"It Happened" Story 3

It happened. Kindred can say "Now I know my ABC's" and mean it. He sings the whole alphabet clearly, with of course the exceptions of "lmnop" and "wx". He even imitates an old version of the song that I used to sing when I changed his diaper (months and months ago) where I would stick a word instead of a letter into the series. (Ex: ABCDEFgorilla, HIJKLMNOpeanuts, etc.) So sometimes he will sing, ABCDEFMama! HIJKLMNOAyiyas! Dada! QRGrandma! Then he grins, like he's the cleverest guy around.




He sings a lot now, which is wonderful to hear. His repertoire includes "Tinkle tinkle Yittle Tar", "The Itsy Bitsy Pider", "Baa Baa B-yack Sheep", "Mary had a Yittle Yamb", and his personal favorite, "The Tofu Song" which he made up himself (out of the clear blue) but often insists that we sing. "Dada, sing a tofu song! Towwww-fuuuu, towwww-fuuuu....." Many times I will come into his room after a nap to find him starting at the ceiling, singing or reciting one of these tunes.

He also knows many of his colors, and many of his shapes. It's been fascinating to watch him learn all this stuff. We would work and work to teach him things like shapes (not so he become a genius but just so he could do his shapes puzzles and stuff) and he wouldn't get it for the longest time and I would think, Oh, he's gonna struggle to get this, and then whammo. One day he just knows it. His vocabulary has exploded, to the point where I am surprised when he doesn't understand and respond to something I'm saying or asking.

The one thing he can't get yet is the concept of pointing. If he's looking for something, we can sit and point to it, and even if it's right next to him he can't figure out where to look. It's kind of amusing sometimes.

"It Happened" Story 2

It happened. Elias sits well on his own now. He's not completely fall-proof, but he's much better. Except of course when he gets mad. He throws himself backward in total anguish that someone looked or walked away from him, then wham on the floor goes his head. Hopefully he'll learn to make adjustments. (Maybe he'll learn to stop being so freakin' over dramatic. Doubtful.) He also can occupy himself on his own for a few minutes without any interaction. I try to take advantage of every moment he gives me while he hangs with his blocks or his chewy toys.

"It Happened" Story 1

It happened. Kindred's first trip to the Emergency Room. It was last night when he and I packed up his bag with a library of books, dinner, and lamby (and a chooch, if things got ugly) and climbed gingerly into the car to see the doctor. Once again, he had a mysterious injury to his left hand.


He had cried a weird cry before I took him for a nap after I'd taken his hand and brought him inside to sleep. I thought he was being really dramatic in not wanting to go to bed, but I didn't allow his tears to stop me from putting him down for his nap. He quieted down, and was moaning softly an hour later. Then quiet again. I went in to get him around 4pm and he was huddled on his pillow, still crying, not moving to get up. He moaned, "Jidjid's haaand hurts!" I moved him onto the couch to get a better understanding of the situation, and he wailed. Oh the tears. He was crying loudly and begging, "Mama, kiiiisss it!" as though a simple kiss from me would make his pain disappear. I almost cried myself at that point and just held him a while before I felt around on his arm to see what had happened. Did he sleep on it funny? Was it his hand? His arm? His shoulder? I eventually decided somehow his wrist was causing him the most pain, and I wondered if, once again, I had managed to dislocate or twist something when I took his hand and he resisted when going for his nap. Instead of rushing to the hospital, I tried to keep a cool head. I gave him some lunch, and some Tylenol. I encouraged him to play, to ride his bike outside. Maybe, like last time, he could just work it out. He was cooperative with all of these distractions, but still refused to move the hand that he held in a small fist planted alongside his hip. He rode the bike with one hand. He had to have help to eat his sandwich because he wouldn't move his hand.

Brooke was here, thank goodness, because Michael was not. We tried to figure out if he was just committed to playing this injury up or if he really was hurt. When, after nearly 2 hours, he was still wincing and crying when I moved his wrist, I decided he needed to be checked out.

When we arrived, the triage nurse examined him while he wailed. Then we went into the waiting room and he demanded his burrito. He wailed through x-rays. Then in the waiting room he was the evening entertainment for everyone present. It actually was kinda fun.

