I'm a bit of a language nerd and I mastered in journalism, so imagine my delight when these two loves of mine collided this week in the "On Language" column that runs in the Times Magazine. Micah and I both laughed out loud as we read some of the hilarity that ensues when headline writers try to cut their words down to the bare minimum -- and beyond. "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge" is a good one, but we both just about busted a gut when we read that the "British Left Waffles on Falklands." And we were both scratching our heads for a minute trying to figure out what the headline writer meant to say when “Google Fans Phone Expectations by Scheduling Android Event” popped up in print. Anyway, I know some of you share my love of a little ambiguity here and there, so I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy. Image from the Times. Obviously.
For those who have small children and are not acquainted with Charlie and Lola, I invite you to make their acquaintance. Charlie is an awesome big brother, and Lola is . . . well, Lola is small and very funny. Simon has picked up some of their lingo (he's always talking about having a "streemly, streemly" -- extremely, extremely -- "happy birthday"), which we don't mind since they are some of the few children's characters we aren't annoyed by in the least. We can't make a trip to the library these days without looking for a Charlie and Lola book and I'm fine with letting Simon watch a few episodes of the show at a time on YouTube. They are fun to read, fun to watch, and they aren't really preachy or anything -- they are just kids being kids. I should rephrase that: they are just good kids being good kids.
Friday is the day Simon and I make a "special treat." Today I started out by throwing some flour, salt, and sugar in the food processor. Then I added some shortening and Simon turned it on. And then he added the butter and pulsed it a bit. And then I added the water and folded it all together.I rolled it out with our awesome bubble-gum pink silicone-coated rolling pin, during which time Simon completely lost interest. I thought he would love using the cookie cutter on it, but I was wrong. So I did it. And I thought he would love spooning some blueberry preserves onto the circles, but I was wrong. So I did it. While he slept. Slacker. But it was probably for the best since it got a little messy when I was pressing them with a fork, and it would have been a complete disaster to let Simon help with the milk wash and the sprinkling of sugar.I was almost thinking it was a waste of time to come up with this project for "us" to do when it ended up just being me, but then dinner time rolled around and he took one look at this risotto I made (ack! it's green!) and said, "I don't like it." And then I said, "Well if you don't eat it, you can't have any pie bites," and so he choked it all down. It took him the better part of an hour to do it, but he managed. And I decided the pie bites were worth the risotto.
woke up early and went for a run in the rain. did the laundry with the boys. in the rain. did the grocery shopping. with the boys. in the rain. before lunch. The casualties included our Costco-sized wind-proof umbrella, which, it turns out, is actually not wind-proof -- and my record of never having given Simon a time-out in public. A mom's got to do what a mom's got to do. Unfortunately, the time out did not have the desired effect and we ended up carrying two baskets through the store anyway.
Simon couldn't stop laughing as I tried to turn our umbrella right side in and keep Oliver dry and out of the wind. At least one of us enjoyed the situation, although Oliver was a pretty good sport about being winded and rained on. I finally gave up on the umbrella and hurried us to the laundromat with it inside-out.
And then I sat on the couch and watched episodes of Chuck and Castle on hulu while folding the laundry. Thing 1 took a long nap in his room. Thing 2 took a short nap on my lap. As I finished folding, the clouds parted, the sun shone. And I shook my fist at it.
We're running the Ragnar Relay this May. It is 178 miles -- Woodstock to the Bronx -- and we are running it with 10 other people from our ward. It's going to be awesome.
Except that we have to start training now. And it is cold. And the days are short. And we only have a single jogging stroller -- not that Oliver is big enough to sit in a stroller yet anyway.
What that means is that I have to start waking up at 6:00 in the morning so I can go for a run in the early daylight before Micah goes to work. I prefer my mornings to start quite a bit later than that, but I also prefer 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and that's not going to happen any time soon.
We went to the Brooklyn Children's Museum yesterday during the free hours. (Thanks, Natalie, for the suggestion.) Simon was pretty excited about it. He took an "early nap" at 10:30 and didn't sleep a wink for the 3 hours he was locked in his room. Ha! Which meant, of course, that within minutes of getting in the stroller he zonked out and slept the whole (20 minute) walk there. Ha! again.Our first stop in the museum was the pizzeria. Simon learned the hard way that you can't eat a foam mushroom, and that is how "pretend" became the word of the day. We went grocery shopping -- minus the stress of me trying to keep Simon from running all over the place and plus the fun of him being able to pick all of the groceries himself -- hung out in the Chinese bookstore, and "danced" on the stage in the music room. Simon was really in his element while playing in the "sandbox" (or garden, as the sign said), where they had a variety of pretend vegetables:
"What is this?" he'd ask. "I think it is broccoli. It looks like broccoli to me." "No. No, I think it is a cauliflower. Or maybe a tomato. I think maybe it is a tomato." And he'd throw it on the pile. We did that for a long time, until we decided the explore the nature exhibits. It was there that we happily discovered that Spike, the poor deceased baby red-eared slider turtle, was alive and well and living as an adult painted turtle at the museum. Imagine that! What a relief to have that off our minds. Simon seemed unsure of whether he wanted to go back next week. "No, I don't want to not never go back to the moo-zee-zum," were his exact words, I believe. Hmmm. But I know it made an impression on him because this morning over breakfast we had this exchange:
Micah: "Oliver, are you a rooster?" (Oliver was wearing a shirt with a rooster on it.) Simon: "No, Oliver is not a rooster. Oliver is a ox." (Puzzled look from Micah.) Me: "Oh, that's right. We learned at the Chinese bookstore yesterday that Oliver is an ox. Do you remember what you are, Simon?" Simon: "I am a pig and Mom is a pig." Micah: "And what am I?" Simon: "You are a horse, Dad." Yep, we're a bunch of farm animals. (I'm referring to the Chinese zodiac, fyi.) So, no matter what he says, I think that by next Wednesday he'll be thrilled to take an early nap so he can visit Spike and bake some pretend pizza. And maybe by the end of the winter he'll be dancing along with me on the dancing stage.
