Two or Five?

Survival of the Best-Dressed

2012-01-28T17:17:00.000-08:00

By all rights, I should tell you about Thunder Baby's first haircut. How he likes me to whisper the words, "whisper, whisper, whisper, cuddle, cuddle, cuddle" in his ear and then how he gives me a large, soft-mouthed baby-kiss on the cheek that is more "like a fart than a kiss" according to Little M. But what I need to tell you is that G is adorably nuts. I try to find a theme to sum up her dress sense. "Drag-Queen-Gone-Bad" was a thought when she requested a jewel-sparkled-rainbow-with-butterflies belt for her birthday that is 6 months from now. But, that term didn't catch the near lunacy of her preferences nor the sometimes sheer genius and cuteness when items do remarkably flow together. Note: I never use the word "match" in reference to her clothing choices. I thought "crazy bag lady," after the woman who lurked outside my university study hall after hours. But, G does not mutter to the wind, has no independence privileges after sunset, and the bag lady, I have to honestly say, dressed much better than G does about 75% of the time. G is not wearing a coat in the above picture because lions don't ever wear coats. Haven't you ever watched National Geographic Safari? No coats on lions. However, according to her, lions do wear bandanas, hello-kitty skirts, rainbow leggings and mismatched neon socks. Lions also apparently survive suffocation. Today I walked into the kitchen to find Big M saying to G, "Take the plastic bag off your head." G replied, "Ok, but lions can do that you know." She then goes on to say, "I could put a hole in it..." in a hopeful manner, as if a hole-y plastic bag would trump our request for her to survive despite her fashion choices. I must have fallen asleep during that last installment of National Geographic Safari. You know, the one where the lions walk around with plastic bags covering their heads...

A year in the life of T-bird.

2012-01-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday T-Bird!

We are thrilled you're here!

Thunderbird born.

4 months old. Fingers preferred.

5 months old traveling to the U.S.

6 months old.

Technical difficulties downloading 7 month old pic.... :(

8 months old at the ocean.

9 months old hiking thru Forest Park!

10 months old!

11 months and attacking his sister's hair...

Preg Head

2012-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

I have some really great pictures and a few stories to share, but getting it all together would mean that I would most likely forget to tell you the most important story of this week. So, no pictures and no sifting through what to share...just this one tidbit. G has taken to calling her beloved stuffies by their patent or registration numbers on their tags instead of their names. So Lolly her lamb is now 516. Horsie is now 247z8. These names/numbers are abbreviated because I would forget the longer strings of numbers as I forgot that I did the dishes this morning. I walked into the kitchen with the sole purpose of doing the dishes and saw that they were done. I thought G was the fairy dish mother. She said, "No." I then broke into a sweat and thought maybe there was a very dark deep chasm in our time/space continuum like on a Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica episode or something and now I had proof. My dishes were done! But then G said, "You just did them mum." Aha. Yes. I remember now. I had done them right after I found 516 and 247z8 in my sock drawer whilst putting away the clothes. What?! Who put away the clothes?!

they win

2011-12-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

To steal from the latest Sherlock Holmes, I find children just as Sherlock finds horses, "Dangerous on both ends and crafty in the middle." There is something innately gross about children. There are, of course, the dirty appendages. Little M, dutifully removed his shoes at the door, yet his socks were so dirty they left squidgie marks on the carpet and floors. Then, there is the perpetual dampness from runny noses, tears from real injuries or perceived yet non-existant ills, blood and pus from said injuries as they are healing and picked at and healing again, drool, diapers, spit-up, snot... My modus operandi in life is to make an encounter successful for as many involved as possible. The kids will not stop picking their noses no matter how often I ask or bark or threaten. Neither party is successful in that case. Therefore, I think, why ask or bark or threaten? Rather, I offer what I find to be great opportunities. I said, just the other day to the kids, "You could pick your noses at night. Wait all day. I bet there would be big boogars at the end of the day and we could wash your hands in the morning and I wouldn't have to witness anything." Little M considered and said, "Well, I just harvest them in the morning." G said, "Oh, I eat them all day. When can we teach T-Bird to pick his nose?" They are gross. They win. Bleach and industrial hazard showers needed.

new identity acquired

2011-12-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

There are some phrases and actions that I know without a doubt come from outside my house rather than within my house. For example, Big M knows that I am right 99% of the time and I am also aware of my uncanny ability to be almost infallible. Therefore, the rhetorical question, "Am I right?" never surfaces in our house. I am right, usually. And, usually, everyone else is not.

So, the other day, we were stumped as to what the Big Hohoho would bring our little minions especially Little M. When asked, Little M sighed, "I don't see what he could possibly bring me." For reasons too large for this blog entry, I am interested in Little M arriving carefully at the truth; if you believe in Santa he will bring you a gift. If you don't, he won't.

We asked, "What do you mean? Santa can do some surprising things." He replied, "Well, he knows your rules too. No video games. Am I right? No lizards. Am I right? No snakes. Am I right? No fish or tarantulas or hissing cockroaches. Am I right?" His list continued and in 6 year-old parlance, he was indeed right. Very right. Learned-the-phrase-on-the-playground-right. "Not even in a glass tank!" right. According to Little M, "Santa's you know, a good guy, but I'm not so sure he can change your mind."

I am many identities. I am a mother, a writer, a wife, a sister.... but, this year I added a new identity. I am a 6-year-old's buzz kill. Am I right?

G Update

2011-12-10T09:43:00.001-08:00

I wish I could say that her outfits have toned down as she matures like Little M's did, but alas no. They seem to get even crazier as she ages than her preschool outfit pictured above. Before I forget, I must tell you that she says "gotten-for-ed" for forgotten. "Find" as the superlative of fine. For example, if she has a super fine day, when asked, she will reply, "My day was find!" instead of, "My day was great!" It is distinctly different than a "fine day." Little M is her preferred source of comfort as well as joy, even when he is the cause of her hurt. She builds room-sized obstacle courses for Thunder Baby referred to as, "otter dens." Through these dens, she lugs Thunder Baby who grins his thanks to be included with the big-kid activity. Muppets are "muffets." Stuffed animals and costumes are preferred over dolls and princess/fairy/ballerina outfits. She is more of a fish than Little M ever was at her age which says a lot. Her swim lessons are spent mostly under water with the instructor waiting and waiting for her to come up for air so that a 2-second instruction can be made, "Please swim on top of" swim, swim, swim, "the water." "Please" swim, swim, swim, swim, "do the backstroke," swim, "right now," swim, "try to touch, " swim, "the sky" swim, swim, "like this." As usual, we are all hoping she acquiesces. She certainly won't change her vocabulary or her dress for the rest of the world, why swim like the rest of us too?

Why are you talking?

2011-12-04T19:49:00.000-08:00

It doesn't matter if you know me well. It only matters if you are with me to witness my superhero power. My power is one which calls out to essential strangers to divulge to me what most would consider to be private or quite personal information. Those who have not witnessed this power of mine often credit it as a mistake on my part. They say that I am mislabeling the information as private or that my introspective and private nature finds a typical sharing of oneself to be shocking. Or, simply that people find I exude a comforting vibe and seek me out for solace. But then, they witness a virtual stranger's verbal belch and they are converted. They know my superhero power is real and that of confessor to the penitent stranger.

Take this past week. After Little M's swim team practice, we picked G and Thunder Baby up from the swimclub's day care. I had seen B only once as we are new to the swim team. She said, "Hello!" I gave her my card and name and B sent a message back to her co-workers that we were there for the littles. Then, B said, "What a stormy Thanksgiving that was." I said, "I know!" B said, "My Dad in Utah ended up in jail with what?! His 3rd DUI?! And I couldn't go out there for Thanksgiving. Instead I stayed here and couldn't even earn money as everyone who was covering my shifts wouldn't give them back. He is just, ugh, my Dad..." Another mother came up collected her children and yet another two mothers did as well. It takes a while to get Thunder Baby ready to leave day care and Little M and I wandered about a bit. Each mother collected their children with us essentially out of earshot and without much more than a pleasant smile and thank you and good bye from B. We approached B again and she continued with the story about her father, "....yah, you'd think he could keep it together for a visit from me that he had wanted for a whole year! I'm totally giving up on him..." To which I said, "Oh, that must not have felt very good. I hope you at least got a nice break and a few good naps in," and during which Thunder Baby arrived in my arms and Little M quietly said whilst peaking over the edge of the counter, an edge of disbelief in his voice,"Why are you talking to my mom?" Sigh, poor Little M. Tis my superhero power. It is real.

the better of everything

2011-11-15T20:22:00.001-08:00

Today, Little M said, "Ketchup is the better of everything." I wanted to tell him, "No, having you and G and ThunderBaby and Big M - that is the better of everything." But, then I thought maybe I shouldn't correct him. Not for any big parenting philosophy type reason, but simply because I have not kissed any of them with ketchup and Little M, who seems to have errant bits of ketchup crusted on his lips even after swimming in a pool for an hour and even after I wash his face and even after brushing his teeth, has probably, somehow, kissed us all with ketchup. Therefore he probably is in a position to make a maxim like, "Ketchup is the better of everything."

Armpit Farts

2011-11-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

Somehow, in a 6 year old boy's mind, one can accidentally lick their palm.

And, accidentally put that damp palm under his armpit in gym class.

And, then, accidentally make an armpit fart noise and accidentally get into the wee, tiniest bit of trouble. Accidentally. Just once. Or maybe twice. Accidents are hard to remember in a 6 year old boy's mind, too.

eco - this, baby!

2011-11-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

I dare anyone to embrace the GO GREEN! ethic like my children do. They have their own toilet upstairs and I have discovered it left unflushed for hours? days? uhm? at a time. While this "conserves water for fish and fowl" according to Little M with a resounding "Yah Mum" by my transplanted Glaswegian G, it is, I think, a practice too disturbing for most to adopt. It is now on my list to check the toilet daily but as the days and nights are still a little mixed up with our Thunderbird Baby I cannot guarantee it is a daily check according to conventional calendars. I am also not sure that they wipe their bums as often as would be hygenically recommended which does indeed save trees from becoming toilet paper, but worries my illness avoidance streak. Call me crazy as Little M does. I am fine with that. I will own it. I will also own that limited time has made a mockery of my once neurotic cleaning skills (Mom, I am so sorry, but I was a late bloomer regarding cleaning and they did not flourish til I left home...). However, I am perplexed by their preference to eat stale food found in surprising corners guarded by dust bunnies asking for beer over fresh, warm, homemade food. Though, be sure, I am thankful when food does not go to waste. My kids also share toothbrushes. All toothbrushes. Again, too be fair, sharing does extend the life cycle of these toothbrushes. But why they bicker of sharing toys and not germ laden tooth scrubbers I don't know. Then there is the act of... oh nevermind. The list could continue, but I am just too grossed out.

little m update

2011-10-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

Little M is starting to not be quite so little anymore. His shoulders are broad and make shirts that fit in every other way look like they don't fit. He wears the shirt you see above most every day because it fits him in the shoulders yet isn't too long in the sleeves. He likes his hiking boots because that is what a naturalist would wear. He has conducted educational classes for the 3 year old neighbor/fairy/princess/ballerina on his "Catch and Release Program for Woolie-banded Caterpillars." She could've cared less except for the fact that Little M is magical in her eyes. He has snapped his fingers for two years now and likes to skip to remember his friend Lucy O in Scotland who taught him how to do just that. He hopes she is practicing her snapping as he taught her. He misses Scotland, but wants to stay in our new house forever. He told me about how he got into a wee bit of trouble at school yesterday, but he's working on it. Lovely family and friends, no tidy and chuckle-worthy stories today. Just taking stock before I forget...

of pets and girls

2011-10-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about G is that she is not afraid of bugs. Every creepy crawlie she squawks over, "Mama! Look it's one of my pets!" The woolie caterpillars on our porch, the rollie pollies in Scotland, the stinkbugs clinging to our screened windows in search of warmth from the settling autumn...these are all beloved creatures in her heart. I must be honest. Bugs creep me out. I've learned to take a deep breath. But really they creep me out. G, on the other hand, has no squirms searching for the hatch on fishing trips and only screams when I accidentally step on some snail or spider or banded slug she was saving for her menagerie. Her love affair with bugs collided with her abandoned adoration with her older brother during a recent visit from Nana. Picture a four year old, just losing her toddler tummy and sprouting long wirey limbs and her furtive carrying of a jar of pets delivered to her most favorite person on earth, her older brother, at bedtime. Nana asked, "Are you carrying bugs upstairs?" No, no she wasn't she said. The next morning, after swatting 17 off her brother's ceiling and walls at 11:32 at night, we asked, "Did you carry some pets upstairs last night?" Yes, yes. The house now is full of her pets she said. I am still smashing stinkbugs off the walls of her brother's room. It's night number 5 since the denied jar of pets was delivered. I must smash at night so as not to endure her very deep sadness at each broken exoskeleton. Crunch, crunch, crunch. A mama's got to have limits.

wake up

2011-10-09T09:49:00.001-07:00

Nope. No pictures. You want pictures? You come and get woken up by a rounding rendition of atonal strumming by the "Meerkat Ukelele Band" at 6:32 am.

moving forward

2011-09-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

In other news, T-Bird used to aim his feet at a desired object and push himself backwards to get to his objet d'amour. For the past three days, he has not moved backwards at all. He has decidedly shed his backward looking ways and has begun to move forward. I'm taking it as a hint and setting up the letterpress with the help of my husband and kids. Looking forward to days of printing ahead. Thank you T-Bird!

11 September 2011

2011-09-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

A few of the things I did today. Had a breakfast of honeyed toast with bananas made by my eldest. Nursed my youngest and sniffed the top of his head before I put him down for a long quiet morning nap. Searched for a table on craigslist. Dressed my daughter in her daily wear of self-chosen mismatched mayhem. Cleared out the brush under our backyard plum tree. Ate the lunch my husband made me before we took the kids to roam a hardware store for this and that for the yard. Clipped back a few shrubs that my oldest delivered to our yardwaste bin in his tonka truck.Watched the sun hit the valley with its stupid-pretty rays at the end of the day. Read an entry from an encyclopedia about blue whales and also humpback whales to my oldest son while my youngest son kicked his feet in my arms and my daughter snored in the room down the hall. My youngest son kicks his legs when he is unquestionably happy which is pretty much all day. Have to say I was pretty happy too. And, writing my "list of good" is the best way I know how to honor a day with such a dusty history...

ready

2011-09-09T20:45:00.001-07:00

No stories for you about T Bird just yet. They are just mine and all mine for now. But, I will share this picture with you. He's certainly ready to tell you all our stories...Leave it to all of my offspring to do as they please rather than as I wish...

the zoo train

2011-09-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

Lately, my stories have been longer and I just don't know why. They are what they are. But I do like the shorter stories and so, here is one. I took the kids last week to the zoo. We decided to pay extra for the zoo train. The zoo train is great to get away from the zoo. It is fun to stop at the Japanese Gardens, the Rose Gardens, and the Washington Park. It is not, however, good to see the zoo. We chugged thru prep areas, past dung piles, and exterior timber wrapped and waiting to be nailed to some exterior. I was so sleep-deprived that I could not find a sweet kid lie to live. I could not say, "Oh, Look! Woods!" Instead I said, "Oh Look! Exterior Lumber children! GREAT!" G was up on my down and said, "Hey mom, Here's a cheetah for you!" and struck the pose below. Yes indeed, the only wild life on the zoo train was my daughter.

just waiting on a friend

2011-08-26T21:45:00.001-07:00

This picture is of us waiting for a park date with new friends? Acquaintances? I'm not sure what the word is. She gets my dark humor. Though she is from Alabama, she does not mind that I have not waxed my eyebrows, painted my toes, and barely remember to brush my teeth - so more than an acquaintance, I think. A liked acquaintance? Collectively we have 6 kids that tumble down in ages like Russian stacking dolls and somehow they all are red-faced and sweaty and easy to put to sleep after a playdate. So maybe more than a liked acquaintance. A preferred person and her children?

