2012

2012 is going to be Dutch's lucky year. She announced that tonight after beating me at Carcassonne. She got the green light to stay up as late as she wants tonight, as she has every New Year's Eve since she turned 3. I think the first year she actually fell asleep before her normal bedtime, and she's never made it past 10:30, but tonight she's going strong, and I suspect she'll make it. I probably won't, however.

I feel a little wary of 2012. I'm really tired of being in limbo. I'm getting too old to be in limbo. Even if this isn't a fabulous year for me personally, I'd really like to see some positive social changes out there, lest I become a terrible, terrified, cynical shadow of a person, crouching in a cave waiting for everything to come crumbling down. However, there are plenty of anti-cave forces in my life, and plenty of reasons to hold out hope and enthusiasm for 2012. I'll focus on those.

My New Year's Resolutions:
1) Whittle down and organize my various communication and media electronic files - email, photos, movies, etc. I know that sounds petty (and I should be whittling down other things), but it makes me feel weirdly out of control to have all this stuff piled up in virtual heaps. And I'm going to get my email inbox down to empty this year. Take THAT, 2012!
2) Be nicer. I'm not setting out any metrics for that; we'll see how it goes in a qualitative sort of way. Maybe I could at least avoid yelling at my kids for a few days, to kick things off.

***

Now it's 11:15 and Dutch is asleep on the couch in an elaborate nest of pillows and blankets that took a half hour to construct. I think I'll wake her up for the turn of the year, for the first time. Rituals and ceremonies are important to this kid. She offered some very solemn toasts at dinner, raising her teacup of sparkling cider to say big important words.

I wish you all a joyful, rich 2012. No caves!

I hope they're at least not laundering their fleece jackets...

While these tweets make me squeamish, I can see as how this could be Dutch in ten years.

Oh, shit.

This society is not going well.*

*This is what happens when I look at my Google+ feed after a long hiatus. Jeez, S & T. 

Another picture I forgot to include yesterday

Christmas

Christmas Eve morning

Cook took the kids to play kickball with friends. They came back tired.

Christmas Eve dinner: Skipper ate none of it. But it was delicious. 

Stockings. I don't know why Skipper took her clothes off for the event.

Skipper was pretty confused about the whole thing. Early on in the Big Present Opening Frenzy, she opened a set of playdough tools, and promptly retired into another room to play with them. I asked her if she wanted to open more gifts and she said "Just save them for me." (She changed her mind later, and plunged into the Frenzy to a terrifying extent.)

Dutch received several gifts that fit into her Old-Fashioned persona. Actually, we have no idea where the apron came from, or which of us it was intended for. There were some technical problems during the Frenzy that resulted in an alarmingly large number of orphaned gifts. Does anybody want to take credit for the apron? We'd like to know who to thank.

I think Laura Ingalls would have liked the snap circuit kit, too.

And this was one of my favorite gifts, annotated by the giver.

Then Cook took the kids outside again and ran them around. (Dutch is wearing maybe her fourth outfit of the day.)

That's the story here.  I hope you all had/are having wonderful holidays!

I pray the Lord my soul to keep...

Dutch is reading the Bible, for fun. And she's been wearing her new (to her) dark plaid dress with the puffed short sleeves and fake velvet collar every day. She's been watching "Colonial House," and is really sad that Cook and I are not going to put any effort into applying to be contestants on the next historical-themed reality show.

We have baked/cooked up 6 sticks of butter so far (please note this does not mean that we have actually CONSUMED 6 sticks of butter in the last three days - some of this is going in the freezer for another year).

Now I lay me down to sleep...

A few days ago, Dutch looked up and memorized a prayer to say every night before bed. We are a completely atheist family, but religion fits nicely into her passion for Old-Fashioned Stuff,  and her interest in Stuff That Is Important, so she's pursuing it in her own weird way. (And we're not stopping her, though we have explained carefully why we are atheist, and I did stop her from trying to teach a prayer to Skipper.) I really have no idea who this kid is going to grow up to be.

In unrelated news, I finished the first season of Downton Abbey. Dangit. Now what? Anybody know any TV shows with Maggie Smith in them? That are good for watching while washing dishes?

