy Friday

Me: Well, Batman, what are you going to do now?

Batman (Nathan): I'm going to fight crimes.

Clara (plaintively): I not crimes!

The story of my sink.

A couple weeks ago our sink suddenly was draining really slowly. So, like all red-blooded Americans, we poured toxic chemicals down our sink and took care of the problem. Done and done.

But last week, it started draining slow again, and this time Drano did not solve the problem. I was thinking, we've been really careful to not let any food or anything go down the drains lately. And, if terrible poisons are not taking care of this, it must be really bad. But while Levi was at work and after a call to my home-maintenance consultant (read: my dad) I decided to become an amateur plumber. (Really, I had no idea it was so easy to just unscrew by hand the trap under the sink. Ridiculously easy.) Right away I could see the problem: 

 Yep, that's a rock. A rock. In the pipe under my sink. How?

We're not really sure, but we're thinking that something got caught down there, and over years and years the mineral deposits built up, until this thing was suddenly gumming up our drain. I'm just curious to see what it would have looked like before I started eroding it with drano.

 

Sharing the Spoils

 We're trying to keep a lid on sugar comas around here, so the Halloween candy is stored on top of the fridge. Where, of course, I can sample anything that looks good when I take a fancy to. One day after lunch the kids chose tootsie pops as a treat. Nathan quickly finished his--he's a sucker biter. Clara took a little longer, and then I found her giving Alice some licks. As I went to get the camera, Nathan decided he needed a piece of the action.

 What a nice sister to share.

They all three very nicely took turns with the sucker, Clara making sure that each got equal licking time. Until Nathan decided to bite it. The sucker didn't last too much longer after that.

Oh, and by the way, that baby is scooting. For a couple weeks now. She'll get up on her hands and knees and lurch forward a couple of inches, and then start the process over. She's trying to figure out how to move those hands, and she's getting pretty close. Sometimes she'll get up on her her hands and her feet, with her bum sticking way up in the air. It's kind of like she's showing off her tricks, but we're a pretty appreciative audience.

Halloween

 The Monday before Halloween is known as Pizza and Pumpkins. So while I went out for some last-minute visiting teaching (yeah, I have to keep up on that stuff now) Levi made some pizza.

 And after dinner came the pumpkins. Every year we go to a place in Hooper that you can pick your own pumpkins for $5 an armful. This year they were kind of puny, but we got two that were still carveable. Nathan wanted a bat and Clara wanted a princess. While I was hollowing out Clara's pumpkin Nathan went at his with the safety knife we had from last year's pumpkin-carving kit. The pumpkin was pretty soft from all our warm weather so he could actually carve it. I did the bat but on the other side of his pumpkin he wanted a face--a face which, after I got it done, he systematically dismantled with the safety knife. It was just a gaping hole when he had finished. But he left the bat symbol alone, so we had one side fit for display. Levi took over carving the princess pumpkin. His carving is a little more nuanced than mine, and his took a lot longer. Clara loved it.

 The kids were so antsy to get out trick-or-treating that we didn't get very good pictures.

 For instance, we forgot Batman's yellow utility belt. I especially like the small ballerina holding on to Batman's cape.

And Clara, whose leotard skirt is sticking out over her tutu, had a cute matching headband like Alice's. Which she broke promptly after wearing it for five minutes. It broke on the way to our first Halloween party.

This year it was really warm. I wore shorts while we took the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, and then we headed to trick-or-treat the grandparents. The kids had fun showing off their costumes to a very appreciative audience, and they especially enjoyed the extra handfuls of candy doled out by doting grandmas and grandpas.

It was a Happy Halloween.

Salon Saturday

 After some more concentrated curiosity about the contents of my makeup bag, I decided to initiate Clara into the cult of beauty. Can you believe she's two and a half and has never had her nails painted? I stopped painting my nails years ago (maybe high school?) but I had some as a gift from a well-meaning visiting teacher. And, luckily, it was pink. Levi suggested if I painted mine it might cover up my ghastly toe, but no such luck. You think maybe he's tired of looking at it? (My toenail is black from where the edge of a dinner plate hit my toenail, before Labor Day. I'm starting to lose the nail now.)

 We also did Alice's toes. She was not happy about it as it meant she couldn't touch her toes for a while.

 Nathan wanted in on  the fun. Dad was not on board. We compromised with one thumbnail, and the toes on one foot. Which we said we'd remove strictly before church the next day, but of course that didn't happen.

She was so excited. And, once I got used to the feeling of polish on my nails, I kind of enjoyed it too. Watch out; I might get all girly now.

Cousin week

First off, I wanted to share a couple stories about bouncy houses. Apologies to those who already heard me tell these at Labor Day, when I was laughing so hard I cried. I have to share again.

Once upon a time when I was super sick and pregnant, I watched a lot of America's Funniest Home Videos. It's good mindless entertainment when you feel like puking all the time. And one of my favorite videos (one of the only ones I remember) is of a kids' party. Lots of kids everywhere, but most especially in the bouncy house. And then we see a clown come. This clown looks semi-professional, and very enthusiastic. And the clown decides to go where all the children are, the bouncy house. The clown goes in and starts jumping around--because clowns make everything more fun, right? The clown's arrival causes a panic. The kids come piling out. The ones who can't get out are clinging to the sides, crying in terror. Even now, I am nearly crying with laughter just as I type this. I don't know why it's so funny.

