Sally Says

Missing Family Found!

Um, we kind of dropped off the face of the earth for a week didn't we?  I didn't even manage to call my parents once, not even on Thanksgiving.  Sorry! 

I'd like to use excuse #526.  We were sucked into an alternate reality so far from the outside world that we were unable to communicate with friends and loved ones.  Unfortunately that excuse doesn't really work.  The alternate reality in question was actually Kansas.  Although David's family home is a rural retreat  far from the outside world, it is fully equipped with phones and a wireless Internet connection.  

So I guess I've got no excuses.  Allow me to build a case for leniency however.  My failure to communicate was not due to inconsiderate laziness.

It all started last Saturday.  Tommy had a busy day scheduled.  He had his last acting class at 9, a birthday party at Hoots Torturous Party Zone ^{(tm Sally)} at 11 and the performance for his acting class at 5:30 pm.  David worked the night shift Friday night so he needed to sleep most of the day.  We were on our own.  I wrangled Charlie during Tommy's acting class.  Charlie wrangling is exhausting!  Tommy was strangely subdued during the class. 

We didn't have time to go home between the class and the party, so we drove around a bit, ate French toast sticks and Sonic for brunch and then went to Hoots.  I'd arranged for Tommy to get a ride home with a friend because Charlie needed to nap, so I left. 

Somehow, despite my best efforts, Tommy didn't really understand that I'd be leaving.  He's been there tons of times and never really pays any attention to me throughout the party, but this day was different.  The other mothers called me around cake time to let me know that Tommy was hysterical, and could I please come and get him.  Charlie and David were sleeping.  I woke David up after only 3 hours of sleep and told him he was in charge of Charlie while I quickly went to get Tommy.  It's a good thing I did this as the phone rang 10 minutes after I left, waking Charlie up who was hysterical to find me gone.

Tommy went straight to bed for a nap when he got home, something he hasn't done in about nine months.  When he woke up he had a 102 degree fever.  Ooops.  I guess they should call it Hoots Infection Zone since it now had Tommy germs all over it.  He was so disappointed to learn that there was no way we were going to let him go to his acting class performance with a fever.  Plus, the Thanksgiving trip to Grandma's that was supposed to start the next morning might have to be delayed.

By bedtime I had a raging sore throat.  The next morning I felt horrible, but Tommy had rallied.  He has an amazing immune system.  Sometimes he gets sick, spikes a fever, burns off the contagion and then is perfectly fine.  We could travel with me sick as long as the boys are OK, but we hadn't packed anything.  I fuzzily wandered from room to room tossing stuff into piles which David tried to pack for us.  We ended up forgetting a lot of stuff like Desitin and my mom's phone number, but we were on the road by noon on Sunday.

It was a nice Thanksgiving visit with David's parents, brother and sister-in-law, but by the time we got there I was fighting some really gunky congestion.  Tommy continued to feel fine, but he gets really homesick and discombobulated while travelling.  Charlie had a milder version of my cold by the 2nd day and cut TWO molars over the course of the week.  We did alot of damage control as the boys randomly shifted back and forth from whiney misery to happy-happy-fun-time with Uncle Terry.

So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  Sorry to be MIA, but we're back now.  I'll have pictures from the trip ready for you tomorrow.

21 months

Charlie is 21 months old today.  Two is just around the corner!  He weighs about 27.5 lbs and is 35 inches tall.  Here are a few more little things about him to mark the occasion. 

Charlie's newest phase du jour is "No way!"  He says it when he really, really, most assuredly means "no."   He says "No way!" when I ask him if he's ready for a diaper change.  He says "No way" when I try to give him something suspicious to eat, like chicken or anything that isn't cheese.

Speaking of "no" Charlie is quite bothered by diapers that have been lazily set aside on the floor.  If he sees such a thing, which sadly happens more often than one would wish, he cries "oh no!  Inna trash!"  Then he'll pick it up and throw it away for us.  Knowing that we can count on him to throw diapers away for us probably explains why we neglect to throw them away in the first place.

