Canines

Ace got both his canine teeth this weekend. That brings the tooth count to 10. Soon he'll look like a little vampire.

Purge

Bampa has been helping me with some stuff for my new business. He recommended a book, which I knew I had a copy of, and I knew exactly where it was. All I needed was 5 minutes with a ladder and without kids.

The book had been at my office. In February, we moved into a new building. When I boxed up my personal stuff, I just brought it home. I never took it to the new office, mostly because I plan to be launching my own business soon. It got put on the top shelf of the garage, where I would see it and think "I have to get that down and get it put away".

So, I got out the ladder and started digging in the box. There were several books I wanted to pull out, and I found them all right away. Then I turned to get the top to the box to put it away and I knocked the whole thing off the top of the ladder.

I stood at the top of the latter, looking at shards of my favorite coffee cup and pieces of broken glass all over the garage floor. And I felt GREAT. It was forced and instantaneous letting go of all that baggage.

When I got a broom to clean it up, I found that the glass in my "5 year certificate of appreciation" from my office, and my professional association membership certificates was shattered. None of the family photos were damaged at all.

Isn't that perfect?

So, now the family pictures are safely stored, Moolah's artwork has been saved, the legos are in Daddy's stash, the rest is in the goodwill pile or in the trash, and I am one box closer to my new career.

Whoopee!!!

I hope we're back

I had a cruddy cold for 2 weeks, and finally felt mostly better on Sunday. On Monday Ace got sent home from the daytime family with 101 degree fever, which lasted til yesterday. He's been fever free for 24 hours now, so he can go back to his friends tomorrow. Unfortunately, my sore throat is back. I'm determined to not get very sick this time, although my determination has no effect on whether I actually do get sick...

What is it about panties?

Panties are fascinating to both my kids. Preferably dirty. If I leave a pair of panties on the floor, or sort out a pile of laundry, at least one if not both will end up carrying panties around, putting panties on their head, putting panties over their clothes, wearing panties as a backpack... the list is endless. They don't pick out shirts or towels. Sometimes Ace will chew on a sock if no panties are available. Otherwise, it's panties.

Oh, and if no panties are around, they'll both head for the same pair of my shoes, shiny red flats.

13 Months

Ace is 13 months today. Tomorrow Moolah will be 3 1/2.

When Ace was first born, maybe even his first ride home in the car, he cried and I asked Moolah to sing to him. She sang the ABC's and he stopped crying.

In the last 13 months, we have requested Moolah's soothing song stylings countless times. In the car, during Boot Camp, in a restaurant, in a store. It works every single time.

Tonight, we were driving home from IKEA at 9 pm and he was way overdue for bed. He was completely unglued. Moolah soothed him by G or H.

P.S. Sorry for the absence... I've been really sick!!!

It's been a Nyquil week for Mama

Today's brief updates:

The sun finally came out for part of the day. I think you could probably see the glare off the pasty skin of Rainy Staters who flooded outside to catch a glimpse of this rare phenomenon from space.

Strider's family walked to the park.

Ace walked every single step of the way from our house to the big kid swings by himself. For those of you who haven't visited our park, the big kid swings are a good long hike away if your legs are a foot and a half long. It also involves a serious amount of altitute gain. After that, he still climbed all over the equipment back at the bottom, and went down the slide head first twice (Daddy and Moolah caught him). He is sleeping very well now.

Now it's Nyquil time again...

Moolah read all the "I"s and "a"s in the Dr. Seuss bedtime story of the night. She was also very excited because Daytime Mama sang "Freres Jaques" today, which she knows as the song that Mama's Granma sang. It was very exciting that Daytime Mama also knew Granma's song.

LIfe in the Rainy State

It's June 11 and Moolah is wearing her Christmas dress, which is perfect for today's weather.

Moolahism of the Day

"My tummy hurts."

"Why does your tummy hurt, are you hungry?" (she was dawdling over breakfast)

"I think my tummy hurts because I'm not watching Word World."

Memory

Moolah has an astounding memory. Many of you have experienced this. Here's one recent example.

We were driving last week and Moolah said "Can we go to the pumpkin patch and ride a train? This time I will climb up the hay. Last time I was scary, but I'm bigger now and won't be scary anymore."

This had not been a recent topic of conversation with either Daddy or I.

Get to Know Ace

Likes:

• Spaghetti
• Bananas
• Peek-a-Boo
• Showers
• Medicine (yes, lucky us)

Dislikes

• Baths (screaming fit from the second his feet touch the water).
• Shoes (with soles)

All is calm...

Moolah and Prince G chose to share the futon. Prince G said it was "more comfortabler" and I said he could use it but he had to share.

Prince 5 thought the Mini Princess would get lonely being the only one not on the comfortabler futon.

Mini Princes was just fine in her little zone. And, yes, I went and got a blanket so she wouldn't get cold.

Speedy Recovery to the Princess

The Princess had surgery today, which was delayed, which is why the Royal Children are sleeping downstairs.

This sleep-over was the contingent, contingent, contingent plan. It required at least three unlikely events to all occur at once. Instead, one unanticipated event brought it on. But, the result was that Strider's team had little time to prepare for the visit.

