Marmot Mamma

Love Bites

2011-02-13T20:40:00.001-08:00

So I say to my daughters, "Come see these ideas I've found for making Valentines for this year," as I gather them around the computer. They hem and they haw. They wander off. A couple of days later I ask E if she has decided which kind of Valentine she wants to make. "Well, Mommy, I'd like to do something you didn't find on the computer. I want to do something different." (A girl after my own heart.) She thinks for a while and suddenly, in a grand moment of inspiration says, "That's it!" And what, dear readers, is "it"?

COBRAS!!

Yes, my sweet daughter is giving out venomous snakes for Valentines. I think they're brilliant.

Marmot Dad likes it when they all face the same way.

Are you feeling the love?

The only problem is that they are fragile--real fragile. We've spent a lot of time gluing tails back together (and someone, who shall remain nameless, blamed me when he glued his own stubby fingers together with the glue).

Those rotten second graders had better appreciate them.

Animal Shelter

2011-02-10T11:08:00.001-08:00

The kids have been playing Animal Shelter for quite a while, commandeering the "formal" front room for their shelter. I woke up the other morning and discovered some rules posted at the entrance.

1. Don't do anything to hurt the animals.

2. No jumping.

3. Take off your shoes.

4. No yelling.

5. (my personal favorite) No pocket knifes, smoking, or guns.

6. Only 8 people at a time.

7. No people that are sick.

8. No littering (no staples)

9. No touching the animals.

10. No making caves out of chairs.

11. No playing on chairs.

12. No taking animals out of bed.

13. No fighting

14. No turning off lights at play time (unless the teachers help).

15. No hard balls.

With so many rules, you wouldn't think that the front room would look like this:

But it does. Sigh.

In Which We Improve Our Lot in Life

2011-02-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

OK, let's be honest. We live in squalor. At least a quarter of us are unclad at any given time (in case you are unduly worried, let me assure you this is the exclusive territory of the under-five-feet-tall faction). Food is hiding here and there about our house--old, dried out food. Our kitchen utensils are used to dig holes in the back yard and carry the dirt about. And our furniture can best be described as Early-to-Late Thrift Store.

I bring to wit one dining table, made of metal, plastic, and plasticky faux wood stuff:

Pay no attention to that large spot of something on the kitchen floor.

Plastic meets metal:
The chairs are even worse. Let's not talk about their comfort defects but just focus on the aesthetic flaws for the moment. The color. The faux-wood-plastic-backs. The bendy metal frames.
And since they are, I imagine, circa 1952, their mustard-yellow-and-yucky-green-seats are coming apart. Not to mention that there are only four of them (we're now down to three since one was destroyed by the natives a year or so ago) and six of us.
Let's just revisit the table and picture it with the yellow chairs.
Now, hold on to your hats. WE BOUGHT A NEW TABLE AND CHAIRS. MATCHING!!! SIX CHAIRS! NOTHING WOBBLES!

Before you get too excited, let me assure you that this one is also MDF covered with a faux-wood veneer, but it's at least a more lifelike veneer. And the chairs (all except one) are in good repair. And it's probably more like vintage 1970s instead of 1950s. So we're moving up in the world.

This "new" one is also a little beaten up--but people like us would be foolhardy to purchase anything new.
Enter in the new era of civilized living.

Dear Reader

2010-12-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,

Don't give me a hard time about not blogging . . . I've been very VERY busy! I have a life, you know. A life that recently included the creation of four (FOUR!) dolls and two plush chickens--that lay eggs. But here's a story that must be told, all about M.

M started reading The Pepins and their Problems a couple of nights ago. I was lying down reading with both girls. M starts huffing and puffing.

M: "This author keeps saying 'Dear Reader' like she's talking to me."

Me: "You don't like that?"

M: "No."

A few pages later, she flings the book down.

Me: "You're not going to read any more?"

M: "No! The author just kept talking to me and wouldn't get on with her story!"

The nerve.

Culture Clash

2010-04-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

E, talking to neighbor child: We were hoping to see some avocets on our family bird walk this week.

Neighbor child (clearly a Philistine): Huh? Did you say Avatar?

Fly Away Home

2010-04-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

Imagine if you will:

You look out the back door of your house to check on your four lovely children. You see, to your amusement/dismay, four crawling forms, bottoms to you, two of those bottoms stark naked, crawling away from you into the neighbors' yard, stalking the elusive Mallard Ducks that have taken (contrary to their own best interests) to visiting our neighborhood in the morning and evening. This is what Marmot Dad saw tonight while I was busy putting sheets on our bed. I'm devastated that I didn't get to see it myself.

But it points to a larger trend/mania in our home: BIRDS. The kids are smitten with birds and birdwatching. I bring to wit two birdwatching notebooks, produced by M and E, entirely on their own and without any parental prodding or suggestion.

Here's E's Bird Notebook:

peacocks:

swallows:

black wing (she means red-winged blackbird):

Canada geese:

woodpecker:
yellow head (blackbird):

ducks:

kestral:

ospray [sic]:
killdeer:

ducks redux:

And M's notebook:

titled "A nonficten Book about ducks"

Where Have All the Mompers Gone?

2010-02-24T21:20:00.001-08:00

M has been at it again. She's launched full-tilt into a new publishing project (drum roll please):

Ta-dah! May I present The End of the Dinosaurs

(Note the open spaces on the dead dinosaur where you can see flesh [decaying] and bones.)

How did the dinosaurs die?

(I love how this dinosaur [inside a thought bubble, no less] is innocently eating a plant, completely unaware of the asteroid [clearly labeled for your convenience] hurtling toward him.)

I do not no. Maybe all the pla . . .

nts died because a asteroid or meteor fell and steam filled the sky for a long time. and . . .

(Note that now our greedy dinosaur looks around, aware at last that something is not right. If you don't know where the meteor might fall, follow the dotted line.)

all the plant-eating dinosaurs died because the plants died and if the plant-eating . . .

(Once again, a fabulous cut-away of what a dead and decaying dinosaur's insides look like.)

dinosaurs died the meat-eating dinosaurs would not have any food and then they would die. And then there would be no dinosaurs!

See our other great titles in this series!

M thought all of this up herself, and as I recall she only asked me to spell "asteroid," "meteor," and "because." She kills me.

Now E is clever in a somewhat different way. Marmot Dad took the girls to school a few days ago. On the way there, E was telling M that a sticker or book or something that M had was stupid. In one of those desperate parenting moments, Marmot Dad said, "E, tell me something that you really like so I can tell you that it's stupid."

Quick as a wink, E answered, "Well, the only thing I really really like is M, and you can't call her stupid!"

E - 1

Marmot Dad - 0

Mompers

2010-01-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

It's open! Oh at last! It's open! Let's go!

"Where to?" you might well ask. Let's go to . . .

Yep, the girls have been at it again. We had two opening celebrations this week (complete with refreshments) for the two newly opened Dinosaur Museums, one in each non-parental bedroom (we have a fairly fluid assignment of sleeping spaces, so no one really has an assigned room). When they found out I had purchased 5000 sheets of paper at Costco, they lost no time in trying to burn through the supply.

Which bring us to this: the Wooly Mammoth Wall (these are known as "mompers" [monsters] by this little guy)
Here's a sample of the artwork:

Everything's carefully labeled in case you aren't sure what's what:
(Those little triangular things are the plates of a stegasaurus)

We have a few (ahem) non-traditional dinosaurs:

Another wall:

I'd call this the main gallery:
One of my personal favorites, the singing dinosaurs:

The toothpicks are prizes awarded for excellence in drawing. (Note the fish-catching going on, and the little waves splashing up.)

A colorful fellow:

Momper of the Deep:

Wet Momper:

Flying Momper:

T-Rex and child:

And of course no museum is complete without a museum shop. This one sells bracelets fashioned out of pipe cleaners in various sizes:

Pennies go here:

Come visit soon!

His Eye is on the Sparrow (or Junco)

2010-01-06T20:38:00.001-08:00

E came to me in a dither yesterday after playing outside for a little while to report that she thought she had found a dead bird. She had indeed. It was most certainly dead. Thoroughly dead. A little Junco from the back yard. Her mind immediately went to the Cedar Waxwing we found on campus last year that apparently was part of a mass kill-off, probably from ingesting ice-melt. So she posited that it had eaten "poison" from a neighbor's yard (neighbors who are notorious for spraying and sprinkling noxious substances on their lawns, sometimes with a down-wind effect on our yard/family/flowers).

Here's the (late) bird:

We wondered briefly what to do with it. They knew not to play with it, since I had told them the story of my bringing home a dead bird as a child and being scolded for bringing a yucky, dead, stiff, no doubt pestilential bird into the house. We decided to bury it in the garden (the circle of life and all that). They wanted to use a push broom. I opted for a spade.

Then the girls wanted to memorialize the poor bird:

Then M's sign got more specific:
The final product:
Tooie decided today he wanted to dig the bird up and "just take a look at it." Fortunately, I distracted him.

Oops.

2010-01-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

The phone rang this morning. M brought it to me, and the voice on the other end said, "Is this Dr. So-and-so?"

"Why yes it is," I answered, not without some pleasure in finally, finally, getting my due.

Let's back up just a moment. I am not actually a Dr., but I am only about four chapters of a dissertation shy of being one. (OK, so that's pretty far shy of it, but I could have finished, barring a husband and some children, right? Oh yeah, and some serious writer's block and perhaps a dearth of original ideas.) Anyway, I am at least a bona fide professor, and really, that should count for something.

When I first started my university career, being (a) female and (b) someone who looks young for her age (sometimes by as much as ten years), my students felt they were justified in calling me by my first name . . . which they most assuredly were not (perhaps I don't deserve any respect, considering that dangling modifier I just bunged in there). But even though 32 was old enough to teach, it was not old enough to call them to repentance. There were other problems as well, but let's not dwell on the negative, shall we? Suffice it to say that I've been waiting for years (almost ten, to be exact) to get some respect, in and out of the classroom.

So is it not excusable to react with a blush of pleasure when someone calls me "Dr." of her own accord?

But my joy was short-lived. The woman on the line started talking hospital this and on-call that. I should have known that on New Year's Day, no one would have a literary emergency. I told her that unfortunately I was not that kind of doctor. "Oh," she asked, "are you a nurse practitioner?" I hated to disappoint her, but no, I am not. "I am a professor," I said.

I didn't tell her I'm not even a real doctor of anything. Sic transit gloria big-head.

Nessie

2009-12-29T19:20:00.001-08:00

The children have been looking at a book from the library about Scotland (because of their evil Aunt's impending move there), and wouldn't you know--they are all fascinated, absolutely fascinated by . . . the Loch Ness Monster. M has drawn all kinds of pictures (and then hidden them, apparently, because I can't find them now) and has spent most of the day on the couch staring at a fuzzy picture purported to be said monster. E keeps coming up with explanations: "I bet someone carved a big log to look like the Loch Ness Monster and put it out there. Do you think maybe it was a rock? When was the last time anyone saw it?" And Tooie vacillates between longing and loathing: "Do you think the 'cotland Monster has TEEF?" "Do 'cotland Monsters EAT people?" "I think when we go to 'cotland the 'cotland Monster will say [funny voice here] 'oh, I think I will go up and visit Tooie and his family.' "

Everyone wants Aunt to be on the look out for the Loch Ness/'cotland Monster when she gets to Scotland. And then, when she locates it, they want to come and visit it themselves. Tooie's last words before he went to sleep tonight went something like this:

"Will the monster stay up and visit us if we are nice to it?"

Mom (distractedly): "um hmm, probably"

Tooie (with lots of spit): "Then I will be EXtra nice to it when I see it."

Tomorrow M is preparing a letter to send to Aunt with a picture of the monster and the instructions, "Look for this monster in the ocean when you are going to Scotland." Marmot Dad is trying to quash their belief in the beast, but I say if Leonard Nimoy suggested that it was real, well, I'm a true believer.

The Old Christmas Spirit

2009-12-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

I was lying down with the girls tonight when I heard a knock on the door. I got up, peeked out the front window, and saw my neighbor's daughter, so I opened the door . . . only to discover that said daughter was proffering . . . a roll of toilet paper. Somewhat stunned, I took it, thanked her, waved to her mother in the car (who hollered out "Merry Christmas!"), and closed the door. There was a little note attached: "Money is scarce and times are hard, so we're giving you this instead of a card." There was more, but I can't bring myself to write it down. I was just given a festive Christmas roll of toilet paper.

Now I know that civilization is on the very verge of collapse.

In other Christmas news, Marmot Dad has been engaging in his favorite holiday pastime, Elf-Like Behavior (ELB). On his latest round, he came home to tell me some of what he had picked up here and there, whereupon I told him what he should have picked up, and where. So he has renamed his ELB "Elf-Like Blunders."

(Note: in all fairness, Marmot Dad's Elf-Like Behavior is generally of the highest quality--he has a knack for stocking stuffers, particularly for little girls, that borders on the amazing.)

Overheard

2009-11-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

E goes to ballet classes once a week. This is a nice little ballet studio, run by the woman I took ballet from at the university twenty-some years ago (and she is also E's teacher). I like it because it is low-key, and there is none of the hoochie-koochie dancing that is so popular for young girls in these parts.

There are things, however, that I am not fond of. And I'm not talking just about trying to control the other three kids while E is dancing, although that is a sore trial in my life. I'm talking about Other Mothers.

One mother in particular feels the need to share wildly inappropriate information with me about how her children were planned or not planned and what medications she was taking when they were conceived and on and on and on. I try to smile and nod and mostly plan my next vacation to the Bahamas while she talks to me.

Last week, though, I heard some great stuff from another mother. Her three-year-old daughter was misbehaving, and the mother was trying to get her to stop. This is what she said: "Do you want to lose ten Good-Girl Points? Because if you don't stop, you'll lose ten Good-Girl Points. I'll just take away ten Good-Girl Points."

