Madeleine was getting dressed this morning and picked out a watermelon shirt to wear.  She also picked out a shirt that said "Happy" on it, and said she was going to wear that one tomorrow because she was going to be sad tomorrow.  I asked her why she was going to be sad tomorrow, and she said, "Sometimes I'm sad on Wednesdays."  (I hadn't told her what day it would be tomorrow; she just knew, and was perhaps thinking of it because she had just put on her Tuesday day-of-the-week socks.)

I think she really ought to say that she's sad every day, and not just sometimes on Wednesdays.

(Lately if she doesn't get her way in something she says she's going to be sad for the whole day, and nothing can make her happy.  She's always been telling us tragedies, since she was born; now it's fun to see her tell us about them in words.)

Gotta go.

May 8, 2011

I told Madeleine today that I thought I wanted a glass of wine, and she said in a funny sort of voice, “It doesn’t get better for you than wine, does it.”  It wasn’t really a question, just a statement, said in a silly voice.  It cracked me up.  And yes, occasionally on a stressful sort of day, a glass of wine is nice. 

After church we were walking to the car and Madeleine told me she was jumping over the cracks in the pavement.  I said, “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back” as we used to say when we were kids.  And Madeleine scoffed at me and told me, “That’s just a nursery rhyme!!!”  Why yes, yes it is, but I didn’t expect you to know it!

She also threw a huge fit this morning.  She wanted to make a pony park with the duplos, and we started.  She wants me to help, but everything I do is wrong, so in the end I mostly just sit there by her and clean up stuff and ask her questions to get her to build her own stuff.  It’s all going to be just the way she wants it anyway, and I don’t do any actual help at all.  I guess she just needs the moral support.  But it was time to get ready to go, and I needed a shower.  Since it’s Mother’s Day I thought maybe I could go take one by myself.  But Madeleine was so upset that I wasn’t going to keep doing the pony park with her.  She had asked earlier if she could watch me take a shower, because she can’t bear to be away from me that long, I guess.  I had said okay, but when I actually tried to do it, she was a screaming fussing mess of a girl.  She went into our closet, crying, while I took my shower, but eventually Brian came to get her because she was crying.  When I was finally all dry and dressed she was still screaming downstairs.  She came up the stairs to me, sobbing, and panted out, “I…(huff)… was… (huff)… so… (huff)… worr…. (huff)…. Ied…. (huff)… about…. (huff)… you!!!!  (huff huff huff).  It was like I had gone off into some terribly dangerous situation foolishly, and she was both mad at me for it and so grateful that I came back alive.  Brian had spanked her, which I agree he should have done.  I sent her upstairs to her room for a moment, but then just decided she needed help calming down.  She isn’t very capable of calming herself down after she gets that worked up.  So I held her and talked to her and said I loved her, and she told me she was so sad about something, and I said she was sad because I took a shower instead of helping with her pony park.  But I talked about how people aren’t always going to do what she wants them to do, but it doesn’t mean they don’t love her.  She really loses it when she feels out of control of a situation.  Lately I’ve been trying to calm her down and talk about it, pointing out that I love her so much, but that doesn’t mean things are always going to go just the way she wants them. 

Anyway, we had a very tense cranky morning around here.  Even Grant got in on the action, and we were all grumpy by the time we went to church.  After church was probably even worse.  But now we’re resting, and life is better again.  For now.

May 6, 2011

I’m probably going to regret not being asleep now, but I was awake in bed and then thought it’d be better to get up and write than sit there trying to snooze.  I think the fact that it’s light out at 5:30 a.m. now is contributing to this.  Anyway….

I had some things I wanted to write down last weekend, but I got sick and slept a lot instead.  I wrote down some quick notes and we’ll see if I can remember what they are referring to.

