Rosie the Robot

We've joked about it for a while, but Glenn and I finally bought ourselves a belated holiday gift: a Roomba vacuuming robot.

We gave it a quick trial last night and were pretty impressed, but needed to wait till this morning when it had a full charge. We were more than a little worried about Rex's response, since he hates loud noises and vacuums of every kind. But the kids think it's the funniest, coolest thing they've ever seen. Ben is racing around the house, clearing a path for it and jumping up and down in excitement. Rex keeps yelling "Hi Rosie!" whenever it comes by.

I've been lamenting the fact that our kids really don't like TV enough for it to work as the famous "electronic babysitter" that everyone talks about. We may have found a good substitute.

Post-tryptophan high

Mike's been coming to our place for Thanksgiving for a few years now and we're getting the whole thing down. With the addition of Kathy this year it got even better. They brought brussel sprouts (on the stem, even), Kathy made a truly great salad, and Mike has now mastered the art of gravymaking.

I, however, was talking through my tasks in the kitchen and managed to make an entirely new mistake. While carefully draping the turkey with butter-soaked cheesecloth (for a beautiful burnished copper color), I failed to notice that I had placed the turkey on the roasting rack UPSIDE DOWN!

Suffice it to say that my turkey had the most beautiful back you've ever seen. The breast had the skin tone of an Iowa teenager in March. However, it was the moistest turkey I've ever made.

We had a great day. Kathy got in her last training run before doing the Seattle half-marathon on Sunday, the kids loved having two more playmates, and we did a video chat with my parents in Connecticut. One of these photos shows us arranged around the living room with Mom and Dad on the tv screen. Note both boys doing block building for their appreciative audience. The solo photos of Mike and Kathy were taken by Rex. Thank you to Kathy for taking a very nice shot of me with Rex!

Come Christmas we'll be repeating the whole menu. Mom is appalled that we're adding brussel sprouts to the traditional menu, but Dad is delighted. I'm very pleased with my first pumpkin pie made from actual farmer's market pumpkin. And with the knowledge that there's enough pumpkin in the freezer to make three more.

Talking turkey

This is all true, though I can't repeat all the dialogue verbatim. Suffice to say that it's pretty close to what was actually said.

At today's breakfast table, Ben says "Is turkey a fruit?" I look up from the paper, stunned, then back down to see a large, full-color ad of a roast turkey. Lavishly garnished with grapes and oranges.

I laugh loud and long. In fact, I literally throw back my head and laugh. Glenn sticks his head around the door to see what's up and gets an explanation. Laughs. Hard.

Ben takes it all in good grace. I explain at some length that it's not a fruit though I do spare him the pedantry in which a College-Educated Plant Scientist is tempted to indulge.

He responds, "Then it's a vegetable."

A million calorie night

We went trick or treating with both Ben and Rex tonight. To my surprise, Rex was utterly hyped about it, reaching out for candy bowls and happily babbling on the walks between houses. I figured he'd be (at least initially) confused about what the hell we were doing.

But no, he's all over this Halloween thing. Ben also had a great time. We let him stay out later and he and I visited most of our friends in the neighborhood after Glenn and Rex headed for home. Unfortunately, said friends were overly generous, giving three and four pieces of candy to Ben while the adults chatted. The next few weeks should be interesting, as we navigate the tricky "treat after dinner" routine.

Luckily, he's too young to have figured out that he should inventory his candy before going to bed!

Halloween

I'm way behind in posting. But most of you who read this are family and hell, most of you were actually ON the trip to Maine early this month!

So onward. Ben returned from Maine having rejected the idea of being a bear for Halloween (thank heavens. How boring!) and adopting my (admittedly planted) suggestion of a lobster. See results below. Rex was a cupid, simply because I cannot go ONE DAY without getting a comment from someone on his lovely curls. This will be my last year of choosing his costume, I'm sure, so I figured I'd do it even knowing that he'll curse me years from now when the photos resurface.

