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Author: sajbat
Monday morning comics
So much of what is fun about having kids isn’t the big events-it’s the little things that they say or do that can keep you in stitches. Don’t get me wrong, my kids can drive me batty at times and there are plenty of times I yell at them, but really there’s so much that just cracks me up.
Before I forget these I just want to keep a record of some of them so that we have a way to remember, so here’s a list of some of the recent ones, in no particular order. (sorry for the poor formatting, wordpress is a bit hampering that way)
Walking in from afterschool
Boy, pulling me aside: “Can I talk to you about something?” he says in a soft voice.
Me: “Of course, what is it?”
Boy: “Well, sometimes when I hit my sister, it takes her a long time to start crying. I’m really worried that the signals aren’t getting to her brain fast enough. Maybe you should take her to a doctor to get her checked out.”
Reading “Oh The Places You’ll Go” at bedtime with both kids:
Me: “…you can steer yourself any direction you choose!”
Girl: “That’s not true.”
Me: “What?”
Girl: “That’s not true for little kids. You have to steer youself where grownups tell you.”
Boy: “Yeah. At least until you’re 10, I think.”
Driving back from school
Eric: “Girl, what do you love most in the world?”
Girl: “My whoooole family. Even brother. Even you and mommy when you are being mean to me.”
Love triangles of the preschool set
Me: “Are you still friends with that little boy A?”
Girl: “Well, I not so much friends with A anymore. A was in love with me but I was in love with B. But then I got sad because B wasn’t in love with me but was in love with C. And then A was sad because I wasn’t in love with him. Now, no one is in love with me. That makes me sad.”
On choosing a travel destination
Boy: “Mom, can we not travel to China, ever?! Let’s just have good Chinese food when we go to Japan.”
Me: “Why not? “(ignoring the food comment)
Boy: “Because! They are friends with North Korea!! And you have to be very controlled in North Korea! It’s not like South Korea where you can be free. You need documents and government permission and can never leave.”
Fixing an injury
Girl, crying and crying in bed after bumping her knee: “Wahhhhh”
Me, coming over to comfort her, and leaning over to give her a hug.
Girl: “Waaahhhhh Waaa-Mom, are those new earrings? They are beautiful—Waaaahhhh”
Me, rolling my eyes at her clearly severe injury.
There are so, so many more and I wish I had time to write them all in when they happen and I want to get better about it. Now that they’re both older and really talking, it’s nearly constant.
Penguin jokes
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Media savvy
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Hats & Teeth & Hair
New knitting!
Of course, the boy is FAR more excited about his FIRST LOOSE TOOTH. It is so wobbly here that he’s pointing out how loose it is. Teeth have been a sensitive issue for him, given that he’s 7 1/2 and is the last of his friends to lose teeth, even most of his younger friends have gap toothed grins.
Here’s a better picture of the hat:
Knitted out of a single skein of Noro Kureyon, just your basic 2×2 ribbed hat. I used the flat knit top instructions from the fabulous TechKnitter blog, though it took me quite a few tries to get it right. Even so, I feel like the hat still rides up a bit at times. Oh well-the boy doesn’t seem to care too much, though I’d prefer to sew some elastic through the brim.
Back to the tooth…who knew that just that afternoon…
He was so, so excited. The tooth fairy did indeed come to Denver, and left 3 golden dollars for him. (Note-there was a bit of discussion between myself and the fairy about the appropriate amount of money, me thinking that the fairy was being just a wee bit too generous. We compromised saying that first tooths get a special extra.)
As for the hair, it’s getting mighty long, as you may have noticed in these pictures. We ask the boy often if he wants to cut it, and he always is adamantly against it, even though it’s not without its negative consequences. He’s frequently mistaken for a girl by others-people often ask the girl about her big sister and things like that. To his credit, he never seems to get upset, and just corrects them gently, “No, I’m a boy, I just have long hair.” In some ways, I think it’s a good lesson for him-you can look how you want and if you’re happy with it that’s all that really matters, but you’ll have to learn how to react to other people’s reactions.
I once asked him why he wants to grow his hair long, what the inspiration was. He answered without missing a beat, “I want to look like Shiva.”
Tough to argue with that one!
