UNO, at lunch: Mom, do you want to have a bite of these hairy spider legs?
DOS: No, try some of my gooey snake eye balls instead!
TRES, in her best menacing voice: How about some mac and cheese!
~RCH~
5 years ago
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
My favorite Christmas card
A hand-written note arrived today in a card from one of DH's former patients:
I guess, seein' as how your not coming back to [our old town], I'll send you a card to see if your still all right, & your family is doing good or whatever. Hope things are good there, still waiting for you & yours to come back, don't look like thats going to happen, so best of luck to you. Met up with the new doc, he's OK. But don't have much sense of humor. I'll work on that.
Joe.
We are doing good or whatever -- but man, I miss the people back there. That was a good town.
~RCH~
I guess, seein' as how your not coming back to [our old town], I'll send you a card to see if your still all right, & your family is doing good or whatever. Hope things are good there, still waiting for you & yours to come back, don't look like thats going to happen, so best of luck to you. Met up with the new doc, he's OK. But don't have much sense of humor. I'll work on that.
Joe.
We are doing good or whatever -- but man, I miss the people back there. That was a good town.
~RCH~
Thursday, December 17, 2009
And wassup which you?
I'm a terrible blogger lately. Sure, I'll pop in every now and then to share a snippet, but I go way too long between substantive posts. Life here keeps marching on and nobody knows about it; no history is being kept. It is time, my friends, to play catch-up!
Holes
Uno had been asking to have her ears pierced since last year, when she noticed that some of her kindergarten friends had earrings, and her pleas intensified this fall. DH and I thought she was a little young -- but had more indifference to the idea than actual objections. I would have felt comfortable putting her off until, say, her 8th birthday (a milestone year in Mormon culture) but one night in October DH impulsively promised earrings as a reward if she would follow through on a specific good behavior.
I tried to prepare her for the pain. I told her that when I had my ears done, at age 9, my ears were sore for a few days beyond the initial hole punching. I produced a dramatic reenactment of my sister's piercing experience: She entered the mall brave as a bear, confident she could pay the price of pain for beauty, but after they shot the gun through her first ear she clutched the other one, wailing and screaming and rubbing off the marker dot, and refused to continue. "You think you're tough," I told Uno, "but so did she and look how that turned out!" (Though for the record, my sister did end up with a matched set -- either the next day or maybe even later that afternoon, I can't remember.)
Uno continued to assure me she'd be fine, and after school on Friday, October 16th we hit the road to find the nearest Claire's. Dos, a mere 18 months younger than her sister, thinks she needs to tackle every milestone at the same time and so by the end of our drive she had me convinced to let her get earrings as well.
Dos is hardcore when it comes to pain, the proverbial steel magnolia to Uno's little purple pansy. She's never minded her vaccinations, and when she recently had to have a CBC she watched with a slight grin of morbid fascination as the needle went in to her arm and the dark thick blood slurped out into the vial. (Contrast that with the time Uno required a few stitches in her foot: Terrified and flailing wildly, she had to be strapped to a board and have five people hold her down -- yes, five people and an immobilizing board for the little girl with the big fight-or-flight response -- to get the job done.) I thought I knew which kid would be most likely to freak out, but apparently I prepared Uno very well. She steeled herself for the (thankfully simultaneous) punch and managed a triumphant smile when it was all over.
Dos doesn't have the talent for histrionics that her sister has, but she did cry some nervous silent tears when it was her turn. I told her she didn't have to do it, that she could come back later or not at all and it would be totally okay -- but she wouldn't let Uno one-up her.
I brought my camera to record the momentous occasion, but Claire's has a policy against taking pictures (legal reasons, bla bla). I did sneak this shot in, though. I'd love to show you an After photo with their glamorous pink daisy studs, but as I've mentioned before, the girls are incredibly reluctant models these days. Grrrr.