Another Friday night...

another trip to the Emergency Department.

Friday night, after several days of cold symptoms, Ben woke with that horrifying seal-barking cough of croup. While I recognized it immediately, it wasn't for a couple of days that I realized I identified it based on experiences in my childhood in which my parents walked my little brother outside the house in the dark, hoping the cool air would calm the cough. Glenn called the nurse line associated with our health insurance while I hauled a coughing and scared Ben into the bathroom and turned on the shower for steam. In the end, the nurse told us to get him in to the hospital for evaluation. Apparently, while croup is common and usually just a good scare, in some cases, the child's air passages swell to the point of closure, which is, to put it very mildly, not good.

So at 10:30 Ben and I made another Friday night visit to Children's Hospital's emergency department. And as always, it was slammed. Fortunately, his cough and fears calmed immediately upon getting outside. He was mostly delighted with the unusual treat of getting to go out late at night and see his familiar world made unfamiliar. "Mom, look at those Christmas lights!" He had a great time playing with stuff in the waiting room, although I had reason to be grateful that I had brought his beloved John Deere coloring book and crayons. We were there till nearly 2 AM.

All's well now, with a bit of coughing during the day and occasionally at night. The doctors said that it usually has run its course in 48 hours (right about now, in fact) and he can go to child care on Monday. Rex has hit one of those social periods when he's so enjoying his family's company that he is refusing to nap and hollering for 40+ minutes before passing out at night.

Let's just say that his very sleep-deprived and stressed-out parents aren't enjoying his company enough to forego his nap. Sigh. I remind myself often that we are very lucky. We have marvelous health care close by, we have the means to pay for doctors and medicines and for the most part, we have healthy kids. But I've rarely been so glad to see a weekend end!

Here's a shot of Ben in the waiting area at the Emergency Department.

The long week

Ben's child care center closes for most of the week prior to Labor Day. They do in-service training and have the place cleaned thoroughly. Glenn, forseeing a long, exhausting week of two-kid wrangling for me, decided to take the whole week off so we could turn it into family time.

We're both tired, but have had some great successes. Friday we took both the boys to Bainbridge Island (Rex's first ferry trip) to see the Bloedel Reserve, a truly lovely garden. Usually, we treat Rex's nap time (and Ben's concurrent "quiet activities" time) as sacrosanct. What that means is that no matter what the morning has wrought, a giant metaphorical bungie pulls us back home around lunchtime. On good days, the kids are both quiet and safe for up to two hours and adults get to eat lunch, read books, make phone calls, or simply stare into space. On Friday, we said "to hell with the nap!" and blithely set out.

Rex took a short nap in the car, we had a picnic on a great beach and a really fun visit to the garden. Another fun ferry ride home and Glenn and I were congratulating each other on a remarkably successful trip. We hope it bodes well for the big trip to Maine we'll be taking in October.

The photo of Ben exploring a reflecting pool is at Bloedel, the other two were shot today
during our walk at Meadowbrook, here in Seattle. Ben in his boots makes me think of Christopher Robin, and Rex no longer has to be carried on our family walks; he walks!

Ben and Lynn's big adventure

Ben and I drove off Friday afternoon to pay a long-overdue visit to my brother Michael. He drives up here very regularly from Hood River, OR and we love having him, but have never returned the favor. Having recently weaned Rex, I wanted to see Mike and give Ben a taste of the classic American tradition; the roadtrip. So we loaded up the car and headed out, leaving Rex and Glenn at home.

For whatever reason, the traffic was heavy and the trip down took longer than it should have, but I introduced Ben to roadfood in the shape of Doritos, and we arrived before dinnertime on Friday night. Mike and his girlfriend Kathy showed us a great weekend. Mike's birthday present to Ben was a 2.5 hour drive on a vintage train. I'll state the case with restraint if I say that Ben was pleased. Saturday afternoon we walked to a very cool community-built playground that Mike had scouted (nice research, by the way, Mike), although it was hot enough to make all of us wilt, including Ben.