Cheetahs never…
The other morning, the boy was in the bathroom down the hall and the girl was keeping him company by sitting outside the closed door and chatting with him. All of a sudden, she yelled down the hall “MOM! Brother says that there are cheetahs in Asia!! He is WRONG!”
I think about this for a second, and then yell back down, “Kid, there’s no cheetahs in Asia. They’re only in Africa!”
He yells back (still in bathroom), “NO! There are cheetahs in Asia! They live in Iran!”
Still doubtful, I use my google-fu to learn that, well, shit, there ARE cheetahs in Iran.
“You’re right, actually! How did you know that?!” I asked him.
“‘Cause we’re learning about Asia and we just did a part on Iran,” he replies.
And all I can think is that I’m now living with someone who’s going to be an even more insufferable know-it-all than myself.
Sparkle Scarf
On a trip to Fancy Tiger a few months back, the girl saw this pretty pretty sparkly yarn and fell in love and wanted a scarf. Given that it’s not exactly cheap, I tied some vague, “you must be good” clause to me getting the yarn for her.
I thought she’d forgotten about it entirely, but then on the way back from the Thanksgiving wedding in Houston, she looked up at me and said, “I be so, so good at Megna’s wedding? Now you buy me that ‘parkly yarn and knit me a scarf?” How could I say no?
Yarn: Knit Pixie Collage
Needles: 19 to cast on, 15 to knit
Pattern: Cast on 30, join in round, knit in garter, cast off. reaaaal complicated.
You can’t see the sparkly goodness in this picture, but trust me, it shimmers. It’s interwoven with a few strands of what seems like gold tinsel.
It took me a few tries to get this right since there’s no real pattern-I really wanted a longer scarf that she could loop once around her head. The first time I finished it, the cast on edge was so tight that I had to unravel the whole thing and cast on with larger needles. Using size 19 needles for anything makes you feel like you’re knitting with broomsticks. It also means that the entire thing took about an hour to knit, which is such instant gratification that I want to make about a million of them.
Here’s a picture of her wearing it that just screams, “Look, I just discovered photo filters!”
4 year old sacrifice
For months, the kids have been doing anything to avoid being a rotten egg. As we go upstairs at night for bath and bed, the boy will scream, “Last one up is a rotten egg!!” and since being a rotten egg is the worst possible thing EVER, both kids will scramble upstairs as fast as they can. Sometimes I’m already halfway up the stairs when the boy darts by and the poor girl is lagging behind. Even though I run AS FAST AS I CAN, somehow I always manage to slip at the last second and the girl ends up on top of the stairs just a split second above me.
I moan, “I’m the rotten egg AGAIN?! I’m always the rotten egg!” and I proceed to weep while both my children roll on the floor giggling loudly.
The other day after running upstairs and me being the rotten egg YET AGAIN, the girl stopped at the top of the stairs. I was kneeling and she put her hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, “Mommy, I be rotten egg for you today,” and then gave me a big hug. I almost cried for real-it was one of the sweetest things she could have done.
I’m sure, though, tonight I’ll be back to being the rotten egg as usual.
The Hokey Pokey is Hard
San Francisco or Bust
A few weeks ago I went to San Francisco. Or I should say that I undertook a journey of Homeric proportions to get to San Francisco. Okay, okay, that’s overstating it a bit. But not by much.
I had a late flight out on what would be the first big snowstorm of the season, and DIA was, I would later find out, woefully unprepared. It felt like a blizzard as I drove to the airport, though native Coloradoans would probably have termed it “snow driving.” Growing up in California, I have never quite mastered the art of driving in the snow. As I do it I usually evaluate my life and try to see if there is anything I’d like to do differently should I survive.
I got to the airport, made it through security easily and got to the gate. I had a little extra time (and here I wish I’d had an inkling of the near future) and went to the bar to have a pre-flight cocktail. The waitress asked if I’d like another after I’d finished, and I replied, “pshaw, no,” thinking that I’d be getting on the plane soon. Once on board, the captain makes some announcement about getting going to de-ice, some planes have been waiting for 3 hours to de-ice but he didn’t think that would happen to us.
I’ll spare you all some time here and note that I got through a few episodes of “Damages” (1st season good, 2nd not so much) before we hit the de-icing pad 3 hours later. The captain announces that we’ve got half an hour before FAA regulations say we’ve got to go back to the gate. The flight attendants come by with water and pretzels. This doesn’t really mollify me. AS THEY ARE DE-ICING THE PLANE, the captain says that it’s taking too long and we’ll have to head back to the gate. It is now 1 AM.
