Ahh, the torch has been passed. Sitting on the motorcycle was the only way Dave could persuade Katrina to get out of his car's driver seat and stop playing with the steering wheel. She loves it. "Bye-sih-tull! bye-sih-tull!!" she declares ("bicycle"). Dave says she's a total gearhead.
Whee!
Julian was so good about setting the table tonight. It helped that I asked him to make my napkin into a triangle shape.
Gabriel did his homework before dinner.
Ah, these darling perfect well-behaved helpful little children. You buy that?
Gabriel was really a pain tonight. The least of his offenses was not getting out of the car for a long time because he was too busy kissing Katrina, and she was actually tolerating it. Yesterday I found him sitting and helping her play with Zoobs (a sort of building toy that's Julian's), pausing to kiss and hug her. This boy's love for his little sister knows no bounds.
Homework's started again. It's due weekly, but it's going to require a lot of oversight from us on a daily basis. Gabriel also has to practice a spelling list every day, as he'll have a spelling quiz every Friday.
Katrina's definitely identifying colors now, sometimes even correctly. For a few weeks, it seemed she's been trying, though still saying an object's color with the object, as though it's part of the name. For instance, the "orange firefly," a tiny dragonfly barrette, too small for her hair, but she likes playing with them. She saw them in the drawer I keep a brush and her hairbands in, so I started handing her one every morning to play with. I used to give her any firefly, but now it has to be the "ahhjj fiefie" (orange firefly). Then she started pointing out the "boo fiefie."
Today I directly quizzed her on Gabriel's T-shirt, which had identical red, white and blue cars on it. She got "boo" (blue) and "rit" (red) right, and couldn't identify the white one, but so what. Most telling is that she understands the question and what sort of thing she's supposed to answer. She's experimenting and saying new things and imitating and trying to communicate all the time now, a real language explosion.
Even her regular evening dinner tantrum was relatively minor. She's shedding babydom with every passing day now!
We had such a fun camping weekend! I used to camp a lot, Dave too to a lesser extent, but it was all motorcycle camping, often roving. Meaning, you're not in one place for more than one night, and spend the day travelling, so you tend to bug out early and arrive late, often setting up camp in the dark. You can carry a lot more on a motorcycle than on a bicycle or backpack, but it's still a far cry from car camping.
Still, my first experience car camping -- with kids -- was just great! We got incredibly lucky that our camping weekend coincided with a major heat wave. Along the coast, that meant that it was beautiful and not foggy and freezing, and we weren't in 100+ degree heat back home. Really, coastal beaches around here are famous for being cold, so this was a superb stroke of luck.
Most families shared one tent, and some tents were huge.
That legacy of motorcycle camping meant that I have two pretty small tents. The boys shared their own tent, and I got my own. Later, several people thought the separate-tent idea was great, though short of buying another tent, that's just what we had to do. It worked out great; even if I get a larger tent that I can stand in, I'd still put the boys in their own tent.
The moms who organized this trip did so, so much, it's just incredible. They arranged for the campsite, collected money and bought all the food, organized work details and basically took care of every last detail. Really hardworking ladies -- and husbands -- and I'm so grateful to them for having made this possible. Nice touch on the weather clairvoyance too.
There was a little fog Saturday morning, but it burned off quickly.
Julian at one of several portable tables, with other 2004-born kids.
I wish I got more "scene" photos, but, here's the main firepit where people gathered.
Hills attract kids immediately.
Some people brought tricycles too. Julian discovered too late that this little lowrider doesn't have brakes, and he fell hard on his helmetless head, resulting in a marble-sized bump on his head and a lot of crying. A helpful mom suggested a piece of candy to ease his pain; I declined. I can just see the kid-brain spinning that one: "hmm...! pain + crying = candy! hmm!!" It took about half an hour to get past this bump problem, and the spot is still very sensitive. It's hard to enforce helmet-wearing for a little tricycle, but Julian's awful bump demonstrates why we should. (yes, that's Gabriel in the photo, but Julian's the one who bonked his head.)
