Stand up, everybody

So I never update this blog. Never. But today I have to report a startling happening. Little Marmot Babe (who, mind you, cannot yet sit up alone and is a mere seven months old), crawled his way over to the little antique loveseat-couch thing we have and put his hands on the edge. He pulled himself up onto his knees. Then, as I watched in both horror and delight, he pulled himself up to his feet. THE CHILD PULLED HIMSELF UP! He's so little to be doing such a thing. And he can't even sit up yet! But he's been trying for days to stand up. He wants to be like all the rest of us, I guess. Must be hard being the littlest.

In other news, we had a lovely Christmas. Here's what's the funniest about Christmas this year. Marmot Dad likes to get stocking stuffers for everyone ("elf-like behavior" he calls it), and he's usually quite creative about it all. This year he struck gold. He got a jar of furikake (seaweed and stuff that's all mixed together for pouring on rice) for Tooie--his own jar. Tooie has not let it out of his sight. He was quite taken with the whole idea of a stocking to begin with. He has a little basket into which he puts his "things," in other words, the stuff that was in his stocking (that were not chocolate, of course, because he ate all of that before breakfast on Christmas morning): his toothbrush, his toothpaste, and his furikake. "Mommy, where are my things?" he asks several times a day. He takes his furikake to bed with him. He tried to take it in the bath with him, but I stopped him in the nick of time. He had it taken away for a brief while when he hit his sister over the head with it. He put it in a bag and took it to grandma's house when we went visiting. Oh how that boy loves his furikake. Try it. You'll like it, too.

Which one is it?

I was looking for something in a cabinet today and came across a ring I purchased in Japan many years ago for approximately $5 at a grocery store. Here's the sad part: it looks EXACTLY like my wedding band. Exactly. So it's quiz time: which one is which?

Ring A:

Ring B:

Give up?

Keep going . . .

The answer is . . .

Ring A is the real deal.

But really, could you even tell?

So our next door neighbors opened a retail jewelry store this year. They sent us a Christmas card that was really a thinly veiled invitation to come to them for "all of our jewelry needs." What they haven't seemed to figure out in the six years we've lived here is this:

WE HAVE NO JEWELRY NEEDS! NONE!

If we did, we could just fulfill them all at the grocery store.

p.s. I did these photos against the faux wood grain of our faux wood table just to drive the point home as hard as I could. This is the kind of people we are. Faux.

Summer Etymology

This summer, M asked me out of the blue, "what does popsa mean?"

Popsa, popsa, what the heck is popsa? I frantically consulted my mental dictionary.

"Well," pipes up E, "I know that cle [kll] means 'cold,' so popsa must mean 'nice and.' "

Get it? Popsicle=nice and cold.

"No," corrects M, "I think popsa means 'hard and colorful and.' "

Now you know.

Tooie's First Prayer

Tooie spontaneously burst out in prayer last night after his sister said the official version of the family prayer. Here's a transcript of it:

Heavenly Father.

Grateful . . . day.

Not be 'cared of monsters . . . and . . . white . . . alligators.

Jesus Christ.

Amen.

What goes on in that teeny-tiny head of his, I wonder.

Quiz Time!Gi

E and M were working on making alphabet books the other day. See if you can identify all of these drawings by E that start with the letter A:

1.

2:

3:

4:

Give up yet? Here are the answers: 1=apple (duh) 2=Appaloosa 3=Ariel (duh again, for all you mermaid fans) 4=animal

These kids crack us up. That's when they're not driving us crazy.

The Perfidy of Marmot Dads

We got invited to go to the pool with Max and his family on Friday. E made snacks for everyone to share--graham crackers and peanut butter, a family favorite. In my haste, however, I left them on the counter as we were rushing out the door. E asked as we were pulling into the parking lot if I had forgotten them.

Me: Oh no! I did! Daddy will probably eat them because he won't know they were our pool snacks. (Marmot Pa was home watching Marmot Babe.)

E: Why would he do that?

Me: (somewhat unfairly) Oh, that's just how he is.

E: Yeah, he's always eating the LAST cookie or the LAST scoop of ice cream or something.

M: (out of the blue) (and with a deeeeeep sigh) He's a hard Daddy to live with.

E: He sure is.

zziiiiiiiippp

That's the sound of me zipping up actual pants on my actual body. Why does that merit a blog post, you ask? Because I spent many many months wearing hideous pull-on pants with big nasty elastic panels on the front. That were still too small and tight. But I have, miraculously, graduated to zip-up pants because the latest and greatest marmot is now on the outside instead of on the inside, bless him. (I still sometimes have a hard time getting undressed because I yank and pull on my pants to try to get them off, forgetting that they zip. It's been a while.) 

Anyway, he's the cutest little marmot you could imagine, and now that he's almost two months old he can make eye contact and make little cute noises and be interactive. Let's find a photo or two of him.

Oh wait, that's where you still can't see him yet.

There he is in all his marmoty glory.


And here he is today in his Sunday best.

And now I have to go because the girl marmots are fighting and the baby marmot is crying and hungry and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I never update this blog.

Amen.