Seattle! I'm going to Seattle!

I shouldn't even write this, since we haven't exactly booked the tickets yet. Joel is going to Seattle for a benefits thinghy in May/June and... I'm going too!

He grumbles that I won't get to spend much time with him because he will be "very busy." Pfft! I'm more than happy to explore alone. It's sort of always been my dream to travel alone. I can't wait!!

Soooo... what should I do!?!?

Also here's a pic taken by my friend Annetta, whose darling children were in my recent dance class:

And Eddie sans the toofers:

And just one more pic for good measure:

WHERE IS MY GREEN COAT!?!?

Remember that garish kelly-green coat I bought back in 1996? I CAN'T FIND IT. Do you have it? I would like it back by Tuesday, if at all possible. Thank you.

Also, yesterday I posted on Craig's List looking for some hanging baskets in which to plant some flowers and hang around the gazebo. I got a reply, from someone I'll call Revayco. I suspect this guy might be a long-lost relative.


Original craigslist posting:

Hey there, I'm looking for your used hanging basket-style containers for plants or flowers. Optimally, they'd have a hook or loop at the top and I can hang them off some existing hooks in my yard. Any size is OK -- I'm thinking in the 8"-14" range. Any material (plastic/metal) OK too. Im looking for up to six (6) hanging pots. The picture shows what I would call very high-end -- a cheapo throwaway plasticky kind is totally fine. Free would be best -- cheap is OK too. Let me know what you've got! Thanks!

Revayco replied:

Hi - I have 6 of the metal type of hanging basket that I won't be using this spring.
I paid $5 apiece for these in 2004.
They are in real good condition. I've discarded the moss, so we are talking frame only.
I don't have pictures.
We be asking a firm $15 cash.

I live in Champlin. Haven't been in East Saint Paul since the Vikings were in the Super Bowl.

So I wrote back:

I wasn't aware the Vikings were ever in the Super Bowl.. Thanks for the reply --
Champlin's too far for me, though. Sorry...

At which point I would have expected the conversation to end. However...

Revayco writes back:

Thanks for letting me know. I'm also delighted the inhabitants of the
east side write and speak English.
Four Super Bowls in fact.
I earned the right to talk smart about the east side. I married one, and made a good woman out of her.
Keep smiling.

So now I've been engaged, and I can't resist. I reply:

Hellooo, didn't you get the memo? The east side is the new happenin' spot. The new Uptown. Uptown II. Uptopia. We're still working on a title. All the hep English-speaking cats are groovin' over here..
Get out and do some yard work, or something.

And here's the response from Revayco:

Hep Cats ??? My good common sense says, Meg wants the last word. Ain't happening. I'm Irish.
The east side is like a foreign country. Lower Liberia. Southern Somali. Eastern Ethiopia.
The fringe benefit you get is to see the sun first, not conducive to a good crop of anything except weeds.
Best check your TV guide.
Wouldn't want you to miss Lawrence Welk and those sweet "Hep" Lennon Sisters you grew up with.
Oh, I don't do yard work till after Easter. Makes it easier to hide the eggs. Yard mice don't like eggs.
The price of the hanging baskets is now $250 cash only. I need it to get my head examined.
I'll now retire to the bat cave. We're burning pictures of Oprah to use for tomato
fertilizer.

So the upshot is, I still don't have any hanging baskets. If you have any to get rid of, let me know. And now I have the memory of this very strange e-conversation.

In unrelated news, a friend of mine offered to teach preschool drawing class and asked whether Lucy would be interested. Lucy likes to produce art, but I'm not sure she'd benefit from a class at this stage. Anyway, I was mulling this over in my head yesterday morning when I turned the corner and ran into ... Frida Kahlo.

So I'm guessing the art class might be a good idea after all, eh?

American Idol Week 1 -- Top 13

YESSSSS. American Idol is back, baby!

Sorry, I don't have much to live for these days... or that might be the way it seems. Regardless, I am fully on the American Idol bandwagon after three yearsish of waning interest.

Here's my own personal recap of tonight's show, the Top 13. I have ranked the contestants as I see 'em, but I think I'll do my commentary in chronological order since there are soooo many of them at the moment.

It's Michael Jackson week, which I think is pretty cool since he has a gigantic catalog of decent songs. Paula borrowed her outfit from Bjork, and here we go.

1st up: Lil Rounds! What a name. She sang "The way you make me feel" and I thought it was great. Eddie said "Look at her! She's beautiful!" and Joel thought it was a little slow and dull at times.

2. Scott the Blind Guy singing "Keep the Faith"
I like this guy, he's a pretty good musician, but I can't help but think he's getting lots of votes for being the blind guy. As Scott was sitting behind his VERY shiny piano, Eddie said "He's in the WATER!" and then, as the camera rotated, "He's on the STAGE!!" That Ed, you can't get anything by him.

3. Danny singing "PYT"
This was the first song of the night that got me really excited. I like Danny a lot, and not just because he has the same glasses as I do (except mine have a giant "G" on the sides, and that's only interesting because Danny's last name also starts with a G, although I guess it's a good thing because if we ever got our glasses mixed up it would be very easy to tell them apart... and I am indeed happily married but, Danny, it would be OK by me if our glasses somehow got mixed up). I also like Danny not just because he dances like Stu, which he totally does. I thought the performance was fun and entertaining and I loved it. And now, a conversation between Joel and Lucy:

Joel: I thought he rocked it.
Lucy: What does "rocked it" mean?
Joel: I thought he nailed it.
Lucy: What does "nailed it" mean?

This from a girl who just yesterday was looking for Jerusalem on our globe, and called out, J... J... I'm looking for a J... and when I said, a J? How did you know that? she grinned at me and told me she sounded it out.

4. Michael singing "You are not alone"
Michael, I'm not your biggest fan. Sorry dude. And it was confusing because I could never tell when they meant you, or when they meant Michael Jackson. And guess what, today at AYP rehearsal a 9-year-old girl called Michael Jackson "Michael Jordan." And then had no clue what a Greyhound Bus was. I feel ooooooold.

5. Jasmine singing "I'll be there"
All right, I admit I didn't actually see any of this song (nor the second half of Michael's) due to kiddos bedtime. But I promise she was boring.

6. Kris singing "Do you remember the time"
This was gooood. He is cuuuuute. Joel liked it too but without all the extra vowels. Joel also caught the Jason Mraz vibe and that's fine but Kris is still in my bottom four-ish.

7. Allison singing "Given to me"
I ADORE this girl and I think she's amazing. Joel thinks she's going home, though, because "who's into rock anymore?" I suspect he's wrong, but I can see how her sound probably sounded a lot more fresh eight years ago when Kelly Clarkson started doing it.

8. Anoop -- Beat It
This was bad, bad, bad karaoke. And it was followed by a weird Hershey Kisses commercial where a kid hands a wrapped Kiss to his mom and she pops it right into her mouth. It made my fillings hurt.

9. Jorge Nunez-- Never say goodbye
I liked it a lot, actually, and then the judges went and ripped him to shreds. I really like Jorge. And Paula looks soaking wet. What is her DEAL!?

10. Megan Corkrey -- Rockin' robin
She looked super-embarrassed to be singing such a ridiculous excuse for a song. Her red dress was bizarre and exactly the opposite of the kind of clothes I want her to be wearing. The dress was weird, the song was weird, and yet there is something about the tone of her voice that I LOVE.

11. Adam Lambert -- Black & White
Let's get this straight: Adam Lambert is Constantine Maroulis: 2009 edition. And I mean that in the most loving way: drama geek with a fantastic voice and stage presence who has chosen a niche (possibly out of a hat) and is rocking it. Except Adam seems gayer -- I find myself strangely unattracted to him and there is something ungenuine (is that a word?) about him. Possibly his base makeup. Also I cannot STAND the name "Lambert" -- wasn't that the name of a pathetic sheep character in some cartoon of my youth?? That said, Adam's performance was brilliant. And I was really impressed by his comment about it taking a lot of hard work to get his performance the way he wanted it. I think that's something a lot of young performers misunderstand -- Adam doesn't just lay around all day until it's time to hop on stage and do his Aerosmith/Rolling Stones thingamajig. He WORKS HARD to get the sound and the effect he wants. Certainly he has natural talent, but he also puts in a lot of hard work to make it seem effortless and natural. Bravo!

12. Matt -- "Human nature"
Pretty darn good, but some of the end notes were weird for me.

13. Alexis -- "Dirty Diana"
Joel thinks she's adorable and he is totally right. I thought her performance was decent -- did anyone else notice that she's six inches shorter than Ryan Seacrest, even while wearing 4-inch heels? She's a peanut!

