facebook snippets

Infrequently, I post a conversation with the kids or random blurb on facebook.  Sometimes, I share it over here, but might have missed a few.  I'm going to do a little copy/pasting, in an effort to spare my parents having to join facebook to get these updates!

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Oct 6:
We have a neighbor whose cat sleeps on their windowsill.  I didn't realize the impact this exposure to cats was having on Clement, until a conversation on our walk this morning.

C (pointing):  CAT!!
Me:  Yep.  What does the cat say?
C (silent)
Me: Does the cat say "woof"?
C:  Nooooo, doggy.
Me:  That's right.  Doggies say woof.  Does the cat say "moooooo"?
C:  NOOOOO.
Me:  Cows say "moo" -- What does the cat say?
C:  Cats nap.
Me:  Ha.  Do cats say "meow"?
C (insisting):  Cats NAP.

He does make a good point. 

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Oct 2:  
Note to anyone driving a red car: My son seems to have decided your vehicle belongs to Elmo. There may or may not be a small temper tantrum upon informing him he's wrong. I just thought I should prepare y'all for this situation.

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Sept 25:
I have decided that it would be GREAT if our bodies could somehow know ahead of time whether or not they could survive a certain acute illness. That way, say a bout of food poisoning hits: you either die right away, before experiencing the hell OR you can at least comfort yourself 5 hours into the ceaseless, overwhelming, grueling agony with the knowledge that you WILL survive. 
It is really the uncertainty combined with the anguish that is just too much to bear.
Mortality's a beast.

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Sept 12:
Josephine just completed her third week of kindergarten. Tonight at dinner, she informed me she's ready for first grade. (and was highly insulted when I burst out laughing.)

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Aug 14:
Well we made it 5.25 years without anybody getting anything lodged in their noses. That's not too bad.

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July 21:
Want to throw an interesting wrench into the sibling dynamics around your house? Give to the younger child a toy (like Legos) which they cannot do, but which fascinates and obsesses the older child, who is then required by property rights law to repeatedly relinquish the toy to the child to whom it technically belongs. They must continue to get along in order for the younger to share and the older to enable the playing, and so the undercurrent of tension is smothered in forced kindness. 
Pour some coffee, sit back, watch, ponder the human condition...

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July 17:
... that moment when thunder cracks SO loud, SO close that you immediately stop everything you're doing to recount any sins and evaluate whether God has it out for you...

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July 11: 
Dilemma: a dozen balls of cookie dough don't FIT on my cookie sheet. 
Only one solution made sense.
Don't worry, I handled the problem.

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June 20: 
Rats. Josephine has caught onto the fact that I never adjusted the clock by her bed when the time changed last spring. Just heard her explaining to Clement what time it ACTUALLY is.
There goes my extra hour...

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May 20:
Me: "No, Clement, don't put broccoli in your water."
Clement: "Juice!"

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May 14:
The irony of trying to pull out my grey hairs is that in order to hunt and pluck, I have to scrunch my face in such a way that all my forehead creases become dramatically exacerbated. Which means I step back from the mirror looking far older than I did 5 minutes prior when I got all worked up about the greyness in the first place. 
Conclusion: It's a TRAP. And I give up.

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April 11:
Pretty sure I've broken my finger trying to do taxes. This is what happens when you open last year's accordion file, are greeted with an enormous roach, which promptly runs under your bed, and after 20 minutes of high-strung vacuuming and reorganizing of under-bed storage, you finally discover the beast, only to have your shoe collapse under your hand as you smash it down, resulting in a full force jam on a tile floor. Finger = curse-worthy pain. Floor = clean. Roach = extremely dead. Taxes = no progress whatsoever. But that's quite enough for tonight.

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Jan 28:

Josephine's birthday is in April.  She has been hounding me for details about her special day since Christmas ended.  Because of a recent lull on this front, I *thought* my emphasis on being present in the moment had gotten through to her, and that she was letting go of worrying about things that are two months out.  Turns out she just moved on.  This morning she blindsided me with lengthy and intricate plans for our Halloween costumes.  Coffee, anyone?

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... And that puts us back to the start of 2014, so that'll do!

[speaking of Halloween costumes... guess what she was talking about on our walk to school this morning?  Yep.  Mommy better get some kind of plan in action...]

September

Forgive the silence!  I'll try to put up a few posts with some pics from September...

A little "Clement-heavy" since Josephine has been in school.  She's doing GREAT in Kindergarten.  Her teacher says she's very sweet and helpful, kind to the other kids.

Clement obliging Josephine's "hilarious" request that he put the hat on his head and take a picture.
Note: Elmo shirt.  It's a big deal around here.

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A play date with Wyatt (Zanna's younger brother) who is about two months older than Clement.  They're INCREDIBLY sweet together.  Pretty sure they have older, alpha sisters who have taught them the fine art of "turns" and "sharing".  ;)  These two were great at cooperating and giggling together.

Adorable.

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With Josephine getting worn out at school, there's been some hard napping around these parts. 

The zombified, we-just-woke-up-and-want-to-stare-at-each-other moment.

what she created before passing out...

perfectly good bed over there.  Why all the sleeping on the floor???

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He decided to get brave and step off the scale unassisted.  He practiced it a lot.  I took a video.

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playing in the front one morning after taking Josephine to school. 

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Clarence.

Begonia.  Cute as ever.

wherein Begonia completely ignores Clement's attempts to direct her to the tennis ball he tried to toss her

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dinner at Sean's apartment... (there's that Elmo shirt AGAIN)

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Reading.  He's very studious!  Well, maybe not "very" ... but I'd say there's at least one spell a day where he really dives into the books.  A video here...

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On the way back from the baby shower... a rest stop... get your wiggles out.

my own adventures...

I went with Josephine to cash in a gift certificate from last Christmas to a place called iFly.  Sky-diving indoors, basically.  No jumping out of perfectly good planes and risking death.  Good idea.

Josephine and I were both really pumped watching folks go ahead of us, but she HATED it when she actually got in the wind tunnel.  It IS loud, despite the earplugs they give you, and she didn't like feeling the air rushing up her nose; she felt like she couldn't breathe.

So it wasn't much up her alley, and I ended up using her time.  Naturally, I LOVED it.  There's a video here.

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I also flew, airplane-style, out to California to see Mychel for a long weekend, driving with her from her conference in San Francisco down to where she lives in Orange County.  It was a really fantastic trip-- great to catch up.

Virgin Airlines:  In case you wanted your aircraft to feel more like a nightclub.
I know I always have.  
The fog machines upon entry were especially effective.
Will be sure to wear my stiletto, thigh-high, black leather boots next time.

Arepas!! 

Muir Woods

the hostel we stayed at, just north of San Francisco, before starting the drive

Stopped at my beloved monastery for a couple hours!!  

spot the wannabe contemplative hermit

elephant seals

The second night, an AirBNB place.  Worked out well.

A tree in San Luis Obispo was tagged with a "Hug Me" knit.
So I did.  I hugged ME.
Nerd.

Now, that's what I call BREAKFAST.

swam.  cold.  in case you were wondering.

a very good send-off!

Really couldn't have asked for a better weekend trip!!  Majorly wonderful.

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The same weekend as Darla's baby shower, it turned out that the vicar of the last remaining Anglican Church in Iraq was speaking in Plano (just north of Dallas).  Went to see him.

The Rev. Canon Andrew White

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Otherwise, it's just been house projects mainly.  Jason (and other, quieter guests) will be happy to hear that, amongst other achievements, I finally got the upstairs faucet handles switched so they now turn the proper directions.  :)