Lucky!

Today Simon found a FOUR-LEAF CLOVER at the park! On very St. Patrick's Day!


When I was about 11, my friend Natalie and I spent about three months straight looking for four-leaf clovers in her yard. Never found one.

Did I also mention that Simon found a $100 bill at the park last time his papa was visiting? I need to take that boy to the park more often. Or maybe a casino. . .

Like nobody's business.

Sometimes heaven smiles on you and sends a little something unexpected. Something angelic. Two years ago when I was recovering from surgery it was so nice to have an angel baby who just wanted to calmly snuggle with me and help me heal all day. I was worried about taking care of her and it turned out she took care of me. Well, Mary Tessa has turned angel baby on me again. Before I even had a chance to think about it, worry about it, plot for it, she . . .




potty-trained herself.



I know you're trembling, you're in shock. Please don't hate us. I mean I've heard of child-led weaning, but child-led potty-training? It was wild! It was crazy! It was fun and easy! I had not even given potty-training 0.5 seconds of thought. Now that I think about it, Tessa had been giving it thought for at least a year--as soon as she could stand and hover a foot away from anyone using the toilet. (Not Mark, he needs waaaaaay more privacy; but the rest of us, we choose our battles and you know how it is.) She logged lots of hours of observation. Before she logged. Ha ha.

I remember having to elaborately command, bribe, coach, dictate, coerce, and exert all my faculties to help Simon learn. "Okay Si, step here, no scoot over an inch, now sit for 20 more seconds, let's sing a song, let's read while you're on the potty, I'll buy you a convertible, you won't die in the toilet bowl, see your chart!, pee 15 more times and do a poop and we'll buy you car/happymeal/house", and on and on and on to a degree in Bathroom Hostage Negotiation. With Mary Tessa, she and I were already washing our hands at the bathroom sink and discussing something else before I realized she'd done everything and I'd said and done nothing. Instead of Simon's 632 step instruction book on the whole process, Mary was already at Just Go To the Bathroom. Done and done. Quick and easy. Simple. and a Miracle.

Thank you Heaven. This has been an unbelievable gift.

Turning two in style!

noh moh

hoping for a strike

The Tess (her personal catch-phrase:"Tessa did it!") happened to hear a rockin version of "Hit the Road Jack" last week. Did you know that Ray Charles' version is much better than anything you ever heard at the baseball stadium? As such, I'm recommending MT's new mo-town station for your listening pleasure. The Mo's around here were sure rockin to it this afternoon. In the meantime, here's a taste of Tessa singing her fav-o-rite song.

Bippin.

i don't know if i'm just at peace, but there's not a lot of blog posting going on in my brain lately.


we did wake up Christmas morning.




it was terrific.
mary tessa's bowels gifted her with a diarrhea-free day (bookended by 10 days of "not so much").

i started on a "i'm not going to eat sugar until my birthday" kick, giving a nod to my high-school days when i'd go off sugar or chocolate with my best friend mel. it's just fun to think "I haven't had sugar for 13 days" just like those safety signs in factories. funny thing is, when i talked to mel a few days later she said she'd been looking for someone for a few months to do it. karma, mel.

not caramel.

speaking of forbidden sweet things, i stopped nursing tess cold-turkey on saturday. the first day was somewhat okay, considering she was used to nursing about 4 times/day and to sleep. she slept but then woke up early. both of us were sobbing away at 5am sunday morning while mark and i told her that "mom's medicine makes it yucky." because soon it likely will. tomorrow i go to my bi-annual cancer checkup and will probably have my radioactive iodine treatment soon.

and nobody likes radioactive milk.
but i'm not opposed to serving bluebell ice cream for breakfast.

thanks to a few well-read friends of friends who posted their favorite books of 2009 i have a great reading list going, including Escape by Carolyn Jessop, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, and Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.

allianna and i have been waging the Battle of the Pants. she abhors the things. and will spend hours daily raging against them, writhing on the floor. she also cannot tolerate a coat. or a jacket. or a sweater, no matter how feminine. the only desire of her heart is dresses. she was born in the wrong century. she would refuse to even allow a coat or--shudder--socks/closed-toe shoes in the car when we went places. i've taken to making her carry her coat in her arms when we're in public, so that 1. people don't judge me a bad parent 2. strangers can see how sassy she is when they tell her she should put on her coat. because it has been getting below freezing (gasp!) here. though i can't prove it thermometrically, i'm beginning to believe she's just hotter than the rest of us. so today she played outside in short-sleeves and something knee-length while the weather was low 50s and i'm just going to leave it to her to come in if she's cold. if i can't steer the ship i'm just going to get out of the way.

and go read one of my good books.

on her most bundled-up day in months

and those are the things bipping around in my head.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds.

Underneath that quilt in the corner is the mini-trampoline Mark WRESTLED for an hour and a half.

Mark explaining the meaning of Christmas symbols taught to him by St. Nick (his dad's tradition).

Some of the homemade goodness, finally unveiled:

And the barricade against kids who go pee in the night:MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Our folksy Christmas performance.

