Heck of a Commute This Morning.

Yep. Stubbed my toe on the door jamb between the bedroom and the office.

Piggy Bank

The VCR stopped working a few months ago. I found a DVD inside (courtesy of the Wee One) and removed it, thinking I had solved the problem. No dice. Every time I put a tape in it whirred, whirred, whirred, slowly coming to a stop with fuzzy screen. After it devoured “Arthur’s Family Fun,” we stopped using it altogether.

Last night, the husband bought a new 19-inch TV to replace the sad 13-inch model. (I know, we are leaping into the twenty-first century!) It’s one of those combination deals, with a DVD player built right in. The whole shebang was too big to fit into the TV cabinet with the VCR (which, though long broken, was of course still sitting in there). When the husband pulled the VCR out of the cabinet, it…jingled.

Oh, and it's Amy and "anonymous" who have got it! (Charles, was that you?) "Umpooka" is umbrella, indeed!

Leah, yogurt is "yoga" which also means "Yoda"--that makes for some confusing conversations. As in, "Me be yoga, me use light saba, eat me yoga!" (this usually said while brandishing a yogurt-covered knife)

Thanks for playing, ya'll.

Special Bonus Wee One Word: umpooka

If you can guess the meaning of that one, I'll reward you by publishing your name here on Quistilton News. I get at least three hits a day--you'll be internationally known in short order. Leave your guesses in the comments section.

So I turned on word verification for the comments section. Sorry.

This means you'll have to read a funny-looking security word and enter it when you leave a comment. It keeps robots from leaving unwanted spam comments. And you know, I was starting to get tired of deleting entries such as this one: "Hey, just read your blog, and boy is it GREAT! My friend has a blog about Indian wedding dresses!! Why don't you check it out? You can see all the best deals on Indian wedding dresses HERE (insert appropriate annoying link)." They weren't even putting them just on the home page, where I could find them--they were being hidden in old, archived posts. Grrrrr. Hopefully this security feature will work.

Why We Live Here

Wee One Translation Handbook

egebaytah = elevator
pooyah = pillow
woo-woo (recently also “woobie-woobie”) = dog
Hiyaeen = Halloween
hing (As in, “No me not hing!” ensuing tantrum) = swing
mine = my (this just has the effect of making her sound German)
Wega = Wegmans (as in, “Me go a Wega me get f(r)ee cookie!”)
white = green, pink, brown, blue, red
geen = gold (as in the shiny gold ford focus)
hank = thanks
Mama = Apparently, any woman she loves

Favorite song: Happy Birthday, preferably sung to the dog
Favorite phrase: “Me do it me own!”
Favorite activity: Clutching the dog’s lips

Kindergarten is AWESOME!

We have settled into a lovely pattern here, with my working-morning weekdays and the Wee One napping and the Biggie’s trumpeted arrival home from school. I finally feel like things are resembling normalcy, in a way that they never have since the Biggie first burst upon the scene, all big-eyed seven pounds and two ounces of her. My mom was right, I crave routine. It’s strangely comforting not to have to decide anew what to do, every single day.

The Biggie adores kindergarten, the music, art, Pledge of Allegiance (“for Richard Stands”) and gym class, everything except the bathroom. The teacher and I recently realized that she is not going at school, she’s waiting until she gets home. Although that is no great length of time compared with her pee-holding record (16 hours), it is simply not sustainable over the long haul. Argh, the heart-shriveling specter of potty training haunts us once more.

But the rest of kindergarten rocks, and I am wondering why we were paying $300 a month to send her for two days a week to a little monochromatic preschool where they only served vegan snacks and the art corner was a pile of paper scraps. (“Why won’t she eat hummus?” they asked, as if it were some serious spiritual shortcoming. I hemmed and hawed over that one, having the grace not to reply that it tastes like feet dipped in lemon juice.)