A few enterprising Dads lined the kids up for a hike. Gabriel joined at the last minute, just as Julian bailed. They went all the way to the beach, which is a 100-foot drop (according to Gabriel), and the best part was a ride back up in a V8!
Before lunch, I took Julian to the beach while Gabriel was on the hike, and later went back to get Gabriel. I love beaches. I love the ocean, and it's a crying pity that I don't get to them more often, especially living so close to paradise.
A smattering of surfers had Julian very concerned. "What if the lifeguard drowns?"
The water here is still too cold and fast to do much body-surfing, as I did as a kid on the Atlantic beaches. But sand play is always a big attraction.
We went back to the campground for lunch, then back to the beach. I didn't think the boys would have two trips in them, but they did. The beach is closeby, but not really walking distance, so we drove.
Back on the beach, three other moms and I went for a walk, while Dads and other moms watched our offspring. I was one of three "a la carte" moms, cleverly phrased by Lance's single mom, but Gabriel was in good hands with this (shh, handsome) redheaded Dad commandeering an engineering project. This Dad has taken his daughter (on his right) snow-camping in Yosemite, by himself, when she was three! They're serious campers, and I enjoyed talking to his wife on our walk.
Gabriel later tackled his own castle, a second one built behind a levee wall, after his first got washed away.
Other than the dead decapitated sea lion (not a sight you see on Atlantic beaches), it was a lovely walk.
Julian, unfortunately, didn't fare so well. Somehow during a frisbee game, some sand got in his eye. Several moms and myself couldn't get him to open his eye, and even a very impressive uniformed ranger couldn't persuade him either. The ranger had a bottle of eyewash stuff, and we did our best to flush out the sand, but Julian just couldn't tolerate opening his eye at all. We went back to the campsite and I sat him nearby, still clutching a cloth to his eye, while I started on dinner detail. Before long, he disappeared into his tent and went to sleep. Just as well.
As I was getting Gabriel to bed, Julian was just waking up, and he was wet. I got him cleaned up and pajama'd, then found some dinner for him with the help of yet even more helpful moms. He sat by the fire with the grownups, calmly eating dinner, listening to a Dad play guitar, and a few times took his hand off his eye. It was red and swollen, but at least he was able to open it. After he was done eating, he got up and said, "I'm going back to bed!" He'd been sleeping since 5pm, I was amazed! It had been quite a day for my little mishap magnet.
Julian's eye still looked a little swollen this morning, but he had it open and was looking around like normal. Thank goodness, because I was prepared to take him to Urgent Care if not.
Back to motorcycle-camping habits, I packed up quickly, got the boys breakfast and ready to go not-so-quickly, but we still left early enough to be home before 10am. My only regret is that the group photo of all the Moms and our 2004 "babies" happened while Julian was deep into a piece of cantaloupe and he refused to join me. Sniff.
Don't bring white shirts camping!
The only thing that marred this weekend for me was, of all things, a "minor" migraine headache. I was OK as long as I was moving around, but sitting and talking was hard.
When we got home, I was tired and in need of real sleep because of the headache, but was bracing myself to hear horror stories of Katrina torturing Dave all weekend. Not so! They did really well. She had her share of tantrums and opinions, but Dave said overall it was pretty quiet without the boys, and he appreciated the change. It was too hot on Saturday to go out much, but a nearby park has a little water feature and she enjoyed that.
The boys were happy to see Dad again, and they all like watching Sesame Street videos on the iPhone!
Katrina was adorable and funny today. It seems like she's made a huge leap in her language while we were gone! Dave said she's been telling him, "No way, dude!" in mock resistance.
She can finally climb up onto this chair, and this afternoon was having fun being silly on it. This is by no means a rare moment, but minute-for-minute, her tantrums are unfortunately more memorable. So this might seem like a very ordinary dull video to you, but to me, it's the most delightful thing to see her being charming and silly and happy.