I took the photo one-handed with one of those little auto-everything digital cameras while T-Bird gnawed happily on the thick curve midway in my trapezius as it arches from my shoulder blades to the base of my skull. He hasn't any teeth yet, despite the foreshadowing drool, and it didn't hurt - his gnawing that is. This picture is of all of us waiting for our first official meeting at the park and the gnawing in my heart did hurt. Would we get along as we did that first surprise charging of the green slopes at the Lake Oswego summer concert? Would my children disrobe and display their feral fairy selves or stomp off in a teary discharge over a disagreement regarding truck-playing etiquette? Would she know that though my foot is always in my mouth, I am unusually eloquent and always with kind-treaded intentions? Would she know that I have reasonable grammar, an exciting vocabulary and that I am a good speller when not sleep deprived?

She was late by twenty minutes and I thought ALREADY! Already I have screwed up the place! Or maybe the time! Or maybe the place and the time! I texted her with my gnawing happy infant doing the yay-life-is-totally-great-coo-while-you're-at-it-dance on my shoulder and misspelled most everything important. One became imr. Park became oark. All these errors and more. How would she know that at least when the chips were down she could count on me to spell when I clearly couldn't even spell one handed with a creepy auto-correct that corrects nothing whilst balancing a very happy busy baby? "I can multi-task!" I wanted to text to her. "Really! I can! Even some of my best friends are multi-taskers and they would call me a multi-tasker too!"

I laughed at my self and my gnawing little worries. Clearly, I was not ready to be a new face in the crowd again. Little M asked me from behind his growing sand pile what I was laughing about. I chuckled that I was worried that our new friends wouldn't know I was a good speller. He scratched sand out of his head and examined his fingernails. He said, "You have more to worry about than that. We are a smart and kind family. They just have to figure it out." Just then, G moaned that she had to use the toilet, T-Bird spit up on my shirt, and Little M tripped and hurt his knee as he ran out of the sandbox to greet the newly arrived new friends. errr acquaintances? errr preferred companions?

I think they did figure out that we are smart and kind and even delightfully odd as we've had a few nice visits at the park since our moaning, spit-up, bloody, teary first official minutes. She has watched our collective brood as we've shared tasks like snack sharing and swing pushing and she has kindly suggested a spell-check program that might work for spellers like me.

can i get a witness?

2011-08-01T20:00:00.001-07:00

I am a "yes mum" when Big M goes away. The children ask if they can eat ice lollies for lunch? Yes! Might they have a 3 hour visit to their favorite park? Yes! Would it be possible to watch PBS Kids/CBB's until their brains ooze out their ears and pool in a sticky glutinous mass on the floor? Yes! I adopt "low-impact-parenting" when Big M leaves because it makes his absence more enjoyable, especially since the kids have not caught on just yet and their requests haven't been death-defying. So, last week, the kids were quite lucky when we stumbled upon our adored and missed "Barbara's Puffins" brand of cereal. It is a naturally sweetened, whole grain cereal that is unheard of in the UK and it is our favorite. What's more, Barbara came out with a peanut butter and chocolate type during our sojourn abroad. The kids spied this and began to wiggle and moan the beginnings of their collective "please-mum dance." But they needn't complete it. Big M was out of town and I said YES! immediately.

Also, when Big M is away, the rule at our house is that if you would like to eat before I am done nursing T-Bird, then you must make it yourself. You gasp, but the kitchen is usually cleaner than if I try to juggle 3 kids' needs within a whiney 5 minute window. Plus, the children are single-minded without help. Food, as soon as possible. That's it. No fuss, few bowls and accessories... Ideal really. Though, I confess to leaving subliminal suggestions out the night before like cereal, apples, bowls, spoons - even bananas with pre-cut/easy peel stems sometimes.

The next morning, the kids were so excited for their peanut butter and chocolate puffins that they didn't even moan at me bedside and I didn't have to remind them of the "if you must eat right now, you must make it yourself" rule. They just woke, stumbled to the kitchen, and ate. It was a quick few minutes before Little M crawled into bed beside T-Bird and myself. I thought the cereal must have been quite a hit! Quick eats and he's even ready for a snooze! Amazing! "How was the cereal?" Little M nodded a yes and dozed off again next to T-Bird. I thought the cereal must be magical, beyond words! I went into the kitchen. Little M's bowl still had the chocolate puffs in it. Perhaps Little M wasn't feeling that well? Perhaps that was his reason for a speechless reply? His snooze? It most likely wasn't the cereal, I thought, as G didn't even carry it to the table she was that excited. She just sat on the floor, crunching away in that nascent awakening way. I bent down and sniffed her sleep-tousled head. Heaven. I peaked into her bowl. All of the chocolate puffs were still floating in the soy milk. She was only picking out the peanut butter ones with her spoon. I asked, "How is the cereal? Do you like the chocolate ones?" She whispered in that hesitant way that tells me she has an answer but doesn't want to be rude, "I don't know. The chocolate ones look like poop."

At first, I didn't go back to work due to Little M's anaphylaxis. But now that he is older and we have a safety routine that we both feel comfortable with, I haven't gone back to work due to our overseas status and also due to my belief that someone in their family should witness their growth. But, after reading the article that families with working mums do no long term damage to their children, our return to the USA and cereal that looks like poop, I think I might not have to witness everything...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/22/working-mothers-no-harm-children

ever in the world

2011-07-24T21:58:00.001-07:00

Little M used to say "ever in the world" a lot. I thought he had confused the phrases "forever" and "best in the word" as he would use this "ever in the world" phrase to indicate very big things in his heart. He would tell me that I was "ever in the world" when I pointed out a crab that matched the sand scuttling away from his curious self. He would call a great day with sister on the beach "ever in the world." It was an adorable phrase and I thought I had lost it undocumented in time's tides changing far too fast for a mom like me.

But, as usual, I was wrong on both counts. Firstly, I was wrong on the meaning. "Ever in the world" is a phrase unique to him alone. It does not mean best and it does not mean forever. Loosely defined, as far as I can gather, "ever in the world" is his marker of moments and people that he realizes are threads woven in the fabric of him. Secondly, I did not lose it undocumented. Certainly, not now as I am documenting. But less obviously, I did not lose it to kid whose language use is naturally maturing. He simply doles this marker out much more wisely and judiciously as he ages. Tonight we had a rough night at the outdoor concert. It was his first outdoor concert, he was tired, he wanted to run and scream, and I wanted to scream, "SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP! NO ONE CAME TO THIS SUMMER CONCERT TO HEAR YOU!" But I didn't. Instead, I was a good parent that calmly and steadily butt heads with my tired, sweating, and limit-pushing son. Finally a few songs into the set, he figured out what this outdoor concert thing was. He then put his over-heated face on my shoulder, pecked my cheek, and whispered, "You are ever in the world." Then, he sat down on my lap and we sweat listening together eating pistacios and watching the world go by. It was the first time he had said this phrase in a long while and I don't mind a bit how hard I had to work for it.

as wide as it is deep

2011-07-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we spent the day with some dear friends from Seattle. They drove down to say howdy and spread a bit of love. It was lovely. It was so lovely that the children and daddies, who have not seen each other in three years, simply slid right back into the way things always were. Conversation was easy. Laughter was even easier and even the tears over sad-happenings-to-be-caught-up-on were shed in comfortable manner. It was so comfortable and easy that when our dear friends pulled out some stripey-dotty-monkey socks for G and she put them on promptly to wear in the pool, no one blinked an eye. No one wondered or tried to co-erce her into a sock-free pool dip. No one glanced at me as a way for clarification or to see if I would mind. No one tried to teach her that socks in the pool, especially cotton stripey-dotty-monkey socks, have never been worn in the pool. No one tried to teach her such unspoken social rules outloud. The kids didn't blink or laugh. The adults didn't wonder or even comment on her crazy pool attire. We all knew that if we just let her wear the stripey-dotty-monkey socks in the pool we would have a great time and not because we avoided a tantrum. We knew we would have a great time because we adored each other just as we are...and as G is, this includes wearing whatever one wants to wear in the pool.
I have many friends like these littered over the globe. They truly pop out from bushes like woodland fairies in the most necessary of times. Some think that this fact is sad, my world-wide friends. And, it is sad to miss people. But, I also find it as evidence that my friendships are as wide as they are deep. We are readying ourselves to grow a new batch of friends here to add to their good company. Also, thanks to the D's, we have enough socks for everyone we meet along the way. The water's warm an we're ready for a dip!

I love surprises

2011-06-28T17:48:00.001-07:00

Nothing raises my ire more than others boxing my children in. I hear that G "WILL BE AN ARTIST." Yes, she drew pictures wombside. Yes, she feels called to score her world with permanent marker when the rest of the world sees a wall, or a sofa, or 3/4" cedar siding. Yes, she sleeps with her pictures and "Fifi" when other children sleep with blankets or stuffed animals. But, she might end up being a politician with an appreciation for the arts or a scientist with an understanding of the artistic nature of the nanoscopic world that advances our society's well-being to unheard of heights. Or, she might even be a waitress that enjoys daydreaming about weather patterns. Maybe, none of these at all. No matter what, she is a kid that likes to draw. Nothing more just yet. And, no need to shove her identity around in my playbook.

Little M on the other hand, has only recently succumbed to pen and paper. Really, only in the last 2-3 months tops and without fanfare. I would call him eccentric rather than artistic. Case in point: the picture above. Here, he is eating what he calls "alien brains" and made me take a photo to send to his pal A in Glasgow.

Recently, we were at the Enchanted Palace (http://www.hrp.org.uk/KensingtonPalace/stories/palacehighlights/EnchantedPalace.aspx) off the Kensington grounds in London. The kids found a guide who took us under her wing for an hour and showed us the grounds. She led them in a lullaby to Queen Victoria and then pulled down a journal in which they could leave the Queen a message. G dictated a note via me regarding the specialness of her "Fifi" and that Queen Victoria might find one like hers helpful when falling asleep. M drew a picture of the Queen as a girl playing with wolves in a winter forest...what? A picture? Of winter? In a forest? And wolves? And a young Queen? It was so thorough and surprising that even the guide broke character and called over her colleague to take a look- as proud and impressed as I was stunned and busy amending my childrens' identities in my heart. She found it inspiring enough to sing a wee bit of an operetta.

Wrong me. Humbled me. I shoved M in a little un-artistic box and was happy to leave him there. I did exactly what raises my ire. Thankfully, we are open to wide adventures as a family that will wake me up the next time I make such a terrible mistake. My deepest apologies Little M. Grant me patience and I just might surprise you, too.

lesson number three hundred-n-some from the book of G

2011-06-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

G's life has been busy and dictated mostly by others in the past few weeks. She has moved from the only home she remembers, took her elder brother to the ER for anaphylaxis in London, toured London, toured Portland, ate lunch in the car or on a bus or on a train or in a taxi because we have an anaphylactic family member and safe food is best found in a home made lunch while we are leaving Glasgow, touring London, touring Portland, or house hunting. She has also been housebound most mornings in a boring apartment in Portland because her younger brother is napping. Oh yes, almost forgot, she had her 4th birthday in amongst the chaos. -That's her eating at Yo Sushi! on her birthday in the picture above. It was her favorite place to eat in Glasgow.

In addition to her crazy schedule was her crazy introduction to Portland. Due to jetlag she fell asleep in the car en route to the temporary apartment where we are staying. She woke at 3 in the morning Portland-time and thought that America was the pits. It was dark, not her own bed when this was to be "home," and there would be no friends or school the next day. To her, it seemed that all we did in America was try to get her to sleep in a permanently dark world with us scowling and stumbling into strange apartment corners. Was America a place where you could only sleep? she wondered. She didn't believe that the sun just hadn't had a chance to shine. She wailed, "I want my nursery school! I want my friends! Where is my bed!? Where is my bed?" With 3 hours of patience, she happily discovered that daylight shone on this part of the globe too. Despite her schedule and worries, she has imparted another lesson. While talking about our cross-Atlantic move, she said, "I will not see my friend H in Portland, but I will always like her in Portland." Ah yes, G. How right you are about friends. I wonder what other little nugget of heart-smarts she has tucked up her sleeve...right up past that cute little elbow of hers...

No Venus

2011-06-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the Tate Modern and what should I discover there but this sculpture! Michelangelo Pistoletto "Venus of the Rags." This sculpture embodies exactly how I feel in the middle of a move - mind you this is #6 in 2 1/2 years (read posts from a year and some ago for the affect of the economic downturn on rental properties in Glasgow). Also, keep in mind that tonight is the second night of drilling against the shared wall with a start-up at 9pm and we will most likely move our hotel room tomorrow. I want the moving pain to end but I think the UK has it in for me. The worst thing about moving is figuring out where to put clothes. The kids grow out of clothes and wear out clothes faster than I can pack, unpack, wash/dry, and find a reasonable spot to put them. I have found whole boxes between moves -forgotten and filled with clean and folded laundry that the kids could have used but have outgrown. I even gave up in the last house and just let the clothes multiply in their child-chosen, mold-growing corners. Even my writing of late feels jumbled and messy - rag-like, if you will. And then, there is G! She who wears everyone's clothes at some point during the day because that is a part of who she is - a random clothes wearer. The best part is that "Venus" was sculpted by day laborers in Italy and the rags were sourced and placed in the mound before her by people Michelangelo hired to create his vision. Even the artist did not sully his hands in creating this masterpiece declaring my inner pain. But I calmed myself as I thought that at least I had the added benefit of exercise with all of this moving and laundry and stuff. But no, apparently not even my post-partum-mid-move-#6 bum looks as good as Venus'. Little M even told me so when I said, "This is exactly how I feel!" and he said, "But you don't look like her..." Then again, maybe Little M was commenting on her vacantly peaceful expression on the other side of this sculpture. Peaceful about the whole affair? I am surely no Venus.

loose screws

2011-06-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

We are en route to Portland! Gasp and eeegads! Currently, I am writing on a desk that looks nice, but is so wiggly that with each keystroke, the table wobbles ever-so-slightly. It moves almost imperceptibly but enough to make me think that I was a) suffering dizzy spells due to a brain tumor or dehydration b) experiencing London's first earthquake or c) going crazy mad due to the after affects of upping sticks in a foreign country in less than one month. But no, none of the reasons for my motion sickness was due to any terrible imagining that my delightfully odd nature is prone to conjure. Just a desk with a few screws loose.

not to burst your balloon, but...