Two hours had passed since we'd gotten to the ER. Kindred climbed up into a chair and picked up lamby to show someone...with his bad hand. Then he waved lamby around...still with the bad hand. Eventually it became very apparent that he was recovered. Both hands engaged in all play and manual labor. When we got called back to the exam area just a few minutes later, I immediately told the doctor he was fine and had full range of motion. The doctor examined Kindred for a few seconds, agreed, and sent us on our way. We were home by 10pm.

This is his bracelet.

Why I Shouldn't Have Nice Things

I ruined the "nice rug" today.

See, Kindred wanted pancakes. Elias woke up and needed to be changed, but Kindred was demanding, "Pancakes! Pancakes with syrpa, pancakes!" So I put Elias in his carseat until I mixed up and started cooking the pancakes for the impatient Kindred. I had strapped Elias in, but only with the arm straps because he had a sleeping gown on and the leg straps wouldn't go around it. I set him facing Kindred, who had already crawled up in his high chair and was calling out for his tray. As I was cooking the pancakes, the pan (the largest skillet I have) got too hot, so I was waving it around in between rounds to try to cool it off a little. While doing this, I turned and saw the carseat tipped forward. "Crazy escapee kid," I thought, and walked over, pan in hand, to kick it straight again. But when I saw Elias, his face was red and he was sputtering because he was being strangled by the straps and plastic attachment. I immediately put the pan down on the floor and rescued him, knowing that I was probably going to wreck the rug.

Elias lived (and is totally fine). The nice rug, or at least a 9" diameter circle of it, did not. It is melted and hard. And I, although I appreciate the survival of my son, am a little depressed and vowing to never again touch or go near anything worth more than $30. (I do realize this means I can't use the refrigerator or the television and can't even think about driving the car.)

I suck, I suck.

Keep a straight face

We had a great morning even though it included a trip to the doctor to make sure Kindred didn't have an ear infection (he doesn't). When we were on our way home, Kindred and Elias both slept in the car. Elias miraculously kept sleeping after we came in the house, but Kindred just sat in his room and read books quietly. When Elias woke up, all 3 of us hung out on my bed. Kindred, who was near perfect all morning, was feeling a little feisty. He head butted and pushed Elias, and finally laid next to him and bit him on the side! Elias wailed and I expressed my anger with Kindred while trying to comfort Elias. I left Kindred in the bed without any animals or books while I tended and nursed Elias. When I came back into the room, I sat down and looked sternly into Kindred eyes. He started before I opened my mouth: "Go see Ayiyas. Say sowwy. No pushing him backwards." I said, "And what else did you do to Elias?" He replied solemnly, "Jidj eat Ayiyas."

At this point I'm fighting to remain stern. "You ate Elias?"

"Yeah. Say sowwy."

I mentally decide to go with it. I'm still dying inside and can hardly get my words out. "No more eating Elias. No eating people."

"Yeah."

Then he marched into the living room without me, found Elias, and said "Sowwy Ayiyas."

That morning story as promised

For the first time in what feels like weeks, I'm at the computer and both boys are asleep. I'm in shock. We'll see how long it lasts.

So I was going to tell the story of the morning last week. It isn't as interesting as I've now set it up to be, but I will share anyway.

Elias now has 2 teeth, one top and one bottom. They are opposites from each other, so he's going to have a pretty silly grin for a minute. But this is making him excessively cranky. He's also developed this habit of screaming. I've talked about him screaming before. This is even worse than ever. (I will post a video soon.) When he gets in this screaming shrieking mode, I find myself losing my mind. His voice activates the small man who lives in my skull wielding a tiny, sharp pick axe, who, when summoned, chips away at my brain and my sanity little by little, laughing maniacally.

The morning was rough. The weather has been manic, so we had been stuck in the house for a few days. When it got to the point that I started to tear apart the office to find the Birth Center's return policy to see if we were still within the time limit to send Elias back, I decided two things: One, it was time to go for a walk. Snow, ice, slush, no matter. I needed apples and we could go to the produce stand and get them, and two, I was certain the return policy would have expired after 30 days. So I tossed a shrieking Elias into his snowsuit and plopped him into the backpack (a baby carrier, not my knapsack), hauled the stroller outside for Kindred to climb into and off we went.

