Category: jools (also a beloved child)
new year's meme
it just seems like a good thing to do.
1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?

- start monthly IVIG therapy. i never would believe that i would voluntarily sit for 5+ hours with a needle in my arm every four weeks (for the rest of my life). i hatehateHATE IVs. but you do what you have to do, especially when you’re a mom. and staying alive and healthy is what it’s all about for me now.
- take ice skating lessons. i know how to skate, but i never learned, for example, how to stop. i learned other things, too, which led to another question answer…
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

i started to until i was derailed by a knee injury, thanks to the new ice skating lessons 😉 but i did lose a little weight. not all that i wanted, but a little. and that’s better than nothing.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

nope. not a one.
4. Did anyone close to you die?

sadly, our little friend mason died. but he lives on in our hearts, and every time we pass key school, we think of him with his cool bike, his batman paraphenalia, and, of course, a soccer ball.
5. What countries did you visit?

grand cayman, mexico, and the republic of new jersey. oh, and the happiest country in the world, disney world. (does that count?)
6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

- better health
- happier, rested children and spouse
- time and focus to write
7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

getting a short story published for the very first time!
8. What was your biggest failure?

allowing BC to linger in a class where she was not only not learning enough but where she was terrorized by a person in authority. i will never forgive myself for this. ever.
9. Did you suffer illness or injury?

ha ha ha. very funny. besides the usual panoply of sinusitis and bronchitis, let’s see:
- a torn PCL
- a torn meniscus (both leading me to arthroscopic surgery)
- CVID diagnosis
- a gallstone
- a request by my doctor to elect to have my gallbladder out (this will be a 2008 experience. i can’t have all the fun in one year)
- and lest we forget the zillion CT, HIDA, and other scans i had this year, plus endoscopies and the like.
on the bright side, my platelets remained stable the entire year, which is more than i can say for 2006… ;-P
10. What was the best thing you bought?

hmmm. a year membership to the thomas jefferson community center. the workout equipment is ancient, but the people-watching is priceless.
11. Where did most of your money go?

chocolate. mortgage. computers. money market funds. probably not in that order.
12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

springsteen going back on tour. the who going back on tour.
13. Compared to this time last year, are you:
 a) happier or sadder? 
b) thinner or fatter? 
c) richer or poorer?

a) happier
b) thinner (but not by much)
c) probably dead even.
14. What do you wish you’d done more of?

exercise. get my kids to read instead of being read to. spend more time and attention on my kids. write.
15. What do you wish you’d done less of?

house cleaning. hands effing down.
16. What was the best book you read?

the tale of despereaux. a children’s book, but an awesome read with BC.
17. What did you want and get?

tix to see springsteen.
18. What did you want and not get?

perfect health. i’ll never get that. but i am going to keep trying anyway 😉
19. What kept you sane?

my friends. my BS. my parents. and even sometimes my kids. see, my kids have a way of driving me crazy, but sometimes, i realize how incredible they are (especially when i see other kids in action.) sort of like my parents and husband, now that i think of it 😉
20. Who did you miss?