2011-06-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

I have many stories to tell you but they are lost in the tumble of saying goodbye yet again to another cluster of fabulous people that have bubbled up and into our lives. There really is just no way to leave gracefully. What's more, we are at that traveling stage where computers and photo storage and memory sticks are in transit or stored or inaccessible for the time being. In light of this, I have a wee story for you.

Earlier this year, as you know, I had pneumonia during the last month of TW's gestation. In the haze one night, M rented a movie. It seemed the perfect way to occupy the children while I broke a rib whilst coughing whilst gestating. A delightful French movie called the "Red Balloon." It is a story with few words about a boy and his friend which happens to be a red balloon. Really, a sweet movie. Quiet. Calming. M inserted the movie, placed the kids' favorite dinner in front of them, and left. Surely we would have some time to ourselves to worry. Shortly thereafter, Little M came in, "I don't like this movie." We shushed him back to his seat. G came stomping out of the living room, "Might I have some chocolate instead?" We denied her back to the room as well. Then, they kept coming. Incessantly. In turn or together. Moaning, whining, complaining. Whinging I think is the Scots word they use here. M and I were frustrated. There was no quiet to be had. Why couldn't our children be normal? Other children loved watching television til their brains oozed out on the floor. Why couldn't ours? They even have food! Even food they like! What was wrong?! "Go back and watch television!" We yelled. No amount of grumpy parenting would convince them to stay and enjoy, eat a little even... I rolled my wheezing, insomniac, heavily pregnant self out of bed and waddled into the living room to investigate my bored, annoying and perhaps even abnormal children. Apparently, there is also a French porn movie called the "Red Balloon." Thankfully. The movie was still at its "boring" talking parts where the porn stars are introducing their characters and the plot or whatever. Also, thankfully, my children don't speak French.

fuzz

2011-05-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

TW is sprouting fuzz. When G did this she was just over 4 months old. I was nursing her on the bottom viewing gallery at the marine aquarium just outside of Anchorage. Little M was watching a sea lion watching him watching a sea lion thru thick plate glass and the calm light from above. She sprouted this soft blonde fuzz that truly marks the end of every one of my kids' infant stage and their moving onward to baby stage. G's fuzz reflected the light as if it were the warmest strands of gold. Tomorrow I will take TW's 4 month old picture and it will most likely not pick up his blonde fuzz. You will be able to see it in the photographs a few months from now. The picture will also be harder to take because all he wants to do is kick his legs. Kick, kick, kick. He is very proud of his bendy knees and kicky legs. They will pull the picture out of focus though, these very busy legs of his. I am writing about TW's fuzzy head and busy legs as he takes his fourth 2 hour nap of the day. I pray to God he sleeps tonight. I have a dull ache forming just behind my eyes and his older siblings are still thumping about with large and secret plans for the bar of soap in the bathroom. I am also writing about TW's new fuzz to avoid writing about how much I will miss this community that really has no problem pitching in and helping out - even knowing that we will move and our chance to pitch in and help out in the near term will drastically decrease in about 15 days. I was homesick here. But that doesn't mean I didn't make this a home. I must text E O'H back and let her know that yes, it would be wonderful if she could take Little M to Sam A's birthday party tomorrow. I have to take a picture and to watch TW sprout some blonde baby fuzz.

Am I spoiled? Dumb?

2011-05-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

I feel a bit turned around. Kind of like the picture above.

Perhaps I am spoiled. There is so much we can do from online these days. I can book summer schools for the kids in Portland whilst we are still in Glasgow. I can hunt for a house, apply for a house loan, and peruse golf courses the area has to offer. I can even see the road a favored house is on via Google maps. I can order groceries to be delivered to the temporary housing we have set up on the very day of our arrival. Surely, I should be able to figure out if a public school has openings for my kids? Maybe not online, but through a phone call or email?

But no. Not the case and I am turned around. While I know, respect and understand why they want us to live in the district that we would like the children to attend, I don't want to commit to an area unless I know my kids are accepted. Why would I buy a house and support a local economy only to find that I need to plop my kids in a car and drive across a county line to get them into the school that accepts them. Maybe I am the one dumb as a stump? Read the post below - especially the bit about pirate bones.

dumb as stumps

2011-05-18T01:33:00.000-07:00

I love the Guardian newspaper. Especially Saturday's edition and especially the Family section. There are celebrities interviewed every week about their families. Every so often one of the luminaries makes the comment that he/she tries to teach his/her children that there "isn't a dumb question." This "no dumb question" lesson is meant to encourage the children to always communicate with the parent. To this, I say: WHAT?!? I think those children must be dumb as stumps. Or maybe emotionally neglected so when this radiant parent actually lands at the kitchen table the parent is essentially at a loss for what to say and starts foaming, "Really! Darling! You can ask me any question at all when I am actually giving you the time of day! Quick! Before your 5 minutes is up!"

Just to test my theory, I decided to see how many questions Little M asked me in the first 15 minutes after picking him up from school. 18. That's more than a question a minute and depending on the length of the question there was hardly time to answer before another question came barreling thru my taxed synapses.

G, who is more of take it or leave it gal, doesn't ask questions so much as state increasingly weird maxims until you simply can't bear it any longer and must correct her with an air of, "Good lands child! How will you ever survive without accepting this basic premise?!" Examples from yesterday include, I kid you not, "Actually, I have more bones than a pirate." and "I don't need the sky. It could even be green. Actually." I must also own up to my faltering knowledge of the body as G was right about pirates. Teeth are indeed bones and pirates, for a 3 year old, have very few teeth. Actually.

Thankfully, TW is not talking, questioning, or stating anything just yet. Moaning? Yes. Wailing? Yes. Cooing, laughing, and smiling too. I was relieved he slept soundly during my experiment. Though, I have no doubt he is not as dumb as a stump. I am also fairly certain that he will display characteristics belying the long line of delightfully odd people from which he has sprung. Actually.

May 11

2011-05-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

I am having a hard time writing. When my kids are having a hard time, I tell my kids to take a breath. In thru the nose. Out thru the mouth. We do it together and it often takes the edge off our most recent worry or tantrum.

I have many things I should tell you. I should tell you about TW unfurling from his womb-time. I should tell you we celebrated the Royal Wedding with my parents by visiting the Glasgow Necropolis - a city of the dead laden with leaning tombstones and quiet mausoleums cutting up the unexpectedly blue sky. I should tell you that we are moving to Portland the end of June. I should write how very sad I am to leave the people and the hills we have discovered here. I should write you about how excited I am to be close to our American friends and family again.

But, then I take a big breath and find myself on the other side of all these stories and worries. After all I should tell you, I find all I want to tell you is about my Grandmother. You may remember that last summer she passed away. Today is her birthday and today I would call her and ask if she got her nails done. I often sent her money to get her nails done for special occasions. We would then chat and I would tell her all the stories from my small family and then she would tell me all the stories of her large heart. They were often the big stories of little things as she neared the end of her life. Stories about what she ate for lunch, the weather, and who sat with her in the sun just the other day and told her all the comings and goings of whatever leaf on the family tree.

Today, she is not there to answer the phone. There isn't an address for her that I have lost in one of our many moves that I can recover and then go knocking on that door. "Grandma! Hello! It's Jen! I thought we had lost each other. Silly me! You're right here. Your nail appointment is at nine. Let's get going..." Though, when I take a breath today, this hard day to write, I smell her.

Since her passing, many more babies have been born into our family. Like TW, they are unfurling in their own time and discovering knees and drooling over their new-found fingers and on relatives and cooing at magical things like, oh, I don't know, the very bendy nature of one's knees. Though I am very sad she will not meet all these babies, Grandma would be very happy about all of these babies. I have so very much more I should write to you, but I think I will take a big breath and enjoy a day thinking about her...

the crack cocaine

2011-04-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

I really need to tell you what a great day my eldest son had the other day. It is amazing to have a boy confident enough in his self to be interested in his youngest sibling. He changed TW's wet diaper by himself at his request! He tended to his sister's bruised knees and hurt feelings. He was strong on the rugby field and finally told a reasonably funny fart joke.
He mastered the times tables up to 3 on his own. He read a book a whole level higher than usual without melting down. He had such a great day that when he saw a can of coke that was not consumed with my prior night's pompadom emergency, he asked politely enough to make a prison warden weak in the knees if he might, perhaps, "...have a sip or two of the coca cola?" Of course! I was smart mama and remembered what the research says about positive reinforcement: "Yes" goes a longer way than "No." "Yes, yes." I said, "Yes, here is 1/8th of a can of coke."

If you say the following as fast as you possibly can outloud, you will get the jest of what he said 2 minutes after ingesting his positive reward. "- I like bananas. I'm still hungry. Gorillas eat bananas. Even the peel like this (insert lightening fast demonstration). They even eat the peel. The peel would make me quite ill actually. May I have another banana? Cut it in half. Like this. Long ways. Not short ways. G is shorter than I am. We both have wide feet. Meat feet. But you can't eat our feet. Daddy has blisters still on his feet from running too long in California. I don't want to move to California because of the earth quakes. They cause tsunamis. You can't even enjoy a tsunami if you are a surfer. Mama's cousin D is a surfer. He rolls with the waves. I like the ocean. I have a wet suit and played in the ocean with G when TW was in your tummy and you were vomiting everywhere. When do I learn how to surf? We took a ferry on the ocean to the Isle of Barra -

During his hyperactive, yet pleasant, stream of conscious monologue, I interrupted in fits and starts - "I'm happy to give you another banana. But I hate getting food ready for you only to find you've only eaten a bite. The end of your tummy is always further than expected, but always a surprise. I hate wasting food. I could feed another child on the food you've wasted."

This comment of mine stopped the flow shortly after "Isle of Barra" comments and was followed by his question, "Is that why you had TW?"

I decided that it was time to do the bathe-book-bed routine rather than add a sex talk or the fumbling reasons as to why we decided to have TW in spite of the rising cost of college tuition other than, "Dunno. Just wanted another," to his caffeinated sucrose high. By the way, annual undergraduate education is at 250000$/year in 2020 at last estimate. I know, I know. Gasp. Might I, perhaps, have a coca-cola to drown my worries in?

The evening ended with me checking on him after his supposed bedtime to find him screaming - politely - into his pillow whilst doing a donkey kick with both legs in the air whilst wearing Minnesota Gopher sweats, his blue dressing gown, and a cap with a stuffed tiger glued to the top from Big M's cousin J.

And yet, I am calmed by who he is and who he is becoming.

telephone

2011-03-29T02:46:00.001-07:00

I am thankful for Lady Gaga. Mostly because she tries things I don't make time for - like arriving to an awards show in an egg/chariot thing or wearing a dress made out of meat. I mean really, why not? My uncle and cousin raise prize winning beef cattle, why not support a trend that could open a whole new market for them? (http://www.manta.com/cmap/mm2wdhf/borst-family-farms) We wear leather trousers and fur coats, why not meat?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1311683/Lady-Gagas-raw-meat-dress-But-offal-MTV-outfit-real-fake.html

Oh yah, that's why not. Thank you Lady for figuring this out for me. Not machine washable. Definitely too risky to wear when chasing after littles. No meat dresses for me. Sorry Cuz... Our own little fashion risk taker is pictured below in red cowgirl boots, pink leggings, her brother's madras shorts, pink sweater and lizard cap. She kept in character all day and is pictured pretending to be a "tokay gecko" that can climb walls at lightning speed. Why not wear Little M's shorts? Oh yah, that's why not.

Due to the title of this entry, you probably guess incorrectly that I will continue with a story of Lady Gaga's once ubiquitous "Telephone" song and my children. But you guess incorrectly. Rather, the Primary 7 classroom monitors for little M's class love the "Bad Romance" song and sing it when they are on the play yard. Like the children's game, telephone, the lyrics have been passed from monitor, to Little M, to his sister - G. The only lyrics that have passed/morphed are the ones that go, "Gaga oo la la la/ want your bad romance." M sings a rendition that is startling in tune though it is clear the lyrics are disintegrating into some variation of "gaga oo lalala you're a bad roman." These lyrics in G's lovely little mind have morphed into "Gaga oo lalala, you have a bad man." After swimming lessons in the woman's locker room, G sings these morphed lyrics while galloping in her lion costume sans other accoutrements like underwear and socks and pants and shirts and such. The ladies in the locker room strangely trust her as a sage for relationships. Perhaps it is her willingness to go out on a limb? Or the tendency for Glaswegian men to truly be bad men to date? I dunno. Maybe it is just the costume.

thank you

2011-03-29T02:25:00.001-07:00

This babe is TW and he is taking maybe his second or third breath in this picture. My husband is cutting the umbilical cord as I murmur to TW that he is right where he needs to be. That I am so happy that he is here. That without doing a thing besides make for a pain filled and hectic morning, he is loved more than he will ever know. That this day is a happy birthday. These are the things I have murmured to all of my kids at their births. We would not have gotten there with TW without:

her. I had a drug resistant lung infection for the last month of TW's gestation. Nana came and cared for us for the last 2 weeks of that infection and the first week of TW's life. Her 24 hour plane flight, constant pain in her repaired knee due to the travel, absence from her work, and Bopa's willingness to let her go before a major surgery of his own were so very necessary. Her actions murmured to all of us that we are loved more than we know, that she and Bopa are so very glad we are in their life. That we are worth the hassle. We are left with nothing to do or say except thank you and hope our actions say the same thing to Nana and Bopa.

Fart Jokes or Why We Adore Steve Knapp

2010-12-21T04:51:00.000-08:00

Steve Knapp has been a co-worker of Big M's for the past decade. In that time, he and his family have become good family friends.

Recently, Steve Knapp came thru Glasgow on a work related trip. It was the second week of cold, snow, and ice storms. Also, it was my second week of being housebound whilst pregnant due to the weather and the first day that Big M was back from a two week work trip to Asia. Big M deemed a break for me as urgent, scooped up the kids, and took Steve Knapp and his visiting customer on a two hour hike thru Mugdock woods. I never would've chanced the littles with grown-ups much less a customer, but I learned again that I perhaps underestimate my kids a bit - or maybe we are just in each other's pockets too much with the weather recently. Regardless, reports from the snow indicated that the kids were not whining, having fun, and showing Steve Knapp and his customer a side to Glasgow that they would not have seen in a standard meet-n-greet. To be honest, I was relieved more than proud, but again that might indicate I am more the culprit in what I deem as questionable behavior in my kids.

I assumed responsibility for the littles in the early afternoon so that Steve Knapp and crew could go on a scotch distillery tour. Rather than greeting me with, "I missed you!" or "We had such a good time..." or "I jumped into a snowbank off of Mugdock Castle's kitchen wall..." Little M greeted me with the following statement:

"Steve Knapp said, Pull my finger and then I did and then he farted - in my face..."

This was said as if Steve Knapp is now the ruler of the free world and also untouchabley cool. Though Steve Knapp did run for governor of California, I can assure you Steve Knapp is not a ruler of the free world neither should he be - if only due to his less than circumspect gastrointestinal control. Also, I must admit my bias. Fart jokes have never been my thing. They just aren't funny to me and fighting the "no fart joke" fight has proven to be cause for migraines, ulcers, and heartache in a house with an almost 6 year old boy thumping the oaks. "Uphill battle" does not describe my efforts accurately. "Lost battle" does.