The big question for this week:

How many sticks of butter can we use?

Don't worry.

Skipper's eye seems to be fine. We'll take more care with table-setting from now on.

File under "Things People Commonly Say That Are Funny to Say But Not Actually Very Funny to Experience."

Tonight Dutch accidentally* stabbed Skipper in the eye with a fork. This is something I actually say as an ironically exaggerated figure of speech,** as in "I would rather be stabbed in the eye with a fork than vote for Newt Gingrich" or "OMG watching that preschool talent show was so like stabbing myself in the eye with a fork," and I really never, ever thought that I would experience an actual fork-to-eye-stabbing.**

I think Skipper's okay. She can still see. However, it seems to really hurt. I will be sure to let you know, if it comes to it, what the doctor says when I explain that Skipper was stabbed in the eye with a fork. (Cook's betting on complete composure, because in his experience, doctors have already heard just about every insane injury explanation even the most elaborate episode of Mythbusters could ever devise.)


*Really accidentally. We're pretty sure there wasn't even any subconscious desire to maim - it was a table-setting accident.
** Because I am so witty!
*** Unless society crumbles in the next few decades, which really seems less and less unlikely.

Two Things I've Learned Lately (What is a Weekend?)

1) Gluten-free baked goods do not age well.
2) There should be a role for Maggie Smith in every TV show. I really mean it.

Some photos

Skipper likes to supervise all baking and cooking activities.

She fell asleep on the couch at 10:30 AM last week.
That's Punghy lying behind her.

I swear this is the last thing I'm writing about Skipper and Punghy.

Skipper: I want somebody to play hide and seek with me.
Me: Maybe you should play with Punghy.
S: Punghy doesn't know HOW to play hide and seek. I need to play with somebody who's, like, REAL.

Holidays

Today is the beginning of two weeks of holiday for Dutch and Skipper. Dutch is really, really excited. I'm excited to not have to deal with drop-off/pick-up for two weeks (the kids have a babysitter three days and are going to The Blonds' house* for one day so I can keep up my normal work schedule).

Given how well I"m parenting my kids lately, I think I'm going to need to schedule some (or many) playdates, to save on future therapy bills. Both kids have been pushing my buttons frequently and enthusiastically lately. Skipper is much more defiant than Dutch ever was, and she seems to be deeply invested in pissing me off, probably at least in part as a way to gain my attention. This morning one of the very first things I said to Skipper was "I don't want to be with you. You're awful." I'm pretty sure this isn't the worst thing anybody's ever said to their child, but it violated even my not-very-rigorous parenting code.**

So we've got to line up a bunch of activities this week. We're kicking off the week with a dentist appointment for Dutch, so that will set the entertainment bar nice and low.



*The Blonds are the family I've mentioned before who live a few blocks away - two parents, one first-grade boy, two 3-year-old girls - they're all tall and thin and blond and bike-y. We swap childcare and hand-me-down clothing, and it's pretty great. This is O Blond in the photo below, doing chemistry with Dutch. 

** One pillar of my code is to try to differentiate the kid from the behavior, so it would have been (more) acceptable for me to say something like "The way you're behaving right now is making me feel really bad, and I don't want to be with you when you're acting that way."

Further investigations into Skipper's complicated and sometimes prickly relationship with her favorite stuffed animal.

Today Skipper told me "When I'm feeling sad, I have to hold Punghy upside down so he can't talk to me. I don't like him to talk to me when I'm feeling sad."

I've been reading a book about social structures in high school. And I've been watching a movie about public schools. I'm feeling... oh, a LITTLE DISHEARTENED.

Reality shows

Skipper and I were setting up for her nap this afternoon when she started making frustrated noises. I looked over at her, lying in her bed, and she said angrily "There isn't enough room! Punghy didn't scoot over!" After a moment's contemplation, I said "Honey... Punghy can't scoot over." and she said "Why NOT!?" and I said "Because he's a stuffed animal. He's not alive. He can't move by himself."

There was a very long pause, in which all the indignation and irritation drained out of her expression, to be replaced by bafflement and then a kind of dawning revelation, as if suddenly some things made a lot more sense. "Oh." she said.