OK my top three:
Allison
Danny
Adam
Lil Rounds

Middle of the pack, hope they're safe:
Alexis
Megan
Jorge
Matt
Scott

My bottom three:
Kris
Michael
Anoop
Jasmine

Facebook profile photos

Kate, I really hope you don't mind me doing this. I just think it's ... well ... such a funny accident!

My cousin Kate:





Me:




I invite anybody else (particularly any other cousins, but the invitation extends to others with a similar look: Sarah McLachlan, for example, or the Progressive Auto Insurance girl) to post their competing pics. I dunno, maybe we can come up with a prize or something.

Chocolate cake for the toothless wonder

It is for sure, like, 50 degrees out this afternoon. Bring it on, spring!!

I found a couple Lucy quotes laying around on scraps of paper, and I doubt I've posted them yet so here goes:

"Mom. I'm gonna pick out the shirt, you're gonna pick out the pants. Is that clear enough for you?"

and

Lucy (immediately following some sort of meal or snack): "I'M HUNGRY!"

Me (knowing that she means "I'M BORED!"): "What did you say!?!"

Lucy: "I didn't say 'I'm hungry.' I said . . ." (she pauses to think) . . . "'I love you.'"

My little Eddie-man turns 3 tomorrow. Got to go wrap presents...

Anyway, yes.

Eddie continues to rebound as though he'd never even been under the knife... err, the pair of pliers, as it were. He was running around the house like his old self yesterday afternoon and it was all Joel and my dad and I could do to keep that kid on light-duty.

I can see Ed sticking his tongue in the new hole in his mouth, and the rice he was eating last night kept spilling out as fast as he could shovel it in. Also, sometimes he whistles when he talks, now... but other than that, all is back to normal for him.

Joel and my dad and I all took everything much harder, I must say -- when the dentist came in to confirm what we were doing for surgery yesterday, he was hinting that maybe the teeth wouldn't need to come out at all. Then he noticed something on the chart that he hadn't noticed before... NOT what a mama wants to hear in the waning moments before they knock out your son to rip out his teeth. No, what I want to hear is that the doc has been thinking about nothing else besides my son for the last three months. Ridiculous, I know, but could he at least pretend to be sure what he was doing?

It all did shake out OK, though -- like I mentioned, the teeth did really need to come out, and it all went seamlessly until Joel backed into a pylon in the hospital parking ramp and tore the plastic off our driver-side taillights. Grrrr.

We came home and proceeded to watch ... oh ... maybe four kid-movies in a row? Madagascar, Ice Age 2, Nemo, and some Veggie Tales. The grownups all catnapped, but NOT EDDIE. Stinker. He must've eaten seven popsicles and an entire tub of strawberry yogurt.

Joel (knowing he'd be home all day) called a garage-door-fixit company to take a look at our garage door. The door itself is only a few years old, but the opener has been flaking out on us for the last five years or so -- the first couple years, it wouldn't operate when the temp was below zero or over 100. Last year the range was 20-80 degrees and this winter, really, once it got below freezing there was no chance of it working.

It's a detached garage and we keep almost nothing of value in it, but still, we do live in a city neighborhood and it had been damn frustrating to have to manually tug the door open and shut (and even then it would buck and rebound and cause endless frustration). So yesterday, $360 later, it is completely fixed. We also found out that the mechanism was from 1983. So it'd been living on borrowed time for at least the last decade. It brings me great joy to watch my garage open and shut merrily along and I feel like a giant thorn has been removed from my rear end.

I'd better go call Grampa and Ed in from their rollick in the snow. It's lunchtime!!

The teeth have left the building.

Eddie and Joel and I all just got back from the hospital. Ed is doing GREAT. He's eating popsicles like they're going out of style, and holding court on the living room couch, while being doted on by his loyal admirers -- mostly Gramps and Lucy.

The teeth are out -- and it's a good thing, because the roots were very badly damaged, according to the doc. He and all the Children's Hospital staff were just wonderful, gentle, kind, and patient. It was a wonderful experience.

Thank you, everybody, for the thoughts and prayers and well-wishing. Gotta go unwrap some more popsicles!!

Say "sayonara" to those two front toofers...

Just wanted to post a beautiful new pic of the kids. We are all going to bed here -- Ed's surgery (to get his two mangled front teeth removed, in case you've been living under a rock) is at 7:30 AM Wednesday. I will post updates later in the day.

Drowning my sorrows in Cinnamon Life Cereal

I think I'm getting arthritis, at least in my right hand. The back of it hurts, kind of a lot, with a frequency that's starting to get irritating. UGH.

Kind of a cold, worthless weekend around here. It was sunny but pretty much too cold to take the kiddos out sledding or anything. Life is tough when your legs are shorter than the recent snow accumulation.

I spent much of Saturday at Pat Watson's photo studio open house. It was a fun time; I got to see several people I don't get to see very often; and most importantly I was out of the house. Phew. I also got to tuck into a massive grocery trip All By Myself. It felt good, and it feels even better to have something other than lonely, rotting carrots and Worcestershire sauce in the fridge.

Joel and the kids and I went to Augustana Lutheran down in West St Paul this morning, to check out their contemporary service. We liked it a lot, even though I'm not sure we can go back following Joel's behavior at communion. You can ask him about it -- I do not care to relive his wrestling match with the poor teenage kid holding the wine chalice.

We're on the countdown for Ed's tooth extraction (do I say "teeth extraction" since it's two teeth?) Wednesday morning, March 4. I will, if everything goes smoothly, post an update that afternoon. In the meanwhile say prayers/send power/think happy thoughts for Ed and for Dr. Mielke and for the anesthesia staff, and for me to hold myself together. I almost cried several times at our pre-surgery tour last Thursday night. Last Saturday, Pat and his other photog-friend were kind enough to snap a few quick shots of the kids, so I could get some pre-extraction 3-year shots of Eddie. He turns 3 this coming Saturday, March 7 -- hope his face is healed enough to down some chocolate cake by then.

Thursday notes

So it turns out my personal newspaper-fairy is actually my darling husband, who's been leaving every morning well before 7:00 to prep for his triathlon in July. Rats! Now I want my gift certificate back. Just kidding.

My pint of half-and-half went bad earlier this week, and when I look back and realize that I kept drinking the rest of the cup of coffee, even after I noticed it tasted weird, my tummy starts to hurt a little. Since my food budget is $2.82 until tonight at midnight, I thought I was going to have to go coffee-free for a few days until I discovered not one, but TWO aerosol cans of whipped cream in my fridge. Whose are they? Where did they come from? Who cares? They're mine now, and if there's anything yummier than aerosol whipped cream in my coffee, well, I just don't know what it is.

In the flurry of posting this week, I wonder if my note about the children I know (who have been taken from their home by their non-custodial mother), has flown under the radar. It's a terrible experience this family is going through -- the kids have been missing since Feb. 6. My post is several posts down. I know not everyone can give money, but sending some prayers and "power" their way would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Old-fashioned bribery

A little $20 Target gift certificate worked its magic for the Gronau family this week. I sent it to our newspaper carrier a little late (like, maybe early February) as a Christmas gift. Yesterday our paper (the Pioneer Press, my favorite paper in the whole world) was tucked inside our screen door. This morning, inside the screen door, I found the PiPress AND my East Side Review (a local rag that I'd seen sitting in my lawn yesterday).

Talk about service!

So far, I guess I *am* technically having fun...

OK so I thought I would dye my hair blonde today.

But considering it started out nearly black (which is apparently my natural color these days. I swear it's been getting darker and darker recently -- as though to really emphasize the gray. Sweet.)

Anyway, I left it on for 80 of the maximum 90 minutes but now I'm approximately the color of a school bus. Objectively, it's an Orange that would be super-lovely on a geranium or perhaps a lioness. The good news is I've never seen anybody with this hair color. The bad news: I've never seen anybody with this hair color.

Argh, these are terrible pictures. Too much face, not enough hair. Let me try again...

Wow, it looks a lot lighter from the side.

I bought another box because I figure with the dark starting color and the coarseness of my hair, I probably need to reapply. But I have to wait at least 24 hours, so we'll see what I end up with.

It also turns out that now the only color I can wear is black. *sigh*

OK also I took the kids sledding at Battle Creek this afternoon, in lieu of the facade we now call naptime. That place is AWESOME!! We had it to ourselves, and we had 3 sleds which was good because Lu and Ed both insisted on going alone. It's a good thing it's only a mile and a half away, though, because we only lasted about 20 minutes. It's exhausting.

So, these kids I know from ECFE have been kidnapped...

I can't believe I'm posting about my stupid Oscars stuff when this is going on. I know this family very well -- Rainbow and her kids have been an integral part of my ECFE experience for the last 18 months.