Then, without skipping a beat, Little M added, " and he must not have a good Mama to teach him that farting is also quite rude."

While I am sure that Steve Knapp's mother has done a good job despite losing the same "no fart joke" battle I have clearly also lost, I am even more sure of why we adore Steve Knapp. Because, when told of Little M's take on the whole situation, Steve Knapp was impressed. He thought it a unique skill to enjoy a fart joke and suck up to one's mother in the same breath. This experience is one I have had with Steve Knapp over and over again. He is able to find and enjoy the skills that everyone brings to the table - even amidst glaring faults and whilst the room stinks to high heaven. We miss and adore you Steve Knapp. Fart on...

there is always tomorrow

2010-12-02T02:39:00.001-08:00

G wears the cuffs that were cut off of Big M's pants on her head at least once a day. They are crowns, hats, magic bunny ears, veterinary tracking collars for rhinos, the source of super heroine powers, and a great embarrassment for her brother especially when I say, "Come on, let's document this moment."

There is one major difference between these two. Little M, believes that if you could just listen to his entire story -even if it takes days to hear the story- you will come around to his world view. G doesn't really care if you get her world view as she just does what she wants and figures you'll come around. An offshoot of this part of G's personality is that she has developed a myriad of ways of telling you, "No." Please note that it is such a pervasive part of her, that her ninja "no" skills are not a developmental stage but more a part of her basic skill set.

The latest is tomorrow. For example:

Me- "G, please put your Jammies on."
G- "Jammies are for tomorrow."

Me -"G, it's time to go to the store. Let's go to the store. We need to get special chocolate for Little M for his friend's party. You can have some too!"
G- "I like chocolate. I like chocolate right away. The store is for tomorrow."

Me- "G, let's get our coats on to get your brother."
G - "I will go tomorrow."
Me - "It will be too cold without our coats. We need to stay warm and cozy."
G - "I am warm and cozy now. You get you (not a typo) coat on. You go now. I go maybe tomorrow."

I'm not sure if this use of the word tomorrow is a sign of a young procrastinator? a stubborn yet polite child? a forward looking soul? Her brother was too busy talking about how he didn't want to wear the pants cuff on his head. He was just sure if she listened she wouldn't put it on his head. G just put it on him whilst he was yammering on. I said to him, "M, you don't have to put it on. You can use your words. You can tell her no." G piped in, "Or tomorrow."

i'm special

2010-11-29T12:18:00.000-08:00

I've lied to my kids. I've told them that I am very special. I have said that I am a special person because I am their mother. That we are better than friends because I am their mother and I enjoy their company. That I have amazing capabilities like healing owies, calming hurt hearts, putting letters together to make words to make sentences to make stories that take them anywhere they'd like to go. That I am special because I will believe in their otter dens, their dragon houses, their delicious playdough cookies.

I've told you before how my children ignore the bounds of natural laws. Physics, geometry, even genetics are all things that are essentially faulty in their world until proven otherwise with bruises or bloodshed. For example, when asked if they are excited about the baby, if they would like a boy or a girl this February, they reply with a zoo animal of some sort. Often the zoo animal is not from the petting zoo section. A polar bear, a baby elephant, a white tiger, a beluga whale... Thankfully, they usually want something from the placental order of mammals, albeit cetaceans show up more often than I'd like.

I have taken these hopes for a zoo animal as an opportunity to teach my children about the gray zone in which most of life occurs. I tell them that I am special, but not that special. I am good, but not great. But, the lies have grown out of control. They do not believe me. They shrug in defiance, "No Mama, you are that special." I find though, after looking at pictures of these two, that maybe I am that special. That when they say they are hoping for a zoo animal, they are indeed hoping for one of their ilk. A wee babe that will build meerkat dens like they do. A sibling to help them sit on dragon eggs til they hatch, and to swim like a real-pretend-killer-whale in the pool when ready. And, if that is what they are saying, I am sure I am that special and I am thankful that they know I am too.

let go

2010-11-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

First, let me provide a list of the what she is wearing. a pirate bandana, my elastic hair band slung under her nose and around the back of her head, a black turtleneck, her swimming suit (under everything), a home made halloween cowboy vest, a pink tutu, green leggings, red cowboy boots and her brother's socks and his boxers.

Second, let me state that this is what she wore for most of a Saturday. She wore it, including the headband just so, outside, to the park, for an hour's long drawing session, building forts in the living room and during lunch. She also, remarkably and impressively, never had a toilet accident despite the layers of removal required for such endeavors. There were no alterations. Suggestions/comments/queries from outside sources were frowned upon with the disdain that only G can muster.

Third, let me offer the above picture as evidence that I am not lying when I say that I do not care what my daughter wears as long as it has been cleaned within the last 48 hours. I know when to stand my ground and when to retreat and really, from the looks of her, wouldn't you retreat into a padded parent corner and sing gospel hymns out of tune too? I mean, what else is there to do?

Fourth, let me ask you to remind me of this picture when I require blackmailing as a parenting tool. You may even say to me, "You know, you might try to persuade her not to x, y, and z, by threatening to show others that picture of her as a 3 y.o. you posted on stubbytoes...." I am asking for your help as I clearly not only need it now. I will rely on it heavily in the future.

Fifth, remember how good it is to let go.

you stink

2010-11-21T06:41:00.000-08:00

I was bullied as a kid. Head in snowbanks, surrounded by kids throwing kickballs at my head, names without games...You say it, I probably had it done to me. As I got older, I realized that some of it was how I saw the world. Simple misunderstandings. Such as in high school, I was asked if I liked toe jam. I thought I would be received with laughter and high marks for humor when I replied that it was yummy in a dead pan, serious sort of way. Nope. I was tagged as the freshman girl with questionable hygiene who snacked on toe fuzz for my first few months there. Luckily, I've always found a quirky soul to hang with and a patient teacher here and there. I've also had the strength to mature and realize that not everyone is out to get me. Just a few people who have bad senses of humor, don't like toe jam, and don't hum their own tunes to themselves in the hallway.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover this weekend that sweet baby G is out to get her big brother. Though not in a malicious way. It's more of a little sister trying to keep up with big brother sort of way. Yesterday we took the kids' bikes to the reservoirs and when G tired of her bike, she walked. Then she decided that big M should hold her bike and she should chase little M. Then, when she couldn't catch Little M cruising ahead on his bike, she would cry. Moan. Hide her face in her hands, lean against the wall and curse the sky. Little M, kind guy that he is, would stop, turn around and go to comfort her. She'd leap up and run ahead and shout, "Nananna Boo boo," or some such and stick out her tongue and repeat the whole process when he superceded her. Without fail. He would comfort and she would trounce on his kindness. If you have enough energy to pick on your sibling, you're clearly not being worked hard enough. We put her back on her bike to stop the madness.

Even this morning, at breakfast, Little M ate quietly considering the day of rugby and swimming that laid before him. She, frustrated with the quiet, said, "Your bread stinks." For all I could tell - and I do have that hypersensitive pregnancy nose - it smelled fine. It smelled like honey and peanut butter. Little M was worried, how should he respond? I told him his toast was fine and to ignore her. She said, "Your peanut butter stinks." He asked in tears, "Does it stink?" No, no. I am trying to teach him that kids say rude and untrue things about his food at school and now even his sister says rude and untrue things. That these comments are silly and not worth his worry. If he knows the truth, that his bread is unstinky, then these comments have no bearing. G continued, "You stink." Little M sighed, summoned his patience and said, "Stinky bread makes you strong and smart. You want some?" G laughed and finished his stinky toast for him. They then took their stinky selves and made a meerkat den in the living room.

surprise, surprise, surprise

2010-11-12T02:23:00.001-08:00

The only thing I miss about being childless is being able to knock around town with big M without regard for time. That's it. Everything else I love more than when I was childless. I love my joys more. I appreciate my frustrations and hopes more. I like being a parent more than I like eating breakfast on the odd Saturday with my husband without kids. I also like and appreciate surprises more. Even though it's been really rough going at times, I've found I'm better than most with surprises like, "Your son will die if he eats any form of milk or egg and does not receive medical attention within 5 minutes of ingestion." I am also good with surprises like, "Your daughter has her own mind and will wear whatever costume she deems necessary: even if it is an impossible mash-up like a princess-ballerina-cowgirl-costume of her 3-y.o. doing that is not based in reality or your motherly desire for the order and tidiness found in other children." I am also good with surprises like, "Your son knows how to raise the roof and line dance." This latest surprise I discovered at the Halloween Party thrown by the school. Apparently, the Scots like to line dance and little M, being a social guy and game for most anything, has no fear on the dance floor. He rallies the boys to join the girls and will "raise the roof" when things get a little dull on the oaks. He will not, however, dance with his gestating mother. But that's I guess that's no surprise.

sometimes

2010-09-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think I do more wrong than right. I worry about decisions regarding their school and discipline and health and life in general. I think you all know by now that I am also delightfully neurotic and so it isn't simply that today I've a small worry about, say, sleeping habits, whilst making toast and leave it at that. It is more like when I start to worry about sleeping habits, these worries quickly tumble into logrithmicly expanding terrains that end up in my having an existential crisis on behalf of everyone in the family. Really, I know it's a favor and a skill that I know they could do without. It is simply too much to put on such small people - nevermind my own growing soul. But then, I find a photo like the one above. Then, my delightfully neurotic side shuts up. For a very long time. Because, you see, there is evidence that I need not have existential crisis, even for the youngest of my family. There is evidence, photographic evidence, that I am doing things alright. Sometimes.

Notes on the Isle of Barra

2010-09-19T03:03:00.000-07:00

I thought rural was driving out to my grandmother's or my uncle's farm in Minnesota. Both were about a twenty minute drive outside of town and they seemed far sitting in the backseat with the winter sun long set after a family celebration. Now that I'm older and I've lived in Scotland, I realize that is not rural. It is certainly not city or suburban - even with urban sprawl taking place. But it is not rural. Maybe country, but not rural. Rural, I've found to mean something a bit different since traveling to places like the Isle of Barra or even twenty minutes outside of Glasgow. Rural is access via a road only large enough to fit one car with pull-out spaces for the rare car to car meeting. Rural is difficult for a visitor to find a phone or surf the internet. It is static-y radios and busy days filled with fresh air. Rural is where sheep and cows graze with a view and have more motorway rights than cars. Rural is a place and time where you realize how very loud the quiet can be. And, in this quiet there is comfort and an invitation for all the creatures roaming about a 5 y.o. boy's head to come out and play...

gimme a gun?

2010-09-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

Nothing screams "sheltered middle class white mother" like my shock over a recent gang beating that took place on the main road to my husband's work.

http://www.blogtopsites.com/outpost/c2353a973a60fdcf20886363e9b3e046

The Brits think the Yanks are nuts for the amount of guns available and sold in the States. The U.S. is also apparently also one of the main manufacturer of guns for the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/sep/01/photography-zed-nelson-best-shot

A part of me, maybe, if I'm honest, it is the "sheltered middle class white mother" part of me, sees the Brits' point of view. There is gun violence and a sad amount of deaths involving guns in the U.S. Why have them available if there are accidental and not-so accidental deaths from them? Here they are heavily controlled, yet, I'm not finding a void of gun violence.

http://news.uk.msn.com/in-depth/raoul-moat-manhunt.aspx
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8457418.stm

If anything, there is a remarkable number of violent gun deaths considering this strictly gun-controlled island country is not much larger than Minnesota and Iowa put together.

http://www.sarmonster.net/UK.htm

The native Glaswegians I've asked about this recent event shrug it off. They say that gangs hurt gangs and that innocent bystanders rarely get involved. I dunno. If I'm about to die, innocent bystander or not, I'd rather it be quick - the way an abbatoir kills the animals we eat - than being shoved off the side of the road and beaten beyond a hair's breath and then live knowing someone wants me gone.

No, I'm not saying I want to be caught in crossfire or that I have a deathwish or even wish to belong to a gang. But I am tired of this stereotyping of gun-users in the States. The U.S. is not filled with rabid gun slingers ready to pop innocent bystanders for not correctly ordering a mocha at Starbucks. My uncles are hunters. My kids' uncle is a hunter. My husband learned to shoot cans in the Arizona desert with his grandfather. For him, it was time in the quiet without the worries that come from a child stumbling through adult concerns. No one has been hurt. If there is to be an end to gun violence, even in heavily controlled societies, then thoughtful teaching of gun use and the value of life has to happen. Not juvenile fingerpointing at cultural preferences founded in historical necessity. I want my children to neither be caught in crossfire nor be beaten to a pulp.

for lack of an ode

2010-08-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

A while back I wrote an "ode" to both G and my husband. These odes were the result of my being quite grumpy with news articles that just promoted yucky views on family. I've been wanting to write an ode to my son, to keep it balanced, but each time I start, I get sidetracked into telling stories. For example;

"I love my son because he lives in a fantastical world where anything is possible for anyone...like the time he found out I was pregnant with Babe Newt. He has a brain fascinated with natural history and understands life cycles like few kids do. So while I was surprised when he first said that he knew I was going to have another baby but even more surprised when he then he said that he didn't think it would be a baby dragon but he just wasn't sure."

Ahem. Let me begin the ode again without being sidetracked into a story.

"I love my son because he is interested in people and their stories. He wants to know about you; what you need, what you like, where you come from and where you'd like to go. He wants to help you on your way. We went to the beach to build a fire and watch the sunset on the Isle of Barra. He and G both needed to use the toilet whilst on the beach. He quietly went about digging two deep holes. One for each bodily function. He also spelled the world -toilet- in the sand. He and G used these as the sunset and the waves crashed. Not as sweet as we thought the evening might be, but Big M and I sighed and thought, well, what is the harm? What is the point in stifling such creativity? The next day, at another remote beach, he did the same thing. But, another family came upon the beach. G was running half naked down the chilly shore shouting I-used-the-potty-on-the-beach! as her brother asked the couple if they too needed the toilet. This couple's children were too cold and wouldn't venture off the dunes to the beach. They stared at our family's mayhem and we could see their juvenile wheels turning to use our children's behavior as proof why they should remain in bed despite the beach seals groaning on the rocks beyond. To them, this sad scene is clearly what happens when you commune with nature. Random Americans ask you if you want to relieve yourself on the beach. It was clear, this couple's children were civilized. We were left a bit confused. Do we explain that our son is a caretaker? Only interested in the well-being of others? Do we explain that we really aren't red-necks? Or maybe own up to our apparent red-neck tendencies and offer them some of our lunch too to show that being a red-neck also has a hospitable side? Or would all this talk just make it worse? We really couldn't make a decision in a timely manner as we were laughing too hard. The family left quickly."

I think I will try to write my ode when I'm grumpy with a family image in the newspapers. I seem more succinct when grumpy.

almost

2010-08-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

Often, I marvel that we only have the one word "love" to mean so many things. I mean really. I love my new vegan chocolate sauce and I also love my family. I think the reason we don't come up with more words for the different kinds of love that exist is because there are simply too, too many ways to mean the word love. Better to give up, use the word "love" as often as possible and move on to more easily attainable goals.

