E's Birthday

Our little E is finally five years old. She is officially a girl and not a baby anymore. She had a good day overall. We had a little party for her with three neighborhood children. Since we weren't planning anything for the party besides eating cake, and since the Mommy of the family is deeply opposed to more plastic toys in our lives, we sent out requests in our invitations for homemade or recycled gifts, and that worked out nicely. E got a variety of hand-drawn pictures and a used stuffed horse that she adores. She wanted a pony cake (these words struck terror in the heart of a mommy who did not want to put too much effort into a cake this year)--and explained that the pony cake she wanted was a plain sheet cake with her pony toy stuck on top. Hallelujah! I could just about do that. She wished before she blew out her candles "that mermaids would be real." Don't we all. 

The poignant moment of the day came after all the festivities were over and E and I were talking before she fell asleep. She wanted to know if she would still have birthdays after she was dead (yes, this is our most morbid child). We decided she would. "Well, then, Mommy," she said, "you could just pile my presents up next to me, or put them next to my grave." Enough to break a mommy's heart.

The Special Love of Christmas

Last night Tuey and I turned in early and left Marmot Dad to deal with the fallout of the girls at night. He roped them in by putting two blankets down on the quiet room floor in front of the Christmas tree (which we had just finished decorating). Each girl was told to stay on her respective blanket. Then he put on some Christmas music and turned on the lights of the tree and told them to look and be silent (which of course they were not, but a man has to dream). After a while, though, apparently E told him, "Daddy, I really do feel the special love of Christmas now."

M spent the day yesterday wearing E's purple long underwear all day long. It makes her look pleasingly marmot-like. For about twenty minutes in the morning she sat on the floor and sang into a metal trash can so her voice would echo.

Tuey, the Goodest Little Baby in Town, slept all night last night (a first). He woke up at 6 a.m., had a little snack, pinched my nose for a while, and then went back to sleep until 7. What a kid.

An Amazing Sight

Picture this if you can:

M is wearing a long-sleeved striped turtleneck. Over that she has on a striped short-sleeved shirt, inside out. Both are shades of pink. She has on yellow pants. She has on a red polar fleece hat (in case of sudden indoor snowstorms). She has taken my eyeliner and blackened her nose and drawn on whiskers on her face and some fur on her feet. (Just for the record, I did not ever actually purchase eyeliner. This is a little sample left over from my last Mary Kay soiree, which I think I attended in 1996 or thereabouts.) Anyway, she has on this getup. I come upon her standing in the bathroom with a bottle of conditioner in one hand and a grout brush in the other. She is scrubbing eyeliner scribbles off the toilet, using the conditioner as soap. She has also actually "scrubbed" some of the grout with copious amounts of conditioner. I ask, rather calmly, considering the circumstances, what the *%^$& she's doing. "I know sometimes you need me to scrub, Mommy," she announces. And then the non sequitur "you're not always mean to me, Mommy." What could I do? I shrugged my shoulders and left.

Tuey spends a lot of time these days dancing little dances and barking at dogs.

