Archive for December, 2008

2008 in Pictures

December 31, 2008 @ 3:17 pm | Filed under:

1. Nasturtiums, 2. Watercolors, 3. New glasses, 4. Bonny lass, 5. Equinox, 6. Mischief, 7. Pink hat, 8. Nap, 9. La Sagrada Familia, 10. Museu Nacional d’Art, Barcelona, 11. Salamander’s foot, 12. Immaculate Conception, 13. Out for a hike, 14. Watering the pumpkin, 15. Monkey naps, 16. Rebuking the waves, 17. Comic-con, 18. Zipper pouch, 19. Julian trip, 20. Sea World, 21. 36 weeks, 22. Candledipping at Old Town San Diego, 23. Viewfinder, 24. Like mother, like son

Unsolicited Signing Time Commercial

What Rilla’s saying at the end there is “With Alex, Leah, and Hopkins.” Totally unprompted, I swear.

When I watched our Christmas 2005 video the other day, the bit that gave me the biggest pang of nostalgia was watching Wonderboy signing away. He hardly signs at all anymore, now that he talks so much. I’m thrilled with his verbal speech, but I really miss the signing. It’s funny to think back on how much ASL dominated our lives (in a rich and satisfying way) for a couple of years there, and now our use and pursuit of sign language has slipped to the back burner, becoming something of a hobby rather than a daily necessity. Jane still wants to certify as an ASL interpreter someday, and every few months we pull out our materials and learn another chunk of vocabulary and grammar. There are community college courses we might take next year. It’s a beautiful and important language, and I don’t want to let it go, even if our boy doesn’t need rely on it for communication the way he once did.

And of course the Signing Time DVDs remain in great demand with my little people, as the video above attests. With Rilla, we’re seeing all the benefits of sign language we saw with the first three girls—because rudimentary ASL was a part of our baby & toddler life from the get-go, long before we had a Wonderboy or knew he had hearing loss.

Here are some old posts singing the praises of our favorite kiddie DVDs:

It Must Be a Sign
Something Else to Buy Instead of Curriculum: Signing Time
Rilla Signs
Signing with Babies, My Favorite Topic

This Year’s Daddy-Books

December 29, 2008 @ 3:16 pm | Filed under: ,

Every Christmas (birthdays, too) Scott gives each child one special picture book. Yes, our older girls are well past picture-book age by now—except that you’re never past picture-book age, not really. I’m certainly not. And this is a treasured family tradition; it’s always great fun to see what gems he comes up with.

His picks for Christmas, 2008:

Rilla: an oldie but one of the best. Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. Our dog-eared paperback copy was recently destroyed in that little bit of flooding we had on my birthday. Scott replaced it with a hardcover, because Rilla is ripe for that time-honored, giggle-inducing refrain of “You monkeys you, you give me back my caps!”

Wonderboy: a Boynton book called Fifteen Animals! (Most of which are named Bob.) A perfect choice for our little guy, who loves rhythm, repitition, and all things Boynton.

Beanie: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by the fabulous Mo Willems. This would have been a fine choice for any of our brood, but Scott singled it out for our belly-laughing Bean, and belly-laugh she did. We all loved the Caldicott honor-winning combination of black-and-white photo backgrounds and whimsical Willems art, and poor little Trixie’s desperate attempts to communicate the disappearance of her beloved bunny to her father are utterly priceless. A slam-dunk, daddy dear.

Rose: A Visitor for Bear by Bonny Becker, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton. This was one of the Cybils nominees, and when I read the library copy, I knew it was a keeper. Sweet, funny story about a rather curmudgeonly bear who, despite his best efforts, finds himself playing host to a persistent and amiable mouse. I showed it to Scott, who instantly pegged it as a perfect Rose book. Endearing art, charming story.

Jane: Diary of a Fly by Doreen Cronin and Harry Bliss. Various children have been given its companion books, Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider, in years past. I believe Scott said he chose this one for Jane because of the line about the young fly being relieved to discover that he’s not the only kid at school who likes regurgitated food. (Cue satisfying shriek from thirteen-year-old.)

Of course our Christmas book bounty didn’t end with the Daddy-books, but the rest of the treasures must wait for another post.

