Hi Mom!

These are the words I hear almost nightly around 2am. A little head appears at the side of my bed and says "Hi mom". I just say, "Go back to bed, Naomi" and she trudges back to her bedroom. But it's the same routine night after night after night. What does she think she's doing wandering around the house in the middle of the night? One of these nights I think I'll just ask her what she's doing and see what she says.

Birthday Ideas

David asked me yesterday what I wanted for my birthday. He said he wanted to get me something nice. At first I thought a new camera- a really nice one. My pictures always seem bad to me- blurry and just not great quality. But would I really have the patience to learn all the fancy-pants stuff? And would I use it any more than I use the one we have now? David just had to have that expensive video camera last Christmas and we've taped less than an hour's worth of stuff, I bet. So I decided maybe not a camera. Asking for my old house is probably out of the question. I could use a new computer, but David wants one too, so that's out. Any ideas what I need, don't have, and can't live without? I can't even suggest jewelry, cause I never wear the stuff I have. It shouldn't be this hard to come up with something I want.

Halloween

Ok, I know alot of people think we should be condemned for celebrating Halloween. But it isn't like I've started my own coven in honor of the day. It's just a fun time to dress up the kids and get some sugar. And exercise. Since our neighborhood must be anti-halloween-ites, only every third or fourth house had anyone handing out candy, and since I couldn't very well tell Hope to be content with her five little pieces of candy after we finished the block we were supposed to ToT on, we walked quite a ways. And thanks to whomever thought it was a great idea to build houses on hills, we got to walk up and down everyone's stairs- some of these houses have 10 stairs up to their door. I carried Naomi up most of them so she didn't fall or get trampled. By the end of the evening, I had shed my sweatshirt, pushed up my sleeves, and was breaking a pretty nasty sweat. I can tell Disneyland is going to be lots of fun if I can't even walk up and down a few flights of stairs without huffing.

I found an angel costume on ebay several months ago that was either 1¢ or 99¢, I can't remember. But with shipping, it was about five bucks. I really thought about getting a devil costume for Naomi, but I thought that might be pushing it, and I couldn't find a cheap one, so she wore Hope's skunk costume. She loves hats, so she loved the hood to it; I put it on her early in the day and had to hide it from her so she wouldn't wear it all day long. Joel had two pumpkin costumes, so he wore one of them, but he and David stayed home and handed out candy while Hope and Naomi went ToTing. Naomi got the hang of things pretty quickly, holding out her bucket and taking handfuls when people let her pick her own candy. She was so sweet- she couldn't say trick or treat, but she never missed "thanks, bye bye". She learned quickly how to say candy and chocolate, and most of her candy has been removed from her pumpkin so we won't have too many days of listening to her ask for it.

Seriously? I have to drive this?

I really didn't want a minivan. After ending up with one as a rental last year and seeing how nice it was to sit on the floor between the girls to help them eat lunch, I decided it might not be the worst thing ever. And after the trip to Spokane last Thanksgiving in which I got to spend most of the five hours leaning over my seat trying to catch the vomit before it got all over Hope, I decided it might be a pretty good thing to have a minivan so I could actually get to her in situations like that. But holy cow, I don't want to drive one. They're just such a soccer-mom thing. But here's our new car.

Who cares what the polls say

People in this country think we actually elect the president. How foolish. I just watched an hour-long debate about who is going to win the election. Do these people not remember the last two elections? George Bush lost the popular vote, and yet he's still the one residing in the White House. We don't elect the president; the electoral college elects the president. Yes, it would be nice if the process was a little more democratic, but it isn't. Living in a very blue state, I know my vote counts for nada in any presidental election. Washington State's 11 electoral votes will always go to the most liberal candidate. So why even bother? I will vote, because I have a responsibility to do so. But don't try to convince me that "my vote counts" or that just because the polls say McCain and Obama were neck and neck a few weeks ago, McCain has a shot in heck of winning. Obama already has 260 electoral votes that are a given- the states historically vote Deomocrat. There are 90-some votes that are up for grabs in the battleground states. Obama needs 10 of those to win. There is no way he won't get them. That's basically one state. All he needs is one of the 7 or 8 states to go his way. Even if McCain gets all the votes for the states that are strongly Republican, weakly Republican, exactly tied, and weakly Democrat, he still doesn't have enough votes to win. Obama will be president; it's a mathematical certainty. So can we waste air time on something else?

