Ersatz

Sometimes I don't know why we bother with toys. I know it's just another riff on the baby-loves-boxes theme, but this is what I found Mabel playing with this afternoon, after she'd raided the kitchen for implements.

And then I asked her to clean up a mess and she found the cutest little family of sweeping brushes.

Then again, maybe it's because all the babies were napping.

 

Green Card (and other movies)

Sometimes I think that blogging is exactly what's wrong with the economy.

Okay, maybe that's not quite it, but it seems that the free time needed to read about the minutae of other people's lives, and maybe even write about your own, could be better used doing other things. Especially when many people who read blogs read them at work, when they are actually being paid to do other things, or should be, except that maybe they haven't any other things to do.

Let me clarify. If you're reading this at work, I don't mean you, and please don't go away. You are a boon to the economy, I'm sure. But I first started to read blogs when I was chronically bored at work, and I'm pretty sure that's the only reason I ever read through all the archives of Amy, Kristen*, and Julia, to name a few. There I was at a desk with a computer and literally nothing to do, so my self-assigned project for the next few days became to read through someone else's backstory. If I did have something to do, I needed to string it out, so I'd read blogs in between short bursts of work.

I'm not the only overeducated underused employee that ever existed, so I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who ever did this. I'm not the only person with a degree in English to find herself sitting behind the receptionist's desk or waiting for someone else to schedule a meeting so that she could update a handbook that nobody would read anyway. On a global-economy scale, that's a lot of unharnessed energy.

It occurred to me today that if I had been driven enough, lucky enough, and interested enough in something, I could perhaps be somewhere very different today, with a big fancy career and a big fancy life. (I'm very lucky and interested in various things, but I'm the first to admit that I'm not very driven.) But then, I thought, would I be any happier than I am right now?

Nope. I'm pretty much as happy as whoever Larry was. There are niggly things that I'd like to have more money to spend on - outsourcing housework, getting my hair professionally coloured, buying all my clothes from J Crew - but in the big picture, this is where I want to be. There's the tiny issue of that hypothetical third baby, but I think in order for that to happen I'd have to go back in time and have got married a few years earlier.

Which would have required me to win the visa lottery the first year I applied instead of the third, let's say. (You note that marrying someone else is not an option. He's my lobster.) And maybe B and I needed those years apart to make it work now, anyway.

And then I thought, what if I'd never got the visa? The Diversity Visa Lottery is something many Americans have never heard of: the government offers a number of resident alien visas every year to countries whose emigrants have been under a certain number for the previous five years. If you're lucky enough to be picked, once you can show that you're reasonably employable and enough money to not be on the streets straight away (and not a communist), you get your very own green card. My chances of winning the year I did were about 1 in 100, and you're no more likely to get picked the tenth year you enter than the first. I was lucky.

If I hadn't got my green card when I did, I don't know what we'd have done. B could have come home after his PhD, but to no job. I could have gone over illegally, but it's very unlikely I would have. We could have got married straight away and I would have been legal but not eligible to work (I think), which would have made me feel that we began things on an uneven keel and under some level of duress.

It's all very Sliding Doors-y to peer down the wrong end of the telescope at what you might have done if your life had turned a different way. And while Gwynneth Paltrow's haircut was cute and John Hannah's accent was dead sexy, it wasn't a very good film, and the ending left us all feeling pretty frustrated.

It's probably better to just work with what you've got and move forward as you are. As I am, damn lucky. For one thing, if anything had been even a tiny bit different, I probably wouldn't have this to entertain you with:

*Not there; at her old, and sadly currently defunct, blogs, "Debaucherous and Dishevelled" and "Better Now".

Up and Down

Dash has been telling us that there's one species of penguin that can fly. He watched a movie about it at school. (Sigh. Nobody watches videos at school any more.  I suspect nobody listens to tapes in French class either. Remember when your teacher had to bring in a giant boombox and balance it on a stool beside the wall where the outlet was so that they could press play to let you listen to the fuzzy-voiced announcer telling you something impenetrable about le train que départ à quai numéro trois? Now I suppose they just send an mp3 to the kids' iPhones or something.)

But all the knowledge that Dr. Google (that's Dr. Google, PhD in acquatic avians, not Dr. Google, MD) has put at our fingertips tells us that there is definitely no such species. I really hope Dash's teacher didn't inadvertently show them this BBC clip from 2008, which turned out to be an April Fool's Day hoax.

If he comes home talking about the spaghetti harvest next week, I suppose we'll know something's up.

