Seven.

This girl turned seven today.
I realized, after referencing last year's post to get my interview questions, that I really need to interview her BEFORE we do whatever exciting birthday activity she has chosen. Because just as last year's post was VERY Stingray Intensive, I'll let you take a wild stab at what exciting activity Harper got to enjoy for the very first time this morning (with her dear friend Miss J):

1. Harper, at what age is a person a grown-up? "20. I think, is that about right?"

2. If you could be invisible for one day, what would you do? "Sneak up on people?" (me: That's the same thing you said last year!) AND take toys that are on the ground. To make THEM invisible."

3. What is something that makes our family special? "Getting to go ice skating with you."

4. Are you a good friend? (nods) Why? "Because I'm funny and I like to play."

5. How would the world be different if animals could talk?  "They could tell you what they wanted."

6. What is the best thing about being a kid? "Getting to ice skate."

7. The worst thing? "Schoolwork."

8. Where is your favorite place in the world?  "Kemah AND the ice skating rink."

9. If you could give one gift to every child in the world, what would it be? "a unicorn for the girls, and a baseball bat and baseball for the boys."

10. What are five adjectives that describe you? "Funny. She has curly hair, hazel eyes, lost 4 teeth, likes to play with horses. She likes to ice skate, roller skate, and do gymnastics. Is that five?"

11. If you could invent something, what would it be? "A horse park."

12. If you could make one rule that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? "DON'T LITTER."

13. What is your favorite:
--color? pink
--smell? "Candles. Good smelling ones. And flowers. Roses and magnolias."
--food? "For breakfast, oatmeal muffins. For lunch, Amy's burritoes. For dinner, dumplings from PF Chang's. Also chocolate chip cookies."
--book? "Probably Magic Treehouse. And Pooh!"
--activity? "Ice Skating! And drawing."
--sound? "The sound of dragonflies buzzing. And Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal chipping."
--animal? "Stingray, octopus, horses, cows, cardinals, and robins."

14. What does Daddy like to do? "Watch t.v. I told you he was going to watch LOTS of t.v. all summer long!"

15. What does Mommy like to do? "Watch me ice skate and roller skate and do gymnastics. She likes to watch ME."

16. What makes you special? "I'm good at LOTS of things on my first time."

17. What do you most want to do? "Ice skate EVERY day!"

18. What would you write a book about? "Horses and unicorns."

19. What is your favorite thing to wear? "Shirts with flowers and pink ones. All my clothes. And shorts. Pretty clothes and dresses."

20. Describe what you look like: "Tall, curly hair, hazel eyes, lost 4 teeth. SEVEN."

21. What are you looking forward to this year? "Ice skating MORE and gymnastics and USING my birthday presents."

22. What is your favorite song? "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

23. What are some things you accomplished as a 6 year old? "Cartwheel. Handstand. I liked playing with my friends and doing presentations (with our Classical Conversations group)."

24. What do you hope this year brings? "ICE SKATING. Telling time, being flexible (which she means literally and not personality-wise), having fun, doing art."

So, I guess you have ascertained that Harper chose to go ice skating for the first time this morning. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, and was so pleasantly surprised that she LOVED it. She was fearless and tenacious, not minding at all the few rather painful-looking spills she took. The skating instructor was very sweet, several times sweeping her up into dramatic lifts:
This has been a year of growing confidence. A year in which the cartwheel has been mastered, and upside down has become more common than right-side up: You've become an independent reader, and a lover of books, which is, naturally, to my great delight. You and Hudson are true and abiding play-mates, and your disagreements have been few, your joys in shared adventure manifold. You are learning to be more and more patient with Helena, and I predict this is the year she will enter in as an almost-equal. You are navigating the oft-confusing world of peer relationships with equal parts enthusiasm and caution, which I think is as it should be. You like to be Alpha, and are learning, with some resistance, that it is sometimes acceptable to be Beta, or Gamma, or even Omega. You are eager to learn about birds and music and stars and horses and volcanoes and tarantulas and the physics of the hula hoop. You are insatiably curious about every detail of every single living thing. And also minerals. You wonder what other people are doing when you aren't there. You aren't keen on my going places without you, because of what you might be missing.

