Temper

I have been very short on temper the last two days.  I dislike it when I snap at my children for things that I should be able to handle in a more positive way.  I don't like when I yell at them because what they're doing is very child-like, but so not what an adult wants to have happen--like pouring an entire cup of water on the table, just to see what happens.

My children have been children, nothing more, but when you're running low on patience, it's hard to be the parent you want to be.  My children are at that age where they like to push you and see what they can get away with.  Okay, wait, that's not entirely accurate, they are in that long stretch of life called, "childhood" in which they test and test and test their parents to see what happens.  Today, I was not interested in being tested.

Today I was a crappy parent.  Tomorrow,  I hope I'll be a more mellow mom.

The Big Boy Update:  "I'm going to do it the right way."  My son had brought out a very simple puzzle with colored fish.  All the fish are the same shape and any fish will fit into any spot.  My son for the first time decided there should be some order to the fish and wanted to put the colored fish into the matching colored slot. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Why you doing the bouncy house one?"  My daughter asked me this question and I had no idea what she was talking about at first.  We had some sticky substances get into the car seat latches and I had been soaking them in water to dissolve any residue.  I decided to dry out the latches with a hairdryer and had gotten the extension cord so my hair dryer would reach the car.  What I didn't realize was that the only other thing my daughter has ever seen us use that extension cord for was to plug in the bouncy house. 

Dinner With Friends

We had dinner with our neighbors tonight.  We went to one of their favorite restaurants.  We enjoyed small plates that we shared and a lot of good conversation.  I had a great night.  We have some great neighbors.

Among stories shared were those about pregnancy, delivery and other things best shared only by those who have lived through the horrors (or joys) of delivering and raising a child.  That's not to say that others might not be interested in the stories, just that those that have experienced them personally will find your stories that much more humorous.

We have a lot in common with our next-door-neighbors.  We plan to go out on child-free dinners more often. 

The Big Boy Update:  "Why we have balloons in the car?"  My son asked me this after having a lovely dinner at a restaurant.  Upon leaving, the waiter gave both my son and daughter balloons.  They happily carried them to the car and were then strapped into their seats.  As we drove off, my son asked us why we had balloons in the car

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   "I want a spoon."  My daughter has a utensil issue.  She only likes spoons.  If a for is available, it's not a spoon.  She has almost had a tantrum over the lack of spoon at her place.  Okay, let me think that through, she has had a tantrum because a spoon, "wasn't available".  We're not letting her have a spoon every time she asks for one because she needs to learn that a fork is a useful tool as well.

Alcohol Is Heavy

So this month I haven't been drinking alcohol.  Or for the most part I haven't been.  There was the champagne toast and the unfinished champagne bottle.   (Let's not ask my husband about that one, he may have some choice words for me.)   There was the, "let's go to a bar before we go to dinner so we can have drinks" birthday event that I felt obligated to have a beer at to be social.  But other than a few specific instances, I haven't had any alcohol at all. 

It's interesting how your mind just doesn't care about alcohol when you haven't had any for a while.  I hear it's like that with lots of things, such as fatty or salty foods and candy.  Maybe it's like that with reality television.  I know I don't have any desire to watch any, but that could be because I've never gotten interested in it.

Back to the alcohol though.  Last month it seemed like I had to pay attention to my weight and I was even considering going on a restriction of calories for a week or two because I had seemed to be going up a tiny bit for a while. 

This month with no alcohol and I'm back to where I expect my weight to be.  I don't know if it was the calories in the alcohol or the food I ate because alcohol makes me hungry that made the difference. 

The Big Boy Update:  "I want to be good."  This was one of those things that just about made me cry.  I had a phone call and was working on something today and my son wanted the iPad so I gave it to him so I could work on the computer for the duration of the call.  I came back after the call to find him lying on our bed with very wet pants.  This means our comforter was wet with urine as well.  I was so mad that I yelled at him.  He really does know better and he's so good at toileting at this age, but sometimes he gets too focused.  I kept yelling at him and telling him I was so mad and that I was disappointed in him because he knew better.  He was sitting forelornly on the bridge with his legs dangling through the pickets in the railing when I had calmed down.  He looked at me and said in a sad voice, "I want to be good."  And I know he does want to be good.  I picked him up and hugged him and told him I knew he wanted to be good and I knew he tried and I was so proud of him for trying.  We then had to wrestle around on the floor until we both got the giggles.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Change of roles.  Tonight, my son calmly got out of bed after an unexpected nap, walked downstairs and sat in the chair waiting for dinner.  My daughter, on the other and very uncharacteristic hand, threw a tantrum like I've never seen her do before.  She was unable to comfort herself and she didn't want my help either.  It went on for twenty minutes.  When daddy got home and had chocolate, I gave her a mini candy bar out of desperation because she needed some calories and nothing was working.  She sat on the floor, at the candy and then my daughter returned to normal.

An Itchy Update

The Big Boy Update:  Most of tonight's post is going to be about my son, so I'm just going to start with his section heading as I know my three readers are easily confused.  Alright, fine, it's not you folks. It's for me for future reference.  Years from now, how will I find something I remember writing about but have no idea when I wrote it?  (Assuming this blog, the internet and  I'm still here)  If I stick it in the main section of the blog will I miss it if I'm only looking through updates on my son?  So to make sure I don't get confused (you see I was the confused one all along) I'm keeping updates on my son in his section. 

Let's talk about being itchy though.  My son developed eczema when he was about four-months-old.  He didn't know how to scratch then, but it looked bothersome and we hoped it would go away.  Some time later, we discovered he had an egg white allergy.  It's not uncommon in young children and the allergy usually goes away when their immune system is more mature.  So we avoided eggs.

His itchy skin--he could scratch by this time--didn't get better though.  And to back up, the allergy he had was initially obvious; he would eat something and then get all red around the mouth and on his thumb and index finger.  He was reacting to things he was eating on all the external places he touched the food.  Only later did we make the connection to the eczema.  There would be an immediate topical reaction and then there would be a delayed dermal reaction of about two days.

Eggs are in a lot of things in small quantities.  We avoided it mostly, but he would have strange reactions to things that didn't make sense--things he didn't react to last week.  We were perplexed.  We finally got a blood test for food allergies done on him.  And then we understood.  He was reactive to all the major things: milk, egg, wheat, soy, tree nuts, fish.   Well no wonder this kid had eczema.

The pediatrician said the levels weren't high and gave us some foods to avoid over others.  We cut back on some things and his eczema got better.  He had gotten better at using a utensil and getting the food in his mouth by this time so he didn't get red in the face and his hands didn't look like he needed to soak them in Palm Olive and have a manicure anymore.  But the eczema persisted.

For example, at one point we were feeding him edamame beans and unlike the times before he had a terrible itchy reaction.  After that one time we've carried Benadryl in the car ever since.  As he gets older, both the reactions and the eczema have reduced.

Now, my son can eat a meringue cookie and ask for a second.  That's right, that's a cookie made entirely of egg whites and sugar.  Egg whites were his nemesis for a long time.  Those soy beans he had a fit of a time over, we now buy in freezer bags and give him a bowl full for snack.  Peanuts he still dislikes, but other than that, he's got a much more flexible diet now.