(The title is this adorable book by Oliver Jeffers, which confirmed our suspicions that penguins don't fly unless shot out of a cannon. Then again, it would lead one to believe that they're quite partial to playing backgammon, so I'm not sure this is the ideal resource for those of you looking to find out more.)

Raindrops keep falling on my daydreams

Mabel is very much enjoying this song these days. It may have taken over from One Dozen Monkeys, at least for a while. I think it's hilarious that my budding grammar maven insists on expanding "you'll" to "you will", with no care for scansion.

I think she's really going to get into the Christmas spirit in a week or two. Yesterday she ran up to me:
"Mummy, sing 'Redolf, the rud...', 'Redulf the rod...' ... sing the song about the reindeer."

The thing she's messing with in the video is one of those devices for hooking bikes on the back of a car. Sadly, no longer much use to us as B left his bike out front one too many times and it disappeared. So the frame thing came into the house, and Mabel found it this morning and decided it was her pilates machine. She's doing exercises on it while she sings, you'll notice.

The kids are mostly mystified by what pilates is, I realise. It's just this mystical place I disappear to on Wednesday evenings (sometimes), and I'd love to know what their little minds envision when they think of it. Earlier in the week I had brought my pilates mat into the house, and they unrolled it and gave themselves a pilates class. "This is a very difficult pilate," Dash advised Mabel, as he contorted himself in to some sort of pushup on the mat.

Which brings me to my other traffic-stopping revelation for the day: it's much nicer to think about exercising than to actually do it. I was happy with my new decision to start running (walking briskly in expensive clothes, whatever), and it was lovely to think about how nice it will (firmly using the future tense, none of these hypotheticals for me) be when I am fit. But B was almost unseemly in his enthusiasm, and made sure to bring me to the running shop this morning to buy some good shoes. "There's no rush," I assured him, but off we went anyway.

The man in the shop asked me how much running I was doing, when I said we'd come to get me some shoes. "Well, none, yet." Really, who buys shoes after they've started running? Isn't the right thing to do to get the shoes first? He found me some shoes in my size with a "neutral" gait, to see how I looked on the treadmill.

"You're familiar with running on a treadmill, right?"
"Um, no. No, I don't think I've ever been on one, really." I did use the elliptical machine a few times when we lived in Texas and had a tiny gym attached to our apartment complex, but I steered clear of the treadmill. It just didn't look very interesting.
"Okay. I'll set it to a walking pace. Probably somewhere between three and four miles an hour for you."
We settled on 2.9, because I was in danger of falling off the back.

He pointed out the various wierdnesses of my gait, and I mentioned my vertiginous arches, and he came back with a new pair of shoes that felt bouncy and snug. I was sent for a little run outside and assured that the people around here were used to seeing people who didn't look as if they should be exerting themselves running around the square. Once around the plaza was just about as far as I'm able to run, it turned out, so I looked perfectly reasonable until I reached the doors and flopped myself back in, a tad out of breath. We had a little conversation about how people who are aerobically fit when they start running are prone to injury because they push themselves harder than their bones and muscles can cope with at first. I agreed that I would probably not have that problem.

Then, the piece de restistance: I needed a decent sports bra. The ones I wear for pilates are from before I had babies, which makes them at least six years old, and not exactly the right size in several directions, besides being not nearly sturdy enough for running purposes. I tried on a few, and, as I had feared, had to accept that the best one for me was the most ugly, most industrial strength model there. I may look a little too well-upholstered for comfort, but damnit if I won't bounce. At least, some parts of me might be bouncing - let's charitably say my feet, in their new shoes - but my boobs will be bound tightly to my chest in perfect, immobile squishedness.

As we left the shop, I told B that he can wrap it all up and put it under the tree, because of course I'm not going to use any of this stuff yet. That would take all the enjoyment out of my daydreaming.

A new phase

It's all but impossible to narrow your own child's personality down to a few simple traits - they have so many facets, and so many personas - you know, it's almost as if they're whole people who won't fit into little predefined boxes, just like you and me ...

So please indulge me as I now do exactly that, just a little bit. Because I seem to see Dash's personality emerging anew these days, and it's amazing. I don't know if this is how he'll be as he grows up, or if it's just another step along the way, but I love it. He was an active baby, always on the go, kicking hard from the very start. (And I mean the very start. Before he was even out, he'd take my breath away with the thumps.) He was the sort of toddler who's like a wind-up force of destruction: put him down and he was off, straight into the nearest thing he could pull down and take apart. He was a preschooler who couldn't be left alone with a non-board-book: he would just rip them up, because they were there and he could. His paintings at nursery school were huge swathes of black, his drawings were scribbles, his scissor skills lacked accuracy. In short, his fine motor skills had not yet caught up with his gross ones. Which is pretty much the norm for a boy of his age.

