Here is a snap of the snow as it fell at our house this past Monday morning. The interesting thing about this shot is that it seems to reveal a selective nature to the snow itself, i.e., it has only fallen on the South side of our street. You can see the bushes and driveway on my side are bare and dry while the entire driveway and even part of the street across the way are covered in a soft blanket of white.
Anyone care to explain this one?
I know BopOp and Grumpy can’t resist the urge.
I hadn’t even got it all the way out of the packaging and when I pulled on the clear-tubey end of this nice, rechargeable, wireless, LED light that my brother gave me for christmas…it came apart in my clutches.
But man, that packaging was aggressive. That stuff is ALWAYS hard to get open. They should have made this clear-tubey thing out of the packaging, then I wouldn’t be posting this.
You may even notice the yellow wire hanging out whereupon previously it didn’t really.
Good news in all of this; my years of breaking things has instilled a tolerable ability to put things back together again. And in many cases they are reassembled in a manner consistent with my usage of them. That is, I put them back together to withstand me. This time was no different. I soldered that little yellow wire back on with about 5 grams of solder. I put that at about 4.5 grams more than necessary. This overage was rather in deference to my weak soldering skills as opposed to my ‘make it bigger, better, stronger’ approach. I would’a been happy with 3.5 grams but eh.
Anyway, after that I packed all the entrails back in, smeared 1/4 tube of super glue all around that clear-tubey thing and ran it down till it stopped…then a bit more for good measure.
It worked! In retrospect, I shoulda tried to test the light before I rammed all that super glue up it’s wahTubey but, again, eh. I have proceeded to use that super-tubey LED light no less than 6 times in the past 5 days. It is very chic.
I finally uploaded all of my images from the holidays and found a pretty nice one of BopOp’s balloon.
I also posted, on YouTube, my one good video of the event. You can hear me half-laughing (and Emma too) as I bend over backwards and she nearly falls off my shoulders. She didn’t, of course, primarily because she got her hooks into every crevice of my face and unhinged my right contact in the process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhCMR9IUIRI
Good thing I have learned…they are disposables.
Anta! anta! anta…an…AHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Quick! Take the picture – Take the picture – Take the picture!
Emma’s Christmas Bibbit.
I think there are more tiara’s in our house then you would find on the first floor of Buckingham Palace.
CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Over the past couple weeks we have been weaning the littlest mermaid off of middle-of-the-night nursing. In this regard I get a healthier dose of something I am not accustomed to; waking up frequently to calm a crying baby. It used to be that I didn’t have the equipment to calm her and now it is rather BECAUSE I don’t have the equipment that I get my just reward.
It of course gets worse before it gets better and well…that pretty much means that Emma is weaning us off of middle-of-the-night sleeping. It is relatively short lived though, when compared to the last 21 months of sleep deprivation. I will take my lumps.
So, last night was a landmark night and at 5:26 AM The Mommy marked it clearly;
Wow! Emma hasn’t woken up all night.
About 8.34 seconds later she woke up.
You might amaze, as I did, and reflect on the wonder of the absolute synchronicity between mother and child, between offspring and caregiver; ahh the glorious miracle of it all. You might think that was the point of my sharing this with you.
You would be wrong.
My immediate thoughts this morning were along those lines. But the true awe inspiring event of this morning was dulled by my aforementioned ‘just rewards’ and ‘lumps’. Once I cleared my head I realized that the real news here, the real story, is why…WHY! on EARTH! would you wake me up an hour before my torture device alarm to inform me that Emma has FINALLY! slept the night through.
WHyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeee!?
A little background is in order:
Before Christmas, before we all got sick for the third time in a row, the eldest mermaid was being a pill. Everything was drama, tears, and attitude
One night, Ang was getting ready for an appointment, hurried to make a spinach and ravioli pasta dinner and then hurried off.
No sooner had she walked out the door when I served up the pasta and approached the table with it.
I don’t want that!
Oh Really? Fine
And I took it away. I was angry at the attitude so I lowered myself to her level and asked, in my best 5 year old, what SHE might like to eat?
Cereal.
Ok. But since you aren’t going to eat the food I am serving you that Mommy made, YOU are going to have to make it ALL yourself.
[happily] Okay
Now I was silently cursing my lack of foresight as I realized she is likely capable of pulling it off…she was.
There were 2 servings of krispies on the floor and table, no milk anywhere but the bowl, and a somewhat smug 5 year old in her chair, eating her ‘dinner’. Thinking I once again gained the upper hand I coolly explained,
Just making your own dinner isn’t all you have to do you know?
[meekly] What do I have to do?
You will have to clean up your bowl, wash it and the spoon and the glass and clean the table and the floor ALL by yourself. [ha]
Okay…and [now with some indignation] I’ll clean ALL the dishes. [ha HA]
Done! [ha HA HA!]
Now we enter the moral of the story which is; never think you have the upper hand.
Abby proceeded to finish two bowls of cereal and moved on to tackle the dishes. In spite of never fully mastering the art of the lesson this time she outdid herself with her dedication to finishing the job.
Quality control notwithstanding, she powered through every dish, pot, pan, glass, plate, and fork over the course of the next 90 minutes. Including a pot so big that, when full, it was probably 1/2 her weight.
