Another day in the neighborhood

Thing 1 and 2 are in the other room watching TV. I can hear their conversation through the open door. Thing 2 becomes inordinately upset and is wailing about a line on her foot. Thing 1 looks at it and says it’s just a line, just a wrinkle on your foot. Thing 2 says but I don’t want a line on my foot! Why is it there? Thing 1says “It’s just the way Jesus made you.”

For anyone else this would be normal, not particularly noticeable conversation. But for me, who has too long ignored my children’s religious upbringing, this brings joy to my heart. Somewhere along the line, from Church, from reading, or from me, Thing 1 has indeed picked up a little bit of religion.

This morning Thing 2 was quite excited about breakfast. She grabbed the Nestle strawberry milk powder from the pantry and galloped with it to the table. However the lid was not snapped on tightly and in her galloping, she was exuberantly tossing the container around as she galloped, the lid flipped off and about ¼ of a large container of pink powder went all over the floor, which she skidded on, and all over her clothes. Her response, not too unexpectedly, was to start to wail. No matter how many times she is encouraged to not wail as a first response, it is still her first response to anything the least bit negative.

Hubby came back from Italy on Sunday. The girls and I spent most of the previous week in Logan, culminating in a couple of days on Bear Lake with my brother's family. The girls had a fabulous time, I think their favorite part was riding on the chariot innertube thing with their cousin. But they really enjoyed jumping on the trampoline, riding in the boat, and playing in the water. We wore them down to the nub and even Thing 1, who isn’t much of a napper, fell asleep in the boat for a couple of hours. All in all they just had a fabulous time.




Speaking of which, when we were in Logan my uncle Glade and Aunt Vicki came up for a reunion the next day and since we were looking for a babysitter so I could go to the play with Kristin that night, we asked them to babysit. They said everything went well, but thought the girls exceptionally funny and cute. Glade was particularly amused when something happened that pleased Thing 2 and she said it was Fabulous. Apparently they’re not used to three year olds calling things Fabulous.

I came home and put up the 2nd tarp on the fort, so now both sections have shade. This was a no-question requirement for me, as the sun beating down really warmed up the decking, and from about 10:00 a.m. on the higher slide section was directly in the sun, and as the sun moved across the sky, the too-hot-to-stand-on section just got bigger and bigger. Yesterday we all had lunch on the fort about 2:00 pm. before Hubby left, and the whole deck was in the shade. I am very pleased with how the fort turned out. There are about three things left to do: We need to buy and dump in three or so more bags of sand. The two person swing needs to be put on, but I’m not sure I’m going to get to that. The rails are half nice redwood posts, and half shanty-looking cedar planks, but I don’t know if or when that will ever be taken care of. We do what we can...

Jim Bridger would be proud

We spent the WHOLE day working on the fort in the back yard.

It started several months ago, my sister brought her truck, her husband, and her stepsons and they helped us clear off a foot of topsoil off the top back bit of our yard, to level out the ground for the fort. They shoveled off a ton of dirt which we wheelbarrowed through the garage - the cedar shingled structure on the right - out the alley to her truck. She took the dirt home to put in her corral. Thanks so much to them!!!


The next step was to begin the building process. The fort will be on the left, out of the picture here.
Our postage stamped sized grassy area has been turned over to the girl’s fort. We’ve spent several half days, and two full days working on it.



The ironic thing is how much time we’ve spent ignoring the girls and getting them to entertain themselves while we were working on this fort we’re building to make their lives more magical and fun.


It has since been finished, with a tarp roof and rails on the sides.

I do windows, though

Hubby has been so overwhelmed with writing the book, working contracts, writing articles for technical publications, editing an issue of a technical publication, preparing workshop handouts/papers/presentations for conferences... etc. etc. etc. he's just running down to the nub. So...Sunday afternoon I asked how I could help. He suggested that I start making dinner.

Hmmmm....

This is a pretty dramatic change of behavior for me. I can immediately see several potential problems:
1) he is by far the better cook.
2) he enjoys cooking a lot more than I do.
3) more than once when i did start cooking he came in midway and would start to suggest changes... which sometimes goes over okay, sometimes not.
4) he can usually find some way to improve nearly every dish, no matter where it is in the preparation or post-preparation process, which is often annoying, though sometimes not.
5) if he is in town, when he'll be coming home can vary from 6:00 to 7:30 pm with very little notice.
6) when it is just me and the girls, we have frozen chicken nuggets, hot dogs, or meat balls for more often than Hubby would ever tolerate. That is my kind of cooking.

