There’s a celebrity across the street putting up porch railings.  Perhaps a close relative? Cousin?

At least we know who Joaquin stole his new look from.

3 Comments

…there’s a warning somewhere on this thing that says “Not for use by children” and perhaps a “Use with care” notice. Maybe Black and Decker should have issued a special attention notice  for our family: “Dustbuster not intended as a substitute for bathing.  Please refrain from vacuuming child after meals and allowing child to vacuum his own hair while unattended.”

For those of you who, instead of laughing, are thinking to yourselves, hmmm maybe I should let my kid try that, I leave you with this.  He entertained himself for a full 12 blissful minutes.  I’m unsure of whether an extended life battery can be purchased, but I can look into it for you.

2 Comments

I cleaned up a small mess before taking this picture.

2 Comments

Who’s up for a good mystery?  Any guesses what in the world we are up to this week?

1 Comment

Last night we went over to Scott’s nephew and his wife’s house to help them put together a beautiful baby crib.  In just forty-five days, we’ll have a new family member.  They are on the brink of parenthood.  I stood there in the kitchen watching my four year old on the floor drinking milk proudly from a cup with no lid, a feat we are currently practicing.  Wasn’t that cup a bottle just a few shorts weeks ago?  Wasn’t I naively standing on the brink of parenthood just a few months before?

There was so much I wanted to tell them.

I wanted to say, you will have to relearn how to do everything. From one handed laundry to eating cold dinner because you had to change a diaper or feed a little one, not to mention trying to squeeze in a shower every few days.  You’ll forget to eat in those first days and weeks because you are in such awe that you made this little being and gave him life.  Watching him sleep is more peaceful than a massage.  Hearing him coo is more entertaining than the TV.   You’ll cry when he gets shots.  You’ll hold your breath when he takes his first steps.  You’ll get mad at him. You’ll get mad at each other.  You’ll make mistakes.  Everyone does.  But you’ll love him more completely than anyone else on this Earth has ever loved any one person.   And you will look at your parents in a different way, because you know now, they love you that much.

But I just smiled as I watched Caleb drinking his milk and listened to the last few notes of the crib mobile  drifting down the hall, barely audible in the kitchen. I simply said, “Don’t blink.  Because it goes by really fast.”

4 Comments

Tsk tsk.  My poor neglected blog.  You know it has been too long when you have to log into wordpress to access your blog’s dashboard.  It doesn’t “remember” who you are (your saved login info).  And your husband asks, “When are you going to blog again?”  Two days ago.

So, a little criteria for reading this:

  • If you are a dentist, DON’T
  • If you value your teeth, DON’T
  • If you like to remain cavity free, DON’T
  • If you prefer to avoid sugar induced comas, DON’T
  • If you are on a diet, lord knows, DON’T
  • If you’ve read all this and still just don’t care, proceed with caution, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Gather your ingredients: honey, cinnamon, butter (duh, you pretty much got that from the title), and powdered sugar.  Y’all stop looking at Civil War era mixer.  She’s a beauty, isn’t she?

I’ve experimented a bit with the recipe, as the honey taste was a bit strong in the first recipe.  I used a scant half cup of honey, 2.5 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1 cup of sugar and two sticks of butter.  Just dump and mix.  No special instructions.  The butter will have a nice, soft (spreadable!) whipped consistency when you’re done.

That’s all, after that, just enjoy the rush.  Warning: you may receive unreasonable demands and/or threats that you make more immediately, when supplies are approximately half depleted.

2 Comments

This is Caleb’s girl friend from across the street.  She and her brothers come over to play a lot.  If she got any cuter, I might just keep her here for myself!  She was sure to tell me Happy Mother’s Day!

They had so much fun playing in the car today.  Pretending to be grown ups driving to the gas station and listening to tunes on the radio.  Caleb asked if he could give her a kiss!  “Noooo!” she squealed!

He did give her a weed flower, eskimo kisses and butterfly kisses before asking if he could plant a wet one on her cheek!

I seriously want to offer her parents a free photography session to have an excuse to take pictures of her.  She is so delicate and girly, I feel like she should be wearing a set of wings.  She said the bugs kept biting her earlier and I told her it was because she was so sweet.  She said, “Yeah I think so too.  *Sigh.  Raises eyebrows* Not everybody else does though.”

3 Comments

“All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

“Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

“What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations –what they taught me, was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

“When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself.

“Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane?

“Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

“Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, ‘Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame.’ The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?”. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

“But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

“I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

“Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

“The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.”

~ Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist

Leave a Comment

2 Comments

…this morning?

(No I didn’t butcher the front, it is just the way it is laying while still wet, I’ve now had two years practice!)

A wee bit shaggy a few days ago…

I can always tell it is time for a haircut when the back looks like this every time he lays down… and also, we misplaced his ears.

Of course, it has been worse in the past…

I see nothing funny here.

4 Comments

Next Page »