Last night my son and I talked about what he was taking to school today. On Friday’s they have a fund raiser for this or that (there have been multiple) and the children can elect to have a slice of pizza for two dollars, two slices for four dollars or three slices for six dollars. My son likes pizza and has typically joined in on the Friday fund raisers.
We talked about this particular one and how it wasn’t Hungry Howie’s pizza and how that was a shame because that was his favorite pizza. He said he probablly should take two snacks because he had gotten hungry on the days prior at school. He selected his snacks, put them in his backpack and that was that.
Today he went off to school and after lunch I got a call from his fill-in teacher, to discuss how he was doing in class because he’s had an issue getting work done this week. In summary there, we basically had a serious discussion with my son, explaining we had run out of options and he had to get his work done or he would be doing work after school, until bedtime if necessary, because he had the responsibility to get the work done. Let’s call it a mild threat. Let’s say we were holding him accountable and not letting him get away with any, “I can’t focus” reasons.
He was bribed in a way because he wanted to watch a video after school. And that simple offer worked. His teacher called and said he’d worked all morning, hard, getting everything done easily—which he has full capability to do—and she was going to have to find extra work for him to do this afternoon. So good news there; we’re hoping we can continue that trend, but more on that front as it unfolds.
Then she told me how he didn’t have a lunch. Wait, hold on, oh…crap, it’s Thursday, not Friday when the pizza fundraiser was. My son and I had both gotten the days confused. Not to worry though, she said, they had had Peace Lunch (or maybe it’s Piece Lunch) in which every student in the class shares a little bit of their lunch. She said the children love to do this when it happens and my son had eaten everything he’d been given—including three cheese sticks, which incidentally he won’t eat when I put them in his lunch box.
So good day all around and a happy Peace Lunch for my son. He was more than pleased to show us his completed work plan when he got home and to sit in front of the television and watch the 50 Fortnite Fails YouTube video with his father and laugh at all the crazy antics.
The Big Boy Update: Before bed tonight my son looked at their bunk beds and said, “mom, did you get this hunk-a-junk from China?” I told him no, we had gotten it from the furniture store down the road. He said he wasn’t sure because he saw Chinese writing on it somewhere.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a love hate relationship with the puppy. She plays with her, kisses her, hugs her and then cries when the puppy wants to play back with her little sharp teeth, just wanting to play tug of war with anything handy. Fortunately we have a lot of dog toys around and my daughter is learning how to drag the dog all around with a toy in the dog's mouth, growling back at her and laughing.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Back to Braille
Let’s get back to braille. I haven’t talked about it a while. Have I been working on my braille studies? Yes, but there have been hiccups. Am I fluent? Heck no, I have a long way to go; let me explain…
The Contracted Braille class is twenty-five units long. I’ve just managed to submit my assignment at the end of unit seven. There is a lot more to learn and I had to back off on the class for a while because I was having a hard time processing efficiently the braille I had already learned. I could translate it, but not really “read” it. I could go through with a pencil and put each letter or symbol above the braille character, referring to my reference sheets frequently to get things correct. But it wasn’t really reading.
There was another factor in play that I rather hate telling you: I failed an assignment. I’ll show you what I mean below. Translating braille to print is pretty easy. We can use cues from the context of the word or sentence to figure out what’s being said. Translating print to braille—correctly, with no mistakes—is a whole other matter. And my teacher is strict.
I forgot several capitalization indicators, reversed some ‘r’ and ‘w’ symbols and left off the number indicator before two numbers. I got a lot—almost all—of the assignment correct, but a few mistakes and I’m below 80% and, well, fail. Or in the case of this course, with is voluntary and has no actual final grade, I just have to start over and try again.
But it bothered me. Braille is hard with it gets filled with contractions. Fortunately, and with great timing, my daughter is about the same level in her study as I am in mine. And my daughter does a lot of work at school. I read hundreds of pages of her work, vocabulary work, math sheets, instructions, stories, poems—anything they could send home that she worked on, I read. And it got easier.
I can read braille now without translating character for character. I can go through a stack of braille pages fairly quickly, or at least I can at the level we’re at with the contractions we’ve learned so far.