Three Children for Sale

Here are the highlights (or rather lowlights) of this eventful day. Early on, E came to tell me she needed a new dress because hers was wet. Why was her dress wet? She had had an accident . . . on M's bed . . . on the goose down comforter and the quilt (sigh). ("You know, Mommy, even BIG girls make mistakes sometimes. Even MOMMIES make mistakes sometimes.") Not two hours later, just as we were supposed to get into the car to go to preschool, M announced from the back yard that SHE had wet her pants, and of course since she was outside her pants were both wet and covered with mud. So we got her all cleaned up and made it to preschool and then ran a couple of errands. When we got home, I had to pick up all the little playdough crumbs the girls and Tuie had gotten all over the floor, the carpet, the couch. Then it was time to go back to preschool. The girls got their insect and bird cards all over the car (which I had told them not to do) and were having fights about who was going to eat and who had eaten what candy (which the neighbors had given to them yesterday, curse them). After we got out of the car I noticed that Tuey had something white and sticky in his hair. Gum. I HATE gum. It was in the neighbors' candy bags. E had gotten gum in his hair. So after more bickering and getting into stuff I banished the 2 girls to their rooms for half an hour (they were just lucky it wasn't the rest of their natural lives). Meanwhile I was trying to clean the kitchen floor some more because it was worse than unsanitary. Tooie found some cake on a paper plate covered with a ziploc bag. He loves cake, we just discovered. And he's very enterprising. So he grabbed the bag, turned it upside down, and shook for all he was worth. I could see what was happening, but it was like one of those slow-motion dreams where you try so hard to run but you just can't make any progress. I got to him just as the cake hit the floor and he grabbed it with both hands and ran, stuffing it in his mouth as he went. He made a perfect arc around the table of lemony cake crumbs. When the girls were finally released from prison, I started on dinner but was interrupted by little Tuey wails and blood on the kitchen floor. He had pulled a BIG jar of peanut butter down on his mouth and now has the fattest lip in the world. It's just about thirty minutes 'til bedtime, and I can HARDLY WAIT. These children are all available to the highest bidder.

Night life

We like to play a game at our house called "musical beds." Here's how it went on Thursday night:

Marmot Dad had to go to a concert in the evening, so the kids and Mom piled into the king-sized bed to read books and go to sleep. M was eventually banished to her own bed for squirming, whining, wallowing, giggling, and general bad behavior. The three remaining fell asleep in the "mommy sandwich" configuration (Mom in the middle with one child on each side squooshing me). 

After Dad got home we moved E to her own bed and fell asleep again (briefly). M soon woke up and announced, "I want to snuggle your arm!" So Mom went in to join her in her bed. Shortly after that E woke up with a bad dream, and Dad went in to comfort her. He may have slept in her bed for a while, I'm not sure, but she eventually ended up in the big bed with Dad and Tooie. Then Tooie woke up and started whispering "pihs, pihs" which means "please" which means "I want to nurse." So I went back to the big bed to feed him. He decided after his 3 a.m. snack that he wanted to sing, so he sang until 4:30, a sweet song, but entirely unnecessary at that time of day.

Then I think there was snoring from someone who will remain unnamed, so I went back to M's bed. At 5:30 I was rudely awakened by Marmot Dad carrying in little Tu who was once again saying "pihs, pihs." Fortunately, everyone slept until about 7:30. But that's a lot of travelling around for one night. No one ended up in the bed that he or she started in. This is our life

Labels

E always has some important jobs to do around the house. This morning she decided to label the drawers in the bathroom.

This one says "stuck" (in case you were a little worried), and she put it on the "drawer" in the middle that isn't really a drawer but just there for show.

This one says "do," as in "do open this drawer and use what is inside." She showed me that it has useful things like baking soda (in case you get a bee sting or something--don't ask me why I have a box of baking soda in my bathroom).

This one says "don't," as in "don't get into this drawer!" She found some matches in here, and we all know that children shouldn't play with matches!

A post from E

M is sometimes mean to me. We like to play Ariel together. We like to draw pictures together. We like to write letters to each other. We write them to each other. Sometimes we are paper girls. We got to milk a cow once. When we went to the farm. When M was a baby she was cute. We like to watch many movies, scary or not scary. We like to watch Alice in Wonderland. [from M: I don't.] We like to watch Shanti and Mowgli movie. [M: We like to watch My Little Pony.] We like to play my little ponies, we like to play it. I'm going to tell you one more thing after this: hmmmmmm. Hmmmm. I didn't want you to write hmmmmm. We like to explore with magnifying glasses. We like to write names on the computer. [M: and we like to play Away in a Manger.] Just write "E doesn't like Joseph." [M: We like to play Laura and Mary.] M, we're done! And we like to ride ponies. [M: I like it when Aunt comes over to OUR house.]