Um, February

I am ashamed that it's been a month and a half since I posted anything. Ugh. My excuse is that I am working 50 hours a week, although only being paid for 30. The other 20 are internship hours, which will be done in April. And the 30 are a stressful 30, with more like 40 hours of work laid before me and irritation directed at me when I can't get it done. It's even more complicated than that, and there's a possibility the balance might shift to the totally-not-worth-it-for-the-paycheck side. If that happens, well, I'll let you know. (People like Mrs. Spock put me to shame, what with their several-times-a-week updates.)

So, Daddy is the house-husband, S-A-H-D, home dad, or whatever you want to call him. He's doing a fine job--a great job--but of course, not doing everything the way I would do it. I'm having to adjust to that and self-edit my why-did-you-do-it-that-way inquiries (or at least my accusatory tone). We really don't need/want to spend the three or fours a day together sniping at each other, do we? And this week, with Penny's nasty cold, there's been no morning daycare for her. Poor Daddy.

So, photos! Here are the three little ones, in photos taken by my sister. The toddlers love to make the Baby laugh. (Wait, are 3-year-olds and almost 3-year-olds toddlers? What's the correct term? Preschooler? What if they're not in preschool? Toddler sounds like they're still unsteady on their feet, which, despite a tendency toward bowleggedness on Penny's part, is untrue. Don't they look giant next to the baby-face?)







Penny, in one of many costume changes per day, proving that witches can be wistful. (The plunging neckline is because this [cheap Target] halloween costume is size 4-6. Also, is that a sock on her shoulder?)


And more evidence of what Penny likes. Necklaces, bracelets, hair stuff. And SHOES. Notice the ones that are all neatly lined up, rather than tossed around in a pile? Those are all the ones with heels. Mommy's "fancy shoes" (relatively speaking). Her favorites. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.


I would promise not to wait so long again before updating, but I would probably not be able to keep that promise. Would it interest you to know that in between this sentence and the last, I just washed out underwear (not mine) in the toilet? I didn't think so. The only bonus of working (besides the paycheck) seems to be that I only have to do that on the weekends.

Maybe I will make it my new Saturday tradition, after pancake breakfast and exercise (those two kind of cancel each other out, don't they?), to blog. I couldn't exercise this morning--at least not the kind of exercise that entails driving to the Y, dropping the kids at the babysitting room, and chatting with my sister while walking uphill for 3 miles on the treadmill--because three out of five of our collective children are running at the nose and barking at the throat. The Y frowns upon sharing that kind of thing. We'll see if next week I can do all three (pancakes, exercise, blog). Until then [cough], have a good week!

Christmases (plural)

We had Christmas with both families this year. Christmas Day, since my mom was up in the hospital getting her kidney transplant, we were at my parents' house (where the ham was) without my parents. Which meant my siblings and I were in charge of the food and what time we opened presents, and everything, just as if we were actual grown-ups! I think we pulled it off. Of course we missed my parents, but my dad kept calling with updates, and we all had her in our thoughts pretty much all the time.

The day after Christmas we drove to Charlotte, to be with Carlyle's parents and siblings. We had another Christmas feast (steaks! yum!) and another round of opening presents. The weather was temperate, colder than Florida, but pleasant (at least until Wednesday when we were driving on friend-and-family-visits and the winds came . . .Brrr!). It was especially nice to sleep in since Grandmother Sharon volunteered to be on children-duty in the mornings!

Here are some snapshots from our various festivities.

There were stockings here and stockings there.




There were kittens and cousins and siblings and babies.






There were dinosaurs here and dinosaurs there. We now have a dinosaur drawer, one of those three under the bunk bed. Very convenient.




They learned how to be good consumers. Or consumers of some kind. I didn't remove the red-eye in the second picture because it kind of seems appropriate (also, I'm tired.)




There was a Hawaiian theme, thanks to Aunt H.'s recent trip and gifts. Even Shadow the dog got into the act.






They took baths in the swimming pool (Grandmother Sharon's tub).



We ended with visits to friends even farther north. We actually caught up with two couples we used to work with at the bookstore, couples who also married and each have two daughters. It was great catching up and the visits were over way too quickly. I only have pictures from the second family, our friends Jared and Julie, but our girls had fun playing with all their new friends. Emily asked (whined), "Do we have to leave?" at each stop we made.

Pictured is J & J's 4 1/2 year-old daughter Mary, who was gracious enough to share her bedroom floor with both Penny and Emily. It only took the three of them about 45 minutes, and stern visits from each of the four parents in turn, to fall asleep. Not too bad, considering. Check out Julie's blog (you can see her socks as she takes her photos in my pictures) for better photos of the same event and the un-pictured (by me), adorable Caroline, who, at 9 months, wasn't quite old enough to join the slumber party.




These faces pretty much sum it up (although Penny's face is a little on the 2-year-old's-idea-of-camera-smile-equals-intense-scary-face side). Christmas was good, especially when you factor in the bonus kidney. (My mom is home now and looks great! She'll be taking the rest of the school year off on doctor's orders to avoid 6-year-old germs on her immuno-suppressed system.)