my gram and gramps. but i always miss them. i miss amy and jen-jen, and i never see them. i always miss my family in NJ. always always always.
but they're cousins…
we’ve been having a wonderful visit with my BIL, his wife, and their two DDs, one an extremely sweet girl a few months older than BC and the other a seven-year-old firecracker. they were finally asleep in the living room, the three girls and jools, at their second slumber party of the weekend. last night, BC stayed with them in their hotel room. jools was mad because he couldn’t have a sleepover like the girls. and PRESTO! four kids in the front of my house.
[the night before last, little miss firecracker apparently drove her sister and everyone nuts and ended up sleeping in her mom and dad’s room. she drove her sister crazy enough to make her sleep on a couch! so tonight, i knew we would take no prisoners.]
welcome, as i might say, to auntie wreke’s police state 😉
seriously, though, i had no fears about people getting to bed. see, today, we took them on a walking tour of the National Mall. we walked through FDR’s memorial. we walked through the WWII memorial. we walked through the jefferson memorial. we walked all the way over to mr. lincoln’s place. we did the whole circuit, which, for the uninitiated, is quite a feat, especially if you’re jools and have the 4.5 year old shorty mcshortshort legs to go with it.
after a whiny (jools) cup of hot cocoa and chats about why you shouldn’t touch the water in the fountains (answer: they’re sadly places where homeless people sometimes bathe) and bird shit (all the kids were freaked out about sitting on chairs with tiny blobs of white), we walked back to the car. we had a nice lunch, dropped off my poor BIL, who needed to rest because he has a terrible cold coming on, and spent a few hours letting the kids run around the house while i had a nice chat with my SIL. (BS hid out in the office on the computer.) we then fed the kids and packed everyone in the car for the light show at the national zoo, an incredibly lame light experience. all the lights were sponsored by businesses; all the treats cost ridiculous sums. i don’t know why we had to pay for tickets for this underwhelming extravaganza. i sure hope the national zoo earned some money outta this one.
and then back for brownies and ice cream. BS stopped and bought vanilla ice cream (plus cookies and cream) because the sweet girl doesn’t care for chocolate. why can’t we have chawwwwklit? cried jools, who has been raised by a mama who knows no other flavor. why are there white chocolate chips touching my brownies? cried little miss firecracker, even after i surgically removed them, leaving a faint white (unacceptable) trace. BC, bless her pointed little head, has never met a chocolate product she didn’t like. she ate it all gladly and taught miss firecracker about the wonders of cookies and cream ice cream (the other aforementioned flavor BS actually purchased for himself but which of course ended up with the kids. my poor Beleagured Spouse.) and then bed. a fold-out couch. an aerobed. and a blow-up sleeping bag that jools adores and which is ripping apart.
my sweetgirl niece got homesick and went back to the hotel with my BIL and SIL; BC is sleeping in her room because the living room is apparently too dusty for her. so the talley in the livingroom now stands at jools (in the blow-up sleeping bag) and miss firecracker, who has the entire fold-out-couch to herself. i just hope she doesn’t freak out in the morning when she sees her sister AND her beloved BC are not there with her.
we’ll see.
tearjerker du jour
cranky jools, who stayed up until 9pm last night, was snapping out of his sleepy snit. he jumped into my lap on the couch.
mama, he said, am i too big for your lap?
no honey, i replied. you’ll never be too big for my lap.
even when i grow up and i am bigger than you?
if you want to sit in my lap then, you can still sit in my lap.
he pauses, thinks for a moment. then he continues.
mama, when i am bigger than you, will you die?
i hate moments like this. before i was diagnosed, i used to confidently blurt out, only when you’re very, very old. now, of course, i’m not so sure. i guess no one can be sure. but somehow, i am less sure than before. though ever more determined.
only when you’re very, very old, i reply.
i hope i’m convincing.
my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 4.
ah, the happiest place on earth.
first, a round-up of some of the happy moments, for those of you who think i hate everything. (and, for the record, i don’t.)
1) BC, age 9, discovering her “favorite” rides at disney: rockin’ rollercoaster, space mountain, and expedition everest. i have to say that the imagineers (another great job title, methinks) have an incredible way of making your wait (and yes, friends, sans a fastpass, you will wait. and sometimes with a fastpass, you will wait.) somewhat entertaining. i especially enjoyed expedition everest’s realistic paraphenalia; it made me actually even more interested in the area and the people of the region. and going on said rides with my kid? priceless 🙂
2) jools, age 4.5, discovering his favorite rides: buzz lightyear, star tours (and yes, i went on this 6 times thanks to little man and memorized the corny jokes of the person who got us situated), the haunted mansion (which broke down while he and i were riding it one NIGHT, right in front of some graves — and he wasn’t scared (though i was a little creeped out) and watching the how-to show on becoming a jedi. (be prepared for the crowd to get crazy when the man running the show highlights his first young female jedi-in-training.) i’ll admit: i love going on buzz lightyear a lot, too. i also think everyone in the family loved mickey’s philharmagic. i think it’s the best of disney’s 3-d shows, even better than the old muppets chestnut. also, test track (note that jools is not afraid of roller coasters, so if your child is, he might not enjoy it as much)