He's old enough to tell us if something, "makes him itchy" and we'll ask him before we try something he reacted to in the past for a new evaluation.  If he doesn't like it (say like the coconut cookie I tried today) then no matter how delicious that item might be, he'll hand it over to his sister and let her have it. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She only uses a pacifier in the bed at night.  Well, unless she finds it during the day.  She can and does sleep other places without it, like the car seat or the sofa, but she is very fond of it.  It's going to be a sad day when the pacifier has to be retired. 

The Oreo Tooth

My son's discolored tooth had me thinking back to my childhood and the days of loose teeth and the memory of that strange sensation of a freshly missing tooth in your mouth.  But this story isn't about my mouth, it's about my friend's.

She had a loose tooth that she was waggling back and forth but didn't quite have the nerve to pull out.  It was one of her top front teeth and she didn't have the experience to know yet that it's far better to rip it out and get it over with than deal with the bother over days or weeks. 

We were eating Oreos and swinging in the hammock in our front yard.  Back then, the hammock was close to the front door.  These days those sturdy trees are long gone, cut down when they started impinging on the house, but back then, they were young and healthy.

So we were swinging and eating Oreos and we had made a lovely pile of leaves under the hammock in case we decided to roll out.  It was a nice fall day and I am certain our parents were more than glad we were occupying ourselves and letting them enjoy the day.

About that time my friend told me there was something hard in the filling of her Oreo.  She spit it out into the leaves.  You know what's coming next, right?  She realized a few minutes later--interestingly enough, not immediately--that her tooth was missing. 

Thus ensued a long and exhaustive search through a large pile of leaves for that tooth...because she needed it for the Tooth Fairy.   We must have had more patience as children, because we looked long enough and eventually found the tooth.

The Big Boy Update:  Tower of trucks.  I got another truck for them today.  Children seem to like to things like dump trucks around backwards, usually running, for no apparent reason.  Uncle Dale's childhood trucks are very popular and one more truck, somewhat bigger was only going to make the fun more funny.  One of the first things my son did was to put the smaller dump truck in the back of the new dump truck.  Then he put the tow truck in the top of that dump truck and when I looked next, he was trying to balance a fourth truck on top. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Purple.  My daughter has taken a recent liking to the color purple.  She has a water bottle that she likes to tote around and hold with her Mickey Mouse or baby or other stuffed animal.  She didn't want snack today unless I could put it in the purple bowl for her.  The purple bowl was in the dish washer.  She decided she didn't need snack in that case.

We're Leaving...

My children really don't care if we leave.  They like their sitters and they have fun when people come to visit.  They might be upset when we go because, for example tonight, my son didn't want to eat dinner.  He didn't want to eat dinner because he was overly hungry.  Our sitter, Tristan, sat on the steps while he wallowed on the lowest stair and asked him some unrelated questions and the next thing I knew, my son was eating his dinner.

Did they care when we told Tristan we were leaving?  Not one bit.  I suppose I'm proud of that.  They don't have separation anxiety with either my husband or me.   On the other hand, it's nice to be wanted and missed. 

I suppose you can't have both attachment and independence at the same time.

The Big Boy Update:  Under the dining room table.  My son loves to get under the dining room table.  It's a square table so there is room for him to easily sit under there with a toy, multiple toys or as in the case today, an iPad he found.  I wouldn't have discovered him for a good while had he not turned up the volume on the app he was playing.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was eating pretzel sticks today and she was making shapes on the table with them.  She had made a triangle and I showed her how you could put a triangle on top of a square and make a house.  She looked at the house and said, "that's Madison's house!"  Madison is her next-door-neighbor.

Laura Little

My children were invited to a birthday party today.  We got our present, decorated our card, put on some cute clothes (the children, not me) and headed over to their house.  I had looked up the address several days before because I recognized the street, but couldn't place it.

I did know where that street was, but I hadn't been there in years.  I was pretty certain one of my friends from elementary school had lived on that street, but I couldn't remember exactly.  It's hard to remember street names when you're years away from driving and your parents take you everywhere.

But I was right, it was her street I discovered when we arrived.  I could picture her house, so interesting to me because it was a contemporary design.  There were skylights and angles and it was very exciting inside because it felt both open and like there were lots of little spaces at the same time.

I hadn't remembered her name until we parked and got out of the car.  I looked over to here house and suddenly her name, Laura Little, came to me.  How memory works is amazing.

The Big Boy Update:  Naked.  We were outside today, in February, without jackets.  It was sunny and warm and our neighbor's son was out in a t-shirt and shorts.  My son and daughter walked up to the neighbor's porch a while later and after some time we decided we'd better go check on what they were doing.  My son had taken every bit of clothing off because, "they were dirty."  He decided he wanted to play naked for another hour outside.  He even slid down the slide naked.  Hillarious.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Must...be...naked...too.  My daughter decided if her brother could be naked, she could be naked.  She also took off all her clothes, slid down the slide, fell in the dirt, wiped her bottom off with a cloth and then kept playing.  I kept my clothes on.

Fleeting Askemia

When I was a child my parents best friends lived down the street from us.  The father was a physician and he would talk about medical things from time to time with my father, who was always up for anything interesting in the field of medicine.  One night, when I was playing with my friend from across the street, we heard them talking about something called, "Fleeting Askemia".

I am trying not to search the internet to see what the medical condition actually is, because my understand of it as a child was far more romanticized--and inaccurate--I'm sure.  From what I was told, it was like small electrical storms or strokes that happened in your brain.  The people who suffered from this condition would be totally normal and then they would suddenly exhibit unusual symptoms, such as laughing uncontrollably. 

And with that completely non-medical and eight-year-old's memory of a strange condition, I am most certain I have the true nature of the behavior totally wrong.  But what you need to know is that we translated that to be, "when you laugh uncontrollably and you can't stop laughing, you were having fleeting askemia." 

It made laughing fun.  It made it fun to keep laughing and not stop laughing.  It made laughing at your friend who was laughing and laughing, even more funny.  I remember rolling around on the grass in my neighbor's yard for who knows how long laughing and laughing.

There should be more medical conditions that are purely fun that make you laugh, even if they're only in your imagination.

The Big Boy Update:  Edna asked my son today, "do you know your shoes are mis-matched?"  My son responded, "mis-matched helpes us itch."   We are still trying to figure out how two left shoes from two different pair of shoes is helpful in the realm of itching. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When our children aren't allowed to do something, for whatever reason, we tell them that, "<that thing you want to do or have> is unavailable."  My daughter was playing with a toy early today and I overheard her tell her doll, "this is not uh-bale-deh-buhl."

Boring or Bold?

I go to a play date with other families with young children in our neighborhood on Thursdays.  Today was not my best day.  It was one of those days where you feel like you're a screaming parent in the middle of all the calm parents. 

It wasn't that bad, it's just that my children were doing things that I would rather they not do and I wasn't handling myself well (I didn't yell even though I thought I was going to.)  My daughter wanted to careen down the side yard on her tricycle without a helmet, towards a drainage ditch featuring large, sharp, eight-inch rocks.  Fortunately, I was at the bottom and was able to stop her while letting her fall a little so that she had a, "natural consequences" lesson.   She still has no idea she's mortal, even so.

My son refused to stay on the sidewalk, preferring to both ride and stand still in the middle of the road, especially where oncoming cars couldn't see him.  He, and my daughter weren't listening.  I felt like I was repeating myself and that frustrates me.

