"Wanna hear something gross?"

Sarah, you may want to skip this one.

Somehow, despite talking all afternoon (since she can't talk in class, she has all this crazy pent up talking energy when she gets home), she managed to save one gem as her third bedtime stall tactic:

"Hey, Daddy, wanna hear somefing gross dat happened at recess today?"

Dave was drawn in, "Sure."

"Dere was a dead bird on da ground and everyone fought it was so gross, so I picked it up by its beak and frew it over da fence. It was O'Shaun's bird because he found it, but I frew it over da fence and we all laughed."

"Um, Mabes, you probably shouldn't pick up dead birds because there could be bugs or germs on it."

"It's okay, Daddy, dere were no bugs on it. Only feaders. And den I went into da class and washed my hands wif soap, and went back to playing."

Even though it was hours after the fact, I went in and made Mabes use a bunch of hand sanitizer. I tried to hide my face so she couldn't see how horrified I was by the dead bird story, or how much I was trying not to laugh. Gross.

Time to hike up the jeans and get a mom haircut

I am officially a minivan mom. A small part of me feels like I should be embarrassed, but I'm not. I don't pretend to be cool and I'm nothing if not practical, so bring on the swagger wagon! It's shiny and black and we've named it Bullet Bill. And while power sliding doors were on my "it would be nice but it's not necessary" list, they make me giddy and I'm now angry that my house doesn't have power doors. When I hit the button to open the door for Mabes, she just smiles and says, "Fank you, van!"


Annabelle is getting better at crawling. She had been just rolling/scooting around, and then one day last week she decided she wanted my IPod. Smart girl.

As of today, she's able to stay up on her knees more:

Notice Mabes and the giant scrape on her right knee. The boy who laughed at her when she spilled her juice at lunch pushed her on the playground on Friday. I understand that these things happen, and Mabes wasn't too broken up about it, but I was ready to exact revenge at 2 am Saturday morning when Mabes kept waking up due to the painful knee. She's doing better now.

"I look like a grandma!"

What does that make you think of? Bifocals? Canes? Macrame shawls?

The above statement was made once she got her helmet and sunglasses on and hopped on her bike. We were heading out for a walk on the greenway--evenings are gorgeous now that the humidity is pretty much gone. And I was just giggling as Mabes rode her bike, proudly waving at others and tooting her horn (literally). Sure, in her mind, grandmas sew, quilt, crochet, and provide comfy laps in which to read stories, but they also wear helmets and sunglasses and ride bikes ridiculous distances.

*Some* talking

Mabes is absolutely loving school. She loves learning, she loves her teacher, she loves the kids, and to my huge relief, she is behaving! She's a sweet girl and I love her more than anything, but she is a ball of energy that can be difficult to contain, so I worried about how she'd do. Each day, she'd bring home her folder, I'd initial by the "excellent" stamp, we'd talk about her day, and she'd tell me about the trouble makers. Last week, on our way home, I asked how she did. She said she did well, but that everyone was pretty crazy and they were distracting her. We got home, I looked in her folder, smiled a little, and said, "Uh oh Mabes...it says 'some talking.'"

I thought it was funny, especially since she had already said that everyone was chatty. Kids have off days, right? Only "some talking" from Mabes is practically a miracle. Mabes was pretty upset about it, though, and did not want to tell Dave. I assured her it was okay, it wasn't a big deal, and that she'd do better the next day. I don't want a doctor telling her she's pre-ulcer when she's 9, though my parents never put pressure on me, so maybe some things can't be prevented. Since then, she's gotten all "terrific" and "great" stamps.

She does have some interesting stories about school. On the second day, I sent her with a juice box and she spilled a little at lunch. A kid laughed at her, and she has since referred to him as "the boy who laughed at me when I spilled my juice at lunch." She's very matter-of-fact about it and doesn't seem upset, she just wants to make sure we know. A couple of days later, she was a bit smug when she told us how the boy who laughed at her when she spilled her juice at lunch got his name on the board. He's kind of crazy, she said.

Though her favorite friends are Maria and Autumn (even though she referred to her as Fall the first week), she proudly told me that at lunch, she was nice to the boy who laughed at her when she spilled her juice at lunch and she told him funny jokes and now they were friends. "Now dat he sees dat I'm funny and nice, maybe he won't laugh at me if I spill my juice at lunch." Way to go, Mabes.

Not another liberal arts major!

Last week, Mabes decided she should publish a newspaper. I have no idea where this idea came from; we don't subscribe to a paper, though we sometimes pick up the Sunday edition. Even that has become rare, though. She asked how to spell "newspaper," I told her, and she produced this:

In case you can't tell, the cover stories (in picture form, of course, since they are worth a thousand words) are:

-Squirrels. We have one in the backyard we call Lloyd. He climbs the trees and suns himself on our deck. And the whiskers are intentionally drawn large, to let the reader know that squirrels do, in fact, have whiskers.

-Soccer. World cup fever has broken, but apparently Mabes is still thinking about it. The arrows show that the soccer player is running fast, and that protrusion pointing to the soccer ball is his knee. Dave and I both asked.

-Mabes playing Mario Brothers. Of course. She is obsessed, I tell you. On the way home from school yesterday, out of the blue she lamented, "Mommy, I always fink about Mario. I can't fink about anyfing else!" The first step is admitting you have a problem, right?

-Trains. It's a crazy curvy train because Mabes is a crazy girl.