I was reading Hop Aboard, Here We Go with Madeleine.  It’s an old Richard Scarry book about vehicles.  There was an old station wagon in there, and Madeleine wanted to know about it.  I said it was a long car, and that people used them a lot before we all got minivans and SUVs.  Then Madeleine told me about how Daddy had gone riding in one of those.  I was not sure what she meant, but then she went on to say that we had taken pictures of him (I think).  Then I realized she was remembering when Karen had her wine-tasting birthday party and they had gone riding in a limousine to the wineries.  We did that this year, too, but Madeleine was at my mom’s house, so I think she was remembering the one from 14 months ago, and that surprised me.  Yes, we did take pictures, but I don’t remember us ever looking at them.  They might flash up on our computer screen sometime along with the 50 million other pictures of things I’ve taken.  But  I don’t recall mentioning anything about the limousine ride.  Maybe I did.  But mostly I think she remembers something from 14 months back, and that’s kind of impressive to me.  I know she told us things about her third birthday party (it had an Easter egg hunt that she remembered) and a lot about when we went to the beach last summer.  I guess she’s getting to the age where her long-term memory is developing and functioning.

I used to take showers with both kids, but lately it’s become really hard with Grant.  There’s just lots of fussing, and he insists on looking at the water and getting it into his eyes over and over and over again.  So lately I’ve been trying to take showers at times when I can leave him with Brian.  But – that’s not the point of this.  When I do take showers with both kids, they usually fight about which shower to go to.  We have toys and towels and soaps in the bathrooms attached to each bedroom upstairs.  I make them take turns picking, but there’s still usually some whining (there’s lots of whining around here).  This time Madeleine went on to say, “All the cold toys are in Mommy’s shower!”  What?  The cold toys?  When I turn on the water they all become quite warm…  And then I realized that she meant “cool” toys. 

The day of the tornadoes I talked to Merrie Jo on the phone several times, and also mentioned to Madeleine again about how they’re going to come to visit soon.  Then Madeleine said, “As soon as they get at our house, I’m (or was it “we’re”?) going to throw a party at them!”  This made me laugh and call my sister to tell her that when she gets here she better watch out, because there might be a party thrown at her.  She had already sent me the “helmet head” photo of the kids in their tornado room in bicycle and football helmets, and I told her that she should probably bring those when she comes to our house, to protect them from projectile parties.

Grant said two things that I apparently found interesting enough to write down.  I was putting Madeleine’s shoes on, I think, and I wanted her to help me with something, so I sang, “What’s going to work?” (from the Wonder Pets) and it was Grant that answered, “Teamwork!”  And then later we were playing on the scooters outside, and Grant was going down a small hill backwards and he happily said, “back-ward!”  These words were both very clear, much clearer and precise than I am used to hearing from him. 

I also wrote on my note paper (which was dated April 29, for the record) that it was cold in the house because Brian had turned off the heat.  Before he went to work he told me he had turned it back on, but as the morning went on I noticed it was still quite chilly.  And then when I investigated I found that he had turned the air conditioning on instead.  Ah, teasing fodder!

And that’s the end of that sheet of notes.  Yay!

We were upstairs looking at the crescent moon (Grant is obsessed with it) and Madeleine says to me, "I know what Jupiter is doing exactly tomorrow."  I asked what, and she said he was making cards for his mommy for Mother's Day.  Then she went on to say that he was making lots of cards and was going to hide them for his mom as an Easter egg hunt.  Then she said he was going to go to see his grandma in Seattle.  (Now the making cards and hiding them and calling it an easter egg hunt is something Madeleine was doing today at my mom's house; but the grandma in seattle thing is a bit strange... perhaps it's because we go to see joe in seattle?  we can't see jupiter in the night sky anymore and madeleine has declared that this is because he's visiting his family... his grandma, usually, i think.  anyway, i seem to have forgotten how to capitalize and it's time to put the kids to bed so toodle-oos.)