Before you get the idea that we streaked off into the sunset, let me set the backdrop. You see, a few days earlier we got crapped on with the most miserable weather. We had icy rain, then snow, then hail, then more icy rain. Then it all froze. Ick ick ick. This particular morning it was starting to warm up. Because the weight of the snow was unbearable, many folks simply had shoveled their sidewalks according to the width of their shovel. This is fine for feet, but not so good for strollers. So Kindred bumped along good naturedly while I sort of wheelied us down the narrow path, straddling it often with both wheels up on the ice on either side. When I got stuck on a big ice chunk, I would made a big deal of pushing and shoving and vocalizing until we got moving again, mostly for Kindred's entertainment. At one point, a woman walking behind me while I was making a scene asked, genuinely concerned, if I needed some help. I felt a little stupid when I explained I was just being overdramatic for fun. She mumbled an quiet "Oh. Okay." before she moved past us.

When we got to the produce stand a mere 2.5 blocks away, Elias dropped his forehead onto the frame of the backpack and zonked out. Apples and cucumbers in hand, I figured that it made more sense to allow Elias to sleep in the backpack than try to scurry home. So Kindred and I decided to visit the park on the next block and slide and swing. This was great fun for Kindred and I, because it was the first time he's been strong and confident enough to climb up the stairs to the slide and push off without being encouraged or caught at the bottom. I was quite proud of him.

When it got close to Kindred's lunch and nap time, we headed back. The problem was that the day had gotten warmer. So the stuff on the ground that had been slippery and hard when we left the house had now turned into a softer sort of slush. But not manageable slush. It was more like what the inside of a juicy apple looks like when it goes a few days without being eaten. Softer, gritty, mealy, no longer tasty, difficult to peel. The stroller wheels now sunk into and pushed this mess around. Travel was nearly impossible. We got completely stuck at one point on the shoveled sidewalk in front of a church. Can you picture it? Me wrestling with a stroller that won't go forward or backward with a toddler hanging on for dear life and an infant strapped onto my back in such a contortion that I'm sure people wondered if he was breathing. It was ridiculous.

I ended up pulling the stroller instead of pushing for a while, and even took Kindred out at one point and made him walk next to me so we could move on out of peril. We eventually made it home, in one piece.

Elias is awake now, and letting the whole neighborhood know, so I need to end the tale here.

I wish I had more time. I have so much more to say.

Hooray!

Congratulations to Chrissy and Jen for the arrival of nearly 8lb Kaleb Griffin today!

No worries

I probably won't stop blogging, y'all.

See, I'm finding time for it even now. Elias is wiggling non-stop on my lap sharing blood-curdling outbursts of joy and frustration every 3 minutes or so while a pukey and feverish Kindred sleeps fitfully on my bed after some Tylenol-in-the-butt (Recommended from the Ped. I didn't know they made that.) and here I am, the hero blogger!

No really, you all are my adult interaction. I don't think I could stop. I just might get a little boring and rushed, which feels like a reason to think about stopping. But I won't. Breathe easy. I remain meeshemama.

(Thanks for all the good words. See you mid-next-crisis.)

A Breakthrough. Literally

Someone has been feeling a little unhappy lately. And yesterday Michael discovered the reason for the unhappiness. A tooth. A little sign of the inevitable growth of my child. Bottom front right. Hooked him up with some painkiller and he was more content.

Really, could anyone be cuter? Don't ya just want to snuggle him all day and night?

So, seasoned moms out there, help me regain my sanity. Tell me truly and honestly if I can hope or expect to not have "naptime" from 10:30am to 5:00pm. (Elias - 10:30am - 12noon, Kin- 1 - 4pm, Elias - 3:30- 5pm) If I can't, that's good to know. If I can, for Pete's sake tell me how!!

So in light of the fact that I can't seem to sneak 15 minutes during the day to myself, I may be forced to put the ol' blog on hiatus. I know I risk losing readership, but I don't know how else to get anything done and get more than 6 hours of sleep a night. We'll see.

I'm actually using my 15 minutes to share the story of the morning with you all (at the sacrifice of the kitchen and the last 2 loads of laundry).

[Oh @#$%. (Oh the things I wish to insert here.) I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. I guess my typing has woken up said snuggly boy (AKA pain in my butt) after a 35 minutes snooze. Please go back to sleep. Please please. *holds breath and crosses fingers for 5 minutes* Enter husband. This post delayed. Story of the morning to come later, I suppose.]