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this concept. Except I want to award Bad-Girl Points. To my sister. And when she gets enough, she will have to give me a present. Brilliant.

In other news, the Marmot Babe is the messiest eater we've ever had. EVER. I find food all over the place, on him, his booster seat, the table, the floor, the walls, you name it. On me. Now here's the irony. When he comes in in the morning for breakfast, he looks at his booster seat, which sometimes his overburdened mama has not thoroughly cleaned out the night before. He starts muttering "towel, towel, towel" to himself while he waddles off, looking for all the world like a beaver on its hind legs, to pull a towel out of the drawer, bring it to his seat, and start cleaning it off (in the process getting food all over the floor again, but no matter). Yeah, now he suddenly turns into a neat freak.

In Which I Cease Being a Homeschooler

2009-11-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

M is going back to kindergarten! Not at her regular school, though. We came upon an opening at the university lab school where E went. We hope they can keep up with her. She starts Monday, which is about the time my life ends and I have to start hustling across town every day (at least it's a small town).

In the meanwhile, she has been prolific in her literary pursuits. This might be my favorite story yet. May I present

The Dragon With No Wings!

The Dragon With No Wings! A Once Upon a Time Book.

Once upon a time a princess had a dragon for a pet. It had no wings. Have you ever seen a dragon with no wings and no ears? The dragon had spots on him like leopards have spots on them. The dragon's friend had wings but he did not!

The dragon tried to fly but he could not fly.

(picture of dragon falling through clouds--note dotted line indicating falling)

The dragon tried and tried and tried to fly. Again and again and again. But he never could fly. "Oh," he said, "I will never never fly," he said.

(picture of dejected dragon with sad flames)

One day he woke up. He tried to fly again. He could, he could, he could!!! He was so happy he showed all of his friends. "I am so happy I can fly that I came to show you!" said the dragon.

"Oh oh oh I am so happy I can fly now. Oh I can fly fly fly now. Fly fly fly fly fly," he said. "La la la la I can fly now. Fly fly fly. I can fly. I can fly now. Oh oh oh. Hooray hooray hooray!!"

I can fly. Fly fly fly. Now I can fly.

"Yes yes yes I can fly now. Hooray, now I can fly. Hooray hooray hooray. I can fly now. Now now now I can FLY!!!!! Hooray hooray hooray I can fly now!!!" he said.

The End.

Melville, Steinbeck, Hemingway--they got nothin' on this kid. Next, the great American novel by M.

But wait--she does poetry too (she had me and Marmot Dad write some words--I did mine while holding a flailing toddler, which might qualify this as performance art).

There is a place called England where people do their fiction.

Frankly, this is on a par with or superior to most of what passes for poetry in The New Yorker.

In Which I Become a Homeschooler

2009-10-21T20:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am a homeschooler. I've always been open to the idea, but I never actually thought it would happen. But our little M hated kindergarten after just a few days (actually after just a few minutes, but that's another story . . .). I'm not sure why, exactly. She's given me several (spurious) reasons. For example, "I don't like playing on the little playground." "I wanted to put my fingers in my nose sometimes when it itched, but it was against the rules." "There were some people I didn't like in class." "I missed you, Mommy." (That one I believe.)

For my part, I was not impressed by what she was doing in class, so I told her she could stay home another year and do kindergarten at home. Which she readily did.

This is how homeschooling M works. She gets up in the morning and says, "I think I'll do XY and Z today," and then she proceeds to do so. Sometimes I give her a suggestion, like, "Why don't you make a Writers' Workshop book like E did in kindergarten," and then she spends the rest of the day doing it, with verve, panache, and all those other French attitudes.

Now, just take a look at today's (self-imposed) task, and understand with me why the public school couldn't keep up with her RPMs:

Oh, to be Three Again

2009-10-05T20:40:00.001-07:00

Tooie turned three last week. His GrandMarmot sent him two dollars via the USPS. There was much rejoicing all around. He carried his two dollars around with him everywhere for a couple of days, set them down along with his birthday card next to him on the sidewalk, and patted them every now and then. He refused to let me put them in his pocket because he wanted to be holding them whenever possible.

Today we finally went out to spend his money, after a nasty round of the stomach flu for everyone. Before we left he was very worried because he didn't have any "round money" for an ice cream cone. So M traded him a dollar in change for one of the paper dollars, which she likes better, anyway. And off we went. We had a few stops to make before we finally made it to the thrift store. He found a little Fisher-Price airplane (not quite like the one I got him for his birthday, but good enough, and only 1/10th of the price I paid, even though mine was second-hand, too) for $1.50 and paid for it proudly. (He and M played dueling airplanes all afternoon.)

Then I had mentioned going to the grocery store for a $.50 ice cream cone afterwards, but, heaven help me, I had been running errands for three solid hours with three little kids, and I just couldn't do it. So, as he cried, I promised him that Daddy would take him on a special trip tonight to get his ice cream cone. Heh heh heh. Sorry, Papa. What I didn't know was that Daddy would have to stay at work until 6:30, after having arrived there around 6:30 a.m. But I couldn't postpone the poor child's joy any longer.

So after dinner we popped him into his pajamas and sent him on his way to get his ice cream. Marmot Dad reports that as Tooie was slowly falling asleep in the grocery store, and as his ice cream cone, paid for with his very own (round) money, kept dipping towards the floor, he announced, "Daddy, this . . . this . . . this . . . this was . . . this was . . . this was . . . a good day."

Thank you, GrandMarmot!

The Terrible Twos

2009-09-26T21:17:00.001-07:00

Today was Tooie's last day as a two-year-old boy. He's been doing a happy birthday dance every now and then, and then around about 1:30 this afternoon I guess he had to cut loose and act like a real two-year-old. While I was trying to do dishes and hold a baby, he was quietly standing on a stool in the bathroom playing with his sister's lipstick. With, depending on your perspective, horrible or glorious results.

Well, if he's going to be an imp, I'm at least glad he's an adorable imp. And maybe tomorrow, when he's three, the hijinks will be over.

A Haircut for a Marmot Babe

2009-09-22T21:42:00.001-07:00

The Marmot Babe was long overdue for a haircut. See the curly locks. See how everyone referred to him as "she." See how sad his long hair made him. But his mamma loved his sweet silky hair. It made him seem like a baby still, even though he is inching up on 18 months old.

His sisters loved his curly hair, too. See their schematic drawings of him. First one by E:

Front View

Rear View

Then by M:

Rear View

Front View

And so the deed was done, with sobbing from E and a grim determination by mamma.

Front View

Rear View

Things I've Seen Lately

2009-09-10T21:16:00.001-07:00

A face at dinner time:

A tiny boy in a tiny tie:

A "loaf" of "bread" baked without yeast (oops):

The dreaded interior of the baby's booster seat:
A baby washing dishes:
Pony hair. Yes, I said pony hair, arranged by color:
A boy sleeping with a teeny tiny ear of popcorn under his chin:

If there's one thing I want to do . . .

2009-08-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

Last night we were out working in our yard (i.e. weed patch, as some would have it) when some neighbors came by on a walk (good neighbors, not faux pseudo-neighbors who leave anonymous letters in the mailbox). They have 8-year-old twins, and the boy twin was in our Sunday School class a couple of years ago. He is delightful, if a bit of a handful. For example, one Sunday he escaped from me and started doing ninja rolls up the center aisle of the Sunday School. Sigh. He was always bored, and I didn’t blame him, because I was often bored in there, too. His little mind was too quick for the Church Ladies.

Anyway, the kids were poking around in the garden asking Marmot Dad the Latin names of various plants. Apparently, apropos of nothing, Twin A said to Marmot Dad, “If there’s one thing I want to do, it’s stop global warming.”

Let me repeat that: “If there’s one thing I want to do, it’s stop global warming.”

The kid kills me. He went on to explain that it was all about the sharks (he spent a lot of time drawing sharks when he was our pupil). Global warming is not good for sharks, I gather. He let Marmot Dad in on a little shark trivia, though: “Bull sharks are the only sharks that swim in fresh water. There was an unusual incident (sic) once where someone was attacked by a shark in a creek. It was probably a bull shark.”

Then he rollerbladed into the sunset. Sic transit gloria twinboy.

The Garden (of Eden)

2009-08-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

Here is our glorious garden for this year (see previous post--yes, this is in part compensation for the fact that SOME PEOPLE don't like our gardening style).

Collards. Have you ever grown collards? You should. They are impossible to kill and they make lots of tasty dishes for weeks.

The staging area, where Marmot Dad keeps his hopes up that these plants will be planted somewhere this year.
The Great Onion Massacre of 2009.
True Love. Marmot Dad does not care for rhubarb, but he brought home FOUR plants for me.
Squash-a-rama.
An eggplant! Houston! We have an eggplant!
Holy Sqash Bugs, Batman!
My climbing cantaloupe. Marmot Dad says cantaloupe doesn't climb. I say it does. So far he's winning.
Peppers. Hot.
Arugula a-goin' to seed all over. And a cabbage.
Popcorn! Tooie can hardly wait to put the ears in a bag and "'tomp the corns off."
The garden from a distance. Not bad for the back half of a very very very small lot.
Amen.

Weeds, Glorious Weeds

2009-08-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

I came home from swimming lessons today with the kids and, as is my habit, checked my mailbox. I found a little packet from a "neighbor" inside. Let me quote the letter, as written, poor grammar and all:

This property is a eye sore to the neighborhood. please clean it up! the weeds and flowers are out of control. if you are overwhelmed. please ask your neighbor's or church leaders for help. we have decided to give you a few days before we contact the city and start filing complaints. thanks for being a responsible neighbor.

Yes, someone actually left this in our mailbox, along with a pamphlet from the city ("weeds cannot be higher than twelve inches") and some photos of our home from the street, taken from inside a car.

Well, suffice it to say that I was shocked and appalled. And really annoyed. For so many many many reasons. There's the passive-aggressiveness. Then the patronizing-ness. And the high-and-mighty-ness. And the insulting-ness. And the fact that we do not have 12-inch high weeds in our yard. What we have is a yard that does not conform to the idiotic golf-course aesthetic of our white-bread-eating, American-Idol-worshipping, ATV-riding, pious-church-going neighborhood. Allow me to illustrate.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:
Exhibit C:
DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT???

Here's the thing. I think I know who sent this to us, bless her little heart. She calls the city all the time on people (despite her own city code violations). She even turned my neighbor and friend, a wonderful parent, into DCFS because she didn't like her potty-training techniques (said friend then picked up and moved because she couldn't stand to be in a neighborhood where people would do such a thing).

So this is my plan. I'm planning to put the letter (just the letter) back into her mailbox. If I'm wrong, no harm done. She'll just think some crank put a letter in her box. If I'm right, she'll know that I know it was her.

Passive-aggressive, meet passive-aggressive-ER.

We Scream for Bugs

2009-07-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

I just finished cleaning the baby's booster chair. Some BONEHEAD designer designed it with about 2000 nooks and crannies, each of which can harbor a week's worth of discarded food that will fester and ripen to an alarming stench in no time at all. Especially when one's child does not so much eat food as tuck it under his bottom. Then some BONEHEAD novice parents bought it for their first child and couldn't bear, in their silly frugal way, to discard it and have been cursing it ever since. So this parent in particular feels she deserves a little blog break before she goes to freeze some kale and grind some wheat for her daily bread.

So the kids were all playing happily in the playhouse earlier this week while I worked in the garden. Suddenly M began to scream in her usual histrionic way that "there was a bee on my hand! there was a bee on my hand!" Well, I say her usual histrionic way, but there was in fact a true sense of urgency in her scream. I asked her over and over, "did it sting you? Did it sting you?" She didn't know, and after a few moments of back-and-forth I realized that this was not helping the situation at all and that if she was still screaming she probably had been bitten. Which she had. Stung twice on the wrist by a wasp or wasps. Ouch. So the usual remedies were applied (baking soda, frozen peas, hydrocortisone cream, kisses, lying on the couch) and the brave mama went out to investigate, trailed by two not so brave as curious and reckless boys.

I opened the door to the sink of the playhouse and saw what looked like a basketball-sized wasp nest (my skin is crawling right now as I think about it). Wasps started buzzing and whizzing around, so I picked up the baby and hustled the toddler into the house pronto.

Now, I do not believe in applying poisons all over the home for no good reason. E lectured her class about the evils of fertilizer in preschool, thanks to my evangelizing. To spiders, I say live and let live. BUT when you sting my baby, you forfeit your rights (let's not even talk about what happens when you hit my baby on the head with a baseball bat), and I keep a secret can of wasp spray in the garage for just such an occasion. So I dispatched the nest and the wasps with rapid if not entirely eco-friendly efficiency. (And when I went to remove the nest saw that it was not quite as big as a basketball but probably the size of my fist nevertheless.)

So poor M, the very next day, came running to me from riding her bike, screaming this time about a spider. On her hand. Once again, the dumb question, "did it bite you?" This time she was sure it hadn't, but while I was trying to calm her down she realized it was crawling on her leg, so she screamed some more, shook it off, and ran inside. I have to admit, it was pretty big and hairy. (We have these big hairy spiders living in our air ducts--we looked them up, and they are harmless Daring Jumping Spiders, a name you have to love.) Well, that was just too much for M. She spent the next two hours lying motionless on the couch, staring at the ceiling, no doubt thinking evil thoughts about bugs.

She is recovering nicely.

KEEP OUT

2009-07-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

The neighbor kids drive us krrrrrazy. There's the usual annoying kid behavior. Then there's the entire lack of supervision by parents. A couple of weeks ago we were sitting down eating dinner--eating dinner, I tell you--when one of the girls said, "hey, is that a puder [special marmot language for something unmentionable that you can no doubt figure out] on the back porch?" And indeed it was. IT WAS, I'm telling you. The youngest and most revolting neighbor child had taken off his diaper on our back porch and let it all hang out, so to speak. On another day, an awful day, this same puder-boy hit Tooie on the head with a bat (which I confiscated and still have in my pantry) and then moments later pushed over the Marmot Babe into the grass and sat on his head and bounced up and down until I grabbed him and shoved him off. This child is now banned from our home because he shoves the Babe over backwards every time he sees him.

