Little Mittens

We brought him home at about 3:30 this afternoon in the pouring rain. These pictures were taken shortly thereafter (in the new laundry room!). He's mostly been hiding behind stuff (washing machine, end table) or under stuff (beds, computer desk) and meowing plaintively, which is to be expected when every emergence is rewarded with a 2 year old's squeals.

Now that she's in bed, he's getting more brave. He jumped up on the couch and kneaded me. When Emily sits on the floor, he walks around her, rubbing his head against her. She was a bit impatient this afternoon, saying, (read with whine) "Mo-om, Little Mittens won't come ou-ut," so now she's pretty excited.

Emily's taking pictures of him now. I'll upload more in the morning.

Actual Conversation

Time: 7:45 a.m.
Place: Mommy's bed, where everyone is snuggling because Mommy doesn't want to get up yet.

Penny: (Coughing a chesty cough)
Mommy: Poor Penny. Does your throat hurt, too?
Penny: Yes. [No guarantee of truth. She says yes to most questions. Unless she says no.]
Emily: I have a stuffy nose.
Mommy: You're getting a cold, too?
Emily: I just noticed it when I tried to do this just now (sniffing mightily). And you know what that means?
Mommy: What?
Emily: Nose pickin' time!

The After

If this is what it looked like before, here are some pictures, taken this morning, of the after.




Some small projects remain, like

Installing an actual ceiling light fixture (already purchased for $6 at Lowe's) over the current bare bulb;

Fitting a transition strip (already purchased for $4 from Lowe's) into the doorway between the kids' room carpet and the laundry room cement;

Some kind of paneling to cover up the peeling-possibly-lead paint section of wall next to the dryer (I bought a sheet of cheep wainscotting but it needs to be cut and adhered or nailed using my new masonry drill bits);

Some kind of fence/screen to hide the ugly old water pump in the corner (see last picture). We may have to build this ourselves. We may wait until daytime temperatures dip below 85.

I'm pleased with the results, though. It's clean. It's pleasant. It's possibly the cleanest, prettiest room in my house right now. Sigh.

Lowe's is going to miss me next week.

Sick Day

[Warning: If you have a sensitive stomach and don't like hearing details of child expectoration/regurgitation, read no further.]

At four o'clock this morning, Penny woke up. She's an excellent sleeper, in general, and only rarely wakes up before morning (although morning has sometimes been 5:30 a.m.). So when she does wake up, I figure there's something wrong. And, like everyone at 4 a.m., I was tired, so I just scooped her up and lay her down next to me, hoping she would go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

Instead, after about 20 minutes of quiet tossing and turning, she threw up. I let out the requisite "Aaack!" at having vomit (even clear toddler vomit) within inches of my face. I carried her into the bathroom and she hacked more into the toilet bowl. It didn't seem to smell (and I have a sensitive nose) and was clear, so I thought, hopefully, Maybe she's just clearing out mucous? I had her blow her nose, washed her hands, wiped off the small spot on the sheets and lay back down.

She felt slightly hot, huddled up next to me as she was. I thought, I am going to blog about this later and say: Yes, I lay down next to my toddler who had just thrown up, without changing the sheets, and it's surprisingly comfortable, thank you very much.

She proceeded to throw up again, three more times, before I finally gave up and got up for good, sometime around 6:15. One of those times, she wanted her shirt off, then she wanted to go pee pee, so the shorts and diaper came off. At one point, oh, around 6, she was completely naked lying on a towel (I put a towel down after the second time).

I had to call my mom to pick up Emily and drive her to school (she's the first grade teacher at Emily's school). Before Emily left, Penny ate a few bites of plum, which she asked for when she saw Emily eating one. Ten minutes later, right when I decided to use the bathroom, she threw up the plum. There's probably some little-seen portrait of motherhood somewhere in the scenario of being on the toilet when your five-year-old yells from the other room, "Penny just threw up!" and you say, "I can't do anything about it right now!" Both of them were actually attempting to clean it up, with napkins (on the carpet), when I came out of the bathroom, which was sweet, if ineffective.