Then there was the valley of four-and-a-half, this time last year, when an ocean of self-consciousness swept over him and he was almost swallowed up by the embarassment and terror of just being, especially in public, and life was difficult for a while. This year he's emerging like that most cliched butterfly from a chrysalis, and contrary to everything I expected as I watched him grow, it seems that maybe here I have the bookish child I always not-so-secretly hoped for, after all.

He's still active - his favourite thing at the moment is to ride his bike round and round in ever decreasing circles, and he wants a Razor scooter for Christmas. But it seems his fingers have finally caught up with his imagination. He can happily spend ten minutes at a time (which is an age, for him - he runs on dog years, I think; except when in the bathroom, at which point endless aeons telescope into mere seconds as he stares into space and forgets why he's there) drawing a huge-armed person, or an intricate pattern, and colouring it in carefully, and even labelling it; or painstakingly writing a two-line story, asking at every word how it should be spelled.

[Sample story, intriguingly entitled "How the Hoverbike was Invented". "Once upon a time the scientist invented a new machine. It was a hoverbike." Brief, and to the point, if somewhat lacking in the detail I was so hoping for. Also, "How God Made the World: God made the world by the big bang." Fascinating stuff, from the child of two atheist agnostic ex-Catholics.

Related aside: Mabel came upstairs yesterday while I was getting dressed, turned on the bedside light, and announced, "God created the world!" I was a little startled. I came down to discover Dash had just written the above story, which explains it to some extent, but her let-there-be-light moment was entirely spontaneous. Spooky.]

Anyway. Today we went to the National Harbour, which was very nice, if a little more commercial than I was expecting, what with all the shops, and the frankly Vegas-esque feeling of the convention center, and we thought we might stay for the lighting of the tree. (We didn't, because they spent so long getting around to it that it was time to go home before they'd started. It was still very pretty, though.)

Tree, pre-lighting; harbour; sunset.

Dash pestered me for a small notebook in CVS, so I shelled out a dollar for his art, and while Mabel was jumping off benches and dancing to the warming up choir, her brother was diligently drawing designs for several options for the mechanism of his immortality machine (to be brought out on limited release, friends and family members only, when we're old so we don't die). It will be operated either wirelessly or by a stick. I think. Here, he can explain it to you.

All clear?
I love this kid. I can't wait to see what he does next.


(And while I'm at it, here are Mabel and her dad, for your further entertainment.

)

Meet the babies

- Mabel, how many more babies do you think you need?
- Lots.

You have no idea how hard it was to get them all to sit up straight with their eyes open, facing the camera, without any kicking and biting going on.

Mabel would like to introduce you to everyone:

A few more group shots:

Baby can-can

Square o' babies

With our proud Mama/overlord

Hanging out, watching TV. We seem to have been infiltrated by Baby Elmo.
He's a bit furry, but hey, he's a baby too, so it's okay.

Meanwhile, T-Rex realises he's fallen out of favour. I have a bad feeling about this.

 

 Dun-dun-duuuuunnnnn....

38 Candles

I woke up this morning to discover to my delight that Mabel had stayed dry all night. It was her first night without a pullup - she had gone to the bathroom with me at her 10pm waking, and now, at 7am, she was still dry. (And don't think she hadn't had a drop to drink in the meantime. I can personally guarantee that she had.) Even more happily, I was awake enough to hustle her to the bathroom straight away - we can thank the 8pm power cut that ensured early nights all round for that one - and the miracle was complete.

"Mabel," I declared as she put the stuff where it was supposed to go, "You are officially out of nappies."
"No, I'm not," she said, laughing uproariously at silly Mummy.
"No? Why?"
"I'm not a fish! You said I was a fish."

All this was so wonderful and amusing that I had honestly forgotten as I came downstairs why Monkey would be waiting impatiently for me at the bottom and handing me a homemade card depicting his newest superhero creation ("Flystomp").

So, just like Sally Albright, I'm going to be 40. But it's still "someday". That's okay for now.

 And I got a lovely present.

What more could anyone ask for?

Mus. App.

My children have a limited musical repertoire. Beyond the regular nursery rhymes and such fare, I mean. I blame myself for not playing music around them, but honestly, the noise around here is such on a daily basis that if I have anything else in the background, it just pushes me over the edge. I used to love to cook to music on the radio, but now my soundtrack to dinner is more often a loop of "She hit me!" and "He grabbed my horsie!" and "GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN BEFORE I DROP A HEAVY OBJECT ON YOUR HEAD ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE." Adding Amy Winehouse to the mix just wouldn't help matters.