The second story: Two years ago at our Labor Day reunion, there was a bouncy house. This was a new thing, and it was very exciting. The kids were all occupied with other activities, bingo, swinging, what have you. And then somebody notices: There's a bouncy house! And all the kids (big kids, little kids--maybe twenty? Twenty-five? a lot) start running en masse to the bouncy house. Kids keep piling in. So many kids keep piling in that the pump can't keep up, and the bouncy house collapses. The kids who had just been having so much fun are now crying as they try to extricate themselves from the wreckage.

So, these stories have something in common: bouncy houses, and kids' glee turning into utter sadness, instantly.

I'm glad to say our trip to Kangaroo Zoo did not go like that. Clara did cry when she got bumped (I wasn't very sympathetic until I realized that her lip was bleeding a little), but that only lasted a few minutes. And when you consider that we had nine kids in our group, that's a pretty good record.

My brother-in-law had some leave before he deployed, so he moved his wife and daughter back to Utah and had a couple weeks to spend time with family.

Serendipitously, my sister-in-law and nephew who live in Canada decided to come for a visit while he had some time off school. And these two visits just happened to be at the same time.

So we had a busy togetherness week that included: a birthday party, trip to the library, lunch at grandma's house, feeding the ducks and playing at the playground, the Burger King Play Place (guess who got to go  up and help the kids climb?) and K'nex. Oh how the kids love K'nex.Turns out kids from 2 on up to 11 enjoy them, and I'm sure the six-month-old wouldn't have minded getting hold of a few. And did I mention our week included very few naps? But the behavior was pretty surprisingly good--for the most part, they were too busy having fun to be cranky.

And then the grand finale, Kangaroo Zoo.

The highlight of the afternoon was how Clara "needed help" to play, and so I got to jump and slide with the kids. Also, Jessica, who hasn't had much use for me before, let me hold her and even smiled when we played "ring around the rosies." What can I say? bouncy toys bring people together.

 And we even managed to corral them all for a minute to get all 11 grandkids together in one picture. (If you're counting, two of them happen to be in that very cute pregnant belly. Seriously, I wish my pregnant belly were that cute. Also and by the way, don't interpret that to mean I'm currently pregnant.)

It was so fun to spend time with our cousins that we don't get to see very often. Thanks everybody.

Seven months

 Because I haven't posed any pictures of Alice in too long: enjoy. Does she look very ballerina-y? Because that's what she and Clara are going to be for Halloween. I was glad she was more interested in playing with the tutu than with protesting that it's kind of scratchy.

 Unless she decides to go for a different look for Halloween. Less feminine, but it has its charms.

All in all, she's a very nice baby.

She's still not sleeping through the night (since Labor Day!) but I still like her. She's not crawling yet but is awfully close. She launched herself forward a few inches yesterday. And we're trying to teach her eating is faster and less messy if she doesn't stick her fingers in her mouth in between every bite for a quick suck. Those fingers are her very near and dear to her heart.

First snow

 This morning Clara woke up grumpy. So I dragged myself out of bed (usually I just wait for them to come to my room, and hope that takes a while) and headed downstairs. And, by the time I got down  there, I had the perfect end to the grumps.

"Clara, I have a surprise for you."

Surprises are irresistible. And happy.

So both kids followed me upstairs, and wazam, I pulled up the blinds.

"Snow!"

They wanted to go right out, but the mean and grumpy (read: still tired) mom said we had to eat breakfast and get dressed first. And I added teeth brushed and hair combed for good measure--if they don't get done first off they don't get done at all.

It took longer to hunt up and put on all the snow clothes than they actually spent playing in the snow. Alice enjoyed curiously touching a handful of snow for a minute but then, it was time to eat, and she was swaddled in a ridiculously large snow suit, and she was beyond done. I spent my time wrangling a wiggly baby and putting on mittens on--again, and again. Why don't mittens stay on? Nathan had a great time chucking our pumpkins into the snow. Clara was frustrated it wasn't working out to shovel the snow off the grass. And we did have some cousins come to have a snowball fight, share some pumpkin chocolate chip bread, and feed slushy snow to the neighbor's dog. And, the dog was actually eating it. That dog must have been crazy bored.

And now the snow has melted. Clara saw it was gone and said, "Oh, no. The snow got broken!" And put on her sad, give-me-sympathy face.

Now, back to fall. Come on, weather. I had to turn on my furnace and everything. And, since I am my father's daughter, that's not something I like to do before November. What can I say? I'm a little stubborn, especially about things that don't really matter.

The last month or so in pictures.

 I bragged to my cousin that Clara had never gotten into my makeup..just a single mishap with a chapstick. And Nathan only got into a colored lip gloss once.) And then, a few days later...she was so proud of herself. Not sure why she thinks mascara goes on your eyebrows.

 A trip to Union Station to see a working steam engine and the Harvest Festival...

 The first twenty minutes of our outing were the best. We should have stopped there. The longer it went the worse they got.

 And our Columbus Day outing. After preschool we drove up the canyon to see the leaves.

 Nathan said the leaves were beautiful.

 Clara fell asleep and didn't say much of anything.

 And I decided that we should live in Huntsville. Because that was a pretty awesome park. And, Huntsville is pretty.