Always Remember That

We saw a Little Person in Walgreen's the other day, which meant I spent a few bad moments, while looking for the children's ibuprofen, hoping my children weren't staring too baldly and that they wouldn't say anything too loudly. Fortunately they were polite; it was only last night that Phoebe remembered, and said: "Hey Mommy, I saw an Orf the other day, and she looked like a grandma Orf!" Later, she said, "How come that lady was so short?" "God makes people in all shapes and sizes," I said. "Small, tall, skinny, fat..." "And triangle too!" she said. ------------------------ Phoebe challenged me to a staring contest. "I'm staring...I'm staring...I'm staring...oops, you blunk!" she said. ------------------------ "How do you spell thur?" she asked, crayon in hand. "Thur?" I said. "What's a thur?" "You know, thur," she said. "Like...thur...

Over 50 tornadoes swept through North Carolina on Saturday afternoon. Several houses in a neighborhood not four miles from our house were destroyed. People are not being allowed back in to check on their pets. We didn't even lose a shingle or a tree branch. I don't know why. In a mobile home park outside Raleigh, a 3-month-old baby was swept from his uncle's arms when the tornado hit; the baby was found, unhurt, under a pile of rubble about 30 minutes later. Three other children in the same park did not survive. I don't know why. "Do you feel lucky?" a reporter asked a man whose house remained standing when others around it had fallen. "No, I'm not lucky ," the man replied. "I'm blessed ." I prefer to think of it as luck, honestly. At the end of the storm, I still had my house and my husband and my two children (one in a pretty dress mugging for the camera, one in mismatched clothes refusing to smile) -- but if tha...

The latest from my crochet hook. This first bunny was for Amy's birthday: And this one is for my niece Isabel's birthday. (I'm assuming Isabel doesn't read my blog. If she does, sorry for spoiling the surprise. And either way, sorry it's going to be a few days late.) And, that's what I've been up to.

Last night Phoebe asked me to help find her doll Amanda. “Which one is Amanda?” I asked, because there are twenty million baby dolls in my household and I can’t keep track of which one is Amanda and which one is Chelsea and which one is Megan and which one is Jaquinta. Phoebe sighed. “Mommy. You should know this by now. Amanda is the one whose favorite color is purple. She likes me to sing to her, and she likes baby food, and her name is Amanda .” Needless to say, this information was not very helpful in locating Amanda. -------------------------------- Mallory has been taking her times tables tests; for months she was stuck on her 3’s. Last month she finally passed her 4’s and 5’s. Last Friday she passed 6’s; this Monday, 7’s; Wednesday, 8’s; yesterday she knocked out 9, 10, and 11 in one fell swoop. Go Mallory! --------------------------------- I was just named Employee of the Month for, as my nominator put it, remaining ever-pleasant while focusing on creating a high qu...

I was in the Girl Scout store today picking up some badges and I happened across a book which purportedly teaches Brownies all about "Storytelling." It was cool -- there were activities on writing and putting on plays and recording tales from the past and so forth. But then I flipped to a section about "Girls' Favorite Books," in which a girl named Madison enthused about the Harry Potter books. To paraphrase loosely, Madison says that she likes to imagine ways to help out her favorite characters or to advise them so that some of their situations come out differently. For example, in Book Six, the home of Madison's favorite character, Ginny Weasley, is destroyed by the evil Death Eaters. Madison thinks that if Ginny had asked for help from her friends, this tragedy wouldn't have happened. Wait, what? That didn't happen in Book Six. It happened -- nonsensically -- in the sixth movie , and even then I'm not sure how Madison's advice -- if the...

Saturday afternoon one of my facebook friends posted something about a super giant full moon. I immediately, and without reading more about it -- a point which will become important later on -- seized upon this astronomical happening as a chance to make a memory for my children, perhaps one on par with the night in 1986 when my mom woke us all up and let us look for Halley's Comet. (We might have actually seen it, a speck on the far horizon.) "There's going to be a really big full moon tonight," I announced at around 5:30. "So I was thinking --" "I know! I know! Oh my gosh!" Mallory shouted, already filled with glee. "I know, Mommy, we should take a blanket outside and lay down on the grass and look up at the stars! That's even called something, what's it called?" "Stargazing?" I suggested. "Yeeeah! Oh wow, oh my gosh! Phoebe did you hear ? Where's Daddy? No, wait!" Mallory grabbed a piece of paper...

Alternate title: Who needs a haircut? I promise I'm not going to turn this into a Crochet Critter blog (although, why not?) but I'm new at this and I still want to share. That's supposed to be a cupcake. It looks more like a mushroom person. The owl is my best one yet, I think.

