Pile-on Parents Day

I'm not sure what came over my children the other day, but they decided it would be fun to jump, hop and tackle both my husband and me.    We're not usually into wrestling as a family activity, but it turned out to to be lots of fun.

My daughter and my son each planned their attacks differently, but both children incorporated laughs, giggles and screams into their plan.   My husband and I tried to balance accepting their exuberant leaps onto our bodies while worrying about being accidentally and unintentionally wounded by small, excitable children.

We ran out of energy before they did...something that nearly always happens when it's adults versus children.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was playing with a stretchy toy as we got into the car.  I warned him if he kept it up, it was going to break.   A short while later I heard him say, "it broke", followed by my daughter saying, "I got it now."  (She had wanted it all along and he wouldn't share, but when it broke, it flew across the back seat into her lap where he couldn't get to it.  She was very happy about that.)

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My father came to visit yesterday.  He was about to leave when my daughter told him, "I want to go to your castle, Gramps."

Fitness Update:  Our trainer asked us if we were coming in tomorrow when we got to the gym today. He said he needed to know because he wanted to know if he should work us harder today or plan for tomorrow.  I was planning on going in tomorrow, and then time got away from me getting ready for our trip and going out for dinner with friends and I think I'm going to sleep in.

Blockus Towerus

That's Latin for "towers made out of blocks".   Or, at least I think it is.   Never mind, that's not important.  The important thing is my children have gotten back into building towers with blocks.  

It's one of those things with children where they like something and they they don't care about it and then later, after you put that thing away and they forgot about it, when they see it again they go nuts for it.

Aunt Adrienne and Aunt Brenda got my children some wooden blocks with letters on them.  They liked the blocks, but got tired of them after some time.   I put them away.  I brought them out and they thought they were interesting, but not that interesting, so I put them away again.   Three days ago I brought them out and suddenly, they are all about the block towers.  

My daughter will sit in the corner and make her own towers and walls.  My son likes to put the plastic container on his head, come over to his sister, knock her tower down, and then help her build it back again.    Sometimes, my son likes to take blocks into the bathroom because you never know when you're going to need to build a tower while sitting on the potty.  

Tonight, I heard squeals and screams in the bedroom: my daughter and husband were making a tower so high he had to lift her up to get her high enough to place the last few blocks.   She was very accurate at placing them, so much so that they had to intentionally knock down the tower.

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes to make towers with the blocks, but he's also interested in what's on the blocks.   There are letters and animals and colors and he knows what a lot of them are now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Mom and dad, you gotta close your ears."  (What my daughter told my husband and me when her block tower was getting tall, because she knew it was going to make quite a clatter when it fell.)

Back Coating

I used to do something called, "back coating" all the time, but times changed and I haven't done it in years.  It's nothing naughty (even though I know at least a portion of my three readers thought it most likely was); it has to do with paper.

I have done origami, or paper folding, since I was eight-years-old.  I met a friend in my twenties and we started going to the national origami convention in New York City.   Origami has been a life-long love of mine, even in times when I haven't done much folding.

I remember at one of the conventions we met a nice man who had some wonderful paper.   One of the things origamists spend time doing (other than folding models) is looking for the perfect papers with which to fold.   Our new friend told us he had back coated the paper.    We told him he was going to have to tell us more, because we wanted to be able to have soft, supple and resilient paper and we were willing to learn.

First, he helped us find the papers, which were long, fibrous tissue papers made from mulberry fibers, imported from Japan.  Then, he told us about methyl cellulose, that you use to adhere the two pieces of paper together with.

Methyl cellulose is a white powdery substance you add to water that turns into a pile of goo that looks just like the ectoplasm in Ghost Busters.  You put a large sheet of paper on a flat surface, paint it down with the goo, lay a second sheet on top of the first, add more goo and then wait for it to dry.

What you have when you're done is a beautiful sheet of crisp yet flexible paper that no longer resembles tissue paper, but has all the bendable properties of it.   It is a delight to fold with and is one of my favorite paper mediums of all time.

My friend wanted to make some back coated paper for an upcoming trip to Japan.  I hadn't made any in years, but when we got started it all came back, just like the proverbial riding a bike comparison.   There were tricks to aligning the paper, how much paste to use, how to dry the sheets quickly and how to best cut the papers to maximize the number of final squares cut.

We had a fun night.   Now, if only I could make a little time for making some truly complex and time-consuming origami models...

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to give daddy a, "fist buup" after we drove away this morning.  I know he's saying, "fist bump", but it comes out as "buup" with his tiny little guy voice.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the way to school this morning my daughter suddenly said, "once upon a time there was a robot who loved the woods..."   That was apparently the end of the story.

Fitness Update:   We got to chatting with our trainer at the gym and ended up with a fairly whimpy workout, but we got some good discussions in.

I'm Not a Smart Boy

Children are both tough and delicate at the same time.  Some things, you can tell them again and again and they don't get (or choose to ignore), while other things they absorb from hearing it across the room.   Say, like swear words.   Children can hear those in the next room, with the door closed and they can spit them back out at just the right (or rather wrong) time later.

My son is very resilient; but he is also very sensitive.   We've been careful to never say things like, "you're a bad boy", to him or "you're a bad girl", to my daughter.   Saying things like, "you're stupid" or "bad" are labels that apply to the child as an individual, not a particular behavior.   Hitting your sister over the head with a toy is a behavior that's bad, but the child that did the behavior isn't a bad individual.

Today while my children were at school I got a text from his teacher.   She told me she asked him to use his gentle hands.  She asked why he was using his rough hands and he said, "one day I will be a smart boy and use my gentle hands.  I am not a smart guy."

When did he hear that?  We never tell him anything negative like that.  We don't tell him he has to do things to be smart or that the "smart boys" do such-and-such or that, "smart boys do/don't do that."  She knew we didn't speak to out children that way, but she was concerned enough to let me know, and I told her I appreciated it.

I talked to him after school and he very sadly,  seemed to believe he wasn't smart.   We had several conversations during the rest of the day and I think I've been mostly able to change his feelings about being smart.

I'm not sure where this came from, but I'm going to use my, "listening ears" and see what I hear as my little guy is apparently quite sensitive.

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes to do a "fist bump high-five" before going off to school.   With one hand he gives daddy a high-five and with the other he fist bumps daddy's other hand.   My daughter is still working on the coordination to get this goodbye ritual down.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Swimming and breathing.   We went to the pool this afternoon and it's been several days since I've gone with them.   My daughter is now swimming out into the middle of the pool without a worry, because she can lift her head up enough to get a breath, and can do that multiple times if necessary, until she gets where she wants to go.

The Sushi Surprise

We like to go out to eat. We also like to take the children out to eat with us.  When children are tee tiny, they just sleep in the car seat while you eat beside them. As they get older, you strap them into a high chair and they are interested in trying to put food in their mouth.  

When they get older, as ours are now, they sit in a seat and usually don't want a booster seat. My children like to move a lot and have a surplus of energy, so keeping them at the table while food is ordered, cooked, eaten and paid for can be a challenge.   We also work hard to have our children be flexible in eating a wide variety of foods.

Overall, the children do quite well at a restaurant. They don't get digital devices to play games (which could completely occupy them and make them a great meal companion).  But we do have to work on them to sit thought the meal. 

Recently, one of our favorite adult restaurants has turned into one of our children's as well.  We go to a shush and Thai restaurant that leaves my children occupied and full every time.  First, we get edamame beans.  Both children can now open the pods and really like the beans. They like to have a bit of our salad sometimes, and then they can both demolish an order of kid's teriyaki and rice. 

It's been a pleasant surprise to have them enjoy a restaurant as much as we do. 