P.S.  -- Back again.  We went upstairs and did flips and slams with the kids on the bed before Brian put Madeleine to bed.  Then it was time for kisses, and I asked her how many she wanted.  Lately it's always 41, and we usually count by 41s, although sometimes we'll do 10 or 5s or 8s and add on some extra numbers.   Anyway, I asked her how many kisses she wanted, and she said, "41, because Jupiter has a big day tomorrow!"  I think Brian and I both laughed about that, though Brian was pretty clueless about what Jupiter might be doing tomorrow. 

Anyway, Grant is asking for cheese.  That kid loves cheese.  Gotta go...!

May 1, 2011 – Tornadoes!  (Not here.) 

I have been, perhaps, inordinately interested in the Alabama tornadoes.  But, then again, maybe it is an ordinate amount, after all.  I do love weather events.  Perhaps it comes from being the daughter of a meteorologist-by-training?  I remember when Hurricane Katrina came I had just moved into my new house.  I found it fascinating, and watched a streaming-over-the-internet news channel for two days before it actually hit.  That time it was purely interest in the strength of nature.  (Why do we call it “mother nature”, when so often nature is anything but motherly?)  On Wednesday my sister Merrie Jo called up on the phone to say that she was going to die in an hour.  I think she was only half-joking.  The tornado sirens were blaring in the background.  She was busy eating up the Doritos and the Easter candy.  A huge storm was scheduled to hit her location in about an hour.  I think she was setting the laundry room up to be her storm shelter.  Perhaps, in the past, they had gone in a closet under the stairs?  (I’m sure I’ll have some inaccuracies in this story, because it’s not really my story.)  After I hung up with her I searched around on the internet for a Huntsville news station that I could get over the internet.  I also checked the internet for the radar, and there sure was a big wall of red heading their way.  The news channel was fascinating.  Our neighbor girl Haley comes over to stay with us on Wednesdays, so she was over and fascinated by the coverage too.  At first they had a tower cam of some sort showing what they said was a wall cloud, and then there was a mention of a shelf cloud (what’s a shelf cloud? We don’t have those here!).  Then there was what appeared to be a funnel cloud forming right in front of our eyes.  Then that camera went out, and they struggled and got another camera working for another minute or so, and then that one went out too.  After that we didn’t see many live pictures, if any.  But the meteorologists and news people were hard at work updating the severe weather maps constantly.  They kept looking for areas of circulation and then doing Storm Tracks, which calculated how many minutes before that area of circulation would hit various communities.  Then they were talking about various things on the radars… perhaps areas of intake? Inflow?  And then later in the day they showed a debris ball – a large area on the radar that reflected just from the debris flying in the air.  (Later on Merrie Jo said she saw that from her front porch – the actual debris ball, not just the part on the radar.)  After that storm hit I called my sister again.  She had gone to her neighbor’s house; he (?) had come to get her and the two babies and they had gone to his house.  I asked if that house was safer, and she said not really, but at least they were together.  After that she sent out on her iphone a picture of Jameson and the neighbor’s kid in their storm closet/room.  One had on a bicycle helmet and one had on a football helmet and there were lots of pillows around, I think, to act as a cushion.  We talked later, and she had gone home and Jimmy was there.  He had been at work and thought there was an hour before the big storm hit, so he stayed to eat his lunch before coming home.  But the storm was faster than they thought and he was stuck at work longer…. ?  But then when he did come home there was a downpour of rain so hard that he couldn’t see anything and had to pull over and thought that he might be hit by a tornado and not even know it.  But he wasn’t, and finally made it home, and Merrie Jo went home too.  Then there was another storm coming… what is it – an area of circulation?  And on the news they show charts saying things like “Madison – 8 minutes” (that’s where she lives).  I think it was after that tornado (it was) went by that I called back and Merrie Jo said that they had seen it from their front porch.  She had run back to the laundry room with the kids, but Jimmy had stayed awhile longer.  I wondered if he had taken pictures.  Later she said they had video, but it didn’t really show the reality of the situation well.  (I think.)  Then I think there was another potential tornado coming, and then after that the news showed yet another one coming to Madison in 22 minutes, and I called back incredulously, “22 more minutes?  Really?” and the baby (3.5 months old) was screaming and she had to go, and that was the last I heard of her that day.  And then there was another huge tornado that went by (the one that I think was later assessed at 190 mph winds, EF4 on the scale, 10 mph below the highest level of EF5).  I guess she saw it too?  And Jimmy saw it?  From the porch?  Later on she said that the neighbor guys never go inside the house for tornadoes, but that with this one a neighbor saw the water from the pond across the street being sucked up into the air, and there was debris flying above the houses.  And then those guys all went running inside to their shelters.  (This reminds me of one of the youtube videos I saw, where another guy was filming a tornado and then suddenly said “oh shit!” and went running for the closet.  The camera was left filming, and the house survived, so the video got posted to youtube.)  After the fact, when I finally talked to my sister again, she said the house was creaking and popping and straining, and she was rather expecting it to go flying off from around her.  But thank God it didn’t!  I’m not sure how far she actually was from that tornado.  She thought maybe a mile; her neighbors had gone and seen the damage and said it was terrible.  From the maps I can find on the internet thus far I would think a bit further than that.  But her friends who lived two blocks away had their windows shattered by their patio furniture which had gone flying over their house and into the windows.  So – I think she was plenty close enough. 