You are around 46 inches tall, and you weigh around 44 pounds. You wanted me to bake oatmeal muffins for breakfast, and you requested chocolate (Pioneer Woman) cupcakes, with white (Pioneer Woman) frosting, sprinkles, and pink jelly beans as your special birthday treat. You wanted to read House at Pooh Corner (which was a present from the Grandparents Pate) before bed. The one where Pooh falls into a pit and lands on poor Piglet. You giggled about poor squashed Piglet and Pooh not realizing he himself was the one doing the squashing.And then they find Small on Pooh's back.

You asked for, and received, a charm bracelet with three charms (plus a gift card for another), a tiny Peter Rabbit china tea-set, a hula hoop, some real watercolors, a red velvet pillow, a Playmobile swimming pool set, some tiny overalls for your stuffed frog Frog E. Doo, a tiny leotard for your stuffed dog Sasha, and a wonderful morning of skating with a dear friend.

Aren't we full, my sweet, sweet, dear daughter? Brimming. And thankful.

It was all very moving

I'm going to summarize the move to the new place with some statistics. Because statistics are tidy and quick and there are, unfortunately, still boxes I need to tend to.

 **Number of days in the new house (which has stairs, about which the kids had been almost overcome with GLEE and JOYFUL ANTICIPATION) before Harper proclaimed, "We need an ELEVATOR!": ONE.

 **Number of emotional breakdowns (completely without merit) the kids had while I was trying to unpack boxes: SIX.

 **Number of days the kids spent in Port Neches with my parents (the first time they've ever been away without me) so that I could pack UP boxes without any emotional breakdowns (other than my own): FOUR.

 **Number of trips up and down the stairs while moving in and unpacking: INFINITY.

**Number of times I used my handy pocket box cutter while moving in and unpacking: INFINITY. (I love this thing so much that I am even using it now when there is no box tape to cut.)

 **Number of times I really needed to wash my hands on the day we moved in, but couldn't because I had forgotten to bring soap of any kind. Or paper towels. Or even Purell: INFINITY.

 **Number of really disgusting things that hasn't happened to any of the kids even EVER that happened while I didn't have any soap or paper towels or even wipes: ONE.

**Percentage of our garage (we have one! A garage! We didn't at the old place) taken up with boxes filled with things that may or may not have never been unpacked when we last moved almost 3 years ago: One-third. (this is actually closer to one-fourth after the husband spent some time out there today)

**Number of severe thunder storms, including hail, we experienced the night we moved in, during which it would have been super awesome to park our cars in the garage (which YES, we fully intend to do): ONE.

**Number of trips I took to Ikea while deciding on and ordering our furniture: SEVEN possibly EIGHT.

 **Number of pairs of shoes I bought at Ikea while deciding on and ordering our furniture: TWO.

**Total price of two pairs of Ikea shoes: $5.

**Number of pairs of shoes I bought at Ikea that, the husband duly noted, make me look as though I am shuffling down the courthouse hallway, while shackled, on the way to my arraignment: ONE.

 **Number of pairs of Ikea shoes that the husband duly noted could not POSSIBLY be any uglier:  ONE.

**Number of $1 ice cream cones I bought at Ikea while deciding on and ordering our furniture: TWO possibly THREE.

That is going to have to be it for now because I just spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to load pictures on the ipad, after which I finally gave up. After which I had to find the power cord for the laptop and wait for it to clickety clack its way into the internet. I'll close with before and after shots:

Dear house on Kinglet,

You vastly improved our life almost 3 years ago when you provided us with a wonderful, shaded back yard, and rooms for all of us to sleep without anyone needing to be in a closet.  We will miss you and your wonderful foliage.

Dear new house,

We like you and you are pretty and you smell terrific and we believe that those trees have real potential.

Hudson at five and a third

I should be packing, so instead I'm going to sit here and write some things about Hudson. Because if I don't do it now, I might not ever. Unlike packing, which is an unfortunate inevitability.

 I'm doing this on my laptop to see if the spacing issues are the ipad's fault.

 We ran into the grocery store Tuesday night (after dinner at Berryhill, where kids eat FREE on Tuesday) and on our way out, the receipt came out of one of the bags and began to blow away. I charged Hudson with catching it, and he did. "Hudson! You saved the day!" I enthused. "Well," he demurred, "not the ENTIRE day." Endearingly modest, that boy.