The Big Boy Update:  my son got ready for the pool all by himself today. He got on the wat diaper and the swim suit without any help at all.  And just to be safe, he put on a regular pair of underwear first. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  As they were driving to the pool today, my husband explained that first they would order food, then eat the food while sitting at a table and then they could get in the pool. My husband said she was great and had no complaints because she knew what was the plan was.  

The Coupon Coup

If you pronounce "coupon" queue-paun then why why would you pronounce, "coup" like "coop"?

The two words start with the same first four letters, but for some reason, some people pronounce the first syllable differently.  

Coop-awn and coop is how I say it.   How do you?

The Big Boy Update:  My son pulled out his penis at the playground the other day and showed it to three unsuspecting girls.   Fortunately, the parents didn't mind.  The next day, his teacher messaged me and told me he'd pulled out his penis at group time and showed it to the class.   She immediately applied diaper rash cream and told me my son said, "thank you Kica."   We started putting on steroid cream that night because we realized it was itchy due to invisible eczema, something he suffers from all over,  but is particularly hard to see in the genital region.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes to lie down on a towel at the pool or beach.  Her sitter takes them to the pool from time to time and she drew my daughter lying down on the pool lounger after swimming:

Fitness Update:  Something like four miles with friends at our girls weekend in the mountains.  It was walking, but walking and talking with girl friends is always fun to me.

The Fifteen Pound Pants

My body shape has changed a good bit with the exercising.   If you're new to following this blog, let me go back a bit and explain that historically I never exercised.   I complained that I had inherited a large stomach from my mother's side of the family, but ultimately, I was just overeating.

Two children later and I decided I had best do something about all this largeness that had happened from going through two pregnancies, nursing and oh yes, all that overeating through the years.   I started running, thanks to two friends and eventually, possibly as a result of some mental instability, I ran a marathon.

That weight I had put on, came right off and I weighed less than I remembered weighing as an adult.   I was very happy about that.   I got some new clothes and the shorts fit so nicely on my non-protruding stomach region.   About that time I started going to a trainer and things changed again: first I lost weight, and then, I gained muscle.

In the middle of all of this, I decided I had lost too much weight.   I really needed to gain some back because yes, it was nice to get that fat to go away, but with the muscle I'd built, I just looked too thin. That was a fun time.  I gained about ten pounds but did it in a slow enough way that I put on more muscle than fat along the way.

This post is about pants though and how they fit and muscle and fat.    Years before, I had bought a pair of pants that I'd worn for a short time and then couldn't, due to extra poundage I added to my body.  They sat in my closet for years but I couldn't get rid of them because they were just great pants.   When I lost all the weight and I was in the, "you need to put some weight back on because you're looking way too bony" phase, I pulled out those pants and was very happy to be able to wear them again.

Then, alas, I had to gain weight I decided.  I looked at those pants and put them back on the shelf, thinking I wouldn't get to wear them again, but not wanting to get rid of them.

Yesterday I pulled out the pants and tried them on and I couldn't believe it, they fit.  I am fifteen pounds heavier now than when I last tried them on, and yet they fit and were comfortable.   I think those pants yesterday finally made me realize and believe that the weight I put back on wasn't just chub, fat, blubber...it was muscle--and muscle in the right places.

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes, "mom-a-kneese".   Otherwise known as, "edamame beans".

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I'm not sure if my daughter's hair is wavy or curly or frizzy.   It goes through phases, depending on the weather.   Sometimes I'm not even sure the weather controls it as it might be how it was washed, dried or brushed.

Self Selection

Children want you to do things for them...unless they don't.   They like for you to hold them and hug them and put their clothes on them and then, suddenly, "I DO IT" happens.   We're in the middle of the, "I do its" at our house.

Children also like choices.   They want to make their own decisions and something as simple as asking, "do you want strawberry yogurt or do you want peach yogurt", can make the difference between a happy child and a tantruming one.    Children like to have choices and it's up to you as the parent to pick times and things you can offer as choices.

We've been going to a buffet for lunch or dinner for a long time now.  Usually, we go when someone is visiting and my children enjoy the meal and company very much.  A buffet offers choices and we have met with good success in picking lots of little things to put on their plate.    Of late though, they didn't seem that interested in the food selection there.

Today in the car I had an idea; I told my husband we should carry them into the buffet area and let them choose what they wanted to put on their plates.   We asked them what they thought about this in the car and my son suddenly started talking about all the things he wanted to eat...and many of them were good, healthy choices.

When we arrived, they picked their own beverage and then went to the buffet line with us.   They each picked things I didn't expect them to select, including things they had downright declined to eat in the past...and they ate them.  They ate happily and quietly and they enjoyed the entire meal.

When it was time for dessert, we let them pick what they wanted and they each selected something reasonable that they also ate quietly.

It was one of the best meals we've had there in a long time.   It seems letting them make their own choices was the better choice for us all along.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wants to, as he told me, "be a leader".  I agree with him because he seems to want to lead almost everything and everyone around him.   He sometimes wants to be a leader in a negative way though, like pushing his sister down when she's going to make it to the potty first.   We are working on appropriate ways my son can be a leader.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the way to lunch my son was upset.  I offered him my soda water and he declined.  I offered it to my daughter and she accepted.   The fact that she now had the can of soda water infuriated my son into yelling and screaming that my daughter shouldn't drink it all and that he wanted it.   She calmly drank the soda water and smiled and told him, "Greyson, when you're quiet, you can have some", which was exactly what we would have told him.  

The Merita Bread Alignment

This is one of those stories from college.   I think I was a freshman, although I might have been a sophomore, I'm not sure.   One of the students in our hall, dorm, class (not sure on that front either) had moved into an apartment.   Our dorm advisor (or was it dorm mother?  It seems I've forgotten most of the details surrounding the story), thought it might be nice to go and visit her and see what it was like to live in an apartment.

We agreed that would be interesting.  We all lived in dorms and had no idea what it would be like to truly live on your own.  We got there and she showed us around her very small apartment.  She had a roommate who wasn't there that I'm fairly certain didn't go to our college.  It wasn't big, but it was her place and that was fairly exciting.

We sat around her dining room table and asked her questions about life in your own apartment.  She said she was liking it just fine, but there were some adjustments to living with a roommate.   For instance, she told us, her roommate bought the cheapest items at the grocery store.   It was all well and good to save some money, and yes, she didn't have much either, but she liked sandwiches and she liked her sandwiches with good bread.

The bread she thought was the best was Merita brand bread.   I remember at this point looking over to her counter and seeing a loaf there.   She said the problem with her roommate, was that she kept eating all of her Merita bread and she was going to have to say something to her.

I have no idea what the friend's name was, how many of us went to visit, where the apartment was, the circumstances under which she got an apartment or any other myriad things you might think would stand out from the trip.  But I remembered that bread.

From that point on, to me, Merita bread was a far superior in both quality and taste.   Whenever I wanted to get, "good bread" I would get Merita.   To this day, I buy lots of different kinds of bread, including Wonder bread, which I ate quite a lot of as a child.  But a plain loaf of Merita bread is still the best in my opinion.

I bought Merita bread just the other day and out of pure coincidence, my children asked for some bread at snack time.  That was unusual in and of itself, but sure, here kids, have a slice of bread.   After the first slice, they each wanted a second slice.   Then today, my son asked for bread for snack again.

So, it seems my children like Merita bread just as much as I do.

The Big Boy Update:  "What the heck?"   He's said this several times of late.   I suppose I'm glad he's using "heck" and not "hell".

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I've mentioned my daughter's need to be independent of late.   She has now decided she wants to open all doors.   She opened all the doors at the restaurant and store we went to today.  After opening each one (which sometimes took a while as doors can be heavy), she would tell us, "I'm really strong."

