It has already begun

Note the bling bling.

This is the first time, but I'm sure it won't be the last. 

Dear Santa Letters

Eliza's note to Santa: [with translations]
Satu [Santa]
I love you beekus you giv us prezis [presents]
you are vare nis [very nice]
and uor elvz [your elves]
satu see you on christmas
marey christmas i love you plez bren me prezin

Sage’s note to Santa:
Dear Santa,
I HAVE BEEN GOOD but NOT PERFECT.  Will I still get presents and candy in my stocking?  I LIKE your "Ho Ho Ho!"  And there are some people who are giving us the twelve days of Christmas.  Do you know who they are?  Are they your elfs? (Ending of letter)  You don't have to give me any presents though.
Sincierly,
Sage Williams

Just so you know...

Taking a baby's handprint is harder than you'd think. 

  

And, for the record, I only applied paint to one tiny baby hand.  HE did the rest himself.  Our own little Jackson Pollock, in the flesh.  Or on the flesh.

 

 

Censorship

Remember that rhetorical question, "If you give a 2nd grader an email account?"  Well the answer is, she will probably begin reading your blog, and she might read the review you gave her review about the perfect chocolate chip cookie.  Then you might be in trouble.  Enough said. 

There were tears shed and a few insults hurled, which I probably deserved.  Then I sat at the computer (like a shamefaced teenager) with the aforementioned 2nd grader watching over my shoulder (like a disappointed mother), as I deleted the Offensive Post #1 from my oh-too-public blog.

My saving grace came through the many kind and complimentary comments about Sage's typing and Spanish, which I shared with her.  (Thank you, my friends!)

It made for a much less painful ending to my chastisement than the last time I was taken to task for my writing.  During my freshman year of high school, my physiology teacher gave us the assignment to write an anti-smoking pamphlet.  I decided to go the extra mile (I thought) and wrote a satirical pamphlet with such ridiculous things as "Everyone's going to die eventually, so who cares if you die when you're 20 (from smoking) as opposed to 75?" 

Okay, yeah, so it wasn't brilliant satire or logic.  But I certainly did not anticipate being invited to my teacher's office to be yelled at for ten straight minutes.  She repeatedly demanded, "What if this got into the wrong hands?!?", which led me to conclude that it certainly had.  I redid the assignment the "right way," which took 1/10th the time and creativity of my previous submission. 

Unfortunately, there were no kind blog comments back then to ease my teacher's pain or my own.  Which is why blogging is way better than going to high school.  (You can see I've been working on my logic.)  And also why I owe you all for saving my skin. 

One month old

Today my little baby boy, Christian, is one month old.  One month!?!  I'm not quite sure what I've been doing for the last month.  But it involves 1000ish tiny diapers, seeing all hours pass on the clock, and eating a lot of dark chocolate.

Being the math and number nerd that I am, I secretly hoped that I would go into labor on 11-11-11.  Which didn't happen.  I missed it by a few hours.  Next time (did I just say that?), I think I will try harder to conceive a few hours earlier.  But I’m not sore about it.  Really. Ahem.

It was two weeks before my due date, and I came home from a baby shower to take my standard try-not-to-get-a-migraine nap.  When I woke up, I had a few contractions.  Since I hadn't memorized "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (like I did with my first pregnancy), I felt a little rusty, so I appealed to Google.  I typed in "regular contractions," read a little bit, then stood up, and my water promptly broke. Which is why Google is the best invention on the planet.

I called Mark in a bit of a frenzy and said "My water broke.  Come home now."  And then I hung up on him.  Because there's nothing like a constant dripping of aminotic fluid down your legs to rattle your brain a little.

I made two important phone calls: one to dump the next day's Sunday School lesson off on someone else (how nice, because I had not started preparing yet), and the other to tell my mom to make haste, and then we were off, over the river and through the woods to the big H we go.  Labor was shockingly slow (compared to the last two)--only five total hours--which resulted in me actually being able to experience the "munch on ice chips" thing everyone talks about.  

Incidentally, they had blueberry ice chips, which I thought were super cool until I realized that our baby's scrapbook was going to be full of pictures of his blue-toothed mom.  I will be forever grateful to my friends who threw me the baby shower, because it caused me to actually have makeup on in my delivery pictures. (A first after four kids!)  The makeup was nice to offset the blue tint of my teeth.

Our little guy was little, just 6 pounds 3 ounces.