(Maybe if I strapped them to a board and had some photo assistants hold them down.... Let's ponder that thought for a moment.)
After both girls were done, Tres, who had been sitting patiently in a stroller the entire time, piped up: "My turn!" she said. The piercing lady looked at me and shrugged. "I can do hers if you want," she said, but I declined. We'll wait until she's old enough to know what she's asking for.
Holes II
It's not just tiny dots of ear cartilage that have gone missing from Uno recently: She's got fresh holes in her mouth as well. Her first tooth fell out on the evening of November 6th (luckily while I was on a hot date with DH, so I didn't have to deal with any of the gore).
She'd been wiggling it at me for weeks, tormenting me, making me squeal. I hate teeth. I mean, they're fine for smiling and chewing and articulating words and all that -- but they're not supposed to move on their own. I think loose teeth are super creepy, the knowledge of which imbues Uno with incredible power.
"Hey Mom," she said as I helped her stick the disembodied tooth in an envelope and place it under her pillow (way past her bedtime, but she just had to stay up until I got home so she could show me). "Wouldn't it be funny if you had to be the tooth fairy?"
I crinkled up my face. "Eeeeew, gross!" I said. "I would NEVER want that job!"
Which is true.
The real tooth fairy left her with a shiny gold $1 Sacajawea coin, which she proudly showed off to everyone at school the next Monday. But the fun hasn't ended there: She lost tooth #2 at the beginning of this month, and one or two more are loose (and wiggled at me regularly, mean old girl that she is). I figure that with three kids and 20 baby teeth each, I have years and years of free aversion therapy ahead of me.
Yay. :-P
Home Sweet Home
We still haven't sold our house out West. No nibbles. No nothing. Small towns are, by nature, slow markets (if tons of people wanted to live there, they'd be big towns!) so I'm not surprised, but it has been a frustrating experience. Maybe in the Spring. We'll see.
My sense of urgency about the house we're trying to sell lessened immensely on November 13th when we began hauling our stuff out of the ILs' house and into our new rental, though. :-)
We stumbled upon the house serendipitously: DH treated the owner, an elderly widow named Mrs. V, in the ER one night and discovered that she had recently moved to a long-term care center. He had gone to school with Mrs. V's power of attorney (a neighbor of hers in the old days, not related but she may as well have been childless Mrs. V's granddaughter, they're so close) so he called her up and asked if she had any plans for the house. She said she didn't yet; she wasn't emotionally ready to go through Mrs. V's things, to sort them or sell them -- Mrs. V won't be coming back from the nursing home, ever, but UGH, that step seems so final -- and she wasn't ready to put the house up for sale. DH asked if she'd consider renting it out. "Not to just anyone," she replied, "but I know you'd take good care of it." And so we came to an agreement!
It's such a blessing. The rental market in this town is not great unless you're a single kid looking for your first studio apartment. The few houses available are all old, dilapidated and/or mobile, and they all seem to be in sketchy neighborhoods. So to find something like this -- a solid house in a good neighborhood with a big back yard and enough space for our family -- is rare and amazing.
The house is a cute 2-bedroom, 1-bath place with big rooms and high ceilings. DH and I finally have some privacy (cramped quarters aside, none of the rooms at the ILs' had any doors) and the three girls get to bunk together dormitory style, which they really -- especially Tres -- seem to enjoy. Our landlord, DH's old school friend and Mrs V's power of attorney, left some of the bigger stuff in the house for us to use (we got rid of our "grad school chic" furniture when we moved out here), and more in the garage. She told us to feel free to make ourselves at home, hang pictures and decorate to our taste -- anything non-destructive and within reason. Our lease is open-ended; she'll help us out with a place of our own for as long as we need one, and meanwhile our rent money helps her pay for Mrs. V's long-term care. Symbiosis!
I love, love, love being the Lady of the House again. :-)
Ouch.