Fitness Update:  I told the trainer to put me back on regular workout next week.  He still wants to favor my shoulder (which was giving me terrible fits several weeks ago) but hell, I have so many other areas that are bothering me, I'd rather be the one to pick which are favored.  He's been giving me these big hugs lately and telling me my husband better watch out.   I think he's trying to make my husband jealous so he'll come back to the gym.   I'm not sure it's possible to make my husband jealous, but I didn't tell Don that.

I Just Love You (and the Naked Pictures)

I see my college president from time to time.  He was more than just a college president to me, he was my friend.  My mother worked for him for many years and he was always someone who was fun to be around.  His daughter baby sat for me and drove me to piano lessons and gymnastics and she was one of my friends too (albeit a college student friend that I looked up to).

My parents retired to the mountains of North Carolina and as coincidence would have it, my college president did as well.   Both my parents and he and his wife belong to the same country club, so on occasion, I get to see him when we're visiting.

He was always intriguing to be around.  He was interested in computers far before most people I knew.  He liked to try out the latest technologies and sometimes he'd show me what he was working on.   If it was cool and exciting, to be sure, he was interested in it.

Whenever I see him I always go over and give him a great big hug.   This past weekend I saw him at the next table so I ran over, interrupting all the conversation at his table I'm sure, and gave him a huge hug.   We caught up for a few minutes and then I went back to my table, me with a big smile on my face.

Later, I remembered one more thing I wanted to tell him so I waited until the guests at his table were getting up to go get their next course at the buffet.  I snuck back over and we had a second, quick chat.   He told me, "Courtney, I just love you."  I told him he was thinking the same thing I was thinking.   He has always held a special place in my heart that neither time nor distance can diminish.

As the evening ended and we were all getting ready to go, my college president came over to my husband and told him (as my husband tells the story) that he was very fond of me and then...something about naked pictures.

Wait, what?   My husband said it was very loud with so many people departing at the same time and he wasn't quite sure what he said although there was definitely something about naked pictures.  He told Dr. Weems he was fond of me as well and they departed.   But...naked pictures?

Fortunately, my husband told my mother about the comment and my mother cleared it up.   My parents have been doing a study on aging for many, many years now.   Every year, they take pictures of themselves together, completely naked, to see how they've aged.   For some time, I don't think they told people about their yearly foray into nude photography, but now I think it's something they're rather proud of.  Everyone I know that hears of it thinks it's a pretty amazing thing.   So far, I don't think anyone has seen the results of the study though.

So, my husband and I aren't completely sure what my college president said in the loud room, but I am hopeful that he was saying I was holding up well enough to not need to worry about starting the naked yearly photos anytime soon.

I love you too, Dr. Weems.  It's always wonderful to see you.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me today while he was getting water for snack, "when we take a bath the tub runs out of water."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Have I mentioned that my daughter has a terrible reaction to mosquito bites?   I may have, I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up.   My son either doesn't get bit or they don't react with his skin.  My daughter gets huge welts that itch for days.  We forgot to spray her with bug spray before camp on Monday and she woke up last night complaining about itching in the middle of the night.

The Over The Shoulder Conversation Situation

This happens to me all the time.  It is quite possible it happens to you as well, but you haven't noticed it.   Let's say you're standing around at a social gathering and you strike up a conversation with someone.   In general, people don't stand directly face-to-face when they talk, they might stand at a ninety-degree angle to each other or somewhere in-between face-to-face and ninety-degrees.  Check it out the next time you're in a standing conversation with someone you've just met.

What happens more frequently than I would expect is the position people want to stand in.  They have a particular, "comfortable spot" of where they like to stand in relation to your position.   Some some people want to stand at or slightly behind your shoulder, requiring you to turn your head at a decent angle to talk to them.

Normally, this wouldn't bother me, except that I have multiple vertebrae fused in my neck and I physically can't turn my head that far without discomfort.   So I adjust; I rotate slightly to get the person back into a more comfortable visual angle and continue talking.   What happens next, almost without fail, is the other person changes their position to what they find, "conversationally comfortable" which puts us back into the same situation as we started.   Usually this goes on for a bit.

It's an interesting phenomenon.

The Big Boy Update:  He says, "okay pahmer" all the time and we say it back to him.  The other day I asked if he was saying, "okay farmer".  He said yes, and then he said no, and now we still have no answer to the question, "who is Pahmer?"  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today I argued for the first time, and won, an argument where I was going to remove her independence.   That last sentence didn't go very well.  What I mean is I told her I was going to do something for her that we'd been trying to get her to do on her own for months.   Now, she doesn't want you to put her clothes on her.  She gets mad if you try and help.  Today, I told her I was going to dress her if she didn't start dressing herself.  

Fitness Update:  One hour at the gym, I'm almost done having to do alternate exercises for my shoulder issue.  I'll be glad to get back to doing what everyone else is doing.

Nighttime Proud

We have screwed up lots of things as parents.  There are things we encouraged or discouraged or didn't encourage or should have avoided or you name it, loads of things we could do differently if we started over.  But some things, we got right.

I was proud of my two- and three-year-old this weekend at my parent's house.   They slept in a different room from their own, on a separate floor from the other adults.  There was no night light in their room or noise making machine or gurgling bear or any of those other, "sleep aids" children can become dependent upon.

When it was time for bed, we changed them into their night night outfits, walked them into the bedroom with the twin beds and covered them up with one of their blankets we brought from home.  They have several blankets, I grabbed one for each but neither seemed to really care.    They didn't have, "lovies" or stuffed animals they needed to sooth themselves to sleep.   They didn't have pacifiers.   They have both learned how to calm themselves and quietly go to sleep when it's time to go to bed.

They didn't complain.  They didn't need to be rocked or sung to or have their backs rubbed until they fell asleep.   They know how to go to sleep without help.  They can sleep in quiet and they can sleep with a marching band in the next room.

This is not something that was easy.  It's been an iterative process to get them to this point, but I am very proud of them.  They are happy.  They aren't dependent on another person to go to sleep and sleep soundly.   I hope it serves them for the rest of their lives because it's important to be able to sleep when you need to.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came downstairs the other morning into our room and over to the bed.  When I looked up at him he asked, "mommy, can I open my present from Santa Claus?"  We don't make much of a deal about Santa in our house, although he's exposed to it via all the holiday media he sees.  We went out to the living room and looked around, but neither of us could find a present from Santa Claus.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Car-capades.  My daughter did not want to be in the car on our ride home from the mountains today.  She was cross, complained, intentionally got her foot stuck in the cup holder multiple times, demanded food, complained because it wasn't the food she wanted and then exclaimed she needed to go poop, "right now!" We stopped and she did.  Then, we got back in the car and she screamed about the window and how she wanted it up and then down and then the sun shade changed and then, suddenly, she was asleep.   Sometimes that's how it goes with children.

The Rain In Spain

I'm not in Spain.   I'm not even remotely near Spain.   I'm in the mountains of North Carolina.   Years ago, no, make that decades ago, I would come up to the mountains to spend time over the holidays with my parent's best friends, or later, at my parent's house, and it would rain.   It wouldn't always rain, but it rained with enough frequency that I got blamed for, "bringing the rain".

I like rain.  I like weather of all sorts.  I like the thought of damp or drenched green foliage surrounding me in a mountainous environment, so I never minded.   But I still got blamed.   It went on for so long that I eventually started to feel badly about the weather situation, because it seemed to be an annoyance or disappointment to those around me that I'd come visit and brought my friends, "precipitation" and "overcast skies", with me.