 He's been a little scowly and growly lately, and I'm not sure why. He likes to retort, "It doesn't make SENSE!" when I've asked him to do something incredibly difficult and offensive, like empty the bathroom trashcan. On the bright side, he is getting along pretty well with his sisters most of the time. And at the zoo on Wednesday, I happened to overhear this conversation with his friend T:

 T: Let's play "Cars"! I'll be Finn McMissile!(interestingly, to my knowledge, T has never seen "Cars" but is willing to embrace the characters with Hudson, in the same way our princess-loving friend Izzy used to indulge Harper in all of her Lightning needs)

Hudson: I want to be Finn!

 T: I know! We can BOTH be Finn!

Hudson: YEAH!

 And off they drove with their fingers pointed like missiles. It has been my experience that if a little girl had been involved in that negotiation, it would not have resolved so quickly and joyfully. A certain girl in my family would definitely have pointed out the IMPOSSIBILITY of there being more than one Finn.

 Another curl crop has occurred. Will this be the one from which the curls won't return?

He has been playing lots of basketball (in the house mostly, though we've promised a goal at the new house) and he is really good at dribbling. He can pass between his legs and everything. It's only slightly less noisy than the drumming. Hudson is just drawn to all things percussive. Also, when we were at the ranch on Saturday, several people who observed him throwing a football with the Daddy noted that he has an impressive spiral. At his size, he'll definitely need to be super scrappy if he's going to play sports. Like John Stockton (or wait, is that the really old guy that ran for vice-president that time?) or Doug Flutie.

 That will be all, I think. Maybe I'll be back later. Because the albatross about my neck is lighter when I sit at the computer.

Sometimes I dance in the minivan

Usually when we are stopped at a long stop light. My moves are straight from the late 80's and are very entertaining for the kiddies and also, perhaps, random strangers sitting in the cars nearby.

 It's funny to me that several friends have been sent their congratulations when they've received emails "sent from my ipad." It shows that they understand me, their friend the Luddite.

 I still haven't packed a single box, and we move in one week.

 Here are some words that Helena pronounces in an especially funny way:

 1. "Minimals": minerals
 2. "Mr. Cardigan": Mr. Cardinal
3. "Smeh-smee Stree": Sesame Street
 4. "Messin": medicine
 5. "Stained up": stand up

 There are many more, and the big kids RELISH pointing them out, even though they each had their very own special speech impediments at this age.

 I'm sorry to report that I think I've decided to get a beige couch. I don't think my personality really screams "Gentle Neutral Color Scheme" but I decided I don't want red, and the navy is too dark. I sat on the green one for a while on Saturday, and tried to envision it in my life for the next 10 years, but I decided we just needed to stay friends. For its many virtues, Ikea does not offer a plethora of color choices. I did flirt with the idea of the white for a couple of days, but decided that it would be too stressful. I've discovered I really like ticking stripes, but thus far the only offerings I've found were at Pottery Barn and Ethan Allen. I don't exactly remember who Ethan Allen was in the scope of American (British?) history, but he was VERY proud of his furniture. My bedroom furniture growing up was a yellow set from Ethan Allen. My friend Stephanie Sue had the same set. Mine is, in fact, still in my old room at my parents' house.

 I have a few cute pictures from our last day of Classical Conversations. Maybe I'll figure out how to do pictures on this contraption and do a whole post about our year.

 The husband just got home from an evening at the gun range with a couple of other professors. He took the Glock for a spin and she (he?) apparently did mighty fine. We went to a ranch on Saturday (it's funny that this really does happen more than usual when one lives in Texas) and got to ride in a horse drawn carriage driven by a octogenarian. I realized that those ladies in the Jane Austen novels weren't just being ninnies when they complained about how taxing traveling by carriage was. There are no shock absorbers. And also I was sure I was going to lose Helena, who was on my lap, or Harper, who was to my right, or this sweet 8 year old named Lily, who was on my left, when we cantored down into a ravine. It was delightful all the same.

 I just found a slip of paper on my desk on which I had written, "Hudson: MOMMY! Can you come adjust Helena?? Because apparently, a little chiropractic care is just the thing for a pesky little sister.