Today I submitted the final assignment for unit seven for my course. Here’s what it looks like and why ten simple sentences can be tricky and a few mistakes can be easy to make:
That was the assignment. Here’s my marked up version of the sentences with each area in yellow a contraction and other notation to remember additional braille characters needed to identify things like numbers and capitals:
And here’s the final braille, which still looks like a whole lot of dots to me unless I take the time to start at the beginning and don’t lose my place. Losing your place in a page of braille is no fun,
I reviewed the work several times. I wonder how many mistakes I made that I passed over and didn’t see. I’ll find out in a few days.
The Big Boy Update: My son had a rough day at school yesterday, well and this week. His teacher is calling in a half-hour to talk to us. She’s stepping in for several weeks as his primary teacher’s father died and she’s out of town. His teacher is the one he had (and loved) from last year. We’ll update her and see if she has any ideas.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter’s taxi driver this morning told us she would have to pick my daughter up a full fifty minutes earlier than she normally did because of a change in passengers. My husband thinks he’s going to drive her in on Mondays if the schedule doesn’t change. An hour and forty-five minutes is too long in a cab in the morning.
The Contracted Braille class is twenty-five units long. I’ve just managed to submit my assignment at the end of unit seven. There is a lot more to learn and I had to back off on the class for a while because I was having a hard time processing efficiently the braille I had already learned. I could translate it, but not really “read” it. I could go through with a pencil and put each letter or symbol above the braille character, referring to my reference sheets frequently to get things correct. But it wasn’t really reading.
There was another factor in play that I rather hate telling you: I failed an assignment. I’ll show you what I mean below. Translating braille to print is pretty easy. We can use cues from the context of the word or sentence to figure out what’s being said. Translating print to braille—correctly, with no mistakes—is a whole other matter. And my teacher is strict.
I forgot several capitalization indicators, reversed some ‘r’ and ‘w’ symbols and left off the number indicator before two numbers. I got a lot—almost all—of the assignment correct, but a few mistakes and I’m below 80% and, well, fail. Or in the case of this course, with is voluntary and has no actual final grade, I just have to start over and try again.
But it bothered me. Braille is hard with it gets filled with contractions. Fortunately, and with great timing, my daughter is about the same level in her study as I am in mine. And my daughter does a lot of work at school. I read hundreds of pages of her work, vocabulary work, math sheets, instructions, stories, poems—anything they could send home that she worked on, I read. And it got easier.
I can read braille now without translating character for character. I can go through a stack of braille pages fairly quickly, or at least I can at the level we’re at with the contractions we’ve learned so far.
Today I submitted the final assignment for unit seven for my course. Here’s what it looks like and why ten simple sentences can be tricky and a few mistakes can be easy to make:
That was the assignment. Here’s my marked up version of the sentences with each area in yellow a contraction and other notation to remember additional braille characters needed to identify things like numbers and capitals:
And here’s the final braille, which still looks like a whole lot of dots to me unless I take the time to start at the beginning and don’t lose my place. Losing your place in a page of braille is no fun,
I reviewed the work several times. I wonder how many mistakes I made that I passed over and didn’t see. I’ll find out in a few days.
The Big Boy Update: My son had a rough day at school yesterday, well and this week. His teacher is calling in a half-hour to talk to us. She’s stepping in for several weeks as his primary teacher’s father died and she’s out of town. His teacher is the one he had (and loved) from last year. We’ll update her and see if she has any ideas.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter’s taxi driver this morning told us she would have to pick my daughter up a full fifty minutes earlier than she normally did because of a change in passengers. My husband thinks he’s going to drive her in on Mondays if the schedule doesn’t change. An hour and forty-five minutes is too long in a cab in the morning.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Maybe I’ll Be an Editor
First off, let me start this post by saying my brother-in-law cost me $24 dollars this year. Ooo, “brother-in-law” is actually exactly what I mean: as of Saturday, I have a new brother-in-law now that Uncle Brian married my brother-in-law, Bob. So cool.
Anyways, about that twenty-four dollars… Brian was looking to find some pictures to put up as a slide show for the Friday night pre-wedding party and called us for advice. He knew he had pictures stored in iCloud, but didn’t see how to get to them. We compared settings on his phone and mine and I said I wasn’t sure I could help by direct comparison because I’d never turned on iCloud photo storage, thinking I had so many pictures on my laptop that enabling it would bump my storage up to a costly monthly fee.
But I toggled the switch to find out and it turned out that for only two more dollars each month I could have all my pictures stored remotely and have them accessible from my Mac, iPhone and iPad any time I wanted them. This was a bit of an issue I’d had over time that PhotoStream wasn’t really helping with. So I clicked the “Agree” or “go ahead and charge me” or whatever it said, button and my devices started dumping pictures to the cloud.