3) we had lovely meals at boma and jiko. the kids were a little perplexed by the food choices in the norwegian restaurant akershus (we’re not from the big scandinavian food choosers), but as that was where the princess lunch was, that’s what we ate. i would recommend people stick to the breakfast if possible, though lunch is ok (just not what i would normally pay that kind of money for 😉
4) as people staying at WDW, we were allowed to send our kids to a childcare center (for extra $ of course). we chose simba’s cub club in the animal kingdom (so that we could have one grownup dinner date.) not a terribly high-tech place, but when we returned to pick the kids up (at 9:30; we’re so lame at staying out late), the kids begged us to let them stay. of course, they were fed a meal they loved of mac and cheese and chicken nuggets, with all the cookies they could stuff; what’s not to like? kids age 4-12 can enjoy this, though they must be potty-trained to do so (we actually saw a couple getting busted — their daughter was in pull-ups. you know it’s not a good sign when you walk into the club and the cast member takes you aside and says: “there’s something we need to talk about.”) $10 an hour per kid. actually comparable to what we pay around here, almost, when you throw in the pizza we always order for the kids and the sitter 😉
5) the parks, especially the magic kingdom, are WILDLY crowded on night when they stay open late. the exception to this for us was when we paid extra for mickey’s christmas party. it was a snap to get on rides that night. little parties and dancing aboundeth that night — my kids danced with goofy, and yes, dear reader, even jaded little me enjoyed that moment. that’s the night when they have the much vaunted holiday parade.
RANT ALERT! (you knew i couldn’t go all the way through in a happy way, didn’t you?)
we used to visit disney when i was little. i’ve sat through a gazillion parades. and even though they’ve always piped in music, the people in the parade used to sing. i’m pretty darn sure of that. so i am wondering why we all sit for hours to watch people lip-synch? i have zero interest in watching people lip-synch. i want actual singing, people. if i want lip-synching, i’ll go watch some MTV awards show.
jools slept through the christmas parade. BC loved it. so i’m just a picky-picky crank.
but you knew that already.
my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 3.
through trial and error, we’ve learned that it’s sometimes better to permit our kids to revel in certain media experiences rather than prohibit them and create a forbidden fruit phenomenon. we limit, but don’t prohibit, television in our house, for example. and BC, as i’ve mentioned before, is a HUGE high school musical fan. while it’s not music to my ears, i have no problem allowing BC to enjoy this pretty innocuous, fluffy show in all of it’s glory.
so when we learned that there’s a big HSM pep rally at walt disney world, we knew that BC would be dying to see it. and, as luck would have it, i drew the short cursed lucky straw that entitled me to be the parent who would enjoy the show with her. as happens with every show at WDW, if you’re not there early, you won’t get to participate in — or sometimes just to see — the show. (read: you need to in the front row, if not close to it.) so we arrived, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 9:00am for the 9:35 show. a cast member (i just love that euphemism, don’t you?) told us to stand behind a line and we’d have a great seat for the show. we were thrilled. well. one of us was; i’ll leave that puzzle to your imagination.
so BC and i stood for 35 minutes in what was bright, 70+ degree sunlight, and chattered. around us, there were kids as young as 3 who were waiting for the show. (one little boy, who was actually 3, was there, complete with his HSM glitter shirt on. his mother told us that this would be his 4th time at the show. the first three times happened the day before.) in fact, seeing boys dressed in HSM shirts was a sort of new phemonenon for me. (most boys around here would rather be impaled than be seen in such garb. not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course.) there was a little girl from new yawk whose parents had apparently bought out the HSM franchise for her listening, viewing, and wearing pleasure. it was a wee bit frightening. (BC loves it, but beyond a CD, she doesn’t really have a lot of HSM paraphenalia.)
we stood. and we stood. and we watched people sit down on the astroturf they’d laid down on the ground for people to sit upon once the HSM float (which serves as the show’s backdrop) comes through. and we watched cast members move them along. meanwhile, parents around me seethed like stage mothers behind a rope. why do those people continue to sit on the astroturf? why don’t the workers MOVE them? apparently, there was much gnashing of teeth. i was a little frightened we were going to have a reenactment of the 1979 Who show, and i was not about to have my kid underfoot for some gabriella wannabe. i was getting kind of nervous. BC, i said, if people get crazy when they drop the rope, just run and sit down on the turf. i will find you, but just be careful.
when the cast members started to move the rope, they pulled it across, as if to lead us to our appointed spots. but people started to push, and i was afraid that BC would be in harm’s way. sensing this, BC slipped under the rope and plopped down on the astroturf. i walked over to her and slid my legs around her so that she was essentially in my lap. she was able to actually get up and dance with the HSM people at a few points, and i was calm enough to nearly enjoy the show be happy that my daughter was beaming contendedly and had not become a permanent part of the pavement.