We didn’t hear much from her after that.  The power was gone, and is still off 4 days later.  She’s hoping it might come back on Tuesday, the sixth day after the storm.  (I was talking to her today and she said that she had never expected something like that.  In the past a storm would come through and the power would go off for an hour and then come back on and that would be that.)  ATT apparently lost a lot of phone coverage so her cell phone hardly worked.  Perhaps it was just the sheer number of calls people were trying to make, although apparently the Verizon people had better luck.  She finally got through to my mom later in the evening to say that they were okay.  I had always assumed they would be, but the coverage of all these tornadoes that just coming in wave after wave finally had me just ever-so-slightly uncertain.  I had gone to the gym and felt a bit cut off from my news sources.  At the gym they were showing on the TV the video (I think it might have been live? Or it was taped from the previous live broadcast) of the Tuscaloosa tornado.  For some reason I was thinking that that one wasn’t so severe, though now I know I was in error.  I think I was just fretting a bit about my sister and her family and wanted to hear about the other parts of Alabama, and not just the dramatic scene where the tornado was caught live on television.  

So… hmmm.   Where was I?  So they were safe, but with no electricity.  Her business (The Stem and Stein wine bar) also had no electricity, and they have had $3000 worth of food spoiling there.  I guess they had water; my mom saw something that said that people in Madison were being asked to self-evacuate, since they had no power or water, but I never heard that from my sister.  After a day or so, her 3-yr old son Jameson started throwing up and had diarrhea, and MJ wondered if she had given him bad milk.  They were thinking about driving 7 hours to South Carolina where her mother-in-law lives, and were actually packing up on Friday.  But then the cell phone service got better, and she figured she could hand-wash a lot of laundry in the 7 hours it would take to drive to SC. 

So they have a grill and they’ve been grilling up all the nicest meat that they’d been saving for a special occasion.  All the neighbors are doing the same.  She says it smells like the mountains (by which I think she means it smells like campfires) and it’s been a pretty big party.  Jimmy got all their open wine from the wine shop to drink before it goes bad, and everyone is eating, drinking, feasting, and having a big neighborhood party before all their food goes bad.  At night they can see the stars very well.  (Reminds me of the time when I was in the blackout in New York City; we went to a park in north Manhattan and went star-gazing.)  I think she had a complaint about it being difficult to take care of the baby at night with the flashlight…?  But mostly it’s been okay.  She does what she usually does anyway, but Jimmy is there to help her, and he’s not busy on a computer or on the phone.  At first she hand-washed the laundry, but today she said a neighbor had gotten a generator and let them wash their clothes there.  She hangs the clothes out to dry on the patio furniture, and it works okay.  They got some dry ice now, though she thinks it might be too late for the food at her shop.  We wonder if perhaps she’ll be able to file an insurance claim?  I asked when she thought the power would come back, and she thought maybe Tuesday, as they’re trying to connect the stores and gas stations first, so that people can get food and gas. 

