Get Your Brave On (tm)

In order to encourage our six-year-old daughter to be brave about an upcoming trip to Disneyworld (and the associated water parks, roller coasters, scary adults dressed up as characters, etc.), my husband told her to "get your brave on." Repeat ad nasuem, at swimming lessons, new encounters with adults, strange activities, etc.

Fast-forward to Disneyworld: other parents hear him talking to her in line for various rides, saying "get your brave on!" over and over. Soon he hears other parents telling their kids to do the same. Voila: a family catch phrase is born!

We're famous!

Well, it's our photographer's blog, but still... look how cute we are!

http://libbylewisphotography.blogspot.com/2008/05/muilenberg-family.html

This was front page news

From Burlington, VT on July 18, a story called "Yo, ho, ho and a long, long wager to go" (http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080718/NEWS01/807180361/1002/NEWS01). Two guys are competing to see who can stay dressed as a pirate the longest. At that point it'd be going on for a month; the winner gets $500 and a black powder pistol... the loser gets Tasered. My favorite part:

Graham said his girlfriend broke up with him since the contest began, but that it had nothing to do with piracy."I was kind of surprised, but a lot of girls seem to like the pirate attire," he said. "I think it would be different if we were dressed up as 'Lord of the Rings' or something."Abraham said he has become involved with a young woman since the bet started and that she is all for his participation."I keep waiting for him to get a life for (the bet) to interfere with," Graham said."That it will not," Abraham shot back.

On that note, there were a couple guys interviewed in Entertainment Weekly a couple weeks ago about how they dressed up as Batman characters and waited in line for like 15 hours to see the new movie. A quote from one of them: "This sort of explains why I don't have a girlfriend right now." Why yes it does, my man...

Baby books for busy moms

When I was born my dad had a darkroom in the basement, a setup for his SLR that let him take hundreds of photos of me, blowing them up to 11x17, changing the exposures from crazy light to way dark. Most of these experiments survived, and I remember being in high school, digging through two good-sized boxes of photos of mostly myself, lamenting the fact that he'd gotten rid of most of his camera supplies. There was another, smaller box of photos of my sister, who is three years younger. And my brother, born seven years after me? His pix could probably fit in a shoebox.

You know how this story is going to go, without even considering the onset of digital photography. But the topic for me is baby books: You get a baby book for your first and do a pretty good job of filling most of the pages until age one, then it tapers off. You get another baby book for baby #2, and do a mostly pathetic job of getting even the basic information in the pages. For baby #3... all bets are off, you might not even buy a baby book.

I'm trying to make sure I get at least the basics for #3 done within the first few months of his/her life. For my first two, I bought "Oh Baby! A Journal" (http://www.amazon.com/Oh-Baby-Helene-Tragos-Stelian/dp/B000EZ8ERM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202235844&sr=8-1), which is actually a very easy book to use; I just never bothered with the repetitive information such as family tree, etc., for my second child. Maybe I'll do that once he's in kindergarten.

The other day, I bought "The First 1000 Days: A Baby Journal," by Nikki McClure (http://www.amazon.com/First-1000-Days-Baby-Journal/dp/157061508X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202235860&sr=8-1). I've seen her artwork before and find it charming, warm, emotive. Instead of lots of lines and forms to fill in, it has mostly blank pages for each month, other pages with things such as "first boat ride, first city, first swim." McClure's artwork is sprinkled throughout. My thought was that without the format to follow, I might actually just jot down my train of thought on certain topics as I get to it. Since this is actually kid #6 to come into the house, I'm sure all bets are still off... but my intentions are good.

No one ever said it would be easy

And they were right. S's friend drove her home the other day... he's had his license for a week and is supposed to wait six months before driving a non-family member around. Now I'm scrambling to develop a carpool for all of the rule-breakers (might also add law-breakers, here). It's much less stressful keeping the toddler out of the knives. I do think, though, I have a triple carpool worked out with two other moms. Just chatted with one of them about how it’s good to let the kids know we’re a community looking out for not only rule-breaking, but for them as people. Ha!

Take that, teenagers.

Suburban housewife takes kids skiing

Last Sunday was everyone's first ski lesson of the year. Me, 8-yr-old and 5-yr-old were scheduled for 10am lessons; we brought along 12-yr-old and 15-yr-old, plus two 15-yr-old friends. Left at 6:30am in the pouring rain, feeling fairly pessimistic about the day but not wanting to ruin it for O's first time on skis. Made it almost all the way up the mountain, as usual, but had to stop and chain up -- my first solo attempt, and an immediately successful one, much to my great appreciation.

