Susan the corncob doll

This is the slightly blurry photo that made it on to the Christmas card.

For the third time this week, I am having leftover pizza and M&M's for lunch. Not pertinent really. The Christmas M&M's were marked down to $2 a bag at Target. I'm lamenting I only bought one.

Just now as I was getting a healthy (no pizza or M&M's) lunch ready for the kids, I looked out the window and noted to Harper, with mild reproach, that she had left her scooter outside in the rain yesterday. "Oh well," she said carelessly, "I don't really play with it MUCH anymore anyway." Which is a sentiment that pretty much sums up why I loathe myself for venturing from the "something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read" plan for Christmas this year. We just finished reading the chapter in Little House on the Prairie when their bachelor neighbor Mr. Edwards braves the swollen creek to bring each of the girls a tin cup, a little cake, a candy cane and a penny. And Laura and Mary were in raptures. Over a tin cup, a little cake, a candy cane, and a penny. I guarantee Laura, for all her naughty thoughts, would have never left her Lightning McQueen scooter out in the rain. And in Little House in the Big Woods she has a corn cob for a doll, for crying out loud. And she loves it.

So, aside from all of my existential angst, Christmas was nice. Harper, Grandmother Pate and I went to see the Houston Ballet's "Nutcracker" with our friends the Swanks:



Harper was mesmerized through the entire performance, and it only solidified her desire to someday become a ballerina who raises stingrays in her spare time.

Hudson got two play guns for Christmas:
Which can be exhausting:

Helena got a stuffed puppy of her very own and also has discovered a freckle on the bottom of her foot that she needs to examine several time a day.

And our backyard is full of tallow leaves, which are rather pretty and also good for jumping:

Blind Wally and the Christmas Miracle

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting dinner together when the door bell rang. It was a lady who'd been out for a walk and had noticed a dog in our front yard. She wondered if he was ours. I am afraid I was rather emphatic that the dog DID NOT belong to us. "I think he's blind," she said sadly. In my infinite mercy for stray animals with life altering disabilities, I suggested she ask the people across the street if they recognized him. Then the husband went out to supervise our relinquishment of any and all responsibility for another stray beast. The neighbors offered to keep the dog in their back yard, because they are kinder than we, obviously. Then, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit, I forgot all about the stray blind dog because I could. He wasn't in my back yard, you see.

So, five days later, the kids and I were walking to the park and we stopped at a red light to wait for our turn to cross the street. I saw a flier taped on the light pole. LOST DOG. I stepped closer, and saw "This is Wally. He is BLIND. Please call if you've seen him!" I made the kids get off their bikes and I called the number, leaving a message that Wally was (hopefully) in our neighbors' back yard. When we got home from the park, I saw a lady and a boy about Harper's age holding an empty leash across the street. She asked if I were Patti, then thanked me profusely and told me she had been grieving for five days, sure that blind Wally had come to a sad end. That she had given up hope. That she really saw this as a Christmas miracle. I'm just glad that, even though I hadn't sacrificed much, I got to play a part in the sweet reunion. There's a lesson embedded there somewhere, right?

What is not a Christmas miracle is that I still have not ordered my Christmas cards. We have one decent picture of all of us, and I can't make it fit into the one template (out of hundreds I perused) I decided is the only one I like. Then I asked the husband if we might just try to take another picture, this one more conducive to a square. And maybe he did or maybe he did not cuss. So then today when everyone was all gussied up for church I though maybe I could get a cute one of the kids by themselves and that would do. Well:





So, I'm off to the tiny prints web-site to make one last effort. I think I may have to cut off part of the husband's head, which, now that I think about it, is pretty emblematic of how he feels when we try to take a family picture. So, apropos.

Sweep in heavenly peace

I've been working on a short story, and by "working on" I mean that I have come up with a title but have yet to actually put any words on the paper, about a mother (no one you know, any similarities with any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental) who realizes that she craves silence so acutely that she turns simple activities that should take only a few seconds, like taking out the recycling, or walking around the front of the minivan to get in after she's strapped in the children, into 10-15 minute Events to Savor The Quiet. The story will be told in third person, naturally, because I can't really identify with a character like that.

We have been trying to stop television. This morning's methadone dose involved dry pinto beans and pearl barley on cookie sheets. Helena, meanwhile, studied her solar system flash cards with her thinking cap on:
(ha. In actuality, she was enslaved in the gray play yard you see behind her in that picture, because Helena + pearl barley and dried pinto beans = EPIC FAIL) And it's possible that I took advantage of this time to take an inordinately long shower, which is possibly another activity that should take a few minutes but instead takes many more because of the Blessed Silence it provides. I mean, hypothetically, of course. Because I am nothing like the mother in my short story. Pure fiction.