I’m sure I forgot some things that were of interest to me, but it’s time to pick up our sweet (and whiny—Madeleine – and disgusting – Grant) children from the neighbor’s house.  So – toodles! 

Brian just said to me:  “It’s good you blogged.  It’s good for the soul!”  I laughed, and he said, “For you it is!”  So there you have it, folks. 

For my mother:

http://legoexpress.tumblr.com/post/5015424153/grand-staircase-different-angle-by-eilonwy77

April 25, 2011

Today was a little bit wild.  It was supposed to be an easy sort of day, but Grant was a crying wreck for a lot of the morning.  Then I finally got him calmed down and happy, and it was time to take the kids to their grandparents’ house for the afternoon.  (Of course right before we were ready to go Grant pooped and pulled it out and it fell in three places…. Yuck-o!  And he always says “Big!” when he poops, as if he’s delighted that it’s a big poop (even if it wasn’t) – and he says the same for boogers:  I wiped one this morning, and he happily announced it was “Big!”)  So we went to the garage, but the van’s battery was dead, because an interior light had been left on.  (The switch is an easy one for the kids to reach if they’re playing in the car at all, and I think one of them had left it on, since I hadn’t turned the light on recently.)  So I called Al, and he said he’d come with Ellen and pick the kids up and jump the van.  But now Madeleine was a wreck.  She just fussed and cried and was so unhappy.  She wanted to talk to Grandpa on the phone, but he said something she didn’t like, and she ran away screaming, and then kept saying that she didn’t want them to “say that to her”.  When Al got here I asked what he had said, and it was something about the car not working or the like.  She didn’t want to hear anything about the car at all.  Then Al and Ellen jumped it for us.  They took awhile, so we went down to see how it was going.  Madeleine saw our van on and Grandma’s Rav 4 on, and cables between them, and she ran away screaming and screaming.  Oh—I should say that before they had even arrived, Madeleine was telling me that “there is nothing in this house that can make me happy!”  So I just held her, and she kept telling me how tired she was, by which she means she’s unhappy.  She was such a wreck.  We were finally trying to pack the kids up to go to Les Schwab and then to McDonald’s.  Madeleine was saying she wanted Grandma AND Mommy, but then when Grandpa came in she did NOT want Grandpa Alan.  It was not very nice, but we just got her out of there as quickly as we could.  Al took us to Les Schwab and they checked the battery, which was bad, so they replaced it because it was still under warranty.  While they did that we went to McDonald’s.  Madeleine said that would not make her happy, but she perked up when we were there. 

At McDonald’s there was a five-year old girl that Madeleine was talking to.  Or more like she was talking AT, as the girl didn’t say that much.  I can’t remember all that she was saying to her, but one part I do remember.  I told Madeleine to ask the girl what she had done for Easter.  The girl said she went to Seattle.  I told Madeleine that Seattle was where Unkie Joe lived.  Then Madeleine went on a long monolog about how she had been to Seattle two times (that she remembers – she doesn’t know about earlier trips), and the last time we had gone we left on the third of March and stayed until the sixth day and stayed at a hotel… on and on and on…  But I was just astounded that she remembered the exact dates of our trip. 

But I finally got my van picked up from the shop and I came home alone.  I’ve spent most of the afternoon filing through paperwork, and I found some notes for my blog from awhile ago.  I thought I’d try to write them down so I can throw them away.

So…  here are the last few notes that I had written:

January 23, 2011 --  Madeleine took her first online personality test ever, on the My Little Pony webpage.  Her result is that she’s like Pinkie Pie, the friendly partying pony. 

------------------------

January 21, 2011 – At dinner Madeleine announced, “It’s a nice day for January!” 

--She told me that you had to “concentrate” to fly her paper kite.  (She cut out a paper diamond and taped some yarn to it, and you just ran around with it.)