We deplane and mill about, unsure of what to do. Some other passenger who sounds Canadian but is far too loud to be Canadian (I don’t know, are Canadians extraordinarily loud at 1 AM?) is irritating everyone. We all find a plug to recharge our electronic devices and they announce that they’re getting us all back ON the plane to try and leave, and now it should be okay. Fine. My dad calls to ask me how my flight was and if I made it to my hotel safely. I cheerfully announce that my flight landed safely in Denver.
We get back on the plane, and this time it’s different. This time we spend only 2 hours on the plane and don’t make it to the de-icing pad before they turn the plane around and cancel the flight.
It’s now 3:30 and I’m really wishing I took up that waitress on her offer of a 2nd cocktail. Everyone gets off the plane and gets on the phone to the airline trying to rebook. I can’t get through after 5 minutes so pull out my Ipad, see that there’s a flight leaving a 8:00 AM and get a ticket on that. It’s too little time to go home, and it’s still snowing anyway so I don’t want to drive (see aforementioned note about driving in snow) so I find a gate and try to sleep.
Now, in the 1990s, all airports homeless-proofed themselves. Before that there were seats without armrests where people could take a nap, but too many vagrants were taking advantage of that. After 9.11 when only passengers could come through to the gate area, this wasn’t needed but no airport has reverted to the nicer seats. So I really couldn’t sleep because of the seats, and because it’s damn creepy to be a single woman sleeping in the airport and did I mention I was watching a series about sneaky people murdering each other? So I wander the airport and see this really ugly piece of airport “art.” Did they forget to install something? What is the point of this:
Around 6:30 the airport wakes up, and I wander to find food. At this point, this is the end of a very very long NIGHT for me and I think it’d be nice to have that 2nd drink I never got. I then realize that for everyone else it’s 6:30 in the morning and chances would be that I’d run into a patient and be reported to some state medical board for looking like an alcoholic. I decide to wait for a more socially acceptable hour to have that bloody mary and instead get breakfast.
At 7:30 they announce overhead that the flight has been delayed due to fog in San Fran. Fog? San Fran? Who knew? Ok, no big deal.
At 8:30 they announce that the flight will now leave at 11 AM. I have been in the airport for about 13 hours at this point and am not thinking very clearly, but do realize that if I have to sit through one more flight delay I just may end up hurting someone. I look at the board and see that there is a flight to fog-less San Jose leaving at 10 AM, and run through the terminal to see if they can book me on that. Thankfully, they can, and I head to the bar to get what I feel is a well deserved drink before actually boarding a plane to get to California. (Note how I get to show off my super cool Ipad cover, too.)
As I walk down the jetway, these yahoos flank the walls. I feel they are mocking me and I wish I could hurt them. This is, I think, the WORST thing about flying Southwest.
I land in San Jose, my parents pick me up, hand me a bag with lunch, and I then get on a BART train to ride for ANOTHER 45 minutes to get to San Francisco.
I finally get to the hotel, 19 hours after I left home. I am so, so grateful for the box of delicious Indian food that my mom has lovingly packed in tiffin and eat every single bite.
You may wonder why I didn’t just give up and go home at any given point. Truthfully, I look forward to this trip too much to give it up-it’s my one trip away every year that isn’t work-related. And in some ways, it was kind of fun. I mean, I was there by myself so didn’t have anyone (kids) to take care of and had plenty of entertainment. It felt like I was younger and single and on one of my more adventurous trips where I was sharing a truck with chickens for 12 hours for a ride that should take 2, but without the chickens and all. Had I been going almost anywhere else I probably would have just gone back home, but I can’t pass up a trip to San Francisco, even if it means spending a night in the airport.
The trip itself was great, I spent time with some old friends and randomly ran into an old college friend I hadn’t seen in near 15 years, ate delicious food and got to go to an amazing yarn store to get a new project since 12 hours in the airport had eaten up all the yarn I’d initially brought with me. That’ll have to be another post. Oh, and I did manage to go to that medical conference and learn some, you know, stuff.
When I wasn’t out enjoying this, of course:
fretzes on the loose 