a lot of the shows at disney essentially reward pushy parents. knowing that, we waited so that we could get decent seats. but because of that, jools didn’t get selected to be a jedi knight (must be in the front row). my sister in law and my brother in law (mercifully) scouted out a curbside spot so that we all could watch the christmas parade; i think they must have stayed there for at least an hour. you waste so much time saving spots and waiting at disney. it must be part of their economic formula, but it brings out the crazies in everyone.
including me.
my big, fat walt disney world vacation. part 1.
and you may ask yourself, why the hell isn’t that boring chick writing much? she usually spews about anything. we’ve had radio silence for days, and that’s simply just not like her to be that considerate by shutting her trap.
well, fear not. i’m not being considerate. my blathering self is back. we just spent a few days in the barmy balmy place known as westworld walt disney world. you know, the happiest place in the world? (dammit, at the rates i paid, you will be happy, and nothing will go wrong, or else!) sorry i didn’t let you know in advance, but i didn’t feel like announcing to potential doers-of-evil that i was vacating my premises for a bit. but we’re back. i suspect that there are several points to rant over, so this may take a few days to get out of my system.
(don’t say you weren’t warned.)
for a stunning twist, we decided to take the autotrain this year. you load your car onto the train, then you sleep through the carolinas and all of their kitschy roadside south of the border signage until VOILA! you’re in scenic sanford. (and when i say scenic, i mean scenic like being on the wrong side of scrub pines and railroad tracks.) this time of year, the autotrain is packed, and i mean packed, TO THE GILLS, with senior citizens on their way to flaaa-rida. dahling. i would say that this trip predominantly included most of the citizenry from the greater new york metropolitan area. our family probably lowered the median age a bit.
you know it’s going to be a fabulous ride when the dining attendants hide the hot cocoa packets because the seniors rip them off. (my kids, in a moment of sweetness i wish i had captured on film, smiled so nicely at the attendant that she gave them two additional packets for later. i guess she figured we weren’t a threat to the stash.) but we were off, and everyone was nice to us once we got past the whole boarding thing. (there were a few alta cockers who i feared might run over us with luggage carts should we have the temerity to attempt to walk before them.) but the older folks who were in our little slice of AMTRAK heaven were mostly nice and didn’t monopolize the bathrooms. one even gave BC a dollar in honor of her birthday, which was sweet (even after BC said no thank you and the lady insisted.) now i just have to train these people to not speak REALLY INCREDIBLY LOUDLY WHEN IT’S 10:00 AT NIGHT AND THEY ARE RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR. myrtle, your hearing aid may blow up if you keep that shit up.
where am i going with this? to disney world, of course, silly.
anyway, once we arrived in sanford, the old folks rallied to the very front of the station, as if their personal sheer will would make their car come out before everyone else’s. all, apparently, except for one family, whose car actually came out first. 45 minutes later, the announcer on the PA was getting really snippy: Eber Family, Car # 405, EBER Family, You really need to get your big asses over here right now and take your car away before we sell it on Ebay for $1! okay, so that’s more what was going on in my little bear brain, but the PA Announcer was not far from me on that, you know.
BC asked an interesting question: mama, why do all of these grandparents drive big SUVs? i couldn’t imagine any of them stepping up so high without requiring surgical intervention, but apparently, they can and they do. i scratched my head. i really don’t know, sweetheart was all i could muster. BC decided that maybe they all have to drive their grandchildren around in carpools. yeah right, darling. in their dreams they are all driving that carpool. then, after two days of kids screaming and dropping cheerios in their formerly-clean interiors, they are begging for mercy.
we went on our honeymoon to disney nearly 18 years ago. we did not decide to have children until 8 years after that, probably because a trip to disney is the finest form of birth control around. that being said, i was now wondering whether i would find seniors scarier than children.
madame turns 9
it’s hard for me to believe, but 9 years ago today, i was waddling into a hospital and giving birth to two whole new lives: that of my darling bunnygirl and a novel existence for me as a mom.
BC, today you’re 9, and i relish seeing the person you’re turning into.
dear one, you believe in fairness to the enth degree. especially when it concerns yourself and jools, and particularly especially when you feel you’re getting the wrong end of the stick. but you can, and do, rise to the occasion, especially when it’s the role of big sister. like a few weeks ago, when some older boys were making fun of jools at a party. he was playing with your friend’s polly pockets, and the boys were calling him stupid and dumb. it stings me that i wasn’t in the room when this happened; i had stepped out only for a minute. but you, dear girl. you stepped in and announced that he wasn’t stupid (after jools himself announced that and kept on playing, ignoring the sexist boys.) you told me that then, you had the unfortunate coincidence of swinging your leg around and hitting the particularly offensive boy “in the nut.” it was an accident, you claim.