Tomorrow it's back to school for the kids, and my first full week of work and internship and class and oh-no-did-we-pack-lunches?

Update

Everything went well! My mom was out of surgery, transplant successful, at around 7 pm. We're planning to stop by to visit her on our way out of the state tomorrow. (I did think about staying here, but she'll be in the hospital for at least a week, and there's not much we could do for her until she gets home. My sister and brother and many of her coworkers and friends will be visiting her this week, I'm sure.)

Thanks to everyone who sent good wishes our way.

Karen

Christmas Gift

My mom might get a kidney tomorrow! She has to drive up to the big city hospital to get a blood test at 6 am and wait several hours for the culture results. If everything's good and the donor kidney is good, she will have the transplant tomorrow afternoon.

If you're a praying person, pray. If you're a wishing/hoping person, wish and hope. She (and we) expected to be waiting years because of her high level of antibodies from transfusions. She just got the call this afternoon.

Of course, when a kidney becomes available, that means someone has died. In this case, it was a 22-year-old woman somewhere up North. Her family is mourning tonight.

Early Present

You know about the bunk beds we were going to buy. I may have even told you we bought them. We picked them up about a week ago, in five quite heavy, cumbersome boxes we had a hard time squeezing into the minivan, even with all the seats down.

Our plan was to have my parents watch the kids for a couple of hours on Christmas Eve (no, really, the guy at the furniture store said it should only take an hour "with both of you working on it" hahahahahahahahaha), assemble the beds, then come back down to get the kids. Then we started thinking . . . Christmas Eve, they'll be excited already, new beds . . . Plus, we're leaving the day after Christmas to head up South (Florida joke), and they'd only get to sleep in them for two nights.

So, what about this weekend? As planned, we took the kids down to my parents so we could "do some Christmas stuff", a comment in which Emily seemed disappointingly disinterested.

We cleared a space, removed the old mattresses, and, of course, took some pictures.

First, the boxes, the space for the beds, all the pieces laid out and ready . . .






Oh, and before starting any job like this . . .



Don't forget to charge your power screwdriver.

The photos, naturally, don't do justice to all the tight-space screwdriver work that had to be done, all the Allen wrenches we successfully stripped attaching the bed rails, or the way both of us seem to use the other's name as a kind of curse word when we are frustrated. Or the fact that real, actual curse words were employed. But we did it.

The hardest part was definitely lifting the top bunk onto the bottom bunk, especially for me. I failed the first time and we had to carefully, painfully replace the bunk on the floor again. C went and got me a plastic bin on which to stand. And hoist again. Actual construction time from box to finish was probably closer to 3 1/2 hours.





We quick (!) made the beds, threw the blankets on top and photographed our handiwork, with the late afternoon sun sparkling through the windows.





Someone made the obligatory Big Lebowski joke about the bed "really tying the room together" although "dominating" might be more accurate. The bunk bed is a large piece of furniture and the room is very small. We can open all the doors and drawers, though, and there's floor space to play, so it's all good.

Then we went down to my parents' house to eat dinner. We even talked about putting the beds together right in front of the kids. A couple of times Emily said, "What are you talking about?" I said either, "Putting something together" or "You'll see when you get home." Even with my deliberately limited subtlety, she didn't seem to catch on. She just said, "Oh" and carried on destroying her ham sandwich and dipping her grapes-on-toothpicks in her water.

When we got home, we had to take care of a pee pee emergency (for Penny). This required one of us to run into their room for a change of pants for Penny, lest the excited photo shot we had planned be ruined or compromised by her clothelessness from the waist down. Once Penny was re-pantsed, I said, "Okay, into your room, both of you!"

"Why, Mommy?" said Emily.

"There's a present in there for you," I said, "Go quick!" And they were already gone.




They're definitely happy about it. They actually seemed happy about going to bed, which isn't the usual state of affairs around here. Penny was given strict orders not to climb up to the top bunk. Emily was given strict orders to call us if Penny started to climb the ladder. Daddy lifted Penny up just so she could see what she'd be missing (no, that's not why he did it--we were all just giddy). She did not want to come down.





But she did. They took baths, read stories. Bonus: we can all fit on the bottom bunk to read together! No more sitting on the floor (after I broke the toddler bed)!

Now we're waiting for them to fall asleep, in their proper bunks . . . All's quiet . . .

Christmas Photo, Take 17

You can guess which one we used.

Who am I?

A calm, domestic almost-goddess, who lovingly and sustainably removes the extra meat from her roast chicken, to make a marvelous chicken salad (thanks for the recipe, Sis!) to feed herself and hubby economical lunches for the week?











or . . .






A crazy hormonal* carnivore who is sucking every delicious bit of chicken flesh from the carcass even though she's just had dinner and is seriously already full?



*And no, Mom, and anybody else, "hormonal" is not code for pregnant, just female.