Some of the best photos from the weekend are on other moms' cameras, so I'll have to update this post later. Laura told me she got a photo of the ranger ministering to Julian's eye, and Sonia got a photo of me and Julian. Me, in a photo? Horrors! I think I'll go single-handedly raise the air quality rating by taking my first shower since last Thursday. Not without some sadness rinsing out the salt spray from my hair.
Katrina's hair is getting just long enough for ponytails, and to my amazement, she was very cooperative about my fumbling to put them in this morning. Bye-bye baby, I'll see you Sunday!
I picked Gabriel up directly from school today, Julian in tow, to leave straight for camping. Or so I thought. Gabriel's school has implemented a new policy in which parents can no longer pick up their kids from outside the classrooms, all of which open to the outside, no indoor hallways. Instead, now we're supposed to wait behind a blue line painted in a corridor between two buildings, and the kids are supposed to funnel up this corridor to find us. This wide-open campus is now a closed.
It was a disaster. We were all packed together in 100 degree heat, under these metal roofs radiating yet more heat. The children were supposed to find their parents in this crowd, and then somehow get through it to get out. 5 minutes after school had closed, I broke ranks with some other parents to go to Gabriel's classroom to find him. Empty. About 6 other moms arrived to find the same, and we were all very annoyed. Where are our kids now? There are many ways out of the school, you can't expect them all to go up this one corridor. Incredibly, this mayhem is intended to ensure the safety of students.
At least I knew where Gabriel was: at the CDC. He'd made his way there behind the buildings, and was sitting comfortably in air-conditioning munching on graham crackers while Julian and I sweated under the roofs, sheepishly following this unfriendly policy. And we don't know where the boundaries are. Gabriel's classroom opens right onto a paved playground, bordered by a field and then a public park. There are no fences there. Or blue lines intended to herd back those most annoying of customers -- parents.
But what bothers me the most is missing the opportunity for informal exchanges with other parents outside the classroom, seeing Gabriel's friends and classmates, peeking inside his classroom, chatting briefly with the teacher, and generally feeling a little more connected to his schooling.
After losing 20 minutes to this fiasco, I packed the boys into the car, blasted the A/C, and we were on our way south to camp. We watched my car's outdoor thermometer rise to 103 as we started into the mountains, then as we approached the coast, it started dropped. When we arrived at the campsite, it had dropped to an astounding 68 -- a total of a 35-degree drop in under an hour. I set up camp in fog, long pants and long sleeves.
And so we spent the weekend camping along the coast.
I'm not partisan. I don't like listening to either convention. But when I listen to NPR the entire 2 hours a day I spend driving, some of it is bound to creep in during the news.
This morning, it was all about Sarah Palin's speech last night. Like her or not, she makes some pretty good sound bites. I loved her delivery on her comment about the tenacity it takes to be a hockey mom: "You know what they say the difference is between a hockey mom and a pit bull?" (perfectly timed pause)..."Lipstick."
Maybe that was why I wasn't paying attention when I was carrying Katrina to Tonya's house this morning. I tripped over the sidewalk, stumbled, and couldn't recover -- boom, down we went. My left forearm took the brunt of it, instead of my hands, to cushion a startled Katrina. She landed on my arm, my hand cradling her head, and somehow I managed not to land on her. Or break my arm. It's no wonder where she gets her clumsiness from. She didn't at all appreciate the sacrifice.
Tonight was Back to School Night at Gabriel's school. We recruited Tonya's daughters to play with our little trio on the school playground for the 45 minutes allotted to parents in the classroom with the teacher. Five of which was taken up by the chatty principal on the loudspeaker urging teachers to end on time.