We've been working on the, "ask once" expectation.  Right now, we're at ask three times and you lose a privilege or I physically help you do the thing you're not doing on your own (such as going straight to the potty without complaining). 

When my husband called on the way home from work, I vented some of my frustrations (which were mostly fueled by my daughter smearing milk all over the table, chairs, dog and floor while I was out of the room for three minutes.

We work tirelessly on our children's behavior.  We have high expectations.  We support each other in our parenting goals.  And yet at these events with other children, is it me thinking my children are more rambunctious, more hard-headed, more bold than other children?  Is it the independence we encourage in our children that makes them more challenging in other areas? 

I can say one thing though, our children are anything but boring.

The Big Boy Update:  The tooth.  My son has a tooth that's a little off in color.  Usually, this means there was some trauma to the tooth and even though we and his teachers don't recall any specific event, it does look like there's been damage to the tooth.  We've had our neighbor look at it because he's our dentist.  He reassured us that it is completely fine and it won't jeopardize the growth of the permanent tooth unless there's an infection and it doesn't look like he has that.  To be sure, we're going to get an X-ray of the tooth.  It looks like he may have one darker tooth for the next several years though until his permanent one grows in. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "No, I want the Hot Dog!"  I didn't realize what she was saying until I looked up and saw the "Hot Dog Song" on the television.  She wanted to dance to the last song in the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show and was asking me to not turn off the television yet.

The Hidden Candy Camp Mail

When I was young I went to a camp in the mountains.  It was a Quaker camp and there was a lot of focus on nature and self-sufficiency.  I didn't know anything about that as a child though; it just seemed like it was on a farm in the mountains. 

The food was delicious, we got to milk cows, pick things from the fields and go berry picking in the mountains.  I had a great time for the few years I went there.  My parents liked it because I was removed from refined sugar and processed foods for three weeks and apparently I came home a calmer, less-hyper child.

They had rules, one specifically was that no candy was allowed at camp.  Children had tried to get around this rule before because after the parents left your belongings were gone through (by you) with the counselors watching, to make sure you didn't have any candy.  I didn't have any candy because my parents weren't about to give me any in the first place.  Other kids got caught though.

During this three-week camping experience we'd get mail from time to time.   Packages were checked for appropriate content, which included the removal of any candy.  But for some reason, one of my cabin-mates had a mother that felt it was her child's right to have candy during camp.  Her mother hid a bag of candy inside a t-shirt and it missed getting caught at inspection. 

Our cabin-mate was really nice about it.  She was happy she got the candy, but she immediately decided it was for all of us to share.  I couldn't believe it, she was sharing her precious candy--that her mother smuggled into camp.  I really liked this girl. 

I have another fond memory of that year at camp and that was the book our cabin counselor introduced us to.  She was very kind and I have nothing but good memories of her.  Every night, she would read us a section of the book, A Wrinkle In Time.  It was such a good good book.  She had it timed so that we would finish the book on the last night of camp.  To this day, I believe I've read the book at least five times; it will always be a special book to me.

The Big Boy Update:  His legs are getting long.  He's short, but he's getting taller.  I went hunting for some hand-me-down pants in the closet yesterday and it appears we've hit another one of those in-between sizes, because the next size up is too long on him for now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My iPad is clean.  My daughter made sure it was so by brushing it with her toothbrush this morning...with toothpaste.

You Down With DPP?

I was at the gym the other morning and the song "OPP" played in the middle of the workout.  I know all the words to this song, and can probably sing it from start to finish without the music.  But there was a time when I had to do a different version of that song in front of lots of people.  I had completely forgotten about it until the other day.

In the original song, OPP stands for "Other People's Property".  The chorus starts with, "you down with OPP?  Yeah, you know me" and is basically about cheating on your partner.  It's not the most wholesome song.  For some reason when I was working at the IBM lab back in the nineties, our lab director liked there to be something at every lab meeting to get people excited.  One lab meeting we did a routine to the Addam's Family song.  There was an MC Hammer song we did a rap to one time and then there was the OPP song. 

I don't dance well.  I was okay as Wednesday Addams because I just walked around the stage but for the OPP song we had to both rap and dance and I am absolutely, positively sure I looked frightful on stage with my fellow lab-mates.

But back to the song title.  We never did the actual song, we changed the song around to fit some message that was current in the world of software development.  At that time we were heavily into something called the, Defect Prevention Process, or DPP.  I don't even remember what it was, other than a way to write better code and introduce less bugs, but I do clearly remember practicing and doing the rap in front of all my co-workers at our all-hands meeting. 

It was cringe-worthy.  I am glad there's no video of the event.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way home from gymnastics (or "nastics" as he calls it) my son saw a pickup truck on a flatbed tow truck.  He wanted to know why the truck was on top of the other truck.  I told him it must have broken down and it was being towed to the auto repair shop to get fixed.  As we turned to go home and the truck went straight, my son protested, saying, "I want to go to the auto repair shop.  I want to see that truck get fixed."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The demise of Buzzy Buzzy.  My daughter has had a very very fuzzy pink jacket since the first day of school when she was twelve-months-old.  It was big on her then, but it's much too small for her now.  I called it her super fuzzy jacket, but she translated that into, "buzzy buzzy".  We had to retire the jacket, much to her dismay.   She now has a new jacket and we're trying to figure out a nice name for it.

Two Years of Mondays

Today, like all Mondays for the last two years was weigh-in.  I send myself an email with the results and my husband and I can see if we're maintaining, gaining or losing over time.  This morning was the last Monday in year two.  I know how well I've done for two years now.

The first year was when I set off to lose the weight I'd gained from being pregnant with two children and just general overeating.  That year I lost 23.5 pounds.  During that time I started exercising and running and over time, the weight I'd lost became too much because I was building muscle.  So, part-way through last year I had to put some weight back on.   At the end of year two I think I look about the same but I've gained eight pounds. 

Fifty two weeks, three-hundred-sixty-five days of eating and I'm maintaining my weight so I guess I'm doing something right.  Thanks to my husband for making huge vats of broccoli and grilling fish for me so many times this year. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son has only one pacifier left.  He's too old for it and he hasn't been that interested in it for some time, but he does like to have it handy.  What I found out several days ago is that it's actually broken.  There is a hole in the sucking part that would be helpful if it was a nipple on a bottle, but defeats the purpose for a pacifier.  He hasn't told us it's broken and we're pretending we haven't noticed.  It may even disappear soon.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother was singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" to my daughter the other day. After finishing that song, she moved on to "Twinkle Twinkle".  My daughter stopped her and said, "no no no...I want the one about the cherries."  I suppose she'd never heard of a chariot before.

Fitness Update:  I went to the gym today but wasn't feeling well so I rode on the stationary bike for the whole time while I watched other people doing the hard stuff.   I feel much better now.  I suspect it was my husband's stuffed shells for dinner that did the trick.

The Zombie Ate My Child's Head (and other topics)

It happens every so often, and it appears often has rolled around again...I have more topics than days in which to write them.  So here goes...

The Zombie Ate My Child's Head:  There is something called an, "incident report" at school that teachers fill out and have you sign when something happens to your child.  The teachers of my children know that we understand kids are kids and things happen.  As such, we don't get nearly the number of incident reports as more concerned/anxious/overprotective parents might receive.  However, when something happens in the head region, they are required by day care licensing law to notify us.  Usually, these notifications make us laugh.  Last week apparently my son was bitten by another son on his face.  The report was very specific in what happened.  What it didn't say was what my son did to provoke the attack.  After some text messages with his teacher and chuckling on my end, it turns out the offender, Atticus, was not a zombie, he was just perturbed my son stole his truck. 

