Happy New Year's Eve, blog buddies.
No, I am not, did not, attend the festivities at the Needle, but I do LOVE the Space Needle. Instead, we took the fam bowling. Our church puts on a NYE bowling event every year. This is our first year attending. The girls were thrilled, since they've been wii bowling since Christmas. Betty Boop can get a strike while draped over two sofas and swinging the wii-mote sideways. It's a special skill of hers.
Actual bowling proved a little more difficult. First, the ball is heavy. Second, mom doesn't let her just toss it overhand. Third, Dad gets a little testy when she runs for the food table then tries to hang out with the other bowlers, who we don't necessarily know.
We just so happened to be bowling next to my pastor and his five perfectly behaved children for an added level of anxiety. Our church is very large and I don't actually know my pastor personally, but he just preached on parenting and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a Betty Boop in his house. Sunday I ran into him at church for the first time (it's a VERY large church) just as I was... ahem... calling rather loudly... after Miss Boop to STOP AT THE GATE! DO NOT RUN INTO THE PARKING LOT! There he was standing at the gate and I'm praying "God, if you love me, PLEASE let her stop at the gate." Whew. She did. And she didn't fling a ball into his lane or overturn the food table so I'm calling the evening a success despite one meltdown and one very sad mystery man who burst into tears every time his mom got up to bowl.
I hope your New Year's was as adventure filled as mine. :)
Stay tuned for Robin's New Year's Resolutions. I'm pretty sure I didn't make any last year as the Man was born 4 days prior and my big resolution was to survive the year. Check. On to bigger and better things!
1) I finally saw I Am Legend with Will Smith. I'm not a vampire/zombie/ewwie creatures that go bump in the night kind of person, but everyone else was watching it and I was feeling social. It was fantastic. And now I get what everyone's saying about surviving a zombie apocalypse. I am woefully unprepared, internet quizzes not withstanding. I need supplies. I need Max Brook's book. 
I need a lot of flashlights and preferably a flame thrower. And a German Shepherd. Definately a shepherd. There has been talk in this house of a Shih Tzu, but I think they couldn't do squat against a horde of the undead.
2) All of the Christmas packages waiting for us in the bowels of the UPS finally showed up! The track packages link kept saying something about a natural disaster and I did my part to stimulate the economy by doubling up on presents for some, but now they are here! My DH can tell time again! I have the Top Chef cookbook! Mystery Man has fuzzy Robeez boots! My little girl's prayer for "More Christmas" was answered!
3) Speaking of the Top Chef cookbook, I love it. All I really need to say is that it has Marcel's rap. Marcel, from my favorite season, who showed the greatest character arc of anyone on tv scripted or unscripted that year. I love my cookbook. Now I can make microwave popcorn pancakes. You're all invited.
4)I also got Tom Colicchio's cookbook, Think Like a Chef for Christmas. I love Tom Coliicchio, and his cookbook is amazing - not so much for the recipes as for the whole approach to cooking. I recommend it to anyone who hates making lists of recipes and ingredients and shopping lists and meal plans. Bleh. I like to cook what occurs to me from the ingredients I have on hand and SO DOES TOM! I love Tom.
That's it around here for the night. Mystery Robin signing out... and looking for a wooden stake and a machete to go to bed with...
Yesterday we thought that perhaps the Mystery Man's bad attitude had to do with turning one. I mean, birthdays are tough, just ask his sister. Then today, he woke up irritable again. He's been fed, changed, given a bottle, played with, cuddled, and he's still grumpy.
Then my sister suggested he has a caffeine headache. It's true that he usually steals my lattes. I'll have him on my hip then look down and he's drinking it over my shoulder. Trickly little mystery man.
DH has been dispatched to Starbucks. We'll see if it helps or if it's truly just a seasonal grumpiness. Maybe he misses the snow...
I woke up the other day, with two little mysteries in bed with me. The 3 year old opened her eyes and the first words she spoke were, "Well, sometimes these things happen."
"What things, honey?" I asked.
"Sometimes your bwother lays on you like you are a kitty."
I looked over, and the little mystery man was wide awake, but sprawled out on top of her in "throwing star" formation. He does that with his kitty all the time. I have supplied a visual.
It's Happy First Birthday time for the Mystery Man today. It feels like just yesterday that I was insisting to the triage nurse that yes, I was actually in labor, and no, I didn't want the sleeping pill and checking into a Holiday Inn to wait until they'd believe I was having a baby on the day after Christmas. And now, here I am, one year later. Christmas will never be the same!
Happy Birthday, Mystery Man!
To her older sister after she unwrapped her wooden dolls and paints, "But sharing is part of fwiendship! Someone needs to teach her to share her things!"
Just before bed, after discovering I forgot to give them their mini nail polishes the little one says, "I want to dwop it in my stocking myself!"
Me: ok, do you know which is your stocking?
Her: Yes!
And she goes after a giant cream colored stocking. She brings back said stocking and with a flourish drops her tiny bottle of nail polish inside, then looks at the creamy stocking with disgust.
Her: Hey... why it not turn pink?
Going to bed on Christmas night, I read them the Christmas story one more time, then said I would pray for them.
"I want to pray!" My little Betty Boop squeaks at me. So she prays, "Deaw God, I pway for my sister's tummy (which has been better for a month), and for MORE CHRISTMAS!!!"
I ask her how we could have more Christmas and she patiently explains, slowly, with exaggerated hand guestures, "Because God could make it more Christmas."
I try again, "But what would that look like, if we had more Christmas tomorrow?"
"More presents!!!!"
It's snowing again in Seattle! The girls are still snuggled down in their beds, so it's just me and my sister up with the Mystery Man. DH is out traversing the snowscape to bring back lattes.