We spent the rest of the morning with some new friends at the heretofore undiscovered by us wonderland that is the indoor playscape at a nearby Baptist church. They invite you to play even if you don't go to church there, which is very Christian of them. If I think too much about how much something like that costs, it makes me want to sell my every possession, move to Angola or Nicaragua or Rwanda, and dig wells with the Living Water people. Because in the 2 hours my healthy kids climbed and slid and bounced and delighted themselves, approximately 480 kids across the world DIED because they don't have access to clean water. Yeah. Remember in my last post when I wrote that it is loud in my head? Loud.

When I was cleaning up the pearl barley and pinto beans before dinner, I was balancing the cookie sheet on one hand to get the overflow from the tabletop and I thought to myself, "Wow, it would be a disaster to drop this right now!" so of course, about 2 seconds later, I did drop it, and I can't really convey without a complex physics equation how far and wide will pearl barley and beans scatter when unleashed on a hardwood floor. It was impressive. I pretty much had it swept up and went to find something to act as a dustpan, because I don't know where ours is, and while I was searching, Helena, who had been "helping" me sweep, got into the pile and spread it back all over the floor.

Speaking of cookies, I went to a Christmas cookie exchange at my friend Merry's house last night and it was magnificent. I'm guessing around 40 women, aged 30-80, wine, great conversation, and so many delectable cookies to sample and bring home. I have eaten upwards of a dozen today alone. Some were tiny, but some were not.

Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy.

Well, I have been quite a joy lately. The husband is finishing up a semester in which he has taught a night class two nights a week, which has meant he leaves just after the kids wake up and does not get home until after they are in bed. As much as I do indeed love and cherish my dear children, by Wednesday night of each week I found their every word and deed Incredibly Annoying and my ability to suppress this Extreme Annoyance was nil. I am aware that my temporary situation is a full-time reality for many women, and they have my deep respect and compassion.

The Christmas season also makes me irritable, and then I am irritable because I am irritable. It is loud in my head.

Hudson woke up this morning and was saying, "You've GOT to be KIDDING me!" about everything, which is funny in and of itself, but patently hysterical when his actual pronunciation is along the lines of, "you DOT to be TIDDEN me!" He has been doing more than his usual amount of stomping around with a scowl on his face when there is absolutely not one thing wrong, and I've heard rumors that there is some kind of testosterone surge that happens to boys soon to be four years old, and I suppose that makes good sense. Here he is with a very gun-shaped stick he picked up at the park today and brought home in his jeans pocket. He is also wearing the Daddy's headlamp:He is VERY interested in guns and knives, and has no idea what the majority of mankind actually DOES with guns and knives. Which reminds me that up until this week, when Harper would see someone smoking a cigarette, she would say, "Oh, that lady is enjoying a lollipop!" and I would not correct her, for the same reasons, I suppose, that I don't correct her when she exclaims, upon seeing the smokestacks at the refineries, belching out whatever smoky byproduct it is they belch out, "Cloud makers!! Mommy, that's where the clouds are made!!!" Anyway, yesterday she asked me what a cigarette was. And I asked her where she learned that word and she said from the book about Officer Buckles and Gloria, and he tells the kids, as one of his safety tips, to Stay Away From Cigarettes, a sentence I had skipped over when I read it aloud. Now that she can read, she is going to discover all of the spontaneous editing I do as I read. Anyway, I told her that cigarettes are tobacco leaves wrapped up in white paper and that some grownups like to set them on fire and breath in the smoke but that it wasn't a very healthy habit because our lungs don't work as well as they should with smoke in them. She wandered away at that point. Maybe to go smoke a cigarette, I don't know.

Harper has mastered monkey bars this month, and likes to use it as a verb: "Friend, would you like to monkey bar with me?" she will ask at the park. One day last week our neighbor was over to admire Hudson's drums and he asked Harper if she played any instruments and she replied, "I play piano, harmonica..." and she kind of gazed off into the distance running through the orchestra considering which others she could claim. Harper and Hudson are both infatuated with our neighbors, who are a sweet young couple, newly married. They will stand on the top of the slide peering into their back yard, sometimes singing a little ditty they like to call "Mr. Golightly! Come outside!" Only when Hudson says it, it sounds like Mistuh Dough-yite-yee. When there is a Mistuh Dough-yite-yee sighting, everyone comes running in, breathless and giddy. One day I overheard them making a list of grown-ups who are invited to our house. Mr. Golightly made the list, as did army men and ballerinas and Bear Grylls and karate men and hunters and Survivor Man. I am sorry if you are not on the list. I am not either, apparently.