F is for Facebook:  I use Firefox for a browser, but many of the browsers are predictive these days as they want to make suggestions to where you might be trying to go on the internet.  I've noticed that not only is Facebook big, it's taken over an entire letter of the alphabet.  All you need to is type the letter "F" into your browser and it suggests "www.facebook.com".  

Gifts Across Time (Or the Rubber Duckie Soap):  My in-laws got my son this rubber duckie encased in blue glycerine soap when he was, oh I don't know, four-months-old.  My son didn't know what ot do with it and we didn't know how to use it with him either.  Now, nearly three years later, it's a big hit at our house.  It's the number one reason my two children make a mess at the sink while washing their hands again and again and again.  They love this rubber duckie soap.   I think there may well be a period of mourning when the soap is no longer soap and merely a rubber duckie. 

The Medical Questionnaire:  At the start of the new year many people switched insurance companies or policies.  Out of necessity I had to switch because the state high-risk insurance pool I was under was discontinued with the implementation of the health care act.  My new insurance company (which also covers my husband and children under a different policy) sent us all an invitation to fill out a survey.  If we took the fifteen minutes to do so, they would send us a fifty dollar gift certificate.  I know this is because they want to do data mining on those they insure, but I didn't have an issue telling them more about my medical history or habits, nor did my husband.  He filled out the survey and told me it was pretty easy.  A few days later I did so as well.  When I was done I came upstairs and told him I felt pretty darned good about myself after answering their questions.  So many of them were directed towards mental health, stress and healthy living.  I'm happy.  I have a great husband, wonderful family and happy life.  Yes, I am not without my medical problems, but hey, I'm happy.  Realizing that, I think, made my day. 

Residual Creativity:  My children have some wonderful sitters.  We have the best teens that come to take care of my children.  They have energy, they're exciting and they have imagination that is overflowing.  Last night, we had two of those teens take care of our children.  This morning, instead of wanting to watch Sesame Street, my son wanted to go back to the bonus room with his sister because, "he had important things to do" up there.  The residual excitement and creativity is so worth it.  Hold on, wait, does that mean we're old and boring as adults?!

Your wife is old?:  I'm not sure how to take this.  Last night at our event my husband and I were talking to two fellow board members.  I really like these two guys; they're fun and friendly and the kind of people you always enjoy being with at any event.  Age came up and I said, "wait a minute, I started having children late, I didn't have my first child until I was forty."  Suddenly they realized I was forty-four and for some reason, that was not a sad thing, that was something to celebrate.  They were high fiving my husband and telling him, "way to go man" and I was confused.  I think it was a compliment that I was old, but managed to seem young?  Who knows.  At any rate, it's good to be appreciated, regardless of your age. 

The Big Boy Update:  Conversation my son had with his sister:  "Reese, do you want to marry me?  I'm the prince."  <no reply>  "Reese, do you want to marry me?  I'm a dragon."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today we went to REI together.  My daughter didn't want to sit in a cart so I let her walk.  THREE SECONDS LATER...and she's gone.  Seriously, how do you lose a child in three seconds?  She weaved her way around the clothing rounds and was gone.  I wasn't worried (because clearly she wasn't upset) but I got several staff members looking out for, "a small child with messy blonde hair."  After a lap around the store I saw an employee grinning and walking slowing, pointing downwards.   She didn't even notice I was missing. 

The Science of Party Flow

We hosted an event tonight that was our largest gathering in-house yet.  We've had parties with thirty or forty; we've had pumpkin carvings in the yard with I'm not sure how many and we've even had an all-day event with meals, break-out rooms and seating for thirty-eight.  What we haven't done is have seventy people at an event all in our house at one time before.

It was a logistical problem that I had a good time working on.  At past events, we'd learned if you don't have a reason for people to go to a room or an area of the house, they won't go there.  We discovered if you have food and beverages all in the kitchen, everyone will pack in there, no matter how crowded that space may be, even if there is plenty of open space in the next room or area. 

The next large event we put wine and beer on a table in the corner of the living room.  That worked well, because people went into the living room to get drinks, but no one wanted to go into the kitchen now.  The following event we split things up, some food in the kitchen, drinks in the living room, main meal in the dining room with the chairs backed up to the wall so people could serve themselves directly and then carry their plate away to another location.  And that worked well too. 

So we took all that knowledge of what I'm going to call "Party Flow" rules and thought about how we could put something party-specific or interesting that people would want to investigate or eat or drink in as many places as possible, mostly because seventy people take up a lot of space.

We added the complication of having a two-phase party with the first half, including food, upstairs and the second half involving a presentation and surprise champagne toast, cake and guest appearance in the basement.  And it all had to be timed appropriately, with the person running the event not realizing there was a big surprise for her at the end. 

It all worked out, the party flow, the presentations and the surprises.  I'm not sure it could have gone better.  I think I gave my husband three high-fives at the end of the night when everyone had left, because I was so happy it had gone so well.

Oh, and I have to mention, one of the exciting surprises was a custom cake of our head of school, riding on a motorcycle, driving off to the location of our new school.  Everyone thought it was wonderfully done, and I agree, it was.

The Big Boy Update:  Plastic trains, wooden trains.  He likes trains.  He has two very different and distinct sets, one plastic and one wooden.  The sets do different things and he likes each for their own merits.  Today he decided he had had enough of the plastic trains and would I please put them up and bring out the wooden trains because he was ready for them now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The pacifier trauma.   There was an accident today in which Kica, didn't realize my daughter had dropped her pacifier into the the toilet.  She realized what happened just as she flushed.  My daughter was so upset because she realized it was gone for good.  We all tried not to laugh too much at Kica, because she felt bad about the whole thing.  I "found" the pacifier by getting another one out of storage and my daughter calmed down.  She needs to give up the pacifier, but we decided the night of a big party might not be the best day to go pacifier-free.

The Freeze and the Melt

First it was cold.  Then it snowed.  And it snowed well, (at least for this far south).  Then it did the "wintery mix" dance.  You don't know what a, "wintery mix" is?  That's okay, I didn't either.  It's when you think it's snowing, but when you stand out in, you can feel something distinctly un-snowlike hitting you.  Snow is soft; snow is friendly.  Wintery mix pretends to be snow and if you're not paying attention, it will fool you.  It's snow's naughty brother.

Then it stopped doing anything and all was quiet.  A few hours later, it changed its mind and started up again.  That went on for a while.  Then it stopped altogether.  All in all, it was rather nice.  We don't get a lot of winter weather here.  An occasional snow storm (with intermixed wintery-ness) is nice from time to time. 

It stayed cold overnight and the next morning there was fun for all those who like to play in cold, white precipitation.  My neighbor's son tried to build an igloo.  He ran into the problem so many of us do when we take on this project in the southern states...lack of snow to build a roof.  Sure, he had a plan, and with fifteen more inches of snow, I'm sure he could have pulled it off.  But then it started to get warm.

We have a large party we're hosting tomorrow at our house.  Normally, I would want the coldness, freezing temperatures, terrible driving conditions and all things winter storm-like to take days to resolve, but in this case, it needed to get warm fast.