Gabriel's teacher would have finished close to on time, but a minute or so after time, a mom roped her into a question about how to teach subtraction at home, so that her daughter doesn't get confused with the method taught at school. This is so far from my reality...I can't imagine having that much time or attention, yet. They're in first grade for chrissake. Give your kid an allowance, she'll learn fast about subtraction.
Meantime, Gabriel, Julian and Katrina had a great time playing in the completely unshaded playground in the midst of a late-summer heatwave....urgh. Fortunately it was late enough that it was starting to cool off. Kassidy, one of the girls minding Katrina, and who sees her every weekday, commented that she's a handful! Sort of, it's not like she's always running away or anything. She's just very OPINIONATED. Her Opinion about dinner tonight was, "What, are you freakin' out of your mind?! NFW!!!!"
I challenged Gabriel to see if he could get undressed, clothes in laundry, shoes put away, showered, dried, and in Pull-Ups (sigh, still) and pajamas in 5 minutes. He did it in 4:20. Sucker! But, wow. Beating the clock was actually more motivating than the ice cream that I insisted he could only have after he was ready for bed. MOMom.
...but not ours. There's a Gabriel and a Katrina at Julian's really pretty small preschool. Who knew!
I picked up Julian today at the tail end of his "Science Explorers" class. When we first got the flyer for this extra class, we blew it off, turned off by all the "stimulates" and "develops" language. But Julian's teacher let him take the class one day when there was an absence, and she told me that he loved it. So we signed him up.
Today was the class day, and I walked in and found the teacher was working with him, and she just about melted when she saw I was his mom. "He's so well-behaved!" she exclaimed. I don't know if it's a sell job or what -- these classes aren't cheap -- but according to the science teacher and Julian's teacher, he really takes to the science class. So far, they mostly look like fun, which I'm all for. Learning, ok, great, whatever. Most 4-year-olds learn about centrifugal forces by whirling a ball on a rope around their head on their own anyway.
Katrina skipped her daily mealtime tantrum tonight. I'm a new woman.
Tonight I caught the tail end of Katrina's daily coming-home tantrum, which was derailed by leftover zucchini frittata. Eggs, zucchini, ham, perfect. And despite her automatic protests, she was finally ready to eat. Then the storm blows over, just like that, and she takes bites of "tata" between glowers at me.
Last night after our walk, when it was almost dark, this is what Katrina thought of my plan to take her inside. The concrete is too scratchy to lie down on and throw a complete fit, but she was ramping up for it. She looks pretty harmless in this video, in retrospect.
Summer's over, and I'm filled with regrets. No swim lessons, no fountains, no beach. On the other hand, we had a nice family visit, a Park Week (even if we all got sick), daycamps, and some enjoyable moments on outings between Katrina tantrums. I'm feeling very confined by remodeling, toddler tantrums, and a fearsome back injury. Well, it might as well all hit at once.
Would someone please explain the appeal of the TLC reality show "Jon & Kate + Eight"? I mean really, despite 8 kids, it's just a family through normal day-to-day activities, with lots of kids crying and mom being exasperated -- I get enough of that in my own real life. What's so interesting about someone else's dirty laundry? .... But I love it!! I hope it's on tonight!! (Thanks for getting me hooked, Ro!)
I like this combination: look for a letterbox in a local park, then stay and play in the park afterward.
Gabriel found the box today.
This is a really lovely park with a fabulous dry creekbed to play in -- shaded, curved, lots of places to hide, slide and run.
Except once again, little sister would have none of it. Fuss, cry, scream, draw looks of grave concern from onlookers -- what is that woman doing to that child?!. Once again I found myself irritated and frustrated to tears -- can't I just enjoy the simplest thing with the boys?! This child is nonstop trouble!
So I regretfully pulled the boys out to find a place for Katrina to play where I could see them too.
They made do. Gabriel planted himself on this digger and stayed until we left.
Julian, in his remarkable capacity to make friends, somehow got into a game of lacross with a nearby Dad!