He's very tuned into where everybody is.  I often hear him calling out "Tom?  Are you?"  Once he finds Tommy he mutters, "Oh darie is."  If we're out someplace where it's safe for him to roam about, like in Tommy's preschool classroom, he'll occasionally stop, look around and call out "Are you Mommy?"  As soon as he sees me he goes back to whatever he was doing.

He desperately wants to do whatever his precious Tom is doing.  A lot of his sentences follow a pattern of "I ... too." If Tommy says "I'm hungry" Charlie will immediately say "I hungie too."  If Tommy says "I'm so sorry you hit your head," Charlie will say "I so sorry too."  If Tommy says "Batman and I defeated The Penguin His-self," Charlie will say "I feet Penguin too."  He doesn't have to understand what Tommy's talking about to know that he wants to do it too.  He's very good at repeating whole phrases and sentences even when he doesn't understand the individual words.

He counts to three quite easily, and occasionally counts to four.  He'll count objects and also count before doing something that he thinks is impressive.  He'll stand on top of something low like a stack of books, count "vun, tue, tree," and step off as he says three.

His favorite things right now are The Wiggles, Blues Clues, Pooh Bear, doing forwardrolls, singing, play-doh, drawing & painting, running and playing with balls.

He runs me ragged and likes to have something to DO, so he gets a bit frustrated with his more sedentary mother and brother.  He does have opinions, but is pretty mellow about things.  He hasn't yet had any sort of tantrum or screaming stages.  It might be coming, but so far we've been lucky.  It think it helps that he can communicate with me quite well and has Tommy's example to follow.

The down-side of having Tommy's example to follow is that he's much more likely to think he can do things that first-born toddlers don't think of.  He really likes to play with stuff on the kitchen counter and with running water in the sinks.  Tommy would have just asked to do these things when he was a toddler.  Charlie can push a chair around the house so that he can climb up to whatever he wants to reach in about two minutes.

He's very sweet and sensitive, just like his brother.  He worries when he sees other kids get hurt or cry.  I've been teaching him what to do when he sees things like that, and I think that really helps toddlers to be less worried about the world and more sensitive to others.  He will go up and give crying kids a gentle pat with his hand and ask "OK friend?"  He's started really needing to give David a hug and kiss when David leaves for work.

Tired

Charlie has a cold.  It's pretty mild, but he's had a bit of a chest cough for about three weeks now.  I took him to the doctor for it last week and she wasn't concerned.  I think the cough was probably residual from an old cold and he picked up this new cold at the doctor's office.  Poor little guy. 

He's perfectly happy as long as he's awake and distracted, but I can tell he's not feeling well from little things he does.  We went over to play with his friends Duncan and Caleb yesterday and after 45 minutes he asked to "go home now, all done Dunkie's house."  He never asks to go home early.

Then he was awake from 2:00 to 3:30 in the middle of the night.  He just couldn't settle.  I tried.  David tried.  We gave him water and milk.  Nothing worked.  I think I sang his favorite lullaby about 28 times.  He even tried singing it to himself. 

"Moon, moon, moon, shiny brigh.  Moon, moon, moon, nigh ligh.  Moon, moon, moon, I see.  Moon moon, moon, of Meeeee.  Up moon! Up moon!  Inna sky, round, like a pie!"

Needless to say, I'm pretty tired this morning.  I keep doing flibberty-gibbet things.  I put my teabag and sugar in my cup, and turned on the kettle.  I put my cereal in my bowl.  Then I filled my cup up with the milk that I was supposed to be pouring on my cereal.  I sighed, poured my milk out of my cup onto my cereal and wandered off to eat it.  The whole time I was eating I was wondering why my cereal tasted so much sweeter than usual.  