 

The girls were thrilled to meet him.  Lily showed up with Grandma in her witch costume, and apparently sang "I'm a Mean Old Witch" on her way up the elevator.  I wasn’t so concerned with the witch costume as with wondering when my [former] little baby turned into a giant.

 

Eliza wrote on her school paper: "I like my mom and I like my dad.  I love Criustin my babe bruthrr."  She loves to tell people about the time she saved his life by rescuing him from Lily, who picked him up without supporting his neck.

 

Sage will be a great big sister.  She's been the slowest to warm up to Christian, though.  Or, in other words, the only one to not smother him constantly, but she is pretty happy to have another family member with dark hair and possibly brown eyes.

All good things must end, and eventually it was time to leave the luxury of the hospital, with its full-time cleaning staff, menus, and room service that we will be paying for for a good long time, I'm sure.

I made sure we snapped enough pictures of ourselves from the perfect angle so I would have something to send out to announce our baby's birth that didn't show me in that glorious hospital gown with "Central Laundry" printed dead center.  Also my teeth were no longer blue.

We were met by a very adorable welcome home party. 

 

 My mom outdid herself with caring for our kids.  Eliza had made a cootie-catcher that she was thrilled to show off.  Sage had made a candy bar poster with leftover Halloween candy.  Lily had opened most of my baby showers gifts while I was gone.  The girls had all made Welcome Home signs and cards and even helped Grandma write a song about the new baby.

 

Here is (in the words of Eliza) the “little yellow man” himself (go away, jaundice).  Or, the “dorito baby” (burrito baby), if you listen to Lily.   But after one tiny trip to the name change office, we're now happy to call him Christian.

  Is that a smile or a grimace under that blanket?

 We love our baby boy, Christian.

 

If You Give a 2nd Grader an Email Account

When Eliza was born, Mark decided we should reserve Sage and Eliza both email addresses.  It wasn't until this year that we told Sage she had an email address, embarrassingly enough, named BabySagers.  She was totally thrilled about the account, as well as her (apparently not babyish) username.  Our only initial stipulation before setting Sage lose on the world wide web was that she had to use correct keyboarding if she was going to send emails.  So off she went, slowly typing emails with funny spacing to anyone and everyone she could think of, then staring at screen, willing new emails to show up (apparently this is hereditary).

But none of this is news to my mom and sisters.  They have been so kind to indulge Sage with return emails with pictures and emoticons to boot. 

However, this week, when one of my sisters forwarded one of Sage's emails on to me, I realized that maybe we need to talk to our budding typist about email ettiquette.

Hey Suz! You know that email I sent you earlier. I've been waiting to get a reply back from you. It's been very tiring not to get an email from you. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease send me back an email soon.Is it yes or no If you say yes I'll be relived. I command you to say yes Suzy. From, Sage

Reading this brings back memories of what life was like when I had my first email account, with three total contacts.  New emails were like Christmas presents.  How can I not smile at Sage's antics to procure personal messages in her own little electronic world of BabySagers?  Here are a couple of the seven emails from Sage that I found in my inbox tonight:

Dear Mom, I do not care which name our baby brother will have. But I do care about the names you like. This is from Sage. Bye.  

Hola Mama!Tu eres una buena Mama. NO podemos leer El tesoro de nieve nada mas. Nesesita leer otro libro ahora. De Sage. Adios!

Mom, You are the only one who  sends me emails by them self.I am sad that nobody else will write messages to me. I have to write messages to them first, and then they will send me emails. Thank you a million times for sending me emails before I do.  Love, Sage

"If you give a second grader an email account...."  "....make sure it's loaded with contact information for lots of aunts and uncles"????

I better write Sage back quickly, now that we all know that waiting for responses is so tiring for her.

Classy halloween decor

We are nothing if not classy in our Halloween decorations around here.

Instructions to be classy, too: Let your two-year-old and her cousin get into the box of bandaids by themselves.  Reap the benefits on current decor, bedposts, stuffed animals, themselves, etc.

Auto pilot

Sometimes I feel like I'm living life on auto pilot mode.  For example, this coloring job by Eliza was hanging up for at least a week or two before I really looked at it. 

Awkward!

Thumper said so

My mom used to remind us "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."  That's why I haven't blogged about Lily's potty training yet.  Or, in other words, the battle To Poop or Not to Poop in One's Undies.  (Scoreboard: Lily: 18, Mom: 0)

Here is a picture of our shower, or as we not-so-affectionately call it, The Underwear Tree.