Fun Times with the K-man

Reading "The Potty Book for Boys" and chillin with Catherine (we love her)

Snuggling with Sooz-Anna (we love her too)

Making funny faces with Uncle David (Anna loves him) (and so do we)

Updates and Ironies

Irony: I woke up with some sort of weird flu symptoms. (Could we ever get better, puh-lease?) I got a letter today telling me my health insurance was going to get cut off this week.

Irony: I'm posting pictures of the last big snow day we had. Today it is nearly 60 outside. (Of course I can't figure out how to dress my kids to go outside since I'm feeling a little shivery.)


I'm really tired and the kids have both just gone to sleep, so I'm going to get a nap. (Or make some phone calls or eat some lunch or clean out my livingroom or put away dishes or fill out housing applications or fix Kindred's rocking chair or do some laundry or have a good cry.)

Speaking of good cry, I was looking at the package of paperwork that Kindred's teacher sent with him about the month's activities for the toddlers. I still weep every time I look at that packet. It's amazing. Every day of the month has 3 different activities handwritten on it. Things like: marble painting, music/dance, garden "work", bird puppets, hopscotch, sky watch- look for spring, worm dig, poems, paint rocks, plant peas, sorting colors, prune branches, make a nest, etc. She also has listed the stages of the moon for the month, and has named different kinds of moons: sap moon, crow moon, awakening moon, moon of the sore eyes, trout moon.... I don't even know what these are! She has little quotes cut out and pasted on the top, but they aren't little kiddie poems: "A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes" and "Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. ~Doug Larson" And this is only the first page! The second page is about buds and blooms and pruning trees. She writes on the side: We are learning about pruning branches to help the trees and shrubs. We are learning not to "break" branches. There's a fact page about March, an almanac page, a poetry page, and little snippets of stuff all in between.

And I read through it and cry. I know that seems strange. But knowing that there is this woman who cares about my child so much that she want to take time to teach him all these things blows my mind. He's two. She said that they don't always get to the activities as planned, but she still plans them. She thinks about them. She loves these children. I feel so blessed.

Oh, and Kindred feels pretty blessed too, I think. Last Thursday when I dropped him off, there was no weeping and wailing. Only a frown. Then a bite into his PB&J sandwich. I grinned subtly at the teachers and we all knew there'd been a break though. Finally.

On to the snow pictures:

I got to take Kindred out this time. We had great fun.

He would get on his little bike and I would push him around the yard, then he would pitch himself out of his seat as I was making a turn and throw himself into the snow. Totally hilarious. We made a little snowman, which he took great joy in crushing, and we slid down the slide and played with Pippin.
When the icy rain started, Kindred requested to go inside. We'd been out for nearly an hour.

Then we had a hot chocolate treat.

**Author's note: Elias has just woken up. He's been asleep for exactly 27 minutes. This is the 2nd nap attempt today. So much for that list of tasks. I'm so tired. Why won't he sleep? Grandparents, friends, relatives from afar, you have an open invitation to come and help me coordinate my life--which mostly means occupy my kids while I sleep a minute and unbury from under the mess. You would love that, right?

The highlights

My birthday came and went without much time for me to sit and ponder it. Thanks to everyone for the well wishes. The highlights of the day: (including sending a whiny Kindred to school for the afternoon) I got a bouquet of lovely flowers from my family, a yodeling e-card from a friend, a great comment on my my*space page from the oh-so-popular Johnny Showcase, and a birthday letter from Michael.