She's been fine since, doesn't have a temperature, has eaten a few pretzels and a popsicle. I'm not certain she's done throwing up for the day. She seems to have a sensitive stomach. For a few months she threw up every time she went in the car after we switched her carseat to forward-facing (at, like, 16 months--she was small!). We finally figured out drinking milk before getting in the car was not a good idea. She seems to throw up whenever her tummy is a little uncomfortable, so I'm not panicking and calling the doctor unless something changes (or this continues until tomorrow).

It's funny that Emily was the spit-up queen as a baby, never swallowing a liquid meal she didn't bring back up, up to nine months or so, with occasional episodes up to a year. Yet, Emily has only had two brief incidents of vomiting since turning one. Penny didn't spit up much at all after two or three months of age. I thought, Woo-hoo, I lucked out this time! Until the whole car thing. Maybe these two propensities are just unrelated.

In not-so-exciting-to-anyone-but-me home improvement news, I am going to try to paint the doors today.

Painted Floor

It's done. Painted and flaked. I can still see roller marks, but I'm hoping they'll dry away.

I will not look at it every 5 minutes to check . . .

I didn't expect it to be so white. Or off-white. The picture on the can is decidedly tan or beige. Light brownish, which is the color most featured in their commercials and in the instructional dvd featured with the product (I watched it!). To be fair, it does say on the can under the words Light Color, must be tinted. No tinting product came with the kit. And, more puzzling, the instructions specifically say, after telling you to combine part B into part A, no tinting agents or other additives should be added. I can't really put quotes around that because, even though I pulled one can (part B) out of the trash, the can on which it was written (part A) is back in the garage with all the other not-empty-but-no-longer-useable paint cans waiting for appropriate disposal. And I'm not going out there to check it. Not right now anyway.

I'm not upset about the coloring, but wouldn't you think they would either feature the actual color on the outside of the can and/or include the appropriate tinting additive in the kit? Other options were Dark Color (which looked dark blue on the picture, but also included the must be tinted wording) and Light/Dark Gray. Whatever. I should probably post this to the company message board.

In 12 hours, or more likely 18-20, I will remove the tape and maybe take another picture. Then it's the walls' turn.

And someday I will post about other goings-on in our lives.

All Taped Up and Ready to Paint

Today's the day. 20 minutes from now, I will begin painting. I am unreasonably excited.

Almost There

Laundry Room Floor Project:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

But no new pictures, because it still doesn't look like anything other than a bare concrete floor. Today we moved the washer and dryer to the back porch, swept, mopped, removed the paint under the washer and dryer, swept, vacuumed, mopped with a TSP solution, swept, applied Bond-Loc degreaser, mopped about a thousand times.

My parents watched the kids at their house from 11 am - 5 pm (when we joined them for portabello mushrooms and barbeque chicken off the grill, yum), otherwise we would not have been able to do all of that labor-intensive, but largely invisible work today.

The most frustrating part was trying to rinse the floor after the Bond-Loc application. Since this kit is designed to be used on the garage floor and most people's garages have, you know, a door that leads to the outside, usually a driveway, directions are to rinse with garden hose until the "water runs clear." Do you know how many freaking times I would have to pour clean water on the floor and squeegee it up before the water actually ran clear? Apparently more than a thousand. My arms were tired after, you know, scrubbing off paint for the last 48 hours, so I let hubby do one last mopping. He looked at me as if to say, "Is this really necessary?" but I looked back with a clear "Don't make me throw that ESPN magazine in the plastic tarp full of partially dried paint" so he gamely donned the $40 boots he resented buying from Lowe's and I took a shower.

I really want this to look good, or all my pain will have been for naught. Tomorrow my schedule is:

Do all normal breakfast/clothing/teeth brushing prep between 7 and 8.

Take Emily to school at 8:15

Go to YMCA with my sister (toddlers to babysitting room). Cardio only. Have I mentioned my arms are tired?

Talk sister into returning to my house so she can keep eye on toddlers while they zone out to Noggin.

Try one more time to get old red paint off corners of floor. Means donning the hated yellow gloves and sweat-inducing dust mask and protective eyewear to avoid burning burning burning of accidental splatter.

Mop again? Would that mean waiting another day for my beautiful epoxy floor (Honest-to-God slogan: "Enjoy your floor! You'll be the envy of all the neighborhood!")? Can I handle that? Can I wait one more day?