And Sunday morning, Mike had arranged to visit Dancing Moon Farm, his CSA. We got a bit of a tour from the farmer, Nicholas. Lovely place and really brave farmers: they're only three years into farming and obviously researching and working their butts off! I was fascinated to learn that they ship one entire crop to New York - a particular variety of rosehips much in demand by urban florists. Talk about a niche market...

The return trip was marred by a driving rainstorm, and what should have taken us about 4 hours took just under 8. Ben was a trooper, and made nowhere near the fuss I would have, had I been in his shoes.

Several fun nuggets of information:

1. You know you're doing something right as a parent when your four year old doesn't know the name of the restaurant marked by "golden arches." I took him to one for lunch on Sunday and let him burn off energy in their play area, but was charmed to hear him call it "Old MacDonald's."
2. Mike's new girlfriend Kathy is awesome. I had suspected as much, but she earned a spot in my heart when she willingly got down on the floor with Ben, helping to color in pages of his John Deere coloring book. And then made us all blueberry pancakes.
   
3. When cranky, a little carefully chosen television does wonders for the mood of a 4 year old boy. One of these photos shows Ben with Kathy and Mike watching his All About John Deere DVD. He's in the zone.
   

Ben's 4!

Today was the day Ben turned four. Wow. His party was Saturday and was a real pleasure. The planning was huge, but partially because we were trying to declutter and clean the house, using the party as a deadline to spur us on. But the kids Ben wanted to invite were lovely and their parents also charming. It was hot and humid, a combo I grew up with but have had little experience with since moving to Seattle. Fortunately, a couple of sprinklers and the kids were happy. Next year I'm thinking about a late afternoon party with beer for the adults!

Ben was a good host, and the kids were amazingly well-behaved. His manners have made a dramatic forward leap lately, as evidenced by the following quote from this evening. UNPROMPTED. I made a cake for the party, but we kicked it Saturday so I bought a little ice cream cake for the family to share tonight. It was sky blue with confetti dots and a big red rose on it. When I asked him the favorite thing he did on his birthday, he said, "Have cake. And thank you for giving me the rose." Wow again. I actually teared up.

The other picture was taken by Glenn while dropping Ben off at child care this morning. To honor your child's birthday, you're invited to bring a book to give to the center. I bought a copy of Easy Street, a book Ben memorized shortly after we brought it home from the library. Here, his teacher Mary Lou is reading it to the group.

Just some photos

Life's been busy lately, but mostly in a good way. Glenn and I are on a serious decluttering kick, including our basement, which I have long called "my shame." This time, however, we're pacing ourselves and enjoying small bits of progress; a new path through the boxes which were once impassable, another load of donations off to the Baby Boutique or Goodwill. Each of us will do a bit, inspiring the other to do something in turn. So instead of turning it into a stressfest, it's been a pleasurable experience.

The kids are delightful and exhausting. How I managed without them I can not imagine. How I get through each day with them is equally a mystery to me.

The photos show Ben on a field trip with his classroom and Rex playing with my sunglasses while helping with the grocery shopping.

Zafu!

I've been taking a meditation class lately, which I am enjoying immensely. It's extremely difficult, but oh, so important for me these days when most of my tasks have little to do with my own needs or desires.

I bought a zafu, or a pillow meant to help you hold the unaccustomed still posture needed to meditate. The boys think it's absolutely wonderful. Here are a few photos of them playing with it and each other. I adore the idea of them learning how to really rest and meditate. Ben is mostly taken with the idea of doing the lotus posture while sitting on the zafu poised vertically, pretty much an impossible feat.

The other photo is just a lovely one of Rex showing his new crane shirt and golden curls in today's sun.