I love pictures like this of my family. People I love more hugely than words and laughter or my ego or my joys and desires and failures. I love them so much that every day I learn yet another way to understand and use the word "love." Yet, they are here, these people I love so very large and in such variant and strong ways. These people, bearers of my large love, look small traipsing through the earth's secrets in sands and dune grass. In these pictures, the landscape almost looks bigger than my love for them. Almost.

Cockles and Mussels and Kids, Oh My!

2010-08-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

It is important to me to have polite children. Not nambie-pambie suck-ups. Just reasonable and polite children. A "please" or a "no thank you," serves my wants just fine. The older I get and the more states and countries I travel to and live in, the more I know politeness matters.

However, I think I have unwittingly also supported the mental nimbleness that, quite frankly, exhausts me daily with my kids. For example, on a beautiful morning on the Isle of Barra, we collected cockles and mussels for eats that evening. These delicacies were once thought of poor man's food as on the islands they are free and plenty for the taking. If your sheep failed, and your built-up stone plots for farming failed, you could always eat these lovelies til things got better. Nowadays, in the city, a pot of mussels in a garlic sauce cost the equivalent of 16-25$ depending on where you go... How could we resist such expensive food for free on the beach?

The children tried them. They liked them! They liked them so much that G suggested, "I like them not for breakfast. I like them not for the lunch. I like them not for the dinner or for the breakfast or like them not for snack or like them not for dessert or for things to eat." Little M liked them, too! He liked them enough to question if they agreed with my ante-natal state, "Do you think baby Newt really likes these?" I couldn't lie. Newt has restricted my diet to table crackers and sometimes fruit for weeks. He then wondered if "perhaps" he could "...finish the mussels tomorrow when (you) will forget them and make spaghetti." It has left me wondering if the United Nations has a training program for ever-so-diplomatic thinkers like these. In appreciation for such polite hints, I made spaghetti the next day.

Isle of Barra

2010-08-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

We just got back from the Isle of Barra. School has also begun and of course there seem to be too many stories to tell. I will start with the simplest. This view that met us after our 3 hour drive and 5 hour ferry. No phones. No email. Just this view. The planes land according to the low tide right there on the beach and there is a wee air terminal off in the distance. More soon. Enjoy.

thump thump thump

2010-07-27T05:33:00.000-07:00

I couldn't make it to my Grandma's funeral due to a few bumps in the very beginning with this little thump. Today, those in the know say that all seems well. Version 3.0 expected in Feb 2011.

Grandma

2010-07-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

My Grandma passed away this weekend and I am not able to go home to her funeral. Permit me to celebrate her here.

Of Peonies and People
by Jennifer Philpott

My grandmother passed away today
and my mother was there and I was not.
My children and I were outside to play;
stomping puddles and muddy garden plots.

I tell my son we will plant peonies
when we find our home and by that I mean
the boozey flowers that sagged under trees
and sun on my grandmother's farm and dreamt
of waking from the next winter, too. Tough
ants crawled on the waxy blossom heads
coaxing them open, their scent thick enough
to betray my fort making in the flower beds,

Grandma scolded, “Stay out! You let them grow!”
My girl asks, “Peonies? How do you grow?”
I tell them what Grandma knew of peonies and people too:
You stand back. You let them grow. Don't let anyone mess with you.

disclipline part 2

2010-07-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

I also find it hard to discipline because G refuses either a) to dress or b) remain dressed in the same outfit or c) remain dressed at all. This evening I said, "Gg! In our family, we help each other out. Your brother needs help setting the table. Please help your brother." Go ahead, say this outloud. In the time it takes to say that, she stripped naked and said, "Okay mum," and proceeded to stomp out of the kitchen, naked, with silverware in hand as if nothing had happened. What? Oh that's right, I didn't specify. I didn't say, "...we help each other out whilst wearing standard garments."

long time, no post

2010-07-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so when I don't post because of (among many other things) moving to our 5th house in 18 months, 3/4 family birthdays happening within 4 weeks and big M traveling like mad again, I get a little stuck. I get a little gun shy. What to post? What would be interesting to know? I decided to just post what I like and not fret about the picture this time.

I find disciplining my children difficult. Certainly for the standard reasons of the modern mum. No one likes to say no. It always takes a lot of time and energy to do it right and often disciplining needs to happen when you don't have time and energy. Blah. Blah. Blah. But I also have difficulties disciplining my children because I often I can't figure out with whom I'm exactly dealing. For example, the other night G gets in and out of bed, stuffs the the toilet full of toilet paper, picks an owie so it bleeds and she HAS to get out of bed to get a bandaid, the list is so long I've forgotten all that she was doing when she should have been sleeping. Finally, I summoned the time and energy to discipline her, "Big girls go to bed. They don't run around and pick owies and wake brothers up and say hi to the elderly neighbors dangling from the window. Big girls know when to go to sleep. Big girls go to bed and have a nice breakfast with their mummies in the morning. Big girls stay in bed!" To which, she flops away from me and says, "I am not a big girl. I am a panda!" uhm? What to say to that? I said, "Pandas go to sleep too." She said, "I am now a killer whale!" She then blew air from her spout and fell asleep as all good killer whales do.

on homesickness

2010-05-09T03:35:00.000-07:00

It is no news that I have been quite homesick for some time. With this in mind, another round of friends decided to uproot the gentle hum of their lives and meet me half way in NYC last week.

Add up the following:
1 hour for mass transit time limitations
1 hour for my generally high-strung travel state
1 hour for my exuberance to see my friends
2 hours as the recommend time you arrive prior to an international flight.
What you get:
Me! Arriving a terribly prepared 5 hours prior to take off. There is nothing to do when you are 5 hours early for a flight except to attempt check-in. Usually airline security won't allow check-in 'til 3 hours before the flight. I was early enough to explain to the airline attendant that the mass transit time table isn't really my fault but a monolithic governmental agency's fault. I also had time to explain that my neurotic and happily-high-strung travel state isn't really my fault but more a product of growing up in Minnesota under the tutelage of my mom. The very kind gate keeper checked in me and my bags. He smiled and said, "You must make good friends."

I do. I do make very good friends. I have made friends with my siblings and my parents and even people that were once strangers. It is these friends, who were once strangers, that flew last week over a continent and survived a New York City bomb scare to heal my homesickness. They left flu-ridden children, overworked spouses, and really great weather just to care for me.

It is these friends whose lovers and partners and husbands know that it is best to help us go and do the work of friendship. They know that when we get together, for an hour or a day or a week, we all return as better people.

Due to my husband's work, we have lived all over the states and even a different country. Home is where I grew up, Rochester. But it is also Seattle, San Francisco, Wilmington, and Madison.
This bright morning I took my questionably dressed children to the park. There I met friends who were once strangers in this foreign country. I found myself needed in a whole new place on this earth. As I stood there, I realized that I am not homesick. I am home-abundant. We are halfway through our tenure here. While I do not know where we will land next, I now most certainly know that I will find a home.

making Scotland work

2010-04-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

That's me breathless from dancing "strip the willow" at a ceilidh on Saturday night. The ceilidh was filled with Scots who could dance, Scots who couldn't dance, men in kilts who could whirl me silly, and one particularly crusty old guy who just liked the polka bits of all the dances. The band leader taught the dances as best he could til he gave up and berated us all in good fun. "That's not really dancing," he said to me on the mike for all to hear, "but you can stay to keep the numbers even."

I'm reading "Einstein's God," and I'm surprised at the fundamental understanding my son has of Einstein's groundbreaking rules of the universe. The other day on the walk home, he said to me, "Time goes faster when you're moving. I don't like waiting. Waiting is slow and boring." "Yes indeed Einstein," I said. He said, "I'm not an Einstein. I'm just your son." I'm not saying my son is a genius. I've got proof of the contrary such as when he started to make fart noises on his arm on the walk home to make time go faster.

We danced til midnight and then had popcorn with our sitter and her mum til 1 am. New friends and a good sitter also make time go faster and I'm not smart enough to turn that into a rule of the universe, though I do have hair worse than Einstein's. We're very thankful that great people seem to find us where ever we land. I'm off to NYC for a few days with other good friends that have found us along the way. Time is sure to fly...

2010-04-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

blogger is having technical difficulties. whatever.

If he can...

2010-04-24T08:21:00.000-07:00

I'm having technical difficulties. Within the microcosm of this blog, I keep getting error messages when I'm trying to post pictures. Like all week. Like, even when I download the new software and even when I restart the computer and even when I call my over-worked and technically savvy husband in for help.

On the macrocosmic level, we have been evicted again after our 6 month "assured tenancy" agreement which is standard in the UK because it also seems standard that the Scots can't handle their finances and keep their rental properties. And, as soon as I go down the road of what-have-I-done-wrong, I find that there are 9 other families going thru the same thing. The economy is hard and people can't afford their investment properties and though we're financially secure, our landlords are not. Yet, finding our fifth house in 18 months make me feel more mercurial than G. When I do feel adult-like, I still feel like G above. But, the picture and story that matters the most is the one below.

What you don't see is that it is a windless day. Also, my son and I are stomping through dead wood-pigeon guts and we don't realize it til we go inside. There are also powerlines choking our kite once it is airborne, a yard too small for proper kite flying trying, grumpy neighbors asking us to be quiet at 3 pm on a Scottish sunny day, and G having a full-on tantrum because her socks match despite her best efforts. Despite all of this, we had a great day together. My son seems to make Scotland work just fine despite the crazy housing situation. If he can, I can too.

...really, I do.

2010-04-13T03:25:00.000-07:00

I can take a hint.

I'm a creative cook in my mother's eyes and she often asks the children what I'm feeding them for dinner. Lately, they've taken to replying, "Mummy doesn't really feed us." My sister also asked them recently what they liked for breakfast and my son said, "She hasn't fed us yet." It was 3pm.

So, I thought, right, something is missing here. In their worldview, I'm not feeding them. I decided to sit in the kitchen and respond to every single food-based whim of theirs yesterday at lunch. We had a few courses of peanut butter and jelly, an apple and banana each, cookies, refills of soymilk and juice, red pepper, carrot, and cereal. Nothing out of the ordinary. I even left their half-eaten remains on their plates when they said they were done just in case they had a sudden change of heart.

Off they went to play.

M often makes me popcorn in the evenings. He's mastered the art of kettle corn on a stove top and it is beyond a treat for me. While playing the children found a lost piece of this fluffy goodness, by then at least 2 nights old, but possibly older. They greedily dove onto their tummies while hungrily looking under the couch for more shouting, "Look! Look! She left us popcorn!"

To my knowledge, I'm not described as a duplicitous person by people who know me. But, here, I must confess, I have an ulterior motive writing this blog. Surely, I use it to keep in touch with far flung loved ones. But I will also use it as blackmail and evidence. Blackmail for when they are sullen teenagers and I want them to behave. Evidence for when I'm hauled into a joint session with their future therapists to discuss my parenting style. I will reply to their accusations with this blog and say, "I try, really, I do."

survival skills

2010-04-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

Observe: mismatched socks, rah-rah skirt with velvet strips, salmon shirt of a different hue-d purple, bald spots cut in by her brother in a moment of "helpful" 5 year-old inspiration. What you don't see: The tantrum and distraction tactics it took just to get the shoes to match and her out the door in a reasonable mood, the other bald spots, the nubbie and stained castle shirt under the salmon shirt.

I kept hoping that no one would notice her on our day trip to the Queen's palace, Holyrood, in Edinburgh. But it is the Queen's palace and it is Edinburgh and G is, what I call, "super two." They chalked it up to our American-ness. What they didn't realize is that it's just who G is right now and I generally only intervene when there are threats of bloodshed or "poo-poo stupid" name-calling.

Earlier this year, I had posted a story of what I thought Bug's brain looked like - the rooms and corridors of facts and animals lining the Natural History Museum in London. Each animal and corner whispering its own stories to him. Below, I offer what I think G's brain must look like. A room strewn with loving colors and an elusive wanted thing stuck in the back under a unknown banana hidden by my children "for later." Because, as much as I love them, I never seem to feed them enough. From my experience with the littles prior to having kids of my own, I know that these super-two seasons can last weeks or months or years or lifetimes. I now know that we will survive this when-G-never-matched season, no matter how long it lasts, because there is random rotting food hidden around my house from which they will feed.

of money and baldness

2010-04-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Take a look at my kid. I've often thought that someone could make a lot of money off this mug.

I inherited the ability to talk to myself from my mother. She can often be found in her yard having sweet conversations with herself while pulling stubborn honeysuckle from the earth. I can be found muttering stories for this blog while walking this guy home from school. When I've muttered one enough, I sit down and write it out just for you. But, today, my writing process was scrapped.

Today, I was trying to save money for this kid's future. I was on a very long, long distance phone call with USAA. They don't have international 1-800 numbers, so the charge is all mine to incur. These are the kinds of things I'm very happy to do for my family. I like being a parent. I like worrying about his financial and educational future. I like sticking up for him and his allergies. I like him. Except, when on this phone call to save for his future, he cuts numerous bald spots in his sister's hair.

I was muttering more than blog stories today when I found my disturbingly shorn daughter playing happily with the transgressor pictured above.

I'm trying to figure out how to make money off that mug above as that's the only way I know how to pay off the cost of a hairstylist that will actually attempt to fix the inflicted baldness. Also, when I look at this incident in the big picture of who my son is, I have a feeling that this is not the only cost that I will bear. There's just no way I know how to afford his experimental nature without him footing at least some of the bill....

other than allergies

2010-03-30T03:51:00.000-07:00

Try saying, "M is anaphylactic to all forms of milk and egg in any amount baked into any food." Then, if people don't understand what anaphylaxis is you must repeat the same information in a different way, "M stops breathing if he eats any form of milk and egg in any amount baked into any food." Mouthful. No pun intended. It wears me out some days, though it is always my pleasure to provide this safety buffer for him. Being new, even a year-and-a-half new, I must always be on my best behavior as I don't want to offend someone that I might need in an anaphylactic emergency. I've found I must always have his life-threatening allergies be one of the first things you learn about my family. I have found that, rightfully so, I get questions that cause me to remember the anaphylactic episodes in the midst of relative strangers. One of the reasons I wouldn't want to return to home is because a return means that I have to be new again. I would have to remember in the most unlikely places with relative strangers what happens when M eats one of the allergens that sends his body into anaphylaxis. I went out with some ladies the other night and it seemed that whenever the conversation came round to me his allergies came up. It was overwhelming for me.

A few years back, I was searching for something to keep a conversation going with a very boring person I had met. Work. I only knew about her work. So I asked about her work. She then brought up that she liked Irish Dancing. I asked why. She pointedly replied, "Because they don't only talk to me about work." Letting her rude comment reply slip by, I only thought to myself, "Well, I'd have more to talk to you about if you offered a bit more, Ms. Boring." Maybe I'm too boring to talk to? Perhaps I need to offer a bit more than M's anaphylaxis? Though, I can't see how one couldn't guess that there is loads more interesting about us than M's anaphylaxis. I offer the video below as a bit more about ourselves. We like costumes, cross-dressing, and saving imaginary animals in peril...for a start...

Sorry, once again, my technologically odd skills come to light. Please copy and paste in your browser window. Merci.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcCrgIleqkQ

Too hard to whistle...