(A note about the links here: I stopped including Amazon links in my posts a long while back, for various angsty reasons of my own. However, a recent Kidlitosphere discussion alerted me to the copyright question involved with using book cover images from Amazon and not linking to that site, so in this post I have returned to my old practice of including the Amazon link. Since I have an affiliate account, any purchases made from a clickthrough here will earn me a small referral fee. Wanted to be very up-front with that info! In years past, such referrals helped pay for the maintenance of this site. For that, I thank you!)

Lookie What I Made!

December 28, 2008 @ 9:37 am | Filed under:

Just please, please don’t look too closely. My stitching is deplorable. I really cannot manage to sew a straight seam to save my life. Scott says he likes to listen to me sew because of the inanities that come out of my mouth while I bungle the job… “Son of a b…utternut squash!”

Anyway, here’s my little diaper case, and yes, I am inordinately proud. It holds a couple of diapers and a travel wipes container.

I followed this pattern at Blessed Roots. I don’t know how to use my machine’s buttonholer, so I made the little strap instead. And I left off the wristlet strap.

This was the practice model. I’m itching to try again with some beeyooteeful scrap fabric sent to me by a most indulgent and kindhearted chum. I think I’ll make the top flap smaller this time. The pattern allows a flap big enough that the diaper case could, in theory, double as a changing pad, but that would only work while baby is very small. I’d rather use a blanket.

Everyone Knows Potatoes Have Eyes, Not Ears

December 26, 2008 @ 8:24 pm | Filed under: , , ,

Here’s my boy, hanging out having a snack with his good buddy, Mr. Potato Head.

I wondered why one of Potato Head’s ears was lying on the couch with a spare screw-cover (left over from the construction of a toy shopping cart) stuck on the end. Wonderboy informed me that it isn’t an ear—it’s a hearing aid. And it needed a new battery, of course. Evidently he went rummaging around in the drawer where we keep his own hearing aid batteries and found the little orange screw-cover.

Oh, I could just eat him up every minute of the day.

Real Life

December 23, 2008 @ 10:49 pm | Filed under: ,

I couldn’t help but grin today at the contrast between the cozy Advent post I wrote before the children awoke, the one celebrating the best moments of the past week, and the complicated, messy, full-of-friction day that commenced as soon as the first child staggered out of bed. The thing is, every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

Pondering this, something that struck me was the difference between blogging and real-life conversation. If a friend calls me on the phone, I’m unlikely to say, “We just had the loveliest half hour while Jane played carols on the piano, and I curled up on the sofa with a quilt and the laptop, and Rose was at the other end reading Betsy-Tacy, and Wonderboy was next to me looking at family pictures on an old cell phone that isn’t a phone anymore, and Beanie was dragging Rilla up and down the hall on a blanket and Rilla kept shouting, ‘Faster, Mama Duck!'”

All that is true; it was a lovely half hour, and I Twittered some of it so I wouldn’t forget it. But it’s unlikely I’d have said anything of the sort on the phone. Somehow that just isn’t how phone conversation works, or face-to-face chat, either. No, in person I’d have been much more likely to tell my listening chum about how my hips are killing me, KILLING me, to the point that by the end of the day I can barely walk, much less stand over the stove, which is why my children had to make themselves oatmeal for dinner tonight. And I’ve got this cruel little cough which has caused a bit of cartilage (so I’m told) to pop out of place in my rib cage, so that every time I cough there’s a fierce stab of pain, and I’m desperately hoping it goes away before I go into labor because the thought of pushing through this rib pain…I shudder to think of it.

Or: I figured out that the coughing started the day I brought home the Christmas tree, so we moved it outside and I bought a tiny little inglorious fake tree to replace the tiny little inglorious real one I’d picked up at Fresh and Easy the week before. And we decorated the outside tree—it’s by the front steps—with a beautiful string of fake cranberries I bought on clearance at Joann’s after Christmas last year. But then it rained. And rained and rained. And the deep red berries are now bright pink. And mushy. They’re still kind of pretty as long as you don’t touch them, but Rilla must touch them every time she passes by, and then she winds up with smears of fuschia-colored mush on her hands, and her clothes, and my pant legs, and anything else she can manage to touch on our way to the kitchen sink.