Also, I will post tomorrow about a new way Emily made me momentarily made me feel like a bad parent before I realized that I was actually being a good parent. Confusing, huh? Someday I will also take a picture of her adorable self in her adorable uniform. Tomorrow's P.E. day again, though, so probably not then.

Saturday 5 pm

The paint is gone


except for the area under the washer and dryer. I'll see if I can recruit silent, currently immobile partner to shift those tonight. I want to get it all done, but man, I'm tired.

30 Minutes Later

Look, I got a helper.

And thank you, wire brush and heavy duty scraper. Because we got more paint up in 15minutes than in, well, all the rest of the time I've been working on it.

We are now waiting for the paint remover to bubble on that square in the back. And to prove I was there, too, an hilariously unflattering photo taken by Emily:

The kids are not allowed past the doorway.

The First 24 Hours

are the slowest, right? The hardest? Here are the photographs of my feeble efforts. I did a little bit last night, a little this morning, a little this afternoon. I have discovered:



1) This stuff burns. That's why they tell you to wear the gloves. So don't scratch your neck with the glove finger. Or clean out the container with the garden hose, which spatters.

2) Water helps. Unfortunately, I only recently figured this out. The cleanest areas are those I did most recently, after pouring liberal amounts of water (slowly) onto the surface (after waiting 15 minutes for paint remover to set in and bubble).

3) Remember when your mother or grandmother would talk about getting down on her hands and knees to scrub the floors? Well, I don't do that, but I was doing it today. I now know why the washerwomen in those old advertisements were so brawny.

I have now spent $50 more at Lowe's on a wire brush, a heavy duty floor scraper, and a heat gun. Maybe now I can get a partner's assistance. Hint. Hint.

The Laundry Room

Yes, we were planning on taking care of the bathroom. But then we decided to get a kitten, and I remembered how much I hated the laundry room floor. Which is where the litter box and cat food dish/water bowl have been and probably will continue to be. (Although maybe Penny and Emily can be trusted not to eat catfood anymore. Maybe.) And I remembered how I wanted to do better by that floor before we got another cat. With kitten arrival any day now (whenever we want to pick him up), I'm finally feeling the pressure of the deadline which is apparently crucial to taking action (for me).

Here's the laundry room in all its current glory, with everything on the floor removed
standing in the doorway from the kitchen,

the corner to the left as you step in (closing the door to the kitchen),

moving right, staring at our new washer and definitely-not-new-dryer (it squeaks! it squeals! you have to turn it off during naptime! or when you're talking on the phone!) under the single window, and

the next corner, with the ancient water pump, also noisy, especially around 5 am when it cycles or whatever it does.

Now imagine the camera continuing to swoop right, to the next corner (empty) and the expanse of dirty blank wall to

the final corner, where the door to the children's room and the door back into the kitchen intersect.

You might be able to tell from that last picture that the vinyl flooring in the kitchen/dining room is the same as this vinyl flooring. It is! And it was also in the laundry room when we moved here 3 1/2 years ago. Pretty much the only thing we did before we moved in was paint a few of the rooms and remove this "tile." I have since read that vinyl flooring does not work well in damp or humid areas. Like a laundry room. That probably explains why it was all loose and crusted with grime. So we just scraped it up, painstakingly, with much cursing, either late at night or during the day when someone else was presumably watching then-15-month-old Emily.

What we didn't know was that you should use heat to neutralize the adhesive substance used to stick-on the "tiles." Which means that the floor, sans tile, was squidgy underfoot. Very squidgy. Movie theater squidgy. Or circus squidgy. We mopped it. We scraped it (with the gigantic scraper I will be using tomorrow). Finally we just said F*it and rolled down some paint. It was supposed to be two or three coats, but ended up being only one. So it's looked crappy ever since, and small flakes of paint sometimes come up on our shoes. Plus it's very difficult to sweep or mop. When our cat was alive, he dragged litter all over it, not intentionally, but because he was old, so it was dirty, sticky, and ugly. Only marginally improved from the vinyl floor.