Was I bringing the rain?  Hell no.   But it seemed I was somehow involved in a multi-year, non-specific, undirected conspiracy in which the weather and I had not colluded a single bit.   And yet, it kept happening.

This weekend is the member/guest golf tournament at my parent's country club.  My father and husband are playing together.  Have they been able to play at all?  Barely.  Marginally?  What they have played has been in the rain, fog and chill...in July.   I am fully expecting to be blamed for this terrible turn of the tournament in short order.

I don't feel too badly; I like the rain.

The Big Boy Update:  We went to a children's play land yesterday and today.  It was one of those museum-type things that appeals to children up to age seven.   My two children had a wonderful time.  My son fell in love with a fourteen-month-old girl.   I have never seem him so infatuated with a, "baby" as he kept calling her.  It was very interesting to watch.   After we left, we went to the mall for lunch.   When we were done we walked around for a while.  Apparently he was watching other families because he told me, "some people have two kids and some people have one kid and some people have no kids."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She is my handy helper.   She will help you out if you need it (and especially if you don't need it).  She will help out another child and she will help out her brother, even if he doesn't deserve the help.  She is very helpful.

The Lake Walk

Yesterday on vacation at the mountains we decided to go for a walk around the lake.   This little lake is nestled in the valley between mountains.  For the low, low, cost of zero dollars, you and your loved ones can walk around the seven-tenth's mile path, enjoying a nice afternoon out-of-doors.

There were to be ducks and geese, so my mother and I brought bread for the children to hand out.   When we arrived, the children dashed on ahead, full of energy, excited to find the ducks.   Two small turns later and we were accosted by fifty ducks and geese that clearly smelled the bread on us.   Three minutes later and there was nothing left (because small children don't know how to ration bread when there are eager, hungry waterfowl).

The rest of the walk around the lake went probably exactly as my children planned it, but not necessarily like an adult would expect it to go.

My daughter wanted to play in the gravel path.  She wanted to scoop up the gravel, look at it in her hands and then put it anywhere (including the lake) other than the path itself.   My son thought this was a good idea and joined in.  We explained how the gravel needed to stay on the path several times to no avail.  Then my mother and I tried the, "oh look, flowers!" tactic.

If you thought they would be distracted by that clever ruse, you would be wrong.   The grey gravel dirt got all over them.  My daughter looked like a little chimney sweep.  Eventually we got them to look at the flowers (they didn't care) and then we noticed the many feathers around the ground.  My son thought they were interesting, my daughter decided they were, "yucky".   We looked at how they floated on the breeze and my mother and agreed it reminded us of Forrest Gump.

We eventually got to a bridge and a stream and there was a tiny waterfall.  The children were interested enough, but what really caught their eye was the edge of the lake and some big rocks.  My son wanted to get out in the water and stand on the rickety rocks.   He did and he only fell in once, which doesn't matter so much in Crocs.

My mother told me there was no swimming in the late, and I assured her that we would comply with that rule, because neither child could swim.   We headed on around and found a set of "secret, hidden stairs" that led down to another lagoon area.   We pretended we were at a castle while more rocks were stepped on and more feats of balance were displayed by both children.

Then, there were potty issues.  Namely the smaller child saying she had to go, but being completely unwilling to go in the bushes, or walk quickly to the bathrooms back at the start of our loop.   That last bit of the lake was rather a loud and whiney walk for my daughter, although my son was having quite the time with a very large stick he'd pulled out of the bushes.

When we got back in the car, bathroom duties complete and new clothes on to replace the wet ones from the splashing, everyone fell asleep on the ride home.  Well, I didn't; I was driving.

The Big Boy Update:  My son's shoes were missing the other day.  Our backyard is flat, and then it drops off steeply down a hill.  I asked my son where his missing shoe was and he pointed down the hill.   I asked him, "did you throw your shoe all the way down the hill?"   He very helpfully said, "Not all the way."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She has the hairiest legs.   When she was smaller, they felt a little rough and then I realized hair was growing on them.  Now, her legs are twice as hairy (at least) as her brother's are, and she's nearly a year younger.   The hair on her head doesn't grow fast and it's thin and fine, so what's up with the rampant leg hair growth, I don't know.   It's white blonde, so it's not that noticeable, but it's definitely bushy.

Lack of Whimsy

I don't think I have a sense of whimsy.   I didn't realize this until today when I was wandering around the garden in my parent's yard at the mountains.

My father likes to garden.  I do not like to garden.  I do not like to do anything that involves plants or, and this is the most important part, keeping plants alive.   I am dreadful at keeping plants alive.   Couple that with a terrible empathetic complex that makes me feel horrible for letting any living thing die, and you might get why I like to distance myself from plants.

Back to the garden though, my father does a lovely garden.  It's one of those meandering ones where  you never know what you're going to encounter at the next turn.  It might be different flora, or it might be seven different types of sun dials or even his own creative yard art he's constructed from industrial waste.

The thing is, my father gets whimsy.  He's got an excess of whimsy.   His garden is overflowing with whimsy...and that makes it fun.  

I don't get whimsy; and I envy his garden.

The Big Boy Update:  We're at Mimi and Gramps house.   My son was playing in Gramps's garden and he found, around a corner, well-hidden, a compost and mulch pile.   One stick later and my son was knee deep in that mulch pile, finding worms.   He is so a boy.   He is so Gramps's grandchild.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She likes to help me do the dishes.  She particularly likes to sort the utensils and put them away.  She has been working on the difference between big and small spoons and short and long forks.  Today, I thought she had a breakthrough, but it still took her ten minutes to do a thirty second job.   And yet...she was so happy when she got them all sorted, it was worth it.

Squeezie Hug

The Big Boy Update:   This post is going to be mostly about my son, so I'm starting straight off with his section.

"Boys will be boys."  What does that mean?  To me it means rough and rowdy.   Girls don't listen just as much as boys don't listen, (in my experience).  It seems to me that both boys and girls can make a big mess, poor decisions and be louder than you imagined they could be.   But there is something about boys that says, "hello testosterone" making the "boys" part in, "boys will be boys" make sense.

My son likes to be rough.  At first I thought this was bad.  I tried to squash it because mostly, but not always, his sister hated it.  Then I talked to many people who had lots of experience with children.   It appears that boys sometimes do want to be aggressive and that's okay.    So we've been trying to find ways to help him out when he gets in these moods.

Today, he wanted to tackle, grab, pull, push, poke and carry his sister around.   She was in one of those moods (she told me she was "grumpy" and needed bedicine (medicine) to feel less grumpy).  We separated them and I played with my son and we found other things for them to do.

At dinner, my son sat at his seat and was unhappy because his pasta wasn't cooling off quickly enough.  Suddenly he turned to me and said, "mommy, I want a squeeze hug."   This is something I came up with a while back that seems to help.  He wants to be physical and he needs aggressive physical touch, so I pick him up and squeeze him really tight and hug him.  Sometimes we roll around on the floor and squeeze each other.  There are tiger hugs, bear hugs, tickle hugs and many other kinds of hugs, but it usually starts with the squeezie hug.

I told him to come over and I would give him a great big hug.  I carried him to the sofa and all he wanted to do was sit together on my lap and look at something on television.   We sat there for a good while, him telling me about whatever was happening on the television and me hugging him.

I'm not sure what he needed, but that level of physical contact helped.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She's been dressing herself every morning of late.  Today after the pool, she came out of our bedroom with a new outfit on.  I couldn't place this dress she was putting onthat seemed to be missing one arm hole.   Ah, it was my exercise skirt with the liner pants.   It was lovely pink and orange and turned inside-out and upside-down, it looked very cute on my daughter, one shoulder bare.   I am glad she found the clean laundry basket though...