Today the next oldest child (female, age three) pulled up about half of my onions out of our garden and broke off all the stems of the others. The children have been appalled at this shocking behavior. E decided that a fence would be the best option to keep her and her ilk out. E and M were talking at dinner about how best to fence off our yard when Tooie piped up, thoughtfully, "we should put up a sign at our house that says 'keep out.'" Then he beamed at his own sagacity while nodding repeatedly. The girls kept up their fence talk (electric or conventional? gate or no gate?). Suddenly Tooie cut in with his coup de grace: "And we should put up at sign at Ella's house that says 'keep in.'"

Would that we could, my blue-eyed boy. [Actually green-eyed, but that doesn't sound as good.]

Hilarious or disturbing . . . you decide

2009-06-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the backstory:

E always likes to get presents for people for their birthdays, bless her heart. So when the kids found this horse at a yard sale, she knew it was just the thing for M's birthday. The people selling were happy to get rid of the Cinderella coach (which Tooie picked out for himself), as well as I think three other horses, for the low low price of $1. Birthday happiness was assured.

But we had no idea just how happy this particular horse was going to make us. The kids finally prevailed upon me to put batteries in it, and everyone commenced screaming "IT WALKS!" It was only a matter of time before the idea of harnessing the Cinderella coach to the horse and perching a naked and bald Barbie doll on its back made its way into the little marmoty heads we have around here.

p.s. please don't judge me for how my kitchen floor looks. If truth be told, it usually looks a lot worse.

Babies are Dumb

2009-05-28T21:03:00.001-07:00

Our sweet Marmot Babe has lost his left toenail. He pulled the cast iron skillet (which I stole from my mother so it was probably karmic retribution) out of the cabinet and dropped it onto his toe. It looked horrid for a while until the nail actually came off. I put a sock on him for a few days to protect his toe. People thought it was a quirky fashion statement. "Quirky" is me, "fashion" is not.

But that's not all. On Sunday night as I was loading up the dishwasher he sneaked a handful of detergent out of the dispenser cup and shoved it right in his mouth. I didn't think much of it until he walked onto the carpet (of course) and vomited. Then returned to the kitchen and vomited again. So Marmot Dad checked the label which of course said "call your doctor immediately," so he spent some quality time chatting with the folks at poison control. The Babe was OK, but I got some good heart-racing exercise while I tried to force 4 oz. of fluids into him.

What else he does: tries to eat rhubarb leaves (poisonous); sucks on bar soap (yucky); climbs on things and fall off (painful); runs onto the ball field in the middle of E's baseball game (annoying); and turns the water on hothothot when he's in the tub (dumb).

I'll save my mom the trouble of posting a comment and write what she would have written: "His grandma is going to come and get him and take care of him because his parents are clearly not!"

Poor little Marmot Babe.

How to Have a Really Very Trying Birthday

2009-05-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

Let me give you some advice on how to have a trying birthday. I'm not the type who doesn't like my birthday, feels sad about growing older, etc. etc., so it takes a lot of effort to have a distressing birthday. Hence, I am the best one to give advice on how to make it a day to put wrinkles in the corners of your eyes.

First, and this is important, you must, absolutely must, have four children in rapid succession. This takes quite a bit of advance planning, so don't even think of having a stressful birthday if, say, you only have two children, or if you have the four already but they are at least two years apart each. If you have more than four, and if they are the requisite less-than-two-years-apart, you might as well just stay in bed on your birthday, and most other days as well.

Next, you have to promise all of those children that they may help you make your birthday cake. Absolutely promise the eldest that you will not even unwrap the butter before she gets home from school around 3:30 or 4:00.

So, it's 4:00. Washing the dishes is optional. It will clear out the sink, making cake clean-up easier after you cook, making your birthday less stressful, but it will also increase the whininess of the children who want to help cook your cake NOW, so it's up to you.

Now, get out your ingredients and make sure that you position the two-year-old near everything sticky and/or floury so he can put his grubby hands in it and get it on the floor. Make sure you leave the sugar out so your older children can not-so-surreptitiously sneak bites of it right out of the canister giving you little brain seizures every time they do. Brain seizures keep the stress levels up, ladies! Keep up the good work!

Make the frosting and run whatever interference you need to about who gets to lick the bowl/beater/spatula.

When you take those puppies out of the oven, make sure you leave them where a two-year-old can drag over a stool and pat and press them with his grubby hands. See if he won't lick one or two.

Around 5:45 after you clean up the cake mess, start to think about dinner. Do not, I repeat, do not look at your recipe for tasty pad thai ahead of time, because if you do, you will know that your noodles need to soak in cold water for at least an hour. An hour. At 5:45. Also you will remember that you needed tofu for this recipe. So do the best you can with a quick soak in boiling water and add some extra egg instead of tofu. Hope for the best.

Make sure you promise the kids they can help frost the cupcakes, because that always makes for good fighting amongst the siblings, and, if you're lucky, a cupcake dropped upside down. Try for the carpet, but if you can't make that, the kitchen floor will do. Make sure you put coconut on every cupcake so you'll be sure that someone will cry because he or she does not care for coconut. Remind them that this is your special day, and expect more tears.

Open presents with whining all around and, if possible, get someone to smash your giant-size bag of shrimp crackers (thanks Marmot Dad!) onto the concrete, turning it all into shrimp dust.

Go to bed confident in the knowledge that you have done all you can to make your birthday Very Trying Indeed.

Then give Marmot Dad the leftover coconut cupcakes for his birthday, because you are too worn out to make another cake, ever, until your children are all in college.

At least no one vomited on me this year.

Here's a link to the coconut cupcake recipe. They were very tasty. I've never used so much butter for one recipe before in my life. But I have to admit, I chickened out at the frosting step. I just couldn't add that third stick of butter to the pound of cream cheese. They were very very tasty cupcakes, nevertheless, and I want about 85 more.

**Happy Birthday also to Marmot Dad. Tooie spilled the beans on his birthday presents (a bike helmet and bike seat) so he had to get them many days before his birthday and, with the leftover cupcakes and all, had somewhat of a subdued birthday this year**

**Many thanks also to my long-suffering sister who chopped cilantro and shredded carrots and beat back some of the marmots so that my head didn't actually explode. She also walked off with two cupcakes.**

Someone There is Who Does Not Love the Mall

2009-05-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today was the day. My sister and I reserve the first Saturday in May each year for our rummage sale extravaganza at a local elementary school. We dream about it all winter long, through the cold nights and the dreary, garage-sale-less days of February. April is the cruelest month, because it postpones May, and the rummage sale.

But today was the day. We get up early, skip the shower (speaking strictly for myself here), and brave the drizzly dawn to line up for our beloved rummage sale. We know enough now not to rely on the garbage bags the good folks at the school hand out (these are strictly for amateurs) and bring our Mary Poppins bags to stuff all of our stuff in.

It's important to go with someone else to these sales, because often in the heady rapture over the piles and piles of clothes (shirts for a dollar! skirts for 75 cents! I'll take them all!) we sometimes make less wise fashion decisions. Like the year my sister wanted to buy a shirt that looked like she had slung a rag around her torso. Or the many unfortunate skirts that have made their way to my home, a mere waystation on their way directly to the thrift store.

Then there was the turquoise snowsuit that is absolutely hideous but that, I must say, has kept my girls warm for about four years and that they love and that cost no more than $.50.

So said sister and I shop, and then retire to a quiet corner to critique each others' finds ("you may not buy anything else that shade of blue" she always tells me, or, "did you not notice the gaping hole in that coat?") and then head off to shop some more. I got a pat on the arm and a condescending "good fashion choice" for picking out a bright blue, rather than a light blue, shirt.

This year was a bit crowded, and not as well stocked as years past, but I still managed to spend more than I have in any other year. Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, how much would you spend for this:

3 men's shirts

2 pairs of men's khakis

2 ladies' skirts

1 pair of pants for same

1 pair of sweat pants (shiny, which my sister says I may not wear outside of the house)

6 polo shirts

2 sweaters

3 blouses

3 casual knit shirts

1 pair of shorts

But wait! We'll also throw in some children's clothes:

2 dresses

1 skirt

1 pr. sweats

1 pr. shorts

1 pr. pajamas

5 shirts

2 pr. pants

1 top

3 pr. snow pants

Now how much would you pay?

BUT WAIT! That's not all. If you rummage now, I'll throw in . . .

1 loaf pan

1 muffin tin

1 ice cream scoop (which Tooie thinks is his--"We can make muffins together, Mommy!")

1 instant-read thermometer

1 can opener

1 plate

1 bowl

1 pumpkin thingy for Halloween

And finally, the coup de grace,

10 cafeteria trays in a pleasing lime green.

Any takers? I spent $45, and that's after being charged extra for the cafeteria trays (my sneaky sister got hers for $.10 each) and for a couple of other things, but since it's a fundraiser I usually don't fuss about miscalculations.

We ate off our cafeteria trays for dinner tonight, and I made a dinner fit for a cafeteria tray (or a TV dinner): chicken nuggets (granted, homemade with whole-wheat breadcrumbs for coating), green beans (pan-roasted, not boiled), mandarin oranges (straight from the can), and chocolate pudding yum yum.

(Here's what the pudding looked like after Tooie dropped some on the floor and, not wanting to waste a drop, got down and licked it up.)

Here are the trays post-pudding:

I'm not sure why I love them so much, except perhaps that they are just like the trays from my elementary school (those were pink, though, or a beige-ish pink). Plus the kids think they're fun.

Now, people tell me they don't go to rummage sales because they don't like spending all that time rummaging through things. But I for one would much rather spend two hours going through piles of clothes than spend two hours at the mall feeling a vague sense of unease that deepens into a full-blown funk. Or, worse yet, go to Wal-Mart and brave the horrible lighting and bad chi. I also get to experience the thrill of the chase and the bragging rights of dressing my family for less than $100 a year.

And where else would I have found those trays? Say it with me, baby. Rummage Sale.

An R-rated post

2009-03-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

The girls were sitting at the table tonight doing their self-appointed math homework (and I just noticed that they gave themselves A's, but one of them gave the other a B+ -- I have no idea how they ever found out about grades -- but I digress) when the talk turned, I'm sorry to say, to Tooie's bottom. Granted, Tooie spends a lot of time naked, working on his important potty-training work and just not liking clothes all that much (especially ones with tags). But that does not mean that his sisters should critique his bottom as they did. Read on:

M: "I'm glad I don't have a bottom like Tooie's."

E: "Me, too. You'd have to tuck it in all the time and it would be AWful." (pause) "Well, back to math."

I'm glad they've got that cleared up. I'd say we're a family comfortable in our gender roles.

p.s. I won't mention what Tooie said about his potty-training experience tonight, in deference to my not-quite-as-good-as-I-thought sister (a post about that coming).

A Good Sister

2009-03-29T14:51:00.001-07:00

My sister is a good sister. She reset my blog settings so now I know when people post comments. So instead of taking a month or two to reply to you (all of my five readers) it will only take a week or two. What a good sister. I'll just say right now to Moo, Hey, we're totally there at the farm, and when the toddler Tooie is terrorizing chickens, all I'll say is "I believe this was your idea." And to CSIowa, you don't think the funky chicken was overkill for a (probably accidental) soccer goal??

But I digress.

My sister is a good sister. She is soooo good that she will not mind that I still haven't washed her jacket that she left here and that the baby wee-wee-d into the pocket of and that I told her I would give back to her promptly but that I'm still wearing and that I in fact took with me on our latest family trip and that worked so famously for the weather down where we were and that I love love love and can't I please have it because don't you remember I changed your diapers. She is a gooooood sister.

But she does get a little cranky at the library. But she is a good sister. I saw her actually be almost kind and friendly to a patron just this week.

Now about that jacket . . .

E THE AUTHOR

2009-03-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

E got back the first book she wrote in kindergarten. I'll put in subtitles for the boneheads in the audience who can't read perfectly elegant English.

I fell off the couch. I was sad.

I went to the doctor. They took an x-ray.

They put on a splint. I went to sleep. Then I went home.

IS IT JUST ME, OR DOES THIS SCREAM "NOBEL PRIZE" TO ANYONE ELSE??

Farmer E

2009-03-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

E wants to be a farmer when she grows up. Consequently, she helps her dad out in the yard quite a bit. Marmot Dad has been using a level outside while he builds our garden raised beds and cold frames (I love to see a man using a circular saw). E was fascinated with the level today. Word is, she took the level and checked everything in sight to see if it was plumb and tidy. The picnic bench? "Nope." The play house? "Nope." The bags of peat moss sitting on the porch? "These are just fine," she reports.

Whew. I couldn't sleep at night if I knew our peat moss was out of alignment.

She shoots! She scores!

2009-03-21T21:40:00.001-07:00

M played her first soccer game on Thursday, and her second today. Let us say that we are not particularly sporty people. We can take sports or leave them. We don't get excited about sporting games of chance. We don't want it to be the end-all and be-all for our children. We don't want to try to live out some adolescent fantasies through our children's sporting events.

How, then, do you explain our exuberance when M scored a goal in her very first soccer game, EVER? How do you explain the little victory dance her mother (aged all of 40 years) did in the end zone (I don't think soccer has an end zone. But I was down in that area.)? And how do you explain the happy feeling in our hearts when she did the very same thing today?

Well. We'll try to rope it in.

Do-lefo You-lefu?

2009-03-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

Marmot Dad taught the girls Dog Latin. They love it. M in particular has taken to it and spent much of yesterday and today saying everything in Dog Latin. What is Dog Latin, you may well ask. Dolefog Lalefa-tilifin ilifiz thilifis. I find it very difficult to do. What is ironic is that Marmot Dad can't do Pig Latin very well. Anyway, the point is that we said our family prayer on Friday night, and all was well. And then a moment later we heard from M, "Aylefay-melefen!"

