Getting lucky

The first time I won anything was when I was 5 years old, and our local McDonald's had a drawing for a big Easter basket full of toys and candy. It was supposed to be awarded on Easter by the Easter bunny, but we were going to church on Easter so I picked up my basket a day early and never saw the bunny.

It was the prelude to a rather lucky life: I've never won the lottery or anything (I understand one's odds are better if one buys a ticket), but I've won more than my share of skill-not-required prizes. I won $100 twice in bingo games, once collecting pieces from the supermarket and once in a school fund-raiser. I once won a case of motor oil at my dad's company picnic (not very exciting, but winning, nonetheless). I've found a $10 bill and a $100 bill, just lying in the street. (The $100 bill was in California, which seemed appropriate.) Within the last 8 years we've been in this house, I've won an address book, a birdbath, and a "Charlotte's Web" DVD.

So I wasn't overly surprised to be told that Eric had won a drawing at a local restaurant we frequent for "The World's Largest Christmas Stocking," 6 feet of various random toys and games. They all seem to be overstocks -- things that the manufacturers were having trouble getting rid of -- and the 4 board games included are too old for our familiy as of yet, but Faith and Eric each got a few fun things out of it, not to mention (for Faith, anyway) the excitement of winning in the first place. (We assured her that while it was Eric's name that was drawn, the toys were for sharing.) Faith got 2 dolls, one of which is the slutty kind I'd never buy for her but which has brushable hair, and a kite, which she's been wanting for a while. Eric got Lightning McQueen crayons and a NFL-themed counting board book. (His favorite page is the 9 football helmets, or, as he calls them, "ball hats.") Also included was Aang's Battle Staff from the "Avatar" series that makes swooshing sounds and pops out wings when you push a button, and there's a big, green stuffed frog at the bottom that they both enjoy. After we finished emptying the stocking, it looked like Christmas morning almost a week early at our house with new toys all around the tree!

It's beginning to look a lot like bowl season

The Christmas season is in full swing around our house, and not a moment too soon for Faith. She knew that Christmas was on a Thursday this year, and she knew that it wasn't until after Halloween; so the first Thursday in November, she woke me up with an excited, "It's Christmas, Mommy!" There were many tears that morning after a clarification, and it had to be repeated many times before Thanksgiving. ("Are there lights on the houses? Is there a tree in our house? Do you see any presents? Well, then, you'd better hope it's not Christmas, because it would be a pretty poor one.")

Things are much more holidayish now, particularly my stress levels. I did have all my shopping done by last weekend, until Amazon threw a monkey wrench into the works by announcing something I ordered wouldn't ship before Christmas after all, so I had to rush around the internet finding a substitute (shipped from Lubbock via Fed Ex tonight, so should be golden). I have also been lamenting the fact that I haven't gotten many cards this year, although I didn't get around to doing ours until today so I was being rather hypocritical. Tomorrow is wrapping day (except for the shipment from Lubbock, of course). I didn't get around to my usual holiday baking, though. I really need that extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas! I think we get it back next year.

We put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving, and after I hung the fragile ornaments, Faith and Eric put up the unbreakables. It was Eric's first time to "help," and he would get an ornament for him and one for Faith, rush over to the tree, hang his on a branch, run back to the table for two more ornaments, hurry back to the tree, and try to hang his on the same branch. Sometimes I was able to find him an empty branch, and some I just moved when his back was turned.

Jennifer sent me this Wake Forest ornament several years ago, featuring the Deacon in all his bared-teeth glory, and when I hung it on the tree, Faith asked me, "Why is that man so angry?" After thinking about it for a moment, I told her it was mostly because his teams were no good. The University may be pleased about a third straight bowl, but I'm glad I bought ACC championship and Orange Bowl T-shirts two years ago because I'm certainly not interested in an EagleBank Bowl shirt, win or lose tomorrow. As I write, the basketball team is clinging to a top 10 ranking, but conference play doesn't begin until after Christmas. After the disappointing seasons they've had the last two years, I'm not going to raise my expectations until I see what they do against ACC competition. If they don't even make it into March Madness, I have no opportunity to doom my bracket by inking them in all the way to the championship!

One holiday behind

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Now that we've all eaten turkey, it's time for me to get around to posting Halloween photos.
As you can see, Faith was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz this year. She'd still wear the ruby slippers every day if I'd let her.

Faith doesn't have an acrophobic bone in her body, as evidence when she was 2 and climbed to the top of the McDonald's PlayPlace structure without a qualm. Last Halloween, our church had a 20-foot-tall slide she spent all night climbing to the top of and sliding down. This year, she had to settle for the inflatable rock-climbing wall. We found out afterward that one of the other sides of the "mountain" had its footholds closer together for smaller climbers, but despite the fact that she was on the "big people" side, she made it to within 5 feet of the top.

