Today may just be the greatest day of my life. Ever. It's been kind of a long week, 'round here, with the children being cranky and various meetings being... well, you know, the sorts of meetings where you're sitting there, hour after hour, questioning your will to go on in a world where people think you need to have 3-hour meetings about minutiae. I also totally biffed our meal planning this week, and I have absolutely no excuse for it, either. As a result we had "Oh crap, what are we doing for dinner?" every single night this week. Not really my favorite meal, though we worked it out. And...
When I was pregnant with Chickadee, I knew she was a girl. I told her father I knew she was a girl, and he would always tell me that I had a 50/50 shot at being correct, and after she was confirmed to be a girl via ultrasound he quipped that if I gave birth to four children and correctly predicted the gender of all four, THEN he would believe that I "knew." (I did know, though. I knew with Monkey, too.) Meanwhile, once she was confirmed to have two X chromosomes, I sank into a quiet and private dread. It's not that I don't like girls, you understand. It's that I WAS ONCE A GIRL and I both...
Whoops! Was yesterday Love Thursday and I missed it? It's not because I was without love, I assure you. I was OVERFLOWING with love, yesterday! Inbetween the curse words! Um. Sometimes I curse when I'm especially overflowing with love. Or especially overflowing with cake batter. Yes. A few days back Otto told me he was having a colleague come to town for the week, and then he laid out their schedule of events and asked if it would be okay with me if we had him come to dinner on Thursday night. And we're having kind of a busy week, here, so I may have looked... less than thrilled... and he...
It's been raining. And raining. And today, it's supposed to SNOW! (Translation, for those who don't live in Georgia: The forecast is calling for ten flakes of snow mixed with our rain. BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES AND CLEAN OUT THE GROCERY STORES!) There's an interesting chain reaction that happens 'round here when we cannot go outside to play. First, Monkey gets a little... ummm... tense. Monkey is sort of like a human border collie; we often joke that he's fine as long as he's allowed to carry heavy things and run and feel useful. On a rainy day when he can't adequately disperse his energy, he...
I love my children. I love my children I love my children I love my children Ilovemychildren. Even if they are TRYING TO KILL ME. Look; after the last-minute science project We Had Words. (Most of them were even not curses!) Chickadee agreed that she would no longer do her work at the last minute. She would budget her time better. She would get things done using all of the time allotted to her. Things Would Be Different. I bet you have NO IDEA where this is going, right? Oh, things were better. They were. For a while. Her workload this year has been a lot heavier than ever before (gotta prep...
What I told Otto---and what I thought was the truth---was that if we replaced the kitchen table, then I could tolerate everything ELSE I want to change about the kitchen, a while longer. The truth is that the kitchen is probably the only room left that's still in its original-to-the-house state. I suppose it's possible that the (ugly) wallpaper isn't original, or that the (cracking) vinyl was replaced once along the way, but the cabinets and countertops and quite possibly the stove are ooooooold. Not that there's anything wrong with old. But in my mind's eye, I see fresh paint, new cabinets,...
Someone asked me a few days ago if Monkey will ever outgrow his sensory issues, and I struggled to answer that coherently because yes, of course he will, and no, not really. Sensory sensitivities are the result of a somewhat differently-wired neurological system, and though it will vary from person to person and age to age, it does seem like the relative immaturity of a younger brain struggles more than an adult who's had time to toughen up and adapt. For example, I think it's pretty clear to us, as his parents, NOW (though not before, because back when we were kids, this stuff was never...
I did get some chocolate today. In a heart-shaped box, even. And it's very nice, and all. But I also got my kids giving my husband a card onto which they had recorded a "WE LOVE YOU OTTOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" message that prefaced a recording of "We Are Family" by Sister Sledge. And then I got to disco-dance with my family while it played. (P.S. We are family, and we are also extremely bad dancers.) Happy Valentine's Day!
I hadn't been in to volunteer in the classroom this year, yet. I'm not sure how that happened, but it became immediately apparent when I walked in and was struck---as I always am---but how HUNGRY so many of these kids are for attention and to understand where I've come from. Are you Monkey's mom? Really? Does he have a dad, too? Wait, he has TWO DADS? And a mom? And his stepdad HELPED? On purpose? Did you bake this cake yourself? And brought it in for US? And you brought candy, too? Can we eat some? Really? One little boy told me that the cake was "gonna be so tight" after they finished...