Much of what follows has been copied and pasted (simply meaning I didn't write it), but please read on.

A friend of mine from ECFE, Rainbow Espinoza, is in the middle of a terrible crisis -- the details are below. The Dayton's Bluff ECFE network is trying to get the word out in support of her family. As parents, all of us fear something like this happening to our own families. I am sure it is very difficult for her to ask for help in this way. If a monetary donation would be possible, a pay-pal account has been set up: http://sites.google.com/site/mayaandrojocomehome/ It doesn't need to be much - $5 and $10 adds up within a large group.

If giving money is not an option, please consider sending this to others who may help. Rainbow has said it is ok to share the information as it may aid their search. Prayers and positive thoughts go a long way!

It takes a village...

RAINBOW WRITES:
Hi everyone,
Unfortunately I have some bad news about my step-kids, Maya and Rojo. Those of you who know the story, you can skip to the bottom of this message where I'm making my ask. Background:
My husband, Rafael, has had full legal and physical custody of the kids (Meg interjects: Maya is about 7 and Rojo is about 5) for the past 2 years and they have lived with us for the past 3 1/2 years. The mother, Cindy Adler, appealed the decision twice and was denied both times. Over the past year things with Cindy have deteriorated quite significantly, and it has become quite obvious that the purpose of all Cindy's visitation with the kids has been to interrogate and drill them about what we do in our family. Last fall we filed for supervised visitation during her parenting time. Rafael and I also pulled the kids out of school and my mom and I have been job-sharing the duty of home-schooling this year.

After many trips and countless calls to several different police departments in the area, apparently the mom decided she wasn't going to get anyone around here to believe her story of the children being abused and neglected by Rafael and I. So she began the process of planning to run away with the children.

On February 6th, she picked the kids up after school and hasn't been seen or heard from since. This would have been her last time to see the kids before the court day where the judge would hear our argument to limit her visitation rights. It becomes clearer every day that this was very pre-meditated and calculated, not simply a last-minute plan to run off. There's a friend of hers who, willingly, came to the cops last Thursday (after seeing there was a felony warrant out for her arrest on the news) saying that she drove them to Missouri and dropped them off in a rural, mountainous region north of the Ozarks.

There is a large team of local cops and US Marshals working on the case, going house to house, searching places and questioning people. They are not finding people to be helpful or coopertive, even though they have information. It seems a lot of the people mainly involved are connected through a church group of evangelicals that have done this sort of thing before and are good at it.

Today (this was last Thursday, Feb. 19)
Two important things happened today. The first was the court hearing happened and the judge made a very favorable ruling for us.The other thing that happened is we had a meeting with the cops in charge of this investigation. They gave us a run-down of what they can tell us about what has happened so far and advised us of some next steps. They feel confident about the ability of the Marshals to find them, since this is their job and their only job: to find people. They have the technology and resources to find murderers and lots of other people who need to hide out. They are taking this very seriously and still have leads they are following.

However, the people there in the region have been less than willing to cooperate as of yet. Here comes my ask...

What I'm asking you to do... if it's possible:
First of all, the cops are telling us that since money is the universal language, a reward might be helpful in encouraging people to talk. We, clearly, have pretty much exhausted our funds in legal fees at this time and still may need to hire a Private Investigator down the road. The cops don't think it needs to be much, because money goes a long ways down there and the money is only rewarded in the event that the information leads to finding the children.

We don't want to make a hardship for anyone, but if you can, we would REALLY appreciate any amount of money to help put up a reward. We will keep track of who gives what and in the event that it doesn't get used, we will quickly return it to you.

The second thing we are asking is if you would forward this email to people you think would be able/willing to donate a few dollars for this cause.

The third thing we are asking is that if you, or anyone you know, has contacts in south-central Missouri we would ask you to contact them and send them the flyer with an ask to post it around their community. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is flyering their network (apparently pretty actively) but it always helps to have more than one way to get information into a closed community. Especially important (because of the religous connection) are people who are involved in a church organization in that area. You'll see on the flyer information that she might be disguised in a Burka and using Muslim names for the children, however, the cops believe that this tactic was only used to transport them from here to there and is not currently accurate. Clearly, she would stick out like a sore thumb in this area wearing a Burka.The link to the flyer is here: http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PubCaseSearchServlet?act=viewPoster&caseNum=1116002&orgPrefix=NCMC&searchLang=en_US

Our home address is:
Rainbow and Rafael Espinosa
661 North St.
Saint Paul, MN 55106
(651) 774-0661

Please let me know if there's more information you need about this that might help and we really appreciate anything you can do. Also, if sending any money causes any hardship at all (these are not easy economic times for anyone) please do not do it. This is a horrible ask to make, and I really hope nobody is put-off by it. We will, of course, keep you updated, should anything significant change. Thank you for your support and we hope to bring an end to this very soon.
Rainbow, Rafael and family

When I call on Jesus, I wear a monocle

So yesterday I was listening to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on NPR, and they were making fun of Michelle Bachmann (R), US Rep from Minnesota, and her crazy comment about America "running out of rich people." They mentioned a sudden overabundance of monocles and jodhpurs (I'm sorry, I'm totally not going to take the time to Google that spelling). So apparently I had monocles on the brain, because this morning I was listening to the local Christian music station and the song "When I call on Jesus, all things are possible" came on. But I kept hearing her sing "When I call on Jesus, I wear a monocle!" and it made me giggle. A lot, because it becomes a very repetetive song. Then I imagined Jesus IN a monocle. And jodhpurs. Also funny.

OK I caved, and looked up "jodhpurs" and for the record I totally guessed right. But it turns out I misspelled "repetitive." Oops.

Watched the Oscars last night and enjoyed it thoroughly. Before the show, we ate a complete 81st Annual Academy Awards dinner, complete with:

Indian honey-curry baked chicken (a'la Slumdog Millionaire) (Side note: this was delicious and the recipe was super-easy, if anybody wants it) ...


German (a'la The Reader) Hot greens-and-bacon salad...


"Pitt"-ed peaches dolled up to look like ... um... buttons?
OK it was a bit of a stretch, but I knew nobody but me would eat any "button" mushrooms, and there is a total lack of foods named "Benjamin."


"Frost/Nixon" brownies.. the only people who might get this joke were actually at dinner last night, but since that was really only 3 people I'll try to explain. Several years ago the show "Whose Line is it, Anyway?" did a bit on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". I'm SURE you can YouTube it. Anyhoo, the multiple-choice answers were something like:
A. B
B. C
C. A
D. Richard Nixon
E. A jar of almonds

Anyway, these brownies had Frost-ing and also some almonds. I promise you, it was equal parts funny and delicious.

And to drink, of course, we had....

Milk!

Real lazy Saturday

It's a rare weekend with only a few optional activities planned. But here it is! We got a few inches of snow last night and even I have to admit the fresh snow is quite lovely. Joel finally got the kids out in it about 20 minutes ago -- our excuse this time was that their good mittens were in the wash, having been thoroughly muddied several days earlier.

I'm waiting for my meat loaf to finish cooking. I sorta forgot to make sides -- I bet I have time to steam up some peas, or something. I've been wayyy unmotivated to cook the last couple evenings, but it's been turning out OK.

Joel and I are going to a Grown-up Party tonight and I have neither any idea of what to wear, nor an appropriate host-gift. I don't think a bottle of three-buck Chuck is going to cut it. For the hostess gift, I mean -- though I doubt it would cut it as an outfit either.

Don't forget to watch the Oscars tomorrow night!

Flat of a board

Hello, happy Wednesday. Lucy and Lily are playing, nicely but not especially quietly, in the living room, and Ed is in (though not down and certainly not out) for a nap in his room. I'm left to tackle a monster to-do list, including "bake bread" and "write a play." It might be a busy day!

A couple cute, quick kid stories to share. We were at the pool last Friday and Lucy took one glance at a large and active water-aerobics class and asked "Mama, what are those grandmas doing?"

Lucy, also, has had an explosion of writing. A couple weeks ago I was very surprised to see that she'd written the first 5 letters of the alphabet on her chalkboard. She continued to write through J, when I took a picture, and kept on until T when she lost interest. Occasionally she needed teensy reminders of what letter came next, and I think she skipped N, but overall she was totally doing it. A few days later, we got a note from ECFE saying that, for Valentine's Day, Lucy should make a Valentine for the other 11 kids in her class. They gave the option of letting your child cut-and-paste the other kids' names from a sheet of paper, OR have your kid write (or play-write) the other kids' names, or simply draw each other child a picture of some sort. You could get store-bought cards, or make them, or whatever you want. ANYWAY, for Lucy, this simple assignment was nothing short of a communication revolution. She spent just about every waking moment for the next week making cards, envelopes, and letters for everybody she knows. We made Valentine cards for all the kids in her class, the teachers, and our immediate relatives. (Auntie Jamie got one that said "Paper Glue School" because Lucy was fascinated with the words on the glue bottle at the moment.) We made dozens of cards for Daddy. We made piles of other cards for everybody else Lucy could think of (and if you didn't get one, it's because it got lost in the resulting paper avalanche). Her ECFE teachers remarked that she had to be dragged out of the writing-table for snack time. The girl was obsessed.

