Monday, December 20, 2010

best near-disaster so far today

so i'm being lazy, still in my PJs, in my bed, at 10 am. my kids are kind of roaming the house looking for things to do. suddenly reed and max walk into my room, reed holding a bowl of an unidentified dark liquid, filled almost to the brim.
"what is that?!" i say, trying and failing to keep my voice in check.
"syrup," says max, with a shrug.
"syrup?"
"yeah," he sounds almost bored, as if it should be obvious why his 2-year-old brother should be wandering the house with a bowl full of syrup.
i sprint to the kitchen, expecting every surface covered in maple syrup.

but i am delighted to find that the mess is confined to one small section of counter top, and that most of the spill accompanying the pour from the syrup jar to the bowl is sopped up by a paper towel. all i have to do is un-sticky the handle of the stool pushed up against the counter, and finish wiping up what's left of the puddle.

sometimes my kids surprise me.


Wednesday, December 08, 2010

the near future

all right, so it's the near future, and still no pictures in promised posts have materialized. i apologize. allow me to dazzle you with text instead.

recent events:
Tuesday before Thanksgiving we went to Disneyland as a family. Troy even took a day off work. :) Crowds were a bit lighter than expected, and a good time was had by all.



Thanksgiving we spent with Aunt Mary Alice and company, which was very fun. We haven't seen much of her crew for a long time, so it was fun to catch up and just be comfortable extended family. Plus, any event with pie at the end is a good event.

Once December was upon us, we had to get a tree. Yes, a real one. And yes, it is impossible to go cut your own if you live in LA. But we also didn't need snow boots or four-wheel drive. We satisfied ourselves with going to Target. Except they didn't have trees. So we headed to Home Depot instead. And so did everyone else. But we got a tree, and Troy manfully hauled it through the makeshift forest while we waited in line to pay for said tree. And we're hoping that in the process we didn't discourage anyone around us in line from having children in the future. Maybe everyone just enjoyed the jollity. We got the tree home and discovered that the trunk was a mite too large for our stand. Troy retrieved his faithful ancestral blade (a buck knife with "T. Walker" engraved on its sheath, inherited from his grandfather, Troy Walker) and whittled down the trunk until it did fit in our stand. Our living room is still not satisfactorily arranged to accommodate the "living" and the tree, but we're making do.


Reed managed to turn two without a single shot taken of him, big moment or small. I have failed him as a mother, and all of you who wanted pictures of him. He hasn't changed much since those pre-Thanksgiving pics taken at Disneyland. Although it is a shame that we didn't take a picture of the cake either. It was straight out of a magazine, I tell you. One of these days I'm going to take a class and get really good at it. For now my technique is purely gleaned from TV.

Reed opened several presents on his big day, the contents of which have mostly been commandeered by his older brothers. I'm hoping by Christmas they'll let him play with his own stuff. The winner among the presents, as measured by playtime since, is definitely the motorized trains. Thank you, Grandma Corinne! When they decide that sharing is a good idea, it's pretty great. :) Tonight, I asked each boy what part of the day was their favorite, and Max answered, "when i got to play trains with Dean and Reed."

We even had a little party here, and then a reprise on Monday to further spread the cake joy, since otherwise I would have finished it myself and felt guilty for a few minutes. :)

I really enjoy Christmas and everything that goes along with the season. My favorite, though, is being able to participate in as much music-making as possible. (okay, it's neck and neck with all the yummy treats people bust out right about now) We've already had more than one Family Night that involved choosing favorite Christmas songs. This year I am involved in more music than in years past, probably because we're not traveling! Whatever the reason, I'm extremely happy to be able to play my flute, play piano, and sing, in choirs and solo, music that I love so deeply. Troy encourages me in all of this, even though it means I'm gone for chunks of Sunday afternoons and evenings and he is putting children to bed alone. It makes for a strange schedule, and I'm glad it won't last, but it's been really fun.

