Terrible/Perfect

What's going on in the box

I always kind of half joked that once our big girl started really reading, we would lose her to books.

Ha ha...ha...eh.

This is what she does for many, many hours of each day: she sits in her large packing box, with a pillow and a book and a light and maybe a Ryvita, if Mr. Terrible gives her one even though I have stressed the inadvisability of letting her eat someplace where we can't see her at all, and she asks us to fold the lid closed, and she reads.

Mr. T and I had a really strange conversation today about whether or not we should allow her to sit in the box and read all day. I argued that since she'd been to church with us in the morning and socialized with her friends, and played out on the cold, cold playground for an hour or so with her sister, I could not think of any justifiable cause for forcing her to get out of the box. He was just worried (worrying is one of the things that Mr. T does best). I have to think, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that if she's getting dressed in the morning, taking a bit of exercise, seeing her friends, eating regular meals, sleeping, and bathing (which she is), I suppose all we can do is relax and keep feeding books down the chute.

Lift the box flap and SHWOOP...there goes Narnia...and Harry Potter...and the entire world of Oz...and Edward Eager...and Alice in Wonderland...and Roald Dahl...and Pippi Longstocking...and Terry Pratchett...and those cat warrior books...

Gone. Poof. Lost. 

She is going to be pissed when she realizes how carsickness works.

First Day

I realized, a wee bit late, that I would want those first day of school pictures of my kids, whether they attend any kind of school away from home or not. She wore this today, out to the zoo, and I can honestly say that I was not at all prepared for either the strength or the volume of the response to her funny little costume. It was a full day of constant comments, from the smiling "If the python gets out we'll know who did it!" from the zoo docent to the "What is this for? Just because? That is wonderful," from a grandmother who stopped her car to ask. I think in the end it was the teenage boys, young men, really, walking along downtown and offering a totally natural "Hey, what's up, Potter?" and their hands to slap that made me realize how much the character really means to people: yes, a child dressed to the fantastical nines outside of October is wonderful, but seeing Harry, well.

That is a joy. 

Snooze

Wonky sleep patterns around here. Again. I think I need to get "This too shall pass" tattooed on my arm. I've been buying vintage pink pillowcases and they make me so happy, like a feel-good Sofia Coppola film if such a thing existed. It would be really nice to get a solid night's sleep on them.

The big kid has a birthday coming up. I asked her to write out a list of gift ideas for her dad and me, and she gave me this:

A Kaya doll (which her Grandma just got her as a huge, sweet "just 'cause" surprise...lucky girl!), a Lego Lava Monster (that little orange dude), and a bow and a sword. Not sure where that fighting vibe came from, but okay. I think we're done with theme parties until she's old enough to really commit to a theme, but she keeps telling me all of the costumes she's going to wear for her party: Link, a giant foam Rock Monster suit, Tintin. I love that she really sees all of that happening. She wants a Lego cake with all of her favorite things on top, including pictures of Kaya, Link, the Tintin crew, Moomins, Legos. That I think I can do.

I can't believe her birthday is only a month away. The summer gets away so fast.

mauvais appetit

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to stop being surprised by this, but I am becoming someone who cares a great deal about food. Clearly we all care about food, at least enough to cram it in our pieholes whenever "can" and "need to" coexist in the same universal plane, but lately I've been doing a ton of work in the kitchen making stuff for us as a family from scratch, and I suppose it's kind of growing on me: the idea of really paying attention to food, appreciating it. I hesitate to attach myself to movements of any kind but yes, bringing my attention to food has most certainly been accompanied by a feeling of slowness. Not a bad thing at all.

I've taken home a few food magazines that friends were done with, and found a lot of what was in them helpful, or at least interesting. Maybe not enough to subscribe to any of them, but enough to read them all the way through.

I'm not in the least bit interested in food celebrities, though. I'm trying to pay less attention to celebrities in general anyway, but I have no idea who the various food show hosts are or the big restauranteurs or what have you. Reading the magazines I kind of plugged my eyes and shouted "LA LA LA LA LA LA!" whenever a celebrity chef's name came up, but then there was her.

Again, as I said, I'm actively resisting forming any kind of emotional response to famous people, but she looks like she is planning to eat me. Terrifying.

Baby lay there flipping pages and saying "Isssss IIIIIIIIICE KUH-reeeem. Bread, bread, bread."

Which is precisely what I thought: once you got past the cover there was a crazy-wonderful-looking recipe from St. John for chocolate ice cream in there.

Link, he come to town!

Did you know that I have two daughters, and zero sons? It's true: it's a big ol' ladyfest around my house. Even one of our dogs is a ladydog. The bros, man and dog, are seriously outnumbered. It's kind of a running joke in my family, too, because I am not, shall we say, the most delicate of flowers. That's also a frequent joke of Mr. Terrible's, come to think of it. "My wife," he will say, "is a delicate flower." I am a consummate Plain Jane tomboy, or, tom...man?, and yet: I had two daughters. One of which has both feet firmly planted on Planet Girl.