But fine, i can roll with the punches. I bought him a Rachel Ray 30 minute meal cookbook a couple of years ago that has been sitting unopened on the shelf, so I pulled it out and chose a couple of recipes, and went shopping on Monday. Maybe if it only takes 30 minutes I can stand to cook something. I also like that she suggests the whole meal, not just one item. I am famous for pulling a main course out of the oven and blinking in surprise when Hubby asks what else we're having ... "Ahhh... raw carrots and .... a slice of bread for everyone! Huzzah!"

The other challenge is finding something that the girls (Thing 1) will eat. Her menu of acceptable foods is quite limited.

I don't usually talk much to Hubby during the day, but Monday afternoon I needed to ask him something and he casually mentioned he'd be at the library until it closed. This was news. Admittedly he'd said something about not watching a movie or anything that night because he needed to work late, but I had interpreted that to mean that after dinner and putting the girls to bed, he'd need to do some more work.
So.
Do I continue to cook for myself, or do i blow off my new dinner making routine for another day?

I decided I'd go ahead and cook for me and the girls and he could eat when he got home. I made a chicken with gravy, (Thing 1 does eat some chicken if I wash off any seasonings it has on it and hold the gravy) cheesy orzo (I told her it was a different kind of macaroni and cheese) and some vegetables cooked in Balsamic vinegar. (Our balsamic vinegar was so old it pretty much ruined the vegetables.)
Thing 2 fell asleep on the couch while I was cooking, and would not be roused. I finally carried her lifeless body to bed at 8:00.
Thing 1 was enthusiastic about dinner until she walked in the kitchen and saw it on her plate. Then she yelled that she didn't want that for dinner, she wanted waffles, launched into tears, and ran out of the room. No amount of coaxing or rational explanation lessened her overwhelming sorrow.

Skip ahead to ten minutes later I am sitting alone at the table, eating my dinner. Thing 1 comes in, the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth reaction has passed, and she calmly eats several bites of chicken, a decent sized serving of orzo, pronouncing them both "Good," but no thanks on any more than what she ate. She then asks for her frozen waffle, which has been the deal in our house. If you take a couple of bites of what's on your plate, I'll make you, within reason, something else. I am not completely happy with this deal, and think it’s going to change soon. But that’s another story.


Hubby had a plate when he got home.

That or something like it has been the story. Thing 2 of course wolfs everything down, proclaiming each dish "her favorite," and asks for more. When she's awake.
Over the course of the week, Thing 1's fits upon seeing what dinner actually was have lessened, last night she sat down and had her pork chop and cooked apple slices without hardly a peep, though she only ate three beans (one of each) of the three bean salad and pronounced them completely unpalatable.
Hubby has been high with his praise, has only made suggestions when asked.

So goes my foray into cooking.

This is Thing 1 all ready for her foray into the wading pool in our yard.

Harsh words

I just overheard Thing 2 telling Thing 1, “.... you ruined the whole world and made it upside-down!” I don’t know what Thing 1 did to spark such criticism…

International travel

Hubby is going to Italy in June. I want to go with him, but we just checked the airfare yesterday and while he can use frequent flier miles to buy his trip, he doesn’t have enough to buy mine. The current cost for a round trip to just about anywhere in Europe is around $1600, give or take. This is absolutely outrageous. I don’t remember what I paid for my airfare for London last year, but it was something along the lines of $800 less than two weeks in advance.
The other problem is right now Hubby isn’t getting paid and we’re living on savings. Even if our airfare was covered, it is still going to be close to $2000 in expenses, I’m guessing, while we’re there. I don’t know exactly what hotels and things will cost, but I imagine they’re not giving that stuff away.

Sigh. So I don’t know what to do. Put ourselves even more deeply in debt and go, or send him to this conference alone. I really would like to go with him…

One of the things I felt the need to document that probably hasn’t been before… I noticed the other day some artwork that Thing 1 scratched into the paint job of the Passat a year or so ago. She had a little rock with a sharp end to it, and while I was out in the back doing some yardwork, and I thought she was just puttering around the garage… she decided the paint job of the Passat was boring and needed some dolling up. So she scratched a little design behind the passenger door on both sides. There are also what look like initials scratched into the paint on the back, on the trunk. I heard suspicious noises coming from the garage, finally, and of course found her busily scratching away at the paint. She wasn’t very old… probably 4 or so, but she should have known better. Obviously she didn’t remember the reprimand she received after scratching the hood with a rock while we were in Jackson Hole two years before. And to think my father was worried that he put a long straight scratch on each back passenger door once with the handle of a mop thing he was using to clean the inside of the windshield when I opened the doors to do some vacuuming or something in back… Sigh. Just thought I should write that down for future reference.


Thing 2 has developed a new friend from school – Maxine, whom she plays with every week or so. Thing 1 and Sophia Blue have really become good friends. For the past several months we’ve swapped every Wednesday afternoon, with Sophia coming here one week and Thing 1 going there the next. But her mother picked up a new Wednesday shift at the restaurant she part times at, so now we take Sophia on Wednesdays and Thing 1 goes over there either Monday or Wednesday.

