Wilfred and Virginia

James‘ grandmother (Nana) passed away a few weeks ago on January 9, 2007, joining her husband (Pop-pop) who passed over a year ago. It was hard to imagine Nana all alone after Pop-pop died.

I never met James’ mother, who died while he was in college, but I met Nana and Pop-pop several times over the years. I like to think of the time we stayed with them for a few days one Thanksgiving, before Ethan was born. They both showed me over their home, the house that James visited in the summer when he was a little boy. Pop-pop took me to his woodworking shop, where the tools he had amassed during his lifetime were placed carefully on the pegboards lining the walls, every one in it’s place. Nana showed me over her kitchen and informed me proudly how she designed the layout herself. I exclaimed over the spice rack hanging inside her pantry door, and Pop-pop disappeared and came back with 2 more identical racks, which we took home with us. One we left in our old house when we moved, the other hangs in my pantry now. My efforts to get some family dinner recipes didn’t go over so well. There weren’t that many to be had. However, desserts and cookies, I came away with a notebook full. (Some of which I still can’t get “just right.“) They talked to us and each other with a sharp wit that was a bit unexpected, on my part. They made me laugh, and they made me feel loved and welcome.

There was no funeral for either grandparent. I think in the abstract, this idea always sort of appealed to me, but no longer. It would have been nice to go up and see family that we haven’t seen in a long time. It would have been nice to sit with them and reminisce about the lives of these two wonderful people. It would have been nice to hear more of the stories, collect more of the family recipes, sit and soak in more of the history of James’ family. It would have been nice to say goodbye and have some closure. I guess that is what this post is for me now.

I think of the pain they must have suffered when they lost their daughter, and I can’t even imagine going through it. I hope I never have to. Parents are supposed to go before their children.

I like to think of them together now, and reunited with their daughter, who is likewise reunited with James’ father.

May they rest in peace.

Screen shot from google calendar.

Tonight and tomorrow is the big day for Andrew, Tamara and Adora. Good luck! We’ll be thinking of you, and we can’t wait to meet the little wee lady!

Can you make it out? Because I can’t really.

James and I saw it last Friday night.

Loved it.

Wish I hadn’t read any summary/synopsis of the movie.. it ruined it a little bit for me. The summary always stated something about the girl’s imaginary world, but I think it could have been viewed as “real” events, and I would have done so, if I hadn’t read those and been predisposed to thinking “this is all in her head.”

Other complaint.. “EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO”

Does anyone else see a mention of “Pan” in there? This obviously says, “The Faun’s Labyrinth” .. and there was no mention of Pan anywhere else in the movie that I could see. The faun was never named as Pan. Isn’t Pan a pretty important mythical character? Am I wrong to feel like I was mislead by the “Pan” in the title? THERE WAS NO PAN! DON’T TRY TO FOOL ME WITH THAT TITLE!

Anyway. For some reason I feel kind of righteously indignant about this translated title.

Oh, but the movie was beautiful. It appealed to the fairy tale lover in me. It felt right, and it was not just the icing of a fairy tale that happens in so many versions. It had real horror and life and death situations (which real fairy tales have), which was mirrored in the physical (“real”) world going on around the girl. It did not leave the taste of sacharin in one’s mouth, as so many modern/updated fairy tales do.

Highly recommended. Hope it wins all the awards it was nominated for.

our power went out friday evening. I was on my way home, and James called me to tell me. He was halfway through nuking some hot dogs in the microwave for the kids when it went out. He requested I stop by BK for some dinner.

The power came back on about 5 minutes before I got home.

However, now, mysteriously.. our microwave does not heat food. It sounds like it’s working. It LOOKS like it’s working. The light is on, the turn table is spinning, but the food does not get hot.

This is a little inconvenient but no big deal.

Big Deal: Our heat on the main level is not working. We have tried peering intelligently at the furnace in the basement. I flipped the switch for it on, and off, and it seemed to start up and make noise. But warm air does not blow out of our vents. James went outside and peered intelligently at the blower units sitting next to the house. He informed me that one unit has a green flashy light, and the other unit has no light. This seemed to be pretty definitive information, until suddenly the unit lacking any blinking light turned on and made noise.

We kerflommuxed.

And chilly.

I laid down for 20 minutes in front of our gas fireplace, which we never ran again after seeing the gas bill the month after we moved in, and got the pilot light started. The entire thing even light up briefly when the switch was turned on, but then faded back down to solely pilot light.

We are continually thwarted in efforts to heat our home.

We’ll be upstairs.. until the service people get here.

-amy is CHILLY.

I can’t remember if I’ve talkeda bout this yet, so if I have, I’m sorry.