Every month the elementary school kids who haven't been written up for bad behavior get to participate in some kind of reward activity. Once they spent half a day at the bowling alley; I think another time they watched a movie. In November, they played a game of dodge ball -- teachers against students.
Yeah. That's a bright idea. S-M-R-T.
When I picked Dos up from school that day (Uno had stayed home, sick) she had tears in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong. "Mr. N, the art teacher, hit me in the head with a dodge ball THREE TIMES, Mom! I don't like him anymore." More tears....
Really? Adults pelting kindergartners with large rubber balls? This is supposed to be a reward?
*Sigh.*
SEESTER!
And brother-in-law! And adorable nephews! Look!
Aren't they the cutest ever?
The weekend before Thanksgiving, and just after we had settled into our new place, my sister and her family came to visit us from Atlanta. We had the best time! I felt bad that there weren't any sights to take them to, no touristy things to do; this area has great summer activities -- pretty National Forest hikes and whatnot -- but not so much during cold weather or with babies. That's okay, though, because what all of us needed most was just the time together. I know I loved it. I can't wait to host them again or drive down to their 'hood. :-)
Circus
When they were growing up, DH's aunt used to take her son, DH and SIL to the Shriners' circus every year on the day after Thanksgiving. Now that we're back in town and with kids of our own, she and DH's cousin wanted to restart that tradition and so they bought tickets for all of us as an early Christmas present.
DH, obviously, has plenty of experience with the circus, but this was only my third time: The first one I ever saw was a crappy traveling circus that performed at the fairgrounds of the small town we just moved from. It was a blisteringly hot day, the middle of July, and we had to stare almost directly into the sun to see the acrobats balance on stacks of cylinders or hobos cavort in the dusty arena more often populated by bulls and rodeo clowns. It was a little bit pitiful, but I loved it anyway.
We went all out the next year: Ringling Brothers! Everything about it was big -- the crowds, the arena, the ticket prices, the noise, the concession prices (what's the margin of profit on a $12 bag of cotton candy -- $11.95?). The "greatest show on earth" dazzled and entertained, as promised. Despite the lack of what I thought were standard circus animals (lions and tigers specifically -- I could excuse their absence from the tiny circus, but Ringling Brothers?) and temporarily losing a nephew in the crowd after the show (aaaaack!) we had a great time.
Which brings us to the day after Thanksgiving this year and the Shriners' Circus. I think this one was the best of the three: It was neither big enough to be unwieldy nor small enough to be pathetic; Uno, Dos and I got to ride a freaking elephant before the show started, lol (I've never even ridden a pony! This was my first animal riding experience!); and they had lions and tigers (and the aforementioned elephants and bears and dogs and monkeys and pigs).
"You see?" DH beamed. "This is what a circus is supposed to be."
The most awesome chant in sports history
The day after the circus (so the day after the day after Thanksgiving) we drove to Tennessee to watch one of DH's many alma maters, Drake, play a basketball game against Austin Peay (pronounced like the letter or the vegetable). Our guys narrowly -- and I think unexpectedly -- beat the home team and a great time was had by all.
Clarksville is a pretty little town set along the Cumberland river. The people are gracious and the university has a beautiful campus. But you can tell that I've been spending too much time among the grade school set because my favorite part about our short visit to the home of the Governors was the Austin Peay fight song (which, incidentally, sounds like it belongs in an Adam West-era Batman episode) -- and in particular the last line:
Smash! Bang! To victory
Go the Governors of Austin Peay
Clash! Clang! It’s misery
For the minions of the Enemy
Fight on and
Smash! Bang! to Score Again
For it’s ready, set 1, 2, 3!
Smash Bang! Biff Bam! Clash Clang! Rim Ram!
Dash along to Victory!
Let’s Go Peay!
Tres is potty training, so we've been cheering on the Governors a lot lately. Sure, it's way cooler to hear a large crowd of basketball fans shout "Let's go Peay!" over and over than it is to hear it from just your mom, but hey. I do what I can.