And it did.  Today it got close to fifty degrees and all the frozen stuff fell off the trees and turned to slush.  The drains were under attack with freshly-melted ice and snow and the amount of whiteness visible was dropping by the hour.  Tomorrow, only large piles of snow will be left.  

The Big Boy Update:  The Motorcycle.  My son doesn't know how to pedal a tricycle, but he can ride the heck out of his motorcycle.  He loves it so much he wanted to ride it in the snow.  It doesn't ride well in snow, but he didn't care.  He wanted to sit on it and watch the flakes fall.  Today, he rode it around the melting snow and ice clumps and used the big front wheel to crush through larger piles.  He came inside wet and happy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The Tricycle.  My daughter loves to pedal her tricycle.  She goes into our garage several times each day, regardless of how she's dressed, and pedals her tricycle around and around the cars.  She is always happy when she's doing this.  She has no interest in the balance bike or the balance motorcycle my son loves, but then again, he doesn't care about her tricycle either, and that's the way she likes it. 

The Creek

We have a creek below our house, or rather down the hill from our house.  We live on a hill by intention.  It's not a large hill, but we're far up enough from that creek that the one hundred year high-water line is no where near even the footings of our house.  It was a fairly even slope when we bought the land, albeit steep. 

When we planned the house we wanted both a walk-out basement and as much back yard as we could manage.  Both of those things required dirt to be moved from higher up on the lot to further down.  We have a nice walk-out basement and we have forty feet of flat back yard that my children (and we) love.  But beyond that, it's a steady and steep drop off to the creek and it's flood plain.

It's really not that far away, but in the summer it's completely occluded by the trees and their green leaves.  In the winter, it's barely visible, but it's close in color to the ground itself and it is nigh-impossible to point it out to someone standing on our deck who doesn't know where it is.

Today, I saw the creek more clearly than I'd ever been able to before, thanks to the snow.  We had upwards of six inches I hear, (although I'd bet it was more like four).  Snow was covering the ground and everything around it, but the creek remained dark and flowing and it was very clearly visible from our windows and porch.  My neighbor who had never ventured down to see it before was surprised how close it was.

We all resolved, for the third year running, that this spring we're going to make a permanent pathway down to the creek so the children can have adventures and get wet and collect rocks and bugs and all the other things kids like to do around creeks.

The Big Boy Update:  The throwing lessons.  This isn't about how he needs to be taught to throw well, like in yesterday's update.  This is how he didn't want to follow the, "no throwing in the house" rule all day today because he was cooped up in the inclement weather.  Again and again he was removed from a situation, made to sit and think about his actions, repeat the house rule of no throwing and it didn't seem to make a difference.  He was spanked, yelled at (I lost my temper and so did daddy) and he didn't get the message.   Tomorrow, hopefully he will get to play outside more in the snow and burn some more energy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tonight she was carrying a doll around.  They're all named, "baby" to her at this point.  She held one up to the window after dinner and said to it, "You see that, Baby?  There's the dark."

The Clean Clate Club

We've started something new at meal times here.  We reward our children (as well as adult's who eat with us) by singing the, "Clean Plate Club" song when someone eats all the food on their plate.  We don't require our children to eat every bite of food they've been served, because if they're full, I don't want to require them to overeat.  What we were doing was looking for an encouragement to eat, a reward if you will, for eating all of the food they've been served.

My friend told me she had this little thing she did for her boys that for some reason worked, even though it was simple: when they ate all the food on their plates, she sang a little song to them.  It's an easy song, and you can do variations of it fairly easily.  My children memorized the song after only two hearings.  Let me tell you, this song is magic.

My children get very excited when they get close to finishing their plate (or bowl) of food.  My son told me this morning that he wasn't done eating his breakfast because he wanted to be, "a member of the clean clate club."  So I waited, and when he was done he looked up and we smiled and then my daughter and I sang the song to him (while my daughter danced):

<singing>
Greyson is a member of the clean plate club,
the clean plate club,
the clean plate club,
Greyson is a member of the clean plate club,
because he ate all his food.

The last line can be varied such as saying, "because he ate all his broccoli, potatoes and chicken" or "because he ate every single bite!"  Regardless of what you sing, my two children get excited, smile and sing along.

And now, they will be the first to point out that Gramps or daddy or Uncle Jonathan is going to be a member of the "clean clate club" (as they call it).  So we make a big deal of singing our song to everyone who qualifies. 

At restaurants we have been known to sing quietly, so we don't bother the other diners (or look foolish as adults, you be the judge there).

The Big Boy Update:  Throwing lesson.  My son needs someone, most definitely other than me, to give him a lesson in throwing a ball.  He does this off to the side throw that looks awkward and usually fails at getting the ball remotely close to where he wanted to send it.  Hopefully someone will step in and show him how to throw soon, because I think he got his throwing skills from me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  It's been snowing here.  It's now what's called a, "wintery mix" but a few hours ago it was nice and fluffy.  After dinner we all went out in the snow and had a good time checking out the four inches of accumulation.  Before we went out my daughter got dressed.  She decided that she needed to wear, "Buzzy Buzzy" (her name for her biggest, fluffiest jacket) as well as her snow suit (which is also very thick).  Uncle Jonathan got her dressed and then had a hard time not laughing at her because she could hardly walk in her thick layers.   It seemed to work for her though, because she wanted to stay out longer than anyone else in the cold weather.

You Make Me Happy

So I've had that blog post title for some months now.  I even have it highlighted in red in my blog post topics list, but for some reason I haven't written about it.  It was something unexpected, but something that made my day, even though the situation was not a happy one; and it was totally unexpected.

I was in the middle of a phonathon, making calls to families, asking for money for our school, when I got a call from a friend.  I didn't expect this friend to call me at this time of night, so I took the call.  The friend had gotten some bad news and needed someone to talk it through.  I walked outside and listened to the situation and gave advice and was sympathetic to the sad situation and just tried to be a friend in the best way I could.

I didn't help much and I definitely didn't solve anything or make anything better, but sometimes just talking through something, saying what you're thinking out loud, getting out your fears and concerns is what a person needs during a difficult time.  What I didn't expect was what my friend said to me at the end of that call.  She told me, "I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.  I always enjoy talking to you.  You make me happy."

That little sentence was something you don't hear from people all the time.  You hear, "I love you" from family members and loved ones.  You hear how you're funny or you make people laugh or you're a good person or you're a great person to spend time with, but it doesn't seem common for people to tell you, "you make me happy."  I think it's the biggest compliment I've gotten in a long time.

I didn't know what to think about it.  It made me smile in the middle of the tears of sadness I had been crying as I paced back and forth in the courtyard that night for my friend's situation.  And I haven't forgotten what she said either.

But it's true, she makes me happy too.  There are also people in my life that make me happy and for some reason I've never told them.  Perhaps I will start telling people and see if it makes them smile like it did to me.

The Big Boy Update:  The ever-changing banana word.  My son keeps changing how he pronounces "banana".  He can say it perfectly well if he cares to, but it's been, nana, banana, bwanna, blanna and possibly several other iterations I can't remember so far. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:    The little wiper.  My son has no interest in wiping.  My daughter is interested in trying.  Tonight at a restaurant she asked for toilet paper while I stood in the stall with her.  She has to hold herself up on the toilet because she will just fall right in otherwise.  This is something she is very skilled at.  I gave her some tissue and watched as she balanced on her legs and one hand and did a very nice job of wiping herself.  When I realized what she planned to do next, I yelled out, "no!"  She had seen the little metal bin for disposing ladies feminine products on the wall of the stall and to her, it looked like a nice trash can.  She wanted to put the toilet paper (part of which had gotten in the water) into this bin that she couldn't really reach.  Once I got over being startled, we put the toilet paper in the potty, and then did a very thorough job or washing our hands.