Here she is at the petting zoo, in a shot that shows off her French braids. I hadn't even tried to French braid anyone's hair since high school, and it took me about a half an hour and a lot of hair gel to get hers done. I told her before I started that I wasn't a very good braider. She was very still and patient, but part of the way through, she said, "I think you're right, Mommy. I think you're not a very good braider."

And, yes, we do still have another child, but we don't have any Halloween pictures of him. Eric is at a difficult age photogenically: If he sees me point the camera at him, he immediately stops whatever he's doing and runs toward me to point at the camera. So most of our pictures of him here recently are either when he's sleeping or out of focus as he quickly approaches.

In which the blogger criticizes the way other people raise their children

The kids and I went to a newly-opened McDonald's for lunch and playtime today. (Probably won't be back, as there's no door at the PlayPlace entrance, which means Eric felt free to race out into the restaurant proper where I had to chase him down, but Faith enjoyed the different playground.)

I rarely actually eat lunch at the McDonald's, but it's a great place for me to sit and read the newspaper or get caught up on magazines while the kids get to Play Well with Others. They're contained where I don't have to worry about crazy people or traffic, and it's all climate-controlled so it's an all-weather, all-season playground with reasonably-comfortable seats and free refills. What's not to love?

Plus, of course, it's the perfect venue for that perennial favorite parents' game, "I'm Sure Glad My Kid's Not That Much of a Brat." At our usual McDonald's last month, I enjoyed a banner day in the sport, when a four-ish boy came in dressed like a miniature sk8r-boi, complete with black T-shirt, baggy black jeans, and a curly asymmetrical haircut a la the late Heath Ledger circa "10 Things I Hate About You." His surly pose was spoiled by only one thing -- the baby blue pacifier that never left his mouth except when he ate.

Now, I know the pacifier habit is a hard one to break. We made Eric go cold turkey shortly before his 2nd birthday, and I felt so sorry for him. But given that your kid is running around with a pacifier not long before kindergarten, why dress him like a 15-year-old? It makes for a jarring juxtaposition.

Now you can probably go find the sk8r-boi's mom's blog wherein she criticizes something my kids were doing at McDonald's last month. The game goes on....

Talk about a lost month!

Oh well. Let's start off November with a photo of Tommy with the kids.

The lost month

Well, I'm running out of time if I want to have a blog entry under the September heading. Where has my time gone this month? A stomach bug and a cold each took about a week of it as they worked their way through the family. Tommy was on vacation for a week, which always slows down my discretionary time, as I have three people to entertain rather than just two. Then he got in a fender bender in the parking lot his first day back at work, and we've been spending time dealing with the insurance company to get the car fixed. And then we found water dripping through the ceiling and down the wall from the attic one night and had to call out the air conditioning repairman. (I still haven't gotten around to trying to fix the wallpaper where it peeled up.)

Apart from dealing with one thing after another, I don't know that I've accomplished anything substantive since I last blogged. I did, however, manage to get caught up on the stack of magazines that piled up unread since my parents' move. So I'm a little closer to getting to the shelf of books that have been sitting unread since last Christmas.

In the meantime, my friend Becky gave birth to her fifth baby August 30th and has posted five times in September. *sigh*

Making Their Move

My parents have moved. Actually, they've been in the new house for 2 weeks now, but life is just beginning to settle back down to the point where I can think about getting caught up. I haven't read the newspaper since August 16th, so I have a big stack to get to. By the time I have a chance to get outraged about something, it'll all be over.

The moving truck didn't show up on the day of the move until 9 PM, and it was well after midnight before they got everything unloaded. (The poor movers had a 4-hour drive back ahead of them and had to be at work again at 8 AM.) I spent the first four days or so at their house, unpacking. There are still boxes against the walls up there, but they fall into a few distinct categories: things that were stored in a closet or shed for years at the old house, pictures and things to hang on the wall (I hate to start putting the first nails into a smooth, freshly-painted wall), stuff that should be thrown away because no one's ever going to use it (far too much of this), and stuff that's mine that I have to get around to eBaying, trashing, or otherwise disposing of.

So while life is not "back to normal," it's at least heading in that direction. The kids love having Mawmaw & Poppy so near. Faith's been at their house every day since they've been here; they might be getting sick of her! I hope to blog more regularly with The Big Move behind me.

Oh, and I did end up getting the new vent covers up. I returned the ones I had to Lowe's and bought Home Depot's brand. I'm not a big Home Depot fan and shop Lowe's instead when I can ( long story involving a Christmas tree), but the old air registers must have come from there: The screw holes lined up exactly!

And it came to pass that the previous owner moved out, and, lo, the walls needed paint....

The saga of my parents' new house forges on. In the original plan, they should have already been in their new home for a month now, but they're still waiting on repairs to be done to their old house. So in the meantime, I'm still responsible for the new house and keep finding things that need to be done.