Katrina found a tunnel on a play structure, forcing me to hang out in blazing sun and not have a place to sit to rest my back (though sitting isn't so great either).
At least she was happy for a while, which poses another problem: how to extract her to go home. Fortunately, a pancake from this morning's breakfast handled the transition.
We reconciled later in the day, when I took her for a power-walk around the neighborhood in the jogging stroller. Gosh, I miss running. Walking just isn't the same. But it was fun to chat with Katrina on our walk, and play her new game of her saying "Thank you!" and you respond "You're welcome!" and she giggles. She went "whee!" and "zoom zoom!" for most of our 40-minute walk. As long as we were moving, she was very happy. Life on her terms.
We went to a Labor Day party today, hosted by some unexpected neighbors. My father has "hooked up" with a lady in the lovely home where he's living now, a lady who's at about the same stage of dementia as he is. Their hookup has meant a lot to us, as well as her family, since they're both very happy and spend every second of the day together. They've even moved into the same room now, facilitated by one of the lady's two daughters, Cindy, who lives nearby in Massachusetts.
We thought it was ironic when Dad's lady's other daughter, Cathy, also lives in California, but were all blown away when it turned out to be the same exact city! Just one zip code over. And, Cathy and Larry happened to be visiting back East at the same time we were, so we met them at Cindy's house, and much of the rest of the family, last July. They're all such nice, generous, interesting people.
So Cathy and her husband Larry -- a professional chef, lucky me -- invited us to an annual Labor Day bash at their house today. I was touched by their invitation, and was really looking forward to seeing them, so we all went this afternoon.
It was very risky arriving anywhere at 1pm with Katrina before her nap, but we took two cars and were completely prepared to bail. Actually, she did really well for about an hour, and Dave took her home without disgrace for once. The boys played with another 4-year-old Aidan for a long time too. Their house is stunning, beautifully remodeled, decorated and landscaped, not a hair out of place. But still comfortable and relaxed, not formal at all, with various touches around the house that come from Cathy's partial upbringing in Hong Kong. I took a few photos before my camera battery died, and this is probably the least attractive one, but, I want this pantry! Not only are Cathy and Larry very nice and interesting people, but so are all their friends. Many of them live in our same city too, and I had a great time getting to know so many neighbors. Many families with young children arrived as well, so there were no shortage of other parents to exchange war stories with and playmates for the boys. Cathy is a very serious cyclist, so there was a big athlete contingent as well.
Arrgghh....Katrina's capacity to make even the most innocuous outing miserable is unmatched.
This morning, I took her and Julian to a kitchen & bath store, then to a paint store. I didn't want to, but I have a deadline for bathroom vanities. I had very specific goals in mind, no putzing or browsing, and indeed, I was out of both places in 15 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively. We went in the morning, right after a big breakfast, so she was at her best of the day.
Katrina's best, however, includes ear-splitting shrieks if her playful brother so much as looks at her the wrong way, scraping a plastic toy along walls and bathroom fixtures to create the highest-pitched most irritating sound possible, throwing her arms around my legs and crying, followed immediately by flailing and demanding to be put down, freaking out if the wrong item is offered to her or if the right item falls out of her reach. I figured the lady at the bath place would triple the estimate I was requesting just to get us out of there. Meantime, my 4-year-old boy, not usually the most agreeable demographic, quietly sat and colored.
We fared a little better in the paint store, perhaps because I put her in the stroller. But once again, when she let loose her disapproval of, oh, say, the way the stroller was facing, she was shot looks from other customers that went beyond irritation and well into alarm.
I'll give her this: my decision-making process becomes far, far more efficient when she's there. No overthinking anything; I have no choice but to go with my first instincts.