It's been amazing watching her start to realize the new things you can do when you can read. For example, once you can tell an "L" from an "R", you can totally be the Spinner for Twister (even if your legs aren't quite long enough to have Right Foot on Red while still keeping Left Foot on Green). And she can tell which mail is for her, versus those for Eddie, Megan, or Joel. But Lucy is still the first one to remind us "I'm only FOUR!" if we ask her something too challenging.

Then there's Ed. Sweet and charming as can be. "Flat this out!" means he wants you to lay his blanket flat on the floor so he can sit in the middle of it and be wrapped up like a Baby Dumbo bundle from the stork. "Flat of a board!" means he wants to lay flat ("AS a board") on the ground for you to pick him up. And last week I presented him with a bowl of minestrone soup, of which he took one bite and made a horrid face. "What a face, Ed!" I said, to which he responded, "I said "oh, brother!" with my eyes."

We've come to a peaceful agreement about what to do about school for Lucy next year -- basically we've applied to the St Paul 4-year-old program and if we don't get in, we have two great backup options that we're happy about. A big chunk of me wonders whether I shouldn't keep my baby girl at home with me for one more year... then there's the chunk that struggles to challenge her burgeoning brain around the house. Then there's a third part that wonders if I oughtn't pay for a nice 3-year-old program for Ed, and enjoy some serious time to myself? To write, or teach dance, or something. It's pretty tempting but not something we've given serious thought to.
OK I really have to go do some work around here. Cheers...

Carry me up, Mama

Well, I woke up today in a bit of a funk -- after weeks of feeling pretty good about life. Some days I feel like I'm really failing as a wife and mother. I really wish I had more patience with the little-kidness of my little kids: their slow feet, their selective listening and obeying, their picky eating, their trails of giant messes everywhere.

We visited another preschool last night: Crossroads Elementary in the Dale-Como area of St Paul. It's a public school where you can choose either a Montessori track or a Science track, and it's a year-round school. I'm really interested in the year-round option -- I think the traditional long summer break is detrimental to kids' learning, and I've always been the kind of person who much prefers frequent, shorter breaks over one giant break. I also think year-round schooling better prepares kids for life -- I remember a giant shock when I graduated college and entered the workforce and suddenly summer no longer existed.

Anyway, visiting the school gave me another kick in the gut that Lucy will be in school in September and I can't stop it! Depending where we choose, she'll be in a half-day program 5 days a week OR a full-day program 2 days a week. I'm sure she's ready (she's bored at home)... but she's my baby, my first baby, and it's scary sending her off into the great unwashed masses.

Ed woke up the other morning constructing more complex sentences (that sounds so dumb the way I wrote it, but Joel and I were listening to Ed go on about something the other day and Joel turned to me and said "Wow, he's taken another leap in language, hasn't he?" and it really was overnight). Every day we experience evidence of his incredibly sweet nature, whether it's sitting with him on the toilet (where he inevitably coos, "Mama, I love you SOOOOO much") or watching him interact with Lucy and his other peers (when he gets frustrated with a playmate, we watch as he'll raise a hand as if to strike the other child, then think better of it and (often) drop the hand and find another way to express himself, often vocally).

Lucy continues to work at her letters, like, ALL THE TIME. I gave her a spare 2009 calendar and she asks "What month is it? What day is it? When is September?" all the time. The other day she opened to January and wrote a different letter on every day. Well, sorta -- C and R were duplicated with some frequency.

Ed has this dinosaur coloring book, and he's obsessed with the mammoth. "It's the last mammal, Mommy!" "That's mam-MOTH, Ed." "See? Mama? The LAST MAMMAL!!"

Also he picked up a plastic camel yesterday and said "Look, Mama, it has two mumps."

Uh-oh, two 4-year-old girls are ganging up on Eddo...

Just a quick Monday-afternoon (hah! That's when I started writing this. But it's Wednesday now and the following still applies:) check-in before I have to go tackle some laundry and dishes and prep for my dance class...

The Kalahari waterpark was SUPER FUN, as long as you remembered to bring all your own food and snacks, as prices at the resort are insaaaaane. We arrived around 2pm Saturday, checked in and swam until 5pm when the kids totally melted from all the excitement. (We did not actually remember to bring our own snacks, but Joel's parents brought some stuff and now we know the story for next time.)

Part of said excitement came as we started to explore the waterslides. There are, bafflingly, very few height/weight restrictions for waterslides, so when I saw that one was OK for people above 42" tall, I thought, heck, Lucy can go on that! So she and I walked up to the top, and I told her how to lay (legs crossed, hands behind head) and I told her I would meet her at the bottom. I went first, knowing she'd need help getting herself out of the pool at the end.

I then spent MY whole ride (maybe 20 seconds?) and HER whole ride (another 20?) completely convinced that I had killed her. The slide was SCARY. It's pitch-black, it's FAST, it's SPLASHY, and it's super twisty-turny. It way surpassed my appetite for thrilling, and when I got to the bottom I realized the guy at the top would send Lucy right away, and there was nothing I could do to stop her from having the same terrifying experience. When I saw her little body coming out the chute, laying back (as I told her to do) but looking limp and lifeless, I thought for sure she had perished from shock. I pulled her from the water and she opened those big blues and to my total amazement, she didn't cough or spit water or even cry. She mentioned it was scary and didn't want to go again. Her heart wasn't even really pounding. She was happy to go back in the water but we didn't do any more slides that day. The next day, however, to my total shock and amazement, she went back on a whole bunch of (other, brighter, slower, MUCH less-scary) waterslides all by herself, or with Joel or Donna or me on a tube. What a trouper. On the other hand, it took three or four whole days for me to completely recover. It was an awful feeling.

In other learning-to-let-go news, yesterday we visited a preschool for Lucy for next year. It's the Community of Peace Academy charter school, so it's free, and it would be 3 or 5 full days a week next year. We liked it, and Lucy and Ed LOVED it, but we have several other visits yet to make. It's so weird to think that in 8 short months, we'll be kissing her goodbye several days a week. And Ed will follow the next year. Sob!

OK so just a couple around-the-house sort of things. We've been composting since the summer. We take all our fruit and vegetable peels/seeds/leftovers, bread crusts/crumbs, small bits of paper, egg shells, coffee grounds and filters, and basically anything that's not plastic, meat, or dairy, and we toss it in a big pile in the yard. I *think* the plan is to use some of the year-old compost in the garden, as mulch or fertilizer or whatever. Composting is important because it keeps food items out of landfills. Organic material, when crammed into a landfill and left unexposed to air, contributes to toxic gas output. It also decreases the amount of garbage our household produces. Now that we're composting, I swear ALL we throw out are plastic bags. Literally -- our trash is FULL of the plastic bags that come with lunch meats, cheeses, bread, produce, etc. Plus the yogurt/cottage cheese tubs that we, inexplicably, can't recycle here. It is so gross.

I'm also particularly proud of some of the food choices we're making around here, so I'm sharing just in case anybody else cares to talk about healthy eating for families. I just made a $69 shopping trip where, as I looked over my receipt, I found I'd bought almost exclusively whole foods -- fresh and frozen fruits and veggies, no-sugar peanut butter, plus cheeses, eggs, milk and butter. Stuff that "remembers where it came from" and still shares characteristics of its original food or animal source. I did get some jarred preserves, but even those were reduced-sugar kind.

The menu that spurred that trip looks like this:

Breakfasts:
1. Lucy likes "egg in a hole" where I cut out the center of a piece of whole-wheat bread, then fry the bread in a skillet and break an egg into the center. She'll sometimes eat 2 of these if she's hungry.
2. Ed eats oatmeal -- I buy the quick-cook kind, and toss it in a bowl with raisins, cut-up dates (NOT the pre-cut sugared kind, but the date-shaped, unsweetened whole dates. They're not super-easy to find, but worth it!) and very-finely-chopped walnuts (I make it almost like walnut-dust, and he doesn't even notice it, but it adds good fat to the bowl). It took a while, but I weaned him off any sort of added sugar.

Lunch:
Listen, my kids LOVE PBJ. I don't fight it; I buy no-sugar peanut butter and low-sugar preserves, and whole-wheat bread. I serve it with milk and some kind of fruit on the side.