We're doing it right this time. Even if I have to do it myself! First I'm removing the paint with a toxic paint stripper, said scraper, gloves, protective eyewear, and dust mask. Then we're laying down some kind of floor sealant, then epoxy garage floor (with flakes! as seen on tv, but to be purchased from Lowe's!). Finally, I want to paint the dirty, white, concrete block walls. I will post updates, if only to keep myself motivated.

Final note: This little laundry room is actually the top third of the garage. The second (larger) third is the girls' bedroom, and the back third is storage behind a garage door. This was all done before we moved in, and not particularly well. That's another, much bigger project.

Knowledge is Power

A few of the things Emily has brought up this week:

Nipples

This was initiated by finding the Barbie I'd put in the closet two years ago. Remember? I just mentioned it last week and thereby brought it to the universe's attention. I had turned on the closet light to find a pair of shoes. The kids were standing within 2 mm of me, as usual, and Emily looked up as I flicked on the light, "What's that hair up there, Mommy?" It was this:

Thank God she's wearing that little black cover-up, huh?

Anyway, as anyone with children knows, taking a doll's clothes off is pretty much a requirement within the first couple of minutes of receiving it. So the clothes came off (not surprisingly, this didn't take long!), and Emily said, "She has big mountains," while pressing on the doll's breasts.

I've never used the term mountains to refer to breasts, so I guess she was just choosing the most appropriate geological analogy all on her own. At any rate, I decided I might not have been as direct about correct anatomical language as I'd always intended to be, so I said, "They're not mountains, they're her breasts. Every woman has them."

"Yeah," said Emily, "I can see one of yours right now." Only one, apparently. "But Penny and me don't have them."

"But you will," I went on. "Your breasts grow when you start to become a grown-up." Since Penny obligingly already had her shirt off, I pointed to her tiny nipples. "When you get older, they'll grow."

Then ensued a discussion about the fact that everyone has nipples, even boys and Daddy. "But only woman's nipples grow," said Emily, "and boys' nipples don't."

Almost. I really didn't want to leave her with the impression that adult women have giant nipples. So I belabored the point by explaining that the nipples didn't grow. Well, they do grow, but . . .

Whew, this stuff is exhausting.

P.S. That Barbie of the magnificent breasts, hair, and tan? She's now the Mommy to all of the smaller dolls. Beautiful=Mommy. I should bask more in the unconditional love . . .

Birthing Babies

After dinner, Emily came up to me, both hands over her abdomen. "Doesn't it hurt, Mommy, when they cut the baby out of you?"

I did not have c-sections, but I had explained a few months ago (in the car, if I recall) that babies are born in different ways, and she must have seized right onto that giant cut in the tummy.

"Well," I said, "not all babies are born like that, but if they have to, the doctor gives you lots of medicine so you don't feel it happening."

"How else do they get the baby out?"

"Well," (I always have to buy myself a little time) "most babies come out through your body." And I proceeded to use the V word and describe it as the opening below where you go pee pee. I have used the word before, I really have, but what is up with that freaking conditioning that makes it so hard to say? "It stretches," I explained, "so that the baby can fit out."

Emily, sounding relieved and confident: "Right, so it doesn't hurt that way."

Well . . .

Native Americans vs. Indians

Finally, something non-body related! I was reading a book called Children of the Earth and Sky to Emily, one that she picked out because "I like Indians, Mommy." The book has a very nice introduction which talks about how the Native Americans were many different tribes and didn't call themselves "Indians" or by any other one name. And that Columbus called the people he encountered "Indians" because he thought he was in India.

"But I can still call them Indians, right, Mommy?"

"Well,"(you're getting tired of that prevarication, aren't you? So am I.) "Lots of people do say Indians. Even some Native Americans call themselves Indians now. But it's kind of like a nickname someone else makes up for you and maybe you don't really like it." So we thought of a couple of nicknames that might not be so nice. "It's probably better," I said, "If we say Native American or the name of the tribe the person belongs to."

I also said something (which I've said before when the subject has come up) about how a lot of Native Americans died when people like Columbus and other explorers and settlers from Europe came here. She doesn't really have a firm grasp on history or time, though, because she said, "But not when we came here, right, Mommy?"

Sigh. Raising a kid ain't easy.