Jocelyn is huge. Late December we realized that she’s outgrown all her 3T shirts. The shirts I had to buy her in late sept/early oct because she’d outgrown all the fall 2T stuff I’d gotten her in early August.

She is now wearing a 4T.

FOUR TEE!

HER BROTHER WEARS A 4T!

…

SHE IS ONLY TWO! YEARS! OLD!

…

I’M FREAKING OUT HERE! AND I’VE HAD A MONTH TO GET USED TO IT!

So this does mean that my mom and I got to buy all sorts of darling cute clothes for her around Christmas, while she was visiting.

And the whole point of this post is to show you my very very favoritest item of them all.

Picked it up at Target. I love love love this fabric. I would buy bolts and bolts of it and paper our house with it, inside and outside, if i could.

However, whoever dressed her on the day this picture was taken, needed to be hit with the fashion stick.

Can you guess which parent it was?

PARENT DADDY????

Or PARENT MOMMY!?

Post YOUR guess in the comments!

Regardless. Aren’t we lucky to have such a sweet girl? 🙂

“how does a frosted mini wheat go to the bathroom?”

“how?”

“with it’s frosted mini wheat penis!!”

Every night, when I put the kids to bed, I always tell them to have good dreams. And then whenever I get them up, I ask them if they had good dreams, and what they were.* This morning I sat on Ethan’s bed and rubbed his back as he was waking up, and told him good morning. Usually this takes a few minutes for him to “wake up,” but this morning, nearly as soon as his eyes were open, he sat up and climbed into my lap for a great big morning hug. I asked him if he had good dreams, and he nodded, and then I asked him what he dreamed of. I think that sometimes he doesn’t remember or doesn’t dream, and has a standard answer of “trains!” or “dump trucks!” but sometimes I can really tell that he is remembering his dream and he tells me about it. It’s never as detailed as I would like, as I think the dreams of little kids are just fascinating.

This morning, he grinned up at me and said, “I dreamed about YOU!”

“REALLY! What did I do in your dream?”
“We went up in an AIRPLANE!”
“That sounds like it was a LOT of fun!”
“It was! It was great!”
“Let’s be sure to meet in your dreams again.”

It was pretty sweet.

*This makes it sound like I do all the putting to bed and waking up in the house. This is not the case. I just mean, whomever i’m putting to bed, and whenever i get someone up, this is what I say/ask.

This morning we were driving away from our house, and up ahead there was a school bus stopped, and the kids were all climbing on board. The car in front of us stopped, and a little girl and her mommy got out. Her mommy put some aquaphor on her lips, and then the girl hustled down to the bus, which was waiting for her, and she climbed on board.

My kids watched this in fascination. I excitedly pointed out the school bus to them, and then they were full of observations.

“LOOK at the BIG kids!”
“I’m going to be a big kid too, and get on a school bus!”
“I’m not a big kid. I’m an OLD KID.” (jocelyn)
“LOOOOOK! LOOOOOOK! SHE HAS AQUAPHOR TOOOOO!”
“Are they kindergarteners, mommy?”
“Yes, there are some kindergarteners there.”
“I’m going to be a kindergartener too, and ride the bus!”
“Yes, next year you’ll be a kindergartener, but I think you’ll still be at OurSchool, so we’ll drive you. But when you’re a first grader, THEN you’ll ride the bus.”

He didn’t answer to this, but was mulling it over.

Kindergarten decisions await us. Their preschool has a private full day kindergarten, and with 8 kids to 1 teacher vs. 25 kids to 1 teacher, I think you’ll agree that that isn’t a hard decision to make (keeping him at his current school vs. putting him in the overcrowded public school). Even if they fix the overcrowding (which I’ve heard they will) it is still not a ratio anywhere near as good as what OurSchool has. So even though the lure of saving money is strong, we’ll probably be doing the private school thing for him for kindergarten.

But the THOUGHT of putting him in the public school and how does that work? and what about before/after school care? and who runs it? when? how much? will he like it? is just poking at me all the time, and while I am happy with our situation right now, with both of us working, and both kids at the same school, in a few years, it will all change and it scares me a bit. It will definitely be tough to have Jocelyn at the private school, and ethan in the public school, just in terms of picking up / dropping off, but I wouldn’t want to gyp her out of a good start in her education by not putting her in the private kindergarten that her brother will have gone to, and I heard some talk at my Bunco night about the extended day care and how some of the mums weren’t too happy with it..

But what it really boils down to.. I would like to be home when my kids come home from school. It is how I grew up, and I just don’t like to picture anything other than that for my kids. It’s kind of weird. I mean, weird that I am totally fine with how things are now, but I don’t like going on this way in the future. You’d think that if I’m fine with it now, I should be fine with it then, but I’m not, I’m very squidgy about it then.