Here the girls and I do our living room chamber music thing last Sunday.
This is mostly for the grandparents.

Don't know why Mary Tessa's video isn't working--but I put in two places just in case it decides to come on board.

Exposed.

I thought one of the kids got out of bed and I was going to be discovered, with all my last minute elf-workshop items out. I went in to the kitchen to see what was making noises. No kid. But a cockroach BIG enough to make enough noise that I thought there was a kid in there.


UGH.

!!!!

AND MARK'S ALREADY IN BED WITH THE WORST COLD EVER.

HELP!






update, 5 minutes later:
i have slayed the beast.

between making all the homemade present goodness and defeating that Creature by myself, my family sure is lucky to have me.

For lack of a better word. or two.

I want to make this cake. Even after an entire month, that's all I'm saying. Lack of better words.

Short cut

We're getting mighty impulsive with this girl's hair lately. She is almost four, after all.

I like it.

And I didn't even think about crying.

Lounge lizards

In case you've been wondering what the coolest cat is up to, it's just a whole lot of lounging--

**she was comfortable moments before i took this**
And, forgive my horrific expression in this one; I either: was reacting to being told that cat was nuzzling in my hair, really need reading glasses, or could faintly smell that sandwich.

Anyway, Nimbus has been lounging around--just like the rest of us.

If and Remember

If you finally convince your son to start having "school lunch," (I personally loved it as a kid)

you should remember that you used to make him a sandwich everyday and hide it away in that nifty little tupperware pouch at the bottom of his lunch pack.
Where it's been lurking for a week and a half.

Man of her dreams

Allianna made this confession to me the other day while we were swinging:

Allianna: Mom, I have a husband.

Me: Oh, really? Does he look kind of like your dad?

Alli: No. He has orange hair.

[swing, swing]

Alli: And a black body.

[swing]

Alli: And a white face.

Alli: And he's sixty-nine. But I'm seventy-nine.

Trick or Ten

Our Halloweenie Top Ten List

10. When we went to get some carving pumpkins the night before from a local church's pumpkin patch, we arrived to find out they weren't selling pumpkins any more. However, we could take any that we found that weren't rotten (my reason for waiting til the night before to purchase in the first place--aah, TX). So our grand total was about 54 gourds, mini pumpkins, and a large white, green, and orange squash. FREE. This has brought untold rapture and joy around the house as pumpkin patches sprout up in all the rooms; it will probably continue through to December.


9. At our third stop, Mark and Simon find a lone carve-worthy pumpkin. They bring it home and are appeased; we have to appease Jack with two slices of bread, apparently.
8. Dorothy
7. the Bat. Not "bat man, bat boy" or any variation thereof. Trying out his new kindergarten playground vocabulary Simon tells me that his face paint is "sooo hilarious" but means something closer to "horrendous" or "humiliating" and wants me to wipe it right off.

6. A shout out to Grape Street. It had one of the few blocks that managed to have consecutive porches offering treats--back in the day when tricks were expected our neighborhood wouldn't have fared well.



5. Alli's cold medicine had her pursuing treats like this for 75% of the night.
Until she could finally be persuaded to take a pack of Skittles.4. The little (repurposed) Mermaid.
I faced my personal sewing machine el Guapo and (thanks Melissa!) came out victorious.

3. Mary Tessa caught on quick to what the trick-or-treating gig was all about. She wouldn't let go of her bag for anything and wanted to eat most of it immediately. It's the first thing in her life that she's taken personal responsibility for. Couldn't be prouder. She wouldn't entrust it to any of us for fear that we'd pull a fast one on her hard earned booty.2. All's well that ends well. This was the pace: Mary downs three suckers and a pack of M&Ms, Alli packs in an entire pack of Rolos (plus some various ?) and her cheeks stick out like Jack Nicholson before I notice, Simon DEE-LIIBERATES for a full 45 minutes before gingerly choosing ONE piece to try. He kept chastising me for tempting him to eat some while we were walking. Firstborn. Please notice how Simon's clutching his bag and won't pour his bag out because doesn't trust his sisters to STAY BACK even though they've got plenty of their own.

1. In an effort to regain balance, this morning Mary Tessa poured and poured and poured salt all over her cereal. Savory, sweet, savory (Chinese take-out), sweet (Trick or Treating), savory (her breakfast). Looks like it was okay for me to follow the pattern and serve candy for Sunday lunch.

Wish us well til Mark returns from his La Jolla trip.

Down by the bay

We made it to Kemah for the first time post-Ike. The 70 degree weather lured us out of our air-conditioned cocoon. Ahhh, sea breezes!

Don't worry, they're not firing, just telescoping.



In other weather-related news, it POURED all night, which floods our backyard and Nimbus' chamber/bathroom. She's been definitely earning her keep today; she's currently back there hunting waterlogged cockroaches who think they can escape the weather by coming into her room. She's just hovering and purring with delight as she lurks waiting for the next victim.

Friday Night faves.