Fitness Update:  It was like cardio-yoga day.  First, do something very strenuous like jumping rope slams, and when you can't do any more, tag the next person in the line.  Then, do something that requires you to remain still, like a plank or six-inch hold, until you get tagged again in the circle.  The cardio part was tough, but holding still was worse.

The Funny Things They Say

I have more quotes today than I do random thoughts and so here are some things my children have done that have made us laugh:

Potty Talk - You know your really likes his five-year-old neighbor when you hear this:
My son: "Hey Hudson, do you want to watch me go potty?"
Hudson: "Um, no."

Birthday Spider Webs - This morning at breakfast, my son was shooting webs from his hands in true Spiderman fashion.  He added sound effects and looked very convincing in his Spiderman pajamas when he said...
G:  "I give you spider webs Reese."
R:  "NO, I don't want spider webs!"
G:  "I give them to you for your birthday."
R:  (thinking about it) ... "Birthday cake!"
G:  "I don't have birthday cake, I have spider webs."

Magic Trick - My father came over this afternoon and just before he left, he pulled some coins out of my son's ear.  He changed the coin to a different color and then he turned it back.  Before he left he put the coin back in my son's ear.  As he walked out the front door, my daughter was putting her hand up, touching her ear thoughtfully, when I heard her say after him, "I wanna do my ear."

Cowboy Hat - Mimi gave my son these tassel ropes yesterday.  This morning he was playing with one and had tied it into a shape that looked a little like a lasso.  I showed him how to swing a lasso around and said cowboys did that to catch cattle.  My son spun it around and flung it out in the bedroom.  Before I knew it, he had lassoed the dresser knob.  He said, "I caught it!"  I told him he was pretty good and that we might have to get him a cowboy hat.  As he left the room he yelled back, "and a cowboy dress!"

Porcupine

I had something entirely different and wholly un-animal related to write about tonight until I walked downstairs.  I was putting a DVD up in the rack in our storage room and when I walked back out, I saw my dog, holding her porcupine in her mouth.

My dog is small, although overweight, at eleven pounds.  She is in late middle age at nine years and doesn't like to play much any more, mostly because she has two bad knees.  When she was young, her patellas would dislocate and stay dislocated on both hind legs so it was surgery for her in the hopes she'd have a more comfortable life. 

She has been more comfortable, but arthritis is setting in now and she's not as agile as she was.  She's been on a diet for some time, but the children dropping crumbs and leaving food in easy reach hasn't helped her figure.  In short, she doesn't play any more.

But she has this one toy from when she was a puppy that she still loves.  It's a porcupine that's not a dog toy at all.  It's a hand puppet, and a fancy hand puppet at that as it was purchased for her at FAO Schwartz in Las Vegas and given to her as a gift.  The spikes on the porcupine are longer sections of fur, and it's done well enough that it's very clear the little brown furry thing on the floor is a porcupine--or at least it was some years ago.

It's been washed and slept on and loved for a long time now.  What she most wants though, is for the porcupine to come to life.  She wants you to put your hand in it and move it around and make it act like it's alive.  She wants to bite on it (not hard) and have it bite back at her with your hand.  There are holes all in this thing, but it still magically comes alive when you pick it up.

My daughter wants to play with the dog and has been trying to figure the porcupine technique out.  So far, the dog has met her attempts with skepticism. 

So tonight when I came out of the back room to see my little old lady dog holding up the porcupine that's over half her size, looking at me longingly for some play time, I had to get down on the floor and make the hand puppet come to life.

The Big Boy Update:  The alligator story.  He and Mimi were busy with an interactive alligator story today.  She would talk about the alligator and how he was down at the stream and how he was dirty and would my son help by sharing some of his soap and maybe some toys too.  My son got very engaged in this story, leaving the table several times to bring a bar of soap or a toy to show Mimi what he was going to share with his new alligator friend.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Sing along songs.  My daughter is getting better and better at singing along to songs.  She will ask for a specific song and then sing along right in time with it.  My son likes songs, but didn't show the same interest in singing as my daughter did from a very young age.  Some days, I think she wakes up and goes to bed without having stopped singing.

The First Movie

My children have seen movies before.  On long trips in the car they see Disney or other children's movies.  My son has gotten gifts of movies from friends and on Friday night Movie night at our house, they stay up and watch movies (or part of a movie) with the other children until it's their bedtime.

Today, we decided to take them to their first theater movie.  We wondered if they would be impressed by the big screen, but they seemed to find a very large screen completely reasonable.  They sat in the seats and looked comfortable, even if they looked tiny in the big chairs.  They liked the popcorn and ate some of the hot dog we had gotten them and my daughter decided the ICEE was the best thing about the whole experience.

We decided to take them to Frozen, at the recommendation from a friend with several children.  My son had no difficulty sitting through the entire movie, which did not surprise us at all.  My daughter did well until fairly close to the end, which was a surprise to me--I didn't think she was going to last that long.

My son asked questions to daddy during the quiet points when the scene shifted such as, "where did that girl go?"  My daughter ate popcorn and Cheetos and drank a lot of beverage from a very large cup.  I think we all enjoyed the movie. 

The Big Boy Update:  On the way home my son took off one shoe and sock and told us, "Frozen hurt my foot."  He had some mulch or something in his sock that had been poking at his foot,  On the ride home we asked him again if he could say, "Raleigh" and this time he replied, "No, 'cause I have an accent."  How is this kid ever going to get home when he's lost? 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She didn't have any trouble in the dark at her first movie, but she did the other night in her bed.  She was crying out, "mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy" for a while, so I went up and said to her, "I'm here" to which she replied, "I want daddy."

Fitness Update:  Krispy Kreme Challenge day was today.  Five miles, twelve donuts, 2400 calories, one hour.  I accomplished everything except the 2400 calories.  Instead of eating the donuts, my neighbor and I picked up our boxes and kept running back to the start.  Uncle Jonathan, on the other hand, not only ate all twelve donuts, he beat us in time as well.  

The Little Birthday Things

I'm not a big birthday celebrator.  I mean me, personally.  I don't mind going to a big bash or toasting with champagne with anyone who wants to throw down for their birthday.  Birthdays just weren't a big deal in our house.   We would go out to dinner and my parents would get me something for a gift when I was young.  Today, we still go out to dinner and they get me a little gift.

For the past several years, they renewed our membership to the museum of art.  I remember when I was in college and I had a little Honda Accord.  I loved my Honda, but it needed tires as the current set was in danger of rupture or collapse.  My mother said, "we could get you tires for your birthday", and I remember thinking that was the greatest gift.  I'm not sure what other gifts they got me for my birthday over the years, but I remember those tires and how practical a gift I thought it was.

I got phone calls and texts and emails for my birthday this year and a few presents.  My favorite present though was what my husband got me as a surprise.   The morning of my birthday, we had gotten the children ready to go to school and we were about to get them in the car.  He was reaching up on a high shelf for some reason and I had no idea what he was doing.