The kicker? She did it all while happily singing…
It’s a hard knock life…for us.
It’s a hard knock life…for us.
[ha HA HA! HAAA!!]
The younger mermaid is really figuring things out now and we are feeling the pressure.
A couple weeks ago she was obviously disappointed to hear that her sister had eaten the remainder of a cookie that was abandoned nearly an hour before but still considered ‘mine’.
ooie
You want your cookie?
yeah
Ohhhh, honey, Abby ate it. It’s gone.
oh
She paused to consider the eldest mermaid for a moment or two and then approached her with an uncommon determination; she grabbed for Abby’s belly and said very clearly
back!
Considering we have been to Childrens Hospital now about five times in five years, I can just about start a tab running at the front desk. I think we have been in every room in the ER and we know the drill.
Abby knew that there were snacks, I knew where they were.
Abby knew there were movies on the TV, I pretty much remembered the channels.
Abby even recalled that they give patients a teddy bear, and being so prepared, sweet talked the nurse into one for herself before they delivered one for Emma.
Sunday night, Ang said, rightly and authoritatively
Something’s wrong.
Indeed it was. Emma had a respiratory infection, caused by respiratory syncytial virus a.k.a. RSV. It was likely her second infection in a row, and it had triggered asthmatic symptoms causing her much extra work while her lung capacity was reduced to about 30-40%. What made it difficult, at first, to conclude that something was wrong was her unusual happiness. She had a 103°F fever, enough phlegm to choke a horse, and still she smiled and laughed…until she coughed…and then she vomited…for the fourth night in a row…AND THEN Mommy made the aforementioned proclamation.
So, we took our semi-annual family trip to Sand Point. Spent five hours in the ER while Emma revolted at the mere hint of a face mask; much crying, then coughing, and…you know the rest.
After 2 hours on a nebulizer she showed good signs of improvement but not enough to give the supervising ER doctor a warm fuzzy feeling so she was admitted. Oh yeah, and that pretty much meant Mommy was admitted too.
In a nutshell, that meant Abby was at Gramma Nana’s that night at 11:30 The Daddy was asleep by 02:00 and The Mommy didn’t sleep at all while she held an oxygen tube, out of striking range, at three inches to ensure oxygen saturation above the level of alarm.
The next day, a short shift change, a short nap for the Mommy, and incremental improvement for a very tired little girl, the medical staff still insisted that Emma be off of her oxygen-crutch for a full 12 hours before going home. It sounded like they were talking sense; Childrens Hospital, for the most part deals in exceedingly good sense and my experience has shown that they perform especially well.
At this point the little mermaid pointed at the door and said
Ohme [Home]
We sympathized with her and yet the monitors remained.
That night the monitors were removed, and the next day she was declared ‘a discharge’ at 13:00. Five hours later the nurse printed out the first and last paperwork form detailing her medicines, got it utterly wrong*, and we bolted out of that cage like a family of relocated black bear. A little groggy at first but determined to put some distance between the cage and our numb hind ends.
After all that, we won’t be sure that Emma doesn’t have chronic asthma for a couple of years but we do know she has a propensity for asthmatic reactions to RSV that can be life threatening. We don’t know of any other triggers as yet but we are certainly now a bit more sensitive to the signs.
She may try to delete this when she is 15 but she is still really cute in that gown.
* I did say that ‘for the MOST part’ they deal in good sense. This guy was a piece of work. I didn’t see it all but I saw enough to know that he wasn’t gonna get any tip from me.
So, this phrase has been kept alive by me and my aunt for a number of years and is usually reserved as the vivacious response to the query “Buffalo Beat Miami?”
Think Steve Martin and Saturday Night Live of the early 80’s. ’nuff said.
But now, it might be applied to something a little more tangible; namely everyone in our quartet of a family.
Currently all three Mermaids are ‘under the sea’ and I have only just emerged from a weeklong fever. The current household epidemic is of a different nature and since I am unable to hold my breath at night suffice it to say that I have seen my future and it isn’t pretty.
We have missed family gatherings, dance recitals, work days, and much more starting with Thanksgiving.
Our traditional Christmas delights (self made DVD’s and candy) will most certainly become January reviews due to their long lead time and I am frankly amazed we were able to get pictures taken at all. They too will be post-holiday arrivals.
Not much more than that to say really, other than I hope you and yours have remained, and will continue to remain, healthy this holiday.
The eldest mermaid has seemed to bypass many of the malapropisms that commonly accompany anyone learning a language.
Today she proved there are more out there.
While playing Polly Pockets today she described to me that a yellow haired Polly Pocket was indeed Snow White.
She just wants these other clothes on even though she doesn’t have black hair…she just dialed it golden.”
Later, as she often does, Abby was re-enacting parts of a movie with the younger mermaid. This time it was Aquamarine (what else but a mermaid movie.) There is a scene in which the protagonist is told that in order to get the male love interests attention she should make him feel good about himself (fluff his ego) and then leave (retreat). He is SURE to follow after that.
Emma! Just fluff and retreat.
[pause]
Fluff and retreat.
[another shorter pause]
Flufficito and retreat
I wasn’t aware that she was learning Spanish at all.
blief 