Baby Girl Bling

Look close! Lissa has bling! She got her ears pierced tonight at long last. Kirsty wanted to do her ear piercing when she was an infant. While I agree that seems very easy, she had immune system issues that made me chary of poking holes in her.

Then we thought maybe we should wait till she was old enough to express interest--little realizing that this would come at the tender age of 2. For the past several months she has been eyeballing and fingering Kirsty's earrings (or mine on those odd days when I remember to wear some) and saying "oooh pretty." Actually it is more like "ooooh, pree" but we knew what she meant. Then she would point to her ears and say "pree ME" most emphatically. I talked with some friends who said the most optimal way to pierce at her age was to have both done simultaneously.

Tonight I had the kids at the mall getting birthday gifts for Kirsty and the Piercing Pagoda had two techs on duty and there was virtually no one around. Gotta love the quiet at the mall but it is a sad reflection on the economy. Not even the kids that usually hang out there. . . but anyway, I decided to do her ears since everything seemed to be falling into place. She helped pick out her first earrings. They are birthstone ones and she didn't even cry. She whimpered and looked like she was going to let loose with one of her glass breaking whoops when it was first done, but then we held the mirror up right away and she was entranced with the look of her new earrings.

January's nearly done!

I just happened to look at the calendar and it fully registered in my dull headachy little brain that we have nearly finished the first month of the year. This seems incredible to me. Time has a way of moving at warp speed these days, both at work and at home.

Today I only worked a 1/2 day, which was a real gift to our family. I came home early so that Kirsty could get the van inspected and do a few needed errands with out the entire tribe in tow. Made things a lot easier for her.

KC and Rob played in the back yard in the snow. Lissa stayed inside and played with me. Then later KC and I made valentine decorations. He made a cat out of valentines for his nana who is a very serious lover of cats and laboriously wrote "you are purr-fect!" on it. It is really cute and we will mail this up to her.

Tonite I will take Chet out to purchase his birthday gift for Kirsty. Her birthday is coming up in the first part of February and he is stressing because he doesn't have the actual gift in hand yet. Tomorrow promises to be a busy day for me and the kids so it might be easier to run this errand tonight. And at any rate, in Chet's case, alleviating stressors that we can, as quickly as possible is always a good thing.

Oh and the picture at the top of my blog got changed a few days back. I put up a pic of the hearts poster the kids made for our dining room!

Icy Excitement

This may not fall under "excitement" but we had another ice storm. That makes i think three this winter. I may have forgotten one. I can't EVER recall a winter with so much ice. Sorta makes me think my eldest's gloom and doom prognostications about what we are doing to the planet may not be so far off the mark.

This a.m. I went sliding out to my car and attempted to clean it off. In an odd twist of events I own a parking space next door to our house and that is where I park my car as the van and our camper take our driveway pretty much. You can fit my car in if you really want to but i think it generally easier this way.

Easier except in times of bad weather. Everytime I tried to get the ice off the top of the car I literally slid away from the vehicle. Faced with landing on my butt before getting said butt to work, or potentially getting a ticket for snow on the top of the car, i opted for a potential ticket. I work 3 miles from my house. I know the police officers. The goddess will protect me! :-) I eventually de-ice the Metro and head to work after throwing a bunch of rock salt over the lower 1/2 of the driveway. The boys were supposed to chip this out later and take out the trash and recycling.

My co worker has been ill for 4 days and was finally well enough to return to the office. This meant I could actually LEAVE the office for a brief time (some people call this lunch hour!! a treat I don't get all that often as things are so hectic lately) Today's treat was really called "inspect the Metro."

I have been stressing over this. My car is a 98. It is rusting badly. It is elderly. I don't know the last time I changed the oil. But OTOH I don't drive it a lot. It only has 67K miles on it. Really. The whole family can't fit in it anymore so it is just to take me or Kirsty to work, the 3 mile commute. And in the good weather I bike and it sits home.

But. . . my rocker panal is really rusting out badly. My coworkers I think had a betting pool on whether I was getting a rejection sticker. But I took that baby down and IT PASSED! The little dear even passed emissions! I think all the ice and crud all over it from the storm may have helped to disguise the sorry rusty state of the aforementioned rocker panal. But whatever, I am legal for another year!