The End.
So that catches you up to, um, three weeks ago (when I began writing this post -- oy!). Not much has gone on so far in December, aside from all the usual craziness of the holiday season. Oh! The girls did go visit Santa a couple weekends ago! I asked Uno and Dos (who know about these things) whether this one was the real Santa or one of his helpers, and they assured me he was real because his beard sticks to his face. I'll leave you with a picture (which I did not take, and which is a kind of crappy scan) of that meeting, a list of what they asked for, and a promise to try to blog more often so my next post won't be so insanely long. ;-)
Uno: A cell phone and a dog
Dos: A robot
Tres: A bicycle and a hat so she won't crash on her head
~RCH~
Holes
Uno had been asking to have her ears pierced since last year, when she noticed that some of her kindergarten friends had earrings, and her pleas intensified this fall. DH and I thought she was a little young -- but had more indifference to the idea than actual objections. I would have felt comfortable putting her off until, say, her 8th birthday (a milestone year in Mormon culture) but one night in October DH impulsively promised earrings as a reward if she would follow through on a specific good behavior.
I tried to prepare her for the pain. I told her that when I had my ears done, at age 9, my ears were sore for a few days beyond the initial hole punching. I produced a dramatic reenactment of my sister's piercing experience: She entered the mall brave as a bear, confident she could pay the price of pain for beauty, but after they shot the gun through her first ear she clutched the other one, wailing and screaming and rubbing off the marker dot, and refused to continue. "You think you're tough," I told Uno, "but so did she and look how that turned out!" (Though for the record, my sister did end up with a matched set -- either the next day or maybe even later that afternoon, I can't remember.)
Uno continued to assure me she'd be fine, and after school on Friday, October 16th we hit the road to find the nearest Claire's. Dos, a mere 18 months younger than her sister, thinks she needs to tackle every milestone at the same time and so by the end of our drive she had me convinced to let her get earrings as well.
Dos is hardcore when it comes to pain, the proverbial steel magnolia to Uno's little purple pansy. She's never minded her vaccinations, and when she recently had to have a CBC she watched with a slight grin of morbid fascination as the needle went in to her arm and the dark thick blood slurped out into the vial. (Contrast that with the time Uno required a few stitches in her foot: Terrified and flailing wildly, she had to be strapped to a board and have five people hold her down -- yes, five people and an immobilizing board for the little girl with the big fight-or-flight response -- to get the job done.) I thought I knew which kid would be most likely to freak out, but apparently I prepared Uno very well. She steeled herself for the (thankfully simultaneous) punch and managed a triumphant smile when it was all over.
Dos doesn't have the talent for histrionics that her sister has, but she did cry some nervous silent tears when it was her turn. I told her she didn't have to do it, that she could come back later or not at all and it would be totally okay -- but she wouldn't let Uno one-up her.
I brought my camera to record the momentous occasion, but Claire's has a policy against taking pictures (legal reasons, bla bla). I did sneak this shot in, though. I'd love to show you an After photo with their glamorous pink daisy studs, but as I've mentioned before, the girls are incredibly reluctant models these days. Grrrr.
(Maybe if I strapped them to a board and had some photo assistants hold them down.... Let's ponder that thought for a moment.)
After both girls were done, Tres, who had been sitting patiently in a stroller the entire time, piped up: "My turn!" she said. The piercing lady looked at me and shrugged. "I can do hers if you want," she said, but I declined. We'll wait until she's old enough to know what she's asking for.
Holes II
It's not just tiny dots of ear cartilage that have gone missing from Uno recently: She's got fresh holes in her mouth as well. Her first tooth fell out on the evening of November 6th (luckily while I was on a hot date with DH, so I didn't have to deal with any of the gore).
She'd been wiggling it at me for weeks, tormenting me, making me squeal. I hate teeth. I mean, they're fine for smiling and chewing and articulating words and all that -- but they're not supposed to move on their own. I think loose teeth are super creepy, the knowledge of which imbues Uno with incredible power.