Fitness Update:  With five minutes to go at the gym, I made the mistake of telling our trainer I'd be out for the rest of the week.   "Tell Eleanor to stop right now, we're going to do something else", he said.   Oh dear, I just caused Don to give us a, "finisher" for the last five minutes.   It was so tough, it took us ten minutes to do.

Red Dwarf

I was introduced to the BBC SciFi series, Red Dwarf by a friend, long ago.  Since that time, I've introduced many other people to it as well.  

For some reason a few nights ago, I decided to watch, "The End" (the pilot episode) of the show and now I just want to get everything done and the kids to sleep so I can watch more episodes.  

This is very like me, re-watching an old show when so many people are recommending great new shows.

Today, I told my sitter, who is in high school, about Red Dwarf.   She, her sister and brother, all like Dr. Who, and I think they'd like Red Dwarf too.

The Big Boy Update:  We had a play date with Jacob this weekend.   He came over and we had been playing for quite some time together.   I went upstairs to get some snack and my son followed me up. I put out some plates and my son said, "this plate is the same color as Jacob's shoes".  It was.   The associations children make and the things they notice is a marvel.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter fell off the bar stool today.   She wasn't paying attention and fell backwards, off the side.  She caught herself half-way but it was still a bad fall.   She wanted the, "boo boo duck" and put it on the back of her head.  Then, she was recovered and back to eating.   She is tough.

The Gardenia Challenge

My favorite flower smell is gardenia.  I don't know what it is about the smell of the gardenia flower that is difficult to capture accurately, but it is very rare to get a consumer product that truly smells like gardenias.

One time at an airport I ran across a candle that was very expensive, but smelled just like gardenias.  I balked at the price and then for the next month I thought about my upcoming business trip and how I was going to get that candle when I went back through the airport.   When I returned, they had sold out.  

I see candles frequently that are gardenia scented and I almost always stop to smell them.  I'm almost always disappointed because whatever smell it is, it's not remotely like the true gardenia flower scent.

The Big Boy Update:  I asked my son if he knew what he used to call a motorcycle and a helicopter.   He didn't remember what a 'mackamuck' or a 'hebercopper' were but he practiced saying the words and smiled when I told him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has not had a functioning pacifier for a while now, but she still likes to hold the broken one and sometimes even puts it in her mouth.  Yesterday she did something that she knew would have her pacifier thrown away.   She was fine with it at the time, but at night she felt differently.   She went to sleep with not pacifier though.  The most interesting part was how for thirty minutes she moaned that she, "needed carrots" before she fell asleep.

Fitness Update:  At the gym he's having us do bench presses and pull-ups.  These are two of the three things I never thought I'd ever do (the third being a push-up, which I do repeatedly, all the time now.) I would tell you how much I'm bench pressing, only it would not impress you in the slightest.

Heartbeats

Our neighbor's son has surgery tomorrow.  He's fourteen and he has had a pacemaker since he was a baby.   Over time they need to be replaced and it's that time again.   He seems fairly calm about the whole thing, especially since he's been through it before, but it's still an important day for him tomorrow.

His four grandparents are in town and we stopped in this afternoon to deliver a card my son made with us for him.  My daughter was going to help, but she fell asleep at the table eating strawberries so she missed out.   My son was excited about doing some stamping and making a card for Blake.

In the middle of this, my son and I had another one of those battles of will in which he didn't get his way (that being to put his hand on the ink pad and rub ink all over the table).  He got upset and decided he wanted to go to bed.  I got into his bed with him and we talked about how he and I had both been having strong feelings all day and that it had not been our best day.  

I asked him what he thought we should put into Blake's card and he said, "kisses".  I asked him how, and he told me, "we blow kisses into the envelope."  I marveled at the imagination of a child.   So that's just what we did.  My husband, son and I blew kisses into the envelope for Blake and then sealed it.  My son decided there needed to be a red bow on the front so he got one out and stuck it on.

Before we went over to Blake's house, I asked my son if there was anything we should take to Blake as a present.  My son said that yes, we needed to take some strawberry yogurt to him and that we should bring a spoon too.   Now that he thought about it, he was going to need a strawberry yogurt and spoon as well because he could eat his yogurt with Blake.

Yogurt, spoons and card in hand, over to the neighbor's house we went.  Blake opened his card and then he and my son sat at the table and ate their yogurts together.   It was very sweet.

We wish Blake the best tomorrow and look forward to seeing him home on Tuesday with his new, upgraded pacemaker.

The Big Boy Update:  It was one of those days.  My son would not listen.  Oh, he would listen, but he would intentionally and immediately do the thing you just told him he could not do.  It was a crazy day of testing.  When my husband got home he saw it in action, so it wasn't just me my son was testing.   I yelled multiple times and my son got upset eventually, saying he felt like he just wanted to go to bed.   I got in the bed with him and he and I had a little talk and we decided to be good friends again.  He is sensitive, but he's more hard-headed than he is sensitive some days.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She was itchy.  She's not commonly itchy, although bug bites give her the itching fits.   At any rate, it was non-specific in location and seemingly all over so I gave her some Benadryl after the pool.   She fell asleep fifteen minutes later with her head on the dining room table after eating some strawberries.

Tie Dye

We did some tie dying tonight with one of my children's teachers and another family from our school.   I have been a participant in the tie dying before, but this time I was coordinating the process.   It was messy the first time as a mere participant.   As the person running the event, it is drastically more messy.

The children had fun in their underpants squirting dye onto their shirts.  (My son was naked, shocker there.)  Afterwards, they ate dinner mostly naked and then I put them in the bath with a capful of bleach (on recommendation from my son's surgeon for skin bacteria, not at all having anything to do with the splattering of color all over their little bodies.)

Tomorrow morning I get to rinse, vinegar wash, rinse again, washing machine wash, dry and then run a second, towels load in the washing machine to make sure all residual colors have moved on down the line.

Last time, the results were great.  My two children love their tie dyed shirts from the spring and wear them regularly.  We'll see if their work this time is of equal quality.

The Big Boy Update:   My son wants to connect his penis to things.   I would be alarmed, but I hear we're not the only family experiencing a "bonus" member to their family at this age of childhood discovery.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I heard my daughter wake up this morning.  I heard the drawers of their dresser opening upstairs.  I heard her pattering down the stairs and running into our room.  I opened one eye and watched her put her "night night" outfit into the hamper and her nighttime diaper in the trash can.  Then she came over to my side of the bed and told me, "my wadiebug is is not tied."  And so it wasn't.  Her ladybug dress that she'd selected needed to be tied in the back.   Then she asked me, "can I have yogurt for breakfast?"  Two-and-a-half years old...she makes me proud.

Malaise

I'm not sick. Maybe I'm lazy or maybe it's a lazy day.  I don't know what it is, but I've been a slob and a blob all day long.  That laziness is going to extend to this blog post because I just don't feel like putting forth the effort tonight.  Tomorrow is Saturday, which is pancake day, and we should all have a fun day with two play dates, a cook out, and tie dying with friends. 

The Big Boy Update:  "Do you know where the pumpkin patch is?"  My son has been asking about pumpkins lately. We're not sure why. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "I wanna try that again,". This is my daughter's favorite thing to say when she enjoys something. If it's jumping into the pool or doing a twirl or sliding down the slide, she'll gleefully say this (or say it to you if she needs your help) and then do the thing over and over and over. 

Tesla's Birthday

Today is Nikola Tesla's birthday, which I'm going to use as a loose excuse to write more about our new Model S car.