This evening, Gabriel had a birthday party at a nearby inflatable play place, for a former kindergarten classmate. I brought him alone and dropped him off, though I stayed for a little while to chat with some of the other moms. Gabriel launched right into high-energy mode, showing off and jumping around like a madman, or running through a tightly packed huddle of giggling girls -- playing around them, but not exactly with them. They actually talked to each other. The mom of the birthday girl assured me more boys were invited, though the gender imbalance hadn't occurred to me. I was too busy being bemused by the fact that I was the only mom not wearing a sari. And being the only boy so far clearly didn't bother Gabriel (others arrived later and I doubt he noticed that either).
Foolishly, I brought Katrina with me to pick Gabriel up from the party, mostly so Dave could eat dinner in peace. I don't know, maybe I thought it'd be fun to show off my cute toddler to those moms who'd I'd told about her. It wasn't a bad idea in theory, and several other moms had toddlers there too, for the whole party.
Once again, disaster. I don't know what came over me, but I gave Katrina a cup of watered-down apple juice, and she was outraged when I didn't stand at the crowded, wet, sticky table and just keep pouring her more. I tried to extract Gabriel from the throngs of kids, get him to thank the hostess and gather things to go, while Katrina angrily stormed away from me, crying furiously. Other parents saw her and started to comfort her if they didn't know me, or frantically pointed her out to me if they did. This tiny little girl walking around by herself, wailing in a small room swarmed with 6-year-olds, must be terrified and lost and desperately wants her mother's comfort! Yeah right.
I braced myself to pick her up and leave, when Gabriel started to go back into the fray. With Katrina flailing and screaming in a football hold, and in no position to weave through the crowd again to retrieve him, I had to call for my sometimes-hearing-impaired son so sharply that once again, I drew the now-familiar startled looks. I threw a harried and apologetic thank-you to the hostess over my shoulder, grabbed Gabriel's hand, and made a hasty ignominious exit. Stares followed me like a wake behind a boat.
Arrrgh. I did survive this once already, right? Does that qualify or excuse me from surviving it again?! I don't want to take her anywhere anymore!
Really, she can be a lot of fun. It's just all on her terms.
I had all sorts of plans for today, my day "off" -- sort of. Yet few of them were accomplished. I think I just heap everything that's pressuring me to get done into one day, unrealistically. I'm so unproductive. Yet somehow, other women my age manage to have a Down's baby and four other children, and still find time to govern Alaska and run for vice-president. I couldn't even get dinner made tonight.
Before driving north to pick up my car tonight, I managed to get the crew to pose for a photo. This isn't the best one of all three, but Julian's face is irresistable.
After picking up my car, Dave took the boys out to dinner, and I came home with Katrina, who had the rare treat of being able to put together train tracks without fraternal interference. She loves these train tracks. So do I. These have been far and away our longest-lasting toy, as Gabriel got them when he was Katrina's age, for Christmas. Unlike his two younger siblings, he couldn't put tracks together until he was at least 2-1/2.
I'm sure keeping the cows in business though. Today at TJs I bought just about every dairy product there is: milk, cottage cheese, several types of yogurt, several types of cheese, sour cream, half-and-half, heavy cream, several kinds of cheese, butter and ice cream!
Gabriel's teacher sent home a "welcome parents" note the first day of school, with logistics about things like forgotten lunches and dropoff times. But the first thing it says is:
"Expect your child to be EXTREMELY TIRED for the first month of school. He/she may also have butterflies, aches and pains, and/or tears."
This is as much outside Gabriel's world as crying when Mommy was mad when he was a toddler (which the new reader might not know: that never happened). Hmm, those things might be related.
Gabriel brought home a sampling of work he did in class today. I was a little surprised to see addition so soon; I recall this sort of work being "extra" in kindergarten. Maybe the teacher was calibrating to find out what her class knows. Of course, what do I know of first-grade math? Nothing is teaching Gabriel arithmetic faster than having an allowance though. The opportunities are endless: "How many more weeks before you have enough saved for that Lego racer car?" We've even had to [ try to ] explain percentages to him. There's no way around it when there's sales tax involved. "Why does California want my money?" he asks innocently.