Did It Honk?

2009-03-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

Last night at oh around 2 a.m. little Marmot Babe started throwing a fit. As I was lying down and holding him and trying to keep him from flinging himself off the bed he arched his back real hard and came down directly on the bridge of my nose. It made the most horrifying snapping and splintering sound--Marmot Dad leapt out of bed and started hyperventilating. I saw stars. As I pushed on my nose it made a quiet and not at all comfortable clicking noise.

I don't think it's broken, but it is very bruised. It throbbed all night long, and today it still feels like something very heavy is pressing on the bridge of my nose. (Marmot Dad says he thinks maybe I reset it myself.) (Fortunately I have hoarded my narcotic pain reliever from the birth of said Marmot Babe and had one left so I could sleep through the throbbing last night.)

Before church started this morning, Marmot Dad and I were rehearsing my narrow brush with death. "It sounded so awful," he said. "I know," I answered. "My body has never made such a noise before."

M, sitting between us, looked up with absolutely earnest eyes, and asked these immortal words: "Did it honk??"

This is why we never get any sleep

2009-02-26T08:13:00.001-08:00

Wildlife Museum

2009-02-26T08:00:00.001-08:00

E had her last day of school for the block yesterday. Her class had their culminating activity for their study of native wildlife at 3 yesterday--they made their classroom into a wildlife museum. What this means is that they wrote books about their animals of choice, and made a sculpture of said animal, and then made buttons that the visitors/parents could push to find out more about their animals (i.e. they would read their books out loud to us). E studied deer. I wish we could have brought the deer book home because it was priceless. It had a table of contents in it, an exposition of what she knows about deer ("boys are called bucks and girls are called does" etc.), a list of what deer eat, and a great diagram with labels of their various parts.

I told E it would be great if we could send a picture of her sculpture to Grandma. "Mom," answered my tech-savvy child, "why don't you put it on your blog, and then send her a note that says 'please look at my blog.' Probably Grandpa will see it first, because he's always on the computer."

So here are the pictures on my blog.

So so wrong

2009-02-14T16:22:00.000-08:00

Tooie came into the laundry room/closet the other day and said solemnly to me, "Mommy, I did a terrible wrong to you." "Excuse me?" I said, sure that my two-year-old son had not just said such a thing. "I did a terrible wrong to you," he repeated. "What did you do?" quoth I. "I knocked it over," confessed my green-eyed son. I had no idea what he was talking about. Turns out he had knocked over the coat rack. A Terrible Wrong.

The Amazing M

2009-02-14T16:14:00.001-08:00

Here are some of M's latest greatest creations. This first one features "word people," where she turned her horse's name (Jewel) into different characters. My favorite is the W-shark. Marmot Dad's is the crazy E-face.

The above is not a rabbit. It is a dog, I am informed. M said you can tell by the collar around its neck and its tail.

Here's our standing-up boy

2009-02-13T08:56:00.001-08:00

Just in time for Valentine's Day--True Love

2009-02-13T08:46:00.000-08:00

We drive to and from school a lot. Like, every day, sometimes twice. So we get lots of quiet quality listening time. Tooie lately has always requested "Grrrrandma music," a CD that Grandma and Aunt made many years before he was born (yet I still tell him that some of the songs say "Tooie"). (Incidentally, his favorite song on the CD is what he calls "Black Jack Grrrravy.")

Listening to Aunt sing got the girls thinking. Here's what they said:

E: M, when we grow up, let's live in different houses but in the same neighborhood so we can visit each other.

Mom: Yeah, that's like me and Aunt [until, that is, she DESERTS us in a few months]

M: But I always want to live at home. I'm not going to marry.

E: Well, your husband, who would be the daddy, could drive you to visit me.

M: No, I don't want to marry. Mommy, I don't want to marry!

Mom: Well, that's your choice. No one will make you get married. I chose to marry Daddy because I loved him and wanted to always be with him.

E: [think think think] Hmmm. I choose to marry so that when I have a baby I won't have to drive myself to the hospital.

So there you have it. In our family, our example of marital bliss boils down to this: men are basically there to drive you around. Thanks for being my best chauffeur, Marmot Dad. And happy Valentine's Day.

Green with envy

2009-01-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

Oh how our girls like green. E had a green cast on her arm for four weeks ("Mommy, why do most girls prefer a pink or purple cast?"). The worst thing about green, though, is that they fight over the green Ikea dishes that we have. In theory, we have enough plates, bowls, and cups in green for each child. In reality, at any given time at least one of each is lost in the backyard or under a bed or somewhere.

So imagine our collective horror one night when the girls were fighting over who would get the green plate for dinner, and Marmot Dad came rushing into the kitchen with a pair of scissors (green handled-how ironic) and CUT the plate in pieces and threw it away. Oh the weeping! Oh the wailing! From E: "Was that our only green plate? I think it was our only one! And now we don't have one at all!" (we have two more) From M: "DADDY! You WASTED! A grownup NEVER wastes!" From both: [tears] From M: "I never thought a grownup would WASTE a plate!"

The result: less fighting over who gets what color.

Apparently Marmot Dad was planning on being like Solomon of old and cutting the beloved plate in half to see who loved it more, or some such silliness. Fortunately, it just shattered. He admits that once he had scissors and plate in hand he began to worry that the scissors wouldn't work and he'd be helplessly hacking at the plate and end up looking more than a little silly. I kind of giggle now when I imagine how THAT would have gone over.

Stand up, everybody

2009-01-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

So I never update this blog. Never. But today I have to report a startling happening. Little Marmot Babe (who, mind you, cannot yet sit up alone and is a mere seven months old), crawled his way over to the little antique loveseat-couch thing we have and put his hands on the edge. He pulled himself up onto his knees. Then, as I watched in both horror and delight, he pulled himself up to his feet. THE CHILD PULLED HIMSELF UP! He's so little to be doing such a thing. And he can't even sit up yet! But he's been trying for days to stand up. He wants to be like all the rest of us, I guess. Must be hard being the littlest.

In other news, we had a lovely Christmas. Here's what's the funniest about Christmas this year. Marmot Dad likes to get stocking stuffers for everyone ("elf-like behavior" he calls it), and he's usually quite creative about it all. This year he struck gold. He got a jar of furikake (seaweed and stuff that's all mixed together for pouring on rice) for Tooie--his own jar. Tooie has not let it out of his sight. He was quite taken with the whole idea of a stocking to begin with. He has a little basket into which he puts his "things," in other words, the stuff that was in his stocking (that were not chocolate, of course, because he ate all of that before breakfast on Christmas morning): his toothbrush, his toothpaste, and his furikake. "Mommy, where are my things?" he asks several times a day. He takes his furikake to bed with him. He tried to take it in the bath with him, but I stopped him in the nick of time. He had it taken away for a brief while when he hit his sister over the head with it. He put it in a bag and took it to grandma's house when we went visiting. Oh how that boy loves his furikake. Try it. You'll like it, too.

Which one is it?

2008-09-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

I was looking for something in a cabinet today and came across a ring I purchased in Japan many years ago for approximately $5 at a grocery store. Here's the sad part: it looks EXACTLY like my wedding band. Exactly. So it's quiz time: which one is which?

Ring A:

Ring B:

Give up?

Keep going . . .

The answer is . . .

Ring A is the real deal.

But really, could you even tell?

So our next door neighbors opened a retail jewelry store this year. They sent us a Christmas card that was really a thinly veiled invitation to come to them for "all of our jewelry needs." What they haven't seemed to figure out in the six years we've lived here is this:

WE HAVE NO JEWELRY NEEDS! NONE!

If we did, we could just fulfill them all at the grocery store.

p.s. I did these photos against the faux wood grain of our faux wood table just to drive the point home as hard as I could. This is the kind of people we are. Faux.

Summer Etymology

2008-09-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

This summer, M asked me out of the blue, "what does popsa mean?"

Popsa, popsa, what the heck is popsa? I frantically consulted my mental dictionary.

"Well," pipes up E, "I know that cle [kll] means 'cold,' so popsa must mean 'nice and.' "

Get it? Popsicle=nice and cold.

"No," corrects M, "I think popsa means 'hard and colorful and.' "

Now you know.

Tooie's First Prayer

2008-09-24T19:47:00.001-07:00

Tooie spontaneously burst out in prayer last night after his sister said the official version of the family prayer. Here's a transcript of it:

Heavenly Father.

Grateful . . . day.

Not be 'cared of monsters . . . and . . . white . . . alligators.

Jesus Christ.

Amen.

What goes on in that teeny-tiny head of his, I wonder.

Quiz Time!Gi

2008-09-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

E and M were working on making alphabet books the other day. See if you can identify all of these drawings by E that start with the letter A:

Give up yet? Here are the answers: 1=apple (duh) 2=Appaloosa 3=Ariel (duh again, for all you mermaid fans) 4=animal

These kids crack us up. That's when they're not driving us crazy.

The Perfidy of Marmot Dads

2008-08-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

We got invited to go to the pool with Max and his family on Friday. E made snacks for everyone to share--graham crackers and peanut butter, a family favorite. In my haste, however, I left them on the counter as we were rushing out the door. E asked as we were pulling into the parking lot if I had forgotten them.

Me: Oh no! I did! Daddy will probably eat them because he won't know they were our pool snacks. (Marmot Pa was home watching Marmot Babe.)

E: Why would he do that?

Me: (somewhat unfairly) Oh, that's just how he is.

E: Yeah, he's always eating the LAST cookie or the LAST scoop of ice cream or something.

M: (out of the blue) (and with a deeeeeep sigh) He's a hard Daddy to live with.

E: He sure is.

zziiiiiiiippp

2008-08-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

That's the sound of me zipping up actual pants on my actual body. Why does that merit a blog post, you ask? Because I spent many many months wearing hideous pull-on pants with big nasty elastic panels on the front. That were still too small and tight. But I have, miraculously, graduated to zip-up pants because the latest and greatest marmot is now on the outside instead of on the inside, bless him. (I still sometimes have a hard time getting undressed because I yank and pull on my pants to try to get them off, forgetting that they zip. It's been a while.)

Anyway, he's the cutest little marmot you could imagine, and now that he's almost two months old he can make eye contact and make little cute noises and be interactive. Let's find a photo or two of him.

Oh wait, that's where you still can't see him yet.

There he is in all his marmoty glory.

And here he is today in his Sunday best.

And now I have to go because the girl marmots are fighting and the baby marmot is crying and hungry and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I never update this blog.

Amen.

Sometimes this happens when you turn 40

2008-05-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday being my grand 40th birthday, I decided to take extra care with my appearance. I blew dry my hair. I wore makeup (such as it was). I put on my nicest tent dress that made me look least like a watermelon lurching around on two legs. Speaking of legs, I shaved them. Things were looking up. Then when it came time to leave, I couldn't find my shoes that matched my dress. So I had to wear very black sandals with my very pale blue dress. On my special day. (Just as well, probably, because my tan sandals, which I remembered where I had hidden about halfway to church, don't fit my newly swollen feet.)

The girls, especially M, were in fine form for the birthday festivities. M wrapped up a plate for me, a broken Santa Claus figure of hers, and a Japanese book of mine. She got soooo excited at dinner time and told me "Wait Mommy! Wait! You don't have to get a plate for yourself! Here! Open this!" And then I had to gush about opening my own plate for my own dinner. It was very sweet. She was also gratified by my surprised and pleased reaction when I opened my very own book that she had wrapped. (It makes sense, after all--I had already purchased it, so it MUST be something I like.) She rushed around the table and insisted on serving everyone. I had made some apple slices and carrot sticks for the kids, and she made sure that everyone had the same amount, lined up in the same formation, on their plates. That all was very nice.

But then came the greatest indignity of all. I was putting sweet little Tooie to bed with a bottle. He gave me his half-finished bottle and looked at me with a funny look on his face. "What's wrong?" I ask. "Are you going to vomit?" (NB: this is perhaps the all time stupidest question you can ask a 1 1/2-year-old when you think he might be about to vomit.) To his credit, he answered me with a weak "yeah." I had just enough time to grab him and jump (or rather lurch) off the bed before he hit me with the full force of his vomit capacity, all over my nice Sunday dress. We rushed to the bathroom where he did his thing for a few more moments, all over the floor and the bathmats and both of our clothes. Marmot Dad wants to know why on earth I didn't just put him directly into the tub when I got to the bathroom. I have no idea why. Perhaps I was just thinking that on my 40th birthday I was covered in pre-digested fishsticks and ketchup and bok choy and pine nuts. On my special day.

p.s. Oh yeah, Marmot Dad's birthday was on Monday. It was nice enough. No vomit.

Miscellaneous funny things

2008-05-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

Here are some gems from the girls of late:

Tonight at the dinner table as M was trying to tell us something and E was interrupting--

"I'm trying to talk to you but E keeps destructing me!"

I took all the kids to the dentist on Tuesday (a fool's errand, I know) for my checkup. The girls had beads they were stringing on thread with needles, which keeps them occupied for long stretches and worked great. Until, of course, M broke her string and dropped all her beads, then lost her needle in the chair, and then sewed her necklace to her dress while she was working on it (after gathering up beads and needles again). But overall the children were exceptionally well behaved, even Tooie who sat on a chair and played with a pony. People kept coming into the exam room and remarking on how well behaved they were being. At one point the dental hygienist said, "you children are really being good while your mother is busy." "Well," answered E, "that's the kind of children we are."

Of course, that's not always the kind of children they are. Last weekend Marmot Dad told E to get out of the muck and mud in the back yard, which muck and mud we have in spades. "No, father," answers E, "I must follow my heart." I think he almost blew a gasket.