People know it or don't:  People either know immediately what the car is, are excited, want to ask you questions and talk about it, or they don't even notice it.   If you're into cars or electric cars or technology, you may have heard about this breakthrough new car company that's doing things differently than other companies.   Otherwise, it just looks like a nice sedan.  I've picked up people in the car and they've said, "you got a new car, nice, " followed by, "what is this?" and then followed by, "who makes it?"  It doesn't stand out visually, even the logo, a capital T, looks a bit like the Infinity logo if you're not paying attention.

The stereo can play any song:  If you've used Pandora, you'll be familiar with this type of behavior, but this is the first time I've seen it in a car.  The car comes with five years of 3G AT&T cellular service and includes both Slacker Radio and TuneIn Radio.   It also has voice recognition, so you can press and hold a button on the steering wheel and say, "Play 'Ants Marching' by Dave Matthews Band".  It will process your request and then pop up a selection on the touch screen.  You can pick the song itself, the album or alternate versions of the song by other artists and it will start to play.   If you pick the song itself, it will first play that song and then play other songs that are in the same genre/era/feel as that song.

The volume goes to eleven:  Some people have said that this feature alone makes the Tesla Model S the coolest car they've ever bought.   If you're not familiar with the phrase, "our amplifiers go to eleven" from the cult classic movie, This is Spinal Tap, then this feature may not appeal to you.   As someone who's been saying that phrase for decades, it is, I agree, one heck of an homage.

Digitally Faithful:  The car won't let you in unless you're vetted by a key.  Heck, you can't even grab a door handle and try to open the car unless you're in possession of a key because the door handles pull flush with the car when it's locked and asleep.   You can't unplug the charge cable if you don't have a key in proximity either.    I thought at first the car liked me,  now I realize it's digitally faithful to the keys, which are shaped like mini Model S cars.  As long as it's protecting itself, I suppose I don't really mind.

Charging Stations:  We've been looking at Plugshare.com on the browser in the car and continue to marvel at how many EV charging stations there are in the area.  We went to one of our favorite shopping malls the other day and discovered not one, not two, but three locations you could charge your car with a total of five charge ports and two levels of charging.   The electric car world has been out there for a while, we're just now realizing how prevalent it is.

Strange Noises:  This car makes noises you've never heard a car make.  It makes them at times when you think it's asleep, like when you walk out to the refrigerator in the garage to get a drink.   It makes buzzing sounds, popping sounds, unusual humming sounds.   There is a panoply of noises I have yet to catalog.   So far, I have no idea what any of them mean either.

I have parking anxiety:   It's new.  It's shiny.  It's unmarred.   Both my husband and I are having parking anxiety because we don't want to get it dinged by someone who isn't paying attention in a small parking space.   I had my last car for five years and it never got dinged, but this car is new and suddenly we're both overthinking the whole parking thing.

How efficient driving saved the car:  The car goes fast, that's for sure.  But it also wants you to drive it slowly because it tells you, in great detail, how good or bad your driving habits are--in graph form.   There's the, "rated range" and the "ideal range" and your driving habits, accelerating slowly or quickly, using regenerative braking or hitting the brakes at the last minute and overall speed can make a big difference in how much range you get out of a full charge.  My husband and I have been comparing who can be the most efficient driver.   Yesterday, I was at a stop light and when the light turned green the person in right lane went straight through the intersection into my left lane without even realizing they had changed lanes into mine.  Because I was trying to accelerate gently and slowly, they faded into the lane in front of me and I took a deep breath of relief.

Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla, the impact you've made on our world is both dramatic and ongoing.

The Big Boy Update:  My son looked down today and said, "what are those, mom?"   Ah, "those are your testicles," I told him.  I don't know if he's never noticed them before, but he suddenly wanted to check them out.  He was trying to isolate them in his scrotum so he could get a better look when I told him, "why you don't ask daddy about them.   You should be gentle with them, I hear they can hurt if you're not."  Let's see what he asks daddy tomorrow on the subject...

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   I let the dog out after she ate her dinner and before I could shut the door, my daughter came around the corner on hands and knees, exclaiming, "mommy, I'm a dog."  She wanted to go outside too.

About the Mac

It is quite possible I might become an Apple Snob.  Or maybe a Mac Nerd.   I have no idea what condescending names might be applied to people who prefer Apple computer products over PC-based (or any other computing paradigm) but soon enough I may well be in that category.

Traditionally there was a learning curve to Mac computers.  There still is, but the difference between a PC user's required skill set and that of a Mac computer user's has narrowed significantly in recent years.   Not only was I able to transition, I was able to pick up the new operating system, user interface and general Mac way of doing things fairly quickly.   And here's the thing...I like it better.

I don't dislike a Windows-based machine, but with less than a month as a Mac user, I don't want to go back.

So dad, if you're reading this...I'll be your tech support should you choose to take the step and go Mac.

The Big Boy Update:  We had a visitor coming over tonight just before bedtime to drop something off.  My son was getting his night night clothes on and decided he wanted to, "connect my penis to this" thing which was a drawer handle.   If I hadn't been assured by other parents by now that this was completely normal behavior, I would have been worried.   Ten minutes later and the doorbell rings.   My son runs out to meet the new guest and proceeds to show him his penis (for some reason I missed because I was getting paperwork from the visitor.)  Our friend said something to my son and then my son made sure he knew that, "this is my penis."   We laughed in that, "I have seen this many times and it never stops making you laugh, this being a parent thing."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today she picked out her clothes.  She selected a pink tutu and a New Orleans Saints jersey that was given to her by our Uncle Jonathan.   She said, "Uncle Jon has one of these too!"   I think she meant the jersey and not the pink tutu...

About That Running Thing I Do

I'm not sure I really like running.  I've had troubles with shin splints, IT band and feet that cramping, but other than that, I haven't had any real injuries.    I seem to be able to run with relative ease and I can easily still run a half marathon distance with nothing more than needing to eat a nice, calorie-laden meal afterwards.   But I'm not sure I actually like running.

I like having time to talk to my two good running buddies.   It's great to have several hours with nothing else to do than talk while you run alongside each other.  That part is great.  I like burning all those calories because one of the main reasons I run is so I can eat whatever I want.   I do so like to eat.   I particularly like to eat things that are high in calories.

I've tried being a faster runner.   That's when I got the shin splints.   I thought it was shoes, and I still think it was in part.   But I've tried on and off running faster and every time I get a little more speed on, the shin pain comes back.  When I run at my podunk pace, no pain at all.   Being the type of person who likes no pain over any pain, I am perfectly fine being a dreadfully slow runner.

What I think I like the most about running, isn't running at all.  I think I like having run.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to play with a sugar packet at lunch today.  He didn't know it could be opened, but I warned him not to be too rough with it.  He mangled it enough that after lunch I told him we could go outside and I would show him what was inside it.   I told him there was powder inside that adults put in their drinks.   (You have to think about these things, because kids can turn any bit of seemingly harmless information to their advantage when you least expect it.)   So we went outside and opened the packet.  He saw some sugar crystals come out.   He put some on one plant and then he said, "I want to sprinkle this tree over here so it will grow."   "Good enough," I thought.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At the pool yesterday, I was talking to another parent when I suddenly realized my daughter was getting completely naked over at the table where our things were.   What was going on?  Could she have pooped in her water diaper and is now taking it off so that all the other parents can freak out about the possibility of poop in the pool (and maybe cause the pool to be closed for twenty-four hours so it can be cleaned?)   No, that was not it at all.   She had seen the spare water diapers in the pool bag, had selected a new one and was about to put it on.   "Hi there, what do you need the new water diaper for," I asked.   "This one is wet," she tells me.   (It was wet because she'd been swimming in it for over an hour).    After she upgraded to a new, dry water diaper she got back into the pool.