Hurricane Days

Emily started Kindergarten today. She loved P.E. and having her cousin in her class. I didn't take a picture, because today was P.E. and she had to wear her P.E. clothes to school instead of her parochial-like uniform. I intended to take a picture of her tomorrow, but then this happened:

We live right along that little red line. The reports right now put it at only at Category 1 at worst, but we will get rain and wind and some people may get flooding. They cancelled school in several counties, including ours. So, Emily's second day of school is a Hurricane Day.

Closet Ghosts

We just cleaned out the girls' closet. I should have done a before and after, but just imagine, if you will, all those cubbies filled with miscellaneous stuff: blankets, winter hats (!?), a jumprope, various costumes, shoes that were too small, baby monitors, breastpump (in a box), baby sling (in a box), candle holders, and toys that no one felt like putting away. Also imagine those two tiny floor spaces under the clothing racks filled with boxes of clothes that are too small. Those boxes, and a few extra filled from the closet-pruning, are now sitting in the living room, by the front door, waiting for Daddy to take them to the garage. And picture the racks so full of clothes that all half of them stuck out sideways. The small clear box in the front is the new costume box: it even has a lid!

Emily's school uniforms are on the bottom left side. I will take pictures of her in one--the first day of kindergarten is tomorrow!

I've always known this, but damn that closet is small. Note to self: Figure out how to increase closet space before puberty hits. Make it part of Five Year Plan. (P.S. Start working on Five Year Plan.)

As soon as the kids saw me taking a picture, they insisted on being in it. So here are the two closet ghosts (Emily's idea: that's why she's doing "spooky" moves with her hands.)



Finally, I present a picture of our breakfast. It is a German Apple Pancake, recipe from Cooking Light. I was inspired to take pictures of home-cooked food by my friend from Eastwestwood. Our usual breakfast is cereal and cut-up fruit. And it will probably continue to be, especially after school starts tomorrow and mornings will once again be rushed and hectic. At any rate, we had fun making it. Penny tipped in the nutmeg and the cinnamon and helped whisk. Emily did eggbeaters, milk, sugar, and helped me arrange the sliced apples.
Unfortunately, neither of them liked it once it was cooked. They made those scrunched up "Yucky, Mommy" faces and I couldn't convince them that it was a) like eggs with apples and sugar (Penny loves eggs) or b) apple pizza (naturally, they both love pizza). Nor did reminding them of all the yummy things we put in it half an hour before, many of which they sampled at the time, persuade them. Emily did eat a few bites, mostly to get at the powdered sugar. Hubby gave me a similar face, maybe more like, "Do I really have to?" when he got up.

Well, I thought it was yummy, and I will just have to eat it myself!

New Header Background Photo

I have to give credit where credit is due. My husband took this picture in 2005, which was a scary year for hurricanes in general. July. The hurricane was Dennis. We had high winds and minor damage (tree limbs in the road) in our area (SW Florida). A month later was Katrina, of course, putting these little problems into perspective. He tried to drive down to one of the beaches (the one closest to our house at that time ~1 mile away), but the sand from the banking dunes had blown into the road. He stopped and took a picture, then backed up and drove home. At least that's what he told me he did.

So that I like to think of that picture as the road to the sea. Or the road to the Gulf, at least. I cropped the dashboard and windshield out of it, finally got it the right size, and I don't have to worry about copyright. Thanks, Honey.

Sleepy Time Woes

First, let me gaze upon how beautiful my sleeping babies are:

Yes, they're both thumbsuckers. And yes, I realize this photo is close to two years old. And yes, that's our bed. At naptime, which was a rare event for Emily at age 3, which is likely why we took the picture. And Penny has the bassinet behind her, so she couldn't roll off the bed. (All safe-parenting questions answered?) I was scanning through my photos and realized I haven't taken pictures of the kids sleeping in quite a while. Except for this one.

And, yes, in this one, only Emily and Daddy are sleeping. We're not technically family-bed people, although Emily makes forays into our room in the middle of the night about 50% of the time. And about 90% of the time, we're too tired to do what you're supposed to do: Walk the kid back to her own bed.

Penny, on the other hand, as mischievous as she looks at what I'm guessing is before 7 am, sleeps in her bed all night. Part of this is the fact that she's still in her crib and, besides a scary incident at about 15 months (before I removed the crib bumpers), does not or can not climb out of it. Part of it is that we wised up on our second stab at parenting and never brought her into our bed. Even when she was nursing at night, I fed her and carried her back to her room. Ah, my own space. Well, except for the (then) three-year-old next to me. Arrgh!