On the brink

Ben has a big transition ahead of him. Tomorrow he goes to child care but reports to the Jungle (preschool) room! He's graduating from Heffalump-hood, and I don't think he's at all regretful, but Glenn and I have grown to deeply appreciate the Heffalump room and its marvelous teachers. So I feel more than a little sadness.

Which I'm trying not to show him.

He's been visiting the Jungle room quite a lot in the last month, and we've seen some interesting new behavior. Some of it is charming. He's actually inviting kids to play with him, instead of always talking to their parents, for example. But some of it is going to be challenging. He's being exposed to a lot of older kids, many of whom don't have Ben's naturally sunny disposition.

This should be interesting. Stay tuned.

Equal time

Wow, I've been neglecting Rex here. And not because he's been uninteresting. On the contrary, Rex is now walking up a storm, learning new words daily and being generally charming to all. However, after weeks of wellness after this winter's dismal eight ear infections, he came down with a fever Thursday and made us all nervous. A Friday visit to the pediatrician gave us a diagnosis: hand, foot and mouth disease. Apparently very, very common in pre-verbal kids. Ben came to the doctor with us and she looked him over too. I figured he's the one bringing most viruses home because he's in child care three days a week, but he got a clean bill of health. The doctor said he's old enough that he's either had it already or has a sufficiently healthy immune system to skip it altogether.

Rex is nearly back to normal now, despite the discomfort of mouth sores. He and Ben have been playing together lately, which makes me very happy. Firstly because it bodes well for their future friendship. But also because it's less work for me to find ways to simultaneously entertain two kids!

Uncle Mike, your birthday crocodile couldn't have arrived at a better time. Rex is making a furious racket, hauling that loud thing all over the house. Here's proof. Also, I'm including a photo of Rex's curly hair. I rarely go more than a day or two without a stranger telling me how much they like his hair!

Another theater geek?

Glenn and I both did high school theater, although I'll freely confess that his roles were a lot more impressive than mine. Hell, he was Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, and I had only one speaking role, Essie in You Can't Take It With You. Most of my involvement in plays was as a dancer, and I was probably only cast because Essie was a ballet dancer. A really bad one, too. Which was fun, I must say. I got to lurch around in pointe shoes looking as dorky as possible.

Anyway, we both love theater. Seattle has a much beloved children's theater which we know through Glenn's cousin Stephie, who did their summer theater camps for several years. It was always a thrill for us to get to see her perform, but she's moved onto bigger things (like making a full-length feature film last year! In high school!).

But today I took Ben to see a musical called Busytown based on Richard Scarry's series of children's books. It was utterly charming, with ingenious staging and great performances. I had a marvelous time and here's a photo I took surreptitiously with my phone to show you how Ben liked it. In the background you'll see his friend Flynn. I'm so grateful to his mother Tasha for suggesting we go.

Back to the farmers' market

One of my recurring jokes with Ben is "Should we go to the farmers' market today and buy a farmer?" He, having nearly four years of life experience, fixes me with a withering stare and says "You don't get farmers at a farmers' market!" But then he cracks up. Every time.

Which is one of the reasons I love having kids.

Anyway, it's tricky to do the market with kids, but Glenn and I have been trying to get more one-on-one time with each of the kids lately, so I've decided to make it semi-official that Ben
and I go to the market on Saturday mornings. Last week I decided to give him a small canvas bag and had him do some of the financial transactions. Some foods are too fragile or expensive for him to deal with, but he hates being left out. Last week he had a brainstorm: he pulled one spear out of the bunch of asparagus I had just bought and carefully placed it in his own bag. Brilliant!

This week I saw an ad for those wheelie carts that elderly folks use to cart groceries home and decided to try it with Ben. I was a bit concerned that he'd spend the whole market kneecapping people, but with a little preemptive speech about being careful, he handled it like a master. With his moose rain slicker and red boots, he made quite a picture and we got a lot of friendly smiles from folks at the market. Success!

