After School 2

The girls eat a snack and lunch at school, yet they still come home convinced they are on the verge of starvation.


I love new art supplies.

Before School

Sometimes it's fun to have many of a particular toy.

By some miracle we've been getting ready with enough time each morning for the girls to actually sit down and play for ten minutes or so before leaving, and that's with leaving earlier this year because we're carpooling with another family. We'll see if that keeps up next week after I start school.

After School

"Art" is in the eye of the beholder

Many Words

Imogen certainly doesn't mind a monologue, especially when it's coming out of her mouth. We've been playing alot of tetris on the DS lately and I guess it's been on her mind. As Jeremy was trying to fix something on my computer, I got bored watching him and picked it up and began to play. Imogen proceeded to tell me all about her own personal philosophies and strategies regarding tetris (she's never made it past level 5... I've beaten it at level 20). I let her rattle on, completely amused at just how boring it was to listen to her describe where she likes to put various pieces in various situations. I was wondering just how long she would go on when Jeremy finally snapped and said "I think mommy knows all about tetris!" I started laughing hysterically.

I'm often able to tune Imogen out. I know it sounds heartless, but she does feel the need to speak a lot and does not require the most devout listener. I feel it's kinder to let her talk to me than to tell her to be quiet. Often I will suddenly realize she has been talking to me for a while. I'm very willing to have a two way conversation with her, but she needs to get my attention first, which I think she realizes.

Genevieve on the other hand wants to know that you heard her and is perfectly willing to repeat herself as often as necessary to get a response.

"Do you think that if I don't say something, I didn't hear you?" I asked tonight after she repeated herself three times in rapid succession.

"I dunno," she said, completely unconcerned either way.

Oh and Imogen has a strange insect fascination. She recently bought a book at Barnes and Noble about insects. Last night she was flipping through it and came to a page with some kind of velvet ant or something.

"Oh, it's so beautiful!" she said.

"Oh?" I said, "Are you going to be a bug-ologist?"

"What?" she said.

"A scientist who studies bugs," I said.

"Yes. Or an artist who paints bugs," she said.

I guess everyone has their thing.

Yum yum

My dogs and I have a disagreement. To them, if it's left unattended, then it's fair game. To me, the floor is theirs, the table is off limits. Zeus knows well enough to stay off the table unless it's really reeeeally unattended, because getting caught is unpleasant. Monster is more clueless, as always. We try not to leave food laying around but things get overlooked. In this case, what got overlooked was a tub of margarine Joseph had brought to the table and left there for Monster to find. Zeus can eat things carefully, but Monster, having a rather flat and furry face, must smoosh his face into whatever he is eating and consequently, you always know what he's been into. And you can't see it very well from the picture but his face was covered in margarine. I had just bathed him the day before, too. This dog has already had more baths since coming here than Zeus has had in the three years we've had him.

Imogen's latest hair adventure

This is not the first time Imogen has gotten an unplanned haircut because of some disaster. This was the first time it involved this goopy slime stuff that I couldn't get out of her hair, which necessitated in my cutting a large chunk off on one side. She looks cuter with short hair anyway.

Fun at the Zoo

We went to the zoo a couple weeks ago. I, being in the midst of raging allergy season, was perfectly miserable the whole time. I did manage to stop sneezing long enough to shoot a couple pictures.

Fair, to the last crumb

The fair thing has gotten totally out of hand. Today alone, this is what I've heard:

"Can you get me a cup for my cherries, because Imogen had a cup and that wouldn't be fair."

About the parmesan cheese, Imogen said, "Only take a sprinkle because I only got a sprinkle!"

They asked for a drink of my dr. pepper. Previously we established that a sip is smaller than a drink and a drink is smaller than a gulp. So Imogen had a "drink" and handed my almost empty cup to Genevieve and watched her carefully. "Hey! That was a gulp!"

This is ridiculous.

Nightmares

Imogen very rarely wakes us up in the middle of the night, but when she has a nightmare, she wants to be tucked back into bed. I always ask what the nightmare was and she has these really great narrative dreams. Genevieve tries to explain her scary dreams and they are usually only that she saw something scary. Nothing really happens in the dream.

Imogen's first nightmare that I can remember is that a volcano erupted in our back yard.

Another time, she dreamed she put her hand in a cookie jar and pulled out a snake, which then proceeded to chase her around.

Last night she had another dream and I asked her what happened in the dream. "I was playing with Monster and his eyes fell out, and I was scared that I would get in trouble so I hid them under the couch, but you were cleaning up and you found them." Ha! Best nightmare ever!

Cookout

A couple months ago the girls were playing outside and they piled up a bunch of sticks on the back porch and pretended to be camping. I felt sorry for them but not sorry enough to try to sleep on the ground for a night or two so we decided to have a cookout, and then go home to our nice squishy beds. We held it last night at Mary's farm and brought hot dogs and made smores. The girls thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to them.





We got there before sunset and ate hot dogs.




Dave built a fire... you know, just like cave men and pioneers used to do it...





Playing with sparklers.




My camera doesn't like taking pictures with the flash off.



By the time we were on the freeway on our way home, I looked behind me and saw this.

Conversations

Yesterday in the car:

"I'm watching The Sound of Music," Genevieve said.

"Oh, is it past the part where they sing that big song?" Imogen said.

"No," Genevieve said.

Today at dinner:

"Did you know there is a haunted house right here in Missouri??" Imogen told me.

"Imogen's classmate has been to it," Genevieve said. "He almost died there!"

I laughed and said, "I doubt he almost died there."

"Those robots had guns!" Imogen said.

...

Bath time

Before: Cute and fuzzy.



During: Slightly scary.



After: Getting a bit better.

Friends for life, provided nothing goes wrong...

We were in the car yesterday and Imogen said to Genevieve, "Some day, when I get an apartment, you can live with me. You can be my roommate."

"If I know where you live," Genevieve said.

"I can drive you there," Imogen said. "We can share a car."

"If I like your apartment," Genevieve said, noncommittally.