However, the biggest challenge for a new allowance-receiver is where to keep the money and not to lose it!
Earlier on the learning scale, we have our budding botanist giving flowers kisses.
I don't think Katrina is quite speaking in sentences yet, as in, putting together individual words with grammar. Two, maybe three words, like, "help open box." But she sure says a lot of "sentences," such as: "turn on the light," and knows what the phrase means even if she doesn't understand its components. She's a little parrot right now, repeating back everything anyone says. And she talks a lot, yakking away in her own little language, with a few recognizable English words peppered in there.
She has a huge advantage in language development right now, which is two older siblings. Not only do they talk to her, but she hears her brothers talk to each other. They get a big kick out of enticing her to say silly or gross things.
Julian's language is so well-established that it's hard to believe that if he were suddenly moved to another country and never heard English again, it's quite possible he'd never remember that he ever spoke English. At 4-1/2, he won't have a lot of memories of this part of his life. Gabriel at 6-1/2 might have a better shot at remembering English. My friend Heike forgot most of her German when her family moved here when she was 6 (she later studied it and it came back quickly). Of course, there are individual differences -- Julian by nature is a much faster and more natural language-learner.
I find all this fascinating. I was one of the very few undergrads who didn't find the class "The Psychology of Language" really boring. I just talked to my college roommate today, and she told me she's back in school, for another master's in another field (nursing). I always thought it'd be interesting to go back and study psychology with more than an easy 'A' in mind...especially when it turned into not-so-easy Bs.
I'm so glad a 3-day weekend is coming up. I've felt a lot of self-induced pressure getting this school/work/remodel routine in place. Downtime is due. And a handy heatwave to coincide. Shorts weather, finally! I know white after Labor Day is a fashion faux pas, that rules out my pasty office legs.
Collins held a "Welcome Back Parents" night tonight. After work, meeting with our kitchen designer, returning something at REI, picking up all 3 kids, making dinner and staggering from what I fear is the onset of a migraine, I blew it off. Next week is a "Back to School Night" in the classrooms anyway, in which we meet the teacher and get a tour of the classroom. That's far more important. I just couldn't do it two weeks in a row.
Besides, I really felt the need to exercise tonight, and managed to sneak in a 28-minute swim. Not much, but I feel much better.
Julian really really wants to know how the Tooth Fairy knows a child has lost a tooth. "Do you call her on her cell phone?" he asked, so sincerely I didn't have the heart to lie to him. But I can't break the truth to him either! Especially not when Gabriel got a dollar in the special little tooth pillow. I'm running out of ways to put him off. "She just knows."
Besides, no one can prove or disprove the existence of the tooth fairy anymore than we can God....for all we know, there really is a tooth fairy. I'm not enough of a person of faith to discount that possibility.
Our little crew crammed into the back of Dave's car, which I'll be driving for at least tomorrow, on the way back from dropping off my car for service. I can't say I'd be heartbroken if the Subaru dealer found something catastrophically wrong with my car and I needed a new one. But I'd shed heavy tears for our checkbook.
Our remodel is going well, basically, though it's turning into a ton more work (meaning: money) than we'd expected, like probably having to repaint the entire upstairs. I'm entering the phase of a project in which you start to think it's just reality, that a torn-up house and a constant stream of bad news is permanent and that ownership of our house is reversed -- it owns us, not the other way around. Sort of like the later phases of a pregnancy when you start to think it's all a big joke someone's playing on you and you're going to be pregnant forever.
I woke up with a start at 7:20 this morning. 20 minutes late from the get-go! Incredibly, I got everyone dressed, fed, sunscreened, packed up and into the car by 7:58, but it was a stretch made only possible by thorough preparation the night before, and Dave dressing Katrina. This thing about making lunches in the morning...I'm just not in that sphere of competence.