I had been doing workarounds to get pictures to and fro from one device to the other as needed for some time now, but now that everything is cloud-based, when I opened my laptop up tonight to post a naked picture of me here in this blog (don’t skip ahead, it’s coming) the photo was right there in Photos, no transfer necessary. So thanks, Uncle Brian, that twenty-four dollars is going to be money well-spent in time saved and certainly will make me happy from an organizational standpoint.
Let’s get to the point of this post though, which is my son stealing my phone yesterday morning. He was suppose to be getting dressed before breakfast. He was not suppose to be stealing my phone while I tried to get some of the morning pain to abate in a hot bath (which is what I do every morning because it helps). And he definitely wasn’t suppose to be taking pictures of me while I was in said tub.
I told him, “don’t take pictures of me, modesty!” “Modesty” is a word my son uses all the time now because he doesn’t want to be seen naked. Or at least doesn’t until he gets into the bath and then he forgets all about being naked and romps around with his sister in and out of the bath.
So he had my phone and he was doing something. He got called away to breakfast and handed my phone over, saying, “here, this is the picture I took.” And it was good. Modesty, check. Lighting, check. Composition, check. And extra points for black and white. I told him I was impressed, he took a good picture.
As he left the bathroom he casually said, “when I grow up maybe I’ll be an editor.” Here’s the shot he took:
Anyways, about that twenty-four dollars… Brian was looking to find some pictures to put up as a slide show for the Friday night pre-wedding party and called us for advice. He knew he had pictures stored in iCloud, but didn’t see how to get to them. We compared settings on his phone and mine and I said I wasn’t sure I could help by direct comparison because I’d never turned on iCloud photo storage, thinking I had so many pictures on my laptop that enabling it would bump my storage up to a costly monthly fee.
But I toggled the switch to find out and it turned out that for only two more dollars each month I could have all my pictures stored remotely and have them accessible from my Mac, iPhone and iPad any time I wanted them. This was a bit of an issue I’d had over time that PhotoStream wasn’t really helping with. So I clicked the “Agree” or “go ahead and charge me” or whatever it said, button and my devices started dumping pictures to the cloud.
I had been doing workarounds to get pictures to and fro from one device to the other as needed for some time now, but now that everything is cloud-based, when I opened my laptop up tonight to post a naked picture of me here in this blog (don’t skip ahead, it’s coming) the photo was right there in Photos, no transfer necessary. So thanks, Uncle Brian, that twenty-four dollars is going to be money well-spent in time saved and certainly will make me happy from an organizational standpoint.
Let’s get to the point of this post though, which is my son stealing my phone yesterday morning. He was suppose to be getting dressed before breakfast. He was not suppose to be stealing my phone while I tried to get some of the morning pain to abate in a hot bath (which is what I do every morning because it helps). And he definitely wasn’t suppose to be taking pictures of me while I was in said tub.
I told him, “don’t take pictures of me, modesty!” “Modesty” is a word my son uses all the time now because he doesn’t want to be seen naked. Or at least doesn’t until he gets into the bath and then he forgets all about being naked and romps around with his sister in and out of the bath.
So he had my phone and he was doing something. He got called away to breakfast and handed my phone over, saying, “here, this is the picture I took.” And it was good. Modesty, check. Lighting, check. Composition, check. And extra points for black and white. I told him I was impressed, he took a good picture.
As he left the bathroom he casually said, “when I grow up maybe I’ll be an editor.” Here’s the shot he took:
The Big Boy Update: My son got in trouble tonight before bed. Then he compounded the trouble with backtalk and defiance. My husband had had enough when he threatened to leave the family, opening the back door to go outside in the near freezing temperature so my husband went out with him, telling him he could sleep on the couch on the porch overnight. My son cried and complained but he was locked out (for all of two minutes). When my husband opened the door to talk to him I heard my son, finally relenting, say, “can I at least have a blanket?”
The Tiny Girl Conversation: My daughter came home today and calmly asked if she could talk to dad in the bedroom. They were in there for quite some time, quietly talking. I don’t know what they talked about but apparently I’ll find out soon enough. Secret planning, I wonder what it’s all about.