So, Penny night-weaned and slept through the night earlier, fell asleep on her own at bedtime, and waved bye-bye happily from her crib from around the time she could sit up. Not that we haven't had minor rebellions since then, but we've always been able to maintain the same routine and get back to bedtime bliss pretty quickly.

Oh, but now she's two.

Now she can say things like, "More books, more books!" in a desperate, weepy voice. Last night she even sobbed through the second to last book and the last book in anticipation of the time when the light would go out and the parents would leave. This from the child who actually toddled/trotted/pranced to her crib at bed- and naptime to our delight and (false) pride at our awesome parenting skills. Now she pulls out all the excuses: "Jammies on?"(she loves to change clothes) "Pee-pee?" "More books!" A couple of nights ago, she convinced us to leave the lamp on, but when she still wasn't asleep 30 minutes later, we had to turn it off (to renewed screaming).

(They have a nightlight in their room and the door is open to the light in the next room.)

She screams. And whenever anyone comes back in to tell her to calm down, to find out what she needs (we try to minimize these trips, really), she demands to kiss us. "Kiss, kiss," she says, through her tears. "Huggy, huggy." How can you resist this, even when the tiny lips are covered with the liquid snot of her angry tears?

She will get over it. We will get over it. We will probably put off that "big girl bed" thing for a bit longer, though, because I'm really over angry two-year-old by 8 pm.

Watching Enchanted with Emily

Here is some dialogue between us.

Emily: What happened to her [the-little-girl-in-the-movie's] mommy?
Me: I think her mommy died. So now her daddy has a girlfriend.

(later)
E: Who's that?
M: That's the daddy's girlfriend.
E: I thought that was the evil witch.

(later)
E: Is she [Amy Adam's Giselle] going to be his girlfriend now?
M: Maybe.

(at the end, after Patrick Dempsey and Amy Adams seem to get married)
E: Why does she need a mommy anyway?
M: I guess she misses her mommy. And she likes Giselle.
E: No, I mean him. Why does he need a mommy?
M: The daddy?
E: (annoyed) Ye-es!
M: Well, I guess he didn't really need to get married again . . .
E: But he wanted to. He didn't need to, but he wanted to.
M: Ye-es.


And Penny danced. She was naked and she danced.

Toys

Is it wrong that I am happy that my 5-year-old daughter prefers playing with these

rather than these?

Actually I don't have a problem with the little farm stand with the farmer girl cashier, but I had to lean Barbie-princess-with-pink-plastic-bustiere against something to take her picture.

And maybe I should have a problem with the fact that Emily flirts with a double whammy of political incorrectness by liking knights and Indians with equal enthusiasm. I swear I did not stage that picture.

Seriously, I don't want to bias my daughters in one way or the other. Well, that's at least partly true. When she says she hates princesses, I know that's mostly because I complained about the poor quality of writing in the ridiculous Disney princess book (which has been permanently retired). I've also railed aloud against people who refer to their daughters as little princesses. She wants to please me, I get that.

This is actually the second Barbie she's received, but I put the first one in the top of the closet. She got it as an exchange gift in her 3-year-old preschool class--which means it was bought by the parents of another 3-year-old. Why?

I'll probably give it to her someday, if she seems to want it, but I wasn't ready for Barbie's presence in my house when Emily was 3. She's 5 now, so it's harder to sneak toys away from her.

I mean, I had a Barbie, and I turned out okay! Except for the fact that I now hate Barbies.

Okay, enough with the commentary. Here's a cute one with Penny, who does like the girl dolls. Even if she will no longer use her real smile for the camera.

Snail, (Missing) Teeth, Hair

Three days ago, after a daily rainstorm, Emily found a snail in the driveway. We were heading out somewhere, which is pretty much the only time I go outside on summer days. She said, "Look, Mommy, I found a snail." I probably said something like, "That's nice, Emily. Get in the car." My parents were arriving at the same time, dropping off something or picking up Penny or something I can't rememember, so I must have decided to make a pretense of interest by walking back to where she was standing. I asked if there was a live snail inside, and she turned it over to look.

