Clementine "cuties" are in season, and I have a bunch of them, some I'd bought and some that came in mine and Betsy's weekly fruit box. This morning I got caught in one of those "FEED ME NOW OR THE WHOLE WORLD WILL CAVE IN" moments, and quickly peeled Katrina a clementine, cut a few pieces in half, and stuck them on her tray.
Oh my goodness, did she like them. It was all I could do to keep up with preparing the pieces, which were supposed to buy me enough time to make her a sandwich, before she devoured them and then insistently called "AH!" and pointed frantically for more. Finally, after 3 clementines, I got just far enough ahead of her to slap together a soynut butter sandwich, and even more fortunately, she got derailed from the clementine craze and actually ate the sandwich bits.
Despite a slight cold (runny nose, coughing), Katrina was in a great mood most of the day. A trip to the Y's Childwatch this morning and then a mecca to Trader Joe's made up her morning excursions, and the rest of the day she played very happily scribbling or looking at books when her brothers weren't bothering her.
Brothers were too busy outside with Dad working on some new-old bicycles that Dave rescued from imminent deposit at a dump. Dave got talking to the owner of a property way down the end of a neighboring street, who'd just sold the property to a developer who's going to level the old house (it's nothing special) and put 4 new houses up. The now-former owner was cleaning out the garage and offered Dave some kids' bikes that hadn't gotten much use and had been sitting for a while. Dave brings home discarded vehicles the way little girls bring home stray kittens, so we're now richer two more bicycles.
They needed some work, so Dave and the boys glady delved into that today. First, Dave showed Gabriel how to test the spokes, then Julian got into the action.
I didn't see the rest of the wrenching party, but they got the 20" bike up and running, and apparently that's now Gabriel's new bicycle. Dave said the frame is a little big for him, but he has no problem riding it and wasted no time skid-sliding it around the leaves along the sidewalk. Julian will inherit Gabriel's 16" bike, though he's still too small for it.
The boys are very very anxious to go to the BMX park tomorrow!
I'm going to try to go for a short while too, to videotape them, though dusty bike parks and crawling babies don't mix well. It looks like the BMX park is going to be enough of a fixture in our lives that we'll have to soon solve the problem of only having one car that can conveniently transport bikes and baby. I can install a carseat in Dave's car for the few hours my car is toting the boys' two-wheelers around, but what a pain.
We had an unusually nice quiet afternoon, thanks to Julian being an unbearable pain in the rear end. There was absolutely no way he was going to spend the entire day tormenting the whole family, so I invested time in getting him in his room for a "nap." He loudly and rudely insists he doesn't want to take a nap, so I tell him he doesn't have to sleep, just lie down. "But that's taking a nap!" he petulantly complains. Finally I told him just to have quiet time, read him a book, and made a hasty exit. To my amazement, he stayed in his room quietly for about two hours, some of which we think he did spend sleeping.
Thank goodness. Gabriel worked on his Italy cultural poster for school, while Dave and I caught up on office things, and Katrina happily scribbled. I was getting up a lot to help Gabriel, checking on Katrina on and off, getting rid of old mail and organizing things. I commented to Dave how amazing it was that Katrina was playing so well by herself.
But eventually my "it's too quiet" alarm went off, and I checked her in the craft area -- not there. I did a quick scan of the downstairs. No baby. I ran upstairs -- not in her room or the bathroom, and the other rooms' doors were closed.
Ran back downstairs....waitaminnit, we never close our bedroom door if we're not in it. Why was it closed? Ran back up, into our bedroom. Then could hear crying from a distance, but couldn't locate it. Where was she? After another scan of the upstairs, I went back into our room and realized our bathroom door was closed too -- and there she was behind it, shaking and crying pitifully. She'd snuck all the way upstairs and closed two doors behind her in our relatively soundproof house. Will someone please notify the Mom Of The Year Selection Committee to cross my name off their list of candidates?
One more day of a four-day weekend, and I'm nowhere near getting anything done that I'd planned. The remodel must not stall for lack of decisions! The pressure is mounting, but maybe that's exactly what I need.
11/24/07
p.s. How could I forget?! The most incredible thing today: NO MORE MIGRAINE! It was a one-dayer! Hurrah!
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