Archive for December, 2008
At the in-laws:
We went out to visit my BIL at work, and then Grandmother at the nursing home. Beforehand, the Little Guy told us he was excited to visit his Uncle at the “Newspaper Factory,” and indeed, he eagerly inspected the presses and was interested to see the front page being composed on the computers in the newsroom.
After that, we went to the Nursing home, where he hugged his 96-year old great-grandmother very gently, and sat politely on the edge of the bed to make conversation with her, telling her that, “What I thought was going to be my favorite wasn’t my favorite, but this is my favorite.” It took some explaining, but he was trying to pay her a compliment. In the car on the way home, he leaned over to my DH and whispered, “But that wasn’t really true. I was just trying to be nice to her.” Normally, one doesn’t want one’s children to lie, but it is sweet of him to make such a pointed effort to be nice to her. Miss Baby ran in a circle through her room and then went out into the hall to dismantle an oxygen tank.
When we got home, the Little Guy ran up to fetch the newspaper, and was very pleased to see the front page he had inspected earlier that day.
(Yes, I realize that teaching him to appreciate newspapers is like teaching him to appreciate swing music; it’s a dying genre, blah, blah, blah. What can I say? His Daddy loves radio. I read books, actual 900-page novels. We’re all pretty out of step with the times in our house).
We’ve been at the in-laws, so I haven’t had a chance to blog. The Little Guy had a fine time with his cousins — he was impressed by the 11-year old’s new cell phone (”She’s a kid and she has her own phone, and she called the weather channel on it!”) and enjoyed spending time obsessing about trains with his Pappaw. He — the Little Guy –received an HO-gauge CSX engine as a Christmas present, and kept creeping away to open the box and look at it and pet it — everything but mumble, “my precious.” So that was a big success.
Miss Baby is funny. She didn’t really come out of her shell until all the cousins showed up and the place was complete chaos. When the Little Guy was younger, he was generally overwhelmed by the cousins, and more content with us, or the grandparents, or his uncle. But Miss Baby likes to run with the herd. It was unusual to see her so shy (and thus extremely daddyish) — normally she’s pretty gregarious. She hurt her Pappaw’s feelings a little bit; normally, kids just gravitate to him, but Miss Baby wasn’t interested in him at first. She does things on her own schedule.
All in all, it was a nice Christmas, and the kids were happy. We went to church on Christmas eve. I went to the nursery with Miss Baby, until my DH came and traded places; he brought her in for the candles and “Silent Night.” The Little Guy enjoyed the service — he generally likes church — but declined communion, on the not-very-theological grounds that the crackers didn’t look yummy and he doesn’t like grape juice. During the solemn moment before the candles were lit, Miss Baby chattered happily for all to enjoy, until my DH wisely popped a lollipop into her mouth. This saved us from a round of, “Happy Birthday,” which is her usual response to fire of any kind.
If possible, seek the “non-toddler” option. The Little Guy grew tired and went to bed on the fold-out couch. Miss Baby stayed up to all hours, bouncing around the room. She chatted on the phone, which we had already unplugged. She flipped on the radio and re-set the clock, which we quickly unplugged. Eventually, My DH curled up with her and held her still until she went to sleep. After a while, she crept up onto the bed and snuggled next to his legs for a while, and then, still not particularly awake, she migrated over to me, and ended up spending most of the night with her hand on my cheek and her face under my chin. Sweet, but not especially comfortable. Rather like sleeping with a 35-pound housecat.
Filed under: Costa MesaPosted: December / 22 / 2008
OK, so I’m behind. Still: cue the Hallelujah Chorus! The Fed has shut down the toll road; Trestles and San Onofre state park are most likely saved!
I had a student write a paper about this subject this semester — here, in NC. Surfers everywhere care.
Filed under: the roadPosted: December / 22 / 2008
Nice place, clean. Easy to find, seems safe. Huge TVs. The suite is generous, but the layout makes it impossible for us to follow our initial plan, which was to put Miss Baby on a cot in one room and let her wear herself out until she fell asleep. Meanwhile, we would mellow with the Little Guy and then install him in the room with her. The room with the fold-out couch — where he will sleep — connects to the bathroom, and has the little fridge, and myriad other temptations that there is no way we are leaving her alone with. So everyone is on the big bed, watching Cars on TV — Miss Baby is in her element — and hoping that she dozes on the cot which is now at the foot of the big bed. The Little Guy will still spend the night on his foldout in the other room, so the suite isn’t a total loss.
I’m downstairs in the “business center” — a niche with a computer. Still, breakfast is included, and not just continental either.
Take care, all — I’m going back upstairs to plunge into the melee.
Well, we spent the day in the car. The Little Guy reminisced about our cross-country drive, and wished that he lived in SC, “Because I would feel more at home because they have palm trees and Denny’s.” Miss Baby had one little explosion, but otherwise spent her time kicking the cooler at her feet in time to the music, imitating her brother, and shouting out lines from her favorite movie. Every semi was “Mac!” and, late in the day especially, it became very funny to repeat, “Pit stop!” over and over, especially after Mommy used the term to refer to a bathroom break.