P.S. It's worth noting that although Ben appears to hate protein in most forms (no meats, except bacon, pass his lips, no peanut butter, tofu, etc.), he will eat some pretty adventurous things. Two weeks in a row we bought fiddlehead ferns at the market and he ate them greedily. And he'll gladly eat the little florets from chive blossoms. His current favorite treat is a cup of tea made from lemon balm growing in our garden. Weird, but charming!

Immortalized

Ben made a book for my brother Michael's birthday. It's called Train Smoke, and it's the story of Uncle Mike driving a train to Seattle, Portland, New Mexico, etc. It's not much of a story, really, but it's priceless nonetheless. Ben rarely does figurative drawings, but he made a pretty marvelous depiction of Uncle Mike in this one, don't you think?

Farmer's Market

Not a great photo of Ben, unfortunately, but it's because he's intently listening to a steel guitar player at our local, excellent farmer's market. My brother Michael and his friend Kathy came to spend the Memorial Day weekend with us, bless their souls. We don't go anywhere these days, so I'm lucky to have a brother who's willing to haul his tuchus up here regularly to see his nephews (and Glenn and me, sort of). We're having a lovely time, especially since they have infected us with a holiday spirit even though we're still getting up at 6 or 6:30 AM. But after the kids are in bed, we can drink beers and hang out. Heaven!

We also went to Folklife yesterday, which was a sea of humanity. Tricky with small kids. But worthwhile because Ben has been on a kick lately to identify various instruments from the sounds they make. We listen to music mostly in the car, so it's been pretty academic until yesterday, when he got to see guitars, bass fiddles, banjos, accordions, fiddles, drums, marimbas, saxophones, trombones, mandolines, dobros, bass guitars...and the star of the show, his first WASHBOARD! Absolutely eclipsed every other instrument. You strap metal to your chest and bang away at it and no one asks you to stop? Get me one of those!

Rex on the cusp of walking

I realized a few weeks ago that Rex would love to have a push toy, the kind of toy that he can propel while "walking," even though he would only be able to walk because it was actually holding him upright.

But most of them are cheesy and plastic and I realized that in our little bungalow, it would really be more of a bumper car than anything else. So I didn't get him one.

Nonetheless, he's getting closer and closer to walking. A week ago he started standing without support and he's taken as many as three steps when he gets distracted and forgets to tell himself that he can't walk.

And today he simply created his own push toy. He liberated my Grandmother's Hitchcock chair from its accustomed place along the dining room wall and pushed it the length of the entire dining and living rooms. I'm a little sentimental about that chair, but I have no doubt that Mom mom would have been delighted to see it put to such good use by her great-grandson! Glenn, Ben and I got a great laugh out of it and Rex was clearly very pleased with himself.

In sickness and in health

Just in case you'd lost track, today I decided to do an inventory of my children's recent health woes. Here is what Ben and Rex (and in consequence, Glenn and I) have dealt with since December:

• 8 courses of treatment for ear infections (6 for Rex, 2 for Ben)
• 4 bouts of stomach virus (2 each, 1 with liquids exiting the upper end, 1 with them coming out the lower end)
• 1 case of pinkeye (Ben)
• 1 surgery to have ear tubes inserted (Rex)
• 2 visits to the Emergency Department at Children's Hospital (both Ben's, both warranted)
• 1 case of a virally inflamed hip joint (never heard of such a thing? Join the club. Ben's)

And lest I sound like too much of a whiner, here are the bullets we've dodged:

• Another round of pinkeye that went through Ben's child care center a month after his case
• Roundworm (also at Ben's center)
• Aha, Glenn reminds me that we also skipped head lice from the center.
  

I'm ready for the end of cold and flu season. Or maybe becoming the matriarch of the first-ever family-in-a-bubble.

P.S. In case you were wondering, the reason I've been mulling over this topic is that Ben was diagnosed with a new ear infection last night at the after-hours clinic, and Rex got the same diagnosis today.