I know, I know, but I won the Starbuck's Gold Card in the Christmas Eve gift game last night and the only thing that could make this scene more perfect is an eggnog latte.
Merry Christmas, everyone! I just had to share my very first white Christmas with the rest of you.
Now, go open some presents!
The star is in the sky!
The angels are singing the advent!
The babe is in the manger!
The Lord is come!
Merry Christmas!!!!
My three year old, whose nickname is Gigi, has been insisting that she is still two since her birthday in September. Recently, my hubby tripped her into an admission that she was three. He's been trying to capitolize on that ever since to get her to admit her real age. I'm not really sure why, I just go with the whole "I'm two" thing, since I'm still 29.
But last night, the conversation took a new turn.
DH: I heard you say you were three, now come on, how old are you, really?
With a dramatic pause and great import in her voice, she announced... "I am four."
DH: What?!
GG: I pwetend to be 2, but in weal life, I am four.
DH: You can't just choose your age like that.
GG: Yes I can. I am Gigi.
Sorry for the blog silence, folks. I've been battling croup (complete with a midnight trip to the ER), the flu times 5, ever impending Christmas and snow, snow, snow!
All my little ones have been miserable and I've been housebound which is almost as bad as being deprived of caffeine. When I sit down at night to blog, and I've had many posts swirling around in my head, it's all I can do to logon. I can't seem to get the words from my head to my fingers, so I just track my amazon packages and go to bed.
But today I got a hold of some antibiotics. I took my 4x4 out in the snow. I had my coffee, and I'm starting to feel a little bit human. Hopefully I'll get a few posts out before Christmas!
Till then - enjoy your holiday!!!
So far, I've seen like three snowflakes. I'm seriously underwhelmed. I'm still holding out hope that it's just late in arriving.
Woah! Holy time lapse, batman! I had to put the kids to bed and when I came downstairs it was a winter wonderland. It's just beautiful. I put on my big black wool trench and wrapped a scarf around my neck and took a little walk outside. When I came back, there was my three year old in her little ducky pajamas saying, "Mama! You back! I wanna catch a snowflake on my tongue!" It's so fun to share winter with little girls.
So, it's off to bed in snowy, snowy Seattle for me.
Also, I wanted to let you know to check out Enduring Romance later tonight or tomorrow. I'll have my top ten books of 2008 up. :)
Merry Christmas!
I apologize for the blog silence. It mimicks my silence in real life as I have lost my voice. Not, oh, that's cute, it's kind of raspy. No, I can't talk. Occasionally I can muster something above a whisper but only at great cost to my already horribly painful throat.
And so I whisper, which is not entirely bad as the kids now whisper back to me and only sometimes ask why we are being so quiet. The downside is when one of them lunges for the other's neck, I've only got my flying body tackle to stop them.
In other news, we have a full blown winter storm headed to Seattle. YAY!!! I love snow and I love storms, especially since there's no chance I'll get stuck at work in it. It once took 3 1/2 hours to get home. I slipped all the way across the bridge and ultimately got stranded at a McDonalds. Poor DH had to come rescue me after taking an hour and a half to get him and the kids home. And my cell phone died. So I was calling in a pay phone booth in two feet of snow with high heels. Eating french fries.
No chance of that this time! But, the red one did leave her coat at church so I've got to go get that in the morning, and I extracted a blood oath that she'll wear the purple puffy down coat from last year even though she now hates it because otherwise she'll turn into a big red popsicle.
Also, a word of warning... my favorite podcaster, Mur Lafferty of I Should be Writing, just talked about an author friend of hers who had to be treated for a pulmonary embolism - blood clot. Apparently, according to his doctor (and we know this via Twitter via Podcast) people who sit in chairs for several hours per day (so, yanno, writers) are at HIGH RISK of blood clots. Well, not me, because I have small kids. The longest I sit down is driving to school to pick up the red one. But one day I hope to actually have them all in school and write for long stretches and I'd better be getting up to mop the floor or run around the block every two hours. That's what the doctor said, move every two hours at least. So I'm passing on the public service announcement.
And if you don't hear from me for a while, we've lost power, or become popsicles, or maybe we're outside making snow angels and drinking fairy milk. :)
A sideshow at the birthday party:
My little three year old comes up to me with a green silk scarf...
"I need you to tie this awound me so I can be a magician."
"Ok." I tie the scarf around her - no easy task because she keeps twisting her entire body to look over her shoulder.
"I need you to hold still so I can tie it."
"I need to see if you are doing it wight."
Once the scarf is tied to both of our standards she says,
"Gweat. Now I need to cast a spell on something."
She looks around furtively.
Next, I see her standing in front of a painting in the living room with a fork.
"Abwa Cadabwa - make this picture disappear!" She says with a magicians flourish... then...
"Hey. Why that picture still there?" She looks at the fork in her hand and mutters to herself, "Maybe because this not a weal wand..."
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I love this Christmas card - see, it's Robins in the snow. ;) How sweet is that. But, I'm sending photo cards this year because that seems to be what people like best. I just have to get all three kids dressed, clean, in good moods, and posed. I think that possibly the years I hand stamped and wrote all the cards myself were easier. At least more under my control!
Today is my oldest daughter's birthday, so I'm off to prepare. I really can't believe she's eight, but I say that every year, so next year I'll be shocked that she's nine. I don't know what it is about having a child growing up that makes time pass so quickly.
My little Betty Boop over here is wrapping presents without me now, so I have to go help.
Oh, and Huey is sick - that's why no Huey posts, but don't worry, they're coming as soon as he's all better!
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