Boys at the beach

Boys at the beach

Thursday, May 29, 2014

A Normal Moment in a Normal Day (and I only have 3 kids)

So at last, I sit down at the computer to read my blogs. Finally, the kids are all playing by themselves.  The baby has stopped grabbing at my skirts whining, for the first time all day (he's going through something lately, I haven't figured out what yet).  There are lots of good juicy blog posts from my favorite bloggers and I'm only a few minutes into it when there's a crash in the kitchen. "No one is in there!"  I think, and wonder if someone snuck by me (they're not usually that sneaky yet).  Sure enough, no one was in there, but a cup, one of Aaron's favorites from his childhood, has mysteriously jumped off the shelf and shattered on the floor, amongst all the plastic children's dishes that are already there, due to the fact that I let Sparrow play in the plastic drawer, to detach him from my leg for a minute, and haven't picked them up yet.

No one in the house, including moi, is wearing shoes.  I dispatch Bluejay as the kitchen guard to make sure no one goes in with bare feet, and run off to get my shoes to clean up the shards.  Bluejay takes this very seriously and precedes me down the hallway, shouting to the shoeless masses to stay out of the kitchen!  He reaches the bathroom and announces "Boozy's playing in the toilet!"  (Boozy is the nickname Chickadee has given Sparrow, and it's stuck).  Yes, Boozy is playing in the toilet, dunking the diapers he's pulled out of the trash can.  

I choose to ignore this (he's already gross, how much grosser can it get in a few minutes?), and head back to the kitchen with my shoes, to prevent a more risky situation.  And then I sit down to blog about it.  I guess I better go clean Boozy.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Answer Me This!

Here's a new blog-along blog-along (which is really from here) that I haven't participated in before, and which looks like fun.  I love answering questions.  In fact, my husband and I spent many a delightful dating moment playing "answer questions", instead of "would you rather". So here are my answers to this week's questions:

1.  What's the scariest thing that's ever been in your yard? I can't think of anything scary that has actually been in our yard.  BUT, I have a running joke with Aaron that a cougar pooped in our yard when we lived in Santa Clara.  I found an enormous fumit, of some sort that did not look like it came from a dog.  And since I thought it looked cat-like, but too large to be a neighbor feline, I argued that there must have been a cougar in our yard.  It still comes up in conversation eight years later.  The cougar that pooped in our yard was, in fact mentioned yesterday. Always by me.

2. Beards.  Thumbs up or thumbs down?  Thumbs up definitely.  Aaron has an adorable goatee.  And I'm Orthodox, so liking beards is a requirement for baptism, I'm pretty sure.

3.  If stuff breaks, can you fix it?  Yes. I once even took apart and fixed a VCR!   But I pretend I can't fix the big stuff these days, unless it's sewing or craft related.  "Oh, maybe when Daddy gets home he can glue that back together for you."

4. What was your first car?  A Nissan Stanza wagon.  It was my mom's and she passed it off to me, mostly, I think, so that I could drop my brothers off at school in the mornings, and sit in the high school parking lot at 11 at night, waiting for the bus to get back from basketball away games.  Those were pre cell phone days, sheesh.  Anyway it was a great car, sitting in the driver's seat was like sitting in a nice upright chair, and it had this long, marvelous stick-shift.  I'm so glad I learned to drive on a stick.

6.  Why is your hair like that?  I always cut my hair short when I need to take control of a little something in my life, and, after the first baby, (eg. during pregnancy number two) it was just such a relief not to have that long, long hair of my youth (although even then I would cut it short every few years, it grows back so fast).  I recently had this awesome bob, longer in the front and shorter in the back, and when I went in a few weeks ago to have it trimmed back up, it just didn't look the same.  Also, I colored it recently because all of a sudden the grays just APPEARED and it was a little shocking.  I'm totally going to have a white streak in the front on the right side. But the color is growing out, and I'm left trying to decide if I should leave the awful line of demarcation, or color it again.  I can't afford the professionals, these days!  And I don't have much experience with coloring my hair, I've probably done it 4 or 5 times in my life.  What is a girl to do?