"Hey Mom," she said as I helped her stick the disembodied tooth in an envelope and place it under her pillow (way past her bedtime, but she just had to stay up until I got home so she could show me). "Wouldn't it be funny if you had to be the tooth fairy?"
I crinkled up my face. "Eeeeew, gross!" I said. "I would NEVER want that job!"
Which is true.
The real tooth fairy left her with a shiny gold $1 Sacajawea coin, which she proudly showed off to everyone at school the next Monday. But the fun hasn't ended there: She lost tooth #2 at the beginning of this month, and one or two more are loose (and wiggled at me regularly, mean old girl that she is). I figure that with three kids and 20 baby teeth each, I have years and years of free aversion therapy ahead of me.
Yay. :-P
Home Sweet Home
We still haven't sold our house out West. No nibbles. No nothing. Small towns are, by nature, slow markets (if tons of people wanted to live there, they'd be big towns!) so I'm not surprised, but it has been a frustrating experience. Maybe in the Spring. We'll see.
My sense of urgency about the house we're trying to sell lessened immensely on November 13th when we began hauling our stuff out of the ILs' house and into our new rental, though. :-)
We stumbled upon the house serendipitously: DH treated the owner, an elderly widow named Mrs. V, in the ER one night and discovered that she had recently moved to a long-term care center. He had gone to school with Mrs. V's power of attorney (a neighbor of hers in the old days, not related but she may as well have been childless Mrs. V's granddaughter, they're so close) so he called her up and asked if she had any plans for the house. She said she didn't yet; she wasn't emotionally ready to go through Mrs. V's things, to sort them or sell them -- Mrs. V won't be coming back from the nursing home, ever, but UGH, that step seems so final -- and she wasn't ready to put the house up for sale. DH asked if she'd consider renting it out. "Not to just anyone," she replied, "but I know you'd take good care of it." And so we came to an agreement!
It's such a blessing. The rental market in this town is not great unless you're a single kid looking for your first studio apartment. The few houses available are all old, dilapidated and/or mobile, and they all seem to be in sketchy neighborhoods. So to find something like this -- a solid house in a good neighborhood with a big back yard and enough space for our family -- is rare and amazing.
The house is a cute 2-bedroom, 1-bath place with big rooms and high ceilings. DH and I finally have some privacy (cramped quarters aside, none of the rooms at the ILs' had any doors) and the three girls get to bunk together dormitory style, which they really -- especially Tres -- seem to enjoy. Our landlord, DH's old school friend and Mrs V's power of attorney, left some of the bigger stuff in the house for us to use (we got rid of our "grad school chic" furniture when we moved out here), and more in the garage. She told us to feel free to make ourselves at home, hang pictures and decorate to our taste -- anything non-destructive and within reason. Our lease is open-ended; she'll help us out with a place of our own for as long as we need one, and meanwhile our rent money helps her pay for Mrs. V's long-term care. Symbiosis!
I love, love, love being the Lady of the House again. :-)
Ouch.
Every month the elementary school kids who haven't been written up for bad behavior get to participate in some kind of reward activity. Once they spent half a day at the bowling alley; I think another time they watched a movie. In November, they played a game of dodge ball -- teachers against students.
Yeah. That's a bright idea. S-M-R-T.
When I picked Dos up from school that day (Uno had stayed home, sick) she had tears in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong. "Mr. N, the art teacher, hit me in the head with a dodge ball THREE TIMES, Mom! I don't like him anymore." More tears....
Really? Adults pelting kindergartners with large rubber balls? This is supposed to be a reward?
*Sigh.*
SEESTER!
And brother-in-law! And adorable nephews! Look!
Aren't they the cutest ever?