We're saturated!

The wife of an acquaintance of Cook's is starting a business taking pictures of kids, and she came over a few weeks ago (on the day of Dutch's birthday party, which is why Cook is wearing a tie) to bulk up her portfolio a bit. We weren't very photogenic, but here are some of her shots, post-production.

Oh, and also...

...we still have squash all over the house.

Six things about my week.

I haven't been writing because I've got very little to say. Here, in no particular order and with no attempt to stitch it all together, are your random updates:

1) I crashed my bike today. No cars or kids were involved - it was just me, my bike with its slick tires, and a frost-rimed intersection on which I was turning left. I went down pretty hard, but not very fast, and neither my bike nor I suffered any serious damage (though yikes, ouch). Several bicyclists stopped to make sure I was okay and one of them said helpfully "It's pretty slick out today."

2) Dutch had her first piano lesson with her very cheerful hipster 25-year-old teacher. She loved it. I'm not sure if it's the music, her expectation of immediate great success, or just getting undiluted attention from an adult for 45 minutes, but she's thrilled. I overheard her singing a song to herself this morning that went something like this: "I can't wait for Thursdays! Thursdays are my faaaaaaavorite day of the WEEK! Thursday is when I have piaaaaaaaaano lessons!"

3) Skipper's rash is getting uglier lately. She has a new, sandpapery kind of rash (the internets think she has scarlet fever, but I'm confident that's not the case) on her belly and back, plus the regular eczema on her arms and legs. Nothing seems particularly itchy, and she's not uncomfortable, but it's pretty gruesome. We're cutting back on both gluten and dairy in the hopes that it'll reduce the flareups, if not the base-level rash. Poor kid. In related news, I'm going to launch my first gluten-free baking project this afternoon.

4) I've been doing a little data entry for a short-term project, bringing in enough cash for a few days' worth of groceries. Woohoo!

5) We decorated for the holidays tonight. It was totally hilarious, in a way that I do not have the writing chops to capture in text. You're just going to have to imagine it. These are some of the elements: both kids loudly singing what they think are tuneful holiday songs (Skipper: " HAAAAPPPPEEEEEE KrissssMUSSSSSSS! HAAAAAAPPPPEEEEEE... HAPPPPPEEEEEE!!") completely regardless of the actual music playing on the stereo, Skipper cavorting (rashily) in her underpants around the heat vent saying things like "It's WARM inside my pants!", Dutch reading all of "A Visit From St Nicholas" out loud (unsolicited), the kids fighting like drunk raccoons over possession of a bell ornament, Dutch announcing excitedly "Mom, I think I know what my Gift is! I think it's SINGING!", Skipper running out of the room, shouting "Christmas, goodbye!" and then returning and yelling "Christmas, I'm back!" and I don't know, a hundred more obnoxious, funny, cacophonous, adorable, bratty moments. Cook said later "That was definitely not what I imagined holiday decorating with my family would be like," which he meant in a good way. (I'm pretty sure.)

6) I got an email from somebody named Galadriel, and it wasn't spam.

What We're Reading

Skipper (obsessively): One Morning in Maine
Me: The Titan's Curse*
Cook: Oblivion
Dutch: This and this and this and this and probably some others I'm not aware of. (Has she finished a book in the last three months? Not that I'm aware of.)

*Yes, I am aware that it is a kids' book. Several friends have recently steered me toward kids' books that I have very much enjoyed. Adulthood isn't exactly all that it's cracked up to be, so I feel okay about avoiding it in my reading, since I can't avoid it in the rest of my life.

Growth

We just got a new tree planted in our parking strip, courtesy of the wonderful Friends of Trees - it's a cascara tree* and this is what it looks like.**

 And here is a bonus photo of the scene in our backyard a few hours later.

* It was not as pretty as many of our other options from the list of city-approved trees for purchase, but it was our only native option, and it apparently provides fabulous attraction for pollinators, and food and shelter for birds. So we really had to choose it, and we're going to learn to appreciate its understated elegance.


** Notice Dutch's "Laura Ingalls boots" - I think that in her mind she's living in 1880 most of the time.