We will not discuss how far behind the times I am with current music. I have probably not heard of anyone popular, beyond Lady GaGa, who I mostly know for her bizarre clothing choices. If I heard one of her songs in the mall, I probably wouldn't recognise it. I understand now how people earn the scorn of their children for being so behind the times: I won't know a single hit of the late noughties when they're all golden oldies.

In the car I sometimes put on the classical station, and Mabel likes to ask for the violins (she's been watching some Little Einsteins, bless their cotton socks and conductor's baton and stacatto jumping over icebergs). Until recently, Monkey wouldn't countenance anything that wasn't the theme to the Spider-Man cartoon or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, but there are a couple of other songs that have been in their orbit for so long that they never sounded new: namely, Don't Fence Me In (the slow one by Ella Fitzgerald, or the fast one by David Byrne) and what Mabel likes to call "Bum Bum Bum" - otherwise known as Mr Sandman. (Listen: you'll see why.)

I love to hear Mabel suddenly break into a few bars of "Mister Sandman, b'ing me a dweam..." as we go round the supermarket. Gives her such an air of sophistication, I think.

Recently, however, I was trying to broaden their horizons a tad and had put on some Beatles. Monkey suddenly professed to think Ticket to Ride was the best song ever, and has been asking for it since. Today in the otherwise deserted playground, as he slowly spun around belting out, "She's got a ticket to ra-ad. She's got a ticket to ra-a-ad..." and Mabel picked it up from the swings: "...She's got a ticket to ri-hide, and she don... doesn't care."

That's my gramatically correct two-year-old. My heart, it overflows with editorial pride.

Monkey sings along to Ella. Don't miss the big finale.

House matters

Yes, Hugh Laurie, aka Dr House, does matter. We still watch him religiously (if you can download your weekly worship from the IMDB at a time that suits you), though we have a slight suspicion that maybe he jumped the shark a while ago. Yesterday, out of the blue (actually, because Kai Penn turned up on an old episode of Buffy) I got all riled up all over again about how annoying and unnecessary the whole Kutner suicide storyline was, because everyone knew they'd just shoved it in there because he'd left the show to be Obama's advisor on lupus (or something), and it was ridiculous to see Taub and the others feeling all terrible and guilty about not having hadn't noticed his depression when we all knew that was because IT WAS TOTALLY FABRICATED AFTER THE FACT. Bah.

But that's not even remotely what I was going to talk about. I was just going to show you some photos of our new carpet, and stuff. Sorry if I got off on the wrong foot there.

Here's a photo of the disreputable Dr House, to make up for any disappointment. But make sure you come right back.

I finally got around to ordering the runner I wanted for upstairs. The wood floor is lovely, but had some big obvious stains on it that wouldn't come out (probably dog pee, our floor guy said; delightful), also it's a bit chilly underfoot and noisy. This is exactly what I wanted, and after I'd sent back the extra tiles I mistakenly ordered, quite good value. It's from FLOR, as you'll have guessed if you see as many online ads for them as I do. But I invented the pattern all by myself.


Also, in a moment of pure inspiration, I picked up a sideboard at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago for $25. It's exactly the style I wanted - just right in our 1967 house beside our inherited dining table - and if I ever actually manage to refinish it, I'll then put things in it and it will be useful. At the moment I'm still basking in my great bargain.

Here it is under some lovely flowers that just arrived from my brother-in-law because he was here for dinner on Tuesday. If people sent me flowers every time I cooked them dinner ... well, I'd have no vases left, that's what. Luckily, these ones came already in a vase with water, which I particularly liked about them. The painting is an original of B's (high) school, a wedding present from our best man.


Remember our new sofa (photo at the bottom there)? This is the deconstructed version.


And finally, if you're even still here, I ordered some great alphabet cards from Secret Agent Josephine and put them on the wall in the family room (inspired by her photo of her daughter with the cards similarly stuck above her desk); but since Mabel still thinks things should be on the floor more often than a table, and Monkey is prone to pulling up anything that might be trying to remain stuck down, I had to put them at least a bit out of reach. I hope they're low enough to read. Mabel was delighted with them as she saw them go up, and I love the way the colour of the wall makes them look almost as if they're painted right there.


Sorry about the light coming through the window there. If you go to Brenda's post here or her Etsy page, you can see them properly, and maybe even buy some for your own monkeys. I was really happy to order something from her, because she's a great artist with a lovely blog, and I actually met her last year when she visited Bethany near here.

Finally, here's Mabel, bouncing.