Fewer diapers

Wow, Ben is on his 13th day of wearing underwear! And get this, he's had two accidents the whole time. The first was because I was putting Rex down for a nap and forgot to leave the safety gate open so he could get to the potty while I was in the bedroom. He had another one today at child care, but his stomach has been a bit upset lately so it may have more to do with that than anything else.

In any case, we're really proud of him and get a good chuckle out of his enthusiasm for his new underwear. Mom and Dad gave him some for Christmas with airplanes on them, which are the hands-down favorites, but he gets good use out of his Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine pairs, too. He carefully chooses a pair each morning and usually announces "I'll show Jen at child care!" Don't you love it that there are adults other than parents who will actually be delighted to look at the trains on a kid's underpants?!

And I don't mean that in a creepy way.

It's all over!

He did wonderfully! We were home about four hours after arriving at the hospital, with Rex's brand new (utterly invisible) ear tubes installed. He's since had a good, long nap and shows no particular sign that today was anything other than normal. Blessed short memory.

Mom and Dad are extremely relieved although a bit draggy. But I conked out on the couch during Rex's nap and am recovering apace. Glenn soldiers on, working when possible.

Thanks for all your kind thoughts. I think we'll be just fine and will have a much happier Rex.
The photo shows Rex in his yellow hospital gown, exploring the playroom.

Fewer posts about ears?

I feel as though all I talk about lately are my children's ears. Ben has finished antibiotics from his ear infection and is being lovely and fun again. Rex, however, has had five ear infections since December and will be having ear tubes inserted tomorrow.

By many accounts, the surgery is very fast, easy and nearly painless (the ENT said the pain is equivalent to getting a paper cut). The biggest concern that Glenn and I have had is that Rex has to fast for eight hours before the surgery and the earliest time they could schedule him was 11:15 AM. So we were planning to wake him at 2:30 so I could nurse him and put him back down, hoping that he wouldn't wake at 6 and wail until after the surgery was over. We learned today that they were able to move his surgery to 8:30 so tomorrow morning will be a blur as we get Ben to his child care center early and Rex to the hospital at 6:30.

But now it seems easy. He'll be unhappy, but only for a couple of hours, and I suspect that he'll be a much happier child from then on. Hearing tests showed that the fluid in his middle ears was impacting his hearing and this is such a crucial time for language development. He's just begun using some sign language, to our utter delight ("milk" and "more"), but if he's at all like Ben he's just raring to use his voice instead!

An explanation

Turns out the reason our usually charming (well, mostly) Ben has been a pill lately is that he has an ear infection. He got up from his "nap" today (in quotation marks because he seldom sleeps during that time) whining and moaning. Initially I just thought he was trying to be profoundly irritating, but soon realized something was really wrong. We were off - again - to the Children's Hospital After Hours Clinic and learned about the ear infection. Interestingly, the ear that was really bothering him didn't seem to be much inflamed but the other one was pretty bad.

So 10 days of antibiotics for him and tomorrow Rex has his hearing tested in an effort to determine whether he'll need ear tubes inserted to help him cope with his endless stream of ear infections.

Rex's new toy

You know how little kids love toys that make noise? Well, Rex found the ultimate noise-maker - the toilet handle. You should see his face when he succeeds, which is often.

Sailplanes

Ben's been a bit of a...challenge lately. Other words come to mind, but I'll use that one since this is a family blog. Anyway, Glenn and I have been having lots of high-level strategy talks at night, or whispered in the kitchen while he's in the living room. We have not cracked this problem yet, but are crafting some useful tools. The most valuable, I think, is just to get out of the house so that boredom can't set in.

So Glenn took the kids this morning while I got a little personal time and was about ready to throttle Ben when I got home at 2:30. I threw both of the little ones in the car and headed to Ben's perennial favorite, the Museum of Flight. It happened that this weekend was their annual Soaring Expo and they'd set up three full-size high performance sailplanes in the hall, along with a zillion scale models. I talked to members of two local soaring clubs and was delighted to realize that there's year-round soaring within an hour and a half drive from Seattle. When I told one young guy, originally from New York state, that my father was considering moving to the area and loved to soar and to ski he looked at me like I was crazy and said "It's a no-brainer!"