Nine Years: Today was my nine year anniversary with my husband. We had a day pretty much like we normally do. We don’t swap gifts or cards. I like being married to him every day. I called as I was coming home from dog training class after dinner tonight and asked if there was anything left to eat (I think they were eating leftovers). He told me there wasn’t anything left, then he said, “I didn’t leave you any dinner, that’s your anniversary present.” It was so him and so funny I couldn’t help but laugh. And completely okay by me—I’d find something to eat once I got home and the children were in bed. He’s a good guy, hell, he puts up with me, maybe he’s a saint.
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Cap and Map
Today my son had something called the, “cap and map” baseline for his upcoming neural feedback sessions. He had electrodes put on his earlobes first for reference points. Then he had a cap with electrodes in specific spots put on his head. There was a rainbow ribbon cable coming out of the cap that Dr. Dan connected to a calibration machine.
He put the machine in my son’s lap and told him to help him as he went through each of the sensors, making sure each got down to 3.0 or lower in impedance. He put a needle thing into each of the caps holes. I say “needle thing” because it was a syringe, but it was a blunt one, only responsible for injecting conductive gel into the hole. But he had to wiggle the blunt end of the syringe around on my son’s scalp a bit and that was somewhat uncomfortable.
But my son helped and he only flinched a few times. Then he got to sit in the large, brown, reclining chair and start the baseline test. The test wasn’t too terribly exciting. He first got to look at his brain waves, which was mostly a lot of small wiggly lines on the screen. Then he had to sit still for ninety seconds with his eyes open. Then ninety seconds with his eyes closed. Dr. Dan only needed fifteen seconds of clean reading during this time, but you need longer when you have a wiggly child.
Next my son read for the next data reading. Then there was a math sheet while more data was collected. Then he had the eyes open and eyes closed readings again. And then the cap came off and he was done.
Dr. Dan said he could see some of the things that had shown up in the evaluation he’d had from the baseline. And that’s saying a lot because it was just little variations in squiggles on the screen to me. He was trained by one of the pioneers in the field who told him you have to be able to understand the raw data.
As we were getting ready to go Dr. Dan told my son he worked with chidden and adults for all sorts of things and he couldn’t promise, but one of his students had gotten better at Fortnite after working with him. My son wanted to know how soon he could come back.
The Big Boy Update: My son found a “300 Funniest Fortnite Fails” video on YouTube that’s a compilation of Fortnite clips. He and his father are in the living room as I write this, both laughing out loud as each clip goes past, saying things like, “woah,” “oh my gosh" and “that hurt”.
The Tiny Girl Sleepy Update: My daughter was on the couch tonight, shortly before bed. Apparently she was dozing off because when my husband came over to wake her to brush her teeth she said, “can we have just one more page?” He asked her if she was dreaming and she said, “I was dreaming you were reading a beautiful book."
He put the machine in my son’s lap and told him to help him as he went through each of the sensors, making sure each got down to 3.0 or lower in impedance. He put a needle thing into each of the caps holes. I say “needle thing” because it was a syringe, but it was a blunt one, only responsible for injecting conductive gel into the hole. But he had to wiggle the blunt end of the syringe around on my son’s scalp a bit and that was somewhat uncomfortable.
But my son helped and he only flinched a few times. Then he got to sit in the large, brown, reclining chair and start the baseline test. The test wasn’t too terribly exciting. He first got to look at his brain waves, which was mostly a lot of small wiggly lines on the screen. Then he had to sit still for ninety seconds with his eyes open. Then ninety seconds with his eyes closed. Dr. Dan only needed fifteen seconds of clean reading during this time, but you need longer when you have a wiggly child.
Next my son read for the next data reading. Then there was a math sheet while more data was collected. Then he had the eyes open and eyes closed readings again. And then the cap came off and he was done.
Dr. Dan said he could see some of the things that had shown up in the evaluation he’d had from the baseline. And that’s saying a lot because it was just little variations in squiggles on the screen to me. He was trained by one of the pioneers in the field who told him you have to be able to understand the raw data.
As we were getting ready to go Dr. Dan told my son he worked with chidden and adults for all sorts of things and he couldn’t promise, but one of his students had gotten better at Fortnite after working with him. My son wanted to know how soon he could come back.
The Big Boy Update: My son found a “300 Funniest Fortnite Fails” video on YouTube that’s a compilation of Fortnite clips. He and his father are in the living room as I write this, both laughing out loud as each clip goes past, saying things like, “woah,” “oh my gosh" and “that hurt”.