I also got this hilarious email from a friend. It had nothing to do with my birthday, but it was so delightful for me that I would like to share it with you all. I know it was probably circulated a few years back, and the origin it claims is false, but man it's funny.

~~~~~~~

Here is the Washingt*n P*st's M*nsa Invitational which asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
The winners are:

1. Cashtration: (n.) The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

2. Ignoranus: (n.) A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

3. Intaxication: (n.) Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

4. Reintarnation: (n.) Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

5. Bozone: (n.) The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

6. Foreploy: (n.) Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

7. Giraffiti: (n.) Vandalism spray-painted very, very high

8. Sarchasm: (n.)The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

9. Inoculatte: (v.) To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

10. Hipatitis: (n.) Terminal coolness.

11. Osteopornosis: (n.) A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

12. Karmageddon: (n.) It's when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, and then the Earth explodes and it's a serious bummer.

13. Decafalon: (n.) The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you

14. Glibido: (n.) All talk and no action.

15. Dopeler effect: (n.) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

16. Arachnoleptic fit: (n.) The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

17. Beelzebug: (n.) Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

18. Caterpallor: (n.) The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.


The W*shington P*st has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.
And the winners are:

1. coffee: (n.) the person upon whom one coughs.

2. flabbergasted: (adj.) appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.

3. abdicate: (v.) to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. esplanade: (v.) to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. willy-nilly: (adj.) impotent.

6. negligent: (adj.) absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.

7. lymph: (v.) to walk with a lisp.

8. gargoyle: (n.) olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. flatulence: (n.) emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.

10. balderdash: (n.) a rapidly receding hairline.

11. testicle: (n.) a humorous question on an exam.

12. rectitude: (n.) the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

13. pokemon: (n.) a Rastafarian proctologist.

14. oyster: (n.) a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

15. Frisbeetarianism: (n.) the belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

16. circumvent: (n.) an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.

manta rays

Sometimes when I'm stressed and Michael lets me use his computer, I look for videos of manta rays to watch. Isn't that weird? They are soothing to me. Someday I will write maybe about my trip to the Bahamas a few years ago where I encountered the sea in a new way and decided its depths were as intricate and unattainable as the stretches of the universe. Anyway...

So a friend recently linked to one of the following videos and I found the other. I just thought I'd share this one and this one.



today may or may not be my birthday.

Oooh, I AM domestic!

I approached the day with renewed wakefulness. Elias has started sleeping through the night without a 3am feeding; he wakes and moans for 10 minutes around 4am, but he doesn't eat until 6am. So I am getting a little more of my sleep. (Whew.) When Kindred woke, he wanted "Choo choo cake" for breakfast. I insisted he instead have cereal but that we would make a choo choo cake after he was finished. I figured we had enough ingredients for a cake. Why not?

As Kindred was eating his cereal with his hands, spoon abandoned, I knew I had to be creative. This was perhaps the first time I had ever attempted to make a cake from scratch on my own. I know I know. Pathetic. I don't really ever cook, let alone bake something. But I found a recipe for "Peanut Butter Cake" in my cookbook, threw caution to the wind and set us up to mix together the choo choo cake of his dreams. (OK, not really. His birthday cake was going to surpass anything I could come up with, considering I was just going to draw a train on this one with leftover squeeze icing.) But first I needed to call a friend to make sure I knew what they meant when they said to cream the sugar and butter together.

Flour, sugar, peanut butter galore. I mixed and Kindred helped and we held our breath and greased the pans.

And here is the result. A tasty treat! I did it! I AM domestic!

Elias cheered from his corner.

Then Kindred offered to help with the dishes.

Stories about Noodles

Michael can be a vigorous eater. I like to think that is because he really enjoys my cooking. But he has a knack for taking bites that are on the large side, especially when it's pasta. Sometimes I wonder how he manages to fit them in his mouth, and I often chide him about it. To be honest, it bothers me enough that I have to decide sometimes to not watch him while he's eating so that I don't get upset. But I never outright yell when I am appalled at his bite size. I will just say "Michael!" in my most nagging wife tone, and he knows what I'm getting at.

So last night we were eating. Pasta it was. Kindred was enjoying his little chopped up noodles and Michael was spinning himself a sizable forkful of angel hair. Then he opened his mouth wide for stuff it inside as I stifled a gasp. Kindred, who was watching Michael said, in his most observant voice, "That's too biiig, Dada!"

I practically stood and applauded.

____________________

Kindred likes to get the boxes of pasta out of the pantry and for some weird reason take them to his room. He doesn't usually open them, and will return them at my request. But it's an odd activity that seems to occupy his time. Today he took a box of thin spaghetti and was gone a long time. Then he brought me one piece of the spaghetti, held it out and said simply, "Fire."

Fire?

So I asked him to show me what he meant. He took my hand and led me to his room. Sticking out from one of his closed drawers was another piece of spaghetti. He pointed to it. "Fire. Hot. Moke." (He can't say words that start with "s", like smoke, smile, sky, smooth, etc.) I stared blankly for a minute, then I realized what he was doing.

Incense.

Sometime when we light a stick on incense, we prop it up in a plant or hold it dangling over the side of the dresser with something heavy sitting on the end to keep it there. (I agree. We should get burners.)

He had made incense, with noodles and his imagination.