The weekend before Thanksgiving, and just after we had settled into our new place, my sister and her family came to visit us from Atlanta. We had the best time! I felt bad that there weren't any sights to take them to, no touristy things to do; this area has great summer activities -- pretty National Forest hikes and whatnot -- but not so much during cold weather or with babies. That's okay, though, because what all of us needed most was just the time together. I know I loved it. I can't wait to host them again or drive down to their 'hood. :-)
Circus
When they were growing up, DH's aunt used to take her son, DH and SIL to the Shriners' circus every year on the day after Thanksgiving. Now that we're back in town and with kids of our own, she and DH's cousin wanted to restart that tradition and so they bought tickets for all of us as an early Christmas present.
DH, obviously, has plenty of experience with the circus, but this was only my third time: The first one I ever saw was a crappy traveling circus that performed at the fairgrounds of the small town we just moved from. It was a blisteringly hot day, the middle of July, and we had to stare almost directly into the sun to see the acrobats balance on stacks of cylinders or hobos cavort in the dusty arena more often populated by bulls and rodeo clowns. It was a little bit pitiful, but I loved it anyway.
We went all out the next year: Ringling Brothers! Everything about it was big -- the crowds, the arena, the ticket prices, the noise, the concession prices (what's the margin of profit on a $12 bag of cotton candy -- $11.95?). The "greatest show on earth" dazzled and entertained, as promised. Despite the lack of what I thought were standard circus animals (lions and tigers specifically -- I could excuse their absence from the tiny circus, but Ringling Brothers?) and temporarily losing a nephew in the crowd after the show (aaaaack!) we had a great time.
Which brings us to the day after Thanksgiving this year and the Shriners' Circus. I think this one was the best of the three: It was neither big enough to be unwieldy nor small enough to be pathetic; Uno, Dos and I got to ride a freaking elephant before the show started, lol (I've never even ridden a pony! This was my first animal riding experience!); and they had lions and tigers (and the aforementioned elephants and bears and dogs and monkeys and pigs).
"You see?" DH beamed. "This is what a circus is supposed to be."
The most awesome chant in sports history
The day after the circus (so the day after the day after Thanksgiving) we drove to Tennessee to watch one of DH's many alma maters, Drake, play a basketball game against Austin Peay (pronounced like the letter or the vegetable). Our guys narrowly -- and I think unexpectedly -- beat the home team and a great time was had by all.
Clarksville is a pretty little town set along the Cumberland river. The people are gracious and the university has a beautiful campus. But you can tell that I've been spending too much time among the grade school set because my favorite part about our short visit to the home of the Governors was the Austin Peay fight song (which, incidentally, sounds like it belongs in an Adam West-era Batman episode) -- and in particular the last line:
Smash! Bang! To victory
Go the Governors of Austin Peay
Clash! Clang! It’s misery
For the minions of the Enemy
Fight on and
Smash! Bang! to Score Again
For it’s ready, set 1, 2, 3!
Smash Bang! Biff Bam! Clash Clang! Rim Ram!
Dash along to Victory!
Let’s Go Peay!
Tres is potty training, so we've been cheering on the Governors a lot lately. Sure, it's way cooler to hear a large crowd of basketball fans shout "Let's go Peay!" over and over than it is to hear it from just your mom, but hey. I do what I can.
The End.
So that catches you up to, um, three weeks ago (when I began writing this post -- oy!). Not much has gone on so far in December, aside from all the usual craziness of the holiday season. Oh! The girls did go visit Santa a couple weekends ago! I asked Uno and Dos (who know about these things) whether this one was the real Santa or one of his helpers, and they assured me he was real because his beard sticks to his face. I'll leave you with a picture (which I did not take, and which is a kind of crappy scan) of that meeting, a list of what they asked for, and a promise to try to blog more often so my next post won't be so insanely long. ;-)
Uno: A cell phone and a dog
Dos: A robot
Tres: A bicycle and a hat so she won't crash on her head
~RCH~
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