Fortunately, we did have some Drumsticks left over from the Zuko's visit. So, after a reasonable amount of hot dogs were consumed, everyone got dessert, and a lesson in human development courtesy of Princes 5 and G.

Prince 5, throughout dinner: "I get pudding for dessert. It was left over from my Lunchables. I'm the only one who gets pudding."

Mama: "OK" (translation, this argument is not worth my energy)

Prince 5: "I get pudding. I finished my hot dog (smug grin at siblings with plates full of hot dog and then syrupishly), may I please get my pudding now?"

Mama: Yes. Good job. Everyone else eat up.

Prince 5: "Ha. Ha. I have pudding and you don't" (OK, maybe he didn't really say this. I don't actually remember, but if he didn't, he wanted to).

Mama distributes chocolate Drumsticks to Moolah, Prince G., and the Mini Princess.

Prince 5: "Mini Princess. Do you want (extra syrup) PUDDING! I think you like pudding. I'll trade you. You can have my pudding."

Mama: "Do you want pudding or ice cream."

Mini Princess: "Pudding."

Prince 5 scores a drumstick.

Prince G breaks the top off his drumstick. I get him a bowl and a spoon. There is some excuse for the drumstick being unacceptable. He wants another. Unfortunately, there are no more. He'll have to eat the broken one. Much pouting.

Mini Princess, looking at everyone else's dessert: "Ice cream." Since she was tricked into the pudding, I get her a regular vanilla ice cream cone.

Prince G: "Mini Princess, do you want the chocolate ice cream with nuts. It's really yummy!"

Mini Princess, pointing to the vanilla cone: "Ice cream".

Prince 5: "No fair! No fair! She gets two desserts."

Prince G: "No fair! No fair! She gets vanilla. I wanted vanilla!"

When I pointed out that both brothers tried to pawn off their inferior desserts on their sister, and each had gotten exactly what he asked for, twice in Prince 5's case, they denied it absolutely.

Ah, youth...

Princess, get well soon. I don't have the stamina to do this for more than a couple of consecutive meals :)

Moolahism of the night

"But, I don't like the options."

Moolah made out well on Ace's Birthday

Ace is a baby. He's not very photogenic with his gifts. Many of you (and many thanks) sent along something for Moolah. Here are the best action photos:

From Aunt D & Uncle D: Hello Kitty make-up purse. Moolah had to make up Daddy, who actually kind of enjoyed it. He proudly wore his fingernail polish to work today, and told everyone down to the coffee guy that his daughter did it for him.





From Gigi: Princess PJs and a coloring book. If you look closely, you can see that Moolah has begun to be more discriminating about her coloring, focusing on sections of the picture.



Many thanks to all!

Mama Merit Badge: Dora Salvage

Strider decided that Mermaid Dora looked tasty. He chewed off both her feet leaving shredded plastic doll leg stumps. It looked pretty gross. I wanted to toss her in the garbage and hope for "out of sight, out of mind". But, it was also a pretty vivid message about picking up. Plus, I realized that since she was supposed to be "Mermaid" Dora, feet weren't technically necessary.

So, after discussing that we need to be responsible for our things, I got out my sewing machine and some fabric. I didn't have any batting. Then I laughed and decided to employ the Lou and Adoph construction method.

Best friends, Lou and Adolph bought one piece of property and split it into two, building identical little postage stamp houses side-by-side. Oosje & Bampa now live in one of the houses. Every long weekend, Lou & Adoph added a room onto one of the houses, so that both ended up as meandering structures built with lots of love and little skill. When they were building a floor, or an attic, or a wall, and they didn't have quite enough of whatever they needed to make things level, they would just stuff magazines or telephone books or scrap wood into the offending hole and move on.

This afternoon, looking at my stack of supplies, I realized that I could use the scrap bits for stuffing. It took me awhile to work out how the tail would attach to a plastic doll, until I saw Daddy's old socks that I had cut the feet out of to protect Ace's knees when he crawled (they are the "legwarmers" in the walking video). They never worked for Ace and have been sitting around the house for weeks. Now, they are both stuffing and ribbing for a very functional mermaid tail. All is well again.

Then & Now

1989: Closing night of Grease. I played Cha Cha. We had a great time choreographing and rehearsing our dance, which included several moves that we could not possibly perform at this time.

The lipstick is not mine. I never knew whose it was, but Zuko says it was Sandy's. Apparently she refused to kiss him at the end of the show the first two nights, but made her mark on closing night.



Nineteen years, several pounds, and a few grey hairs later

For those of you who knew Zuko, he's exactly what you would expect him to be. He's an engineering professor in a Geology department and works on hydromapping for watershed management. His kids came out conveniently boy (14), girl (12), boy (11), girl (8 mos). The three older ones are polite and well behaved. I would have liked to include them in the conversation more, but we had many years of catching up to do, and they were all very quiet. They wondered why we all looked like such "geeks" in high school. "Dad, why did you tuck in your shirt like that!?!?" All are artistic and athletic.

Mrs. Zuko and the newest Zukini:

Mrs. Zuko is friendly and delightful. Daddy made her cry (with laughter).

Thanks to Daddy and Fred for joining me on the trip down memory lane, and for taking care of all the actual work involved. Dinner was fabulous!