And finally, little M has been having a great time playing Cinderella. This usually works out well for me, because she likes to do lots of cleaning and scrubbing while she's Cinderella. Of course, I get a lot of criticism while she's doing it, because of course I have to play the part of the wicked stepmother. One day when she was really getting into her role, she climbed up on a chair and confronted said wicked stepmother: "I always do all the work, and you always do all the play, and THAT'S . . . NOT . . . FAIR! So STOP BEING STEP! I am ALWAYS nice, and you are ALWAYS step!" So that's the new label in our family--as in, "wow, that person is really step!"

Tooie's latest tricks are singing an almost unrecognizable version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and a pretty good rendition of Happy Birthday.

Perhaps we're doing something right?

2008-04-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

Our latest topic at home is money. E and M are earning some by picking up rocks in the backyard. I've also decided that it's about time to do allowances on a regular basis. So I'm talking to E about an allowance and explaining how it works and all. She wants to know what she has to do for her allowance. I explain that it's not necessarily for work she does, although we expect her to help out around the house, but just for her to save or spend as she sees fit. "But Mommy," she protests, "I just wouldn't feel right about getting money for doing nothing."

!!!!!!!!!!

"Foster that attitude" says Marmot Dad.

M, on the other hand, toils not, neither does she spin. When we introduced the concept of work-for-pay, she sat at the picnic table while E ran around picking up rocks. M asked a few questions about what things cost, notably bubble gum and lollipops, two things I refuse to purchase. "Aren't you going to pick up some rocks?" I ask. "Well, I'm deciding if I want bubble gum or a lollipop," M answers. She finally decides on a lollipop, which costs $.06 at the local grocery store. So she picks up . . . . 6 rocks, no more, no less.

E is saving up for whatever Disney Princess Polly Pocket toys she might be able to locate and purchase (after visiting a friend who reportedly has an entire closet full, curse the child and her parents). I introduced her to the concept of an auction (which she calls an "option") by scouring ebay for used sets. I'm hoping against hope that some garage sales might come through for us, too. I'm not up on these things. I don't know if they're even still carried in stores. But ebay almost always comes through for me.

In other news, I just heard from M one of our favorite phrases we hear in this household: "E, let's play My Little Ponies with our own human bodies."

Puppy Love

2008-04-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

To say Tooie loves puppies is a laughable understatement. He LOOOOOVVVVES puppies (fittingly, he was born in the Year of the Dog). He has supersonic puppy detection hearing and can hear a puppy barking about 5 miles away. He can see puppies out the car window who look like mere specks of dust to me (and keep in mind, he rides backwards in the car).

So we were shopping for a birthday present for a party E and M were invited to (at Chuck E. Cheese, to my GREAT dismay, all fodder for another entry once it's over, I'm sure) and he saw the puppy of his dreams. We brought it home of course. Here he is wearing the puppy and doing his favorite thing, saying goodbye to tissue paper as it gets flushed down the toilet:

Another shot of the same activity:

Running from the Mommy Papparazzi (who can figure out how to spell those Italian words, after all?)

Not even a great puppy backpack can keep you happy all the time when your sentences are only one word long:
As you can see, he likes to wear the puppy for all kinds of activities (like making playdough), and he has to have it in the car, and he prefers to have it at bedtime:
The best part about this puppy? The "tail" snaps on to the back of it and it becomes a BABY RESTRAINING DEVICE!!! What evil genius came up with this??? Yes, I have purchased a baby leash. I figure that once Tooie 2 arrives on the scene I won't have enough hands to deal with kids in the parking lot, and I can't stay home forever, so Tooie's puppy will have to start using his powers for evil and not for good come June.

In other Tooie news, and speaking of evil genius, the boy is a madman in the kitchen. He loves to cook, or should I say "cook." It starts at the sink. He'll announce "water," "cup," "bowl," "poon," and he expects that his wish is your command. Then he fills up the bowl with the cup and stirs vigorously with the poon while muttering "cook cook cook" to himself. Until such time as I hear a loud splashing noise that indicates about five gallons of water have just been poured all over the counter and floor and we move on to another activity.

Like eggs. If any eggs are in sight he yells "egg! crack! egg! crack!" until you let him choose an egg or two and give it a desultory whack against the bowl. Next stop, salt.

Don't leave a whole container of salt on the kitchen counter. This is my only advice for you.

Ditto sugar.

Appliances are his latest love. He adores the salad spinner. He likes to put small toys in it then lie down next to it on the ground so he can watch the inner basket go round and round while he pushes the plunger. The other night, Marmot Dad was making a salad, and Tooie was playing with the spinner. He noticed something was missing, so he ran to the kitchen, got a stool, pushed it over to the salad bowl, grabbed a handful of greens, and ran back to put them in his spinner.

He also just discovered the "food processor" attachment to the blender (yes, that would be the same blender that he broke just last week). He likes to put all the parts together (sans blade) in order and yells "help!" if he can't figure out one of the pieces. Then he pushes the buttons. I let him push the buttons tonight when I was actually using it, and it scared him so badly that he had to run screaming from the kitchen.

It happens that way sometimes to even the best chefs.

I am a soccer mom

2008-04-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

E is playing soccer this spring. So far we've mostly loved it, except for two little glitches. The first is the abominable snacks that are apparently expected at the end of every game--so-called "juice drinks" and fluorescent-colored "fruit" leather and other non-food items. We took apples and oranges when it was our turn and were met with shock and disdain from the kids on the team, even though I had spent at least an hour cutting the apples to look like rabbits (a special treat requested by the girls).

The other difficulty is the question of sporting gear. The kids are required to purchase a city jersey, and I actually think it's really nice--reversible so they can be a different color depending on the week, and they can wear the same one until they outgrow it because it's the same for all the age groups. Then there are all kinds of optional gear you can purchase: matching shorts, socks, etc. And THEN there is the specialized gear that I think it's crazy to buy for a four- or five-year-old, like cleats (cleats!). But of course E noticed that she was dressed differently right away, and we've had several tearful moments while I explained that her shoes were just fine and that maybe it wasn't such a great idea to WANT to look like everyone else.

She was pretty much reconciled to her non-matching shorts and her thrift-store shoes, and then this last game (where, I have to say, she played her little heart out and really got into the fray and gave that ball heck) she was apparently talking to her little sartorial-splend-i-fied friend who had all the gear you could have and then some while they were on the sidelines waiting for their turn to get back into the game. Here's what came of that--

On the way home, E says to me in the car, "My friend S says that her shoes are faster than mine."

Mom: "Really? I thought you were running pretty fast out there."

E: "Well, I was, but S says her shoes are faster."

Mom: "Do you think that shoes make you fast? I think it's probably your feet and your legs and all the practice that you do running and playing soccer."

E, thoughtful: "Yeah, shoes couldn't make you go fast. It's your legs. And it's being strong like an oak (one of her favorite expressions from Mulan)."

Mom, trying to change the subject: "So, do you think soccer is fun? Are you glad you're starting to play?"

E: "I think soccer is really fun. Even when people lie to you about their shoes."

Birthday Wishes

2008-03-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

We have two birthdays to celebrate, each for a Marmot Uncle. MU #1 turned 32 last week (32? yes?) and we figure he had enough fun celebrating in ROME to last at least until 33 (one can only hope, anyway. We might go to the local gelato place in his honor). MU#2 turns 41 (which I understand is "the new 40") tomorrow. Must have been a curse to grow up with an April Fools' Day birthday. But many happy returns all the same, to both of you. (We did remember Midwestern Marmot Aunt's birthday back in February but apparently marked it with a moment of silence rather than something as festive as a blog entry. Many apologies, MMA. We don't function well in February, what with all the snow and cold and darkness. Makes you wonder why we chose Feb. to get married.)

Theology 101

2008-03-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

E's nativity play last week, as reported by Marmot Dad:

"OK little Jesus, it's time to put on your swaddling clothes. You're just the funniest little savior. Now, you need to wear your swaddling clothes to be a good example to all the other babies."

M has her own issues regarding the Holy Family. She insists that Joseph, not God, is the father of Jesus. "Well, Mommy," she explained (patiently, and speaking slowly, for Mommies of somewhat dim intelligence), "the people who are with the baby are the parents. So Mary and Joseph are Jesus's parents. Joseph is his real father. Heavenly Father is just his extra father." Heck, it makes sense to me.

Finally, E got a little ribbon at church a couple of weeks ago that said "I am a Child of God." She loved it and wore it to preschool the next day, although once we got to school she asked me a few times if she ought to wear it into the school. She was afraid that maybe the people at school didn't go to church or believe in Heavenly Father. I assured her that they probably did. But after school we stopped at the city rec center to sign up for swimming lessons and she took it off then (for the same reasons). (Although, let the record show that she had no qualms about asking the kid sitting in the entryway who his favorite princess was. Sure, she'll proselytize for Disney but not for God.) Anyway, I suggested that it would be just fine to wear her ribbon even around people who didn't go to church or whatever, and then if they asked her about she could tell them what it meant and that she went to church etc. etc. etc. Her eyes lit up as she suddenly understood: "like a missionary!" Then she took it one step farther: "When we get home, I'll put on my ribbon, and we can walk to the end of the road, and if I meet anyone who doesn't believe in Heavenly Father I'll tell them about him! I'll be a missionary to the end of the road!"

(Some of us feel as if perhaps we were missionaries to/at the end of the road at one time.)

Alas, when we got home and went to the end of the road no one was to be seen, believer or infidel.

. . . but screw your courage to the sticking place . . .

2008-03-31T19:41:00.000-07:00

Our little E is positively Shakespearean in her expressions sometimes. Today on the way to preschool we were waiting to make a turn into a parking lot during class break. The college students just walk along without ever noticing any cars that might be about to run them down (like ours), and E finds this very disturbing. "They don't pay attention at all!" she huffs. "That is very dangerous! They could get run over!" Today she found new words to express her exasperation: "they just fix their minds on what they're doing and don't think about cars that might run over them." Fix their minds. She kills me.

More Love

2008-03-13T20:24:00.001-07:00

So Marmot Dad passed up an opportunity to broadcast live from Carnegie Hall in June so he would not miss the birth of Marmot #4. True love. (Of course, he also hates to travel, even to as exciting a location as NYC.)

More Vomit

2008-03-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today I had another coughing fit, this time in the car. E said "Oh no, Mommy, here it goes again. I'm so sorry." Then after some more violent coughing while I was trying to cough and drive and all that she said, "hey, please hand me my backpack." It was sitting right next to me in the front. "Why?" I asked between coughs. "Oh, just because." But I know this child well. So I asked, "Are you afraid I'm going to vomit on it?" Sheepishly, E answers, "yeah." Ah, she is her father's daughter.

In other news, M came to preschool with me today to read stories to E's class. Here's what she wore: one purple tutu, paired with some green silky athletic shorts and pink cowboy boots. Plus a blue necklace and a great big pony. She looked like a dream.

Tomorrow is our very own princess party. Wish me well. It might kill me.

So This is Love

2008-03-10T20:07:00.001-07:00

** Note: This is for immature audiences only. Actual adults may be offended by the yuck factor.**Particularly you, Aunt.**(She seems to think that our family does nothing at all but talk about diapers and vomit.)

Our neighbors sent us home last night with a Disney songbook, so we spent family night singing the girls' favorite songs, invariably the sappy love songs and not classics like Zippity Doo Dah which are what Marmot Pa and I would have chosen. But as it turns out, those darn love songs were prescient. Almost immediately after we stopped singing, I was seized by a violent coughing fit and vomited into a metal trashcan. (It would perhaps be Too Much Information to inform readers that I had had a copious amount of broccoli for dinner [sidenote: Tooie is utterly cute when he says "broccoli"].) Anyway, Marmot Dad offered of his own volition to clean out the trashcan for me, and then he did. Bless his little marmoty heart. If I hadn't known it before, I know now: he is my knight in shining armour. This is not, I might add, his only vomit salvation. When E was a child he caught her vomit one night in his bare hands. I teared up. Now you must understand that there are few things that gross me out more than vomit, especially little kid vomit from kids who have not learned to chew properly yet. Although I have to admit that I have gotten a little desensitized to the whole enterprise. I've been known in the last few months to have grabbed Tooie as I hear him gagging and direct his little vomit directly onto my own chest in order to save the bed from a terrible fate. Oops--I hear someone gagging in the back now (I'm not making this up). Such is the fate of us parents of small children with quick vomit triggers.

Revenge of the Fairies

2008-03-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

Today was the fairy tea party at the library, the event that I stood in line for an HOUR to get tickets for (so humiliating). The tea party itself was fun and all, but the best part was the after-party play. It was fairy tea party land at our house for hours afterward. At dinner, Fairy M was our helpful fairy and insisted on climbing on the shelves in the pantry to get out dishes for all of us, and served us tea at the table (out of an old yogurt container), and ran to get towels when things were spilled at the table (multiple times), and referred to her father as King of the Fairies, or sometimes just Your Majesty. Then when the girls and I were picking up their very messy art table and Marmot Dad was sitting on the couch, she solemnly observed that "the Fairy King is a lazy king."

It was charming to see the little girls dressed up in their finery. E did not wear a plastic bag tied to her front (as she did to school last week), but she did wear a gold sash around her elbows (???), and M insisted on wearing only one glass slipper . . . you know, like Cinderella . . . making her sound like Peg-leg Pete as she clomped through the library. M's dress turned out just fine despite the fact that I finally gave up on the zipper bottom that wouldn't come straight and just wadded up some fabric and sewed over it until it lay flat.

Perhaps their favorite part of the tea party was when we went downstairs to the library and they each got to choose about five books and we read them ALL right there on the library couch for about an hour with no little brother climbing on us or escaping somewhere.

I'd better go see what His Majesty is up to.

Our Sordid Life

2008-02-10T20:34:00.000-08:00

Or I should say my sordid life, and only my dream life. I dreamed last night that I kept smelling cigarette smoke in the house. Finally one day I smelled it coming from Marmot Dad. I confronted him and he brushed me off. Later on that dreamday/night I opened the door to our under-the-stairs closet (a secret desire for a two-story home?) and there he was with a cigarette in one hand and a flask of whiskey (in a lovely engraved gold flask) in the other. "A-ha!" I said, or words to that effect, "I knew you had a secret life!"