--She knew that I’d forgotten to take her to preschool by looking at her calendar.  We got her a Tinkerbell calendar of her very own, and I wrote down things on it that she would be interested in.  Twice a month we take her to the Children’s Museum for a fun class.  This day I forgot, and hoped that she wouldn’t notice.  But she was able to look at the calendar, know which day it was, tell me that she was supposed to go to preschool that day, and throw a bit of a fit about it.  That teaches me to teach my child how to read calendars!  Best keep children as ignorant as possible, right?  Right?? 

--Madeleine tells me that Grant speaks “Gurgle English”.  That makes me laugh.

-------------------------------------

January 15, 2011

--Grant drinks water:  from puddles at the drain at the park; from pooled up water on the ledge/seat in the shower; rain water on a chair; from cups and toys in the bath; etc.  Yuck!

--Grant calls himself “Janh”

--Madeleine loves her My Little Ponies

--Madeleine had a funny joke about airplanes, a “Gonzaga plane”, but for the life of me I can’t remember it exactly

--Grant’s diaper came down to around his ankles even while he was in a sleeper.  He’s trouble!

--We went to the airport to pick up my mom, and there was a kid there that kept throwing himself down on the floor, and Grant thought it looked like fun so he kept throwing himself down over and over again too.

--Grant loves to say “hi!” to everyone.

--We got the neighbor girls to babysit for us for a couple hours on Saturday mornings on a semi-regular basis…. Yay!  Free time!

--Grant is really good at talking on the phone.  He says “hi!” and “good” (when you ask him how he is) and “yeah” or “no” to questions.  My mom was down in Alabama to see my nephew be born, and she talked to Grant on the phone.  She thought we were tricking her and it was someone else, because she couldn’t believe how well he was talking.

--Grant asks to dance and goes over to the radio and asks to turn it on.  “Danh!”  And then he dances by rocking back and forth and it’s very cute.

--Grant loves a yellow stuffed bear (this week – it didn’t last for too long)

--Grant yells “Hi!” loudly out of his bedroom window.  We used to yell to Beckham, but Beckham moved, so now Grant just yells to the empty outdoors.  It’s very cute.

--Madeleine has been very busy getting ready for Valentine’s Day.  She was trying to get lots of “jewels” (the jewelry she has) collected, so she would be ready. 

--Madeleine has been obsessed with Valentine’s Day and with her ponies.

-----------------

I think they might be home, so I better post this!

This morning Madeleine and I were going to get into the shower, but she had to go potty first.  When she was done she didn't flush the toilet, so I told her to flush the toilet.  I thought she did; I really think she went back to do it.  But then half-way through my shower I noticed that it wasn't flushed.  I asked her about it, and she said she flushed it.  I said maybe she hadn't pushed the handle hard enough.  Then she said that her "nipple felt funny, and that was why she hadn't pushed hard enough".  What?  She's always saying funny random reasons to explain things, though this one might be more out there than most. 

The other day someone asked Madeleine when she was going to be going to school.  And she answered, "I'm just hanging out in the preschool classroom at the Children's Museum."  (She goes to a short class there twice a month.)  I love how she's trying to incorporate new words and phrases, and how they're not always...  standard. 

Madeleine is mad that Grant is playing in her tunnel/tent that we sent up.  She's wailing about it, and I start singing a silly My Little Pony song about 'you gotta share.... you gotta care...!"  And Madeleine says, "I'm trying to distract him!"  And I said, "What did you just say?" and she said, "I'm trying to get him to share!" and I ask, "Did you say you're trying to 'distract' him?" and she said, "I'm trying to distract him so he'll share!" 

oh, wow. 

Now they're both over there yelling 'Mine!  Mine!" at each other.  They each wait for the other to yell "Mine!" before a response is given.  Now Madeleine has run away with the tunnel, and Grant is fussing.  Hmmmmm. 

I guess Madeleine couldn't "distract" him.