Got home and Kirsty had had to scrape the driveway as the boys hadn't. Hmmmm. Boys had also "forgotten" trash and recycling. They were sent out by me to rectify this and by now it was cold again and the shed had iced shut and they had to chip it out to get the door open. Ha! I am all for logical consequences like that! ROFL

Of snow, ice and baseball

Snow, ice, shovel , repeat! Yup, that is the mantra for this particular New England winter anyway. I am really ready to be done with the rough weather. I am lucky that my aged little Metro behaves really well in bad weather, but I still hate ice. Driving stick only helps so much when it is ice. I worked through my lunch and left work an hour early because the roads were so icky. On the plus side it was nice to be home with the gang a bit earlier; the kids all looked so shocked when I came in.

I got an email from Little League to see if Rob wanted to sign up this year. Last year I had to move heaven and earth to get Kirsty to agree to signing him up. To say she is not into organized sports would be the understatement of the century. She finally did agree but it was up to me to do the rooting on and the various parental duties that came with the sport. This was fine with me; I was also the Swim Class parent and when he did basketball, yup that was on my watch too! LOL

Anyway I got the impression that Robbie adored Little League. But when I asked if he wanted to sign up again he said no. I asked why, as this year he was eligible to be in the majors. (last year he was fairly indignant over starting in the minors) He informed me that the players got hit by balls a lot more in the majors so if he couldn't play in the minors he guessed he wasn't interested. I think that may be part of it. I think part of it is also about the fact that he isn't Big Papi and he was pretty sure he was till he had a year of Little League under his belt. His coach was really nice, so I know nothing rotten happened; but with Rob if one doesn't become the star in 15 minutes or less, he is pretty done with the experience.

I'm glad he shared that with me before I eeked out $125 for a season of play that he didn't really want! On the other hand, he does want to return to the summer camp he attended last year for a week. This is a conference center run by our religious denomination. I think what helps make it great for him is that there are only 40 kids there, and it is a place we have been to as a family. So even there by himself, it isn't really the unknown. And it is a cool place. He even told me he didn't care if his friend wasn't going this year, so obviously it was a really good experience.

Watching him mature is such a fascinating experience. It is rather uneven--there is still a catching up of little kid things that I find him doing via his time with KC or Lissa, but a growing maturity and I find myself often musing about the kind of young man he will become.

Big Snow?

There's been a lot of snow this year! Enough to make this really REALLY big snow man in our back yard. To give you perspective, Robbie is nearly 5 foot tall and the snowman isn't much shorter than he is. Mighty plump, too that snow buddy!

Rob and KC had a great time creating this guy. He is guarding our garden shed in the back yard. Another foot of snow is headed our way on Wednesday. Sometimes spring seems very far away!

On to the next!

OK I think Christmas is finally done! It was a busy, fun and exhausting day. Not necessarily in that order. We were up by 6:30 as we have to leave our house by 8 to get to church on time. Actually if I knew that Dunkin Donuts wasn't going to be crowded and if I knew the roads were always clear I could leave at about 8:15. But sometimes Dunkins is really crowded and as this is KC's breakfast, I have to factor that in. So we actually got to church a goodly bit early but it was nice to sit and listen to the youth choir practice. KC liked looking at all the drums that Matt Meyers brought with him. www. rhythmrevelations.com is I think a website that gives his bio and talks about his music. He is an amazing young man with a great musical gift. I love hearing his music. Watching him when he plays I see some of the same traits in KC. KC sort of shuts his eyes when he plays music and seems to be spirit wise, some place else. Matt is like that too. KC stayed in church with me for the whole service soaking up the musical ambiance like the little music sponge that he is. Matt's talk on social justice was pretty cool too as far as I was concerned. Want another reason not to buy from Mickey D's? They used to buy their tomatos from businesses in FL that treated their workers essentially like slaves. Took the workers 9 years to get better pay and treatment.

After service, I never went to fellowship, but gathered the kids and boogied for home. I knew Kirsty would be stressing over getting things ready for her family's visit and sure enough, she was.

Rob and I stepped into the breech as it were. I made place cards and he set the table. I got the salad together and Lissa in her party duds. I frosted and decorated Lynne's birthday cake and before long, we were set. Everyone was set to arrive between 11:00 and 11:30. Dad and Lynne (K's sis) arrived on time. No sign of brother Bri and his girlfriend. Hmmm. Clock ticks. KC is antsy. His grampa has walked in with presents and now he can't touch them. He watches anxiously out the window. Still no sign of Uncle and his girlfriend. Finally Lynne says she told them to come between 12 and 12:30 because after all they are always late anyway. What??? Why would you do that? Now they will be even later. Which they were, but of course they didn't know they were an hour late becuase of the inaccurate time given by Lynne. Note to self: next year convey details ourselves. No middle person. I think some family members (naming no names LOL) may have a bit of passive aggressive issues going on and love mucking up the works.