Here's Ben checking out one of the planes.

Ben writes a book

We had to go to the art supply store a week ago to replace Ben's heavily-used watercolor paints. I am a total sucker for art supply stores and can never leave with only the thing I ostensibly came for and this outing was no exception. And since I took Ben and Rex with me, it was even harder to get out without buying their full inventory.

The one utterly brilliant thing we got, if I may say so, was about half a dozen blank, white books. I think I spent two dollars and change for each one, and figured that maybe I could get Ben interested in illustrating them as gifts. It took a little while for him to see the possibilities, but he's already written and illustrated two books, and is hot to do more. The first was titled The Fish Head (don't ask), but yesterday's is known as The Person Who Worked at the Museum of Flight. I'm copying his text below, but you'll have to visit to see his illustrations. As soon as I was finished writing the title on the front cover, he grabbed the book and ran to the living room, where he placed it on his book shelf, with all the other books. Where else should it be?


One day there was a person who worked at the Museum of Flight. And it went upstairs and it said “This is a Blue Angel.”
Then the person went back home, then he took a nap and then he found some dice.
And then he went to the Museum of Flight and he found a R-E-X. And then he went to downstairs.
Then he went to a playground and then he saw a swimming pool. Then he swimmed in it.
Then he went back to the Museum of Flight upstairs in the Control Tower.
One day he came home and then he had his nap and he came out he had a snack.
Then he had prunes with peanut butter and then after that he played with PlayMais.
And then he made a big house. Then he made two, three lines, three trees out of them.
Then he made a chugga chugga choo choo train. And then he made two lines. Then he made THREE FLOWERS!
One day the person went skiing and then snow falled on his building, his house he made out of PlayMais.
And PlayMais is made out of corn. They draw the colors on it.
This is the end of the story.
Actually THIS is the end of the story.

Ben goes skiing!

Today was a big rite of passage for Ben. His name may be Fleishman, but he is also part of the Warner family, and as such, it's time for him to hit the slopes. After all, on Monday he'll be three and a half (with an ice cream cake to celebrate, but SHHH!), so what have we been waiting for?!

Kidding aside, I was hoping to get Ben on skis just a couple of times this winter and started collecting clothing and gear in the fall. Mom and Dad found the indescribably cute skis at a ski swap in Connecticut and gave them as a Christmas present. But today all the stars aligned and we finally pulled it off. I'm so, so tired that I fell asleep on the couch at 7:15, immediately after we got the last kid to bed. Now it's time to pull myself together and climb into my real bed, but first, here are some pictures of Ben on skis. I hope it'll be the first of many lovely days on the snow for him.

A reward for all you patiently waiting...

grandparents. I know my mom and Glenn's dad are still patiently checking every day in hopes that I will finally write SOMEthing.

Well, I'm not, really. But you get rewarded with something much better - a video!

Trying to catch a breath

Okay, Rex is now on his sixth day of antibiotics for an ear infection (his second in a month), and is clearly feeling much better. His mood for the past couple of days has been absolutely lovely. But Saturday at bedtime Ben started rubbing his eye. By morning yesterday his lashes were matted and there was goop in the corner of his eye. A few hours later the other eye had yellow goop spilling out and we knew we were looking at the dreaded pink-eye. I called the health line our insurance company subscribes to and they were, as usual, wonderfully helpful.

So for the second Sunday in a row, one of our kids needs medical care - now! Fortunately for us, we live only a few miles away from Seattle's Children's Hospital, and they offer an after-hours clinic. Again, they are amazing. Everyone from the receptionists to the intake people to the nurses and doctors are just marvelous with kids and parents alike.