The Tiny Girl Sleepy Update: My daughter was on the couch tonight, shortly before bed. Apparently she was dozing off because when my husband came over to wake her to brush her teeth she said, “can we have just one more page?” He asked her if she was dreaming and she said, “I was dreaming you were reading a beautiful book."
Monday, December 3, 2018
Christmas Jammies
I don’t call them, “jammies” but for the purposes of this post I will. A few years ago there was a video of a family in their, “Christmas Jammies”. It was apparently very cute and funny and went viral. The family was from the town we live in. I never saw the video until about a month ago and people were right, it was both cute and funny.
I had been browsing my China connection for stocking things and was getting inundated with Christmas things, including pajamas. So I got some for our family. They came in and I saved them for the first day of the month as my children’s Advent calendar item.
Last night, with a very sleepy daughter and a husband who didn’t want to try on his “jammies” at first, we did manage to get a picture or two of us taken by my nephew, Kyle, who was still in town for one more night before heading back to college after the wedding weekend.
I like my Christmas pajamas. I think the rest of the family might even like theirs too. They’re red, white and black with a white moose on the front of the chest. My husband wasn’t sure at all about them but he looks pretty darned good in a moose sleeping shirt.
The Big Boy Update: My son wanted me to come upstairs after dinner to see a surprise. It was this:
“See," he told me, “that’s Santa in the middle. Those are his super hero helpers on his sides.” Then he told me what each superhero was named and what their super power was. I wasn’t able to type that fast so I missed most of it. The ones with the extra heads were my favorite. Keeping Santa and Christmas safe, thanks to my son.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was singing a familiar song in the car, only the lyrics weren’t quite the way I remembered them I thought as I heard her say, “our country, rid of thee"
I had been browsing my China connection for stocking things and was getting inundated with Christmas things, including pajamas. So I got some for our family. They came in and I saved them for the first day of the month as my children’s Advent calendar item.
Last night, with a very sleepy daughter and a husband who didn’t want to try on his “jammies” at first, we did manage to get a picture or two of us taken by my nephew, Kyle, who was still in town for one more night before heading back to college after the wedding weekend.
I like my Christmas pajamas. I think the rest of the family might even like theirs too. They’re red, white and black with a white moose on the front of the chest. My husband wasn’t sure at all about them but he looks pretty darned good in a moose sleeping shirt.
The Big Boy Update: My son wanted me to come upstairs after dinner to see a surprise. It was this:
“See," he told me, “that’s Santa in the middle. Those are his super hero helpers on his sides.” Then he told me what each superhero was named and what their super power was. I wasn’t able to type that fast so I missed most of it. The ones with the extra heads were my favorite. Keeping Santa and Christmas safe, thanks to my son.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was singing a familiar song in the car, only the lyrics weren’t quite the way I remembered them I thought as I heard her say, “our country, rid of thee"
Sunday, December 2, 2018
You Look Like a Witch
Last night after the wedding was over and I was home I got a headache for some reason. The thing that helps me more than anything with headaches is to get in a very hot tub and submerge my head all the way in the water so I can just breathe out of my nose. This seems to change the pressure in my head or does something else physiologically and the headache abates. Or, and this could equally be the reason, I relax and the headache goes away simply on that merit alone.
Regardless the reason, I knew I was going to bed as soon as I got out of the tub. And that meant going to bed with wet hair. And that meant sleeping on a towel on the pillow because I don’t like a wet pillow.
It also meant another thing—my hair was going to be curly, frizzy and crazy looking in the morning. Not to worry, I would wash it and look presentable for the after wedding brunch at nine. But there wasn’t the time with the children and seven other things happening so I had to go with crazy hair.
I ran my fingers through it and it bushed out some and I told my husband I thought it looked like eighties permed hair but he told me it looked fine. I suppose it did, but it was different for me, unlike the more controlled version of my hair I usually present to the public.
No one said anything at the brunch (which was lovely) except for my mother-in-law, who told me, “you look like a witch.” That’s exactly what it looked like, I told her. She’d nailed it and made me laugh in the process. We said next year maybe I could be a witch for Halloween. I already had the hair part of the costume figured out.
The Big Boy Update: This morning at lunch my son came in, saying, “Merry Christmas”. Mostly he was playing with the word, “marry” because Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian had gotten married the evening before. He went from, “Happy Marry” to “Merry Christmas” and then said, “I don’t want to marry Christmas, I’m only eight!"