girlfriend, you cannot kick boys “in the nut,” and i’m not encouraging you to do so in the future. as a mom, i’m supposed to teach you to abhor violence and to come and find a grownup when you cannot handle the situation. but know that deep inside me, i am cheering ecstatically for my girl, who is learning to defend all that she holds dear.
you are empathetic, and you are especially beloved by little babies and toddlers. we still call you the baby whisperer because babies and toddlers seem to seek you out. they instinctively know you are a good person to know, and you are. you treat little ones gently and lovingly, each and every one (except for jools, who doesn’t necessarily fall under the little ones category anymore, i suppose.) the only other person i know who has that same ability is my BTD . little kids literally swarmed him when he was a camp counselor, and you guys do the same to him now. so perhaps it’s genetic.
you’ve been dropped into a new school knowing absolutely no one; and you’ve made friends, and you’re enjoying school, running, and generally having playdates, something you seldom had in your old school. there is something to be said about sending your kid to a neighborhood school over busing her to a school across town. so much for my parental hopes to give you something even better than what i had.
you’ve also said how glad you are to learn math and science in english now. i guess that helps a bit. also, having a teacher who genuinely loves teaching and children has helped you immensely. (you had one of those last year — your english teacher — but you had another, your spanish/math/science teacher, who i suspect may not.) i’m so grateful that you’ve landed in a school where the teachers behave like teachers and not crazed disciplinarians, and where religion has no place in your classroom. (i am still incredulous that your spanish teacher placed a picture of the creche scene beneath the american flag last year.) at your new school, they celebrate winter — the SEASON — and not christmas. they don’t decide to throw jews a bone and include chanukah, either. and i am sooooo glad for it. i get so bent when people think that if they include a jewish song or a jewish story into the curriculum, then all’s well and balanced. no, no, NO. religious holidays have no place in public school. my religion or anyone else’s. period.
but enough about me. this should be about you.
and you are fantastic, with one leg still in young childhood and one leg firmly in the world of tweens. you still love playing with dolls, but you also love your mp3 player, Hanna Montana, and chasing boys. yep, i’m living in fear over the latter (as are the boys of the world.) but i’ll cross that bridge another day.
know that i love you. you often think i love your brother more, but i have a heart that has learned to expand to accommodate new people ever since that fateful day in 1998 when i wound up with a beautiful little girl. you taught me that, and for that, i’ll always be grateful.
happy birthday 🙂
the minerva louise series by Janet Morgan Stoeke
we finish up books-a-go-go with a local author (well, to me, anyway), janet morgan stoeke.
do you have a four-year-old hanging around the house? then run, don’t walk, to your local library and pick up some books from the minerva louise series by Janet Morgan Stoeke, an author who actually lives in the next town over. i would lovelovelove to run into her in the supermarket and ask her how she gets into the brain of preschoolers!
the thing i loathe about books for preschoolers is that there seems to be so many that veer off into the direction of either books for boys or books for girls. you know — you end up reading about trucks or cars or dinosaurs when you’ve a guy, or princesses or fairies for girls. not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but it gets a bit wearing. i mean, after learning about 50,000 ways to talk about a fire truck, a parent can wish that they’d spontaneously combust.
but the minerva louise books — BC loved them when she was 4, and now, jools adores them! (in retrospect, it’s probably a sign of the apocalypse when they both agree on anything.)
minerva louise is a very silly, and possibly nearsighted, hen. she ends up mistaking a baby for a bunny; a school for a farm; and mittens for a hat. the illustrations make it quite clear to anyone why she would make her errors, and yet the fact that she makes these errors make little kids giggle and giggle. i love to read stoeke’s minerva books with my kids, if only because i love to hear my kids laugh 🙂
a new one just came out about christmastime; i’m jewish, but you can bet i’ll be out there looking for it.
Minerva Louise and the Colorful Eggs
mo willems and his bag of willems goodness
pigeons get a bad rap.
dastardly and muttley were always trying to stop that pigeon. woody allen called them rats with wings. and G-d knows no one wants to be called a stool pigeon.
it’s a wonder a pigeon doesn’t develop a complex.
and mo willems’ pigeon does just that. he wants to drive a bus. no dice. he wants to eat a hot dog by himself. no dice. he wants to stay up late! nope. not happening. all not happening because your preschooler will be laughing so hard as s/he yells NO! every time poor pigeon pleads with him/her about it.
willems, a veteran of sesame street, knows preschoolers. and the humor is funny enough that jaded grownups (now, who could that be around here?) will crack up (especially at moments when the duckling comes in and asks whether the hot dog tastes like chicken). there’s a wonderful, raw quality to the illustrations.
willems now has branched out in pigeon board books (as well as some of his other titles, like Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale and Leonardo, the Terrible Monster (the latter, a major fave of jools’). you really can’t go wrong with any of them.
but in my house, that pigeon can’t be stopped. and he can stay up as late as he wants.
Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus