The new-and-less-dangerous roofing method 

Another trait A inherited from the Day side

At the playground today, a very "helpful" 2-year-old wanted to follow Alyra around everywhere and talk to her and TOUCH her and all sorts of awful stuff like that. Alyra of course hated it, and she finally planted her feet, screwed up her face in frustration, and screamed, "PEOPLE!"

Oh, I forgot to mention-

Dan was BAREFOOT on the roof.

 

Noah, luckily, did NOT fall off the roof 

work circle 

our first work circle

For a few years before A was born, we had a work circle with five other families. We met monthly at one family’s house on a weekend morning and worked together on projects until noon, when we ate lunch together. All except one of the families in that work circle moved or got pregnant about the same time I did, so it sort of fell apart at that point.

Recently we joined a newly-formed work circle, and as the only family who’d done it before, we got the first work slot to show everyone else How It’s Done. Hosting an effective work circle usually requires a large amount of planning; in addition to serving a meal to 10 adults and 6-ish kids, which in itself is not an insignificant endeavor, we make it our goal to get the Most Work Possible out of every member of our work crew. This means having multiple projects going at once, all the materials and supplies at hand, and something that can be accomplished in the presence of children (who should not be in the area during asbestos removal or rusty-nail collection or the like).

With only two weeks to prepare, during which we had several other commitments, we didn’t get as much planning done as we’d like. We did have several fairly small projects to do, such as moving a bookcase, and the neverending weed-clearing in our yard is good to suck up hours of anyone’s time. But we decided to start off with a literal and figurative bang- replacing the roof on the shed.

Dan ordered the materials to arrive a week in advance, and started roof-demolition on Thursday; he was out there again at 7 a.m. today to get good start before the work crew arrived at 9:30. What with the expected demolition-and-tarpapering and the less-expected carpenter-ant vacuuming (maybe we should try to get in a Dyson infomercial for that) and the pre-drilling of the roof panels (oh, we got metal, of course; we couldn’t make it easy and cheap by getting asphalt shingles like everyone else- which means we can NOT move from this house for at LEAST 30 years), however, it was 11:30 before the metal started going up. Everyone worked ‘til 12:45-ish before having lunch, and then two families (thankfully) stayed on to finish.

Finally, everything is done except for the last pieces on each side, which need to be cut. Since it’s 2:30 at this point, the roofers start putting up a tarp so they can finally go home.

It’s at this point, when we’re almost done, that Dan decides to hurl himself off the roof.

We suspect a broken foot. Dan hobbles around with ice while our friends do a beautiful job of cleaning up. (I, incidentally, was all-but-useless for much of the work circle because A was extra-needy; which means our friends slaved away while I watched.) Andy, who is a doctor in his spare time when he’s not fixing our roof, needs to be at the hospital immediately; he sends his wife home to get him less mossy clothes and then borrows our OTHER friends’ car to take Dan to the hospital with him. (In this way, we managed to inconvenience as many people as possible while I still got to stay home and watch other people work.)

Andy fast-tracks Dan at the hospital so it "only" takes him three hours to get in and out, and to hear that his foot is in fact NOT broken, just horribly painful. (Hurray!) Dan gets 8 x-rays and a diptheria vaccine, and Andy waits around to deliver him back home again. Are our friends amazing, or what?

Incidentally, we just made up a budget a few nights ago. Should Dan’s medical bills fall under "medical" or "home repair"?

In which A absorbs more Rain family culture

-Due to C's endless repetitions of his Mary Poppins medley, when he sings "feed the birds..." she pipes in with "twopence."

-When she wants someone to get out of her way, she says "beep beep." "Beep beep Paco!"

-She's started teasing Dan. She says "Yucky Daddy!" to him with an evil grin, and runs away laughing.

C's a suck-up

After coming home from the co-op today, Dan was kind enough to keep feeding the kids in the kitchen while I ate dinner. C roamed into the dining room and tried to chat, and I told him that I was wiped out, needed some peace, and would be much more pleasant to be around after I finished eating. He said, "I always think you're nice to be around because you're my Mommy." Way to make me feel guilty-

renovations

Since we decided we don't have the energy to build an office outbuilding this year, and Dan nixed the idea of converting our closet into a bedroom for A, we decided that we should instead confuse our lives by transferring all of our furniture from room to room instead. While final positioning is not yet complete, C's room is now downstairs in our former office, and A is in his old room. The computer and office stuff are in our bedroom.

We're getting more sleep with A in her own room (well, except when Paco keeps us up all night with his elimination needs, but we're hoping that our most recent financial sacrifice to the veterinary gods will take care of that problem). C's craft table, formerly occupying a corner of our dining room along with several less-than-attractive blockades to prevent toddler invasions, is much better off in his new gated-off room. The bedroom/office is less than ideal, but it's not awful either. The main thing I hate is having C sleep downstairs. Though we leave our door open, I still don't trust that we'll hear him if he calls to us. He's old enough now to seek us out, but I still wish that adding another upstairs bedroom were a simpler prospect....

A is proudly displaying her younger-child status with her latest language addition- "me too! me too!" She spends a lot of time picking "dindy ion fwowers" and "eyelet fwowers" (dandelion and violet flowers). Colors are becoming more interesting; the "black cat" in her tractor book is her favorite, and today she pointed out "Dee-dahs orj shoot" (Cadao's orange shirt).