Neighborhood of Make Believe

Hope is sitting on the couch making up some story between her hat and a hair clip. They got married-she performed the whole ceremony. I asked her how she knew what people said at a wedding. Her reply? "I knew cause we watched that movie where the boy and girl got married outside in the snow". Ah yes, the episode of Friends that we watched about SIX MONTHS AGO!! So the make-believe continues and pretty soon the husband tells his wife he doesn't like her. So the hairclip that's the girl tells her mom that her husband said he didn't like her. The mom says, "I'm so sorry he said that to you. Do I need to kill him?" Looks like Hope has the basics figured out: when someone says something mean to you, tell your mom and she'll kill them.

The days are long, but the years are short.

Today actually didn't seem that long:)
I was just upstairs rocking Joel and had to fold his legs up so he'd fit. It's amazing that he's already that long- to go from a little tiny thing- ok, he was never technically tiny- but little enough that we'd have to really bend our arm up just to support his rump, and now he lays his head on my shoulder and his feet are hitting my legs?!? Holy cow, that's gone fast. And Hope and I went shopping for shoes today for her. She's already out of the little girl shoes and into regular girl shoes. HOW is that possible? Naomi is so much more fun now that she's grown up a little that I don't mind the fact that she's getting bigger, but I bet in a year when she's too big to comfortably sit on the arm of my chair and look at pictures on my computer or snuggle in front of me on the couch, I'll wish these stupid years would slow down for her too. I don't recall giving any of them permission to grow up.

Ok, I know my geography isn't the greatest......

But on a weekly basis this summer, some patient would tell me that they went to "Eastern Washington" on vacation. When I questioned them further, they had gone to Chelan or Moses Lake or somewhere similar. Yes, I suppose technically if you divide the state of Washington in half, the Cascades are pretty much in the middle, so anything east of the mountains is eastern Washington. But isn't central Washington a more accurate description of where you were??

Thursday at work, someone brought in some wonderful peaches and plums. That led to a discussion of where to get good fruit. One of my coworkers, who is really not the brightest star in the sky, said she always gets her fruit "from that fruit stand in eastern Washington". Oh yeah, THAT fruit stand. You idiot, there is more than one fruit stand in the eastern half of the state. As she elaborated, the one she meant was the Thorpe place right before Ellensburg. Ok, since CENTRAL Washington University is in Ellensburg, wouldn't that pretty much be CENTRAL Washington?

And then at lunch, same coworker (who, as a side note, rivals Laurie on her health issues) asked me what state Chicago is in. Really? REALLY? Ok, if she'd asked what state Edwall was in, I could see not knowing that one. Even some mid-sized towns I'd have understood. But Chicago is the third-largest city in the country. That's like not knowing what country London or Paris is in. Do they not teach geography in school anymore?

Who's sleeping with whom

I swear, nobody in this house sleeps in their bed. Joel starts out in his crib, but sometimes ends up next to me. Hope has to start out in Zach's room, cause she and Naomi talk and keep each other up if they're in the same room. David usually ends up in Zach's room too, since he doesn't enjoy being kicked by Joel or kept awake by my snoring.

So last night Joel and Naomi started out in their respective beds. Hope went to sleep in Zach's room, and was supposed to have been moved back to her bed after Naomi fell asleep. Something was severely wrong with Joel, who woke up three times shrieking and had to be rocked back to sleep, which is unusual for him. The last time I couldn't get him to settle down. When he gets really worked up like that, the only thing that works is to lay down with him in my bed. The plan was to put him back in his crib after he fell asleep. However, laying down in a cozy bed with a little snugglebug is quite condusive to sleep, so I fell asleep too. By the time David went to bed, he was too tired to move Hope. So I slept with Joel, David slept with Hope, and poor little Mimi just slept with Tubby.

More teething???

Hope discovered yesterday that she has a loose tooth. I was pretty sure she was making it up, but I checked and, sure enough, it was wiggly. As I was playing with it, I noticed the one next to it was loose too! They certainly aren't going to be falling out this week, but they move around quite a bit. Joel's getting teeth, Hope's losing teeth.