She also cut up one of Dave's old resumes and taped bits of it to the paper, since newspapers have words. I didn't have the heart to tell her that printed news was a dying medium and that perhaps her time was better served working on a squirrel-and-Mario-news-related app.

My little Annabelle has the sweetest smile...

Dear little Annabelle, won't you stay awhile?*

I can't believe she's already 8 months old. She's calmed down a little, but Annabelle still has her days of endless screeching. She’s back to good sleeping, so I can’t complain. On Tuesday, she took a 4 (!) hour nap, and has slept through the night 3 nights in a row. Now that I’ve typed that out, she’ll be up 5 times tonight.

"Why is it that the harder I try to get Murray, the farther away he is? And I get stuck under this chair?"

We’ve found that the screeching can sometimes be alleviated by singing her new favorite song, the title of this post. Doing the accompanying dance also helps. She’s now pretty good at pushing herself up to sitting, and continues to roll and army crawl wherever she needs to go. She’ll get on her hands and knees and rock or crawl backwards a little, but she has yet to go more than a couple inches forward. She’s also able to put her own pacifier back in her mouth. Mabes never really cared for a pacifier, so I wasn’t sure when this would happen. For some time now, I’ve put her to bed with a pacifier in her mouth and one in her hand, since she would yank out the one in her mouth to play with it, only to then get upset that it was no longer in her mouth. This week I noticed that she was waking up with a different one in her mouth than the one in her mouth when I put her to bed. As I put her to bed tonight I had a flashback to when my mom would put my baby brother down with a pacifier in his mouth and one in each hand. He’d rotate them throughout the night, and he always had to have three pacifiers.

Wailin' on her guitar from Uncle David

That baby brother starts college this week. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my mom about how Mabes starting school was this new, huge chapter in my life. I have a kid in school now, and that won’t end until… “you’re my age?” my mom answered. Shortly before Mabes was born, my parents came to visit and brought a giant box of baby clothes my sister sent. As we sorted through them, my dad had a funny look on his face and said, “As I’m watching you hold up the nightgowns and sleepers, I kept thinking of night wakings and diaper explosions and realized what a long road you have ahead of you and thought, ‘Man, poor Allison and Dave!’ But then I thought of the fun—the first smiles, first laughter, first steps, the funny things they say and do, the family trips, the school plays, the sports…and I realized you guys have some really great things ahead of you.”

As I gave Annabelle her pacifiers tonight, I thought about how it seems like only yesterday David had his pacifier collection and awesome bowl haircut. I thought about how my parents are now officially empty nesters, and after a day like today, that sounds kind of nice. But then I check myself--I know that soon enough, days like today will seem like a foggy memory and I’ll long for this:

Of course I took a picture.

It’s hard enough that my brother is old enough to go to college, so I’ll just savor these moments while I can.


*You totally want to watch Three Amigos now, huh?

I didn't cry!

Let's go ahead and get that out of the way right now. Dave accused me of having a heart of stone, but honestly, I think it was a combination of being frazzled due to running late this morning and having my emotional breakdown ahead of time. Which was nice, because Mabes didn't see it. I was doing fine until last night when Dave said, "You know, she can be crazy sometimes, but I really hope school doesn't change her one bit. She's pretty awesome." And I lost it.

She was so excited, but was pretty patient while we took pictures. Schools here do a staggered start for kindergarten, so even though school started last Wednesday, because of where we fall in the alphabet, Mabes started today with only a couple of other students. Tomorrow, her whole class will be there. She met her teacher and saw the classroom last week at an open house, so she felt pretty confident strolling in. She greeted her teacher, sat down, and was ready for the day.

We left, and Annabelle and I had a pretty busy day of errand-running and cleaning. And of course I had to make cookies for Mabes to come home to for her first day. We went to pick her up, and as I saw the teachers bringing the kindergartners out for pick-up, Mabes looked awesome. Not crazy, not shy--just comfortable and very grown-up. As soon as she saw me, she had a huge smile on her face and said, "Mommy, I LOVE kindergarten!"

We got home, ate cookies, talked about her day, and called the grandparents. I can't remember who she told what, but here's pretty much her answer to "how was your first day of kindergarten?":

"It was awesome! We played wif puzzles and we made a raccoon puppet because we read Dah Kissing Hand and we learned about raccoons and how dey go to school but dey go to school at night because raccoons are awake at night and sleep during dah day and den we played wif musical instruments and I took a test on dah computer about letters and rhyming and maf and I was dah best, well, dah lady helping me said I was perfect and I know I did great and we went outside to play and a boy in an orange stripe shirt chased me and a girl in a pink shirt around and I didn't like it so I ran fast like a cheetah and hid in a hole and tried be camouflaged and yelled 'you can't find me!' but den he found me so I had to run fast like a cheetah again and den for lunch we went to dah cafeteria and I could get whatever I wanted and I got cereal with marshmallows and raisins, macaroni and cheese, pear, chocolate milk, and CANDY! It was a really fun day."

Aaaaaand breathe. So yes, she enjoyed her day. Everyone promised me she'd be exhausted after a long school day, but that hasn't hit yet. Maybe tomorrow? When she told me about her lunch, I was a little nervous about what she may have purchased. I put money in her account and then she can pretty much buy what she wants with her number. I realized later I didn't go over menu options and talk about limiting what she got. Fortunately, with the system the school uses, I can check her purchases online. Turns out she bought the standard lunch and the "cereal with marshmallows" was trail mix, and she didn't buy any extra desserts or rounds of chocolate milk for her entire class.

She can't wait to go back tomorrow.