When the water boiled, I poured it over my tea bag, added new milk and took a sip.  Why wasn't my tea sweet?  Oh, yeah, I dissolved all the sugar in the first pour of milk and put it on my cereal.  That's why it was teeth-achingly sweet.  When I came back to the kitchen to add sugar to my tea, I realized the cereal box was in the fridge and the milk was in the cupboard on the bread shelf.  Flibberty-gibbet.

Oh well.  Hopefully I'll get more sleep tomorrow.   

Tommy's current favorite song is Albuquerque the Turkey

I doubt you've heard of it, so I'll share.  Teach it to your kids, especially if you're from Albuquerque like us, and then you too can suffer along with me.  It should be sung as loudly as possible, over and over and over and over... 

Albuquerque the Turkey

Tune:  Have you ever seen a Lassie?

Albuquerque is a turkey
And he's feathered and he's fine
And he wobbles and he gobbles
And he's absolutely mine!

He's the best pet you can get yet
Better than a dog or a cat
He's my Albuquerque turkey
And I'm awfully proud of that!

And my Albuquerque turkey
Is so happy in his bed
'Cause for our Thanksgiving Dinner
We have pizza instead!

Pizza

Our friends Dan & Cindy make home made pizza with their kids Claudia and Duncan.  Tommy and Charlie got to help them make some pizza a while ago.  Tommy's been begging for us to do it ever since.  Thus this was a highly anticipated activity. 

Charlie loves pizza and Tommy loves cooking, so of course they had lots of fun.  Unfortunately, our first attempts at homemade pizza were not terribly yummy.  We'll have to get Cindy's dough recipe.  At least the boys had fun!

 

Tommy Says

"Sometimes crying is a way of being really brave."

Lamest Charlie Chiplets Ever

A few days ago Tommy asked me to read some "baby Tommy stories" to him from when he was exactly the same age Charlie is now.  He really likes for me to pull up the blog archives for him, which is quite satisfying for me. 

As I was reading October 2005 to him, I realized that I used to be a much better humor blogger.  I'm more of a photography blogger these days.  I guess words and thoughts just leak out of your brain when you take care of two small children 15-16 hours a day. 

Poor Charlie's not going to have as many funny anecdotes to read about himself.  It's not that he isn't just as cute and funny as Tommy.  He is!  I'm just so busy and distracted.  I should start carrying a notebook around with me so I can jot stuff down as it happens.  Then Charlie, who is quite Blue's Clues obsessed these days, can shout "notebook!" every time I pull it out.  Maybe that will make up for the serious lack of Charlie Chiplets & Tommy Tidbit posts these days. 

 

So here are the two little piddly Charlie Chiplets I could come up with tonight, thus prompting this introspective rant on my lameness.

Charlie likes to play freeze tag with David and Tommy.  He runs like the wind with his hands in classic jogging fists.  When Tommy touches him he freezes and holds perfectly still while counting "vun, tue, tree, tue, tree, tue, tree!"  He won't move again until Daddy yells "Go!"  This pretty much repeats until David is hoarse or exhausted.  Charlie occasionally stops running and causes a boy pile-up so he can tell me "I runndat!"

Anytime Charlie sees a Coke logo he yells out "Coke Daddy!"  All Cokes are for Daddy you know.

Yeah.  That's all I've got.  Lame.

Playing around with the camera

I tried taking some pictures of the boys without using the flash last night.  The colors are richer without the flash, but the subjects need to be really still to come into focus.  Of course, little boys are never really still.  I kind of like the results though.

 They were usually both in motion...

But sometimes Charlie held still for a few seconds...

 More often Tommy tried to hold him still because he wanted me to take a good picture of them together.  Charlie didn't really cooperate because he was having too much fun playing.

 But they both got tired eventually.   

Behold the Bounce House

  

Want to know one way to keep 22 kids and three babies from running amok through the house?  You can give them a giant Batman bounce house to jump in.