It is during this time of year that I seriously question whether leaving Hawaii was the right decision. "I could be at the beach with the boys," I think as we are huddled on the couch, listening to the wind whistle outside. Or "I could go running every day when Micah gets off work." Or "I could walk down the street and find a mango to eat." Or "We could go to the Seasider to have lunch with Micah." (I am hopeful they'll still have cinnamon bread and cranberry mayo when we go back to visit, whenever that may be.) But, as we have been reminded by the sage Albus Dumbledore, it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
And so we are trying to come up with things (besides spring) to live for around here. Not that we are in any danger of dying, but as we're kind of cooped up and afraid of stepping outside unnecessarily, we are trying to come up with ways to "live it up" if you will, rather than always checking to see if spring is here yet. Because, as we learned last year, winter can last an awfully long time and waiting for it to leave can be an exercise in frustration. I'm pretty sure the lingering winter drove me to tears last year.Luckily 2010 is an Olympic year, so already we have something to look forward to in February. And let us not forget that the final season of Lost premieres in 23 days, which will definitely give us something to look forward to each week. Last weekend marked the start of a new year of our baby-sitting co-op, which means that twice a month we'll get to go out on a date and once a month we get to watch 4 additional little munchkins for an evening (thank heaven for our "jumping pad"). And then we have a few projects as well. I'm committing myself to making these slippers, as well as a bedspread/duvet cover for our bed (provided I can find some fabric I like -- thanks Stephanie R. for the inspiration). Maybe we'll finish up our "baby-due" list and finally get some pictures up on our walls.
We'll see how it goes . . . and we welcome any other ideas/suggestions (especially about how to keep a toddler entertained -- which I am really bad at).
That is what Simon says about 258 times every day. He says it when he takes off his pajamas. He says it when he puts on his clothes. He says it when he takes off his clothes. He says it when he puts on his pajamas. He says it when he turns on the light. He says it when he locks the door. He says it when he gets the vitamins. He says it when he opens his apple juice. He says it when gets Oliver's burp rag. Yesterday we spent a good 20 minutes in the coat room at church while Simon put on his boots and hat and scarf and gloves all by himself. (If I even touched any of the gear, he had to take it off and start all over.) (And, amazingly enough, he got the boots on all by himself, even though it takes me a good deal of pulling to get them on him all by myself.)
This morning he added his diaper to the list of things he wanted to do all by himself. When he came out of his room a few minutes later, it looked like he thought it was backwards day. Yes, even his diaper was on backwards. (After he used the potty he let me put his diaper and pants back on, so we got things sorted out.)
When he isn't giving me a headache, he sure does make me laugh.
Unless they are mammals. We seem to be able to keep mammals alive. Cats, small children . . . okay, that's all we've managed to keep alive. Plants, turtles . . . they die when under our care. I know this because this morning when I turned on the light in Spike's aquarium, he was lying on the bottom. He didn't move when I tapped the plastic. He looked a little floppy. And I couldn't see him breathing. I reached in and grabbed is little body to put on his rock and he didn't respond. Dead, dead, dead. I have no idea how it happened. We fed him. We changed his water when it started to look murky. We didn't handle him too much. But a few days ago he started to seem a little lethargic. And what do you do for a little tiny turtle that you have only been looking after for two weeks? I guess if you are us you let it die. :( I am so sorry to our friends who trusted us with their little pet.
Five years today. Funny how even though it is really a normal day, it isn't. I've been able to remember back to what it was like when we were dating and catch glimpses of important moments from the past five years and to generally look more deeply and intently on our relationship so that I've seen it in a way that I haven't seen it in a long time -- in the big picture/grand scheme of things kind of way. And, granted, this was happening in between Oliver's feedings and Simon's requests and running errands and deciding how to make the day special with two small children, a small budget, and the cold temperatures, (we ended up ordering in Mexican and renting Harry Potter 6 from iTunes and promising ourselves we'll go see a show in a week or two when the tourists have all gone home) but in doing so I think I was able to catch glimpses of what the next several years can bring as well. The kids will be older, we will (I hope) have more breathing room financially, and Micah and I will keep growing together as we have been doing for the past five years.
I am happy that we still laugh as much as we do, that even though we anticipate the jokes, we still find them funny. I am happy that we are not afraid to try new things or to do things differently or to leap before we know where we are going to land. And I am happy that even when both the boys are screaming and the apartment could use some cleaning and we hardly have any food in the fridge* that we can still make eyes at each other across the table and play footsie under it, even while we are each occupied with calming the kids and we can't even hear each other talk. In short, I think we are doing well. -Lizzie
(yes, this is my journal entry from a few days ago)
*because we are too lazy to go out in the cold and buy some, not because we are destitute.
"Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge" is a good one, but we both just about busted a gut when we read that the "British Left Waffles on Falklands." And we were both scratching our heads for a minute trying to figure out what the headline writer meant to say when “Google Fans Phone Expectations by Scheduling Android Event” popped up in print.