At one point, the Little Guy was contradicting my DH about something, and my DH commented about his need to argue everything… wait for it, you know it’s coming… “I do not!” At which point I just about fell out laughing, for some reason. It’s not like we haven’t had this conversation before, but we were all tired from the road, I guess. “Why is she laughing?” he demanded of my DH, which just made me laugh all the harder. Miss Baby tried to imitate the sound of mommy (I’ll admit it) snorting with helpless laughter, and that broke us all up.
We drove through downtown Atlanta at night, and it’s been a long time since any of us were in a big city like that, so we ooh-ed and aah-ed like the small town people I guess we are now. We said, “Pretty,” for Miss Baby, and she tried out the word, but found one that expressed her feelings better: “Yummy!”
So, there you go: the lights of downtown Atlanta are yummy.
So, Santa was up late last night, assembling a lego train and a k’nex ferris wheel (he was asked for electric legos and trains). Ms Santa was wrapping gifts and doing piecework on the ferris wheel, so we –ahem, they — didn’t get to bed until after 1:00.
At 3:30 — two and a half hours later — the Little Guy bounded into our bedroom: “He came! He came! And I think there’s a train!” We tried to get him to lie down in our bed, or in his, but at about 5:00 my DH came to me: “He’s standing in his bathroom watching the clock.”
So, we got up bright and early and had Christmas. The Little Guy was in his element — the only one of his gifts that didn’t require assembly was the Nate the Great book. Miss Baby took to it pretty readily, especially once she realized just how many of her presents featured Lightning McQueen or Elmo. She sat right down and played with the Little People set, and once her Daddy and brother built the MegaBlocks Lightning and Mac set, she was thrilled. “Mac! Mac! Mac!” Everybody was happy and played nicely together — the parents took turns napping off and on, and Miss Baby even napped (she was up early too).
So, whatever rest I’d accumulated over the last few days is gone, but we are breaking up the trip to the in-laws, so tomorrow night we will all sleep soundly in the hotel; when you share a hotel room with little people, you pretty much have to go to bed at the same time they do.
At any rate, the Little People had a happy Christmas day.
So, we had trailer parks back in CA, but they tended to be tidy little places, seniors living by the ocean on a budget kind of arrangements.
Fayetteville trailer parks are generally more dismal, which I understand is more usual, but they are all named by the principle which guides the naming of housing tracts in planned communities. That is, you name it after something that isn’t there. So you have housing tracts named “deerfield” where there are neither deer nor fields. Here, we have trailer parks named “Enchanted Forest,” and “Sweet Fields.” The more pleasant the name, the more dismal the trailer park, so “Leisure Estates” is only moderately unpleasant.
The weather has warmed up a bit, so the Little People went out back to play in the yard. They dug in the sand, played with trucks, tossed balls around. Miss Baby crawled under the back porch. When it was time to come in, I noticed that Miss Baby had red fingers. The Little Guy said, “Oh, that’s from those berries.”
“Berries, what berries?” He showed me the berries that were growing through the fence, so I picked a sprig and brought it in. We looked it up and determined that it was probably dried out pokeberries. If you eat enough of them, you will throw up. A lot. Apparently she didn’t eat too many, because she’s just fine, although she did pull one of the berries out of her mouth to make room for a toothbrush. She had apparently been carrying it about like a squirrel for at least 15 minutes. So I brought her into the bathroom to wash her hands, and let her drink from paper cups and splash in the sink for a while, much to her delight.
While I installed Miss Baby at the sink, my DH called poison control. The Little Guy wanted desperately to do something to help, so we sent him out with a bag to remove the remaining berries. He felt suitably brotherly and heroic.
So, that was almost exciting, which is how we like it — almost.
It’s our Christmas eve — since we will be with my DH’s family for the day itself, we are having our little Christmas here at home tomorrow. The Little Guy is all wound up — I put him in bed, and the minute I closed the door, he called out, “Mommy! I can’t sleep! Help me!” He’s been effusive all day long. School got out early, and I picked him up and took him out running errands with me.
At the Post Office, he admired the display of holiday stamps, including Hannukah, Eid, and Kwanzaa. He wanted to know about Eid and Kwanzaa, and I tried to explain them. Then, he wanted to ask the postal worker at the counter if she was Jewish or Christian, and I had to explain that some people think that their relationship with God is between them and God, and they don’t like to talk about it. Other people don’t mind. “But we don’t know who is who, so we shouldn’t ask,” he agreed.
The Little Guy and I made cookies — we have train-shaped cookie cutters — and he more or less took over. He rolled the dough, cut out the cookies, transferred them to the baking sheet, busy and relatively efficient.
He turned up the Christmas charm after dinner, explaining Santa to us in all kinds of new ways. Apparently, if you see Santa, you’ll get pepper in your eye. He learned this at school (yep, Santa carries pepper spray for naughty children). Huck, our cat, is expected to be on guard for Santa. At 7:30 (the Little Guy goes to bed at 8:00), he perked up: “We need to write a letter to Santa. We never did that.” So we wrote a note to go with the cookies. Being our own special Little Guy, he decided that he needed to devise a special system to indicate to Santa that he was in fact asleep, so he hung up a yo-yo. Evidently, if it swings like a pendulum, Santa will know that he is asleep. Where this comes from, I don’t know.