It's Girl Scout week -- the organization's 99th birthday is Saturday -- so I've been gathering up bits and pieces of Girl Scout history to share with my Brownies at our meeting tonight. I've come across great stuff like these old catalog and calendar images: What did the poor Brownie do to make the girl in the background so angry? Because Girl Scouts and lambs go hand in hand. Do I even have to say that this one is from the 70s? Who is the guy in the background? And yet, I had that exact same felt beanie and goofy orange snap tie when I was a Brownie, and did I ever think I was hot stuff. I also found this poem from the 1920s, summing up what a Girl Scout should learn and be: Monday's Scout is at the tub, Her Sunday clothes to rinse and rub. Tuesday's Scout will roast and stew And fry fresh pancakes just for you! Wednesday's Scout is bent on thrift To patch a hole and darn a rift. Thursday is Scout Service Day For helping your neighbor...

My oldest child has been very challenging lately. I don't have the energy to get in to it, but my frustration level is very high. (And I keep wondering what I've done wrong, as her mother -- do all mothers wonder this? I think it's probably just her, but that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty.) Anyway, today I re-discovered a kind of journal I'd kept before I started this blog, about Mallory's younger years. And I found this conversation we had, when she was about two and a half, which made me laugh. And it could be that laughter is all that's going to get us through adolescence. Anyway, here it is: Yesterday evening I was very tired; I lay down on my bed and was watching TV while Mallory read books in her room. She came in after a while and asked for pudding. I said no, it was almost dinner time. She asked for a cookie. No. Candy. No. A popsicle. No. A banana? I said, "Okay, in five minutes we'll go downstairs and you can have a banana."...

I crocheted this all by my own self, and I can’t wait to do some more. I can only see imperfections in this penguin – its eyes are crooked, its flippers are not symmetrically placed, its feet are different sizes. Using black yarn for my very first project wasn’t such a good idea, since it was at times impossible to figure out where my hook was going, and I have a lot to learn about tension and finishing – you can see some stray yarn here and there, and for attaching the appendages I used the same technique I use for sewing on buttons – basically, use a ton of thread and hope for the best. Still, it was fun to do, and I like to think that I’ll get better with more practice. I think next I’ll make an owl. Then Mallory wants a panda, and Phoebe wants an elephant. What’s your favorite animal – I’ll stitch one up for you too!

I have been reading the Ramona books to Phoebe at night. We finished Beezus and Ramona last week and have moved on to Ramona the Pest . A friend of mine told me that Beverly Cleary got the idea for Ramona’s character when she saw a little girl walking along the sidewalk eating a stick of butter. I think few authors have done such a good job writing real children, and parents too. I was surprised by one passage of Beezus and Ramona – when the girls, walking by themselves to the library (!) – met some elderly neighbors, and one of the neighbors told Ramona she had beautiful eyes. Beezus was used to hearing this , the narration ran, but it didn’t bother her – Mother had told her that blue eyes were just as pretty as brown . I had to read that twice to make sure I had it right – that it was brown-eyed Ramona who usually got compliments, rather than blue-eyed Beezus. In my family it’s the opposite – in fact, it kind of bothers me that not a week goes by without some stranger telling ...

I realized that I haven't taken many pictures of the kids lately; so today when they asked to have a picnic in the backyard, I packed the camera along with the pb&j's and potato chips. I thought I'd try to get a few frameable shots that captured both of my daughters' elegant beauty. Well. Instead I got these: Goofy and giggly and precisely what these two are like, most of the time. I think they're keepers (the pictures and the girls).

You are not as sympathetic as you could be, no doubt, when you hear your bedroom door creak open and a little voice say, “Mommy, I threw up.” You roll over and look at the clock and groan, “Really? You did?” and then hesitate a moment, thinking of the thoroughly unpleasant task ahead of you. You get up, turn on the hall light, look at your daughter, and say, “You should change your pajamas.” You walk into her bedroom and immediately realize that you should’ve obtained more information from the child before stumbling into her bedroom in the dark, in bare feet. You turn on the light and assess the damage – great, lots of ketchup with dinner last night – and then dither around for a few minutes wondering what to do. Do you need a washcloth? A towel? Maybe you should just move out? “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” your child asks, still in her yucky pajamas. “That is not the most important thing at this moment!” you snap. You reflect, as you look for the Oxyclean, that you have no...

Mallory’s illness has been hard on Phoebe. It’s not that Phoebe is consumed with sympathy for her big sister. Nor does she wish that Mallory would get up off the couch and play with her. No, the problem is that Mallory’s being sick has visited upon Phoebe a series of perceived injustices, which are the worst things ever for a 5-year-old. First, Mallory was, as I said, supposed to go to a sleepover on Saturday night. Phoebe had determined in advance that she would sleep with me that night. (Neither girl likes to sleep alone; both regard sleeping with me as a big treat. Don’t ask why.) Since Mallory did not go to her sleepover, however, I told Phoebe she had to sleep in her own bed. Well. You would have thought I’d killed a kitten. Phoebe cried for hours about this. (Mallory, it must be said, cried only about 2 minutes when I told her she couldn’t go to her party, even though she’d been looking forward to it for weeks and had packed her bag days in advance.) “It’s so unfair!” Phoebe ...