Guess who else has two toothers!

There already was a post 2 years ago about guess who has two toothers, so I had to put the 'who else' part in there. While Joel is proving to be my best baby so far, he certainly has been the worst teether! Hope was fussy the day she got her first tooth; Naomi just opened her mouth one day and there was a little tooth poking through. No such luck with Mr. Man. He's been a shrieking, whining, big 'ole crybaby who has drooled and chewed on everything in sight for the last few weeks. His biting has lost him his breastfeeding priviledges; the thought of going to the ER to have a nipple replaced doesn't excite me:( And just think, we have 18 more teeth in the next couple years to deal with.

Doesn't it just figure that the one time I don't bring the camera....

is when a great photo op occurs. We went to the zoo again today, and Hope wanted to feed the birds again. No, she didn't sing the Mary Poppins song- I know Bryn will be so disappointed in her. David decided we should all go in, but strollers have to stay outside and I didn't think about the camera. When we were there last month the birds weren't too hungry and it took a long time before they'd eat the birdseed Hope had. This time, they'd land on you as soon as you got the birdseed in your hand. One landed on David's head, and another perched right on little Joel's shoulder. Joel seemed fairly confused, but he didn't cry and he held still, so the bird stayed there for a minute. WHY did I not have my camera??? That would've been such a great picture! But the girls got to feed one of the giraffes and we got pictures of that, so I guess I should be happy about the pictures we did get and hope that our next visit to Willawong Station will involve hungry birds.



Hopey last month feeding one of the birds

Naomi feeding a giraffe today

Not my little helper

Naomi loves to help with the laundry. She takes clothes out of the dryer and hands them to me to fold. She takes clothes out of the washer and puts them in the dryer, and swats my hand away when I try to help. She spins the washer tub to check for any stray socks, and declares "No mowa!" after she's checked.

Yesterday she was helping me fold kitchen towels and baby blankets. Apparently she didn't want to help very badly. She'd hand me about three towels and then say "ok, no mowa". Well, you goofball, I can see twenty more little towels in there. So I'd say, "yes, Naomi, there's more". Same thing- three towels and no mowa. It took awhile but we finally got all of them folded. She even crawled into the dryer to make sure there really were no more.

A bunch of bugs

We went to the zoo the other day. It was raining, so the indoor exhibits were quite popular. Most of the indoor stuff was creepy crawleys- Hopey got to pet a snake and a gecko- yuck! But the butterflies and blooms exhibit was fun- nothing slimy there:)

Naomi loves corn on the cob!

The Dangers of Unsupervised Camera Usage

Wowies

Naomi is constantly getting
"wowies" as she calls it when she gets hurt. Except she doesn't have to actually get hurt. If she brushes up against something or the wind blows on her wrong, she comes running crying wowie and has to have whatever area has the aforementioned wowie kissed. And if one leg has a wowie, the other leg will have a matching one. Often she gets wowies when nothing seems to happen- I think she makes them up. And lately in lieu of actually kissing them for her, we tell her to give it a kiss. She will- she'll just kiss whatever body parts she can reach. Yesterday she'd come over and point to my arm and say Wowie? and then kiss my arm for me. Compassionate little thing.

Lookalikes

These two- not so much:

These two- Joel is a little carbon copy:

The Joys of Motherhood

I've spent the last twelve hours cleaning up puke. We've gone through almost every blanket, sheet, towel, and pair of jammies in the house. Naomi started throwing up at bedtime last night and kept at it every half-hour or so till midnight. Hope joined the fun at 3AM. Poor thing slept on the floor in front of the bathroom door so she wouldn't have far to go. I fed Joel at 5:30-ish, and when I fed him again at 8, he'd thrown up. Luckily his isn't chunky:) He's still losing his milk; hopefully his will stop as quickly as the girls' did. If I'd known they were all going to get sick, I'd have made eggs for dinner instead of pizza. They slide up just as easily as they slide down.

How things change....

Remember when we were little and Oma would say "hold out your hand and shut your eyes...." I had some crackers in my hand to give Hope and I put them in my fist so Naomi wouldn't see them. I held my hand out, palm down, so I could put the crackers in her hand. She stared at my hand for a second, got a strange look on her face, and then fist-bumped me!