I am sad because the Wee One’s babysitter is having a new baby of her own, and won’t be able to watch Wee anymore. (Of course I’m happy about the baby itself!) Sad especially because the Wee One loves the stuffing out of her, and calls her “Mama Manda”--I am referred to as the “Biggie’s Mama.” It will be nice, however, to save another $300 a month, though this will require me starting work at 6 each morning, so the Husband can watch the small ones while I surf and type away. Automatic coffee machine = New Best Friend.

Fall has come to central New York, and with it the rain and the smell of wood smoke in the air. We are preparing for winter’s hunkering down, buying long johns and sweaters, pulling out the down comforters and the flannel sheets. This is my favorite season; everything is dying in an orderly, preprogrammed way that makes you see the beauty in this aspect of life.

Hot cider, anyone?

The Stats

We went to the doc today, twice. Due to their mess-up (I scheduled these appointments at 3 and 3:15 in MARCH), the Wee One went at 2:00, then I had to go get the Biggie at school and bring her back at 3:15.

The Wee One enjoyed her appointment immensely. She stripped off all her clothes and was allowed to remain that way, IN PUBLIC, for 45 minutes! Heaven, as far as she was concerned. Plus she got to show off her jumping and mega-climbing skills. We finished on time, I zoomed down the hill and got to the Biggie’s school at 3:00—excellent!

Except that the Husband had her booster seat in his car. Thought for half a risky second about driving without it, then called the husband and got him to drive the booster downtown. Will buy new booster for other car this weekend.

We were only ten minutes late. The Biggie was fine until they went to take her temperature. “DO NOT PUT THAT IN MY EAR! IT WILL HURT!” she screamed at the bewildered, kindly nurse. There was a similar reaction when they wanted to test her hearing. “Don’t worry, the doctor will talk to her,” the nurse assured me as she left us in the airless, rapidly shrinking room. I was sweating bullets—I know my daughter better than she does. The funny, grandfatherly doctor whom we all love entered the room. The Biggie showed him how she could jump and stick out her tongue and list words that begin with the letter “A.” Then he took out the ear-looker. “NO!” her face contorted into a demonic scowl and she covered her ears. He tried telling her there were butterflies in her ears (a bit amateurish, I thought). He let her put it in her ear herself. He let her put it in HIS ear, and look for the butterflies (“They have blue and yellow spots!” he exclaimed. “I do see them,” she replied.) Then he tried to look in her ears again. “NO! NO! NO!” I melted into my seat. “Is this…an extreme reaction?” I asked. “Well, yes, I would definitely say that,” he replied as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “You need to make sure she doesn’t think she can take control of everything in this way.” I sank further into the chair. He left the room for a moment. I used the opportunity to attempt a bribe: performance of hearing check in exchange for apple pie at the Rarely-Visited Golden-Arches-Type Heathen Fast Food Restaurant. An extremely rare tactic, the Outright Bribe; even more rare, the heinous and despicable Junk Food Bribe. I don’t believe I have ever used that one in such a bald manner, to tell the truth.

So of course when he came back, the first thing she did was tell him about it. If I could get lower in the chair, I would actually be under it, licking used gum off the seat.

He tried again to look in her ears, and was visibly frustrated with her anxiety. Man, if a professional is having a hard time, shouldn’t I feel good about how I deal on a daily basis? Or maybe this guy is just easily flustered. I mean, she wasn’t even pulling out all the stops.

I could have forced her to do it, of course—held her down and threatened punishment if she didn’t stop whining, but the doctors have always seemed so unwilling to cause any trauma. I was following their lead. I am never sure what to do in these cases—I mean, do they really NEED to see the blue and yellow butterflies?

When he finally left the room, sweating bullets, I helped her get her sneakers on. I offered her one more try—ears for pies. She said resignedly, “Oh, ok,” and immediately tried to bargain for a new My Little Pony as well. (Request denied.) And then she did it for the nurse with only one or two squeaks. ARGH!

Wee One: At two years, 23.6 pounds and 32 inches. Biggie: At five years, 38 pounds and 42 ¾ inches.

Why Do I Try To Take Them Shopping?

Highlight of trip to Kmart: Wee One pulling down her pants in the cart and yelling “Me Poo Poo!” at the top of her lungs, with bare tushy in the middle of the party supply section. Run to bathroom; false alarm.

