Oh, y'know how back in January I said that A was miserable because she had two more teeth coming in? Well, they JUST broke though.

spring

Yesterday we found our first blooms of the year (from bulbs I planted in 2002) and we harvested our first crop from the garden (a few chives to flavor our dinner). We already put spinach in the cold frame, and on Thursday I'll pick up sugar snap peas for planting-

carseats

The straps on A's carseat are difficult to tighten. We determined that the cheapest way to solve the problem would be to get C a booster seat and give her the one he's currently using. This had the additional benefit of making it more exciting for C, because he got to pick out a new one for himself.

And what did he choose, you may ask? The purple one with flowers, of course! Not having the heart to dissuade him, we bought it. In a year or two, he'll either embarrassedly swap it for the one currently in Nana's car or (we hope) stand up for himself and declare that yes, flowers are pretty and he's comfortable enough with his masculinity to admit it.

This left us with an extra carseat, which I immediately freecycled. In fact, we had ANOTHER extra hand-me-down we didn't want, and I set it on the porch for a friend who wanted an extra. But the freecycler inexplicably took both carseats- well, we assume that's what happened anyway, since they were both gone when I came home from the dentist on Wednesday. As long as they're not in my house, I'm not going to fret-

A continues to hate riding in our car. She's happier in SUVs, presumably because they allow her to see out the window better, but we told her in no uncertain terms that we are NOT upgrading. Of course this means that every car trip involves Much Singing to keep her from screaming, which annoys C to no end because the only song he wants to hear is "This Land is Your Land," and given how long this request has been standing, we just can't tolerate doing it more than twice a ride (with several verses, mind you). A particular favorite of A's is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat," and she's also partial to "Edelweiss." She is decidedly unimpressed by our interpretations of Janis Joplin.

This past week, we let C pick the TOPIC for each song, so he'd be less offended by our efforts. The first topic he picked was "staying up waaaay past my bedtime." So we launched into an improvised version of a Rosenschontz song that I remembered from grade school. Since the only lyrics I remembered other than the chorus were "with Olivia Newton-John, I've got a roller skate date," we had to come up with all sorts of our own reasons for staying up late, such as eating candy, making messes, getting into trouble, etc. Many of our more creative thoughts, unfortunately, were not appropriate to voice in front of the children.

(Why do I remember anything about that song, despite having never owned any Rosenschontz music? It's because they apparently sent my 6th grade music teacher a promotional copy of their album and my music teacher played it to us for two weeks worth of music classes. Odd? Yes, but no odder than the fact that my music teacher also spent three weeks of EVERY year having us lip sinc to tapes that we brought in from home, and that he told the same stories EVERY year in the exact same way so that by third grade I could recite them word for word, and that he had three different explanations for why he had a prosthetic leg. At the time, however, none of this seemed odd, and I rather liked the teacher and the class. Memories like this make me think of how nonsensical so many of the life events of children must be-)

So I make an expedition out to Troy to meet Michelle and check out Royah's restaurant. I find parking only two blocks away (I'm handicapped by being unable to parallel park on the left), it's a nice day, Shake Shake Mamas has amazing food/ smoothies, and it's great to see Michelle. Until, of course, I take my third bite of food and chip a tooth. (And I can't even sue Royah, because there was nothing foreign in my wrap- just an unfortunate combination of vectors in my mouth.) The only dental office that I both trust AND can see me this week is in Clifton Park, so I'll be making the trip up there tomorrow for the third time in four days. And I don't have insurance. Maybe they'll barter for some of Cadao's artwork. Or maybe they want a pool table....

This is fairly typical of the "homework" C brings home on Fridays. When I mocked this particular worksheet, Dan reminded me that most kids are kind of dumb. We are eternally grateful that C is not required to turn in completed homework, because he rarely finds it worth doing.

*&%$! personal hygiene instruction

To our surprise, C does actually learn some things at school, and occasionally he learns them better than when we tell him the same thing at home. He knows that when the letter y is at the end of a word, it makes a long e sound; he sneezes into his elbow; he knows that penguins live only in the Southern Hemisphere. However, he was also apparently taught to mumble all the verses of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" while washing his hands to ensure their cleanliness, and this means that his hands are red, chapped, and bleeding. He throws fits when we put lotion on them, so we're torn between super-gluing rubber gloves on or instructing the school nurse to apply Aquaphor hourly.

(Of course all this hand-washing hasn't kept him from getting sick today- we're hoping he didn't get it from Ye-ye....)

Brianna's wedding

Despite the unfortunate detour Dan and the kids took through Arbor Hill, we all had a wonderful time at Bri's wedding. We've decided that we should a hire a DJ for our Memorial Day weekend at Twin Trees, and refine our choreography for the Blackfly Swat. We can work on the Pump-Hauling Grunt and the Batten Bop before performing the Rakey-Achey-Back (which is more of an interpretive thing).

My brother, we hear, had an even Better time after we left. Funny he hasn't posted about it on HIS blog, to share with all his friends.....