Mallory fell ill Friday night with what has now been determined to be strep throat on top of flu. She had to miss a birthday party sleepover Saturday night and, yesterday, had to communicate by Magnadoodle messages because it hurt to talk. Poor girl. I went to check on her around midnight on Friday and found her very, very hot. I woke her up to give her some Tylenol and then sat with her while she fell asleep. "Mommy," she said, "before you came in here, I think I heard the Kleenex box talking to me." "Did you?" I said, startled, as you would be too. "Yeah...and it kind of freaked me out. So I said a prayer to my guardian angel to protect me, and after that the talking stopped." "Well, I'm glad that worked," I said. "Yeah." A moment of silence. "Do you ever pray to your guardian angel?" she asked. "Not for a long time, I haven't," I said. "I think it really works. Mrs T" -- h...

Chris needs a cornea transplant! Do you have a spare? My father-in-law spent the weekend in the hospital. He’s fine, full recovery and all that, but I keep thinking, selfishly I admit: I’m not ready for this kind of thing . My car requires $700 worth of repairs. We don’t just have $700 lying around. I guess we’re going to be eating a lot of rice and beans and Cheerios (not all mixed together) in the coming weeks. I’m turning almost-40 (i.e. 39) tomorrow. I’m really tired of the cold weather. My fingers haven’t been warm since before Thanksgiving. Mallory is resisting, with all her strength and might, learning her multiplication tables. Neither child can go more than five minutes without complaining about some kind of bodily pain. My finger hurts! My stomach hurts! My nose hurts! My foot hurts! My complete lack of sympathy has yet to staunch the whining. I always thought that by the time I was almost-40, I would just have $700 lying around. Hmph. (I don’t mean to go on...

Here are some funny things Phoebe has said recently: "Hey Mom, my butt kind of hurts." "I'm real sorry to hear that." Pause. "Ohhh...I just figured it out! Why my butt hurts!" "Okay..." "It must be because this is Tuesday , and I'm still wearing my Monday underpants." --------- Whilst playing with Mallory: "Don't run away from me! I'm going to wrangle you! And my people are from Texas, so I know how to wrangle!" --------- The girls were singing along with the radio one day when Mallory suddenly burst out laughing. "You'll never guess what Phoebe thinks the words to this song are!" she giggled. The line went: "Say what you need to say..." Phoebe was singing: "Sandwich you need to save..." -------- Phoebe often drops the last syllable of certain words. "Hey Mom, I'm thirst," she'll say. "I need a cup of wat." Or, "I...

“You can admire the human species, but you have to be realistic,” was the first line of a news report I heard this morning. I laughed, and then listened with interest as the reporter explained how human history may have been influenced by the size of newborn human babies – who are proportionately much larger than the babies of other primates, and also more helpless. Humans therefore had to arrange their lives around the fact that, essentially, parents of small children who want to get anything done have to be able to hand them off to other people once in a while. It takes a village. This was a nice story, but it was immediately followed by a report about the little girl who was killed in Arizona on Saturday. She was nine years old. I couldn't listen to the whole story and I can't write any more about it and I can't imagine what her parents are feeling. And I can’t say I have much faith in the village right now.

Is there any day more melancholy than the last day of Christmas vacation? The tree has been untrimmed, the Advent calendars put away, the last bag of presents has been unpacked, the chocolate crinkles have all been eaten. The girls are spending their last hours of freedom with their friend across the street while I think dolefully about packing their lunches and finding their backpacks and wondering where their school shoes are. It was a good Christmas, a happy two weeks, with snow and a trip to the kids' museum and new toys and games. Now it's back to homework and carpool lines and planning Girl Scout meetings and, oh yeah, cookie sales. Oh well. Time marches on, right into 2011. Hope yours is happy.

Best Fiction Room by Emma Donoghue Jack is 5 and the room he was born in is his whole world; it’s a soundproof, escape-proof garden shed in which he and his mother are held captive. Jack narrates the book, and although he’s definitely precocious his thoughts and views are spot-on five. And the relationship between Jack and his mom is wonderfully drawn; it captures perfectly how a mother can love her child beyond measure (and go to extraordinary lengths to keep him safe and nurtured in spite of difficult circumstances) but still be irritated and worn down by the never-ending demands of motherhood. As soon as I finished this book the first time I immediately started reading it again from the beginning. More really good fiction: Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker Guilty Pleasure Faithful Place by Tana French This doesn’t quite fit into the category of “well-written literary fiction” like the above books; i...