This wouldn't be quite so disturbing except for the fact that my most common dream is the one where I'm engaged to someone else while still being married to Marmot Dad and I'm trying to figure out how to get out of my new engagement (to my credit, I always prefer MD in my dreams, even while I'm dating other men).

Here's what Marmot Dad dreams about: flying. Yep, happy dreams about zipping around in space. What does this say about us????

In other news, E gave me a tongue lashing tonight. I said something about something gooey or gunky to Tooie while we were working in the kitchen together and E piped up imperiously, "Mommy! You should talk properly to Tooie so he'll learn to talk the way we do. If you use those silly words he'll never learn to talk right. So please talk just the way we do to him."

Curious.

Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T21:14:00.000-08:00

Tuesdays are never very super at our house. Marmot Dad teaches a night class right after work so we typically don't see him all day long. That makes for a loooooong day for Mommy, too. So we've tried to fill up our afternoons with activities to make the time pass more quickly. Today we perhaps overdid it.

Let me mention first, however, that the overdoing it started early on when I went to vote. Usually it's a quick in-and-out process, but today I had to wait in line for an hour with two alternately active and clingy kids, explain several times that my last name is hyphenated and alphabetized under the first last name, and change my ballot card because the poll workers just assumed that I was voting in the Republican primary. All this before lunch.

Anyway, after we picked E up from preschool, we all ran for the car to get started on our activities. M ran a little too recklessly and scraped her knee on the concrete. She cried and cried and told me "I don't see my bnood (blood) coming out, Mommy, but I think some of my skin came off. Did it? Did it?" which of course was very traumatic for her.

Then we headed for the zoological museum of choice. Tooie was entranced by all the dead animals. He kept going from one to the other and laughing and pointing. When I asked him what they said, he almost invariably said "maw," which is what kitties say for him. Except for when we looked at the springboks and gazelles, which he told me say "neigh."

Next stop was the creamery for ice cream bars. M was excited to get one that was "chocolate all the way through."

Finally, we went to ye olde thrift shop because E has been pestering me for scriptures and cutting out pictures of people reading scriptures and taping them to the wall. Since we don't have much of a systematic religious training program in place for her, we thought this would be a great idea. We found a nice book with someone's unsent postcard inside ("Look, Mommy! Mine comes with a bookmark!") for E, while M chose a version in German ("M, this book is in German." "Yeah, that's what I wanted. A Derman one."). They were very excited to read their scriptures, so excited, in fact, that they chose scriptures for a bedtime story. So we read for a little while with some explanatory commentary from Mom. At one point I told E that people were mad at a prophet because he was telling them to do right things but they wanted to do wrong things. "You mean he wanted them to change their ways, right Mommy?" Exactly. M wanted to know why those people kept saying "yay." When we were done, E told me "I love to read the scriptures. Although they're pretty boring." Silly girl.

Monster Night

2008-01-24T09:36:00.001-08:00

On a recent family night we had a monster drawing contest, with some amazing results:

This was my addition to the festivities->

A two-headed, androgynous monster.
M's monster is standing in front of a house with many windows.
Here's another M creation next to a front door with a doorknob and a wreath.
Marmot Dad made big points when he introduced the cooperative monster--head drawn by Daddy, body by Mommy, feet by E, all without looking. The girls are still talking about how surprised they were that Daddy drew a snake head.

E's monster with a house.

Another lovely E monster, this one with handcuffs and chains on.

Next time I'll have to post our bug drawing contest results, and perhaps even the mermaids (although Aunt's mermaid met an untimely demise and now resides in the outside garbage can. Sorry Aunt.)

We are so talented

2008-01-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

Yes, we are sooo talented that we have managed to come up with two girls and two boys for our children. And not only that, we managed to have them in blocks, girls first and then boys. And one of each child in different seasons, a fall boy and a spring boy, a fall girl and a spring girl. Well, what can I say? It's hard to be so good, but someone has got to set the example for all those other silly families that have, say, all girls or all boys or a disconcerting mix of the two.

(Unfortunately we are not talented enough, apparently, to figure out how to upload the ultrasound movie . . .)

Revenge of the Righteous

2008-01-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

(Disclaimer: If any of you have been laboring under the false notion that E is a perfect child or that I, heaven forbid, am a perfect mother, please read no further unless you want your illusions shattered.)

So this morning we were (or at least I was) rushing to get us all to the library in time for storytime complete with a picnic lunch we could eat on the way to preschool. E was being unusually recalcitrant, especially on the subject of socks and whether she would wear them and which ones she would wear and if she would wear them or not unless I cut off all little dangly strings and if she would put them on herself or make me do it. On top of this, when I sent her to her room for stealing her sister's hat THREE TIMES after being told THREE TIMES not to she told me that "you never ask me if I want to do anything, you just always tell me, and it's not fair!" This just happened to be the straw that broke the exasperated Mommy's back.

So, judge me as you will, the top of my head exploded and I ranted and raved at her for a bit. Mommy ranting, E crying, M jumping around saying "Mommy, I'm doing what you say! Look, I have my shoes on already," Tooie dabbling in the breakfast he threw on the floor--it was quite the scene.

By some miracle, we made it into the car all together with no broken bones or blood vessels and turned on some soft music to soothe all of us savage beasts. E wanted me to turn off the music so she could sing something. So I turned it off and waited, and she started singing . . . "I see my mother kneeling with the family each day etc. etc. etc. love is spoken here."

I would have felt like a real worm if she hadn't sung it in such a self-righteous way, and if it hadn't been so funny when you think about it, and if I didn't know that darn it, she had a little lecture coming to her anyway! And I suppose I did to, and she gave it to me.

Heaven help us all.

More about Christmas

2008-01-12T07:09:00.000-08:00

I forgot to write about our most important Christmas event--trying to persuade the girls that Santa is not real. We've never hyped Santa, and we've always told the girls that he is not real. And logically, they know that. But they don't really believe that it's true. So after Christmas, after the presents magically appeared under the tree and in the stockings, they had some hard questions for their parents that went something like this:

kids: "If Santa isn't real, then how did our presents get into our stockings?"

mom: "Well, do you think maybe mommy and daddy put them in there?"

kids: "Oh mommy! Of course not. You and daddy would be asleep at night!"

Ditto for the tooth fairy. At least we tried.

(This reminds me of my favorite StoryCorps story from the Christmas season. A woman who had raised six or eight or nine children on her own after her husband left them told her son about how she had managed to have Christmas for her big family on a severely limited budget. She told him, "In our family there was no Santa, of course. I wasn't going to let any man take credit for that." Or words to that effect. My other favorite Christmas StoryCorps story was about a doorman from a big apartment building or hotel in NYC or Chicago who had some actor or comedian come to him at Christmas and ask what the biggest tip he had ever gotten was. "$50" he answered. "Well, here's $100" said Famous Man. "By the way," he continued, "who gave you that $50 tip?" "Well, sir," said the doorman, "that was you, last year.")

The girls also spent much of the Christmas season playing one of their favorite games, Holy Family. They took turns being different people. For a while, King Herod was a big draw, but they couldn't remember his name and so would call him "King Whatever-his-name-is" or "King Haggard." One day Marmot Dad heard them playing King Herod. E was narrating the action: "Mary was caught in King Herod's ropes (he used a lot of ropes to tie people up during their dramas) and the Holy Ghost said to Mary, 'Run, Mary! Run!' " Kooky kids.

It's all your fault, Mommy

2008-01-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

Everything is always Mommy's fault. I told the girls for a long time that they couldn't check out Aladdin from the library because it was too scary (see The Little Mermaid, below). Of course I eventually caved because M, in particular, assured me that she would NOT be scared, absolutely not, not her, nuh uh. Well, they got the movie from the library, watched it immediately, and of course M started calling out that she was . . . scared. I told her to stop watching, but she wouldn't. After the movie was over, she confronted me, tearfully: "Mommy! That was really scary! I got really scared! You shouldn't have let me watch that!"

As a followup, though, on Friday night we had "family movie night" and watched Aladdin all together. Afterwards, Marmot Dad said to M, "You weren't scared at all this time." "Of course not," she answered, "I'm in Primary now!"

Rapunzel Rapunzel

2008-01-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

Here are two takes on Rapunzel by the amazing girls:

This is Rapunzel "with piles and piles of hair" by M.
Here we have a somewhat more nuanced treatment of the fairytale by E. Note the bird's nest and mama bird and the tower.
This has nothing to do with Rapunzel, but last week in church M drew all of this music and then used it as her personal hymnbook for the singing of hymns. She cracks us up.

Christmas

2007-12-29T10:10:00.001-08:00

I am a lazy blogger. So if you want to know about Christmas, you'll have to look at my sister's blog for great photos and commentary.

Art

2007-12-29T09:48:00.001-08:00

A lovely picture by E of Ursula the sea witch and Ariel the mermaid.

For better or for worse, I let the girls check out The Little Mermaid from the library a while back. I thought it was too scary for them, but then they saw the scariest part at the doctor's office (curse that office staff) and seemed to be fine, so I figured most of the damage had been done. Except, of course, the virulent Disney-i-zation of their little minds. There's been a lot (A LOT!) of mermaid play ever since. And mermaid art. So here's a sampling of mermaid, mermaid-inspired, and even some non-mermaid art.

Note that you can click on each picture for a closeup so you can study all the nuances of each drawing.

Exhibit one:

A horse saying "neigh" by E. Note that the horse is wearing mermaid gear, i.e., "shells."

Exhibit 2: a lame attempt at a mermaid by Daddy. He was roundly criticized by the girls and told he would have to study some mermaid movies and books to get it right. They even re-colored the mermaid's hair red. Duh, Daddy.

Exhibit 3: a sea witch, by M. My favorite part is the imagination she has drawn. Imagination is indicated by the bubbles on top of her head and the bubble next to her with a baby sea witch in it. Note that the sea witch also wears shells.

Exhibit 4: a mermaid (perhaps Melody) by E. She's climbing a big rock.

Exhibit 5: our family, by M. We LOVE this one. We are all standing in front of the house. The little protuberance on the top is the roof.
Exhibit 6: by E. Even though this says "Ursula" it is really Ariel. Note the shell next to her that hold's the mermaid's voice.
Exhibit 6b: by E
Exhibit 7: by M. Again note the imagination. This time the mermaid is imagining the little fish, Flounder.

Christmas is coming

2007-12-16T06:35:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was our church Christmas party. The girls got to be angels for the nativity play. They chose their own costumes and looked smashing. E wore a gauzy lacy thing and fairy wings, and M wore a purple dress with ladybug wings. M was deeply offended that she had to stand with the "babies" and not with E on the main part of the stage.

At the party they handed out nativity sets printed on cardstock that the kids could color and cut out and tape together to make stand up. The girls thought that was the greatest. M sat at the table for a good 30 minutes saying " 'I, said the donkey, shaggy and brown' . . . I'll make my donkey brown!" and " 'I, said the cow, all white and red' . . . I need to make my cow all white and red." E worked hard on hers all day and decided to set it up in the front window. She announced to me that she had had to climb up and stand on the table (grrrrr) but had gotten it just right. Her "nactivity" set faces the window so everyone can see it from outside, and she taped a star to the window for the finishing touch.

M is in high excitement mode and plans on being Santa. She's been practicing for days. She takes a pillowcase and fills it with stuff and delivers "presents" to everyone. She keeps telling me, earnestly and urgently, that I need to make her a Santa suit, and she's going to stay up all night on Christmas eve and deliver presents to the whole family. She tried to practice staying up all night last night, as did E, but fortunately, despite all the "hard things" they kept doing to keep themselves awake (reading stories, tying ribbons, playing with toys in bed) they finally fell asleep.

They might just explode before Christmas comes.

Christmas is coming

2007-12-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

They might just explode before Christmas comes.

We Sneak Because We Care

2007-12-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

We got a package of lovely, apparently imported chocolates from our favorite Iowa cousins today. The girls (and the boy, I might add, who has learned to say chocolate) went wild. I got down our special crystal bowl to put them in because when else are we going to use a special crystal bowl? Which of course I knew was a bad idea from the get-go. I passed by the front room once and saw E with her hand in the bowl. She jumped and said, a trifle too quickly and too loudly, "I'm just looking at these!" Moments later I spied her sneaking down the hallway with a suspiciously full bag. Once again she saw me, quickly tossed the bag into her room, slammed the door, and leaned innocently against the hall wall. Mom: "what's in the bag?" E: "What bag?" Mom: "The bag in your room." E: "um . . ." Mom: "I'll just take a look." E: "No! Wait! I'm going into the front room for a minute! Don't come in! Don't look at me!" So she went sneaking back to the front room, bag in hand. After a few rustling noises she came out with an empty bag. "See Mommy? Nothing in the bag." Then a third time I caught her and M red-handed, or rather chocolate-mouthed, and then banned them both from said chocolates (convenient to my purposes--more for me).

Daddy cut Tooie's hair again today. Tooie now looks like the world's smallest escaped convict with almost bare patches here and there on his head. Marmot Dad claims you just can't tell when a baby is going to throw his head around when you have clippers in hand. A convenient excuse, I say.

Honesty

2007-12-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

A conversation on the way to preschool today:

E: I used to only like one grownup in our family. Just Daddy. I always wanted you to go away somewhere, Mommy. But now I like you AND Daddy.

M: Well, I like everyone in our family except you, E.

We have a child who eats

2007-12-05T19:35:00.001-08:00

It's true. We have finally had a child who will actually eat food. Little Tooey will eat almost anything you put in front of him, and one of his favorite words is "cracker" ("kaa-kaa," said in a hopeful voice).

I made pumpkin pie last night, and when Marmot Dad said something about pie, Tooey's little eyes lit up. He came running into the kitchen saying "pie! pie! pie!" and pulled at my pants leg until I gave him a piece. Then we heard nothing more from him as he sat in his booster seat and quietly devoured two adult-sized pieces. We repeated the same routine at breakfast. He is a boy who is very serious about his pie.