Not only was there a live snail in the standard size snail shell (maybe an inch in diameter--seems to be standard around here, at least in my highly unscientific survey), there was also a tiny, tiny snail perched on the flesh part of the bigger snail. Here is a very bad picture: minimal ability to focus and zoom in the Canon PowerShot, apparently, or I didn't know which setting to use. At least you get an idea of size, though. This was after we put it down in the mulch and leaves. (The little snail is just to the right of the big snail.)

Needless to say, much excited conversation about baby and mommy snails followed in the ensuing car ride to wherever we were going. We looked up snails once before when we found one while raking leaves, and I was pretty sure snails' reproduction was unusual. It is. So there's really no explanation for why the baby snail was sitting on the adult snail or any reason to assume the adult was the mommy (or more correctly, parent). Pretty cool, though.

And a week ago, somewhere in the middle of the car ride home from North Carolina, Emily said, "I think my tooth is getting looser." Again, a nonchalant response from me. She lost her first tooth at breakfast (eating an apple) about four months ago, which was pretty early (age 4 1/2) and we made a big deal of it. This second one had been loose since shortly after that. Every once in a while she'd say, It's looser and I'd wiggle it. At any rate, right after that statement in the car, she took a bite of her apple and then handed me the tooth. I had to put it in my wallet.

Today, I finally took a picture of it. You can see the one that fell out in the spring has almost been replaced by its adult tooth.

You can also see her hair cut, so cute, and what a relief for me. The battles over combing out the snarls, ponytail or no pony tail, screaming and running away (mostly her): all in the past.

Penny also got a trim to get the bangs out of her eyes. This series shows her making her silly "cheese" face and then deciding she didn't want her picture taken after all by well-timing her foot right as the camera flashed. And finally, a natural smile.

Or maybe she's practicing her soccer kicks. She walks around with that little (badly-needing-to-be-inflated) soccer ball saying, "My soccer ball" and last night, "Emily, come on, play soccer ball with me." Daddy's been watching the Olympics. Emily is going to play pee-wee soccer in September. Penny pays attention.

Sand and Sun

Ah, vacation . . . a chance to rest, relax, and take lots of pictures of the kids having fun. Well, I did rest some, try to relax (why is this so difficult?), and failed miserably at taking any pictures past the first day. I will post one video of Penny jumping off the side of the pool to her grandmother. This action was repeated multiple times that morning and the next day (with me) until she figured out she preferred to turn around and scoot herself backwards over the side, with or without someone standing there to receive her.

[video will go here, but blogger is having trouble with it right now]

From a cinematic standpoint, it's terrible: out of focus and veering all over the place. That's mostly because the sun was so blindingly bright and I had to just aim it generally at what I wanted to film. I think it could be viewed as a representation of how Emily feels marginalized by her little sister, but that's probably more my guilt imposed on the scene. I did take one of her swimming, too, but it's even less focused than this one. Other pictures are the kids with their young, attractive aunt and uncle (my husband's siblings). This weekend served as Emily's follow-up birthday party ('cause who doesn't need two birthday parties when they're five?).

Next year, the in-laws promise, we will be meeting somewhere closer than 12 hours from where we live. Have I mentioned that we live 10 minutes from the beach ALL YEAR LONG? Since the in-laws paid for the whole thing (except a few grocery runs), I can not complain too much. And temperatures at the Carolina shore are decidedly more temperate (and less humid) than at our beaches.

Also, an anecdote to make you think twice about swimming in any public pool. You know how the packaging on the swim diapers you buy for your infants and toddlers warn that they are not designed to keep fecal matter from leaking during swimming (and that, in fact, no product does this)? Well, my child pooped in the pool. I wasn't sure she had (even though she had made The Face), so we kept swimming. As soon as I picked her up to take her inside (a necessity because she refused to walk in on her own two feet), I knew. I had to hose her down in the shower inside the apartment while she screamed the entire time as if she were being tortured. And then I had to clean the shower floor. So I suffered, too. I win a Bad Mommy award, I know. But I imagine this happens more than we'd like to think. I, for one, didn't go back in that particular pool, hypocrite that I am.