Dinners:
This week I made my mom's spaghetti sauce with tons of extra veggies, because I only had half a pound of italian sausage. I used carrots, green peppers, mushrooms, onion, spinach, and some frozen tomatoes from my garden last summer. I served it with whole-wheat spaghetti noodles and some super-treaty french bread (white! argh!) with real garlic and butter and some mozzarella cheese on top. I also made a spinach-zucchini-mushroom-green pepper salad for the side.

Tomorrow I think we're doing some pork stir-fry with more veggies and some fried rice on the side. Friday night is my mom's Nothing-For-Dinner recipe, which is just brown rice under a heated can of black-bean soup under some veggies (green peppers and mushrooms, probably) under some melted cheese.

2 funny kid phrases I need to write down: Lucy comes at me with an inside-out shirt and says "Mom, can you unside this out for me?" And she also pronounces upside-down "up-spy-down". And Ed says "airplane" like "urplane". And about a million others.

Eddie says "I want foot-jamas! Mama where's my SWORD?"

Joel's parents rented a room at the Kalahari resort in the Wisc Dells for tonight (they are going to a wedding for a friend of Julie and Jamie), so we are slowly getting woken up and packed for a day at the water park... and whatever else this place has to offer. Joel said something about go-karts and an indoor driving range. We'll see! It's exciting to get a bit of a getaway in this season.

March 4 (the Wednesday before he turns 3) has been set for Ed's teeth-extraction surgery. Any prayers or power available, please send 'em our way (and the doc's and anesthetist's way as well). I'm not really sure what I can do to prep Ed for the experience -- apparently Children's Hospital has pre-op videos for kids to watch online, but the links are broken at the moment.

This was our Dec. 29 attempt at building a gingerbread house. The homemade sugar-glue worked like a charm -- but much of the house was broken at the start, so we ended up making gingerbread boards. They still tasted great.




The next 3 pix are from last Monday. Temps in the 20s felt like a tropical paradise! I shoveled with no coat and no gloves on and I actually considered eating lunch outside, for about four seconds. There was much happiness in Gronauland.


We wished our friend Josie a very happy 4th birthday! Lu and Jo put on quite a show for us, modeling some of Jo's new dancewear.

...And I've never been to Boston in the fall

MPR cancelled my favorite program, the 89.3 Morning Show with Dale Connelly and Jim-Ed Poole, but you can get it streaming online, which has actually been better for me, since I used to miss all but the final hour of the show since I'm not typically awake enough to turn on the radio before 8am. So NOW I can start listening whenever I want, and I'm guaranteed up to 3-4 hours of folk music every day! It's seriously my favorite thing.

The kids are suffering a bit of post-Christmas letdown. If Christmas is over, they question, why do we still have the Christmas cards hanging up? Why do we still see Santa statues in peoples' lawns? How come we never made a wreath out of branches from the tree in our yard, like you once accidentally thought out loud, Mom? When is it Christmas again? If Christmas is over why is there still snow outside? Why is it still so dark at dinnertime? Why didn't Santa bring us a cat? Why is our Christmas tree out in the yard in a snowbank? WHEN IS IT CHRISTMAS AGAIN!??!?

We had a lovely relaxing weekend, though staying in snowy Minnesota meant we had to miss my cousin Amy's wedding to Dan. It sounds (and looks from the pix sent by my cousin Kate) like it was a blast! Congratulations, you two.

Lots of exciting things going on around here -- we made the decision to wait another year before sending Lucy to kindergarten (her birthday is Sept 2 and the cutoff is Sept 1) so we've applied her to attend the St. Paul Public Schools' pre-K program in the fall. Acceptance is on a lottery system, so now we wait. And, in the meanwhile, visit the schools we'll have to consider if she doesn't get into the SPPS program.

Ed is (without his knowledge) soon having surgery to remove his badly-mangled 2 front teeth. You might remember that he bonked them in November '07, which chipped one tooth (and also cracked it up into his gum) and greyed the other front tooth. Since then I can think of at least 2 other times he's whacked them. The teeth were stable for a while, but right before Christmas he got an infection way up in his gum from the cracked tooth. Antibiotics took care of it until the doc could look at it -- and he suggested either a baby-root-canal or just pulling the teeth. Since Ed's only 2 and therefore A. highly likely to keep falling on his face, and B. not getting his permanent teeth for at least 3-4 more years (thereby increasing the window in which an infection could recur), we decided to go with the extraction. Now we're just waiting to hear when the doc can meet us at the hospital -- probably in February. Ed will have to have general anesthesia, which makes me VERY nervous. All we can really do is trust the doctor and God's plan for us. More updates will come as we find out the date.

In other news, I am now my kids' dance teacher! We adore Miss Lee at Linwood, but my teaching my own kids saves us $40 a month... and I was getting tons of requests from ECFE parents to teach a class in the studio at the Dayton's Bluff Rec center. There was so much interest, I'm teaching 2 sections, and it is SO much fun to be working with the younger age group again! I have a couple older kids (age 6-10) in the Wednesday group, but several 3-4-year-olds as well. We have an absolute blast.

I'm also co-directing three-ish productions of Pirates! The Musical, opening this week at the Maplewood Community Center. This is for kids grades 1-6, and I'm working with an Ashland group (kids from the community), a group from Oakdale Elementary, and a group from South St. Paul. I even co-wrote one of the scenes -- maybe I have a future as a playwright! If you have kids, you might want to bring them to see the show -- it runs this weekend through the first weekend in March. See www.ashlandproductions.com. The show is only about an hour long, and not scary-piratey at all. Just VERY silly-piratey.

I mentioned before that I was auditioning for Seussical, but it turns out I am not actually going to be involved in the show. I went to an audition at the Ordway (it's a professional theatre in St. Paul that often hosts touring shows) on Saturday for Singin' in the Rain, and I was immediately cut. So my ego's been taking a couple hits here and there. *shrug* Such is life.

Oh but here's a wild story! So a couple weeks ago I was watching "Superstars of Dance" which is TOTALLY a guilty pleasure because it's a ridiculous show, and they had a Bollywood number on, and I got all up in arms because I SWEAR I don't understand Bollywood dancing at all. Joel and I had a lengthy discussion about it (meaning I kind of went off for a few minutes, and he patiently nodded while keeping one eye on Michael Flatley), which ended with me saying I really didn't think I would dance any worse than these supposedly-highly-trained Bollywood dancers.

The very next day I got an email from a gal who's taken ballroom dance lessons from me in the past -- she and her boyfriend are getting married and REALLY want to do a Bollywood number for their first dance. I could just about hear God laughing: You think you're so talented? Let's just see about that. Anyway, I'm not sure it's still happening (I mean, I'm sure they're getting married but not certain I'll be involved), but the timing was really impeccable.

OK I've got more but I need to go shovel. Happy Monday and Happy Inauguration Week!

Spectacular! Spectacular!

This is NOT, and I stress NOT, the "Christmas Show" I was in.

This, however, IS the First Annual Gronau Christmas Talent Show/Pageant, held Christmas Eve in Monticello, Minn., directed and produced by my dearest darlingest mother-in-law, Donna Gronau.

Enjoy!

The kids singing Seussical

I think Joel must've taken this. Hope you get a kick out of it!

Seussical auditions on Monday. Wish me luck!

Someone please let me know if this works!

Trying to add a video. Let me know whether it works -- there's lots more to come!

Christmas with children

Hi gang! I'm going to try to post this today... I really want to recap our Christmas break but I just don't know if I'll be able to get it all written down today.

Life was starting to get REAL hectic the last couple weeks before Christmas. The Christmas musical I was performing in (and choreographing) was supposedly in rehearsals, but those rehearsals were few and far-between... and not always well-attended. I went into our tech week with my undies in a serious bunch, but I think the show actually came together really well. The dances I made up were all rehashes from last year, but I always like the opportunity to fix things that didn't work well the first time. The dances I performed in were also rehashes from last year, with again only minor changes (not that I ever felt totally confident doing them last year, either!)

And I spent a bit of time worrying about AYP, the youth performance group who, Lord love 'em, are a bit of a ragtag bunch. They're kids grade 1-8 (so you can imagine the range of sizes and experience represented) and they performed the "pre-show" before the Christmas show began each night, and I'd been the one running most of their rehearsals. So they were at every performance, mostly being their adorable and clueless selves.

I also got to sing in this show, so I had to learn alto harmonies for nine songs, plus I had to mentally prepare myself to sing a couple lines of "Winter Wonderland" all by myself. It was a frightening and exhilarating and, ultimately, incredibly rewarding experience -- many of the other adult singers were names I'd heard in theatre circles, but had never met, and they were all just LOVELY people. And some old friends turned up, too. All very talented.

