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.