Tonight I made mostaccioli for dinner. He wanted to watch every step of the process. And he bugged me until I fed him two bowls of sauce. Then two bowls of noodles. Then after we were sure he had eaten his fill and dinner was over, he caught sight of the finished dish and signed "more! more! more!" until I gave him two more bowls of baked mostaccioli. Then he stole two pieces of cauliflower from his father's salad and ate those.

I tell you, it's an absolute miracle.

Here's what M has been up to. We went to DI yesterday to get Christmas mugs for the festive drinking of the festive hot chocolate. She chose a beautiful (to her, anyway) angel mug, but while waving it around to show her sister when we got home broke it immediately in two. Then she promptly broke her sister's mug. All within an hour of getting home. Fortunately we had gotten two backup mugs, but I had to almost make myself pass out by gluing the angel mug back together with some noxious glue.

She has also discovered her hidden talent of peeling carrots. It take her an eternity, but she finds it immensely satisfying. She peeled about six carrots for some soup I made a couple of weeks ago and was so triumphant by the time she had finished that she announced that "you will never have to peel carrots again, Mommy. I will always peel them for you. Just tell me if you have any carrots to peel. Is it OK if I left some of the peel on?" Fortunately I was making the soup in a crock pot and could just add a carrot every ten minutes or so as she finished. A few days later she insisted on carrying all the groceries in from the car, one item at a time. This just added to her feeling of omnipotence: "I can peel all your carrots and carry all of your groceries, Mommy. I am such a good helper."

E's Birthday

2007-11-28T06:28:00.000-08:00

Our little E is finally five years old. She is officially a girl and not a baby anymore. She had a good day overall. We had a little party for her with three neighborhood children. Since we weren't planning anything for the party besides eating cake, and since the Mommy of the family is deeply opposed to more plastic toys in our lives, we sent out requests in our invitations for homemade or recycled gifts, and that worked out nicely. E got a variety of hand-drawn pictures and a used stuffed horse that she adores. She wanted a pony cake (these words struck terror in the heart of a mommy who did not want to put too much effort into a cake this year)--and explained that the pony cake she wanted was a plain sheet cake with her pony toy stuck on top. Hallelujah! I could just about do that. She wished before she blew out her candles "that mermaids would be real." Don't we all.

The poignant moment of the day came after all the festivities were over and E and I were talking before she fell asleep. She wanted to know if she would still have birthdays after she was dead (yes, this is our most morbid child). We decided she would. "Well, then, Mommy," she said, "you could just pile my presents up next to me, or put them next to my grave." Enough to break a mommy's heart.

The Special Love of Christmas

2007-11-28T06:19:00.000-08:00

Last night Tuey and I turned in early and left Marmot Dad to deal with the fallout of the girls at night. He roped them in by putting two blankets down on the quiet room floor in front of the Christmas tree (which we had just finished decorating). Each girl was told to stay on her respective blanket. Then he put on some Christmas music and turned on the lights of the tree and told them to look and be silent (which of course they were not, but a man has to dream). After a while, though, apparently E told him, "Daddy, I really do feel the special love of Christmas now."

M spent the day yesterday wearing E's purple long underwear all day long. It makes her look pleasingly marmot-like. For about twenty minutes in the morning she sat on the floor and sang into a metal trash can so her voice would echo.

Tuey, the Goodest Little Baby in Town, slept all night last night (a first). He woke up at 6 a.m., had a little snack, pinched my nose for a while, and then went back to sleep until 7. What a kid.

An Amazing Sight

2007-11-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

Picture this if you can:

M is wearing a long-sleeved striped turtleneck. Over that she has on a striped short-sleeved shirt, inside out. Both are shades of pink. She has on yellow pants. She has on a red polar fleece hat (in case of sudden indoor snowstorms). She has taken my eyeliner and blackened her nose and drawn on whiskers on her face and some fur on her feet. (Just for the record, I did not ever actually purchase eyeliner. This is a little sample left over from my last Mary Kay soiree, which I think I attended in 1996 or thereabouts.) Anyway, she has on this getup. I come upon her standing in the bathroom with a bottle of conditioner in one hand and a grout brush in the other. She is scrubbing eyeliner scribbles off the toilet, using the conditioner as soap. She has also actually "scrubbed" some of the grout with copious amounts of conditioner. I ask, rather calmly, considering the circumstances, what the *%^$& she's doing. "I know sometimes you need me to scrub, Mommy," she announces. And then the non sequitur "you're not always mean to me, Mommy." What could I do? I shrugged my shoulders and left.

Tuey spends a lot of time these days dancing little dances and barking at dogs.

Three Children for Sale

2007-11-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

Here are the highlights (or rather lowlights) of this eventful day. Early on, E came to tell me she needed a new dress because hers was wet. Why was her dress wet? She had had an accident . . . on M's bed . . . on the goose down comforter and the quilt (sigh). ("You know, Mommy, even BIG girls make mistakes sometimes. Even MOMMIES make mistakes sometimes.") Not two hours later, just as we were supposed to get into the car to go to preschool, M announced from the back yard that SHE had wet her pants, and of course since she was outside her pants were both wet and covered with mud. So we got her all cleaned up and made it to preschool and then ran a couple of errands. When we got home, I had to pick up all the little playdough crumbs the girls and Tuie had gotten all over the floor, the carpet, the couch. Then it was time to go back to preschool. The girls got their insect and bird cards all over the car (which I had told them not to do) and were having fights about who was going to eat and who had eaten what candy (which the neighbors had given to them yesterday, curse them). After we got out of the car I noticed that Tuey had something white and sticky in his hair. Gum. I HATE gum. It was in the neighbors' candy bags. E had gotten gum in his hair. So after more bickering and getting into stuff I banished the 2 girls to their rooms for half an hour (they were just lucky it wasn't the rest of their natural lives). Meanwhile I was trying to clean the kitchen floor some more because it was worse than unsanitary. Tooie found some cake on a paper plate covered with a ziploc bag. He loves cake, we just discovered. And he's very enterprising. So he grabbed the bag, turned it upside down, and shook for all he was worth. I could see what was happening, but it was like one of those slow-motion dreams where you try so hard to run but you just can't make any progress. I got to him just as the cake hit the floor and he grabbed it with both hands and ran, stuffing it in his mouth as he went. He made a perfect arc around the table of lemony cake crumbs. When the girls were finally released from prison, I started on dinner but was interrupted by little Tuey wails and blood on the kitchen floor. He had pulled a BIG jar of peanut butter down on his mouth and now has the fattest lip in the world. It's just about thirty minutes 'til bedtime, and I can HARDLY WAIT. These children are all available to the highest bidder.

Night life

2007-11-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

We like to play a game at our house called "musical beds." Here's how it went on Thursday night:

Marmot Dad had to go to a concert in the evening, so the kids and Mom piled into the king-sized bed to read books and go to sleep. M was eventually banished to her own bed for squirming, whining, wallowing, giggling, and general bad behavior. The three remaining fell asleep in the "mommy sandwich" configuration (Mom in the middle with one child on each side squooshing me).

After Dad got home we moved E to her own bed and fell asleep again (briefly). M soon woke up and announced, "I want to snuggle your arm!" So Mom went in to join her in her bed. Shortly after that E woke up with a bad dream, and Dad went in to comfort her. He may have slept in her bed for a while, I'm not sure, but she eventually ended up in the big bed with Dad and Tooie. Then Tooie woke up and started whispering "pihs, pihs" which means "please" which means "I want to nurse." So I went back to the big bed to feed him. He decided after his 3 a.m. snack that he wanted to sing, so he sang until 4:30, a sweet song, but entirely unnecessary at that time of day.

Then I think there was snoring from someone who will remain unnamed, so I went back to M's bed. At 5:30 I was rudely awakened by Marmot Dad carrying in little Tu who was once again saying "pihs, pihs." Fortunately, everyone slept until about 7:30. But that's a lot of travelling around for one night. No one ended up in the bed that he or she started in. This is our life

Labels

2007-11-04T17:05:00.000-08:00

E always has some important jobs to do around the house. This morning she decided to label the drawers in the bathroom.

This one says "stuck" (in case you were a little worried), and she put it on the "drawer" in the middle that isn't really a drawer but just there for show.

This one says "do," as in "do open this drawer and use what is inside." She showed me that it has useful things like baking soda (in case you get a bee sting or something--don't ask me why I have a box of baking soda in my bathroom).

This one says "don't," as in "don't get into this drawer!" She found some matches in here, and we all know that children shouldn't play with matches!

A post from E

2007-11-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

M is sometimes mean to me. We like to play Ariel together. We like to draw pictures together. We like to write letters to each other. We write them to each other. Sometimes we are paper girls. We got to milk a cow once. When we went to the farm. When M was a baby she was cute. We like to watch many movies, scary or not scary. We like to watch Alice in Wonderland. [from M: I don't.] We like to watch Shanti and Mowgli movie. [M: We like to watch My Little Pony.] We like to play my little ponies, we like to play it. I'm going to tell you one more thing after this: hmmmmmm. Hmmmm. I didn't want you to write hmmmmm. We like to explore with magnifying glasses. We like to write names on the computer. [M: and we like to play Away in a Manger.] Just write "E doesn't like Joseph." [M: We like to play Laura and Mary.] M, we're done! And we like to ride ponies. [M: I like it when Aunt comes over to OUR house.]

They do love us after all

2007-10-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

From M:

"Will I marry when I am 15?"

mom: "No, I think 25 is about the right age."

M: "Well, when I am 25 I will marry Daddy, so I can stay here in this family forever and never leave."

From E:

"Mommy, I don't just love you because you give me things, I love you because you are so sweet to me."

Sanctimony take two

2007-10-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you will recall that the other day the girls were both trying to be like Jesus (yeah, whatever). On Friday E told me that, rather, she was trying to be like "the ponies" (eek!). "But," she informs me, "even they make mistakes sometimes."

Art

2007-10-29T08:34:00.003-07:00

M was particularly prolific last night in the art department. Let's see if I can figure out how to add photos here:

This is my personal favorite. It's a bunny rabbit. With an invisible body (duh!). And a carrot.

This is the Little Mermaid (note tail). This iteration has short hair. M informed me that "she cut off her OWN HAIR." Mom: "did her mommy take away her scissors?" M: "She has no mommy. [wishful thinking, no doubt] She only has the Sea Witch and she is far far away." Mom: "Then did her daddy take away her scissors?" M: "She has no daddy. She only has a fish friend. And he wasn't watching when she cut her own hair." Lucky mermaids.

The Little Mermaid take two. This one apparently didn't have access to scissors.

This is a boy who took off all his clothes (hence the visible belly button) and put on a tiger costume. He has on a mask so he can't see and his mommy has to lead him around everywhere (this is what M wants me to do with her cougar costume).

This is M's self portrait. What looks like a second mouth is her chin.

This is the Sea Witch with her tentacles (M's word) all curled up instead of straightened out.

Pre-Halloween Festivities and Sanctimony

2007-10-23T20:16:00.001-07:00

We carved pumpkins tonight (after having promised the girls we would last night and not getting around to it because we had dinner too late). They were extremely excited about it. E drew on the picture on her pumpkin and Tuey's, and then M spent a loooooong time drawing hers: "I'm just putting on some finishing touches." They mostly have teeny tiny eyes and noses and enormous mouths with itty bitty teeth. Tuey's came out best. M made me carve about a hundred circles all over hers ("those are the touches" she explained). Then she danced wildly in front of them after we had lit them so they would look like they were dancing.

Speaking of dancing, here is the latest favorite activity of the girls: after it gets dark, and preferably on a night when the moon is bright, they put on their fancy Cinderella slippers and go outside to dance with Marmot Dad ("Prince Erik"). If they are really into the story they'll run down the sidewalk and leave one slipper behind for "Erik" to find and bring back to them. M started crying the other night because "I want to have stairs in front of our house!" You know, the kind of stairs Cinderella runs down at the stroke of midnight.

This post is apparently all about M. Here's one more story about her. E has been having fits left and right lately for no apparent reason. As soon as a fit starts, M will look at me solemnly and slightly sanctimoniously and say, "I would never treat you like that, Mommy."

Of course, both of them assured me last night that they were trying to be like Jesus and only do right things. M opined that she would probably be like Jesus by the time she was 20. One can only hope.

Tuey, for his part, is a full time walker now. Only occasionally does he have a need for speed so pressing that he has to scamper on hands and feet with his sweet little bottom in the air. He also has lots of words to say. His favorites are please (said "pih! pih!" while signing please and looking hopefully at my chest) and cheese (which he doesn't particularly like to eat, but he likes to say it).

I am losing my mind

2007-10-19T10:14:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a big day for us. We went to the library for story time, then I stuffed the kids in the car and gave them their lunch on the way to preschool. (Tuey, for his part, smeared peanut butter and Nutella all over his face and in his hair and then promptly fell asleep.) Then I came back home with Tu and M and then went BACK to preschool to get E and on the way home we went to the grocery store to pick out pumpkins. (Aside: it takes kids FOREVER to pick out pumpkins, especially when part of the time they're pretending to be Wilbur the pig walking on the barnyard fence or when they're getting their feet stuck in between pumpkins. M, of course, was wearing a long skirt and a fancy, silky tunic.) Anyway, I stuck the pumpkins in the front of the van because there was no room in the back because the stroller was back there. OR WAS IT?? After Marmot Dad got home from work, we put the kids in the car again to go out, and I looked in the back and noticed the stroller was GONE. Left on the sidewalk at the library. Yes, this is my brand new double stroller that I paid for with my hard labor this summer in the classroom. The good news is that it was still on the sidewalk when we went racing back to find it. Someone had even pushed it into a corner out of the way. I just can't believe I forgot to take with me a great big RED stroller. (Of course Marmot Pa says it's good I forgot the stroller and not the kids.)