Or: You know how Scott’s car got hit in that parking lot last month? Big truck pulling into the lot caught his front bumper and peeled it halfway off? Would you believe the other guy’s insurance company says he isn’t at fault?? (Though he totally admitted it, himself, at the time of the incident: there was no doubt. Scott’s car was parked. The truck hit him.) And if we can’t get this decision reversed, we’re out $500 for the deductible? Can you believe that?

Or: So I went to Confession today and of course I had all the kids with me, and I left them in the cry room which is all the way in the back of the church, and I was all the way in the front where the confessionals are but I could hear Wonderboy shrieking. He was inside a soundproofed room, but I could hear him. So I got out of line and walked back to the cry room to see what on earth was the problem. Turned out Rose and Rilla were playing tag. Which would be okay, more or less, since they were alone in a closed and did I mention soundproofed room, and it’s not like Mass was going on or anything, but Wonderboy was totally shattered by this breach of churchy decorum and he was howling at them to stop. And then after Confession he cried all the way home because I am trying to ease him out of his fixation on this one particular Sing ‘n Learn cassette he expects to listen to every single time we’re in the van, and the rest of us are all sick of it (though we’ve all got the state capitals down pat, that’s for sure). But he is convinced that the sky is going to crumble and fall upon our heads if we do not listen to that rassafrassin’ tape every single second we’re driving. And then Rose brought up the question of how the seating arrangements will change after the baby comes, and she was furious to learn that she’ll have to move to the back row because the infant seat only fits in the middle row, and Wonderboy has to have the other middle-row spot because he gets into too much mischief if he’s sitting within pinching range of one of his siblings. But Rose despises the crowded back seat, and she is livid at the injustice of it all, disgusted that we aren’t getting a bigger vehicle, completely unswayed by such reasonable explanations as “with the economy the way it is, now isn’t the time to take on a new car payment, and the minivan is almost paid off.” “So we won’t be able to ride ALL TOGETHER as a family anymore?” Rose wailed—because the minivan seats seven and we’re about to become eight. And in case you’re wondering, a cheery pep talk about sacrifice and frugality and ‘just think of all the making-do Kit Kittredge’s family had to do during the Great Depression’ is not likely to meet with resounding applause at such a moment. I’m just saying.

Or: Is it just me, or are your kids bickering a lot more than usual too, the closer we get to Christmas? And why, why, WHYYYY, was I ever so foolish as to begin the gingerbread house tradition? Because every year it becomes a giant sticky thorn in my side. There’s no going back, though, not after the precedent was set ten years ago. But at least this year Jane did most of the hard part, the housebuilding. We’re going to decorate tomorrow but this is a kit I picked up in that same after-Christmas sale at Joann’s last year, and the gumdrops are hard as rocks, and if you can’t eat half the decorations as you’re working on the house, most of the fun is gone. So I guess I’ll have to run out tomorrow and buy some new gumdrops. Arrrgh.

So there you go. That’s what you’d get if you were Alice, calling me on the phone. And you would very satisfyingly commiserate by firing back with similar anecdotes of your own. (“I’ll see your hip pain and raise you four sick kids, a doctor’s appointment, and a car encased in ice.” At which point I fold. Because the cranberry-melting rain is gone, and we had a gorgeous blue sky and sweater weather again today.)

Life is messy, and complicated, and full of friction. That stable in Bethlehem must have smelled like manure. Was the manger clean? I had to scrub so much grime off the infant carseat yesterday, and it had only been sitting in a closed garage for a year. Not even a real garage—it’s just a storage room, really. But the parts of the Nativity story we celebrate are the shining star, and the awestruck shepherds, and the singing of angels. The image of the baby swaddled snugly, sleeping in the hay, with His mother smiling down at Him in wonder, oblivious to the muck and the grime and the prickling straw and the snorts of the livestock: that’s the image we’ve carried in our hearts for two thousand years. That doesn’t mean the muck wasn’t there. It’s just not the important part of the story, the thing worth holding on to. The muck is always there, always here. But so is the radiant star, the heavenly choir, the sleeping Child so full of promise and hope.