It turns out he was reaching for a little cake.  It was an eight inch cake from the grocery store with grocery store icing and no words or anything special.  He said, "I got you this cake and wanted to make sure you had it now in case you wanted some for breakfast."  What a great husband.  My favorite boring cake that I love mostly because I grew up eating those cakes and they just taste like birthday to me.

He took the children to school and when he got back we each had a piece of the cake.  When the children got home from school we had lunch and then all had a little piece of cake and sang happy birthday to me.  It was fun and the cake was just small enough for those two meals.

Thanks daddy, you know me so well.

The Big Boy Update:  My son knows the street we live on.  Today on the way home he was talking about the cities we were driving through (on our ten minute drive).  We asked him if he knew what city we lived in and he said no.  We told him he lived in Raleigh and could he say, Raleigh?  He said with completely clear diction, "I can't say Raleigh."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Where's the poppers?"  My daughter likes to push down the little beverage type indicators on drinks from restaurants.  After she did mine at lunch, she asked daddy where the "poppers" were and then said, "I want to pop yours daddy."

Fitness Update:  Our trainer usually has us do things in minute increments and then rotate.  Sometimes he has us do several things in a loop for a certain amount of time, usually five minutes.  Today he had us doing six exercises, twenty-four repetitions each for twenty-two minutes, no stopping.  And to think I thought I was in shape.

Having Been There Helps

I had a meeting today with someone I've known for the past two years.  We're only casually friends, but he and his wife are the kinds of people you think could be better friends possibly in the future. Today, he told me something unexpected. 

We were meeting to discuss something related to a project we were both working on.  I had been concerned because he hadn't been responsive to my emails and more than one other person had become frustrated with his lack of communication.  We weren't sure if this was normal and his workload was overtaking his free time or if he just felt like it was okay to ignore our reasonable requests for communication and information.  In short, we were getting frustrated with him.

So when we sat down to discuss business, I was completely taken aback when he said he needed to catch me up on some things that were relevant to his situation.  What I didn't expect him to tell me was that for the last four months, he and his wife had been having issues, were now living separately and were getting a divorce.  

I felt terrible.  I was concerned because he wasn't getting back to me on my emails, and he was trying to hold it together while his life fell apart around him.  I told him I'd been there, as I'd gone through a divorce too, and for some reason that seemed to be a bonding thing. 

He told me more and more about the situation--more than I would have expected him to tell me given how well I knew him, but I didn't mind.  I know what it's like to feel like you've failed at something you made a commitment to.  It doesn't mean you did something terrible or you or your partner are a bad person, it just means things didn't work out the way you planned them.

And it hurts.  I suppose he needed to talk about it some and I was not only sympathetic, I was empathetic because I went through it.  Bottom line, our situations were fairly dramatically different in many ways, but feelings are still feelings and they can be hard to deal with. 

The Big Boy Update:  "The cars are racing after the other cars."  We were at a restaurant tonight and our booth looked out towards a large street.  He could see rush hour traffic speeding by in both directions.  I think he thought it was a big car race.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Owie!  Owwww!  Stop!  Stooooopp!"  My daughter messed her pants up just as we got in the car tonight.  Apparently it wasn't comfortable in her pullup because she tried to exit her car seat violently the entire ride home while yelling at us the whole time.   Usually, she doesn't care.

Fitness Update:  Cold.  Congestion.  Cough.  Three C's that don't make exercising fun.  But we made it anyway.  At least I can't smell when my daughter's diaper is dirty and we're ten minutes from home.  My husband had to roll down a window.

Why They Cry

I looked over at my husband's computer screen today to see him scrolling through pictures of young children crying.  I moved closer and saw the captions on these pictures.  And then I started to laugh.  I laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing.  I asked him to send me a link to the page and then I sat at my computer and laughed some more.  I called my mother and told her about the site and she started laughing too.

Children crying doesn't sound funny, unless you've seen them in action.  Toddlers will cry for the most absurd reasons.  My son has cried because I moved his milk glass away from the edge of the table.  He's cried because he needed to put his shoes on so he could go to a pizza party.   My daughter's cried because I'm trying to give her the iPad (so I can get my iPhone back).

There were pictures of children crying for all sorts of silly reasons, and I could identify with all of them from personal experience.  As I scrolled down the site, I noticed the father who had started it all by posting pictures of his son online, had a book coming out.  I'm going to get that book and I'm going to put it in our powder room for visitors.  For now, I'm just going to scroll through his site and laugh.

http://www.reasonsmysoniscrying.com/

The Big Boy Update:   The sleep window.  My son has this window of falling asleep that I try to avoid.  If he falls asleep in the car just before you get to your destination, you're okay, but if he's been asleep more than five minutes, you're going to have a very cranky child on your hands when you wake him up.  Waking him up is another trick altogether.  He is the captain of Team Limp Limbs after ten minutes asleep.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The true tantrum.  My daughter had a real tantrum this evening, which isn't like her.  She was upset because she wanted juice and I wouldn't let her hold the cup (which was paper and unstable).  The tantrum went on and on and I tried not to laugh too much after all the pictures of children crying I had looked at earlier today.

Boop

After writing last night's post about my days at IBM many years ago, I remembered lots of other fun things we used to do during the work day.  We did manage to get a lot of work done, but we were fortunate to not be in a severe environment where work was suppose to be all work and not fun.

There was this phone system throughout the lab of about a thousand people.  You could dial their four digit extension and the phone at their desk would ring.  There was another thing you could do with the phones that I'd never seen before.  It was a walkie talkie-type feature.  You typed something like #7 and then their extension and you'd hear a "boop" sound and then you could say whatever you wanted. 

The thing about Boop (that's what we decided to call it), was the person you were "booping" had no control over it.  You could choose to answer or ignore a call, but if you were in a meeting with your manager and someone wanted to play a trick on you...well, let's just say you hoped your friends were kind.   They might boop you saying, "don't forget about your proctologist appointment this afternoon."

Boop was untraceable too, so if you disguised your voice you could get away with it.  Fortunately, we were mostly a mischievous versus a malicious group and even our managers got a laugh out of a well-executed joke (most of the time).

Thinking of those phones reminds me of a time when my neck and spine were first giving me problems.  I spent a lot of time on the phone while typing and holding the handset against my ear using my shoulder.  After several hours I was in a lot of discomfort.  My manager found me a headset, something that was apparently quite a search, and I was able to talk pain-free from then on.  

The Big Boy Update:  Superman.  He loves his superman shirts.  He has one that has a cape that Velcro's to the back.  This afternoon he wanted us to watch him as he flew down the hallway.  He backed up, grabbed the bottom of his cape with his hands and ran forward, making his cape flap up and down with his arms.  We laughed so much we asked him to do it again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Coin crazed.  She got up on a chair and figured out she could put her hand in the back of the slot machine to pull out the coins.  She played with coins for the next hour.

Has It Been That Long?

I reconnected with a a long-ago friend from when I worked at IBM as a co-op many years ago.  We did some catching up asking the, "so what are you doing now?" type questions.  We reminisced about our days at the development lab and some of the memories we had.  Then, I asked him how his two boys were doing.

His sons are thirty-one and twenty-nine now.  He gave me an update on them and I thought, "hold on, they were just kids when I knew him back then."  At that point I did some year math.  It's been twenty-five years since those days at the software development lab.  I felt old.