Thing 1 has her 2nd cavity appointment next week. I don’t know where these are coming from, I swear I brush her teeth fairly religiously at night and we picked up morning brushing too after the first cavity, which was only six months or so ago. Her teeth must be made of some sort of chalky substance.

I was released from my church calling as Enrichment Leader, and put in as the 1st counselor in the Primary. All in all, I’m pretty okay with this as I was getting burned out with Enrichment. We’ll see how long I last in the primary. I suspect they’re grooming me for primary president, just like happened when they moved me onto the Enrichment committee. They just don’t have enough moms to fill all the spots in the Primary, and I know that logically I just make a lot of sense. However, I’ve found my lack of honest religious devotion getting in the way of some things. How do I ramble on about my testimony when I am not comfortable doing that? My kids don’t say their prayers at night, let alone have any idea who President Hinkley is, we don’t read scriptures at all, let alone daily. Sigh. I’m afraid my private neglect of their religious edification is going to become public.

Vacations

I can pretend my life is about me... but it's really about them. That's okay, they're more entertaining anyway. So I guess I'll just dive right in. This is a photo that they took of Thing 1 at school, and I really like it.

We spent two weeks in Oceanside with my folks this year, and had a fabulous time. One of the really great things was we didn't get robbed while we were there.

We had quite a bit of time to relax and play on the beach, which the girls really enjoyed. Of course in February the weather was a little cold, but we did have a couple of really good days and it seems like we were able to get out to the beach almost every day. Thing 1 and Hubby tried to build some sand castles, but Thing 2 was the professional destruction force that knocked them down as fast as they were built. They had a marvelous time running away from the waves, screaming a lot, and digging in the sand. They loved burying things and digging them back up, making lines in the sand, and crawling around. We also went to both the zoo and Wild Animal park and had really nice times there. Our memberships were good from last year, and so we went as much as we could... though I think we should have gone another day or two anyway.

One of the other highlights of the trip was three days in Disneyland. Like last year, the girls found a ride they liked and stuck with it. I think Thing 2 and I rode the Toon Town roller coaster no fewer than thirty times one evening. After the crowds leave if you ask them, they'll just let you go again and again if no one else is waiting to get on your car. Hubby got queasy after about the third time through and stuck it out to be a good sport, but Thing 2 and I could have gone all night. The girls were also more willing to pose with the characters this year. In the past they have been very shy of anyone in a big suit, but this year they were more willing to talk to and stand with the characters. They had especially good experiences with Mickey, who made a big fuss and spent a lot of time gesturing with them, and Tigger, who took one of their hands in each of his and hopped off with them. The rest of the crowd, including me and Hubby, followed like the pied piper's band. It was one of my favorite moments of our park visit.

I guess that's all for one night....

Memories

Since we've started talking about going to Oceanside Thing 2 has popped up with a memory from last year. Which is odd, considering she would have been 2.5 years old... it's kind of amazing she remembers much at all. Anyway, she talks about how Papa fell asleep outside on the chair. Apparently he was eating dry cereal, and he had some in his hand. Thing 2 remembers taking the cereal out of his limp hand and eating it, without waking him up. Which sounds completely plausible. When I asked her about this to demonstrate her amazing memory to Jeff, she added some richness and detail to the story that she hadn't before. All of which seemed to just verify the truth of it.


Both girls are so excited about going. They don't understand the concept of "we'll be going in a couple of weeks," they're ready to leave tomorrow. In fact several times they've suggested we leave later in the current day. When I picked Thing 2 up from school on Friday her teacher said goodbye a little more warmly than usual, then I guess saw me watching curiously so she explained that Thing 2 told her we were leaving for the beach. I had to explain to her that it will be two or three weeks before we go.

I've been on a vacuuming kick. Since I bought the Dyson I'm not just waiting to vacuum every month or so... I'm vacuuming several times a week. It's amazing... In fact I saw some stuff on the rug and I'd like to vacuum now... One of my problems is the girls usually have a mess all over the floor. This occurs even in their bedroom, despite the fact that almost all of the toys have been moved to the playroom now. So it means I vacuum upstairs one day, and downstairs the other. I probably vacuum each floor about every third day... downstairs, then upstairs and I sometimes even drag the Dyson up there, then I skip a day or two then start over. If I compare my PreDyson behavior with my Post Dyson behavior it is a truly dramatic change. Since I've been weighing the dirt I get out of the rug, I've been convinced that it is working. Either the thing isn't picking up as well or I am actually decreasing the amount of dirt in our house. I'm choosing to believe there's less dirt.