 That will have to be all. I really need to go think about all of the packing I have yet to do. ***I promise this post had paragraph breaks in it. Blogspot is VEXING me by refusing to acknowledge my spacing. FIE on you blogspot. FIE!

Happy at you

This is going to be yet another rambling list of things I don't want to forget. Maybe after we move my brain will shift back into some semblance of cohesive thought. Perhaps not, but we can hope.

 1. The husband got a really nice honor on Friday night. The students and professors and administrators at the university where he teaches named him the Opal Goolsby Professor of the Year, which means that they like him. They really, really like him. (Sally Field anyone??). I'm not sure who Opal Goolsby was, but I am certain that her name is awesome. Anyway, he is excellent at what he does and we are proud of him.

 2. The crops are coming along nicely. Actually, just the corn is. The expensive heirloom tomatoes seem rather timid and finicky:

3. Harper looks a bit feral in that picture. Which, actually, is also how she has been acting lately. We've been doing very little school (there was The Sentence Dictation Nightmare of Early April that cued me that maybe it was time for a little break. The offending sentence was, I believe, "May I please play with that chain?" There were tears aplenty. An unchained melody, if you will.) and have instead been playing outside most of the day. Because the weather is in that sweet place of perfection, which generally only lasts a couple of weeks here in Houston.

 4. Helena has been sick off and on (mostly on) for the past month, and just when I think it might be time to actually trek across town to the pediatrician, she will rally and act completely well. Everyone has been pretty sniffly and sneezy and wet-hacky-coughy. Enough about that.

She spends lot of time wearing that ballerina swimsuit (or "bow-weena cossume" in Helenese) and she insists on also having a bun in her hair and socks with her ballet shoes. Please don't think you can deviate from this. Because girls who are in a cycle of sickness will see this as a tremendous affront to ALL bow-weenas and possibly the entire world. And there will be weeping.

 5. We went to the Arboretum one day last week. We saw herons and turtles and also a black fuzzy caterpillar:

They were watching a millipede in that picture. I really love seeing kids crouched over like that, investigating outside. It's exactly opposite to the way I feel when I see them slack-jawed in front of the t.v.

 6. The husband, after many months of threatening to do so, bought me an ipad on Saturday. I am not using it much because I am, quite frankly, afraid of it. And I also haven't figured out how to post pictures yet. I am secretly hoping that he will realize that he actually bought it for himself, and then I can be happily reunited with my three year old laptop that takes a comfortable 8-9 minutes to load my email. Walking into the Apple store (my first visit) made me very nervous. I usually walk by and glance in at all of those people with an emotion, I've realized is equal parts scorn and pity. Similar to the way I might feel while glancing in a methadone clinic. Everyone assures me that I will grow to love my heroin.

 7. I need to finish and go do something productive.

 8. Helena, when she gets in trouble, has started covering her face with her hands. I'd like to think it's real repentance, but I'm pretty sure she's just sad about being caught. She says, "Daddy going to be happy at me?" and then, inevitably, one of the other two will say, very lovingly, "NO! Daddy will NOT be happy at you if you disobey!" and she'll cover her face again and weep.

8. Blogspot seems to have changed some things around and is refusing to post my list with the appropriate spacing, which is annoying. Still, this will have to do.

Let's furnish this.

Well. At 41 years of age, I seem to be a homeowner for the very first time. Actually, the bank will be buying a home for us, as the case may be, and is graciously allowing the husband to give them a portion of his hard-earned income once a month (for an extremely low interest rate, which is why we are really doing this) to let us live in their house. This is a very big deal, considering that I've never even bought my own car.

We are moving in about three weeks and we've also decided to leave behind our living room furniture, which consists of a couch I bought 11 years ago for $400, and an extremely large red floral chair that came with an ottoman that we had to put out on heavy trash day a few months back because the foam was peeking out.
I was feeling a little stressed out about getting rid of perfectly good (though stained, slightly torn, sagging) furniture, then, a few nights ago, the husband and I were sitting on the couch, and my side of it suddenly groaned and gave way with a thump, listing starboard (or was it portside? coxswain? yar?) just like Titanic in the moments after the berg. (Which reminds me that I need to write about this Titanic book I read a few weeks ago. I enjoyed it, as much as an emotional basket case like me can enjoy a book that delves into what it must have been like to actually behold that horrible event). Anyway, the husband was able to prop the couch back up so it didn't look as though it was about to slowly sink beneath our living room floor, but its days are clearly numbered.