It's been a bit of a head-scratcher for me. I remember going through a dress phase when I was six years old or thereabouts, but prior to that, and after that, I had no time at all for girly things. In an ill-conceived bid to be attractive I did wear make-up for a year or so in junior high school, but after that I gave up, started dying my hair different colors, wearing worn out mens' jeans. I mean...I'm not going to lie: I tried to be cute. I always secretly wanted to be feminine, to be pretty, but genetics wasn't fighting in my corner on that one. I guess I settled for being beautiful on the inside, and keeping my butt covered in Levi's. And when my daughter needed her face made-up for a ballet recital, I had to go out and purchase everything she needed on her face, because I owned none of it. Do you know that part in The Lord of the Rings when Sam has the elven rope around Gollum's neck, and Gollum is screaming bloody murder because "it buuuuuurns us, it freeeeeeezes us!"? It's a lot like that when I put on make-up.

Burt's Bees chapstick! Can I get a "hallelujah"?

I sometimes feel a little bad, not having cute shoes for her to try on, or polishing her nails or what have you. I also sometimes lament not having LEGOs around. And swords. And, heaven help me, Nerf guns. Don't get me wrong in the least; I love my daughters exactly as they are, but I would have enjoyed having a little Jedi Knight running around the place, too. Just...more projectiles. Those are fun.

I'd given up on trying to woo my little Princess Powder Puff with the siren song of building blocks, cars and trucks and the timeless allure of pirates, ninjas and space cowboys (and truly, in all seriousness, I don't really care what they like as long as it's age appropriate and doesn't undermine our family's values), but there developed an in: my little obsessive obsessor hadn't been obsessed with anything for a long, long time.

There was a vaccuum.

One day, for reasons I will never understand, that vaccuum filled simultaneously with The Legend of Zelda and LEGOs.

You know this song? I first heard it when I was in college, and I guess when you're 19 it's super funny. It's still super funny to me, but I lack maturity. I went looking for it the other day on YouTube, and I have no idea why, but the big kid got CRAZY hooked on it. She wants to listen to it every day, and we had to have this reeeeeally long conversation about who Link is, and the Legend of Zelda, and the original NES system, and all preceding and subsequent video game systems, and what, exactly, Link does in the game, and on and on. She doesn't play video games at all, so it was a bit like explaining a California sunset to a cave fish. Over and over again.

How do you explain Pong? Tetris? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City? No, scratch that last one. Don't even mention that one.

Also, I suspect because 1)she has boy friends, and these boy friends do NOT HALF like themselves some LEGOsohmygoodgracious, and 2)I said I was going to bring her little box of basic bricks to the free box because she never touched them, she decided to pull what LEGOs she has out and play with them the other day.

She was instantly hooked, just like that.

Now apparently I have a LEGO birthday party to plan for next month, and a Link costume to make for her to wear at it. Because that works? I don't know what kind of deep dorkiness I wished myself into here. I say this like I don't have an original artist's concept for Bag End as my desktop wallpaper, but still.

She was disappointed to learn that there are no Legend of Zelda LEGOs, but I did indulge her today with a moon buggy.

Look at that cocksure son of a gun. He's all "You know where I'm drivin'? I'm drivin' to space."

She wants more LEGO Space for her birthday. If we get them I'm swapping out some of the astronauts' dude heads (assuming they're all dude heads) for a few wearing lipstick. You know...'cause lipstick = lady.

Double Tink

This is one of the ways I will remember you: running, crying, down the sidewalk, wanting terribly to join your big sister in riding bikes with the neighborhood kids and not wanting to hear "No, you don't have a helmet that fits" and "For that matter you don't even have a bike...", wearing nothing but a diaper and the two pairs of your sister's Tinkerbell knickers that you pulled on over the top.

The Tuna Melt, or No, It's Pole Caught

Baby: I want it!

Me: Okay. Can you ask politely?

Baby: Please.

Me: Here you go.

Baby: It's chik-en?

Me: No, it's tuna.

Baby: It's "toooona"? Ohh.

Me: ...

Baby: It's chik-en?

Me: No, it's tuna. Tuna fish. It's fish.

Baby: Ohhhhhhhhh.

Me: ...

Baby: It's dol-fin?

i heart u

I went to change the little one's diaper a while back and found this on her feet.

They love one another so dearly.

Covert ops

I found this little green man up to some kind of reconnaissance from the light switch in Big Kid's room the other day. I sometimes think that the inside of her head is like an episode of Pee Wee's Playhouse, only slightly less gay.

Lead, red

You know, I kind of forget I have a blog sometimes, and then I remember and think "Oh, crap, people are looking at that thing!", except they're not, of course. Mostly.

There have been some shenanigans around here lately, the most exciting one being the repainting of our bathroom, which involved our neighbor sanding off old paint and laying down primer, yaaaaaawn, adding the kicker that one of the old layers is lead-based and after he was done and everything was all shop vac-ed up I got to quite literally wipe down the entire room with a wet cloth repeatedly to remove as much of the remaining fine layer of dust as possible, only to find that the dust had gotten inside the cabinets that I had taped up against this very possibility and there was a slender coat of powder on our toothbrushes and little pale blue drifts in the corners of all the shelves. We have small children. I threw out the toothbrushes and spent hours going over every surface again and again and I'm still kind of panicking.

Otherwise, situation normal. Big Kid has a freaky monstrous old red wig that she wore as part of her Ariel costume a few Halloweens back, and Baby found it the other day. Naturally she was very happy to waddle around looking like Hedwig on a bender, pleased as spiked punch, until I got out the camera.

 

 

 

Normally she's bald as a cleric but sometimes she puts things on her head and says "Haaaaiw. Haaaaiw." In this case she was marginally correct. It is, in a manner of speaking, hair.

I will be somewhat surprised if hers looks like this when it comes in, but you never know.