Highlight of trip to Wegmans, directly following: Same procedure, this time in canned goods. During whirlwind zoom through the store I keep saying, “Just hold it in, we’re almost there, wait until we get to the bathroom,” to which the Wee One keeps replying with her favorite new word, “Why? Why? Why?”

Upon return to the Quistilton Ranch, Wee One insists upon walking around the house with her pants around her ankles, eating a banana.

Why?

All Hail the Wee One!

I have mother-guilt because I don’t publish the sorts of obsessively detailed, isn’t-my-child-amazing posts about the Wee One as I did about the Biggie. But then I realize that it is her own fault, since her relentless quest for self-destruction is what keeps me from my keyboard. She is amazing in her own way, and for the sake of efficiency, let’s adopt a list format. Keep in mind that she will be two on Sunday, and is the size of many twelve-month-olds:

She can climb up (and down) the ladder of the bunk bed. (“Me kime buck bed!”)
Since she was 20 months old she has been, for all intents and purposes, potty trained.
She has a sixth sense regarding the location of any knives, scissors, open containers of liquid, and anything which could cause a stain. This is uncanny and applies to households other than our own.
She hangs and swings from perilous heights off the side of play structures, dropping herself to the ground below. The first time I saw this trick, I thought she was falling.

And so on.

I remember when we moved to Ithaca and first hit the local playground scene. I met a boy who was the same exact age as the Biggie (then dba Toddlerita). The Toddlerita and I watched him, she clutching my hand, as he clambered over the monkey bars, swooped down the slide, and generally kept himself elevated six feet in the air, in constant motion. I threw dirty looks in the direction of his neglectful mother, who was chatting calmly as her child hurtled about. Why wasn’t she spotting him? He could fall and break his neck! I gently supported the Toddlerita’s rear as she clutched the railing and took the steps one at a time up to the slide, which she would not go down. Ahh, remember those days?

Now I know why that woman was so unconcerned. I know that she was so far beyond being able to control his movement that she had come to terms with the sheer impossibility of the task, and had let go, attaining a zen-like state of mothering. She was not standing under him, holding her breath, because she knew that he probably wouldn’t fall—he was that good, that astoundingly coordinated. And I have a feeling that he was also a grocery cart stander, and a couch-to-coffee-table leaper. And that she, like me, probably smiled graciously at gaping passersby as her child squealed and flailed like an angry, acrobatic demon-pig whenever she DID try to restrain him.

Happy almost-birthday, my dear Wee One. I am posting this now because you are asleep, and lord knows when you will allow me to write again.

So it has happened: The Biggie has started kindergarten. I have such seesawing, ambivalent feelings on this subject. On the one hand, YEEHA! Less work! Less guilt about not responding to her every intellectual query! Etc, etc. On the other hand, YIKES! My baby is with relative strangers for thirty hours a week! My baby is riding, UNSEATBELTED, in a bus with twenty other screaming (and bigger) kids! What about her fear of imaginary violent play? What if she can’t get her overalls unstrapped when she has to go to the bathroom?

For the first two days, I put her on the bus, rode to the school to meet the bus and bring her to her classroom, and did the reverse at the end of the day. On the first day, the bus actually beat me home. Can you imagine that—me huffing and puffing with the Wee One behind me in the little bike seat, dying of humiliation when I was NOT THERE TO MEET MY CHILD OFF THE BUS ON HER VERY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. Many caring friends and relatives having convinced me that this is a sappy, ridiculous gesture, I put her on the bus this morning, stayed home, and am now waiting for her to arrive. She is ok with this, I think. I’m not sure if I am.

She has some concerns. She is worried that they are not learning anything—I think she thought she would already know how to read books by now. On Friday, when we were walking home (because she decided NOT to ride the bus that day), she started sniffling. Ah, here it is, I thought—the expected mental breakdown, the stress and trauma of it being just too much time away. “I missed you all day,” she said through tears. “I know, honey, is that why you’re crying?” I patted her on the back. “No—I’m crying because I can’t go back to school for two whole days!” She likes being so big, and buying chocolate milk at lunch (though I don’t think she drinks it). And she likes sitting at the peanut-free table with her allergic friend.