The biggest challenge for me, though, was that I got to do a lyrical/liturgical/contemporary/modern (I don't know WHAT you call it!) dance solo to "Breath of Heaven." Joan played piano and Paige sang, both beautifully. It's rare for me to get to perform with live music, and I don't think I've ever done a whole solo routine before! I got some really lovely compliments on it afterward, and I was proud of how it came together, especially with such limited rehearsals.

So the 2 weeks before Dec 19 were hairy ones -- also because my sisters and our menfolk and I went skiing at Lutsen, and I just seemed to have several assorted meetings to get to... OH, and I'm co-directing/choreographing three different productions of Pirates! The Musical for Ashland's in-school program. Phew! So I kind of thought I was going to perish from anxiety before Christmas.

But once the show was over, golly did I get to enjoy it! The kids had a little Christmas program at HopeSpring church the Sunday before Christmas, and Joel's folks came out to got to church with us and watch the kids. They sang "Away in A Manger" and "Angels We Have Heard On High" and "Joy To the World" and it was super cute. They also recited some Bible verses that my kids wanted no part of practicing (they don't rhyme!). The Gronaus, along with Jamie and Julie and her new fiance Jeff, also came to watch the show, and John was actually inspired enough to tell me that I didn't stink! That is a gigantic compliment, coming from him.

Lu and Ed had their final dance class of the session, so Joel and I went to watch. They were hilarious and I am sad to see our time with Miss Amy Lee end. I'll be teaching a kids' dance class starting Jan 5 at the Dayton's Bluff Rec Center -- I'm excited for it, but I know the kids and Amy will miss each other. Her classes are wonderful.

I took the kids to see a morning performance of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" at Youth Performance Company in Minneapolis. The kids LOVED it and were absolute darlings. And the show was very good, as an added bonus.

We enjoyed a couple quiet days at home, all activities on a blessed and much-welcomed break, before we headed to Monticello on Christmas Eve Eve. Donna was "producing/directing" our first-annual Gronau Talent Show and Pageant, which was surprisingly jam-packed with volunteers. Donna played "Rudolph" on piano with Lucy singing merrily along. Joel read the Nativity story from the Bible while Ed and I did an impromptu interpretive dance. Lucy did her own impromptu interpretive dance to some taped music, and Eddie and I did some Feats of Strength. For the grand finale Julie and Jamie did a tap dance to "All I Want For Christmas is You" and we all (J and J included) had one of those laughs where you feel like you've just run up a flight of stairs.

Christmas Eve night, we looked out in the yard and saw actual deer (including one at-least-10-point buck!) grazing in the neighbors' backyard. We all got a giant kick out of that.

OK so I want to write down what the kids got for Christmas, but here's the caveat: I don't want this to seem like some kind of comparative list by which you can judge our family. I also don't want to hurt any of the givers' feelings by omitting anything, but that is inevitable as my memory is imperfect. But so many of the gifts were SO thoughtful, so perfect for our kids -- I wanted to write them down so I can remember them and express my gratitude. And I'm doing it here.

Chalkboards with chalk and erasers -- 2 complete sets, for no fighting
A Barbie computer for Lucy -- the games are the perfect degree of challenge for her
An assemble-it-yourself gingerbread house for the kids
A train set and a set of wooden blocks
Three goldfish! Who have already lived three whole days!
Kid tents -- Princesses for Lucy and camouflage for Ed
Wind-up rechargeable flashlights
A tennis racket for Lulu. Pink, of course.
A bird feeder -- can anyone explain to me why we don't have a single bird visiting yet?? HELP!

Christmas day, we drove back from Monti and went over to Jean's house for turkey dinner and Ryan family gift-exchange. The next day, we took the kids sledding in Jean's backyard -- what a hoot!

Last night Joel and Jean and I took Lu and Ed ice skating for the first time ever at the Wells Fargo rink in Rice Park in downtown St. Paul. Lucy was AMAZING -- falling down dozens and dozens of times, but getting back up, learning that "dust yourself off" was more metaphorical than literal, and plowing ahead. By the end of our time there, she was moving along all by herself. It was wonderful watching her start off, check her balance, shuffle her skates along, and grin ridiculously when she made it from Jean to me, or back again. Ed, on the other hand, was a 35-pound wet noodle. He LOVED getting dragged around, but all of our backs were a little sore by the end. Might have to get that kid one of those empty goals to use like a walker on the ice.

OK my next task here (in addition to getting dressed and trying to finish some laundry) is to add some photos and video, so check back a little later. May the love of Christ shine on you and your loved ones as 2008 draws to a close. Merry belated Christmas!

"Say 'Go, Lucy!'" ... "GO LUCY! I'M SUPER-COW!"

Worlds Fastest Update:

I'm in a Christmas show this weekend (Dec. 20-21) -- www.ashlandproductions.org for details.

Ed is 100% toilet-learned (I understand that's the preferred term, over "potty trained"). Including overnights. Anyone want to buy some well-loved large cloth diapers??

It's snowing and it's so gorgeous and I am totally in the holiday mood.

The kids say hilarious stuff all the time and sometime I'll record some more of it.

The biggest news probably is: JOEL'S SISTER JULIE GOT ENGAGED!!! Congrats, Julie and Jeff -- we are SO HAPPY for you!!

It's "Gronau" with an "uno"

I KNEW I would forget something.

I forgot, that was going to be my new Lastname Pronunciation Guide. In this ever-shrinking world in which we live in (as Paul McCartney didn't exactly say), most people know how to pronounce "one" in Spanish, right? Well if they do, they can also say Gronau. OK, it's way funner to say it out loud. Go ahead and try it, I won't tell anybody.

Also, Lucy eschewed the Maplewood Community Center day care services (saving me $3!) this afternoon to hang out with me and Joan and the kids in the Ashland Youth Performers. It was really fun to share that time with her. She mostly sat and drew her wonderfully weird little shapes (she's into roads and purses, this week) but then she was singing the songs the whole way home.

24, minus Kiefer Sutherland and anything sexy or dangerous whatsoever, unless you count bunk beds.

I have so many good excuses for not keeping up on here. Here's a sampling of things on my mind. If you want elaboration on any topic, please leave a comment or drop me an email. I'm sort of having trouble narrowing my focus.

1. Thanksgiving! Awesome holiday. Happy times.

2. My right tonsil hurts real bad.

3. We picked up a bunkbed for the kids, via Craigslist. It is not set up yet, as we do not own twin sheets.

4. I'm singing AND dancing in the Christmas show. It's in 2 weeks and I've had 2 rehearsals.

5. Ed has, according to our very scientific pencil-marked wall-chart, grown 2 full inches since September.

6. I'm reading Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. Amazing book.

7. My book club's cookie bake is this Friday! I totally can't wait.

8. Lucy might start Kindergarten next year. Or not. And St. Paul has about 7,500 public schools to choose from.

9. I'm also working on at least 3 different productions of Pirates! The Musical. It's hard to keep them straight. Yaaarrrrrr.

10. I HATE driving on icy roads. Especially when I'm running late which is always.

11. I have to go collect money from my neighbors, to pay the alley-snowplow people.

12. My body is crazy-sore from taking 2 dance classes last night. A really good sore.

13. I beat my Amazing Athlete-Sister Ellen in a sprint last week. THAT was a really good sore, too.

14. Golly, do I love those kids of mine.

15. Lucy's face is sharpening -- her nose and cheeks are much more angular than just a few months ago. Her latest quirk is threatening not to be a part of our family anymore, if we don't do something she says (like give her a cheese stick, or pick up her shoes for her). She's testing us and it's fascinating and wonderful.

16. She also is way into letters, asking how to draw them and what words start with which letters. And the difference between rhymes and opposites. It's so cool.

17. Ed joined Lucy's dance class this last month and Miss Lee says he's doing just great, despite his standing at the threshold of the studio before each class, crossing his arms, and growling "I'm not dancing. Hmpf." He just loves being with Lucy and doing the things she does.

17a. I'm afraid Lucy's ECFE class (to which she goes solo on Monday afternoons) is messing with Eddie's psyche. EVERY time we go to ECFE, he asks in this pitiful voice "Can I come too?" even though he does, indeed, "come too" at least 80% of the time, if you include all the extra ECFE meetings we hit.

18. On Monday, Ed put on a costume warrior helmet and shield we had laying around, and announced "I'm a BAD GUY!"

19. Today he wrapped his special blanket around his shoulders and hollered "I'm a SUPER COW!"

20. I forgot to mention this, but we started doing a bedtime prayer with the kids, maybe a month or two ago? I had the thing written out ahead of time and I asked the kids to repeat after me. Ed typically conscientiously objects every night (that kid's going to wind up a priest, mark my words) though tonight for the first time he actually agreed to join in. Lucy surprised me the very first night we did the prayer. I'd written a line that went "Thank you for our food and toys" and she stopped me right there and said she didn't want to thank God for her toys. I thought quick and said "our house?" and she agreed to that. I'm intrigued as to why she insisted on the change -- but she's totally right, of course. Our house is a much larger and more-important blessing than the toys; not that the toys aren't lovely.