Crazy Eliza Month

Last week our school had a "Crazy Sock Day."  Because nothing improves school spirit like having kids come wearing crazy socks, right?

That morning, Sage came up for breakfast wearing two different colored socks.  Eliza showed up wearing two white socks.  I reminded her that it was Crazy Sock Day, and she got an excited look on her face and said, "Mom, I am wearing crazy socks.  One of them is clean and one of them is dirty!"'

Speaking of crazy and Eliza, she has always been extremely "creative" in the names she gives her stuffed animals.  (Remember the dog "Riding on the Back"?)  Unlike everyone else, who calls our cat "Kitty," Eliza's been calling our feline "Kitty on the Radio" for weeks now.  But apparently that wasn't good enough, because yesterday she suggested a replacement for "Kitty on the Radio."  I had to take a video clip, and even when she repeated her idea for the camera, I had a hard time not snorting with laughter.

Putzin.  So we can call her Putz-in-Boots.  Awesome.  (Maybe all this naming drama came about because she spent 29 days with the legal name of Female Williams?  Mark and I better get to work on boy names fast.)

First day of school laughs

 First day of school, 2009

First day of school, 2010

First day of school, 2011

On Sage's first day of school she was insistent about wearing the exact same shirt she wore to the first day of school last year and the year before.  Same size even.  Either Sage is not growing, or the shirt is growing, or I'm the biggest tightwad ever.  I know I'm a tightwad (but not that tight).  And shirts don't usually grow (or maybe that's just my third trimester perspective).  As to Sage growing, I know there's no way she'd let me put darling little pigtails in like I did two years ago.  (She plans to wear the same shirt to the first day of school next year, but with braids in her hair this time.)  I just have to be glad she isn't wearing a back to school outfit like mine from the blessed year 1989 (think matching brown shorts and vest and big brown bangs over big glasses).

As for Eliza, she is thrilled to be in kindergarten.

 

And if you didn't know better, you might think she landed herself a spot in Miss Spider's kindergarten class.

And so Lily won't feel left out, I've enrolled her in a little alternative to preschool that I like to call Grocery Shopping 101, where she and I get to do all the grocery shopping (and other errands) together after we drop off the school girls, and we will NEVER take her older sisters with us again until next summer.

Happy Back to School 2011.

The vomit scale

How is it that when your own kid pukes 10 times in one night (the number of dirty bowls in my sink let me know it truly was 10), it's like a 8 out of 10 on the lameness scale....

But when a neighbor kid barfs once in your car, it's 12 out of 10 on the same scale?

That is one of the 600 reasons why I will never run a day care out of my home.

To My Garden

Dearest Garden,
It is really nice of you to carry on, growing tasty things deep down there amongst all those 6 million weeds that I'm supposed to be attending to.

The yellow Siamese twin squash you gave us was unlike any I've ever seen before.  I'm a little scared to eat it, actually.

The peas were a huge hit with Lily.  One day when I hauled her out of the garden into the bathtub, unbeknownst to me, she brought the peas with her and decorated the tub.  She's sad that pea season is over. 

I think the tomato jungle is doing well, even in the absence of cages until last week (that was not good planning, by the way).  We have quite a hoard of green tomatoes, even though Lily picks them whenever she thinks I'm not looking.  I'm counting on some amazing homegrown ones to teach Lily this year that tomatoes are not the worst food on the planet.  (So far she thinks they're just green apples.)

When I brought in another huge load of summer squash today, Sage accused me of falsely informing her that gardens are harvested in the fall.  Let's just let her think that is true, and I'll keep eating the handful of raspberries that ripen each day that never make it inside. 

I think heaven will have lots of sun-warmed raspberries.  Just maybe with less bees hovering.  And maybe heaven will have zucchini plants that only produce the exact number of zucchinis you need.  I'm not complaining, but my compost pit is getting pretty full of zucchinis, which causes me a tiny bit of guilt.  As does the number of zucchini muffins I personally consumed today. 

Kitty love

I am so pleased with how brave my girls have been with our little kitty.

j
j

 Eliza offered to take a picture of the kitty and me.  Behold.  The kitty and [part of] me. 

Haven't we talked about Eliza's photography skills before?  Because it seems like they're just getting worse.

The service chart

After Eliza's misdeeds earlier this month, my older (and sometimes wiser : ) sister, Krista, suggested I make Eliza her own special chart with places to mark off when she did something good or nice, thus rewarding the good behavior.