When the previous owner (a smoker) moved out, it became clear that the interior needed painting, as you could see the outlines of everything he had had hanging on the wall. After a week or two, I managed to find some people to do that for me for a not-too-exorbitant price. And he had lost the key to the garage and side doors, so I replaced the locks on those. I also wanted to replace the vent covers on the ceilings, as they were badly stained by cigarette smoke. Doesn't sound too hard, right? Replacements, a ladder & a screwdriver, and you're done, right?

Yeah, not so much. Turns out the new vents' screw holes aren't positioned the same as the old vents' screw holes. Putting a new hole through the drywall isn't that hard, but on top of the drywall is some kind of impervious something. So most of the vents I've tried to install have a screw on one side that I've angled to avoid the whatever-it-is around the vent and one on the other side that is only in halfway. I'm going to take Tommy's power drill up there and give it one more try to get them done before I collapse in a weeping heap.

I still have to get the carpet cleaned, but I thought I ought to wait until I'm done dropping vent dirt and ceiling dust all over the floor. Or maybe I should just get new carpet. I've entered that state where every improvement I make leads to another improvement. The only end in sight is if my parents actually move in one of these days.

Sage advice

Yesterday, Tommy was using the weedeater in the back yard, and he knocked my gazing globe off its pedestal and shattered it. Faith was in the yard with him and went over to see what had happened. Solemnly, she told him, "Daddy, when I break something, I hide it."

Things Faith says ...

Faith: "Daddy, you are so, so nauseous!"
Tommy: ????
Me: "I think she means 'obnoxious.'"

Faith: "I picked up all my toys, and now my floor is clean as an elephant!"
Me: "As an elephant?"
Faith: "Well, no, elephants are dirty. It's clean as a giraffe!"

Me: "This room is a mess; you need to pick it up."
Faith: "But I just made this mess!"

Everybody Loves Sarah

Here's what's been occupying my time lately:

Last fall, my dad began having some health problems: weakness, dizziness, faintness, memory problems, etc. He was bad at Thanksgiving, better at Christmas, but whatever it was wasn't going away. He played musical specialists for several months, as no one could figure out what the problem was and kept sending him to a different doctor for further analysis. At long last, they decided that the problem was several medications that he had been on: a potassium supplement, Lipitor, and a blood-pressure medicine I can't remember the name of. For most people, they cause no problem, but for my dad, over the time he'd been taking them all, they caused some neurological damage and (I think) also damaged his kidneys. While he has improved since being taken off the drugs in question, all the damage may not be reversible.

In light of his health issues, my parents (with significant prodding on my part) have finally decided to move down here, to be nearer us and see the grandkids regularly. I found them a house 2 blocks down the street from us, and hopefully they can move by mid-July. They've been in their house for thirty years; it was always too big for us; and they filled up the extra space by never throwing anything away, so moving is far from a painless process.

So, yes, I've voluntarily put myself in the situation of having my parents as neighbors. Fortunately, they're not right across the street a la Raymond. The first house I looked at for them we can see from our front porch; this one is still walkable but not actually visible, which is a plus. It's a very nice house -- smaller, and with a smaller yard, for downsizing purposes -- and I think they'll be happy there without the accretions of thirty years, if the move itself doesn't kill them. And on the plus side for me, I'll have easy-access babysitters, less worry about my parents being so far away, and -- not least -- no longer the prospect of inheriting thirty years' worth of junk to sort through.

So that's what I (and they) have been doing for the last couple of months. I hope that by late summer, they'll be settled in, and I can begin to think about other things again.

Previously, on Veronica Mars....

Wow. Checking my Sent Items folder, I find that I haven't sent out pics of the kids since last March. So I'll try to get everyone caught up.


This picture is of Eric's 1st birthday last summer. The Cookie Monster cake was just too cute. Faith got a very blue tongue.

This is Faith last Halloween, as a "fairy princess," I guess. It's a costume I put together from hand-me-down dress-up clothes. This year, she needs a less frilly costume, as the skirt kept getting in her way climbing the 15-foot-high slide on the "obstacle course" inflatable at our church carnival. I ended up tucking it into the bike shorts she was wearing underneath.

And this is the bike Faith got for her 5th birthday. In contrast to the slide at Halloween, which I couldn't believe she climbed so nonchalantly, she's a very cautious bike-rider. Eric can easily outrun her on foot.

Prolegomena

So check me out. I've joined the 21st century, and only 7 years late.

Friends have pointed out that I used to send out pics & news regularly when I only had the one kid, but since the new baby (now almost 2) arrived, we're all apparently suffering from a debilitating disease which precludes photography & typing. Meanwhile, I am shamed by Becky, who has 4 kids and another on the way and still manages to keep a blog. So, if she can do it, I can too, right? (It's a theory, anyway.)

I still have to figure out how to put pictures in this thing. So, work in progress....