Which means I need to find new furniture. Which, per usual, is one of those things most normal people think is really fun, and I manage to turn into an exercise in philosophical ANGST. I decided that first, I need to figure out what I like. I looked at some blogs (the Nester, Young House Love, Pleated Poppy, LLH Designs) which, even though I had just read a blog post reminding me not to let other people and their magnificent talents and gifts as posted on blogs and Pinterest be debilitating, was a trifle intimidating and almost overwhelming. But it was ultimately helpful. It turns out that in general I like just about everything in Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel. Which I believe can be vaguely categorized as Cottage-Style. (the husband actually likes a more modern aesthetic, but is willing to concede that clear plastic chairs that look like the Jetsons' might not be as comfortable as my choice). I like slipcovered couches and chairs, or, as I like to think of it, furniture that is wearing really comfortable clothes that can be washed if someone happens to mark on them with a crayon or throw up on them. It turns out that comfortable, well-made, slipcovered couches and chairs at Pottery Barn etc. cost more than I can BEAR. Then, the heavens opened, and IKEA revealed itself in all its affordable glory. So we went to IKEA on Saturday morning. And I found a couch and also several chairs that are affordable, cute, and also washable. But, because I wanted to make sure I wasn't making some sort of Epic Furniture Mistake, on Saturday afternoon during my Saturday Alone Time, I went to Highland Village to peruse Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Quatrine (for people who think PB and C&B is a little too "mass-produced" for their tastes. The chairs were really lovely, BUT, and this was pleasant to realize, not very comfortable. There was an adorable little kid's slipcovered chair in a charming owl print that was ON SALE for $1100 DOLLARS. ), and Restoration Hardware. There was one chair in Crate and Barrel that made me a little wistful (so soft, it comes in colors like Poppy and Butterscotch and Sage and it Rocks and Also Swivels. It felt womb-like. Not that I remember being in the womb) so maybe we can save up for it, and make do with something similar from IKEA in the meantime.

While I was sitting in the womb chair, I had an existential crisis in which there was a very loud voice in my head that said this: "WHY ARE YOU SPENDING SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY AND MONEY PLANNING ALL OF THIS SITTING DOWN TIME?? GET UP OUT OF THIS CHAIR AND DO SOMETHING TO CHANGE THE WORLD ALREADY. BUY SOME REALLY HARD CHAIRS POST HASTE!!"

That voice is mean and also does not understand me. That voice is the opposite of shabby chic.

So, I'll keep you filled in. Any advice would be appreciated.

Arose

I was looking back at last year's Easter post because I am nostalgic that way, and I was comforted that there are no dramatic changes. Harper and I both wore the dresses we wore last year (my wedding dress--the white linen, I noticed, is beginning to yellow a little. I'm going to look a little like Miss Havisham if I keep this up for much longer) and Helena's hair is slightly more voluminous. As you might be able to ascertain from her expression, Harper was not amenable to the photo shoot. In this one, she was pretending to be Brigitta in "The Sound of Music":
I like how she is choosing to disobey me by reading her Gideon Bible. Rich. Hudson was also irate about the memory making:

I don't know why my posture is so bizarre. I also don't know where we are going to take all of our staged group photos at the new place. I'm going to miss this old oak.

We are moving, and soon. To a house that we are buying and not just renting. It's exhilarating and also frightening. It's also possible I'll be posting more as a way to deny all of the packing and cleaning that needs to happen. So far, I've partially emptied one small kitchen drawer and put some winter clothes in a plastic bin. That just reminded me of this description of hell (or maybe it's just eternity?) in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I can't remember it exactly. Something about birds moving single grains of sand from these mountains of sand to these other mountains of sand. That's kind of how it feels. Only the new mountain of sand is better than the old mountain of sand, in this case. And not sandy. We aren't moving to the beach, just the suburbs. It seems appropriate to end with a little Bob Dylan:

In the fury of the moment
I can see the Master's hand
In every leaf that trembles,
in every grain of sand.