Top ten things A says while she's sleeping or supposed to be sleeping

Out Door
Paco-Maco
Paco-Pie
More Apple
Sock
Eey-Aye (her word for her legwarmers)
Pillow
(monkey sounds)
Read Book
Out Back

(now you can win on Family Feud!)

butter is better

Since C was born, the main chocolate-chip cookie recipe we've used has involved whole-wheat flour, ground oats, and canola oil. They're good. For the first time in forever, we made Toll House cookie bars to send to our friends in Florida, and we ate the leftovers. Now, I'm not quite sure how I managed to convince myself that the other recipe was worth making-

the kids with the ball track C and Dan made

Paco and monkey 

the mobile Dan made to thank Mala and Jeff for hosting us in Florida 

We finally put our two-kid wagon to its intended use today for the first time as we hauled both kids to the library. Even though C was regressing by riding rather than walking, we were struck by how BIG he's getting. Maybe it was his stylish jean jacket making him look older, but when did he grow so much?

He went down the big slide by himself at the park on the way home; last summer was the first time he was willing to use it at all except on our laps, and even then he still needed us to catch him at the bottom. A, of course, climbed right up to the top and went down just holding my hand. She's going to keep us on our toes.

We pulled C's old toy kitchen out of the basement for Alyra last week, and spent forever cleaning it off. It must have spent a decent amount of time outside at some point, because the stickers are nearly destroyed and the whole thing is faded. I was thinking I'd put some Contact paper over parts of it, upgrade the peeling butcher block counter to granite, and so on, but then I remembered seeing this Cozy Coupe upgrade.

So how do we make Alyra's kitchen REALLY cool? Should we turn it into a mad scientist's lab? A bar? A compounding pharmacy? Or should we thumbtack red-and-white striped paper around all the trim and make a toaster cozy out of a cardboard box? The submittor of the best idea will win the right to generate print-ready graphics; we'll provide the full-page sticker paper.

toy kitchen due for renovations- 

Oma's 65th birthday present. It's not blurry in real life. 

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 

baby in the snow 

I just ordered $350 worth of shoes from Zappos in the hope that just ONE (well, two, technically) will fit. I hate hate hate my extra-wide feet-

Well, at today's vet visit, Paco's eye looked much better. Apparently the new-cell-formation is weak, so it's possible that one scrape could wipe out all the improvement and set him back to square one, but we're (obviously) hoping to avoid that. For meds, we're down to just three drops a day. Maybe we should send him to Marley's house to have them done.

Paco update

The vet clinic's eye specialist finally returned today (why he thought his knee surgery was higher priority than my Paco, I'll never understand) and Dan took him in (again). Paco now has a fairly serious corneal abrasion, which wasn't there before; he must have managed to do it to himself since his last appointment (perhaps the night he managed to wrestle his way out of the conehead). So now they're treating the corneal abrasion and hoping that whatever the other problem was has resolved itself. The steroid drops we had been giving him have also apparently been preventing the abrasion from healing, so he now gets different drops, an ointment, and remains on the oral painkiller/ anti-inflammation drug (which thankfully he likes). Wrestling him down and prying his eye open several times a day is wearing thin on all of us.

We had to cut his conehead down because he couldn't function with it at all; he stood in the middle of the room crying the first night he had it until Dan finally gave up trying to sleep and reduced it to a more reasonable size. (Paco refused to lie down, eat, sniff, pee, do ANYTHING with it on.) We're glad we were able to help him a little bit, but wish we knew when we'll be able to finally take it off him.

 

Conehead dog 

Happy baby 

Climbing baby 

C and marble-run blocks

C's gift to Nana

We eventually convinced A to go through the tunnel by leaving a trail of Oatios through it

A likes platforms

there's a boy in the bucket 

New castles; revamped pirate ship 

Our holiday celebrations were just sooo exciting and numerous that we haven't had a chance to write about them! Dan, C, A, and I exchaned presents on the 23rd. Highlights included homemade Playmobil castles for C, a renovations of his Playmobil pirate ship, a set of locks and keys, and a bucket for hauling things up and down from his playhouse. He was really excited about all his presents; we realized that if that had been his whole Christmas, it would have been enough.

But wait! There's more! We spent Christmas Eve through the 26th with Nana, Ye-ye, and Uncle Shannon, where buckeye-making, puzzle-piecing, food, family, and many more gifts abounded. Then we were home for a day to pack before going to Oma and Opa's, with more more more! The kids had a blast, and we all enjoyed the long vacation, but the grown-ups were ready to get things back to normal. (Well, I say that, but now I'm desperately anticipating our trip to Florida, which is more than a month away.)

New this week? Well, a substitute busdriver just blew right by me this afternoon while I was waiting to get C off the bus; it eventually turned around after I ran after it waving and shouting for a block (dragging A, natch) and C told someone they missed his stop. (He said it was someone's grandmother riding the bus. Who knows who it really was, but at least she got the busdriver to turn around.)

(Incidentally, I'd figured that they eventually switched his bus route because they realized it was ridiculous to have kindergarteners sitting on the bus for so long. Nope! They switched it because it was annoying for them to have to wait for his bus to get back to the bus garage so late. Should've known.)

We've spent $175 this week to turn Paco into a conehead. He has some horrible eye problem that they still haven't been able to diagnose. We don't want to think about how much more we're going to have to spend, and how much more pain and irritation Paco is going to be subjected to, before they actually diagnose and treat the problem. He's miserable enough from the pain and swelling (despite painkillers), and now he can't even sniff the ground without bashing into a snowbank or lie down without having plastic dig into his head. (And A wants to play with the plastic.)