It's Come Down to This

    My two youngest children absolutely love to remove the contents of any box, basket or drawer. Caelan is by far the worst (or most talented) at doing this. It's been a daily battle for months to keep all her clothes in her drawers. She is the fashion show queen and enjoys multiple changes a day. I, on the otherhand, have somewhere along the way lost my amusement with this pastime. This last Monday, Keith took one of her drawers out of her dresser and took it down to a restoration center. The dresser itself quite old and has keyholes in each drawer. And they had a key that fit the drawers! Ha! And the key fits all the other drawers, too. Ha, ha, ha!
   Tuesday morning, I heard the confused wail. "I can't open my drawers! It's stuuuuuck." I tried to hold back my smug grin, really I did. Every day since has been so nice. I've had less laundry, fewer minutes of my day spent picking clothes off the floor. I've been motivated to actually put her clothes in the drawers after they've been washed. This is great for me. Caelan still gets upset. I still happily go unlock her drawers and hand her the clothes. She is generally too busy to go to the bathroom when she should, but now that she's allotted one pair of panties, instances of wet ones have dwindled. It's awesome.
    She realized today that I had a key. "Can I see the key?" she asked, slyly. I laughed. Of course not! "But I just want to look at it." She will never touch this key as long as I stay a step ahead of her. "Well, can you just put it right here?" Here being on top of the dresser, well within reach. Hahaha. I am beyond thrilled. They knew what they were doing back in the day. Now I think all dressers should have keys. One of the greatest ideas ever.

The Unnecessary Freezing of Water

    I find myself at odds with the climatic substance known as snow. There wasn't much of it growing up in Texas and when I moved to the northeast, it was with great expectations of it. Snow appeals to my nostalgic ideals and also my enmity. I love it for the very same reasons I can't stand it. For weeks on end it conceals the ugliness of winter, that gray dead that washes out color for too many months. When the snow shimmers under a bright winter sun, it catches my breath. Literally, it does. For with the brilliance of snow and sun come the migraines. It's cruel, really. But then I love staying indoors next to a warm fire, comfortable in my sweaters and houseshoes; then it goes on for weeks. And then I get the bills for the necessity of staying warm. The realities of life quell the joy of snow that is once again fluttering past my windows. Blech.

    So to put a different spin on the snow, here are some things others have said about it.

1. A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. ~Carl Reiner

2. Advice is like snow - the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

3. I grew up thinking of snow as a luxury you visit. ~John Landis

4. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ~John Ruskin

5. When it snows, you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels.

6. The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show.

7. A year of snow, a year of plenty. ~Old French Proverb

8. Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean. ~Confucius

9. Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. ~Phillis Diller

10. I used to be Snow White, but I drifted. ~Mae West (I know, it's not about snow, but it's Mae West!)

Happy Snow Day.



Sprightly Genes

    There have been many of you that have questioned me about my middle child's astounding capabilities and if you have followed this blog, then you are well aware of what she can do. I want to know, just as much as you do, where the heck this kid gets her craziness. So I've done a little research (i.e. talked to my Grandma). It would appear that Caelan does what she does because of genetics, the genes that she received from my side of the family. I was never like this child, so it must have skipped right passed me. And I'm serious about that gene not showing up in me. I've never broken any bones, never been to the ER for personal reasons and it wasn't until my first c-section that I got stitches (which, ironically was with Caelan). If the stories my Grandma told about herself and my Dad are any indication, we are in for many more 'fun' times. Wrap your head around these stories and see if you can't picure Caelan doing the same thing.

    My Grandma was quite young (probably about Caelan's age) when she went missing from the back yard. She had scaled the 6-8 foot fence that went around the yard and was down the street at her grandparents house. Another time she was found on top of a windmill. That explains oh, so much. My Grandma had a little friend that would cry every time my Grandma came around just because she could run faster and climb anything. My Grandma had three boys and a girl, and among the boys they all had their fair share of injuries from performing crazy stunts. My Dad was about Caelan's age when he fell off a picnic table and nearly cut the end of his nose off completely on a coffee can. My Dad had to wear a football helmet, prescribed by the doctor, because of all the self-inflicted injuries to his head. When my Dad and his brothers were older, there are stories about them 'parachuting' off the barn (it was a bust, literally), stories about trying to fly using a piece of plywood (which one of them was strapped to) tied to the back of a horse with a rope (apparently they only got enough speed up to flip the board over and get the wind knocked out of them). These are only a few of the stories. My Grandma apologized but said that she could vouch for me. When she visited last year, she looked up to see Caelan sitting on top of the elevator. 

    I have to say, though, that if Caelan grows up to be anything like my Grandma, she will be quite a spunky, energetic lady.

  

  The future is looking... full... if not sometimes questionable.

Memories Full Circle

    There's a place somewhere in my mind that holds all my happiest childhood memories. It's fluffy and warm there. I remember everything about those moments. Sometimes the memories come to me randomly and others by a tone, a look or a smell. The memories now come back to me in the form of my children. Right now, my two oldest girls have a glimpse of a memory that shaped many of my younger years. They are watching, for the first time, Anne of Green Gables.

   I remember the first time I saw it. The day was warm, maybe in April or May. In Texas, spring is well sprung by May and sometimes by late May, the temps have reached 100 degrees. I know it was warm and not cold or hot because I sat in my Grandma's kitchen. If it had been cold, I would have been curled up under a quilt in the living room, nearest the wood burning stove. If it had been hot, well, it would have been hot. My grandparents don't have air conditioning. They have a swamp cooler, a type of window unit that cools by forcing outside air over water to cool it before sending the cooler air into a room. On a hot day, it is cooler, but you sweat buckets in the humidity. The day I first watched Anne of Green Gables, I was just warm.