21. Thank you, Lord, for our food and toys and clothes and house, and for our general health and our loving families and for the opportunities you've given us to serve others. Thank you for your Love and Grace and Peace. Jesus loves me, this I know.

22. Oh golly, I have to do Christmas cards yet. Hey Jesus, sometimes your birthday parties get blown a little out of proportion.

23. Oh boy, and I bet there's wet laundry in the machine.

24. I ought to have a #24 but I'm real tired. Oh! Jean the Wonder Aunt is coming over tomorrow afternoon so I can get a haircut and *maybe* even those elusive twin sheets.

the schnozzberries taste like schnozzberries!

I'm sorry for no updates in, like, forever. I loathe the excuse "I'm too busy!" -- everyone is busy. For some reason, this week has been exceptionally trying around here. So you get one quick kid story per kid and then I'm out.

Oh I should warn you that neither story is funny at all -- they're more for character development.

Lucy: What's a Bamo?

Me: A bamo?

Lucy: A bama?

Me: Oh, what's Obama?

Lucy: Yeah! (duh, Mom, that's what I was saying)

Me: He's going to be the president of our country.

Lucy: What's a president?

Me: The president is who the people of our country choose to be our leader.

Lucy: Are YOU going to be president?

Me: Oh, no. No. I won't be president.

Lucy: But you go to that Leadership Program!

Well, I about fell on the floor. Her grasp of the language really astounds me. And, I mean, she's totally right. What a kid.

On Monday we were at an open gym with the Watsons, and Ed all of a sudden started crying and ran out into the hallway. I followed him and found him leaning his forehead against the vending machine.

Me: What's wrong, Eddie? What's going on?

Ed: I'm sad. I'm sad because my friends do not play to me. I want them to play with me.

I assured him that the Watson boys would LOVE to play with him, but that he was going to have to just jump in and get involved in whatever they were working on. He cheered up right away, went back in the gym, and joined the boys. It's just amazing to me how we can all communicate so well. It's so fun hanging out with these little people!

OK really, have to run. I'm so sorry.

My funny fambly

OK just some quick funnies from our day:




We're getting ready to go to church, and Joel comes downstairs, with that "I dressed myself" look on his face. I blanch when I see the pants he's chosen: stonewashed high-waisted taper-leg jeans. Our church is NOT a jeans church, but regardless, these things would be frowned upon in any polite company:


So we sit down in church today and I'm holding Ed, who is super cuddly and adorable. He presses his face real close to mine and says "I love you mama."

I whisper back: "I love you too Eddie."

He whispers back: "I like you?"

Me: "Oh! Yes! Thank you! I like you too!"

He repeats: "I LIKE you?"

Me: "I'm happy you like me. I hope you like me!"

At which he opens his mouth real wide and proceeds to LICK the entire length of my face.

Grrrr.

So a little later, Lucy has to go potty so I take her in there, and as she's sitting in the stall (with the door open, of course), she peers at me and asks about my skirt.

"What's that on your skirt?"

"Oh, it's a sash. Like a belt. It's just for decoration."

"When I get bigger I'm going to wear that skirt."

"Well, thanks. You have good taste in clothes."

(Pause; Lucy tilts her head)

"Except mommy, I think I'd wear a different shirt."

*Sigh* Shot down again.

Errata

I forgot to mention a couple things:

YES, Carol took all the photos. She rocks; I suck. She's smart, I'm stupid. She's good-looking, I'm... not attractive.

It didn't really hit me until Just Now that Lu and Ed dressed as the exact same things, respectively, two Halloweens in a row.

2007:

Last year, Ed let me draw whiskers on him. Not so this time!

I guess Lucy technically added the "fairy" to her princess costume this year. Details.

Yikes! Our old kitchen. Now there's something scary. :)

ALSO, when I was busy crabbing about being cold last Tuesday, I TOTALLY MISSED FREE WORLD SERIES TACOS!!!! DANG IT ALL!!!!

Also, I am kind of really excited to watch the election coverage on Tuesday.

Also, I do not understand how some people make a living as writers when they are obviously lazy, uncreative doofuses. I made a favorite recipe for dinner tonight, clipped out of a newspaper several years ago by my mama. The recipe is to die for, but the "article" was this gal's column about "how to make a favorite recipe more healthful!" And literally, she changed the Italian dressing to fat-free, and she changed the peanut-butter to reduced-fat, and she used low-sodium soy sauce. AND CALLED IT A COLUMN AND GOT PAID FOR IT. Give me a stinkin' break!!

And in the At Home section of the St Paul Pioneer Press, this Marcia or Martha Lyons does this "home makeover" thing that they publish almost every Saturday. I get sucked into reading it every week because it shows home floor plans that they change to make more updated and beautiful and user-friendly. But, like, seriously? Marcia apparently has an unlimited budget because they basically gut the entire joint every single week, adding on gigantic additions on every-which-side of every house. Um, yeah -- pretty sure I could also build a dream home out of a 1980s split-level, given $300,000 and no building constraints.

Joel made popcorn and dug a cream soda out of the basement for me, so I gots to go watch Iron Man! Toodles!

Halloween fun

Oh, did we ever have a great Halloween with the kids!

The night before All Hallows Eve, Ed was making worried faces and saying things like "I wake up, a be scary of pumpkins!" I think he was extra-stressed from spending his First Full Dry Day in Underpants (ROCK ON!). We managed to convince him that the pumpkins wouldn't hurt him. We carved pumpkins Thursday night -- Lucy drew her very own face, and I wielded the knife. No pix of that -- sorry.

Friday morning, I had my first rehearsal for Pirates! The Musical at Oakdale Elementary, so I hustled both kids through breakfast, into clothing (Lucy in a sheep costume, complete with black Mary Jane shoes she remembered to call "hooves" all day) and out the door and over to the Dalys' by 8:30 AM. As someone who typically doesn't roll out of bed until near 8 and can barely get herself contact-lensed and dressed by 10:00, I assure you this was quite an accomplishment.

Carol says the kids played marvellously together, hooray! and after a seriously delicious (maybe because I didn't have to cook it, though I maintain it was also Independently Delicious) taco lunch, we headed home for "quiet time" (WAY too excited for trick-or-treating to take naps). Joel's 'rents and Jean came over for our Second Annual Eat-Like-A-Pirate Halloween Turkey Drumstick Feast, during which Lucy made her final costume decision: fairy princess (whew!). Ed eschewed Spiderman/Superman and stuck with the lion costume he wore last year.

John and Donna and Joel and I took the kiddos outside where it was a balmy 50 degrees. We trucked up our block until we met up with the Daly and Mathews families, where much adorableness and kid-wrangling teamwork ensued.

Lucy and Josie immediately palled up... Will was less about the "trick-or-treat" and more about the "climbing-stairs!-and-sprinting-down-the-block!", Will and Eve had some adorable hand-holding moments, 3-month-old Keaton passed out, adorably, in his stroller, and Ed charmed the homeowners we visited by chirping things like "Trick or treat! Can I come in?" and "Merry Christmas!"

Everybody loves a sleeping dragon baby:

And I have to say, a grownup:kid ratio of 4:3 was about perfect for keeping a fairy princess, a black cat, a lion, a doggie, a bear, and a dragon in check. Now, one final pic of me repairing some damage one of the munchkins did. Blasted Republican toddlers.

Strangely enough, I am not even wearing a costume in this photo.

Cold and unmotivated

It looks so pretty outside today, the sky a lovely baby-blanket blue and the leaves still so gold. But I can't seem to drag the kids out when it's barely 40 degrees.
I need to rake the amassing glory of leaves on the lawn, but I doubt the kids will actually sleep deeply and long enough to let me get outside and do that.

It's chilly in here, since Lucy dropped an entire apple down a furnace vent that doesn't have a vent cover on it, and I'm afraid the whole house will smell of burnt apple if I let the furnace turn on. When it gets cold like this, nothing can warm me up except some physical activity -- but of course I'm way too chilly to tackle any ironing or cooking or cleaning. I mostly just want to tuck into the couch next to Lucy, where I know I will shiver until I decide to get up again.