On the whole, I think it is a good thing, though we are all going through adjustments. The Wee One is having the worst time of all of us, I think—she’s just not used to being alone with boring old me. All day long, it’s “Me go, see Biggie at Biggie’s park!” (That’s what she calls the playground at school.) She calls for her as she falls asleep for her nap, and the first thing she says when she wakes up is “Biggie COME HOME!”

****************************************************************

So she comes home, and what’s the first thing she says? “Kindergarten is AWESOME! I want to ride the bus EVERY DAY!”

An era is over.

Kindergartner Question of the Day: "Which is more brave, bees or rain?"

There has been an appalling lack of quality updates lately, and I apologize. Much energy is going elsewhere—work, housework, travel, etc. But enough excuses!

The Biggie is preparing for kindergarten (she refers to herself as a “Kindergartner-in-Waiting”). We recently found out who her new teacher will be, and I am secretly thrilled that she happens to be the wife of a local unicycling juggler. How cool is that? The Big and I bought ALL the hippest size-5 stuff at one of our local consignment shops yesterday. I am pretty sure she will be the only kindergartner with a purple faux-snakeskin jacket.

The Wee One is mellowing with age, meaning she now frequently responds in words rather than screams and displays marginally acceptable behavior in public. She sat in the grocery cart all the way until checkout today (at which point she started using my body as a jungle gym—better me than the candy rack), and I only had to bribe her with a cookie and a bagel. Yeeha! We attended an absolutely lovely wedding this weekend and both of the kids had this strange, sweet glow about them. When they got tired they smiled and drooped on our shoulders, rather than whining and transforming into rabid, anti-social lemurs. The other kids there behaved amazingly as well. (Hmm, five kids, no tantrums despite it being naptime—was there something in the cake?) There were many adoring, childless young newlywed-types there, and I won’t be at all surprised if there is a fresh crop of babies in nine months or so.

Well, there is much more to report, but sadly, no time. I would at least like to send great big internet shout-outs to Jenn, Nicole and Amy—rock on, mama soul (and literal, at least for Jenn) sisters!

(Shhhh, do not tell anyone that I let the dog up on the couch with me. Or that I gave him a cold-pack cheese food-coated cracker.)

Not That I’m Complaining, But…

Why, exactly, do they give me the senior citizens’ discount at the Salvation Army?

OK, this definitely falls into the category of, Only the Parent of This Child Would Read This Entire Entry, but this is the closest thing I have to a baby book for her, and I’m saving this, damnit. Or dammit. Whichever you prefer. As far as I know, she has never actually seen the movie of The Little Mermaid, but she has read those wretched Disney storybooks and their “sequels”—hence the appearance of “Malady.” I have no idea from whence came the land snake/sea snake plot twist.

As quoted to the Husband of the Blog, verbatim:

“Ariel Gets Married to Prince Eric and They Decide That Mermaids and Humans Could Go On the Land”

Once upon a time there was a family of snakes and the mom and the baby were regular snakes but it was different because the dad and the sister and the brother were all water snakes and they loved the water. So the mom and the sister were blue and the brother was green and the baby was green and the dad was black, but they loved the sea but there was one problem with the sea, I mean the ocean. Well in the ocean there was lots of sharks, but it was very good actually because they actually liked sharks and their, one of their mermaid friends' (and they liked mermaids too) name was Ariel and but Ariel had a pet fish named Googa wooga toogle wooga was a yellow fish with black stripes and Googa wooga was very funny because he always went, "Googa tooga wwooga lita tita googa woooga tiga, googa wooga is my name." He always said that to Ariel and Ariel said, "What, what, what are you saying I can't understand you, why do you talk in such a silly voice." And the family of snakes, the momma didn't like this because the momma was a land snake and all of the others were water snakes, the only one that was a land snake was the momma.