The day was my worst ever... I got soaked putting the chains on... freezing rain and sleet fell the entire day (of course when we left it started to turn to snow)... by the time I got the kids (including crying O) into their lessons, I missed mine... we were soaking wet in the first 30 minutes... when I took my coat off for lunch I inverted the sleeves to let them dry a bit, and as I put it down the sleeves fell into a 1 inch puddle on the floor (which I of course didn't notice until we left lunch)... I actually rang out the water before I put it back on... needless to say, everyone was thrilled to leave at 2pm. Here's hoping the next one is a bit better : )

Thank whoever

That someone else recognizes reality. From a Seattle P-I article about an anti-anticlutter movement:

"It's a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands." (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/athome/298282_messy06.html)

Phew, I feel better already.

Looking forward to cooking

So the holidays are over, the folks are gone, the kids are back in school... and I'm not cooking anything. I may try to keep track of my new recipes this year, at least the exciting ones (good or bad). I may not. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm trying to recover the house from the acquisitions.

I've been trying once again to find some kind of group of people who are young, with young kids, who have taken in older nices/nephews to raise. Nothing turns up -- and when I read that less than 200,000 (and I seem to think it was closer to 140,000) families are taking care of their kin -- most of those grandparents -- I understand why we're hard to find. It's just been on my mind a lot as I consider making this brood even larger than we already are, right when it's seeming more manageable than the last two years were.

Ah, well. Shouldn't make plans anyway, since they always go awry.

New Year's Eve

This is pretty much what New Year's Eve looked like around here. The latest anyone over 15 was awake was 11:15, and that was a fluke -- everyone else was out by 9:30 or so. Party on.

Catching up

So, let's see... On Sunday we had the birthday party for O and R. A huge pool party that was very little work and great fun. Lots of good adults were there, a couple of whom helped it run very smoothly -- one friend of Matt's was constantly one step ahead of me, getting the grill going, making the sausages, grabbing the presents' wrappings to throw away, handing me cards to keep, labeling gifts... truly amazing. The girls had a great time and got many fun gifts that they loved getting, no one melted down, etc etc. A true success.

On Monday we went geocaching, and at some point the three little ones, me and Rob crossed a stream. After we realized there wasn't a trail there, we turned back -- and I saw a vortex of bees. It was so fascinating I didn't realize what I was seeing... and didn't react until Tiny screamed "bees! bees!" and started crying. He must have nicked the nest as we walked through the first time. I grabbed him and we all hiked out of there fast, not realizing that when Tiny screamed the first time he had been stung, probably twice, on the knee. As we were hurrying out of there, him on my hip, he suddenly started screaming and crying again, wiggling and grabbing his leg. I dropped him down and yanked off his shorts and diaper, and there was a bee stuck to his leg, at the top of his thigh. I pulled the bee out and we got out of the woods, got a new diaper on, and decided we were done with the caches by the trees. Started walking back up the sidewalk with him in the stroller, and out of nowhere (our hair? the back of the stroller? Tiny's shoe?) another bee zoomed in and bit, then stung Tiny's left hand. This was like adding insult to injury and he
lost it, Matt ran up the street, I was getting really nervous, the girls were looking worried... and Rob was just grooving down the road. At this point we decided to head back to the car, by which time our boy had nearly recovered. Some tylenol and beach time later, and he was fine, but now we're all scared of bees.

And then Tuesday, O started school. Today M and R began, and tomorrow they're all gone, even Tiny for an hour, at 9am. I will be painting the basement in solitude. This back to school thing is a bit of a transition for everyone...

Bullet dodging

After an incredibly trying weekend, things seem back to normal here. A few things I've noticed about myself at this point in time:

- I know that when things get emotionally crazy and one can't eat or sleep, that it's temporary; doesn't mean it goes any faster, but I can at least remind myself that there is another side coming.

- You can't predict how people will react in any certain situation, no matter what you think you know about them.

- I know that raising teenagers is harder than raising toddlers. At least, the stakes seem to be higher. With little ones, you just try to keep them from plummeting off the climbing structure and make sure they wash their hands. With teenagers, there are all sorts of untold evils lurking out there than will affect their adult lives dramatically. Oy.

Losing it

O has her first wiggly tooth, bringing her much joy. She's probably has a couple weeks before it actually falls out, but who knows: she's already psyched to have Robyn "yank it out," to use her words.

Provenance

One night I was putting the little girls to bed, and O had come out a couple times to complain about various things, trying to get me to let her sleep on the floor, etc. I put her back in her room and told her to stay there, and Robyn then did something to make O angry... and out O comes, pounding down the hall, yelling "here comes the madness!" I'd say.

Merry Something

So this is our Christmas photo this year. It's everyone stacked into a photo booth at the science museum in Cincinnati. It's so perfect: Robyn, Sami and Maki are having fun, Olivia is staring at the camera maybe getting ready to smile, and Tiny is... well, Tiny.

Wednesday, June 24, 2004

After looking online at "Today's Craft Project: Homemade Stickers" I decided I needed to pull the trigger on my own craft project. So here it begins...
posted by jnstone at 7:42 AM 0 comments