That's all for now, folks. Tune in next month I guess. :)

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

we're still alive

i just looked and my last post was kind of a long time ago...

since march, several things have happened, the most life-changing of which is that we moved to a little house (post with pictures to follow, i promise) in our neighborhood so that Dean wouldn't have to change schools and we wouldn't have to disrupt our lives too much.

also life-changing for me: Andrea moved to Idaho in July, the day before Dean's 6th birthday. i do mean life-changing. there are so many ways i miss her that i can't begin to enumerate them. i'm functioning well, but it's an effort. having spent so much time with her in the past and watched how she is with people has given me inspiration for how to be now that she's gone. it's like i'm trying to fill in for her. i don't know if that even makes sense, but it's the best way i can think of to put it into words.

much of Troy's family came to see us in July, and the two of us got a vacation to San Francisco while Grandma stayed with the kids. and on top of keeping them occupied for seven days while we were gone, she got Max potty trained--or at least started on the path. we're still cleaning up puddles and clods now and again, but he's doing really well! extra points for Grandma! thank you again for volunteering to stay with my three hoodlums and let us have some time to reconnect. we had a great time!

the rest of the summer was pretty lazy and unstructured, which was fun, and then it was really time for school to start again. :) and now here we are, after Halloween!

so this is really a bit of a preview post. i have pictures and more details but didn't want to worry about putting them in order or pretending that all these things had just happened. they didn't. it was a while ago, and i'm just now getting back to the blog.

anyway there you have it, loyal readers. i'm committing to several posts in the near future.



Friday, March 26, 2010

the glamorous life

ok folks. today i went to the park to meet up with a couple of friends. i hadn't been to this park in a while, and i don't really like it that much because it's always kind of crowded, and there's a beautiful duck pond where you can get really close to the water, which is heart-attack city for moms of young children, which is exactly who goes there all the time. but i was prepared for these considerations since i am quite familiar with the park.

i got there first, and noticed there was no parking on the block where the park is because there were a bunch of trucks parked there. the better part of the playground had been taped off, there were tables set up a ways off, all with the same bright blue table cloths, and there were a couple of catering trucks. i pulled up next to one where there were a couple of people hanging out and asked what was going on. they were shooting, like, all day, and you can maybe play on the fringes of the park that isn't roped off, but we have a permit. thanks!

several kids had breached the caution tape, and i figured, they probably won't start actually shooting for a while, so we'll get out when they kick us out. my friends arrived about 10 minutes before that happened, and then we were cast out into the unsafe-for-kids part(s) of the park. and there's only so much time you can spend running after kids who insist on running away towards the murky green duck-poop-algae water before your nerves are frayed. max kept looking for bridges across the water, which were at the other end of the park to where we were trying to play together, so i finally just bowed out as gracefully as i could. i let max look at the water and run across the bridges a little before heading back.

but it wasn't enough for the trucks to take up all the parking--they took up most of the sidewalk too, so we got to walk all slanty-like on the grass back up to our car. but, if you happen to see an apple commercial of kids playing in a sunny santa monica park, we were some of the people they had to kick out of the park so they wouldn't have to pay us. :) i love hollywood.

but the weather sure is nice!

Saturday, February 06, 2010

The first T-Rex scene of Jurassic Park as told by a 3 year old:

The big dinosaur is on the street!
And the man needed to go to the potty.
and the man said aaah and shut the door!
and the dinosaur BROKE the potty.
and he EAT him!

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

A Day at the Zoo

Hi folks. I know it's been quite a while since I posted anything. But lest ye think we've totally dropped off the face of the earth, here is a little slide show provided by my friend, Star. She came with me so I wouldn't lose any children or my mind, and graciously took pictures of us.

Sidenote: I've never embedded a slideshow, but I thought it would save you the trouble of scrolling down for 4 days. I wrote captions for these pictures and I hope they show up. Here goes. :)


If you click on the pictures you can jump into my picasa web album and see them bigger, and without the captions taking up half the picture.