Fitness Update:  Four miles this morning.  We were going to run more, but there were several reasons we had to stop and then it was time to head back.

The Sunburned Shoulder

Last week I burned my shoulder.  It was annoying.  It itched terribly and I spent lots of time putting lotion on top of lotion and cortisone cream on it in the hopes it wouldn't peel too much.

I was surprised at how much it burned though.  It was really red all over.   Did I keep my body angled in such a way at the pool the afternoon before so that the one shoulder got burned while the other came away only slightly red and not itchy at all?

Two days later, I was still scratching that shoulder and I felt a bump, right in the center of the whole itchy area.   Oh!  I had gotten bitten by something and it was redness/itchiness from that, not a single-point sunburn.

I don't know what bit or stung me (it never stung) but it's calmed down now.   I think the shoulder is going to be fine and I'm glad I didn't get burned.

The Big Boy Update:   He was asleep when I went up to get them for breakfast this morning.   He rolled over and then rolled back and said, "would you help me get my eyes open?"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been getting better and better at toileting.  She's been making it to the potty a good bit of the time and it's been a good while (over a month I think) since there has been soiled underpants.   She will realize she has to go, suddenly stand up and say, "poopy!"  We then say, "run, go fast!" and help her to get to the potty on time.   I've noticed she has an interesting tell sometimes.  She'll sit on the floor and wiggle her bottom back and forth.   Right after that she's stands up and exclaims she's got to go potty.   We still have to work on wet underpants though, as they still seem to happen.   Those are much easier to deal with though, as she is responsible for taking them off, putting them in the laundry basket, selecting new underpants and getting her pants back on.   (She's getting very good at that process as well.)

Fitness Update:  We did two muscle groups today at the gym.   It was the muscles you need in your arms to hold the steering wheel.  The other muscles were the ones you use to press the gas and brake pedals.  I'm glad I wasn't the one who drove to the gym this morning.

The Twenty-one Thousand Dollar Dinner

There is a Chinese restaurant I drive by somewhat regularly.  It opened shortly before I was in college, just across the main campus entrance.  We ordered it.  We picked it up.  It was delicious.   We ordered it more.  We ate lots more.  It remained delicious.   It was a staple in our family cuisine for several years.

Segue to one of my family friends, my college president.  My mother worked for him and he also had found that the Chinese restaurant across from the college was quite tasty.  He also ordered it frequently.

One week he went on a business trip.   He got somewhere and needed to do something like rent a car or put a credit card down for a hotel room and found his card declined.  He called the credit card company and about that time, got a call from that very delicious Chinese restaurant.   They had accidentally charged him $21,000 for his meal instead of $21.  They were exceptionally apologetic, and they were trying to reverse the charge they discovered from the day before.

This was back before all-electronic charge points.  This was way before credit fraud monitoring we have now.   I suspect the charge would have been denied today, but twenty-some years ago it was an interesting day for that restaurant and my college president.

The Big Boy Update:  He was driving around a little plastic car this morning and told his sister, "I need to get gas."   With the recent purchase of our electric car, I'm wondering if this is the last generation that will know and use that phrase regularly.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We went to the pool this morning.  Before we went, my daughter wanted to dress herself.   She put on...wait for it...seven pair of underpants, her bathing suit and then a swim diaper on top of it all.

This, That and Something-or-Other

My list of, "stuff to write about in the blog" has gotten out of hand again.  This seems to keep happening to me.  Initially, I was worried I wouldn't have enough to write about, but as time goes on it is clear that I now like to write just as much as I like to talk.  (And I like to talk a lot.)

The Big Boy Update(s):
Lifting up his sister:  He's been wanting to lift people up lately.  He lifted Whitaker, his eighteen-month-old neighbor in an attempt to put him in a swing.  That didn't go so well and there was an upset parent and some crying.   Now, he wants to pick up his sister and she's relatively agreeable to the whole thing.   He totes her around for a few steps and then talks about how strong he is.

Pool cling-on:  He is swimming a good bit now, but what he most wants to do is launch off the stairs and swim to you, and then hold on to you.   He likes to tell you what you should do next to cater to his every pool need (be a shark, go over there, dive to the bottom, etc.).  I've had to get farther and farther away from him unless I want to drive him around in the water.

She's singing at me:   My daughter likes to sing.  She's figured out a great way to bother her brother.  He bothers her in many, many ways, but this one is I think the best of all the aggravators sibling behaviors yet.   She sings to him and says his name.  He tells her, "No! Don't sing to me!!"   She not only doesn't stop, she sings louder and repeats his name more times.  She loves it.  He hates it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:
The Boo Boo Cataloger:  She likes to check her body for boo boos.   She likes to tell you if there is a new one and how many there are overall.   She likes to tell you if you have a boo boo and poke the boo boo spot just to make sure you know which spot she's talking about.

The Hi Yo song:  My daughter has a song she made up (we think).  She sings, "Hi yo, Greyson.  Hi yo, Reese.  Hi yo, mommy.  Hi yo, <insert name here>"  She is always happy when she sings this song.  We join in with her now.   She also uses this song to aggravate her brother by singing his name multiple times if he balks the first time.

My foot is stuck!:  She can put her foot into the cup holder in her car seat.  She can do this because she's very limber as well as small.   But once she gets her foot in, she can't get it out.   The first time or two I was worried by her cries of alarm.  Now, I just tell her to figure it out or wait until we're home because I unstuck it at the last stop light.

They're both the same!:  She has been noticing things that are the same lately.  This morning she found two lime juice bottles and was very excited that the one in the refrigerator was the same as the unopened one in the pantry.  She then found two empty jars and brought them out to show me they were both empty and the same.

Can I smell it?:  My children watched a Sesame Street episode yesterday in which there were two substances and you had to use different senses to tell them apart.  They had to use their sense of taste to determine which was salt and which was sugar.  They had to use their sense of smell to determine which was water and which was vinegar.   Since that show, my daughter has been wanting to smell everything.

See you at dessert:  We met my husband for dinner tonight.  We told the children when we got home we'd have dessert and that daddy would meet us there because he drove in a separate car.   As we prepared to depart, my daughter said to my husband, "see you at dessert, daddy."

Boogums:  On that same ride home, my daughter told me she had, "boogums".  I told her I could give her a tissue if she needed one.  She said she was okay and then she she suddenly said, "Oh! Mickey doesn't have boogums," referring to the Mickey Mouse stuffed animal she had in her lap.

Fitness (or rather Healthness) Update:  My neck has been bothering me on and off.   I have a spine with low tolerances because of the fusion and other degenerative issues I have.  As a result, when something becomes a problem, it may take weeks or even months to get everything back on an even keel.  Lately, it's been my neck.  It's bothering me so much some nights that I wake up and get an ice pack.  Mornings recently I've had to use my hand to lift my head off the pillow because the muscles are so tense.   It's annoying.

Independence

Today we celebrate our nation's independence but I'm going to celebrate my children's independence.  Children love to mimic what you do as an adult.  They fiercely want to do their own thing, even if they have no chance to successfully complete the task for which they're striving so diligently.  As my daughter's teacher would say, "if your toddler is struggling, you should be very proud".   A child doesn't get upset if they don't immediately succeed.  For instance, they will try and try and try again to master stairs and eventually, they're running up and down them.   Children have excess amounts of perseverance.

We try to encourage independence whenever we can.  Sometimes this can be frustrating, because it will take me less than two minutes to get my child's night night outfit off; underpants, clothes and shoes on and the dirty clothes in the hamper.   Letting the child do the same thing involves standing around and giving advice, waiting for them to select a pair of underpants (which may take some time), helping them get the shirt on frontwards (if they don't insist it should be backwards) and then directing them to pick out shoes and put them on their feet (which will almost always be backwards).