    I don't know what I ate, but being at Grandma's house, I would have had my favorites, namely a V8 or Texas grapefruit juice that came in a small can with a peel off tab, or black olives or pickled okra. I know, it's unusual, but these things were only found at Grandma's. It was during the good old days of VHS and the tapes had been made by a friend of my Grandma's from the recordings that were on PBS. The movie was broken up by some commercials and other short blips denoting the place where the recorder had been stopped for a commercial and then restarted moments before Anne Shirley's imagination filled Grandma's kitchen. There were several tapes and there was a rush to put the next one in before Anne's world slipped away.

   I remember doing this several times in my childhood, in what I would like to think was an annual basis. But the memory is so timeless and replayed so  many times, that it could have only happened once. I remember the tragical moments, the gossip, the bosom buddies, the life changes, the heartaches... And when I didn't have the movies, I had the books, now tattered, yellowed, the bindings of the paperbacks brittle, almost broken. One Christmas several years ago, my Grandma gave me Anne of Green Gables on VHS, not the TV recordings but the real thing with the green box casing, two VHS tapes. That's what my girls are watching now. I don't know if the memory will be as deep for them as it is for me, but I hope so. Anne was magical, my dream friend, a sweet part of childhood.

The Emergency Room

    In the last three years I have gone to the ER four times. I have three children, but these visits involve only one child. She's three. The odds are not looking good for fewer visits in the future to this fantastic wonder known as the ER. Her first visit was at 6 weeks (sinus congestion, cough, sporadic breathing) and Keith had just left two days before on deployment. Her second visit was for smashed fingers (she was leaning backwards on a chair, chair fell and her fingers were smashed on the slate floor) and Keith had just left the day before on deployment. Her third visit was for a head injury from a fall and Keith, surprisingly, was here, but didn't know about it until much later because he was flying.
    Today marks our fourth visit and Keith is in Florida. Anyone see this pattern? Not really to my liking. She flung herself off the bed in my direction, I reflexively went to catch her. Many of you reading this know she has a tendency to do this and have experienced the surprise that comes from seeing this child launch herself at you when you least expect it. Bingo. That's my child. I caught her, but my finger went right into her eye. I knew what I had done the moment it happened, but I didn't expect the copious amount of blood that poured down her face or the obvious tear of the tissue on her cornea. Oh. My. Goodness.  I called her doctor first and the recommendation was the visit to the ER. And then I sighed.
    Of the four visits to the ER, three of them have been to the Good Samaritan hospital, about four blocks from my house. Those are the only times I have gone there. Caelan's name is the only one in our family that's in their system. The head injury visit was to Hershey Med. The people there were all very nice. Except the check-in nurse, who somehow thought that I had abused my child. I told her that her eye was all that was involved in my rambunctious child's accident, but was quickly informed that the question was directed at Caelan and I was not to answer. She really wanted Caelan to tell her if she was hurt anywhere else on her body. Caelan said 'Nope.' I suppose I understand the need for concern; there are many times it's necessary, but other than the injury to her eyeball, there were no others.
   Anywho, final diagnosis for Caelan: Corneal tear/abrasion. If it's irritated tomorrow, we use the antibiotic ointment prescribed.
    Final diagnosis for Mom: A nice cup of coffe and if any gray hairs  appear from these yearly trips to the ER, they will be duly dyed. And I don't think much of the laundry will get done today.

Put it in the Dryer

    It has been fairly cold here in the northeast for several weeks, and Caelan has bouts of being cold throughout the day. Obviously staying bundled up does not exactly work out for her elevated activity levels. And since she has a certain proclivity for streaking, she frequently complains of 'ffffffffreezing.' I don't think she is a child of the winter, despite her December birthday.
    Always one to find her own way, she has come up with a way to stay warm without sitting still under a blanket and still streak. Ah, my innovative three year old. There were several times today I noticed that she would be missing some clothes. I figured out her plan when I took a load of sheets out of the dryer and the pants she had been wearing were lying on top. She has taken to removing her clothing until she gets cold. Then she puts her clothes in the dryer and turns it on, thus heating her clothes for a warm-up later. Smart cookie, that one.

The Good, Scary Dream

At 2:41 am, Evelynn came into our room. "I had a dream." I asked her if it was a bad dream. "No, it was a good dream, but it was really scary." And this is the narrative of her dream:

I had a dream about a mouse. The farther away I was the louder it would hiss at me. Really loud. I couldn't get away from it. It was the mouse that was in our kitchen. I wanted to sneak up and catch him and throw him outside like you did. Are you scared of the mouse, Mom? I was. He wouldn't be quiet. See my socks? I woke up and put these on so I could catch the mouse. The socks make my feet not sticky on the floor, so they don't make noise. I got back on the bed, but I couldn't catch him. I looked around my room and he's not there either. It was a scary dream because of the mouse. It was good because when I waked up I couldn't find him. I want to go back to sleep to dream about something else. I want to dream about getting hot chocolate with Daddy. It was so good. I loved it. That would be a really good dream, right?

When she woke up this morning she told me she had her dream about drinking hot chocolate. My mouse episode, however, has made quite the impression to give her bad dreams. But what child has a bad dream and then gets up to look for the monster in her bedroom before coming to Mom and Daddy?