The Tiny Girl Update: My daughter fell asleep at six o’clock this evening on the couch. She also napped for a while after brunch. It’s unlike her so I checked her temperature but she doesn’t say she feels bad and she’s not febrile. Maybe it was from the day’s fun with all her relatives in town.
Regardless the reason, I knew I was going to bed as soon as I got out of the tub. And that meant going to bed with wet hair. And that meant sleeping on a towel on the pillow because I don’t like a wet pillow.
It also meant another thing—my hair was going to be curly, frizzy and crazy looking in the morning. Not to worry, I would wash it and look presentable for the after wedding brunch at nine. But there wasn’t the time with the children and seven other things happening so I had to go with crazy hair.
I ran my fingers through it and it bushed out some and I told my husband I thought it looked like eighties permed hair but he told me it looked fine. I suppose it did, but it was different for me, unlike the more controlled version of my hair I usually present to the public.
No one said anything at the brunch (which was lovely) except for my mother-in-law, who told me, “you look like a witch.” That’s exactly what it looked like, I told her. She’d nailed it and made me laugh in the process. We said next year maybe I could be a witch for Halloween. I already had the hair part of the costume figured out.
The Big Boy Update: This morning at lunch my son came in, saying, “Merry Christmas”. Mostly he was playing with the word, “marry” because Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian had gotten married the evening before. He went from, “Happy Marry” to “Merry Christmas” and then said, “I don’t want to marry Christmas, I’m only eight!"
The Tiny Girl Update: My daughter fell asleep at six o’clock this evening on the couch. She also napped for a while after brunch. It’s unlike her so I checked her temperature but she doesn’t say she feels bad and she’s not febrile. Maybe it was from the day’s fun with all her relatives in town.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
On Applying Eyeshadow
Today was my brother-in-law’s wedding. Now I have two brother-in-laws. They’re married. Uncle Bob is still our Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian is also still our Uncle Brian, but now he’s officially Uncle Brian. I can’t be happier for both of them.
It was one of those wedding days that gets away from you. We, those of us who weren’t getting married, had time in the morning to get things done, or to relax, or perhaps a bit of both. And we did get some of both done. We had family staying with us and had time to catch up with them and their juvenile dog, Daisy, who my dog had the best time playing with.
My children were excited about the wedding attire they had for the wedding. When it got time to get ready my son put on his navy sports coat, white shirt, navy bow tie with rainbow polka dots and looked so good we couldn’t stop telling him how sharp he looked.
My daughter had a navy dress with crinoline and a navy lace top. She wore white tights and red felt shoes. She looked darling. All the navy color was because the grooms had navy tuxedos for their attire and I couldn’t help but jump in on the color theme.
I was running late with all the getting ready of everything else and didn’t have time to do my hair, which is an endeavor in and of itself because it’s long and takes time. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t because it started raining and it would have gone frizzy no matter how assiduously I’d dried it—so I put it up. What I had decided to do, because it was a formal occasion, was to put on makeup.
Some people do this daily. I do this every few years. I have a bag in the closet with the makeup I got for my wedding nine years ago. I pulled it out and tried to remember what each thing was for. Foundation, check. That pink liquid Nana said I should get to put on my cheekbones to make me look happier, done. Lipstick? My husband said don’t wear any because he didn’t think I needed it. I had a mild-ish color he said was okay so I went with it. Mascara? No way, I touch my eyes too much. Eye liner I don’t know how to put on without making a mess. Maybe eye shadow?
I was looking in the bag for the two colors of eye shadow and the applicator brush, trying to remember if I put the dark color closer to my nose and the lighter color towards the sides of my face or if it was the other way around. I said to myself mostly out loud, "I don’t remember where to put on the eye shadow.” My husband said, “I think you put it on your eyelids.” Isn’t he the best, my husband? Always ready to help.
On the way in the car we talked to the children about the ceremony, what an officiant was and the flow of the wedding since this was the first wedding they were involved in. They were bringing rings down the aisle and presenting them to the grooms. We had a book, that was actually a secret box. When Scott, the officiant, asked who was presenting the rings, the children were to say, “we are!” (When they did the audience laughed at their little excited voices.) Then they were to walk down the aisle, holding the box between them. Bob and Brian would take their rings out and then the children would come back to their seats with the box.