It's staggering to think how much easier our mornings would be without having to load up the crew in the car and do a forced march in a massive minivan parade to the school, or a mad dash and an extra charge at the CDC for morning care to avoid it. But no, in this, one of the most affluent school districts in the country, there are no school buses.
Someday...someday... no more thinking of 7:20am as late to get up. I'm just not made for it.
Gabriel got out of school today, complaining of a "chest pain." It so happened Dave was at our jobsite house anyway when he got the call, plus he'd taken time off this morning anyway to look at siding samples, so he threw up his hands and called it a day. So he picked up Gabriel from the school office and took him to the pediatrician this afternoon.
By the time Gabriel got to see the doc, he was feeling better. The best she could come up with was that maybe carrying a backpack now was making him sore. I find that a little hard to believe, since I got him a Land's End "featherlight" pack, he's only carried it to school twice, and empty both times! But Gabriel isn't one to complain if he doesn't really feel something, and it's not like him to make something up just to get out of school. So we both truly believe something was wrong, we just have no idea what.
This resulted in a major time windfall for me this evening. No pickups! Better yet, I got to make dinner without being interrupted 100 times and with my blood pressure at normal levels. As I was making rice, defrosting hazelnut-crusted trout, heating fish sticks, steaming pre-cut cauliflower and cutting bread, my friend's pointed words rang in my head: "I never cook." Well, of course not never -- she meant on the worknights she walks in the door with 3 hungry tired children after a full day, as I do. I need to pin her down on if "cooking" includes heating TJ's fish sticks.
Major decision about the outside of our house: shingles on the 2nd story, or not?
Today we took a drive, then short walk, around a neat neighborhood in central San Jose that has lots of older houses, many built in the era our house was. We did this to get an idea of what colors houses of our era were painted. I'd like to get away from white if we can, though white is quite historically accurate for old farmhouses.
As usual, any outing was complicated in spades by having our so-not-go-with-the-flow youngest member of the family along. Cute as she was, she immediately insisted on stopping or going her own way, and within a few minutes got into a full-on rage that had me just wanting to pack up and put my faith in 1" square paper samples at the paint store.
I'm thinking light gray, Dave's thinking greener, and we saw enough shades inbetween that we're pretty sure we can easily find the right thing. If the factory-painted fiber-cement shingles we have in mind offer a color that's acceptable, that means the whole second story won't have to be painted -- ever! That's a very appealing idea! Still, we hit paydirt stopping to look at a house whose owner happened to be outside, painting it! He called for his wife, and they explained to us how they'd completely redone their house, and put shingles on the 2nd story as we're considering doing, but weren't happy with the installation. They did exactly what we were doing, driving around looking at other houses to get color ideas, and painted their first story a slightly darker shade than the second (hmm).
They also had an adorable 2-1/2-year-old daughter, who played pleasantly in front while we hurried through the conversation, aware of our little time bomb strapped into the car. The fuse was lit upon being released from the car and given the opportunity to walk around. Boom! There was no winning.
Squarely in the OCD-worrywart department: today I noticed a comment in Gabriel's school's newsletter that congratulated Mrs. Olifant for her retirement from teaching first grade. Mrs. O---?! That's the name of the teacher who gave daily homework! A mom I'd met whose son had just finished first grade with her had told me that it blew them away. I thought the mom had said Olifant, but when there was no Olifant, and there was an Olsen, I figured I just didn't remember right. Retired!
Really, my relief is ill-founded. The school doesn't heap unreasonable work on, and this is about our child's education, after all. In fact, the CDC is offering a "homework club" in which the CDC staff sits with the kids and helps them get through homework. On the surface, it sounds like a great idea, but I'm balking at it. Dave and I -- and Gabriel -- got a lot out of doing his kindergarten homework together. When he's older, the supervision will transition more to just getting it done from how, but I think in first grade we'll still get a lot out of doing it together. So, daily homework...if it happens, we just buck up and deal with it. I have lots of bucking up to do anyway.