Sage was delighted with Eliza's chart, and with trying to help her fill all the squares (aka--"Eliza just smiled at me!  Can she mark off a square?").  Sage begged for her own chart, which, unfortunately, has superseded the second round of Eliza's chart.

Sage's favorite thing to do for a mark on the chart is to make an "invention" for someone.  Yesterday she made a wallet protector by wrapping Eliza's wallet in a ziploc bag, then rigging a yo-yo string so it stretched around the ziplocked wallet; then she secured the yo-yo string by lacing it through several holes of Lily's croc on the other side.

Today she made me...actually I still don't know what it was.  It was something that did some sort of locking up, but it took Sage about 3 minutes to do up the "lock" so I'm not sure it would win the Invention Convention or anything, but it did get a mark on the chart.  And that's what matters, right?

P.S. Tonight Eliza asked for her big dog.  You know, the trash can one.  And then, conveniently, I thought I heard the phone ringing in the other room....

Everything but the kitchen sink

We are down to two kids at home for the weekend, and I'm sorry to say that I've been enjoying it quite a bit.  We jumped at the chance to send Sage to Las Vegas for a quick 3-day trip (down with Aunt Lorene and back with Aunt Danielle), as her cabin fever has become a little much (not so much her cabin fever as the manifestations of her cabin fever, which almost all consist of using "Mom" and "mean/meanie/meanest" in the same sentence, at high decibel levels).

On the morning of departure, I asked Sage to pack her suitcase for her 3 day trip.  This is what I found crammed into her backpack, along with the 3 outfits, PJs, shoes, socks, undies and toothbrush that I requested:

Ruler

1 inch piece of chalk

Washcloth ("for spills" she explained)

Blue belt (that was only used once in the last year)

Pen

3 toothbrushes

3 flossers

1 broken princess comb

Beanbag

Empty toilet paper roll

2 tubes of toothpaste

Stuffed turtle

Jumprope

3 pairs socks

2 rubber bracelets

Hello Kitty watch (not functional)

Purse with mirror and hand sanitizer

Heart pillow 

Basically everything but the kitchen sink.   I hope she survives without that piece of chalk that I snuck out.

Two down

Yey for our second successful birthday party in a week. (First one.)

Today's theme was Under the Sea. 

The kids ignored the water obstacle course I set up and just slip'n'slided.

Homemade octopus pinata=big fat pain.  But it was cute, until it dropped off its string before actually being broken by that noodle.  (We wised up and used a noodle instead of a frying pan.)

You've got to have an M+M machine, regardless of the theme.

Thanks to Becca--photographer and party manager. : )

Some news

After dealing with Eliza's antics yesterday (including, but not limited to scattering birdseed in the carpet, glue on her bed, face paint on Lily and the sheepskin rug, half our Sam's Club carton of gold fish in a bowl of water, and a quick pit stop on her bedroom floor), I guess I should be feeling pretty happy that the results of our ultrasound were....

XY!

It's a boy!

Just think how many years it will be before he can climb up bathroom shelves to reach my Halloween face paint stash!!! 

The old stuffed animal who lived in a trash can

There once was a woman who lived in a shoe. 
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
She fed them all broth without any bread
and spanked them all soundly and sent them to bed.

And that woman was WAY nicer than me today.  Because at least she didn't throw anyone's stuffed animals in the trash can. 

P.S. I chickened out and pulled out that ridiculous dog minutes before the trash collector arrived.  That doesn't mean I gave it back to her...I'm a long way from that.

I'm a monkey's uncle

What do Tigris, Meower Power, Cheeto and Pippi have in common?

They’re all in the running for the name of our new kitten.

I know.  I’m a monkey’s uncle.

I would explain all about my longtime professed dislike of cats, and Mark's last email address (MyHeroScranz[dead cat's name]@yahoo.com), and Sage and Eliza's paranoia around animals, and that naughty billboard run by the Humane Society (with 12 foot tall pictures of lonely, orphaned animals), but our little orange furball is trying to climb up the back screen door (with the intent of unhooking the screen at the top and coming inside).  

Excuse me.

Worst picture ever of the naughty kitty in action

P.S. Don't you think Pippi is the best name for a rambunctious cat who LOVES to walk in between people's legs and climb up screen doors and win over three formerly animal-paranoid children?  I've been totally outvoted.

Darn screen saver

Maybe it's a bad idea to have our computer screen saver set to roam through old pictures on our computer.

Eliza, 10/2009

Lily (with Eliza's encouragement), 6/2011