2010-03-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

It is jaw-dropping news to my sisters that I have become more fastidious the older that I become. This blossoming skill of mine is also in direct contradiction to the life-purpose of my children. Still, I try my best to maintain some sort of cleaning regime within the chaos and grunge these littles exude. I found a new "eco-cleaner" at the store, which is hard to do here in Glasgow. It not only smelled nicely, but when I started to use it today I found that it was working, very, very well! Happy Saturday to me!

It is a sign of a good debater to be able to argue the opposing side's view as well as your own. (The kids are excellent debaters. Excellent.) With this in mind, I changed my cleaning viewpoint and sat at the dining table in G's spot. With my new cleaner in my new cleaning spot, I was happy to wash the table. It was then that I discovered that the rental agency's table did not have marks and mars organic to the wood and giving it character. No. No. It was all grime that I just couldn't see from my standard cleaning angle. I was working too hard to swallow a spoonful of sugar or whistle while I worked... Where is the young Julie Andrews and her special effects crew when I need her?

boys are smelly

2010-03-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

Costume changes are imperative for G. In fact, the wildness of her outfits is in direct proportion to how late I am and how potty trained she is. I was running late and needed her to be reliably potty trained. Therefore, I allowed her out the door in her brother's underwear, a diaphanous blue tutu, the heart sweatshirt you see above, wellie boots, red knee highs, and the kitty cat hat pictured below. To state the obvious, I was in a hurry and therefore and sadly, I don't have a picture.

We went to C's house for a long playdate. It was G, two boys, a girl and a few mums. G loved chasing the two boys for a while. They played all the games she understood from her older brother: Crashing cars, chase and tackle, jump on the bed, build/crash tall towers. Then, the boys had to use the potty. From the sound of things and without being graphic, the boys had a lot of boy type of fun in the bathroom. Amid this fun, G came down stairs in her outfit. She looked deeply into my eyes. She wondered if I would handle this information she was about to impart. She said, "Boys are smelly." The mums laughed. I said, "Hm." She then said, "I don't like boys. Not at all." I said, "I think boys are fine. M is a boy." She sighed a sigh of exasperation, pointed to the raucous potty-goers upstairs, "These are boys. They are smelly. M is not a boy. He is my brother." Then one mum said, "I'm sorry G, but boys will be smelly for the rest of your life." G replied, "But I don't like them today." She proceeded to list the boys she did like, "I like M. I like Papa. I like UDP. I like UB. I like....I like them WHEN they are not smelly." All of the boys in her rather long list were in her family, immediate and extended. That's right, you only have to tolerate someone if they are in your family and only if they are not too smelly. After we mums received our lecture on who G liked and did not like and why, she went to play "dinosaurs attack barbie land" with the girl in the group who became distressed when a triceratops ate barbie's head, but soon got with the decidedly boisterous and destructive and not smelly program. Thankfully, G was indeed reliably potty loving the whole morning.

Grandma Borst

2010-03-21T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you a secret. I know exactly how old my grandmother is. I overheard the conversation between my son and herself. It went as follows:
Maddox: "How old are you exactly?"
GB: "Older than you that's for sure."
M:"How old is that? Have you goned to the elementary school?"
GB:"That's for me to remember and you to find out."
M: "I'm taller than you now. I growed up a lot since Minnesota."
GB: "Everybody's taller than me now."
My grandmother is not a liar. She is diminutive, though she's not admitted it to anyone but my son.

In this age, when my Grandma is old enough for her to remember and us to find out, I've had the privilege of knowing her in a different way. She has an intermittent dementia that is unpredictable as well. Today I called her as I do most weeks and found her lucid, perky, the grandmother I knew 10 years ago. I told her a joke I learned from a woman from County Cork where her dad and grandfather grew up. We laughed. She said, "You know your mother worries about you in Glasgow a lot. I tell her not to worry about a thing. You do just fine and you're funny too."

While we all know that Grandma might mean "funny" as in, "She's got a great sense of humor," or "funny" as in "Sweet Lord, protect her," I like that regardless of how funny I am, when she knows me she has complete faith in me. It is a skill I hope to acquire soon in regards to my own funny children.

oversized part deux

2010-03-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

Bug lost his school shoes. They had race cars hidden in the soles. They were prized possessions. We looked everywhere. Found nothing. I bought new shoes for him. Over the internet. He tried them on and said, "Mama! I'm so pleased! These are just the right size. You did it again!" All punctuation and wording is accurate. We live in Great Britain and children do say "pleased." I can't bear to post a picture. You can hear about my oversized adventures, but you can't see them anymore....

Salty and Sweet

2010-03-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

First, you must know these four things about G. 1)Food is a serious occasion for G. 2)She dresses for the occasion, sometimes she even changes during a meal, a few times. 3)She prefers not to be interrupted. 4) She closes her eyes and chews when she's tasting a new food and has done this ever since her first bite of real food, banana. When I described how the banana tasted, she looked at me like I was a co-conspirator who understood how great food is.

You must also know that I trained parents to describe the world about their hard-of-hearing and deaf children with as much detail as they could muster. "Food" isn't just "yummy." Cheerios are crunchy and sweet and smell like Midwestern fields after a rain and remind me of my childhood and calm me down when I feel grumpy. I have raised both of my kids talking like a maniac to them until they started to talk like a maniac back to me. This outcome is great. They have large and fun vocabularies and they are not afraid to use the words they've discovered.

This outcome is also embarrassing. G and I were walking alongside a group of carpenters working on a house. The air was cool, the sun was out, our noses were running. G started to lick her snot. I said, "Ew. G. I don't think boogars taste very good. Let's get a tissue." She says, "Naw. Salty and sweet. Perfect." To which, the Glaswegians double-over laughing and gargling the words "salty and sweet" in their thick and lovely accents.

Oversized

2010-03-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

I buy and I request oversized clothing for my kids. I do so for a number of reasons. As many of you know, I don't do much without solid reasoning, even if it's reasoning that's deemed eccentric by other standards. So, according to my "at least 5 reasons rule," here are six reasons for bigger clothing: 1)It is pragmatic. A coat too big might just last an additional year or even two. 2) The kids seem little in bigger clothing. I don't have to come to grips every day that this time in my life with these littles is truly fleeting. I mean, really, I can't just hug and giggle with them alll day long. We've got to get out the door and denial is a helpful and under-rated tool. 3) It's easier to ask and shop for bigger clothing. If a gift from a loved one doesn't fit now, it will surely fit later. No need to worry about trans-atlantic returns. 4) Larger clothing is protective. G trips, skids on the macadam, but the only thing threatened in her puffer coat are duck feathers that have already been plucked. 5) Bigger clothing is warmer. More body parts are covered, which is helpful when mittens are frequently refused, misplaced, or gnawed on in defiance. 6) Bigger clothing makes room for appropriate layering. Warmth is key in the wet moorlands.

Lately, I've been thinking it's time for me to stop. The kids always look a little extra out-of-sorts floating around in their clothes and Bug said to me the other day when I bought a pair of wellies in the right size, "Hey, good job Mum! These actually fit!" Sigh. It is a low-day in mothering when your son chooses to opt for the "positive re-enforcement" route regarding parental rearing. He's been waiting 5 years to say something like that. What a patient soul...

Delightfully Odd

2010-03-07T11:28:00.001-08:00

When I was 18, my family got a dog. A black and white dog and while searching for a name for this adored and now missed pup, I thought it funny to call him "Red." Instead, they called him "Cooper." My mom only got my "Red" joke about 2 years later, but that didn't surprise me. Most people don't think I'm funny until about two years after I crack a joke. Until then, they think I'm delightfully odd. I know this off-kilter way I see the world is in the air or in the gene pool or in the food or something that I share with my kids. Maybe our toothbrushes? Still, I'm shocked when I'm greeted in the shower with a life-like rubber snake G has named "Fluffy."

We also have a stuffed sheep named "Fang" and a great white shark named "Cable." (Yes, Cable was too important to leave in Seattle. He's got Scottish mold growing in his tummy just now though. Poor Cable.) Our bee's name is just "Bee" but the bee is logarithmically bigger than an actual bee on an order of 10 I'd guess, so I cut "Bee" some slack for being called by his common name. The parasopholus in the picture below is named "Dead." I thought at first that G had mastered the meaning behind extinct and I would say, "Yes, dinosaurs are dead. They are extinct. Smart girl..." And she, reliably, would say, "No. Dinosaur Dead. This name Dead. Dead." The dinosaur would then be referred to by the name "Dead. I want Dead!" and I would bring, say, a triceratops, and she would begin a tantrum of the 2year and 7 month old variety coupled with shrieking of her own personal variety, "DEAD! DEAD! Please Mama! DEAD!" I'd ask "Ed?" and she'd literally give up on me, flop to the floor in exhausted rage, "Dead. I want my Dead." I then would feel quite pathetic that I couldn't just "go with it" and retrieve Dead from a forgotten bed of dustbunnies. Don't argue or question and don't ask her why she doesn't play with frothy pink things. I don't know, she doesn't know, and the parasopholus' name is "Dead."

The goggles are "doggles" and my toothbrush is just my toothbrush, but it is a communal toothbrush. I should warn you, if you visit and leave your toothbrush out, it will be used by everyone under hip height. So, in effect, you will also be using my toothbrush and M's and the littles'. It is all love in our casita. These are just the things the littles (G on this particular night) leave in their wake, placed just so, after a nighttime shower. I took a picture to prove that I'm not the only delightfully odd one here, and to prove that my kids have surpassed me in every way, as they should. They are delightfully odder.

Ohs, Socrates?

2010-02-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

I've written before about the little words that kids say to communicate before they have the real thing. I love those words. Those words are just so very genuine and passionate and often much better at expressing just what needs to be said than the properly defined and executed dictionary version. G is right at that age when these kinds of words are pouring out of her. Too fast for me to keep up. The one that I can document is her interrogative, "Ohs?" It is used as a general interrogative word. For example:

"Ohs Mama?" as in today at the park when she could hear me and couldn't see me. "WHERE's Mama?"

"Ohs? Mama?" as in "WHAT on God's green earth are you doing now Mama?"

"Ohs? Lollipop!" as in "WHEN are you going to give me the lollipop you promised but keep forgetting to give me?"

"Ohs! Mama help!" as in, "HOW do I put underpants on over my purple tights, green velour pants, and diaper while wearing a bear hat and eating a chocolate cupcake? Help me! Hellllp me!"

Even yesterday, G asked, "Ohs Mama?" as in, "WHY on earth are you my mother? I really don't get your need to prevent me from experimenting with icy puddles when it is below zero, heights greater than my body length, and gravity in a free fall - not to mention your insistence on keeping a coat on during most of these events. You are such a drag."

Sometimes I wonder myself, "Ohs Mama?" Why indeed am I their mother? I put my University degrees to good use and pull out the Ancient Philosophers trick from my mommy-pocket of wisdom. Ancient Philosophers are the only things that seem to give my children pause of late. I replied to her, "An unexamined life is not worth living."

G's answer to this is to reply, "'xamine. Yah." Then, she sucked her fingers, cuddled with her fifi, and revisited the frozen puddle dread.

I told you, I can only hope for my children to pause these days...

Surf

2010-02-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

I've always said that Bug is a surf-n-turf kinda kid. Outside is best. Water or land doesn't matter. We've started swimming lessons mostly to have something to do during the dark winters here and it's been fun/funny. Up until recently, "swimming" meant "flail all limbs in the water while talking until the teacher chucks you forward 3 ft and says good job."

A teacher told him that he might swim better if he just stopped talking. He said, "Great idea! I'll try it." I asked how it was going, not talking in the pool. He said, "Fine, but the teachers aren't learning anything about aquatic life." Yes, my son says words like, "aquatic."

The swimming actually has gone better since the recommendation.

Chuffed is a British word essentially meaning proud. He received a 10m "swimming" badge this past session. He's quite chuffed indeed. Check out how he looks back at Nana/the camera when he catches her watching him swim below. I never knew hams could swim.

Gossip

2010-02-23T05:26:00.000-08:00

My husband is in Korea and Tiger Woods' transgressions are on the front page. Even here in stuffy Britain where the slander laws make it more difficult to print gossip, Tiger Woods was on the front page. Sigh. Let me be very clear. Tiger Woods' life is not "news." His life is not even "sportsy-newsie-kinda?-maybe?" It is gossip and if his life is going to take up even an ounce of my life as I try to find the news in the newspaper that is filled with his gossip, I feel obliged to offer what I would prefer to weed thru instead. I am, afterall, not above bringing solutions to problems like Tiger Woods' gossip in a newspaper. I would like a journalist to celebrate someone like my husband in their newspaper that is filled with gossip. Please permit me to gossip about my husband:

I find him to be good-looking. At least, better looking that Tiger, though I do know that to be personal opinion. He is, surely, handsome enough for the front-page of a newspaper that prints gossip.

When he's not working overseas, he comes home every night. He doesn't find excuses not to come home even on days when we're all in terrible moods. He comes home. Every night. The first question out of his mouth is, "How can I help?" He gets that parenting is 24/7 and he's still a dad even though his work day is done.

He is a fun guy to try new things with. He likes exploring. He is a safe person with whom to learn. He does not lose his temper or crash cars. I am proud that he does not make an obscene amount of cash swinging long sticks in the air.

He has found his family in every storm in which we've been lost - real, imagined, or existential in nature. He can multi-task better than I can as he often has time to take a picture during such storms.

He's a helpful sort. He tries to find a way to balance all of our needs. He catches us when we slip.

He is a good giver of piggy-back-rides.

He never lets us fall.

It's easy to do absolutely nothing much with him.

He shares his triumphs and his defeats with us. He's not chicken to own up to exactly who he is. He doesn't need a press conference, cameras, or threats of lost sponsorship or a lost marriage or lost relationships with his children to confess his faults.

He lets us hang on to him when our moods are questionable.

He not only loves his kids, but he likes them. He takes the time to find out their individual interests and follows their leads. He listens. He knows who they are without my mediation. He is patient and even puts together telescopes when suffering from jetlag. Bad days at work are not bad days at home. Hear that, Tiger? Print that, "journalist."

He is not perfect. Cooking, for example, is still a skill he's developing. If he's "cooked dinner," he has fried it, deeply, for a very long and crispy time. He also recently brought home a two weeks' supply of "organic hummus" that will go bad within two days of purchase and because it is "organic hummus" it also cost 3 times as much as the regular hummus. But, I prefer to end on a good note. We have an extensive network of family and friends who are fathers and husbands like he is. Their lives look different to ours on first glance. But you will find that they all love and like their families and their spouses. They come home. Pitch in. Show patience where maybe none is due. Please help me celebrate those good daddies and husbands. Give them a squeeze and a thanks. Make them feel newsworthy.

Why I envy my daughter...

2010-02-16T11:09:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I like living in Glasgow, is that I get to read The Guardian every Saturday. Every Saturday! I get to hold that paper in my hands! Well, I like it most Saturdays. On the 6th of this month, Anouchka Grose wrote why she envied her daughter, "...now that she is nine and already looks extremely elegant in skinny jeans, crisp white blouses and my hat and silk scarves, I begin to see what Snow White's stepmother was on about." Also, this daughter envy is apparently a familial trait in Ms. Grose's world. Ms. Grose "took care not to compete with her glamorous mother." I am still sick to my stomach. Why aren't you? As a whisper against the gales of women (and The Guardian!?) supporting a shallow valuation of my gender, I offer why I am envious of my daughter and it is not because she has "no open pores, laughter lines, or blackheads."