C's welcome sign when I returned from Seattle recently

Oh, it's going to be a long long four days without Dan. Within an hour of dropping him off at the airport (before his plane even took off!) the kids were a wreck; thankfully, C's at Nana and Ye-ye's for the night, but A's disposition only went downhill after a mere 30-minute nap. It just took me an hour to get her to bed for the night, much of which time was spent hysterically screaming (her, not me, though I came close); nothing I did, including walking around with her and nursing her, helped at all. This kind of evening generally precedes an especially horrific night-

But, in better news, we just got our new tax assessment. Fearing the worst, since the assessment of one of our neighbors tripled, I was happy to see that our assessment increase was minimal and our estimated taxes actually decreased. I'm sure the tax impact will change, as everyone with big jumps will file grievances and get their assessments reduced, but at least we shouldn't need to worry about enormous increases.

Because of A's fascination with cats, I called up http://catsinsinks.com/ to fill half the computer screen, while I read more interesting things in a separate window. Each time she started to wiggle, I'd load a new cat, and all was well. But my site had pictures too.

I wasn't surprised when she said "pie" (her nickname for Paco) upon seeing Dooce's dog; I've noted his resemblance to Paco before. But when I scrolled down to the first picture here, she got all excited shouting, "Mommy! Mommy!" and pointing from the picture to me and back again. Apparently I'll need to pay close attention to her when we're out so she doesn't go wandering off with someone else, thinking it's me.

facial hair

Dan fashioned his beard into a goatee our first day in Florida, and no one noticed. (I even made a comment like "you spent forever in there; what were you doing for so long?") He didn't get to test me on his next step, because he told me he was going to do it, but when he shaved his moustache, neither Mala nor the kids seemed to notice. Nana and Yeye didn't say anything about it, either.

But today, as Dan shepherded C to a birthday party, Karen's 8-year-old brother Hum Fay ran right up to him and said, "Hey, you shaved! It looks great!" Glad someone is paying attention to him-

Florida

It was sunny and warm, the kids got to play outside, and C had a blast feeding the horses/ goats/ peacocks/ ducks. A was afraid of the horses and peacocks (after a peacock bite), ambivalent toward the goats and ducks, and fascinated by the cats. One of them occasionally let her pet it, and A tried to hug her the whole time we were there. Needless to say, the cat tired of this quickly, but A kept on trying. She only got scatched once.

Everyone enjoyed the beach, the county fair, and Mala's workplace, along with swimming and boating and watching the birds and absorbing the sun. Coming home to the cold and indoors has been a rude awakening.

going to Florida

I had a vague recollection of hating the Philadelphia airport, but couldn't remember why until we were stuck there for two hours. To switch terminals, you need to take a bus (of course it's Philadelphia; they wouldn't have those bourgeois train-things like in Atlanta or Seattle) through a third-world country, and apparently vast numbers of lazy or disabled people frequent the airport, because golf carts threatened to run over A every 30 seconds.

Valentine's Day

C, being C, spent a week making funky personalized valentines for everyone in his class at school. We knew that no other kindergartener would have exerted that kind of energy, but we were sad to see that only one other kid in the class had made her own and most of the rest of them were REALLY hideous. In my day, storebought valentines were pretty lame, but they were actually cards with envelopes. Now they are generally 2 by 3 pieces of paper folded in half, and I suspect that it's virtually impossible to find them without licensed characters on them. I find it disturbing that 5-year-olds think Bratz are cool. We very glad, however, that the valentines weren't all the over-the-top gifts that C received in preschool, each with a goody bag of candy, pencils, games, etc. attached.

C's friend Karen, whose family owns the Chinese restaurant, did have a card with an envelope- a "thank you" card in fact, inside which she had (probably painstakenly) written "Happy Valentine's Day" and her full name. We're not sure whether her parents are opposed to the other valentines available, if that's just what they had on hand, or if they figured that was what this bizarro tradition called for.

Updates- after several returns, I found two pairs of very expensive sandals that fit. I plan to never buy new ones again.

A has teeth numbers 5 and 6 coming in, to help excuse her completely sleepless nights. She's refusing to eat anything other than pancakes and Oatios, and she doesn't consume a lot of them, either.

I've been offered a temporary part-time paying job at the food co-op where I currently volunteer for a discount, filling in for someone going on maternity leave. It'll make a nice income supplement this spring/ summer.

I got the stomach thing just when I thought I was in the clear, on Wednesday night. Having two years' worth of practice in not-vomiting through pregnancy, I avoided that route, which meant it progressed to my lower intestinal track, which wasn't pretty either. Luckily it was indeed "only" a 24-hour thing, and Dan and I didn't get it simultaneously.

"happy"

A's newest and perhaps cutest word... to hear a brief audio file (requires Windows Media Player or some equivalent) download from this location: http://home.nycap.rr.com/rootsandshoots/happy.wav

Well, Paco's better-

Dan and the kids were up vomiting all night. I expect my turn will begin this evening. I'm hoping it's just a 24-hour thing rather than last winter's stomach virus, which knocked C and me out for over week-

But Paco's eye is mostly better, and he doesn't have to wear the plastic collar anymore! We have a fairly complicated schedule of drugs to continue for a few weeks, but he's much happier.

And fatter. The conehead was slimming, apparently. Now that it's off, he's looking pretty chunky. I don't know if the drugs caused weight gain, if the dozens of treats he gets at every vet's visit added up, or if he just hasn't been exercising as much, but he definitely needs to do some running!

2 kids in the snow 

conehead dog in the snow 

At Kathy's open house