"Well, we can look for a new apartment," Imogen said, in an effort to sweeten the deal. "We can go inside to look and see if we want it."

"We will knock first," Genevieve said.

"And Ben can visit us!" Imogen said.

"If he knows where we live," Genevieve said.

Does she have to poke holes in every plan, I thought.

Moody

I was recently griping at Imogen for having an attitude problem when she had no good reason to be. She's already so moody and temperamental, she's going to be a perfect nightmare as a teenager. She sighed and said "I'm sorry. You should have named me Grouchy." Genevieve spoke up, "Grouchy is a boy's name."

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Monster

One thing about having Monster is that now I realize how well trained Zeus is. Zeus spends every waking moment worrying about us. He pays attention to everything we do, he follows us and is aware of when I slip on my flip flops (that means I might be leaving) or when I put things in my purse (also leaving) and his ears are tuned to the slightest jingle of keys (ACK! LEAVING!) If we are leaving, his first and foremost goal is to be taken with us. He is terrified that this might not happen. And he is beside himself with excitement when we arrive back home.

Monster is completely unaware of any of the above. It catches him completely off guard when he is scooped up and locked into the bathroom with Zeus.

Zeus is worried if anyone raises their voice, and he runs and hides under the furniture. Monster doesn't care. Zeus takes his watch dog duties very seriously and barks at me when I come home. Monster runs and hides. (???) Zeus goes to bed every night in the same place and stays there until Jeremy gets up and lets him outside. Monster wakes up some time in the middle of the night to pee by my door so that I can't leave the room without stepping in it. Zeus comes when called. Monster might, if he's in the mood. Zeus stresses out a lot. Monster is happy and friendly and mostly occupies himself with chewing on things or people or Zeus.

Part of me has always wondered if I am somehow responsible for what a neurotic stress case Zeus is. That somehow the type of dog owner that I am, the way that I treat dogs, has created his various mental health issues. Time will tell, I suppose, if I turn Monster into a raving psychopath, but so far he seems more relaxed and happy than I ever remember Zeus being.

Please leave a message after the beep...

I'm a terrible message-leaver.

Really. The voice mail comes on and suddenly I'm fumbling around, forgetting what I called for and repeating what little information I am able to retrieve out of my suddenly sluggish mind. It think it has to do with the fact that I'm never just talking on the phone. I'm on the phone and doing laundry, or doing a project for school, or driving somewhere (yes, I'm one of those evil women in a minivan on a cell phone). When I have someone on the phone, I get to pause and let them talk. When I'm leaving messages, there's just silence. And me... rambling.

I left Zach a message one time. It was something like, "Hi... It's Rachael... Um... I have your thing [I forget what the thing was]... So... um... if you want to meet me... I'll be in class.. but it's over at 8. But it starts at five, so I can meet you before then... or after, but I'm not home right now.... I'm on the other side of town, and I have to go get Imogen from school at 3:30 and then go to the grocery store... So I don't know when I'll be home.. So call me and we'll figure out where to meet... Or I can drop it off later... If you'll be home... Ok, talk to you later, bye!"

Zach called me back, "You leave terrible voice mails!"

Introducing...

This is Monster! He's a ten week Shih Tzu, a gift from my mother and step-father. He's the sweetest thing ever!

Birthdays

Imogen's birthday is this Friday, which she is handling with the composure of a lunatic in a rubber room. We were discussing and salivating (me the former, her the latter) about it in the car today and of course Genevieve wanted in on the action. Their birthdays are exactly six months apart which means as soon as one has her birthday, we can begin the countdown to the other's. Genevieve commented (again) that she would get to turn six.

I told her no, she is my baby and my baby is not allowed to turn six. She must turn four and then the following year, she can turn five, then four, five, on and on. I assured her between her protests that we would still give her the same amount of gifts so I really don't see what the big deal is.

She said, "You'll see, Mommy. You'll see." And then she cackled theatrically as if this was some kind of movie. As I was pondering what it would be like to be in a reality TV show with someone like her, she turned to Imogen and broke the spell with, "Won't she see Imogen? When it's my birthday and I turn six?"

That's just bad dialog, I thought.

Circus

I took the girls to the circus today. They mostly had a good time. The show was a little long for them.

For Imogen, it was all about the tigers. Unfortunately, the tigers came first so the rest was a bit of let down. Imogen has an affinity for large cats. She's convinced that she does a spot-on lion impression and when she had to pick an animal for a project at school, she chose the lion.

The only frustrating thing was all the pauses in the show where they begged us to buy stuff. They literally had a guy in center ring holding up ridiculously priced toys while the guy on the PA system jabbered on about them. At the end of a long intermission, they spent a good ten minutes getting people to buy a coloring book full of ads (yes, I want to pay to be advertised to). Of course, my kids thought it was a great idea to buy all this stuff, which the circus people know and which is why they were doing this in the first place. Unfortunately for my kids, they have parents who are too willing to say no. Fortunately for the circus people, most other children don't seem to have this burden.

Otherwise, it was a fun show. We had elephants standing on their front legs, trapeze artists flying around, a bunch of fluffy dogs jumping over things, and a monkey driving a cart. All that you expect from a circus, plus hula girls dancing to Elvis. I'm glad we went.

Wait a minute...

Two days ago, I wore flip flops. People were barbecuing. Today, both Missouri State and my kids' school is canceled for snow.

The weather here is psychotic. Really.

Flowers

Every year (in lieu of grass) we get tons of purple flowers all over our front yard. This year we noticed these two yellow flowers out of nowhere.

Toy problems

Genevieve went to the dentist yesterday while Imogen was at school and a received a small gift from them in return for allowing them to stab needles in her mouth and drill holes into her teeth in a violent effort to fix them. Imogen doesn't deal well with this type of thing. We pick her up from school and she gets into the van and sees Genevieve with some insignificant trinket which becomes very significant during the rest of the afternoon while I listening to screaming "negotiations" concerning the balance between the virtues of sharing and the rights of ownership.