The Blind Leading the Blind

2007-10-15T20:46:00.000-07:00

A conversation from our ride home from preschool:

M: Brooke says purple in a funny way. She says "puhpol." (NB: M and E both say purple as "paypul.")

E: Well, she just talks different from us. She's little. (She's older than M.)

M: But she says paypul like puhpol.

E: No she doesn't. She says paypul.

M: No she doesn't. She says puhpol.

E: No she doesn't. She says paypul.

M: Mommy! E's contradicting me!

And here is E's take on everything in the world. We went for a walk tonight with the girls riding bikes. They are not allowed to ride their bikes across streets but have to get off and walk across. Sometimes M doesn't want to, so we tell her to watch how E does it and follow her example. Tonight Marmot Dad was trying to get M to hustle on off her bike and across the road and was trying to throw in some positive reinforcement along the way, so he said, "here, get off your bike and we'll walk across the road and you can be an example for your sister." At which point said sister cried out, shocked and appalled, "No! No one has to be an example for me, ever! I am ALWAYS an example for EVERYONE ELSE!"

So there you have it.

She also informed me that "preschool is so pleasant when Sam and Averie aren't there."

Tooey is getting good at walking, although he needs to start bending his knees.

True Stories

2007-10-12T08:36:00.001-07:00

So, many years ago, before E was born, Marmot Dad had a dream that he was holding a little Mongolian boy in his hand and the boy's name was Tajil (or Tadjil, or Tagil, or what have you). We called E Tajil until she was born. Last Saturday I was asked to go to a law conference dinner to help host some of the international guests. I was initially seated at a table with three Mongolians. And one of them was named . . . Tajil. No kidding.

A few weeks ago my ditsy neighbor was over in our yard asking her daughter how school had gone. Daughter said that she was not allowed to eat her marshmallows for a snack at school because they were a sugary snack and their class is not allowed to have sugary snacks at their snack time. Neighbor says, "Marshmallows? I didn't know they had sugar in them." Flabbergasted, I reply, "marshmallows are ALL sugar, and a little bit of gelatin." "Oh great, that's all my two-year-old eats." Sigh. Sad but true. I saw someone over at said neighbor's house a few days ago measuring for an appraisal. I was hoping they were getting ready to sell, but no, they took out a second mortgage to finance the opening of a jewelry store. But we figure either way we win: if the shop does well, they'll move into a big fancy house in a big fancy neighborhood. If it does poorly, they'll move back to Idaho.

Another true story: E ate fish and liked it. Hallelujah. She even asked for some for breakfast.

And finally, E and M have discovered a new favorite game: ponies go to college. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

When Ponies Go Bad

2007-10-06T11:13:00.001-07:00

On Thursday while E was at preschool, M and Tuey and I went to one of our favorite haunts, D.I. We scored big time. The girls want nothing more than My Little Ponies for Christmas, but I've been severely griped about spending $5 (each!) for ugly plastic ponies that, frankly, look a little slutty. Well, someone apparently cleaned out their pony collection, and I managed to select six sparkly ponies, one with wings (that always makes the girls happy) for $.25 each. I thought I was so clever to hide them in the basket under a pair of pants. But I guess M has pony radar, because she found them somehow and almost went through the roof with joy. So as a compromise I told her she could select ONE for herself and one for her sister to play with right now, and then we would put the rest away for a surprise for Christmas. So she did, and it worked out pretty well (even though she told E "there are two more of these for you!" but I'm hoping she forgets). And the girls have played with them nonstop since Thursday. I mean nonstop. They even took them over with an extra for their friend Max to play with yesterday.

So today I'm sitting on the floor picking things up when I hear "oh no! A wild animal! Get it!" I look around to see an orange pony and a purple pony holding PISTOLS and they both say "BANG BANG!" and then go to get the wild animals, skin them, and eat them. Yes, pistols. The girls had taken little pegs out of the CD tower (the pegs that hold up the shelves) and shoved them into the ponies' hooves and then taken their maurading gang of ponies around the house to destroy and devour.

Marmot Dad says this is particularly ironic considering the ponies' general effete and lackluster looks and personalities. Aren't they supposed to love everyone and fly around spreading happiness or something? (I missed out [thankfully] on the whole '80s pony phenomenon. MBC??)

I also found the game Operation at DI and have put that away for E's birthday (she's thought she is an underprivileged child ever since she got to play the game at a neighbor's house).

Now here's a recipe (from Moosewood Cookbook) we had at a neighbor's house last week. Very tasty on crusty bread:

grind in food processor or blender:

1 C walnuts

some parsley

add and blend to a smoothish paste:

1 C feta cheese

1/2 C milk

1 clove garlic

pinch cayenne or red pepper flakes

Eat and enjoy.

Theology

2007-10-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

A true conversation from this morning, which Marmot Dad told me "please blog. Please blog now."

E: I was so scared last night until you told me I didn't have a crack in my eye (she dreamed that she did). (pause) Mommy, why did you pray to Heavenly Father that I would only have good dreams, and then I had a bad dream?

Mom: (stymied)

M, the junior theologist: well, maybe Heavenly Father will help you some time (meaning some other time).

E: He helps me all the time.

M: Because he loves little children. (pause) And we are children. (another pause) I dreamed about the Jungle Book last night.

Boys will be boys

2007-10-02T19:25:00.000-07:00

Here's what gave Tuey great joy tonight. He was eating applesauce, and he always eats it as messy as he possibly can--puts his sweet little face right down in the bowl and gops. He got some in his nose, and then he thought that was the funniest thing he had ever done. He started grinning and snorting applesauce in and out of his nose and laughing hysterically at himself. I'm afraid we're in for years and years of burping contests and the like at the dinner table.

As I was making the applesauce, E came in and said, "Mommy, what is that delightful smell?" Oh yeah, she knows how to play me.

M took the Lego box outside this evening (somehow evading my watchful gaze), stripped down, filled it with water, and was going to swim (in 55 or 60 degree weather). I nabbed her before she got it completely filled and decided to let her swim to see that I was right about how freezy cold she would be. Instead, she sat on top of it and wee-wee-d into the water. That naughty girl.

How (Not) to be a Domestic Goddess

2007-10-01T20:01:00.001-07:00

I get toast tonight as an after-dinner snack for the girls. With fresh, homemade peach jam on top. It was as fresh as it gets. E ate about four bites and then was done. I asked her what the problem was. "I don't want to eat this." "But you asked for it." "But I don't want to eat it. I'm afraid worms might start popping out of it."

Back story:

So a couple of years ago my sister came over and we decided to break out some apricot jam. When we opened the jam, said sister spied a small, well processed worm on the top of the jam. I've been a little leery of apricot jam since then, I must admit. I don't know if E can remember this at all, but she told me the whole story: "and then when Aunt opened the jam a worm came popping out." I assured her there was no popping of worms, just a little worm lying there calmly, waiting to be discarded. But she's not buying it.

The good news is, she remembers in her version of the story that AUNT made the worm-popping jam.

In my own defense, that is the ONLY jar of jam in about 20 years of jam-making that has EVER had a worm in it.

In other news, E asked me yesterday, "will I ever have to wear hoop skirts?" (Do you sometimes HAVE to let an alligator eat you?)

M and Tuey had checkups today. Shots for everyone. M tried soooooo very hard to be stoic. She bit her lip and held in her little tears as long as she could, but it all came bursting out. Tuey just screamed bloody murder. He weighs 19 lbs. -- 75th percentile for height, 3rd for weight, skinny little guy.

Yesterday M was the angel who came to Joseph Smith. She came and asked him, "How do I look, Joseph Smith?" I didn't know there were narcissistic angels in heaven.

The Wrong Trousers

2007-09-27T14:48:00.000-07:00

(This is for those of you who do not read my sister's blog. If you don't, you should. At least read her version of this story.)

So Marmot Dad comes home last night looking like the cat who swallowed the canary, having stopped at D. I. and scored a great pair of second-hand pants. (May I just mention, and don't you deny it Marmot Pa, that said Dad is a little obsessed with pants. And T shirts. He never seems to have enough of them and always wants plenty of backups.) Anyway, he triumphantly throws them at me to show me, I suppose, that he is as good a dumpster-diver/garage-saler/second-hander as I am (ha ha ha ha ha as if). I check the size (to make sure I don't have to hem them, because we got him some pants at D.I. about six months ago that needed nothing but a little hem and I STILL haven't gotten around to it). They say "18." I say, "These are women's pants." He denies it vociferously. They were in the men's section, he claims. So what if they were, I counter. These are a "pretty plus" women's size. My sister backs me up. He tries them on. Now I must honestly admit that if I didn't KNOW they were women's pants, I would probably not notice anything amiss. But they do make his posterior a little . . . more . . . rounded. And he himself admits that he noticed that the pockets were in sort of a weird place, and the zipper was a bit shorter than normal. "I did notice that," he says, as if to defend himself. I guess it's good to know that we can do his shopping at Lane Bryant from now on. And let the record show that I have actual photos of him wearing a hideous pink shirt and (horribile dictu) pink shorts (thankfully not at the same time).

Today (new topic) is Tuie's birthday, sweet baby. He took three steps today for the first time and has been his usual sweet self. Except that he thinks he's too big for his high chair (keeps standing up) and want to drink from a cup (which he does badly).

M, on the other hand, was apprehended writing her name in ballpoint pen on her very lovely and nice pink pants. I wasn't sure whether to praise or blame, since she was writing her name on her pants and doing a very nice job of it. After all, she's only three. I toyed with the idea of letting her put on the last letter, the only one she lacked. She explained that "I couldn't find the tag." Cryptic. Then I realized she had seen me write E's name in permanent ink on the tags in the extra set of clothes I sent to her school.

As for E, she told me today that "Hunter is a boy I just HATE." I explained that we could not really like people but we shouldn't hate them. She justified: "Well, I hate him, but I try to be nice to him."

Out next door neighbors got a trampoline. It's getting me down.

Little Microwave on the Prairie

2007-09-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

So E and M are both way into Little House on the Prairie play. They spent all afternoon today being Laura and Mary and going to the college for the blind and packing up their wagon and calling for Jack, the brindle bulldog. After a while they decided they were low on provisions, so they took the toilet paper holder and used it for a gun to go hunting. They caught a polar bear and a Canada goose initially. M hauled in the polar bear (a big stuffed bear) for me to inspect. I asked her what she would do with it. "Take off its skin and microwave it and EAT it!" she explains. Then she says she loves polar bear meat. And duck meat. And porcupine meat. I ask her what she will do with the porcupine that she caught. "Take off its skin and microwave it and eat it! (pause) But first we'll have to take its porks off so they won't poke us."

The truly ironic thing is that neither child will touch meat for real (except a piece of rotisserie chicken about once every six months). But tonight at dinner they chowed down on wolf meat (quesadillas) and duck meat (nectarines) and even tried the goose meat (roasted sweet potatoes).

The Evil Pixie

2007-09-21T09:47:00.000-07:00

So I go to take a shower this morning. I enjoin the girls to "babysit themselves," which makes them feel big and important. They do so. They are in Thing One (henceforward referred to as "E")'s room when I get out. Probably coloring, I think. Great, I think. I get breakfast for the baby and get started on some for us older folk. When I hear a little voice saying, self righteously, "Mommy, M cut off all of her hair and it got ALL OVER my floor, but I picked it up so it wouldn't make a mess." There are several things wrong with this statement, but of course the "cut off all her hair" got my attention first. Sure enough, there was an evil little pixie with an evil little pixie cut-slash-mullet grinning at me, not a hint of remorse in her eyes. As the story comes out, it seems that E put M up to it and even did some of the slash-and-burn herself. The result of which is no girl is allowed to use scissors again until some time in November, if ever.

I called Marmot Dad to tell him the tale. His reaction: "I guess it's good we're not vain people." Oh, but we are a little bit. I was just planning the kids' Christmas portraits just yesterday, and now we'll have two cute little kids and one Liza Minelli (sp?), Jr. Actually, she bears a striking resemblance now to two of her Iowa cousins (unfortunately, both boys). My vanity, slight though it is, might necessitate buying some hair clips and maybe a sign that says "I am not a boy I cut off my own hair don't any of you people have kids?"

Little Tuie/Tuey/Tooey is, however, sweet and good and kind. I'm glad I've got ONE who is on my side.

(In)credulity

2007-09-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

Thing Two: Santa Claus doesn't really exist right? (this is what we tell the kids--to save trouble and despair down the road)

Marmot Mamma: right

Thing Two: (pause) But we got presents last year at Christmas . . .

MM: . . . . .

Thing Two: (long pause and thoughtful look with big, innocent eyes) . . . Why?

another conversation

Thing Two: When will Heavenly Father come out of heaven?

MM: ummmm, I don't know.

Thing Two: Maybe heaven is near India. (The girls are fascinated with India these days because they've watched The Jungle Book. Thing One wants us to move there and plans to take her bike so she can get around without riding an elephant.)

I want to be a paper girl

2007-09-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

We took the kids to the park on Monday night. Thing One has been fascinated with paper girls and boys for a few weeks now since reading The Paperboy, a great picture book. So she and Thing Two both took their bikes, their helmets, and several old newspapers and a rubber band. We first played catch for a while and then the paper delivery commenced. Thing One sat down and carefully folded the newspapers and put the one rubber band on the first one. She strapped on her helmet and, with great joy, hopped on her bike and took off down the path. As soon as she got to the first set of pine trees *BAM* there goes the first paper (fortunately she has been practicing riding with one hand for many weeks now) and *DING DING* goes the bell. Then she stopped, took off the rubber band, and wrapped up the second paper. Repeat. Then it was Thing Two's turn. They were so happy afterwards that they had actually gotten to DELIVER PAPERS (granted to squirrels and bugs) that they had to ride around and around the park path singing at the top of their lungs. Now they're trying to convince me to let them stay up all night and sleep during the day (which they are convinced paper boys and girls do). Thing Three is now trying to impale the computer keyboard. He wants me to write about him. Next time.