I don’t know what will happen, but I guess we’ve got a few years to figure it out yet. I know what I DON’T want, and that is sending my kids off to college and then feeling like my life is over and there’s nothing left to live for. I know that this doesn’t happen to all SAHMs, but I do know some that it HAS happened to, and heaven knows it can probably happen to working moms too.. I have made some big steps to try to keep my OWN life going along with my family life, and so I think the foundation is there.

Anyway. A lot of rambling. Again. We’ve got a few years to figure it out.

-amy gave you a two for one tuesday

On Saturday, Ethan and I went to Target for a prescription, and groceries.

And when my eyes lit on this, it was very easy for Ethan to convince me to get it.

“Let’s get it, momm–”
“OK!!”

It was $15, and has 4 games in it. Ms. Pacman, Galaga, Pole Position, and 2 others that I can’t remember.

The little joystick box has a cord going out of it that plugs right into your tv for video and audio. We have some of those on the front of our tv, so it’s very easy to just plug it in, change the video to video 2, and start playing. It also takes 4 AA batteries.

A friend of ours built a whole console that looks exactly like the video games I used to play at Pizza Hut when I was 8. The kind where the game is set in a glass top table, and there’s controls on either side, so 2 players can face each other. He built it and put a computer inside and the last time we were there and I played, I was amazed when James came up, said it was time to go, and I’d spent 2 hours playing Ms. Pacman.

This game is not NEARLY as good as his. I’ve died numerous times on this little $15 version because the controller wasn’t really doing what I said (I know, I know, it’s always easy to blame the controller, but this time, it’s TRUE.)

But it’s still damned fun.

When it’s my turn, and I’m playing Ms. Pacman, Ethan and Jocelyn sit and watch and root for the ghosts. I only know the name of the red one, Blinky, which is also the fastest and most wiley of the ghosts. James informed me that the pink one is Sue. I should look up the other ones. Ethan likes to gloat and say, “I GOTCHA!” when I die, and then says, “That was me. I’M BLINKY! I GOT YOU!!”

Guess who played for an hour after the kids were in bed.

-amy could only get to the pretzel screen.

One week ago, Monday, it was like 68 degrees.

Yesterday it snowed.

It’s finally behaving like winter! Yay!

Of course, I was one of the eediots who looked out the window, saw the snow, and said, “I’d better go out!”

Well, not really. It started snowing right around naptime, so of course, being the mean parents we are, we made them go up for naptime. After a half hour or so, I started gathering up all the snow apparel I know we’d need, which is when I realized that their snow suits were nowhere to be found. I thoughtfully bought new snow boots sometime in November, but I thought their snowsuits would do for another season. Little did I know that they had gone AWOL. My memory kind of pricks at the thought of snowsuits, so I think that I perhaps dropped them off at Good Will. I know that Jocelyn’s was probably too small, and perhaps Ethan’s too.

So anyway, before “naptime” was over and the kids came down and jonesin’ for the outdoors, I got myself in the 4Runner and headed out to Target. WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD. The roads were packed, but luckily, there weren’t any idiots. Everyone was slow and careful and very aware of what other cars were doing.

Where they had swimming suits and springtime gardening stuff on display.

I guess the good news, was that they did have a few snow suits left (and jocelyn’s will last her for the next 2-3 years at least, as it was a girl’s size XS) AND they were on clearance. I also picked myself up some new mittens, a scarf and a hat. And luckily, they still had some snow items (ALSO ON CLEARANCE) so I picked up 2 child sized snow shovels, and a cheap plastic sled.

So Sunday afternoon was spent outdoors, shoveling, scooping, bulldozing (or ‘snowdozing’ as Ethan called it), snow-girl making, demanding, “pull me! pull me!” (on the sled), loading the sled up with snow and pulling it around, flopping down and making snow angels, and then coming indoors stripping off all the snowy sodden clothes to sit on the couch and watch The Muppet Show with big mugs of cocoa and marshmellows.

This morning, I actually got up when my alarm clock went off (something that hadn’t happened yet this year) and went and turned on the tv to see about school closings. After watching for 40 minutes and not seeing the kids’ school (it’s a private pre-school/daycare) I finally looked up the number and called. They were open!

And so we got up, got everyone ready, bundled up all the snow apparel to be taken to school, and 2 very excited kids went off to school. I also had to call our house cleaning company and ask them not to come today, because oh boy is our house not ready.

Our county schools were closed today, along with many others, so the roads were remarkably not filled with idiots. However, will you people with snow built up on your cars PLEASE clean it ALL off? I nearly died of a heart attack when a huge sheet of ice flew off the car in front of me and slammed against my windshield. Snow is ok. But when it gets all icey.. damn.

So it was a loverly weekend.

How was yours? Did you make any snow-girls?