Creative Writing

Yesterday as I was folding laundry, Elena and I were making up stories. The start of this particular story was my favorite:

Me: Once upon a time, there was...

Elena: a little cow. And her name was Angela.

Me: This cow was very special. She could do something no other cow could do....

Elena: She could grow flowers out her udders.
(She actually said “gutters,” but I knew what she meant)

Birthdays

A few weeks ago (I'm worried most of my blog posts are going to start like this...), we had a party for both my dad's birthday and Seth's Aunt Amy's 50th birthday. As you can see, Papi had no shortage of help blowing out his candles!

Amy has down's syndrome, and at her party, I was once again reminded of how much we can learn from people with this disability (among most others). When we all sang "Happy Birthday" to her, she burst into tears of gratitude, and then, not wanting to leave anyone out, she requested that we sing "Happy Birthday" to everyone.

Seth's cousin, Pete, is a DJ so he provided entertainment. Unlike the rest of us who sat and watched, only coming out occassionally to timidly dance for the Macarena or the Chicken Dance before running back to the comfort of our seats, Amy and her friends (and the little kids, of course) danced the afternoon away completely uninhibited, with ear-to-ear grins on their faces. It was a joy to watch. Why is it so hard for most of us to give ourselves over completely to enjoying the moment, letting our emotions flow to the fullest, without fear or embarrassment that someone is watching?

I have a video of Amy busting out her moves to her favorite musician, Michael Jackson, but it's a little long. If I can cut it down, I'll try to put it up later. For now, here are Sam and Ian showing off their dance moves...of course, Ian stopped dance right when I started taping, but you can see a little. Ian's got some fancy footwork and Sam's all hips (he's been learning to dance from his sister).

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Minnesota Kids

I took the kids outside to play yesterday, making sure to get them bundled up since it was (at most) 40 degrees outside.

Within seconds, they had both ripped off their jackets. And their shoes. And their socks.

I'm just waiting to see how cold it has to get before our kids will notice it. It just started to snow as I was typing this message - maybe that'll do the trick!

Father-Daughter Talk

Elena: I want to go hunt deer with you, Daddy.

Seth: OK - when you're older, you can come hunting with me if you want.

Elena: Yay!.....I want to get a Barbie shooter!

Seth: I'm pretty sure they don't make Barbie guns....

It's a good thing we're not Buddhists...

Doesn't this look like fun?

Makes me wish I were small enough to join in!

Why do I even bother?

I don't know about you other moms, but I ask myself this at least once a day. Here's a little sampling of what trying to get things done looks like around here:

A few weeks ago, I folded a load of laundry after the kids went to bed (because if I do it while Sam is awake, he will join me saying those 2 endearing words that he loves so much: "I help." And then he unfolds more quickly than I can fold.) I wasn't able to put the laundry away because the kids were sleeping upstairs.

The next morning, after breakfast, Sam spotted a bag of doritos and asked for some. I gave him a small bowl and decided to take the opportunity to read the paper and drink my tea. Within a few minutes, I looked up to see that Sam had not only dumped out my folded laundry, but had also fingered them up with his Dorito-hands. (Did I mention they were whites?)

So I sorted out the Doritoed clothes and threw them back in the wash and refolded the rest. While I was doing this, Sam went upstairs to play. When I came up a few minutes later, he was sitting on our bed surrounded by shards of glass. He had managed to get a hold of a glass insert to a candle holder and was somehow able to break it while sitting in the middle of our king-sized bed.

I removed him from the room, vacuumed up all the glass and removed the bedding so I could wash it. I left the room for a minute to grab a new set of sheets. In the time it took me to return, Sam snuck back into our room, removed the dust bin (now full of glass) from the vacuum cleaner and proceeded to dump it out all over the floor and also inside the vacuum in the empty space where the dust bin had come out. Now I had to get another vacuum so I could vacuum out the vacuum, put the dust bin back in and revacuum our room.

After that, I just gave up and played with the kids.

Oh, well. That's what I get for trying to read the paper. I hope you'll understand if respond with a blank stare if you ever try to discuss current events with me.

As Seth likes to say to me occassionally, "Well, at least our kids aren't boring." How true :)

Hello, Godmother!

Sam was finally able to meet his godmother for the first time a few weeks ago. Rachana was my roommate in college freshman year, and we have remained good friends ever since. Since she now lives in Abu Dhabi, we decided to ask her to be Sam's godmother when he was born. That way, even though she lives half-way across the world, our familywill always have a close connection with her. As you can see - Sam just loved her!

Here we are in our Abu Dhabi shirts that Rachana brought over for us:

We were also able to spend a day at the Renaissance festival that weekend. Some of Seth's family happened to be going the same day too, which was great because when I woke up in Bloomington at 2:00 a.m. and realized that our tickets were still on our kitchen counter back home (which was 3 hours away), I was able to call my sister-in-law to pick them up and bring them along! This is at the end of our day there. We all had fun, and as you can probably tell from the picture, the kids completely wore themselves out.

You know you live in a small town when...

One of the benefits of living in a small town:
When you forget your keys at the library, the librarian not only knows they are yours but also calls you at home to get directions so she can drop them off at your house on her way home from work.

First Leaf Pile of the Season!