And they did just that. My daughter, who is very good at following instructions, told them when they took their rings, “we have to take the box back” which also got another chuckle from the audience. I didn’t get choked up until the very end of the reading they had asked me to do, which was a relief, I didn’t want to mess up my part of the ceremony by not being able to say the reading clearly.
Afterwards we had our sitter take the children to dinner and then she took them to a Hanukkah party her family was going to. That meant the rest of us as adults could enjoy the dinner and some uninterrupted adult conversation. It was delicious food, good company, happy wedding. A Great day.
The Big Boy Update: My son liked his dress attire so much he wanted to know if he could keep it on for the rest of the night after leaving the wedding. He doesn’t like to be told he’s too cute or handsome, but tonight was an exception, he was positively pleased with all the compliments he got on how he looked.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter fell asleep in the car before we got to the wedding. She wasn’t in a good mood and I was afraid she wasn’t going to be able to do her part in the wedding, delivering the rings. Some ginger ale and a braille version of the program for her to read and she perked up. She listened to the whole ceremony with her eyes closed. She knew it was an important day for Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian.
It was one of those wedding days that gets away from you. We, those of us who weren’t getting married, had time in the morning to get things done, or to relax, or perhaps a bit of both. And we did get some of both done. We had family staying with us and had time to catch up with them and their juvenile dog, Daisy, who my dog had the best time playing with.
My children were excited about the wedding attire they had for the wedding. When it got time to get ready my son put on his navy sports coat, white shirt, navy bow tie with rainbow polka dots and looked so good we couldn’t stop telling him how sharp he looked.
My daughter had a navy dress with crinoline and a navy lace top. She wore white tights and red felt shoes. She looked darling. All the navy color was because the grooms had navy tuxedos for their attire and I couldn’t help but jump in on the color theme.
I was running late with all the getting ready of everything else and didn’t have time to do my hair, which is an endeavor in and of itself because it’s long and takes time. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t because it started raining and it would have gone frizzy no matter how assiduously I’d dried it—so I put it up. What I had decided to do, because it was a formal occasion, was to put on makeup.
Some people do this daily. I do this every few years. I have a bag in the closet with the makeup I got for my wedding nine years ago. I pulled it out and tried to remember what each thing was for. Foundation, check. That pink liquid Nana said I should get to put on my cheekbones to make me look happier, done. Lipstick? My husband said don’t wear any because he didn’t think I needed it. I had a mild-ish color he said was okay so I went with it. Mascara? No way, I touch my eyes too much. Eye liner I don’t know how to put on without making a mess. Maybe eye shadow?
I was looking in the bag for the two colors of eye shadow and the applicator brush, trying to remember if I put the dark color closer to my nose and the lighter color towards the sides of my face or if it was the other way around. I said to myself mostly out loud, "I don’t remember where to put on the eye shadow.” My husband said, “I think you put it on your eyelids.” Isn’t he the best, my husband? Always ready to help.
On the way in the car we talked to the children about the ceremony, what an officiant was and the flow of the wedding since this was the first wedding they were involved in. They were bringing rings down the aisle and presenting them to the grooms. We had a book, that was actually a secret box. When Scott, the officiant, asked who was presenting the rings, the children were to say, “we are!” (When they did the audience laughed at their little excited voices.) Then they were to walk down the aisle, holding the box between them. Bob and Brian would take their rings out and then the children would come back to their seats with the box.
And they did just that. My daughter, who is very good at following instructions, told them when they took their rings, “we have to take the box back” which also got another chuckle from the audience. I didn’t get choked up until the very end of the reading they had asked me to do, which was a relief, I didn’t want to mess up my part of the ceremony by not being able to say the reading clearly.
Afterwards we had our sitter take the children to dinner and then she took them to a Hanukkah party her family was going to. That meant the rest of us as adults could enjoy the dinner and some uninterrupted adult conversation. It was delicious food, good company, happy wedding. A Great day.
The Big Boy Update: My son liked his dress attire so much he wanted to know if he could keep it on for the rest of the night after leaving the wedding. He doesn’t like to be told he’s too cute or handsome, but tonight was an exception, he was positively pleased with all the compliments he got on how he looked.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter fell asleep in the car before we got to the wedding. She wasn’t in a good mood and I was afraid she wasn’t going to be able to do her part in the wedding, delivering the rings. Some ginger ale and a braille version of the program for her to read and she perked up. She listened to the whole ceremony with her eyes closed. She knew it was an important day for Uncle Bob and Uncle Brian.
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