And the works did get mucked because by 12:45 Lissa had to go down for a nap and KC was cranky as all get out from the tenterhooks feeling of impending presents and a lack of food. Probably for the first time in the 30 yrs Lynne and i have known each other did I quietly give her a sincere talking to about what her actions did. I am not sure whether she just has no clue how kids have only so much stamina for waiting (we are the only people in the family with children) or if she just likes screwing things up.

Bri finally got there and I sure didn't want him to know what the delay caused. AFter all, he thinks they are only a few minutes late. So we do presents while Lissa is sleeping. They are very generous and loving in their choice of gifts for the kids, and seem genuinely appreciative of the gifts we and the kids made for them. We have dinner. Yum. Everything delish and Bri and Dad mention how we always "do" things nicely. On their own they all eat take out and TV dinners so it must look like something out of a BBC movie when we all 12 sit down to table together! :-) It was simple fare but tasty. The funny thing is I bet they had no clue that they were eating vegetarian crumbles for the beef in the ziti bake. There are only 2 slices of lemon merenque pie left and Lynne took her bday cake home. We were finally able to wake Lissa after we ate and she opened her gifts then.

Then we could all relax and socialize a while, eventually the X Games got turned on. Robbie loves them and in a bizarre twist of fate, I have always liked them. I am sort of an adrenaline junkie who had to swear to my spouse that I would do nothing high risk while we had children under 18. I snuck karate past her for 12 yrs (by the time she realized how many people in my class were getting wrecked I was so far along toward my second degree black belt that she toughed it out) I often tease her that the reason she has always agreed to adding children to our family is that at this rate I'll be something like 72 when I get to hike the AT end to end, try bungee jumping and take that rapelling class I've always wanted to do.

But I digress. So I sate my adrenaline rush third party watching people do back flips on snowmobiles! Rob I know would never in a billion years try anything like that so it is totally safe to watch it with him. KC now, I don't know. The night before we watched the slope style snowboarding and he was practicing his moves jumping off the couch!

Eventually everyone decided to head out for their respective homes and I set about restoring order and removing Christmas for real. KC has been dying to do another valentine craft and as we took down the Yule mural tonite, he and I did one. Rob and KC have spent a couple of weeks messing around with water colors and seeing what the colors would do with different papers and treatments. They have both enjoyed it. I had about 16 pages of impressionistic art and we cut them into hearts and glued them onto a big posterboard. It looks stunning. He is thrilled and it truly brightens the dining room. It struck me that although it was a decoration for a new holiday it was also a bright and tangible symbol of what was best and brightest about this day, the love that holds our crazy and diverse family together!

More Yuletide Joy?

Hard to believe but all the holly jolly hasn't ended at our house! Tomorrow we have Christmas w/ Kirsty's side of the family. They like to get together after Christmas so they can buy our gifts on sale. (really! They told us!) And we don't really mind because December is so crazy busy with Yule and Solstice and Lissa's birthday and Christmas . . . you get the drift. Yet although I always enjoy it when they arrive, I am just not really in that holly jolly place any more. It is done as far as my mind set is concerned. I want to think about seed catalogs. I want to take bets on whether the groundhog will see his shadow and try and figure out how many camping trips we'll eek out this year.

But for tomorrow, I have to pretend I am in the merry Christmas mode! And I know that the spirit of giving and all that should happen all the time, so I sort of feel rather scroogy over the fact that I am just not into this right now.

On the other hand, I am looking forward to church tomorrow. There is going to be a very talented young percussionist leading the service. We have heard him before, once at a peace vigil, once at a church service. KC adores his music. When he heard Matt Meyers was playing in the service he announced he would not be attending church school that day because he wants to hear the drums. My guy loves all things musical. So we will be in service and also I am glad to be there as Robbie gets to light the chalice this Sunday. His coming of age class has to help with some component of the church service during the year and that was what he chose to do. Doesn't involve speaking so he is cool with it.

So I know I'll be in a good place when I get home (mentally I mean) and they arrive. And truthfully I love being around them all. I just love it more when it isn't a gifty thing as they are very high end consumers and we are very low end, tend to make our gifts type of folks. I always wonder if they pitch what we give after they get home. I need to get over that. I give apple pie filling and salsa. Who in their right mind would pitch that???