The skinny on the hooey

Quick Saturday update:
It's a gorgeous fall day here in St Paul. Yesterday I dropped Eddie on his face onto the hardwood floor and gave him a goose egg between his eyebrows and he bit through his lip and got a bloody nose and I bet that's the last time he asks ME for a piggyback ride while he's carrying his Diego backpack plus his magic blanket.
After the face-smashing incident, we decided to skip Lucy's "Blast Off to Kindergarten" event at the Children's Museum and I hope my ECFE parent educator will be able to forgive me, again, for having to choose to stay with my own children rather than try to reach out to others'.

Once Joel got home and we established that Ed was neither concussed nor in a coma (as I was holding him while he was still sobbing, I started to cry too, and Eddie goes "Don't cry Mama! I'M sad!!!") Carol and I caught "Mamma Mia" at the Riverview $3 show instead. The popcorn was a little stale but the show was absolutely ridiculous in all the right ways. JUST what I needed. How much fun must it have been to make that movie!?! Singing and dancing always makes me weep with joy. Even though I totally missed the "Aphrodite's fountain" thinghy at the end; I just thought they were all going to fall off the cliff and die.

Nikki met us out afterward at the wine bar across the street. We had some MUCH-needed Girl Talk and some really lovely red wine and we stayed until they started mopping around our shoes. It was wonderful and I'd had no idea how much I needed a night like that.

This morning I took Lucy to Target to buy a couple gifts, and then we went up to the Maplewood Community Center for... Lucy's first audition! She tried out for Ashland's Christmas show. I am not at all certain she's ready to actually be IN the show -- fortunately they're very easygoing over there. She went onstage and sang "Line. Line. Circle, circle, square square square square, triangle triangle line." Right on key and nice and strong. I am incredibly proud of her. She didn't care to learn the dance portion of the audition (ah, sweet irony!) but she was SO BRAVE. She came home, ate a PBJ, took a 40-minute power nap, and dressed in her best gown with fairy wings just in time to be picked up and chauffeured to Annika's 5th birthday party.

Ed and Joel took the morning to hit Menards and pick up some much needed around-the-house-fixit stuff. Not sure what got into Joel, but he is in Project Mode and I am not complaining. I might go iron him some shirts to show my appreciation. Errr, maybe.

Tonight we're headed to Jon Englert's baby shower (now there's a phrase I never thought I'd type) -- do you think a party starting at 4pm on a Saturday will be serving dinner? I'm kinda hoping so.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills

A couple steps back in Ed's toilet-training: I'm mostly writing this so when I go to look back to see what toilet-training him was like, I don't say, WOW! What a snap!

So the problem is that neither his ECFE teachers, bless their hearts, nor the Maplewood Community Center "teachers" (more like tree stumps, if you ask me) know Ed's toileting signals, nor do they have the time or inclination to help get him to the bathroom, undo his pants and diaper, sit him down and make sure his junk is pointing the correct direction, and then help him back into his diaper and pants.

So when I go to retrieve him from either place, he is invariably wet and totally over going on the toilet for the day. Alas.

Joel's mom insists on calling a wallet a "billfold." I don't know why but it's super cute.

Joel went to a lunch-seminar at his work given by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, about protecting the kids' sleep. So we've been working toward a 7:30 bedtime, rather than the technically-8:00-but-usually-more-like-8:30-oh-what-the-heck-9:30-and-they're-not-asleep-until-10 thing we haven been sliding into.

We had one night of awesome success: kids were in at 7:30 without a peep. Then the last 2 nights have been kinda murder, with Lucy ready to go down but Ed squawking for an hour or more later.

Hmmm... 15 minutes and it's still quiet. Could it be?

There's too many kids in this tub.

So Lu and Ed have this little comedy routine they do. I'm serious. Joel says the whole thing is mocking me... but the way it comes out makes it sound like maybe it's from a movie? I have no idea. But they BOTH say it, over and over again, all the time. It's probably a dialogue but they each say the whole thing, often all in one breath:

"Mama mama mama. What? I'm making dinner. I want... OK get that. Here you go. Poof! Haha That's from Ice Age."

Now just in the last day or so Lucy has started to insist that this be tagged onto the end: "Honey it's dinnertime."


Ed has a toddler-crush on Lily, who's about 8 months older than Lucy. When we go pick up Lucy from a playdate at Lily's, Ed always wants to come inside. However, he often disappears into their home and I can't drag him and Lu out of there for an extra 1/2 hour. Which I wouldn't mind, but I fear the Hobdays are, like, "GET THESE GRONAUS OUT OF HERE." Anyway. Twice when we went ot pick up Lucy, we stayed for a bit and had some soup. So now Ed is obsessed with Lily's house and soup. Even though he detests soup at home.

"We go inna Lily's house?" he says.

"Well, I'M going to go in; you're going to stay here in the car."

"But they have-a soup."

Also Ed was admiring one of his creations in the toilet just now, and he said "It's FLOATING! Like a FISH!"

It's a miserable rainy day here -- but Jean is joining us tonight to watch the opening game of the World Series. So that ought to be fun! OK gots to start cooking up some dinner.

Tuesday afternoon

So I totally scheduled out my entire afternoon to give me just the right amount of time to clean up the kitchen, put away laundry, and figure out how to set my oven to cook some baked potatoes while I'm at rehearsal, because I think it can be programmed to do it that way...

And instead I decided to write a little update.

Life is grand. I can't get over these gorgeous fall days... even though I feel terribly guilty for not getting outside and enjoying them. Dear gorgeous fall days: I promise to enjoy you when the kids are in school, in like three years.

I actually put Halloween decorations in front of the house. AND we have a lovely little crop of smallish pumpkins that I've been able to kind of scatter about the yard, to autumnal effect. Halloween is not exactly my favorite holiday, but three years ago I acquired a big box of decorations at the same garage sale where I picked up my double stroller. I wasn't even going to drive by the garage sale; I'd just picked up Lucy from day care and I was TIRED. But I did, and as I drove by I saw the mother lode: a double stroller. For $20. This being an exceptionally good deal for a double-stroller, I felt somewhat obliged to buy more stuff. So I picked up a shelving unit and a giant box of Halloween decorations/costumes for an extra $20. So this is how I wind up with some random werewolves and ghoulie-things on my front steps.

Where was I?

OK, so big news: Ed is using the toilet. He had a horrid, blistery diaper rash a couple weeks ago, so I let him run around bare-bottomed to try to dry the sucker out. In my fear of pee on wool rugs and hardwood floors and silk throw-pillows (I know what you're thinking: "You own silk throw pillows? You are a moron"), I was real good about ushering him to the bathroom with some regularity. Well guess what? NO ACCIDENTS. I even heard his trademark barefoot-pitter-patter running into the bathroom once, and he totally went ALL ON HIS OWN. Hallelujah! So now I try to keep him bare-butt all the time at home and so far no spills or stray nuggets. I took him out on the town, diapered, yesterday and he was dry all day. And this morning when he woke up, his diaper was only slightly damp. So I am really hoping we're rounding a very happy corner here. The kinda-really-nice thing about cloth diapers is that when they're wet, they feel WET. And also, I don't have to stress about getting stuck with a giant box of unused diapers/pull-ups when he decides it's time for real undies. The bummer about cloth diapers is that when we're only going through one or two diapers a day, the stinky dipes can sit for up to a week or more between washings. And they get reeeeeeaaaaaal stinky.

Ed is also getting into narrating little stories. He talks about cereal and eating it with strawberries and raisins in the bowl, and he talks about being a mouse and climbing the stairs and Lucifer the cat getting banged in the nose by a door (OK that one's straight from Cinderella). I love hearing his little voice just ramble on and on.

Lucy's also developing her very own theory of mind, which probably means nothing to most of you -- basically she is getting to the developmental stage where she realizes that other people can think different thoughts from her. And she can see how her actions can change others' feelings. She's been an angel about sharing her treats with Ed or with other littler kids when they run out and she still has some. The other day we were driving in the car and the kids were watching a movie. Ed's screen stopped working, and I couldn't see but I could tell something was amiss because this kids were whining. So I asked Lucy if Ed's screen was broken. I expected her to say "Yes, it's not working" but instead she said "I can't see anything." Joel thought this was super-mundane but I thought it was fascinating that she didn't just say "it's broken" but rather relayed her own experience which was that she, personally, couldn't see anything on the screen. OK maybe I'm an idiot.

I thought I had one more thing to report but... it's gone. Hasta luego...

Rainy days and Mondays...

Just a quick update to let you know that Ed fell asleep on the toilet this afternoon. I was sitting on the edge of the tub and he put his head between my knees, as he likes to when he poops, and the next thing you know he was completely passed out.

Also we had a wonderful visit from Gma and Gpa Books and now it's waaaay too quiet in the house. And it's rainy and gloomy and I guess I'd better wake up Eddo and pick up Lulu from ECFE. Toodle-oo!