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. She loves completely and without question, whether she's wearing pink goggles outside of the pool on a midwinter's day or not.

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. She trusts that her loved ones will return. She has faith that we will all come around and finally understand her. She has patience until we do.

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. She is not afraid to cry or feel much of any emotion for that matter. She will feel what she wants, when she wants, however she wants. Be it in the middle of the woods, the glossy floor of a grocery store, or at 3:32 in the morning. She is not afraid of her emotions.

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. She is curious. She touches snails, slips on beach rocks, tastes sand.

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. She trusts her body to jump and twirl and wiggle. She does not need schooling or official education or money spent on some class to call herself a dancer or singer or painter. She is all of those things exactly when she wants to be those things.

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. Wide green spaces call out to her and she listens. Even if there is a cliff dropping to the Sound of Raasay just a few steps away, she runs or tumbles or skips when the green space asks her too.

I envy my daughter because of her fearless nature. She rolls up her sleeves, tries again, shares seaweed with anyone and anything deserving.

For the record, it is not fair to call someone out without leaving your name. I am Jennifer Philpott. I live in Glasgow. I do not have a "great body." But, I am beginning to like my open pores, my laughter lines, my blackheads, my stretchmarks, my pouchie tummy, my scars, my hips, my toes with toe fungus, my tired-shot eyes, my questionable hair, my sagging chin. Gosh, the list continues and is really far too boring and self-absorbed to continue. I also have a list of my personality faults and one of them is that I am not as fearless as my daughter.

But I like my faults because they show that I have lived on this earth. I like them because they show that my body and my heart does everything I ask them to do. I recover from surgery, late nights, and childbirth. I have held and comforted my children, my husband, my dear friends. I have mourned quietly on the way to work with the sun rising and danced oh-so-silly at every wedding I've been invited to, because, duh, it's a wedding! I have traveled over seas and lived on mountains. I hope I am raising my daughter not to envy others' looks, but to relish her own flaws. I'm looking forward to our next day on the beach. Please join us, if you leave your envy in the car.

A Lion's Tale

2010-02-12T04:45:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to teach my children to handle life's highs and lows the way that I do best. Curl up with a good book, get lost in its pages, take a nap, wake, try again. As usual, my kids apply their own twist to the lessons I try to bestow from my pocket of mommy-wisdom. How should one handle the sadness of Nana leaving after two weeks of goodness? Well, not with a book. Or a nap. One must curl up in a lion's costume and take great joy in the softness of its tail. Did I remember to tell you how very small and lint-filled my pocket of mommy-wisdom is?

...at the carwash

2010-01-30T03:23:00.000-08:00

My kids question my parenting abilities on an hourly basis. I've asked them to bring a curious eye to the world and they do as I've told, even with me. Most times it gets on my nerves, like when G prefers a cuddle from another mum at our playgroup or when Bug asks for permission from another mum on the playground when he knows I'll say no. But sometimes, the benefit of my parenting style shines through. The other day, we went to clean the car before Nana's visit. We vacuumed the car, ate vegan Pringle's while waiting in the que for the carwash, vacuumed the car again and then actually washed the car. When I finally drove the car into the carwash, G was terrified. By "terrified," I mean eye-popping, soul-questioning, body-shaking terrified.

She could find no relief or comfort despite her cries for help as I was strapped in the front, she was strapped in the back and we had school bags and a sea of detritus of 2 kids between us. Bug stepped in. "Here G, hold my hand. These are just giant washcloths cleaning off the mud. When you get muddy you go in the shower. When the car gets muddy, it needs to go into a big shower with lots of fluffy rollers and soap. It's okay. We can hide under my coat." They did so and peeked from the corners of his hood and he whispered comforts I could not. Bug then said, "Mum, could you move a bit. It's time to explain that the driers are coming and we can't see around your big head." I tried to chime in, but then I realized he was doing a much better job at parenting and I shut up and listened.

Intrauterine Cannibals

2010-01-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

My kids have a fascination with facts. They love to read encyclopedias as much as they like a good story. Lately, I bring a deck of "Ocean Animal" fact cards with me when we need to wait somewhere. Uncle B and Auntie Mae gave us these cards a while ago and the kids love them. The deck of cards has a pic of each animal and a fact about that animal.

Picture this. M is away at the annual laser dude conference in SF. I am waiting with the kids in a coffee shop for the traffic to subside as well as the pain from a debilitating bout with sinusitis. My patience is low, but I'm not crabby. Just worn out. First I read this card to the children, "Some sea slugs are carnivorous predators who bore holes in their prey and suck out the internal organs." We all take this in stride. The kids and I have heard this before, meat eating, organ sucking sea slugs are a matter of course in the world of facts. Then I get the next card and it says, "Great White Shark babies are interuterine cannibals. An unborn shark will actually eat its unborn brothers and sisters." Bug takes a slow breath in, puts on his thinking face much like the one above, and says, "Well. I don't do that. I don't like G taking my toys. But I don't eat her or anything. She bites me, but only because she hasn't learned to swear yet."

A few points of interest:
1)He says this as if he has bored holes in prey and sucked out their organs, but has never eaten a sibling. Both of which, in fact, he has never done. Yet. Also, new foods and new methods of eating are out due to his anaphylaxis. So, I have proof.
2) I must interject that the entire cafe clientele is laughing. Hysterically. Out loud. With tears in their eyes. Ah, yes. Thank you Uncle B and Auntie Mae for the gift that keeps on giving.
3) I also need to clarify that I laugh with my friends that I wish G would learn to swear as it's more sanitary than biting. Neither of my kids swear or really understand what I mean by the word "swear." Yet.

Out of the mouths of babes that aren't intrauterine cannibals...

if you've got five minutes

2010-01-12T14:31:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxrUsZqHSfA

get a cup of coffee and enjoy the ride...

a boy and his truck

2010-01-12T13:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZeWaulWjdc

"A boy and his puppy" is usually the catch phrase. Well, phthehthfhthth on that. View the video above. Tis my son and his newest birthday and beloved possession. Whatever will Saturday bring? I must say, you will have to copy/paste it...sorry...I'm terrible at this kinda stuff....

Snow Doggles

2010-01-08T05:02:00.000-08:00

Christmas

2009-12-26T00:42:00.000-08:00

First, these pictures were taken a few days before Christmas when the snow fell. She's waiting for Bug to return, as are her stuffies.

This picture is of her recognition that Bug has not returned with M and is at a playdate. A bit bewildered. A little let down. Bug is the center of her world, and I don't blame her. He's a great guy.

Here, she has decided that M returning is good news, even if it's not with Bug. She's giving him a thumb's up anyway. She's yelling at M, "It's okay! It's okay!" As in, it's okay you didn't bring Bug home with you.

Christmas can best be summed up in the folllowing: G's favorite gift was not the handmade garden playmat complete with a house and little girl. It was not the cool clothes from any of the relatives. It was not the wooden bulldozer from Bug. Her favorite gift was from Nana and Bopa in Arizona, consisting of two plastic lizards that she's named Shiner and Junior.

Doggles

2009-12-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

G calls these "doggles" and again, I don't correct her. The correction will come soon enough and I think we will call them doggles from now own. The kids like to wear their doggles all the time when they aren't swimming. The chlorine is heavy in the pool where Bug takes swimming lessons. So, they do ask to them to wear doggles. I feel a bit of the grumpy old mum about this, "When I was your age, I never wore doggles. Never! For three hours in a pool! An olympic sized pool where I swam with your Aunties! I swam up hill in the snow both ways for three hours without doggles!" Bug is at the age where he moves every limb all the time and still goes nowhere in the pool. Every so often his teachers throw him forward about 3 feet and say Good Job! One told him yesterday that most people don't talk when they are trying to take a breath with the front crawl. He said, "Great! I'll try it!" It's not helped just yet. Early days you know. In other news, the center of G's world is Bug, just in case you didn't notice and Bug is happy for the friendship...

Lion Head

2009-12-14T15:36:00.000-08:00

I thought that Maddox will ask for a mohawk or to grow it long and dye it pink. I thought that this request for statement hair would be at least a decade away. Not so. As usual, my kids outpace my expectations in interesting ways. He likes lion's hair. Leave it to him to find a non-conformist non-conformist's statement hairstyle. Mohawks are so eighties and they don't come with sound affects like a lion's roar which I daresay is audible in the picture below.

The Jesus Cut

2009-12-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

As you may recall, G had hair like this for a few months. This was after the preceeding year-long struggle with barrettes and ponies and headbands and placement of said hair accessories. You may think she's pulling the long face because of her hair, but really she's pulling a long face because the train conductor wanted to actually see the ticket in her hand. Like I'm going to give my young kids' life over to a life of short-changing the public transport system...but I digress as usual. A few weeks ago, G pulled out one of her hair elastic bands and also pulled out a disturbingly large clump of one of her ponytails with it. The baby hair was so fine that it didn't hurt G, but Bug and I were home and we both gasped. Then we were amazed that there was indeed a bald spot and there was indeed a noticeably bizarre difference in her ponytail heft when we tried to remake the ponytails to cover the bald spot. It was Sunday night. I had just spent too much money on a haircut that was questionable of my own so I thought, I'll cut it myself. G sat nicely on the kitchen counter, I replaced her lollipops when they became intolerably hairy and below is what we got...

I find it to be a sweet little girl's bob with fringe as they call it here. Bangs in the States. A woman in our toddler group, from Sweden no less, thinks it is a chic French bob! It does make a perfect nest for a wild animal or 2 or 3 or even 7. Come to think of it, yes,I'm sure there is room for 7 sparrows some mornings. But when I was finished with cutting her hair, Bug came in the room and said, "Oh, she looks just like Jesus!"

Now, we do have friends and family with so many beliefs reading this blog, but I think I can say this for sure. No matter who you find Jesus to be for yourself, and even if you believe there is a bit of Jesus in all of us, I don't think Jesus ever looked like a 2 1/2 year old girl with sparrows in her hair and pink heart jammies...Just a guess though. Despite these theological musings, I really am not sure if this statement is a compliment or further proof that Bug is indeed in a world all his own.

Gifties

2009-12-06T03:13:00.000-08:00

I don't buy my kids a lot of stuff. Di has said on more than one occasion that if she were my child she would probably throw more tantrums because of the lack of toys. My mom thinks it is in character with my delightfully odd self and mummies from our new school comment on my relatively spartan collection. We've moved from the States and had to abandon a lot of our beloveds with friends and charities. More than the hassle of moving toys that may or may not be loved now or in the future or in the past, more than the financial and political implications of buying toys, I don't buy toys precisely because of the early mornings at our house. This morning, my son and I talked about the Spiderman jammies he was wearing from Mimi, G wore jammies from Nana, a handwoven scarf from Grandma Linda became a pirate sash over a pirate shirt from UB, Lightning McQueen from Zizi flew on a plane picked out by Bucka to bowl of oatmeal. A cloth from the Netherlands, which is usually a cape, became a hotel for the cars collection from Bopa, and a horse from the Darwins became a guardian horse of a polar bear from Mae and blocks from Grandpa George. We practised math in workbooks from Phoxie and cuddled under a blanket made by C-9 while reading about dinosaurs in a book from UDP. When I do give them things, like the glow-in-the-dark Dudolph noses and antler sets, they ask, "Who gave us these?" I say, "I did." They say, "Why?" I say,"Because I thought you'd like them," and then my son says, "Oh. You know these noses are plastic." I say, "Yes, but I decided to lighten up a little bit." He says, "Oh." I ask, "Do you like them?" He says, "Yes, but I like them more from someone." So, A) I am left wondering if I am "someone" in his eyes and B) That's why I don't get my kids a lot of stuff. We are surrounded by friends and family from far away and everything we use has a story about someone (preferably not me).

Uncles

2009-11-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

UDP is a fly fisherman. He whistles and clicks at my sister Zizi to get her attention when they are wading the waterways so as not to scare the fish. Apparently he also clicks and whistles at Zizi at other times too. Bug and G have taken to clicking and whistling to get my attention when I am pre-occupied and often when I'm not. It's starting to annoy me. Today I asked Bug, "Why do you click at me? I don't like it." Bug says, "UDP is important. He goes like this to Zizi (insert click and whistle noises) to get her attention when she is ignoring his importance."

In Ordinary Time

2009-11-22T03:07:00.000-08:00

I miss Mr. Rogers. I know I am more the person I want to be because I watched Mr. Rogers growing up. Today, G was sick with the start of the 3-day tummy virus that Bug had earlier this week. All mid-move. We've already watched the BBC i/player dinosaur shows more times than I can count on all my digits and this in-and-of itself is somewhat vomit inducing. So, to perform a differential diagnosis, I found our Mr. Rogers on dvd to see if I was catching the virus or if it was just too many dinosaurs for this mama. We sat and watched as G fell asleep on my lap. Thankfully I was just sick of dinosaurs. But the time reminded me of all the sitting I did right after the kids were born. Everything gets numb, but I didn't mind because there was a brand new person snoozing on my lap.

Mr. Rogers had Wynton Marsalis on as a guest. What I liked best wasn't that there was this amazing musician on television talking with this amazing man and I got to watch. What I liked was how these two lovely people celebrated the ordinary. Mr. Marsalis showed how it was to play the trumpet with different emotions we all feel. Mr. Rogers talked about the daily practice it takes to be a good musician and a good person. Handy Man came to join the band and played. Handy Man wasn't the greatest, but offered something Mr. Marsalis respected -bringing one's whole and ordinary self to the party is all that's needed.

I believe that people have a world of options at their disposal. A person could become Wynton or president or the NEXT AMERICAN IDOL! It's especially tempting being American. Really, it is a fundamental in my belief system that anyone could become GREAT. G loves hats lately. She could become the next great MILLINER to put hats back on the map! Or, she could be a little girl that just really likes hats and brings all of her ordinary self to each day and dare I say appropriately dressed for the occasion of waking?

Catchoomee

2009-11-20T12:03:00.000-08:00

My heart cracks with joyness every day. Joyness is my personal word for that mix of joy and sadness. You've heard it from me before, joy that the kids are growing up and sadness that it goes so quickly. We've moved due to the hubristic financial errors of our previous landlords and I never got a video of G sliding down those stairs. (Que rhythmic thumping sound, then see a bright-eyed girl traversing the long stairs on her bottom as if from no-where.) I know it won't last long and I know it really shouldn't last long. It seems almost too fast to capture, but I need to try and bottle these times as they make for great pick-me-ups when the sadness gets just a wee too big. Write a silly blog seems to be my answer. Anyhow, speaking of personal words, G has a phrase that means, "Let's play chase and tickle." It is "catchoomee." Which means "Catch you, me!" Which means, "Play catch-you with me!" Which means, "If you don't play catch with me, I will reign the morning with screeching terror." She is not yet a benevolent ruler, though she loves the hat/crown wearing aspect of it all.