My children may bicker, and I may—almost certainly will—complain. But the bickering and the griping are chaff, and what’s left when the winds of time carry them away are the golden kernels I want to savor: Carol of the Bells ringing out from Jane’s piano; my little boy leaning against me and laughing for joy at a picture of his daddy; a girl-child lost in a beloved book, her fury long forgotten; riotous squeals up and down the hallway from a toddler on a magic carpet pulled by a giggling, curly-haired Mama Duck. Colored lights gleaming on a cute little tree that, if you squint just right, almost looks real, and doesn’t make me cough. Headlights in the window: that dear red car, its bumper restored, pulling into the driveway next to a soon-to-be-too-small-for-the-very-best-of-reasons minivan. An infant carseat, scrubbed and ready, waiting to be buckled into place and filled with our own little bundle of promise and hope.

Our Advent

December 23, 2008 @ 8:25 am | Filed under:

Last week was the crazy-busy week. Piano recital, Nativity play at nursing home (those two on the same day), speech, OB appointment, post-office trip, extra ballet practice, ballet recital, choir rehearsal, Christmas shopping. Throw in a couple of days of torrential rains and a minor flood in our patio room, just for fun. (Minimal damage, easily dealt with. Turned out to be not a big deal at all. Discovering a computer power strip sitting in half an inch of water—during the brief span of time between the piano recital and the Nativity play—it sure felt like it was going to be a big deal. Fortunately it happened to be my birthday, which Scott had taken as a vacation day because that’s what a sweetie he is. He was home. Made all the difference.)

And this week? Ahhhh. No out-of-house commitments whatsoever, except for Christmas Mass, of course.

I am so happy to be able to stay home in this snug little nest. (Snug and dry once more.) I’m cooing over the pictures of Suzanne’s beautiful new baby and knowing that my turn is just around the corner. And I’m content to have it be just around the corner—no rush, little one, though we’re all so eager to meet you. My mother arrives on January 3rd, a day after my due date (and I’ve never delivered sooner than a week after my due date), so of course our hope is that baby will stay happily put until after grandma gets here.

But I’m all set for Christmas, just in case. All set except for the meal, that is. I suppose I should give that some thought. Quickly, so I can have groceries delivered, because I’m not braving the store this week. Don’t want to squander one of the bursts of nesting energy that have put my home into much better order than I would have supposed, given the time of year. Yesterday I got the infant carseat cleaned up, its cover freshly washed. Baby clothes are laundered and laid out in their drawers, thanks to Rose. The drawers belonged to Rilla until last week: I finally made my way through every dresser and closet in the house, weeding out, sorting, filling huge bags for Goodwill. Rilla has a drawer in the girls’ room that used to belong to Rose: since Rose seems to stick to a small handful of favorite outfits, we decided she didn’t need a whole huge drawer full of rejects. So whew, we’ve managed to find space for everything without adding another piece of furniture, for which there really is NO space whatsoever.

Rilla is sleeping in her little trundle bed in the girls’ room. She still wakes up at least once in the night, but Scott can get her back down pretty quickly. Wonderboy is waking up a lot, too. He’s getting over a cough. Could be some interesting nights ahead when we’ve got a third night-waker in the party.

Yesterday we made Christmas cookies and ate most of them and put flannel sheets on the bed and watched Rudolph and put a big red and green quilt on the sofa. The quilt was a wedding gift from Scott’s mom’s best friend. Many years ago, when Jane was the only baby, it served as a cover for our old ratty sofa. It’s sweet to see it back on the couch and remember the way the Jane-bairn used to lie upon it, staring at its red stars, waving a tiny fist in a quest to grab one.

The Nativity play last week made me cry: it was the carol-singing at the end that got me. The host of eager children in their homemade, hodge-podge costumes, the white-haired residents of the nursing home, the beaming Carmelite sisters in their brown habits, many of the nuns with fat babies in their arms. Whenever our group visits this nursing home, the sisters are quick to reach for the babies among us. Next year I suppose it will be my little one tucked big-eyed into the brown curve of a sister’s arm, making a little O mouth while the nuns and the old folks and the children belt out their Gloooorias.

Glorious.

Links for December 22, 2008

December 22, 2008 @ 8:04 am | Filed under:

These have been in my sidebar widget for a while, but I forgot to roll them into a post for the benefit of my feed-reading readers until I referred to the Amazon.uk thing last night and Scott didn’t know what I meant. Here you go, babe!