But it's paying off.   My son, at three-and-a-half, comes downstairs some mornings now fully dressed.    He did so this morning and then came to wake us up.  He selected an outfit, took off his nighttime clothes and put them in the hamper and then put his nighttime diaper in the trash.    Of late, he's been interested in wearing sweat pants, which he says he wants to wear outside in the ninety-degree weather.

My daughter, at two-and-a-half, is at times more independent than her brother and can get dressed quite quickly and without as much advice help as her brother needs.  Good luck in dressing her if she's in one of those, "I do it!" moods.

The time spent helping our children be independent is starting to pay off.  That, and it's fun to watch what outfits they pick out.

The Big Boy Update:  My children both woke up last night and needed a check from dad in the middle of the night.   When I asked my husband what my son wanted, he told me, "he wanted me to put away his raincoat."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was also asleep in the middle of the night, either dreaming or partially awake.  In the dark room (they don't sleep with a nightlight) she asked daddy to, "turn the sun off."

That Screen Thing Downstairs

Have you had those, "boy, I'm old" moments?    I had one the other night.  We have movie night most Friday evenings at our house.  There are adults, who are mostly our age range.  There are some children, who range from two (my daughter) to thirteen-years-old.

While we were getting ready to watch the first movie in the basement, my friend's nine-year-old daughter asked me if she could play on that thing downstairs.   "What", I asked?  "That screen thing downstairs," she said.   I was so confused until I realized she meant the arcade machine we have against the back wall.   "Oh, sure you can, ask Chris how to turn it on."  

That's when I realized at nine, she has no idea what an arcade machine game is--one of the staples of entertainment of my childhood.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came downstairs this morning and climbed into bed with us and decided to hid under the covers.   Then, he started to make a strange chirping noise.  He kept going with this noise while we laughed at him and asked him what animal he was pretending to be.  "A woodpecker," he said.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She dropped a Mickey Mouse cup on her toe last week.  This week, the toenail is barely hanging on.  Today, she really wanted to pull it off, so I helped with some clippers to make it less painful.  The toe looks a fright, but she feels much happier about the situation, so it must feel better now.

Some Ponderous Problems

Two mysteries, one solved, the other completely still a mystery.

The first is my contacts in Outlook.  I moved to the new machine.  I'm now all Apple/Mac/iDevice and I am quite happy.   I was working in Microsoft Outlook for three weeks with my entire history migrated to the new machine including historical emails (huge), contacts and calendar.   Suddenly, I tried to send an email and all my contacts were gone.  The night before, everything was there, today, they've disappeared.   There were four left that I'd created since I moved to the new machine but that was all.   What the heck?

Google to the rescue and I look for other people who've had this problem.  New Mac user, migrated data, no I didn't delete my contacts, no it wasn't this other issue with Exchange and it wasn't seven other things that weren't possibly given my situation.   Here's the thing, no one has reported this problem, and that's strange.   Because whenever  you have a computer problem, there is a drastically high chance that a thousand or more people have had the same thing happen and there is a known fix or workaround.  

So I'm still stumped on what happened, but I did find a easy way to move my contacts back into Outlook.  A very, very easy fix that took twenty seconds once I discovered it.   I wonder if they'll disappear again?

The second issue was the Tesla's fault.   We had garage doors that worked, and then they didn't.  We'd back out in the minivan (or even in the Tesla) and intermittently we couldn't close the garage doors.   Hold on, was it because we were charging the Tesla or was it not related.   Was it the new power outlet that was between the two main bays of the garage?   Dadgummit, this was annoying.

I looked all over the internet yet again for someone who had the same issue and had found a solution. And then I discovered the culprit...and it wasn't the Tesla's fault.  

We replaced the garage door lightbulbs at almost the same time as we got the Tesla.  The bulbs are the ones that turn on when the garage door opens or closes to give you a few minutes of light to get in or out of your car.  They're right up on the unit itself.   Remember the LED bulb replacement plan?   We had replaced those bulbs with LED versions and the frequency of the bulbs interferes with the garage doors whenever the lights are on.  

Mystery solved as to why we couldn't close the garage doors.  We replaced the LEDs with low-power consumption CFL bulbs.   Now, we can get in and out of our garage again.

The Big Boy update:  Who is Pahmer?  It doesn't quite sound like, "Palmer" but it's not, "farmer" either.   He calls us Pahmer from time to time but we can't figure out who it is.   Is it an imaginary friend?  I don't think so, but it's something he's heard from somewhere.   I play along and say, "okay, Pahmer" when I talk to him sometimes because that's what he does to me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Carrots are always available.  We don't allow them to eat anything they want at any time, but we have two things they can consume whenever, on a self-serve basis: carrots and water. My daughter (as well as my son) really like eating carrots now.  We don't think this is a bad thing.  As my daughter would say, "carrots are always abadavul" (available).

Fitness Update:   It's not so much of an update anymore is it?  I need to come up with a new section title.   I'll think on that.  For now, we went to the gym super early because my neighbor had to be at the hospital early for work.  Uncle Jonathan drove from the next town over to meet us to go to the gym early so he got up super duper early.   Maybe I'll change the title of this section to, "lengths I'll go to to exercise with two toddlers".

Today's Antics Include...

...the following things my children did or said that made me laugh or proud,

The Big Boy Update:

The Unexpected Sleeping Bag:  My son's teacher is pregnant.  She's due in August, so she's starting to be quite visibly pregnant now.   She told me at pickup after camp that my son told her, "your tummy looks like a sleeping bag."   She told him about the baby and then he said, "there's a baby under your skin?"

Letter Pointing:  He's learning his letters now and can recognize many of them.  I asked him so show me the letter M's in a word search on his kids menu and he very easily pointed several of them out.  Only he didn't point directly below the letter, he put his finger exactly on top of the letter each and every time.

The Rocket Ship Story:  My son drew and narrated a story at camp today.  There were several pages of scribbled crayons and the teacher's handwriting below detailing the story my son said the scribbles told.  I asked my son to tell me what each of the pages meant, and he remembered that there was a lot going on with rocket ships and crashing.  His interpretation the second time around was close, but didn't quite match the first one, which read as follows:
 
     The Happy Rocketship, by: Greyson Fox
     The net is catching the rocket ship.
     It is about to explode already.
     The crane picks up the pieces.
     It hooks and throw it away.
     Build a new rocket ship.  The end.

Opening the car door:  The children want to get into the minivan to go someplace.  Or else they don't.  But when they do, the sliding doors are hard to open.  Neither of my children has been tall enough to have enough angular pull to get the doors open until today.  My son successfully got the door open twice.  At least now when I tell them to get in the car they can actually get in the car instead of wandering around it and getting sidetracked with a toy in the garage.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:

Playing under the table:  At two-and-a-half, my children have no concept of what is or isn't a dirty place to play.  As an adult, the thought of climbing under a booth table in a restaurant, sitting on the floor, picking things up and playing with them would likely make you have a mild round of the heebie jeebies.  Not to my children.  My daughter loves to slide down the seat and disappear under the table.  I have vague memories of doing that myself when I was young and not understanding why I had to come out of my perfectly good hiding spot to be with the boring adults.

Headband:  In the battle to keep my daughter's hair out of her eyes without having her tear out any hair bow, bob or barrette and thus pulling out hair, I may have had a success today.  I found a headband that fit her small head.  It was sewn flowers that were very colorful.  She made it all day long with this head band on and I don't think any hair was harmed in the process.

Lin-num-made:  Lemonade, as pronounced by my daughter.