Ben's on antibiotic ointment now and doing much better, but of course is not going to child care today. And is very contagious so we can't leave the house, of course.

And it snowed last night. Not much accumulation, but did I mention that our furnace stopped working overnight?

Oh, and I come back from the bathroom to learn that the furnace repair guy, en route to our house, was rear-ended. His truck was disabled. The company is sending another truck to get him and send him our way, but it's freezing outside and we're heating the entire house with a space heater.

Have a nice day!

Update: as of about noon, the heat's back on! At the moment Rex is napping and it looks as though Ben is actually going to fall asleep, too. Miracle. Things are looking up.

News from a temporarily single parent

Glenn is at MacWorld in San Francisco this week. I'm all for it. He sees colleagues and friends there that he would otherwise know only electronically, and gets to catch up with others who live far afield. And he gets to wallow in cool tech stuff. Stuff that makes my eyes glaze over, when he tries to interest me, despite my best intentions.

But this year, it means I am entirely in charge of two small children for four days. Whoa. So when Rex wakes up at 5 AM needing his reflux medication and a half an hour of entertainment before I can nurse him, I'm on tap. There's been Ben's child care and our doula to cover with Rex for some of the time, so it's not that I haven't had any respites. It's just that I know that I'm ultimately in charge, that if Ben were to wake up at 10:30 PM vomiting (like he did last month), I would be alone in wrangling him and Rex. If it entailed another visit to the Emergency Department (like last month), I'd be bringing them both.

The point is, that I don't know how single parents manage this. I'm getting through it, but Glenn will be home late tonight, and all this time I haven't been trying to care for the kids while earning a paycheck or worrying about their care. I love being a parent, but it is just plain hard, hard, hard. Challenging, exhausting, sometimes tedious. I salute all of you who are doing this now, have done it already and are contemplating doing it.

On a more cheerful note, the boys are now taking baths together and both of them love it! Here's evidence.

Trying it on for size

Ben has a habit that I admire. In order to get the hang of a new word or concept, he creates sample sentences using the word/idea. This can be alarming, until you realize that he's just trying it out. For example, a few weeks ago we had our first discussion about death. I decided that a three year old didn't need to be confused by some of the more challenging details, like knowing that a three year old can die. So we confined it to "Everyone dies someday. People get old and then one day they get sick and then they stop living." A few days later we're sitting at the dining room table and Ben announces "I'll die soon." I gently correct him, saying that he will die, but it won't be any time soon. Quiet ensues as we both eat our lunches. A few minutes later "You'll die soon." I swallow hard, trying not to feel like I've just stepped into a horror movie, and say "Yes, I'll die, but it won't be soon, either."

Recently he got interested in the word "beautiful." Tricky word, when you think about it. We use it for sunsets, snowfalls, but also more mundane things like "You did a beautiful job!" Wallowing in wardrobe boredom I pulled a pair of emerald green corduroys out of the back of my closet last week and when I came out of the bedroom, Ben lit up. "Those are beeYOOtiful!" He then proceeded to run his hands over the corduroy, and followed up with "You look like a tree."

Hey, I've been called worse!

Outstanding in his field (ba dum bum)

Rex has been eagerly working on standing for quite a while now, as his ambivalent parents look on. I was relieved when he began crawling New Year's Eve Day, since I had hoped he wouldn't skip that step in his headlong rush toward walking. In truth, he'd been crawling for several weeks, but since he could only crawl backwards - away from his goal - it didn't seem to count. The same day he figured out how to move forward (a skill he refines daily) he pulled himself up to standing by holding onto the edge of our coffee table.

Of course this results in some resounding falls. He cries for less than half of them, for which I give him credit. The guy is just eager to join in the action and he's willing to take his lumps (literally). I'm a little sad to see his progress, since this is the last time I'll watch a child of mine learn to crawl, but his pride is infectious. He has the most gorgeous grin after pulling off one of these stunts!