And the momma was very very silly and because she was silly, because her parents were silly because they were silly, because their parents were silly because they were silly, because their parents were silly because they were silly, which was very very very very silly. And the mom lived in a cage of rocks, because she loved rocks and the sister lived in a cage filled with water, so did the brother and so did the dad, the dad had water that had rocks on the very very bottom and that was not very comfortable so he got a tiny bit of leaves so he put a tiny bit of water into it and he made it into a little cup and he got a piece of grass one day when he was walking on the land and he tied it around the leaves to make it shut so it would - pretend we were making the movie - so he decided to put a whole bunch of water and the kinds of food he liked to eat into there so it could be a bag of food and every single day he went out to make another one so he could survive and he did survive, but he always got tummy aches because he ate four every single day because they were so so so so good.

He really really needed to see Ariel, because it was very very very close to the day Ariel was going on a very long vacation because so he decided to take the kids on a special adventure to her house out in a big big pool of water to see her fish pet Inkle winkle dinkle tink tink wink dink tola and then she had a magical X-wing fighter that could float deep within the big ocean which was totally blue so the bad witch who had octopus legs could not see it and would think it was part of the sea and would swim right in front of it and get crashed by its big cannons and she would think the sea was shooting her, not a big ship. And she loved the way it had so many water cannons and torpedoes on it and it looked like a gigantic shark and she did not like sharks, but she liked sharks and the sea witch did not like sharks because they would eat her kids and she had a kid every single day that would always appear magically and the sharks would eat it because they were Ariel's friends and Arieal was trying to protect herself because she was a very very brave mermaid because she was very good at saving herself.

And the snakes loved this because it was so fun riding in an underwater X-wing fighter, but she didn't tell them that she was actually going on a boat and getting married to her boyfriend Prince Eric. She absolutely didn't tell them because it was very sad to them because they wouldn't see. They decided to be land snakes so they would see Ariel more. And so they on the day of Ariel's vacation she found a big blue boat where her boyfriend was and they decided to hide in it and they were turned into a person now because the bad sea witch gave her a potion to turn into a human because she thought that humans were bad, and she thought that humans would not kill her children and would take away sharks, but they wouldn't because they were afraid of sharks.

It's kinda hard to tell you this, but she was hoping to turn into a human, so she could marry Prince Eric so she got married and then months months later she had a baby and she just remembered that she was trying to name her Malady and Malady once went into the sea, but she too turned into a mermaid. So Ariel turned back into a mermaid and Malady turned back into a human so Ariel turned back into a human so they decided that some humans could go in the water and some humans could go on land and some mermaids and mermen could go in the water and some mermaids and mermens could go on the land.

The end.

Trying to follow instructions from the obliging Goddess of Clarity (thank you, madam!), I rooted around in my code for a while, but decided that what Quistilton really needed was a facelift. And republishing the blog with a new template just happened to fix the spacingness problem. So, voila! “What Free Time” and Shane will return soon; I need to find their links again.

I just finished the John Irving novel, all 820 pages of it. I didn’t start liking it until I was halfway through. Then I loved it, and could not stop reading—I was up until 5 this morning. (The kids got up at 5:30.)

Do you think I’m going to start the new Harry at this time of night? You betcha!

Things I Never Thought I Would Have To Say, Part One

“Get your foot out of your yogurt.”

“Stop licking your sister.”

“DO NOT EAT THE POOP!” (This to the dog, mercifully.)

It has finally happened. They are both sitting on the couch, reading the “American Girls” catalog that I didn’t manage to toss in the recycle before the Biggie snatched it. The Biggie is saying, “Do you like this one? Or this one? Or this one? Or this one?” and the Wee One is saying sullenly, “Mo. Mo. Mo. Mo.” But they are sitting calmly, together, while I hide over here and play on my little computer. If only I had that latte…(see the entry from July 10, 2003).


Murphy’s Law rules again…Immediately after I wrote that, the Wee One, naked except for striped socks, climbed into my lap and thrust her sticky fingers in my hair. Ahhh, popsicle season!