Maybe not old so much as aged.  I still feel in many ways like the co-op who came in and helped the team doing something called, "object-oriented programming".  I made a lot of diskette copies (3.5") and I installed OS/2 on I don't know how many machines.  If it was mundane and an actual employee didn't want to do it, they had one of the co-op do it.

And we didn't mind.  We were having fun as college students working in the real world, making an hourly wage that is still well over today's minimum wage.  We were also given email addresses, which in 1990, most people didn't have.

And we sent instant messages.  No one had heard of an instant message back then, but the VMS mainframe we used for internal mail had something called "tell".  If you knew the person's ID that you wanted to message, you could type, "TELL DELMONTE.J MEET FOR LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA AT NOON?"   That little message would pop up at the bottom of their terminal screen and they could respond back just as easily.  It was high-tech, even if it was on a terminal green screen.

That was also when I found out how much of a time suck instant messaging could be.  You start a conversation about the funny thing your office mate is doing at her desk and the next thing you know, twenty minutes has gone by.

I was a lowly co-op back then, but I remember those days fondly.  All the IBM-ers were friendly and I felt like a real member of the team.  Four years later when I left (after being hired out of college to work with the same group), was a sad day.

The Big Boy Update:  He loves his teacher.  He got in the car after school and announced this to daddy.  Then, his sister said she loved Kica too.  Kica is so nice, I'm not surprised they feel that way.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The potty squat.  Today my daughter needed to go to the potty and had waited almost too long to make it.  As she was climbing up on the big potty she couldn't hold it any longer and just started to go.  She was only half-way on, feet and hands on the seat of the toilet in a position I can only describe as, "bug like".  She made it though, so I'm not complaining.

Fitness Update:  That tennis elbow, or whatever it is I have going on, became worse after a lot of pullups last Friday so Don had me do a legs-only workout today.  My legs are tired.  I hope my arm feels better tomorrow because my legs may revolt if this keeps up.

The Not So Terrifying Disposal

First, I have to tell you that the way my mother and I say "disposal" bothers my husband.  He says we say, "dispose-ALL" instead of, "dispose-sul" with a big emphasis on the "ALL."  I can hear what he's talking about and I guess the thing in the sink might be able to dispose of "all" things food-related, but regardless, that's not the word it's suppose to be, he says.

When I was a child, I was warned about the terrible dangers of putting your hand or finger or anything in the disposal.  The general level of warning was that anything that's within range just might get vortexed down there and be eaten to shreds and you would be very very sorry about the whole thing--if you survived, that is.  And for reinforcement, horror movies make this point utterly clear.

I have a disposal pusher stick I use today that I like, not because it keeps my hands and limbs away from the dreaded blades, but because by using the pusher, I don't have to touch food refuse, all mushy in the bottom of the sink.

We had moved into our house and I was cleaning out the sink one day and I was trying to get the little flaps of black rubber at the drain point clean when unexpected, the black rubber part came loose.  I hadn't broken the sink, this was a feature.  You could un-stopper the rubber part and clean it out, bleach it, disinfect it, whatever you like, and then stick it right back into place.  Oh, how very nice.

And that was the first time I had a really good look at what the chewing parts looked like in a newer version of a disposal.  The one we had as a child I seemed to remember had blades when you stuck your hand down there to get the teaspoon that had errantly fallen in.

But lo, our disposal didn't look so deadly.  Surely, it did a good job of gnashing up things, but there were no blades in evidence, only dull things that spun fast.  And oh, it was a good ways down there too.  

I still take care when using the disposal, but my fear of the swirling vortex of disposal death is somewhat less now.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went to work with Uncle Jonathan today.  For three hours he helped feed and give medication to dogs and pigs at a research facility.  He got to play with some of the dogs, including hiding in one dog's dog house and jumping out every time the dog came running back in with a big, "raaar!"  My son was very excited about, "bringing the medicine to the piggy to help with his elbow".  He is very tired tonight after all the excitement today.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "I got my fascier down", my daughter told me.  "Wait, you did what?  Hold on, I just put your pacifier on the top shelf of the tall dresser.  Not possible", I thought.  I had only put it up high five minutes before.  But sure enough, she had her pacifier down.  And I didn't see how she did it.  After talking to her and cajoling her into showing me what she did, she smiled, opened the door to the play room, drug out the small table, calmly climbed on it, then on to the shelf, stood up and reached up to the top shelf to get her pacifier.  As she was getting down I told her I was impressed.  She then decided it needed to go back on the top shelf, so she climbed back up and deposited it before coming back down.

Very Old Things

This is about some very old things I knew of as a child.  I would go visit my father's mother, grandma, several times each year.  She lived just a few hours away on the coast so it was always nice to go and see her.  Or wait, they were on the coast but now that I think of it, we never went to the beach when we went to visit her.  Still, we had a great time, even if sun and sand weren't on the list of things to experience for the day.

She lived in an old house.  I mean, OOOld.  At least to a young child, this house seemed old.  There was a wrap-around porch with a porch swing.  Paint was peeling everywhere or maybe it was more accurate to say that paint was still on the house in some places.   This was the home my father was raised in, so it was a magical place even so.

There was this enormous tree in the side yard that was climbable, although there were very few trees that thwarted me when I took a notion to climb them as a child.  Lots of times my aunt would be there too and some or all of my four cousins would be there with her.  Playing with your cousins in a large, old, creaky house with a big yard was about all the fun you needed when you were a child.

My grandmother had a sewing machine in her bedroom that was one of those very old sewing table things.  It was all black metal and there was a foot pedal you could push and things would spin.  How you would sew using this thing was beyond me, but since she did lots of delicate sewing, I supposed it was possible.

But the very best old thing in her house was something I heard about all my childhood, but never saw.  She had this huge freezer on the side of her kitchen.  She had it packed with layers and layers of frozen food.  She had, apparently, saved a piece of cake from my parent's wedding and it was most likely at the very bottom of that freezer.  I heard her or my parents tell the tale of the saved wedding cake slice many times as I grew up.

Talk about exciting to a child.  That's right, we're talking cake, and aged cake at that; and you know how much children love cake.  Surely if my grandmother saved a piece for all those years it must have been something to behold.  I wanted to see that piece of cake, even though everyone always laughed and said it would taste terrible by now.

I never saw the piece of cake.  When she died or when the freezer did, no one called to tell me they had found the long lost piece of cake.  It lives on in my memory though.

The Big Boy Update:  Locked out!  Today at a birthday party, my son needed to go to the potty.  He went in, selected a stall and I helped him get on the seat.  I could tell this was going to take a few minutes so I stepped out into the main bathroom area to check email when suddenly, I hear the door being shut and bolted.  "Well, this is an interesting development," I thought.  I told him to let me know when he was ready to be wiped.  A few minutes later another mother walks in and I explain I've been locked out for the first time and I'm not sure how long we'll be here.  She and I laugh abd talk about how funny kids can be.  Eventually, my son is done and he unlocks the door and I help him before we leave, him acting like this was a normal occurrence.  I am so glad I didn't have to crawl under the stall door.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Where's the ca-der-pill-der?"  We were watching a short film of the book The Hungry Caterpillar.  My daughter was enjoying it to the end.  After that short was over, another story about the moon started, but we had a hard time listening because my daughter kept asking where the caterpillar had gone.