It's always nice to arrive at the end of the week. We took the kids to a park during dinner time, then came home and made them eat oatmeal and pesto noodles (as per their different requests) sitting around the couch. It's fun to try new things--like being a 50s family huddled around the TV, eating dinner at 8pm. Then it was time to swiftly toss them into bed and dart out of their room with an enormous "AAAAAAAHhHHHHh."

We were excited to find out that one of our good good old friends Ryan Weed was involved in some athletic competition tonight, and that we'd get to see him compete. We knew that this was a big season for him, the culmination of these years of training--we just thought all along he was training to be a chiropractor.

But, you want to fly on over to Paris and give it all you've got on the ice?
Ryan, we're behind you 110%!

Here's a wee bit of video:




I'm only regretting that we didn't get a photo of tonight's costume--what with its low cut purple shirt and red neck scarf. Wow!






Guess we should have known he had it in him back when we saw this:

Getting out of the city

We're Oil Ranching today!

Vote: what do you think about the ethics of leaving Simon in school today versus taking him with us?

Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize!

What a wonderful thing!

Read more here.

Mark tells me that Morgan Tsvangarai of Zimbabwe was thought to be a front-runner. He also is very deserving. Next year, perhaps.

An unrelated thing

*** First off, props to the one who can name the group I got my title from.

A few weeks ago, in a burst of supreme motherhood, I took Allianna to Hobby Lobby and bought yards of shimmery fabric to make her a Modest Ariel costume. I haven't sewn for ten years, and even then, it wasn't very successful (mostly quickly jamming up the machine with a skirt that I wanted to wear in half an hour.) Anyway, I had really got down to business and had cut out the pattern and 1/8 of the fabric. This was to be the start of a whole new seamstress me. Tonight, our neighbors brought over a bag of hand-me-downs. At the bottom of the bag was an Ariel costume. Seriously??? (The pattern has lots of tinkerbell and princess options, if anyone local wants to use it)

Luckily, Simon has finally handed down the decision that he wants to be a bat. And in a radical break from tradition, I will be crafting his out of cloth instead of cardboard.

Another of Simon's great ideas was to have "coral polyp" cupcakes. I grinned for days.

Part of the birthday gang "beachcombing" for shells in our backyard.
We also made sand art in little bottles.

Completely unrelated, but still exciting, was the announcement during General Conference that a temple will be built in Fortaleza, Brasil where Mark served his mission 10 (!) years ago.
We loved Conference--it's such a homey weekend. For me, some highlights were:
President Eyring's talk on joy in families and other talks from Sunday morning about teaching children truth so they can clearly choose and seeking personal revelation (many times over!). When I was telling Simon and Allianna that Sister Ann Dibb is the Prophet's daughter, Alli said "Well, then, she's not nervous, because her dad's right there!"
The pumpkin coffee cake was a smash hit as well.
Who wants to join me in the challenge of reading a Conference talk a day?

Wasn't the choir's singing of "O Divine Redeemer" terrific?!!

Um. -- Revised once again

We're all doing just fine around here. Promise.







In other news, I was racking my brain for a post as I watched the days rack up since my last one. To quote an old roommate: "What HAVE happened?!"
OOOOOOoooooh, yeah, a boy turned six, a boy lost his front tooth after two months of dangling, and I started working out for the first time in motherhood (I decided walking and occasional biking are sooo last season). I'm having fun!

Aimee and Lindsay--I was just dabbling in some world news this morning and heard about the latest hijinks of Libya's famed leader. And I'm smiling game-ly about the way his name is spelled.
As I was rushing to add this this morning I forgot to say that his name is Arabic and has to be transliterated, so I've seen it spelled with a G, a Q, and a Kh--gotta love those gutterals! We all win!

The Development

Ten years ago, when Mark and I were dating, we talked about what we dreamed of for our future. One topic kept coming back up. It was really important to both of us.






About 2 years ago, we talked about the time being right to add to our little group.

So we asked the landlord if it would be okay.

And here she is!

Meet Nimbus!!!!!

Mark and I are thrilled to own a cat together--we are a pair of cat lovers! Simon is thrilled also and so ready; the week before we got her Simon was spending 2+ hours a day monitoring his snails' activities, habits, and needs. Now he delights to have her wake him up for school--what a smile every morning when she rubs her cheek on his head. Allianna wins the prize for most attempts to carry and snuggle the cat. Mary Tessa is happy to finally have some seniority around here; she relishes telling Nimbus "No no no!" when she's breaking some family rule (or even when she's not). Nimbus got quite a lecture when she climbed onto the dishwasher door--even though her hypocritical accuser had been doing the same thing the week before. :)

And, in answer to your questions:

Nimbus--the name. Mark thought she had markings like a clouded leopard. But she's not a white cloud, she's dark, so that leads us to Nimbus. For nicknames she's already acquired Nims and Nimbecile (when she repeatedly moved to follow the chicken into the oven).

She's about 7 months old, litter-box trained, all vaccinated and spayed and all that good stuff. So we just get to enjoy her playfulness and avoid all that grief.