And I reflect once again that only children don't have this problem. Or children born eight years apart. My children are eighteen months apart, to the day. In some ways, this makes life easy. They like all the same toys. They borrow each other's clothes. Or, at least, Genevieve borrows Imogen's clothes. Which is always good for a laugh.

But on the other hand, they like all the same toys. Which means they argue over all the same toys. And while they might, on occasion, play nicely with each other, fights are frequent and passionate. It doesn't help that Genevieve doesn't believe in solving any problem calmly. At the first sign of a disagreement, her eyes fill up and her voice gets all squeaky.

Yesterday, in the car, while Imogen was eyeballing Genevieve's new toy, she said, "Can I have a turn with it?

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's a yoyo," Imogen said.

"No, it's not," Genevieve said.

"Yes, it is," Imogen said.

"What is it then?" I asked.

"I don't know," Genevieve said.

I glanced over my shoulder. "It's a yoyo," I said. When we got home, I demonstrated how to use it, then carefully put the loop of the string over her finger and the yoyo in her hand. She let go and it clunked onto the floor. The string was too long. But she took it to school for show and tell today.

Over dramatic

If Imogen had her way, all the pictures that I took of her would be of her standing up straight, smiling right into the camera. I've had the hardest time convincing her that this is very boring. But this time she finally seemed to get it and tried to be dramatic and pouty for me.

Mix match day

Today was mix match day at the girls' school. They get to go in clothes that don't match.

Haircut

Before.

And after.

Genevieve's flower and excess of knowledge

Today, as Genevieve got into the van at pick up time from school, she handed me a flower she had made. She said, "My flower has a realistic stem." Only she pronounced it "wee-alistic". I examined the flower. Imagine my surprise to find that it was an exact replica of that type of flower (whose name escapes me at the moment) that has a stem that is exactly like a neon yellow pipe cleaner. I was suitably impressed.

Yesterday Genevieve told me that her teacher sang the "ears hang low" song. You know... "do your ears hang low, do they wobble too and fro, can you tie 'em in a knot, can you tie 'em in a bow..." etc. Anyway, she was upset because she already knew the song. Imogen had taught it to her. Now, Genevieve pretty much knows just about everything she knows because of Imogen. I've taught her nothing, mostly because by the time it's time for her to learn it, she's already picked it up.

Now, here she is saying that Imogen should avoid mentioning anything that Genevieve may learn in the future at school so that Genevieve can learn it from her teachers instead of her sister. This is so wildly misguided that I didn't even bother arguing about it.

I just said, "Even if I could get Imogen to stop telling you things... I wouldn't."

Renting Books

Libraries are a wonderful invention. However, there are some people who should never be given a library card.

I love books. I adore books. I read a lot, or I do when I'm not in school, and I miss reading while I am in school. I like to own books. So it is my preference to buy books. I like Barnes and Noble and I like Borders. I still haven't found a good used bookstore, but I haven't looked very hard. I keep saying that I'll go on a quest for one some weekend but I haven't gotten around to it. I'm busy.

There is, however, a library very close to my home. Unfortunately, I'm reeeally disorganized when it comes to library books. The girls and I will bring home a stack of books, some of which get read, the rest of which get lost. They get found again, and put in a neat stack to be returned. The stack get buried under laundry or backpacks or an avalanche of junk mail. Or the stack of books gets accidentally put on a bookshelf and mixed in with normal books. Pretty soon the library has sent me a bill for the books and really, I don't want to pay $150 for these books because if I wanted them I would order them from amazon.com or something. Plus, I don't think a lot of my kids' taste in books. Genevieve picks out a book because it has a cool looking tiger on the front and it's some idiotic story about cave people. I don't love books indiscriminately.

Really, I would rather go hang out at Barnes and Noble. I can buy each of the girls a book for around four or seven dollars. It's cheaper in the end than the late fees.

Motivated

After trying various remedies to get Imogen to stop biting her nails, I gave up. They're her fingers.

But then, on a whim, I said, "If you let all of your nails grow out, I'll give you five dollars." One thing Imogen is fairly motivated by, is money. Her nails are almost all grown out, except for one pinky nail that kept getting chewed on. I'm making her grow out all ten, because I figure... I'm paying for it, so I get to make the rules. Besides, the longer she resisting chewing, the more likely the habit will be broken. And if I can break her of chewing her nails till they bleed, it's five dollars well spent.

Inadequacies

In the car, I'm a captive audience. The girls know they can talk to me and I can't run away.

So today, Imogen was in hypochondriac mode trying to describe (at length) something that was hurting her. "It's not my lungs, it more like... by my heart... right here, but it's not my heart. It's my soul. Yeah, my soul hurts."

"What?" I said.

"My soul hurts," she repeated. "Right here."

I glanced in the rear view mirror to get an idea of where one's soul is located. I didn't know what to say. I can't tell her that the soul isn't real, nor can I tell her exactly what or where it is.

"Your soul is like... your spirit. It makes you alive..." I said. Or is it a heart that pumps blood and a brain firing off it's neurons or neutrons or whatever that makes you alive? An insect is alive. Does an insect have a soul? I continued to stumble through an explanation but thankfully she got distracted and I dropped it quickly, not wanting to have this conversation. How do you quantify the unquantifiable to a child who wants to quantify everything.

Recently Imogen asked how I knew something (that dentists turn into fire breathing dragons when you aren't in the room... but that's another story) and I told her I read it in the big instruction book that they give you when you have a baby.

"Some people don't have children," she pointed out.

"That's true," I said.

"So they don't know about that?" she asked.

"That's right," I said.

I wish I really did have an instruction book.

What?!

Genevieve wanted more ketchup for her french fries. I squirted out a packet and said, "That's the last one."

"What?!" she said in an outraged tone.

"That's the last ketchup packet," I repeated.

"I didn't mean the kind of 'what' where you have to say it again..." she said.

"Oh," I said.

Frankenstein

Genevieve has decided to start the year off right. The time she slipped on the floor and landed on a small ice chest that was sitting on the floor by the door. I'm not too clear on what happened because Imogen was the only witness. But the end result is five stitches and a scar that will hopefully be hidden by her eyebrow.

You know, I grew up without needing stitches. I really consider this frequency of stitching to be unreasonable. I asked a doctor if something was wrong with her balance and/or equilibrium in some way but he seemed to think that if she is capable of walking normally without falling down most of the time then she's just a klutz. Of course, a few days ago, she tripped over her own feet when standing still. She landed on her side with such a shocked expression that even she started laughing.

Anyway, I'm sure she'll need stitches again soon, but I just wish she would stop catching her falls with her face.

Not Fair

Parents of only children don't have to hear this on a near daily basis. But if you have more than one child, no matter what the situation is, one thing that it isn't is fair.

By "fair", children do not mean the same thing that I think of as fair. To me, being fair is to give each child what she deserves (whether reward or punishment) and to be more or less equally generous with those things that they do not deserve.

My children do not see it this way. To them, "fair" means "same". So if you have one child who was a perfect angel and one child who was a perfect monster and the angelic one gets to stay up and watch a movie and the nasty one has to go to bed early, this is what I would consider fair. But nooo, this is not fair, because it is not the same. Naturally, the one being sent to bed early will be the one protesting, but the one getting to stay up still views the situation as unfair. Make no mistake, she's just sitting there feeling smug and failing to see her reward as a result of her behavior.

Yesterday I was at Hobby Lobby with Genevieve who was bored to tears as I spent too much time shopping for art supplies. But she was cooperative and kept the complaining to a minimum so on the way out I bought her a silly putty. When we picked Imogen up from school, we got to hear that this was not fair.

Today I bought a small battery operated pencil sharpener for a drawing class. But when I got home I realized that it was too small and weak for the amount of sharpening I needed to do, so I gave it to Imogen when she got home from school. It was very inexpensive, comparable to, say, a silly putty. But Genevieve positively wailed in the car about unfair it was.

Irritated, I launched into this whole shrieky lecture about how if they want me to be totally fair I will punish them both when one of them does something wrong and if I ever have one of something I will keep it for myself, which they largely ignored except for Imogen to make some haughty comment about how she doesn't keep track of these things anymore. She had reformed a minute and a half before my lecture and felt it was impolite of me to hold misdeeds against her which were so far in the past as to be ancient history (that is, yesterday).

I've told them before: It is not my job to be fair. I don't have to be fair. I do not see it as a goal for me to be fair. But of course, when I say this, I mean that I don't want to be their kind of fair. My kind of fair is much better.

Leaves

Today was a beautiful day, that felt more like it belonged in September or October instead of January. Since I find fall infinity preferable to winter, this isn't a complaint. The girls went outside to play in t-shirts and I made them take hoodies with them that they ended up taking off because they were too warm. They laid down in the ditch in our front yard and covered each other with leaves in an elaborate plan to frighten their friend's mom who was coming to pick them up. This did not go as planned, but I got some good pictures out of it.

When a man and a woman love each other...

I recently told Genevieve how she came to be in our lives.

I said, "Back when we were living in Houston, and Imogen was a baby, we left her at home with a babysitter... and we went to the pet store. And there you were sitting in a little cage with little silver bars. And there was a little sign that said 'Monkey'. And Daddy said you were so very cute that he just had to bring you home. So we bought you right then and there."

Genevieve is fairly good natured about this. She just said, "I'm not a monkey!"

Jokes

Jokes have been the topic of much confusion and interest around here, but sadly, almost no skill. For one thing, many of the jokes an adult knows are inappropriate for children. But even when you go down your short list of appropriate jokes, it's surprising how often a joke depends on a person having a certain amount of knowledge. Without that knowledge, the joke isn't funny.

What did Cinderella say when her pictures were late?
"Some day my prints will come."

This is only funny if you are familiar with getting film developed or printed off at a store somewhere and that they are called prints. This may not have relevance to a child who is familiar with printing pictures at home and has only visited one hour photo labs and who calls pictures "pictures" and not prints.

In other words, illustrating what goes into making a joke funny has been extremely difficult. The girls laugh at jokes out of obligation, not because they think it is funny. And they think nothing of coming up with their own joke.

"Why did the dog dance?" Imogen asked.

"Why?" I said.

"Because he wanted to go for a ride!" she said. Genevieve laughed. (She's the perfect audience.)

"Is that a joke?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Was it funny?" I asked.

"Yes," Imogen said. "The dog danced! Duh."

I reflected that I did not teach my child to say duh, and she probably learned it at a school where she also takes etiquette classes.

"Do you get it now?" Imogen asked.

"Um, no," I said.

"I'm no good at making up jokes," Imogen said dejectedly as visions of being the next David Letterman were killed before her eyes.

"People don't usually make up jokes. They hear jokes and they tell them to other people," I said. So I told her a knock knock joke.

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you going to open the door?

Ok, so I don't know all that many jokes myself. I googled for kids jokes and now I know a lot more.

How do you catch a unique rabbit?
Unique up on it!

HA!

More is better

It was Imogen's turn to help me in the kitchen. We were making spaghetti. Imogen chopped the ground beef and poured the jar of sauce in the pan.

She asked, "Did I make this by myself?"

I said, "More or less."

"More or less..." she said quietly to herself. "I hope it's more..."

Don we now our gay apparel...

Now, I love Christmas. But I hate all the cheesy, tacky and just plain ugly things that come with it. There's something badly wrong with a holiday that produces a sweater like this... "embellished with fiber optic lights!" Seriously.

Imogen's drawing

Imogen's drawing style has recently changed to reflect body mass (rather than stick men) and more details which includes very large ears, googly eyes and creepy looking teeth.

Labels are also important.

Internal alarm clock

I have been getting up at 5:30. I wish I could say that I've been getting up at 5:30 because I've been going to bed early and thus have been getting plenty of sleep, waking up refreshed and ready to go at 5:30 in the morning. Alas, it is not so.

Genevieve, however, seems downright perky each morning as she knocks on my bedroom door to say that she is hungry/bored/not tired/lonely/afraid of the dark/etc. Children are surprisingly less adorable when the sun goes down.

I used to be sympathetic. I mean, poor kid, afraid of the dark. But now I don't care. Sleep deprivation does that to you. I've explained many times that nothing will get her. I bought her a night light and even took off the little plastic shade so that it shines directly into her eyes. I allow her to get up and turn on additional lights in the house without comment. But she's rather disrespectful of other people's sleep. I can ignore the hallway light being turned on. I cannot ignore it flashing like a strobe light while she flicks it on and off and on and off. I commented rather loudly on that one (we were all awake anyway).

The girls have been ordered to stay in bed till Jeremy and I get up. Our alarm goes off at 6:30 and I think that's unpleasantly early enough. And honestly, neither of us care at all if they wake up and get up and do something extremely quiet. But nooo, they are out of bed with all the subtlety of a marching band, playing with toys, getting into loud arguments, or banging on my door and claiming they are starving. I yank open the door looking like death itself and scream something to the effect of, "THEN GET A PIECE OF FRUIT OR SOMETHING I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT GO AWAY I'M TRYING TO SLEEP ARE YOU INSANE!!!!!"

Then Genevieve cries because I yelled. And I can't go back to sleep because she's crying. I have to say, it's been a great way to start my mornings. Every morning. Except Saturday but only because they are at Jeremy parents' house behaving like perfect angels and sleeping till noon or something.

Outdated technology

I remember when I first heard about the Internet. I remember playing text based games with no graphics. I remember when the coolest thing our computer did was Paint. I remember my first clunky gray cell phone. I remember the first person I met who had a digital camera. I didn't really get the concept.

My children are growing up in a world that never lacked these things. Once I found a disposable camera in the back of some drawer and took a picture of them. They wanted to see it on the back of the camera immediately. I took tons of pictures of them for my photography class last semester and they finally got used to this appalling limitation of 35mm cameras. Last night Imogen asked me if I would teach her how to use Photoshop when she is eight.

My kids have spent more time on cell phones than regular phones in their lives. All "regular" phones are cordless phones. The inconvenience of not being reachable at all times doesn't really occur to them. Oh and cell phones all have cameras. They are growing up in a world that not only has always had email, but where small hand held devices like cell phones and electronic organizers can email.

My microwave died a couple days ago. It's basically a very large digital clock now. Today I went to heat something up for Genevieve's lunch and I put it in the microwave, punched in the time and it again failed to turn on. I sighed and dumped the soup into a small pan to heat it over the stove. I was on my (cell) phone with a friend (who I met online).

"My microwave is broken," I complained. "Can you believe people used to have to boil everything?"

I found a new way to torment my children

The fun thing about kids is that sometimes they don't realize you are torturing them.

So, today, I invented a new game. A game any adult would call "cruel and unusual punishment" but which my kids thought was fabulously cool. I told them to close their eyes and hold their arms above their heads, and I would tickle them and whoever put their arms down first lost.

And they actually cooperated with this. Surprisingly, Genevieve won both times. She held her arms straight up, squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on "turning her tickle spots off" which she can do alarmingly well for a five year old. I've never met a child that young with that much will power and frankly, I don't see what the fun in that is. (No wonder she's so much trouble.) Imogen put her hands on her head, closed her eyes, then peeked constantly and kept bending over so her elbows would be at her sides.

Then, when I got bored of the new game, they got annoyed and begged to play some more.

Genevieve's song

Genevieve has never been very devoted to eating. Imogen will wolf down her food then leave the table. Genevieve plays, talks, goofs off, sings songs, instead of eating. This morning, while staring at her tiny amount of honey nut cheerios (it's not like I'm feeding them gruel), she was singing. After a while of ignoring her, I tuned in and this is what she was singing.

Aaand, I wish I was a shirt.
A nice shirt.
I would let people put me on.
And I would be so nice to them.
I would be beautiful.
People love beautiful things.
Evil people I would be mean to.
I would hit them if I had arms.
I wish I was a shirt that had arms.
I wish I was a shiiiiirt!

And I wish I was a chair...

At this point I interrupted with much regret and told her to get dressed. She had about 30 cheerios in the bottom of her bowl and she barely ate any of them. She's really not much of a breakfast person.

I have bangs

Cool, huh?

My evening...

It's raining, but my evening got a lot more wet when Imogen noticed a Sonic and inexplicably became hysterical because we had not gone there in a long time. Imogen gets like this sometimes. Not about Sonic, but hysterical for no good reason. Usually after a night of not enough sleep. The next day, she runs out of steam and fixates on something minor and is completely irrational about it. There's no talking her out of it. If you demand loudly enough that she drop it, she will move on to some other utterly insignificant issue so it's no use even trying to cheer her up. Imogen was informed (as she sobbed about her lack of french fries) that she was being unreasonable and that she needs to pick up her room.

Also this evening, Jeremy was helping me cook dinner and he said, "I just don't understand how you can fail to appreciate the benefits of well chopped ground beef."

I laughed hysterically before informing him that it's not that I dislike well chopped ground beef. It's just that I'm not particularly passionate about it.

Dancing

I forgot my cell phone, so when I went to pick up Jeremy, I couldn't call him to tell him we were there. So we went inside, racing the fat raindrops to the door. But the building was locked up. A janitor let us in but Jeremy's department also locked. We decided that he would figure out that we were there eventually and we went back down to the parking lot.

The rain had already stopped, but the sky was dark and ominous with light breaking through in various colors at the horizons. Imogen sought shelter from the wind in the van, but Genevieve danced wildly under the strange sky, somehow infused with an energy that made her ignore the cold. She laughed as the wind whipped through her hair. I squinted up at the building and noticed Jeremy peeking through the blinds from his office.

"Daddy has seen us!" I said. "He will come and rescue us!" Both girls shouted gleefully and Imogen joined Genevieve in the near empty parking lot. She paused to say, "I'm dancing for joy!"

Imogen must know why she dances, I suppose. For Genevieve, it is enough to dance.

Sisterly love

Today I told the girls they needed to pick up in the family room. They accomplished exactly nothing, of course, but this didn't stop them from fighting about it. Finally Genevieve came to me in the next room crying that Imogen had coughed on her new umbrella. "She said she's going to cough on all my things!" Genevieve said. I gave her hugs and demanded that Imogen apologize.

Belief

Children seem to constantly categorize things. Two of these categories are "real" and "not real". For instance, the other day Genevieve asked me if unicorns were real. I said no, but somehow still go into some conversation about how much more expensive they would be than horses if they were real. Either way, Genevieve was disappointed to have to put those in the not real category.

The Tooth Fairy has been a confusion. I was recently unmasked as the Tooth Fairy, but I never confirmed it. I always pretending to be shocked at the allegations, but I figured the jig was up. (I never denied it either- I don't believe in lying to my kids.) However, last week when Imogen lost her forth tooth (while trying to open a water bottle with her teeth), I forgot to perform my fairy duties that night. And the next night. After two nights Imogen was really upset. I was openly sympathetic and mentally kicking myself for having forgotten two nights in a row. (What kind of fairy am I??)

Anyway, that day while Imogen was at school, I rushed home after one of my classes and stuffed three dollars in an envelope and traded it for the tooth. When Imogen got in the car she quizzed me about my whereabouts that day in an effort to see if I had been away from home long enough for the Tooth Fairy to have stopped by. That's right. Somehow the unreliability of the Tooth Fairy has convinced Imogen that I'm not her after all. She came to this conclusion completely on her own. I should feel flattered. Mostly I'm confused. Don't my kids know me? But apparently they have not outgrown the idea that Mommy is really terrific and would not have failed so abysmally.

We got home that evening and Imogen was thrilled, of course. "Three whole dollars!" she said.

"Three dollars?" Jeremy glanced at me. "Overpriced tooth..."

"Maybe the Tooth Fairy felt guilty for not coming the last two nights," I said through clenched teeth.

As fun as the Tooth Fairy is, I've always thought Santa Clause was idiotic. I grew up not believing in Santa. My parents spoiled us like crazy and they wanted credit for it! As do I. Last year around Christmas, Imogen asked me if Santa was real. "No," I said bluntly. She paused, thinking about that and then said... "I don't believe you." What??

You've got to be kidding..

Doctor's visit

Imogen went to the doctor yesterday. She's six and a half (four feet, one inch tall) and still hasn't had the shots she was supposed to get when she was five. Why? Good question.

We used to visit a doctor in this same practice. We switched when he told me that "Someday she's going to need to figure out that you're the mother and she's the child." Now, I know when my kid is being a brat and I don't really tolerate my kid being a brat. Genevieve happened to be completely terrified, and her doctor and his nurse were being impatient and rude about it. So, new doctor. Same practice though. Which means they use the same charts. Which means that Imogen's lack of vaccinations should have been clear to them when she was brought in for allergies, an odd rash, and various other minor complaints. But no one bothered to tell me that she was in need of shots, and it's not like I've memorized the vaccination schedule.

Her current doctor was perplexed at why they had not reminded me about it, but didn't really make a big deal about it. Her nurse, however, came in with the shots and mentioned that it was "really very shocking" that Imogen hadn't had them yet. I made some kind of minor noise of assent like "mm-hm." She continued, "Kind of scary actually."

Scary? Give a break. Imogen's had all sorts of vaccines in the past. She's at least partially protected against these diseases, most of which are very uncommon in the US. It's not like we've been hiking through villages in the Amazon where polio is going to just jump out and get you or something. I think this "shocking, scary" routine is a little on the paranoid side.

Furthermore, if she was trying for some kind of guilt trip, I really don't appreciate the effort. What's with medical professionals being rude to me? I didn't say anything to her about it, because I didn't want to be rude in front of my children, and I didn't want to be rude right before she was going to stick needles into my child. So I just let it go. But it's just annoying.

Of a humorous nature...

My children understand the question-answer format of a joke.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.

What they don't understand is the concept of a joke. The idea behind it. Which is, of course, to be funny. Their jokes tend to lack this essential element. However, they are well versed in the etiquette of a joke- specifically, that after the joke is told, it is polite to laugh. Or cackle uproariously at the top of one's voice. Whatever.

After I gently suggested that maybe she doesn't understand what a joke is supposed to be, Imogen offered to tell me "her best joke". I listened attentively.

"How do you make a house talk?" she said.
"I don't know, how?" I said.
"Throw a stick at it!" she said, and laughed. Genevieve laughed (Genevieve is the perfect audience). I didn't laugh.
"I don't get it," I said.
Imogen frowned at me. "That's my best joke," she said.

Tonight, in the car on the way home, I was talking to Jeremy while the girls played in the back. During a lull in our conversation, Imogen spoke up.

"Mommy, I like to trick people," she said smugly.
"Oh really?" I said.
"Yep, like this," she said. She held out two fists. "Pick one!" I twisted around in my seat and tapped her left hand. She opened it to reveal a button. There was a pause.
"I don't get it," I said.
"It works with Genevieve," she said.

A moment later she was trying again. "Pick one!" I tapped the left hand again and this time it was empty. "HAHA!" she laughed triumphantly.
"I don't get it," I said again.
"I tricked you!" she said.
"Was there a button in the other hand?" I asked.
"Yes," she held it up.
"Then it's not a trick. I just chose the wrong one. What's the trick?" I said.
There was a long pause. "Well... it's a trick because... it would have been in this hand.... but it... wasn't..." she said.
"Oh..." I said. "That's not really a trick."

How to be Mean to Your Child

I could probably publish a book on this topic but honestly, that's not something you should brag about, you know?

Changing the subject completely...

The other day I was playing a silly game with Genevieve where I held out my hand and said "Gimme five!" and she would try and I would pull my hand away so that she missed. Over and over. I would let her hit a few times to keep her interest. But mostly she missed. Then I put my hand on her lap and so whenever she missed she would hit her own leg. I would cackle madly and she would growl dramatically at me. Then I moved my hand to her chest so that she was hitting her chest whenever she missed.

You would think she would see where this was going. I moved my hand to her forehead, palm facing outward and said "Gimme five." And she did. Or at least she tried, and I yanked my hand away and she smacked herself in the forehead. I about died laughing.

Imogen was watching and thought this was very clever so she decided to try to pull the same trick on me. Only she didn't quite get it. She put her hand on her own forehead and said "Gimme five, mommy!" And when I tried to, she pulled her hand away so that I smacked her forehead. The look on her face was priceless.

We try to limit ourselves to only very mature humor in this house.

Genevieve's artistic skills

"What is this?" I asked.
"Oh Genevieve drew that," Jeremy said. "It's Zeus."
"Zeus..." I said, staring incredulously at the drawing.
"Well you know... he's furry..." Jeremy said.
"And being electrocuted," I said.

Tortillas

I went shopping on Saturday. Grocery shopping. I hate grocery shopping. I have a budget and you know, that's no fun. Either way, I brought home to food, and made Jeremy carry it in and made him help me put it away. He pulled out a package of tortillas. He kind of shook his head, half confused but half resigned. Then he put the tortillas in the fridge under the other two packages of tortillas.

"Ah well... you know how it is.." I said vaguely.

"Right," he said. He doesn't understand how I am capable of going shopping with neither a list nor a clear idea of what we already own. I say that I don't need a list because I forget to put things on it, or I forget to bring the list, or I lose the list on my way there, or I lose it somewhere in the store. And no one can keep track of exactly everything that they own. You're bound to forget something and buy something you already have.

Sometimes I worry that I have some kind of subconscious fear of running out of tortillas and sour cream, but honestly, it's not like we're throwing these things away constantly. It's more like we simply have plenty on hand. Just in case.

On Sunday I made tacos. Jeremy pulled out the top package of tortillas, which were stacked by age, oldest on top because he (strangely) doesn't have faith that I will carefully examine all the packages in the fridge before I decide which one is worthy of my taco meat. I made a face at the package.

"They're fine!" he insisted.

"Oh?" I said suspiciously. "What's the date on them?" Now, dates on packages of food are a sore subject with us. Jeremy insists that if something is dated for, say 9/17/07, then that is the date by which the makers of the product were hoping to sell it. To me, the food is spoiled at 12:01 AM on September 17 of 2007. So perhaps Jeremy can be forgiven for sighing at this question as he looked for the date on the tortilla bag.

"August of 2007," he said. "They're fine!"

"AH HA!! I knew it! You're always trying to make me eat old food!" I said. I made a show of meticulously examining the tortillas under the light, sniffing at them and flopping them while squinting at them. We mustn't let him think he can shove any old food at me and I'll just eat it.

Ants

In the car today, Genevieve says out of the blue, "Ants can see all around them."

As she was carrying her Happy Meal to the table after we got home, she stopped suddenly and turned around and recited, "An ant is an insect because it has six legs and three body parts." She turned and walked to the table to eat her lunch.

The Saga of the Shoes

The girls get a lot of hand me downs from Jeremy's little cousins who are not so little as my kids. Nowhere is this more helpful than in shoes. I barely buy them shoes, and in fact, we have too many of certain types of shoes. Imogen was told to choose three pairs of sneakers and the rest are put in the closet to await Genevieve's feet.

One pair of shoes that Imogen received was a very nice pair of black shoes that was perfect for school. They looked like they hadn't even been worn. They fit her well. Perfect. Except that she hated them. She concocted various reasons for this, and finally, in irritation, I took her to Target to buy her another pair. I'll spare you the details of that shopping excursion. Suffice it to say, that there were no shoes there that lacked the features about the shoes she had at home that she claimed she hated, but nevertheless, Imogen was very passionate about the need for new shoes. So after much heated debate, I bought her a new pair.

She liked the new ones, and that was what was important. I figured she had the right to have a simply irrational dislike every so often and I wasn't going to insist that she support all her likes and dislike with documented reasons. She wore the new shoes for the first few weeks of school.

Until yesterday. She misplaced the new ones so she put on the old ones and wore them. In the van on the way home she said "I ran on the play ground and these didn't slip off at all!" This was one of her reasons she hated the shoes. (I mentioned to someone that she "disliked" the shoes and she corrected me, "No, I hate them.")

"That's nice," I said.
"I think these are my favorite shoes now," she said.
"You have got to be kidding me!" I said.
"What?" she said.
"After all I went through for your shoes? You like those now? You are the most impossible child I have ever met," I said.
"Well, maybe not my favorite," she backpedaled.
"They can be your favorite," I said. "But you are the most impossible child I've ever met."
"God made everyone different," she said.

Yeah... "different" is one way to put it. I had to laugh.

My back yard

Yeah, this was a drag. We had to get the sewer lines moved in our yard because of serious tree root issues clogging up the pipes. Why can't I spend money I don't have on fun things?

Pictures

Imogen tried on my sunglasses and I managed to get her to pose like this. Awesome.


The girls have been taking turns helping me in the kitchen. I had Genevieve cook the taco meat for me the other night. She sat there happily chopping it to death and Jeremy was very happy because he's a stiroholic and chopoholic and I am neither.



Yesterday Genevieve walked into the kitchen looking like this. Her hair always falls down, it drives me nuts. Earlier in the day, it was in neat pigtails. Now... it's not. She used to have on a navy skirt, but, she explained, she "didn't want to pull up three things" when she went to the bathroom, so she took off the skirt and only wore her panties and the shorts she is required to wear under skirts. I have no idea what's up with the snow boots.

Annoying genetics

Reason #426 that I know Imogen is Jeremy's daughter: She sits next to him on the couch watching him play his new Nintendo DS and gives him game tips.

The Mystery of the Mysterious Soap

Jeremy came to me recently, holding a bar of soap he had fished out of the trash can. (does he search the trash cans for things I've wrongfully thrown away? Honestly?) "Why is this is the trash?" he asked.

"It's a funny color," I said. "Something's obviously wrong with it." I wasn't looking at him, but I felt his eyes roll.

"It's SOAP!" he said. "You scrub it off and it's like it's a whole new bar of soap!"

"Fine," I said disinterestedly. I really wasn't all that passionate about the matter. We don't go through bars of soap very quickly, because I keep liquid body wash around. However, we have plenty of it in the cupboard, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that I like the idea of bar soap and tend to make purchasing decisions accordingly.

The next time I saw the oddly colored bar of soap, it was in the soap dish with the newer and normally colored (aka, simply better) bar of soap. And that was the last I saw of it. A few nights later I was waiting in bed for Jeremy to come to bed and he walked into our room from the bathroom and said, "You threw that bar of soap away again!"

This seemed rather unfair. His case was purely circumstantial, at best. "I did not!" I denied. "Then where is it?" he said, as if I'm some kind of Keeper of the Soap in this house.

"How should I know?" I said, still laying in bed.

"You really didn't throw it away?" he said. I could tell he was listening carefully. Our room was dark and he couldn't see my face. I'm a terrible liar and Jeremy always knows when I'm lying, but mostly by facial expressions.

"No, I didn't throw your soap away," I said firmly.

"How strange..." he said, finally believing me. He went back to the bathroom and stayed for a while.

When he came back I asked, "Been looking for the soap?"

"Yeah."

"Did you find it?"

"No."

Very mysterious. And no, I didn't do anything with the weird bar of soap. But if you ask me, we're probably better off without it. :)

Genevieve can read...

Genevieve reads short vowel one syllable words. Words like jump, silk, send. Without difficulty. This isn't really an amazing concept, except that no one has bothered to teach her to read. Just like no one really taught her to write.

She does startle me sometimes. Today we were watching the plumbing guy dig in our back yard with his back hoe though her bedroom window. There were chunks of concrete from him cutting and busting up part of our back patio. There was a muddy trench with tree roots and pipes that would be replaced. It's was noisy and messy and ugly and Genevieve pointed and said, "Look! A butterfly!"

A Question of Race

The other day Imogen was talking about Indians (by which she means Native Americans) and at the end of whatever monologue she had going on she stated that she would like to be an Indian when she grows up. I looked at my exceedingly white child, with her tiny freckles appearing across her cheeks after a summer at the pools (slathered in sun screen) and proceeded to crush her ambitions with a basic explanation of how one does not become an Indian, one is born an Indian, if your parents and grandparents are Indians, and so on. I pointed out several other races and talked about how they are from different parts of the world and even took a stab at explaining the difference between one's ethnicity and one's nationality.

She absorbed precious little of this, I'm sure, distracted that her chances of riding horses, shooting bows and arrows and wearing moccasins are pretty much nil. To get a clearer picture of this tragedy she asked me "What do Indians do?"

"Um... the same things the rest of us do... They live in houses, watch TV, wear blue jeans and drive in cars," I said, trying to paint a picture of modern American life. She was sorely disappointed.

She was taught some early American history in school last year. Obviously, comprehending long periods of time (from then until now) isn't Imogen's specialty (like, I suspect, most six year olds). I'm surprised she doesn't expect us to wear corsets, ride around in horse drawn buggies and milk the cow at sunrise.

Unlike Imogen, I'm not heartbroken that we've moved on. I like electricity and running water, cell phones and stores that sell everything and are open 24 hours a day. Modern life is stressful? Bring it on, it's got to be better than only bathing once a month and spending your life over a hot stove because no one's bothered to invent a microwave yet.

Bath Time

Speechless

Sometimes your children do things, and you can immediately respond with the appropriate consequences that they should face. You dispense justice easily, you feel competent and capable. But then, sometimes your children do something that leaves you so confused that you completely fail to act. They get away with heinous sins simply because they render you speechless.

Example? Glad you asked.

Today Imogen comes to me and complains, "I have to wash my clothes again!"

I'm barely interested. I manage a bored, "Why?"

"Genevieve peed on them," she said indignantly.

That got my attention. "She did? She sat in the basket and just PEED in them?" I asked? Imogen had a basket of clean clothes in her bedroom.

"No," Imogen said. "She peed on the ones in the dryer."

That's right folks. Genevieve crawled INTO THE DRYER to urinate on her sister's clean laundry. I called her over to confirm this very strange allegation, which she did willingly enough. I didn't even do anything about it. I told her not to ever climb into the dryer again, and I told her to change her clothes, but otherwise I just walked away, bemused.

Puppet show

Today the girls put on puppet shows for me with their stuffed animals. Imogen went first. She did several very short little skits involving two stuffed animals each, set to a song that was made up on the spot. For example: "Here is a little lamb and he was sad and lonely and the puppy came and played with him and they played all day long and danced. Then the puppy had to go home, but he came back every day to play. The end." Genevieve and I clapped dutifully.

Genevieve's puppet shows were shorter versions of Imogen's with less friendliness and more animals eating each other.

Then Imogen took the stage again, this time to give speeches about each animal holding up a stuffed version of each one. Here they are as best as I can remember. (I came in here as soon as it was over so I could write as much of it down as possible.)

So, animals according to Imogen:

Lions are extremely hungry all the time. They eat meat. They are very scary and mean.

Bears are also extremely hungry. I don't know what they eat but they are also scary. I saw a black one at the zoo.

Monkeys eat only bananas all the time. They climb up in trees.

Bunnies are scared of everything. They run away from dogs and cats and humans. You can have one as a pet only if it's not really extremely scared all the time.

Elephants are really loud. They make all kinds of noise. Well, not really lots of noise. They have this long trunk to get their food and put it in their mouth.

Dogs are good pets. Cows are not good pets so we kill them and eat them. But that's not what this is about. We don't eat dogs. If the dog is a big dog, he could be a hunting dog like in Fox and the Hound. Copper was a little puppy and then he went away and he grew up into a full grown trained huntin' dog. But this dog *holds up stuffed dog* isn't a hunting dog. It's just a regular dog.