Banana Brain

2009-11-17T13:10:00.000-08:00

I really need to remind myself to slow down and get on the Love Bug train every so often. It really is an eye-opening pleasure. Tonight, in the tub, he was quiet and lying on his back. His ears were covered by water and a plastic cow was rising and falling on his tummy in time with his breath. He then said, "My last name is Philpott." I didn't go on and on and talk and talk and fill him with more information on his last name and families and marriage and adult blech. Instead I just listened. He breathed a little more in the quiet and said, "God's last name is Heaven." So, I couldn't shut up at this point and I said, "Heaven?" Bug, "Yes, Heaven. God of Heaven. Of is His middle name and Heaven is his last name. He got married and so it's got that little, little, uhm that little line He is God of Heaven and Earth." I'm so stunned that he has a rudimentary knowledge of women's lib and marriage that I'm not laughing. I'm just wondering the extent of his knowledge of women's last names. So, I just ask, "What's G's last name?" He says, "Well, she's sort of silly so her last name is Banana Brain."

team crazy

2009-11-15T05:29:00.000-08:00

I often laugh that I call my children "Team Crazy" or "Team Bonkers," but really, I know that they aren't. For example, this weekend we were at Mugdock Park. Castles, vast expanses of Scottish landscape, people who hire people to hire people to ride their horses... One of these people parked in a dis-abled parking spot and hopped out of her road beast. She saw me do a double take, and tried to calm my apparently worried expression by opening the back hatch of her sparkling off-road-abled vehicle, getting her dogs out, and saying brightly, "Oh, one of my pointers has hurt the pad of her foot!" So, I've concluded that my children need a better team name, like "Team Energetic" or "Team Super Happy Except When Mercurial Core Values Are Maybe Threatened" or maybe just "Team Love."

Rhinos and Hunnybears oh my!

2009-11-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

What's there to say? The Hunnybear danced and the Rhino's ears did not fall off. No one had a life-threatening allergic reaction and they all went to bed easily despite the sugar I deliberately pumped into them because it was Halloween. At the rate we're growing, we've only got a few years of full-on sugar night hallween's left. So, I indulged my mommy-self and let them eat candy! Thanks to the dear classmates and neighbors that helped with the reaction-free night!

Preparation

2009-11-05T02:15:00.000-08:00

I was prepared for many things about parenthood before I actually became a parent. As a professional, I worked with children and families, often very stressed-out families, for 10 years prior to having my own children. If you count my work at the Family Y and training to be an early intervention specialist, then the number goes up to about 20 years. I knew if I had a boy I would need to survive snot, puke, and fart jokes of a particular kind that girls just really don't do. I knew about temper tantrums. I knew that parenting would be hard in unpredictable ways. I knew I would be surprised.

I was NOT prepared for my son to be about five paces ahead of me yesterday, strike a very grown-up-boys-club pose with his hands on his hips and his head cocked just so, spit a loogie into a puddle and shout, "Hey, Mama! Are you coming or what?" Who taught him this? Why? M says not to worry. He is learning the playground rules and they are preparing him well.

Thank you, sir.

2009-10-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

My Dad brought me up to say, "Yes, sir." He taught me to be particularly polite. To everyone. It is so ingrained in me, it is a knee-jerk reaction and one that I'm proudly teaching my children. When they are old enough to talk, I ask them to say, "Thank you, sir." Or, "Yes, miss." Once, when I was younger and didn't understand the difference between Miss and Ma'am, I requested an old lady that smelled of violets to ,"Excuse me, miss" in the grocery store. She was so happy and twittered that she hadn't been called "Miss" in decades.

The longer I'm here, the less annoying the surprising differences between cultures seem to be. But, the longer I'm here, the more proud I am of being an American, because the differences really matter to me. I like that people are shocked when I ask my children to say "Yes, sir." It is polite and shows an immediate respect for someone because they work hard, too. Here, the word "sir" has a history of wealthy, land-owning, gentlemen who treat others according to a now unspoken hierarchy. So, when you say, "Yes, sir," it is a clear mark that I am American. That we won the war for Independence and that everyone is deserving of respect. If you think I'm over-analyzing, you must visit and have my children say, "Yes, sir," to the guy digging the ditch for sewers and for his patience in explaining what he is doing to my nerve-gratingly curious children. Then, you need to hear the ditch-digger say, "I'm not a sir. I'm a working man." To which I say, "My children will refer to you as sir."

So, the paper guy at the village, I always refer to him as sir. He told me once that he was a "working man." But I still call him sir and he let's it go. I found out today that one of the local papers was giving away free lego sets with each purchase of a paper for two weeks. A different set every day. I went in and bought my second/not-my-usual paper of the day to collect my lego - fun stocking stuffer for both the kids! He asked me about my second paper purchase. I said I had just found out about the give-a-way that very morning. He nodded, went to the back room, fished out the last week's give-a-ways I had missed and said, "There's another week's coming. Buy your paper on Saturday for sure though. There's a larger one coming as a surprise." In my very American way, I said, "Yes, sir." He chuckled at me as usual. Mommy-talk on the playground informs me that he has not done this for everyone. Thank you, sir.

Scotland is Stupid Pretty

2009-10-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Neglected Children

2009-10-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight I made dinner. I swear that I feed and water the children daily. Even hourly, or even every 15 minutes, depending on the day and their moods. Yet, I feel I'm not quite understanding their dietary needs or wants. For example, I made their favorite pasta sauce tonight. They love it. Eat it regularly. I make it knowing that they will most likely finish their plates and ask for more. I make it when I've been a bit too experimental. I am a dictator, but not one without wanting to please my minions. But, I am missing something regarding their diets. Tonight, they came into eat their favorite meal and instead of saying "Yummy pasta!" they said, "OOOOO! BREADSTICKS!"

snooozie Q

2009-10-21T15:29:00.000-07:00

I have said before that I suffer from a touch of insomnia. Everyone has a cure and everything works for a while and then said-cure fades and I've got another bout of insomnia. I have never tried sleeping with a "hunnybear" halloween costume on. It seems to do the trick. I've also always said that I learn loads from my children. Point taken G!

p.s. the mittens were too small. To avoid blue, circulation deprived hands, I removed them while she slept. This move apparently compromised HER TRUE INNER CORE. About 2 hours after I removed them mid-slumber, she woke with a terrified scream. Her paws! Her paws!? Where had her paws gone?!!! No wonder I've got insomnia...

Worry about the mountain...

2009-10-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

An abstract summary of my day is as follows:
Love Bug (who now wants to be referred to as Fizz Wiggle on the blog due to our recent reading of the BFG by dear Mr. Dahl...), embodies some character for most of the day. Here, he is pictured as a five-fingered dinosaur from the Jurassic period. I believe he may be an Hadrosaurus, but I'm usually wrong or late with my guesses as to the names. For example he was an Hadrosaurus, but is now a Megasaurus, but I digress. Fizz Wiggle, in character, is searching out for danger or prey most of the day. Thankfully, all of the meat eaters he becomes do not eat mommies or sisters, and only sometimes devour daddies.

G is usually just hanging out, ready to join in whatever needs to be done as long as HER TRUE INNER CORE is never compromised. In other words, if Fizz Wiggle must become a Hadrosaurus, so be it. She will be a Bifluridan or a leather-winged creature or whatever it is that Fizz Wiggle calls her to be, but DO NOT TAKE HER FOOD. DO NOT WEAR HER CLOTHES. DO NOT TOUCH HER PIGTAILS. DO NOT, well, the list continues and fluctuates as to what defines HER TRUE INNER CORE each day. Usually, there's not much guessing on a per diem basis. If you stumble upon said elements that define HER TRUE INNER CORE that day, you are also hurting - emotionally, physically, psychologically....somehow you are hurting.

I am the outsider. I take the pictures. I record moments in my journal. I write the blog. But these are really just the things I do while I hope that neither of these two shed blood or perform irreversible damage to themselves, others, small animals, or objects of any kind.

You look at these pictures. You look at Fizz Wiggle leaping to show you his pre-reptilian strength. You look at G ready to just roll with it unless he tries to mess with HER TRUE INNER CORE. I'm sure you think, "Ha! Bet you weren't worried about the fence behind these two?" To which I reply, "Yes, I was worried about that fence." Then you roll your eyes and say, "Yes, whatever. Were you worried about the mountain in the distance?"

Yes. I even worried about the well-being of the mountain in the background with these two in the foreground. Poor mountain. Poor, poor mountain.

Squish

2009-10-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

I know something would be terribly wrong if they grew up any slower. Still, every so often, I try to squish them very hard and see if they slow down at all....just even an extra unexpected moment or two might be fun for us all. The Isle of Skye was great. Glad you weren't there though....I got these two cuties plus my husband alllll to myself for a WHOLE week! Better than Santa at Christmas for me!

Waiting

2009-10-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

G sleeps in the car while I look across the inlet to Castle Eilean Donan (pronounced Aylan Doonahn). I can see low clouds curl up from the water in great gossamer licks as they try to climb the time-softened hills.

Of course, Love Bug and M left to explore the castle. When M says things like, "Go wait on that berm," that means for Bug to stand on the berm, see if he can pull a branch off a pine tree, pretend he is a dinosaur guarding the castle, roar at pedestrians just trying to find the path to the coffee shop, throw 3 stones into the water, and pick his nose all in the time it takes M to grab the camera and a windbreaker from the trunk.

I love seeing that there is a moment in our lives when waiting is this incredibly active. Right now, I am waiting to see if we can rent a house while we are here in Scotland. We could fight our current landlords on their questionable reclaiming of the property in the middle of our year-lease. But really, to what end? We don't want a fight. We want to find an easy place to call home for as much of our stay in Scotland as possible. Even if we could stay the duration of our lease, we would be right back in this very spot come April. Yet, this waiting feels slow and inactive and painful. There doesn't seem to be any trees for me to pluck, or rocks to throw, and I've not picked my nose in a long time (believe it or not Dr. Collier...). I could pretend I was a roaring Deinonycos (sp?), but then everyone would be questioning my mental health...Sigh. The woes of being an adult....

I wish I were as good at waiting as my son. But, I'm just not. Maybe I should snooze through it all like G. That's it. A good book and a snooze, I swear it cures all ills.

You yourself will have to wait for pictures post Isle of Skye return...

just over the next hill

2009-10-09T14:53:00.003-07:00

we are off to the isle of skye. i think this picture says why i'm excited to go....

Cool

2009-09-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

This little guy is cool. I mean really cool and level headed and very sure of himself. It is a marvel to watch in such a young person. He handled the "canteen" at school like a pro. He held my hand all the way to school even though most kids don't hold their mamma's hands just because he likes me "more than most." He helps me tidy the house, in exchange for "a bit of telly of course," and he wears his school uniform without a fuss because "it suits" him "just fine."

Goodbye tadpole, hello frog!

the unmade bed

2009-09-23T11:43:00.000-07:00

I used to never make my bed. Like, never. Ever. Never. Never, ever, never was the bed made in Jenna-Jenna Land. Mostly because, if a bed was made, there was no telling who lived there. If my bed wasn't made, well I could tell you exactly who slept there. Me. Who wanted a show-room bed? They smelled funny and felt funny and you could never tell if Goldilocks had broken in and snuck a kip on your spun cotton if your bed was made...

The other day I was showing my parents and Zizi around the new rental house via skype. Last minute, as you does with your parents and sis on skype. We passed by my bed unmade and they laughed, "Nothing new." I laughed and said, "No, no. I make my bed now. It's been 20 years since I lived at home. It's just that G woke up from her nap before you called." There was a pause. Ah, yes. 20 years had passed. The truth is that as I've gotten older, I make my bed. The rest of the world seems so disorderly that a bed well-made with the weight of worn flannel sheets on an Autumn night is better than heaven. The other truth is that in those 20 years of becoming increasingly in need of order, I've also given birth to two very busy children. I need some order woven between the oatmeal stuck on my jeans and the playdough ground into my carpet. So, I make my bed in the mornings.

Then I put Maddox in my bed at night,

And Gigi in my bed in the afternoon because their smell is left in the creases and folds of my sheets. When I crawl into my bed unmade by their youth, I can smell them as distinctly as when I first held them and rested.

book club

2009-09-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

I went to this book club last night and I was the youngest at the club. The oldest, Joyce, was 8 years old when WWII started. They were in Yorkshire and housed a Jewish intellectual who was smuggled out just before Germany began to use incinerators under the Nazi government. The intellectual had lost his family. All of them. Everyone. He was pro-war. Her father, a pacifist. They were housed under the same small roof and shared a deep friendship with each other. I think they must have had an understanding about the skill of debate that contemporary society has lost. Debate is an art to be practiced amongst friends, rather than a war to be won against enemies. I like living here because I didn't stumble into stories like this in the States. I like that I easily find friends of all generations and that they like how I listen. No pictures today. I'm hoping this entry finds you with pictures of memories floating in your heads and thankful for your friends and their stories.

flow chart

2009-09-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

When M goes for work, I lose sleep. A lot of sleep. I just don't sleep well. It's gotten better within the last two years, but I still really get affected by a lack of sleep. I get spacey and a little dingie in the brain without it. Sleep and a good book is my prescription to cure all ills. So, Matt is away this week and last night the kids were being particularly kid-like. The dinner, bath, bed routine is a wild one in any household and particularly wild in my household as my son likes to pretend he is a different animal every 10 minutes throughout the course of the evening. He began last night as a t-rex that likes to swim and became giraffe without dairy allergies, a real pretend baby seal not caught by poachers, a moose, a mongoose, a monkey-type-lemur that is undiscovered yet on a tropical island near Scotland, and an otter that likes vegan chocolate. Identity changes in the matter of a second. If I don't keep up, well, that throws the whole evening off. DUH. G followed suit and squaked and barked and howled and chirped as needed. Well, except for the lemur bit. She wanted to be a tucan and said, "No. Want to. G tucan. Tucan." and flew off by flapping her arms and flapped a bit too hard and slipped and hit her head and howled.

I am so sleep deprived that by the time I corraled the howling and squaking children up to brush their teeth I thought, "How could these evenings go more smoothly?" Then, I thought, "an accountability flow chart." Then, I daydreamed about all the flow charts I had seen when I worked at the hospitals and schools and then the children became killer whales while wrestling with their blankets on the floor and toothpaste and boogars were smudged everywhere. Then I thought maybe I just need some sleep.

I am silly

2009-09-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

When I say things like, "G, let's wipe the peanut butter off your cheeks," she rolls her eyes and says, "Silly Mama." Or when I say, "Your wellies are on the wrong feet, " again the eyes and the grin and she says, "Silly Mama." But I don't think I'm that silly until

I travel with my husband and kids to London for the weekend and I get grumpy. The trainstation doesn't have a garbage can. That's why Glasgow is so messy and dirty and littered compared to other cities we've lived in. There aren't any garbage cans, EVEN at the train station. No one knows how to use the garbage cans that are out because they're not available in the most public an used places, THE TRAIN STATION. And get huffy and puffy and grumpy and all certain I've solved this social ill until

Matt says that people put bombs in garbage cans. Oh yes. Now I get it and he's not exaggerating. They do. Not in Glasgow, but that's because Glasgow doesn't have garbage cans at the train station to put their bombs in...and so I think it is good to travel and try new things if only because it reminds me that my silly little corner of the earth in my brain is not the only corner of the earth that is right. I am so thankful I am here and with my family that loves me and in a safe place to learn how very silly I am.