We had a party on Saturday.  It was what I consider our first grown-up party for lots of people.  We've had as many as three couples over for dinner before, and we've had a few birthday parties for the boys, but this was a full fledged Par-tay for 11 families.  We called it our Fall Feast , and it was a potluck Thanksgiving style dinner.  There were 21 adults in the house, as well as the previously mentioned 22 kids and 3 not-yet-walking babies.  Surprisingly, it didn't feel too crowded.  

We started off with the bounce house.  As people arrived the kids immediately threw their shoes off willy-nilly and dove in.  The more hesitant, younger toddlers watched or played in the bed of David's pick up.  ('cause we're all about the classy entertainment.)  We had a few chairs outside, so some adults watched the kids and talked while others went in and out helping me get the food ready.  The kids bounced until we were ready to eat.  It was getting dark then, but a few brave souls went back out in the dark and the cold later in the evening. 

David and I made THREE turkey breasts (the kind that looks like a whole turkey but doesn't have the dark meat on it).  We placed them side by side in our roaster to achieve the best possible meat-to-oven-space ratio.  David convinced me to put them in the oven way earlier than I'd intended by pontificating about the laws of thermodynamics and googling cook times for multiple turkies.  Therefore they were done cooking way earlier than I wanted.

We also made mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts and a sad excuse for a cranberry jello salad that I put into the freezer after it didn't set.  I tried to pass it off as cranberry sorbet.  That worked out about as well as you would imagine, and we have lots of soupy jello goo left in our fridge. 

I panicked when it came time to make the gravy, and one of my friends volunteered her husband, so his first visit to our house involved an impromtu cooking task.  I'm still kind of embarrassed about that.  His gravy was excellent, but I should have just done it myself and let him enjoy the party.  Our guests brought everything else for the dinner.  We had lots of wonderful food, and I was very pleased to see how it all came together.

It helped that one friend brought a bottle of Tuaca to add to the hot mulled apple cider.  It was a big hit with the grown ups, especially after sitting outside while the kids bounced their feet off.

A couple of friends donated some folding chairs and TV tables, so we had enough places for the grown ups to sit while they ate.  Most of the kids ate standing at two child sized activity tables in the dining room.  When they were done eating -- after about 7.5 minutes -- I started the movie Toy Story II in our bedroom.  There were probably 18 kids lounging on our bed and various kiddie chairs and floor pillows.  It was a great way to keep the kids entertained and away from the main living spaces so that the adults could talk and finish eating.  The littlest ones wandered in and out, watching the movie for a few minutes then playing with toys in Charlie and Tommy's rooms, then looking for their mommies and daddies in the living room.

All in all, I think the party was a great success.  There were no major child melt downs and everyone stuffed themselves with food and the conversation never stopped.  We'll definitely have to do this again sometime.   

I really ought to me making rolls right now

  

Does diving in and out of this window over and over again count as a new skill?

 

New skill or not, it sure is fun!

  

Tommy says, "my baby brother is a little bit crazy..."

 

"But I love him!"

I'm ready for a nap and it's only 8 am. 

It all started with bedtime last night.  Charlie's got something going on that's making him cough a bit as he goes to sleep.  It's either teething drool or post nasal drip from a symptomless cold or maybe just a dry throat from the fall weather.  I don't know exactly what's going on.  He's perfectly happy and doesn't seem sick, but then at bedtime and in the middle of the night he doesn't want to stop nursing or begs for a drink and starts coughing just as he goes to sleep.  You all know what coughing and sleep leads to with Charlie.  Vomit.

I made the incredibly intelligent decision to just say "no" at bedtime last night after he'd begged for more milk three times.  Instead of protesting for a couple of minutes and then going to sleep as usual, he got upset, started coughing and threw up all over me.  Nice.  He was fine 30 minutes later and went to sleep. 

He woke up at 2:30 and then again at 4:15.  I never could get him to back to sleep the second time.  So our day started really early, and we're both cranky.  He may have been unable to sleep because it was ridiculously cold last night.  I thought it was just the weather change.  It was 31 degrees on the patio thermometer when I checked it at 7 am.

The heater had been running pretty constantly from about midnight, but it was still pretty cold in here.  Luckily David figured out that the pilot light was out before he left for work.  He couldn't get it to stay lit though, so now we have to wait around all day, bundled up in extra sweatshirts, waiting for a heater repairman.

Of course I had things I needed to do today.  We decided to have a potluck "Fall Feast" for our friends on Saturday.  I invited a bunch of people because the last time we tried throwing a party nobody came.  Almost everyone is coming - 22 adults, 22 kids and three babies.  Yikes!  Well, I'll just have to wait until the heater's fixed to continue my mad party preparation marathon.

THEN Charlie tried climbing on the table next to the couch and knocked over our first-ever-grown-up-lamp.  I loved that lamp.  I think it's beyond repair.  I'll have to finish buying food and drink for our guests before I can replace the lamp, .

So that's all that's happened in the last 12 hours.  Hopefully the rest of the day will be comparatively drama free.

Election Day for Us

In case you were wondering, we're VERY happy with the election results.  I certainly understand that many people are not though.  That's why I don't talk about such things over here very often.  I just don't think it's polite. 

However, I distinctly remember watching election coverage on TV when Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan.  I cried because the man with the nice smile lost his job.  It's possible Tommy will remember this election even though he's about a year younger than I was.  Just in case he does, I want to mark the occasion with a post here in our family archives.  You can just skip this one if you really don't want to hear about it.

I talked to Tommy about the election quite a bit yesterday.  He was very interested.  He declared that he wants to be a politician when he grows up because he likes the idea of making all the rules and being a leader.  I really hope he forgets about it and goes back to wanting to be a paleontologist.  He can be anything he wants to be, of course, but going into politics is one of those things that I personally hope he'll avoid.

I tried to explain to him why it is historic for the US to have it's first African-American president.  Thankfully, he didn't really get it.  He just didn't understand why a person's skin color or ancestry would make any difference whatsoever -- which is as it should be.  I imagine it will be like astronauts on the moon for me.  There's never been a time in my life when that was impossible.  Tommy will never doubt that anyone who meets the criteria can become president.   

Once he figured out who David and I wanted to win, he decided to embrace the competition whole heartedly.  He taught Charlie to say Obama and they spent the whole day chanting his name.  I tried to explain why that wasn't polite, but he's too young to understand how having your person win means someone else's person has to lose.  So we spent most of the day at home where we wouldn't be too obnoxious.

 Tommy did legos.

Charlie grated cheese.

And I puttered around and watched the news with bated breath.

So that's how we spent election day 2008. 

Don't forget to vote

 

This message paid for by the fund for rocking chair election observers (or Blue's Clues watching toddlers, as the case my be.) 

Cheese

David:  At least I've got you buddy.  They're all against me, but you've got my back, don't you?

Charlie:  I got cheese!

*****************

Me:  OK Charlie.  I'll make some.  You're lucky I'm such a pushover.

Tommy:  What's a pushover?

Me:  It means that a little smile and a please is enough to push me over.  It's why you're getting macaroni and cheese for breakfast.

Tommy:  (smiling sweetly)  PLEASE may I have some candy.

Me:  No.

Tommy:  But...but...

*******************

Charlie wakes up unhappy after a short nap...

Me:  Do you want to get down?

Charlie:  No

Me:  Would you like some milk?

Charlie: Nope

Me:  Are you going to sleep more?

Charlie:  No!

Me:  Should I leave you alone?

Charlie:  No!  No!

Me:  Would you like an apple?

Charlie:  Nope.

Me:  Would you like a lollipop?

Charlie:  Nope.

Me:  How about some cheese?

Charlie:  Cheese!  Yes!