Last Sunday when everyone was dressed and ready for church, Hudson made a proclamation: "The boys have to be cool and the girls have to be bootiful. That. Is. The point. That is the RULE."

Helena has reached the developmental stage I refer to as "octopus arms". She has realized there is an entire world above her head, heretofore unnoticed and she is determined to partake of it. It's hard to remember to push things out of her reach--on the table, on the kitchen cabinets, on my desk. She has also discovered that if she wants to defer the unpleasantness of a diaper or clothing change for a few minutes, she need only stand up on the changing table and wrap her arms around me for a sweet hug. I will usually stand there for a few minutes rubbing her velvet back, until the sweetness can no longer mask the stench, at which point I have to perform a half Nelson to get her in position. If only a hug could wipe away the poo. Alas.

I have decided that I can no longer hide my disdain for the Berenstain Bears books. I think it was Monday when Harper plopped down a huge stack of them and she and Hudson snuggled in and we made it through four and we were almost to the end of one about pollution and recycling and I read, "And Brother and Sister Bear realized that their Clean the Earth club blabbedy blaggedy blah blah BLAH! And they all picked up their litter and recycled and the world was TIDY and CLEAN THE END NO MORE BERENSTAIN BEARS TODAY. I'M SORRY BUT I CAN'T READ ANOTHER WORD OF THIS PEDANTIC INSIPID TEXT. I SIMPLY REFUSE!!" Okay, maybe I didn't really say 'pedantic'. And honestly, I don't mind the older ones like The New Baby and The Spooky Old Tree. But whenever they started writing Issue Books--blech, the quality of the writing is just poor. I told Harper she can read as many of them as she wants to, as long as she is the one reading them and not me. I'm sorry Stan and Jan (and Mike), I am sure you are lovely people and I'm glad you are very rich.

That will be all. I'm thinking about starting another blog to review the grown-up books I've been reading lately. Of course, I'm also thinking about learning to play the cello and mastering the art of watercolor portraiture. So. Life is short, art is long.

hippo.CAMP.us

It's the area in our brains where we store memories. I read an interesting article about some particular strategies to help folks suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's (maladies in which the hippocampus, for reasons still mysterious, stops working as it should) and the most effective was simply to write things down and let the person read the information. The spoken word flits through our consciousness and evaporates, even in those of us with a healthy hippocampus, but the written word cements itself, imprints itself, and the memory is retained. I've known this about myself, that I have a need to write things down and read them; I am clearly, in the parlance, A Visual Learner. I still remember the names of the two adorable kids who sat in front of us in church on Sunday--Savannah and Canyon--because they had stickers from the nursery on their backs with their names printed on them in block letters. Anyway, interesting but not necessarily germane to anything. Except if I don't write about it I won't remember it. And there is great stuff I want to remember. Like our camping trip.

It was raining and fairly cold for two days leading up to the camping, so we wavered on whether or not we should actually attempt the trip, especially since we were bringing along friends with us. Thankfully, the weather cooperated nicely. We were dismayed upon our arrival at the Stephen F. Austin State Park to find that approximately 8.2 MILLION Scouts from the greater Houston area would be joining us for our camp out. And, even with the previous days' deluge, there was a burn ban, which meant we had to make our s'mores over a propane stove and eat MRE's that the husband picked up at REI. But aside from that, we had a really good time. Helena stayed home with her doting grandparents Pate plus the husband really loves camping and is eager to do just about everything that needs doing, which means I actually got to relax quite a bit. There was a moment when I lay in the quiet tent (after the Scouts finally quit with the yelling) looking up at the stars (we left off the rain flap, which made things a bit chilly, but great for star gazing) with sleeping babies and sleeping husband all curled up around me in their sleeping bags, and I was deeply awed and thankful: for stars and trees and wind and warmth in the cold and family and good friends and rest. It is goodness and bounty and I should remember. I will write it down. And show a few pictures:

June and Harper whistling with laps full of Spanish moss:


Boys in the hoods:


We by the Brazos:

The end.

Dew on the berry

Let's get caught up. Last Wednesday we took the yearly pilgrimage to Dewberry Farm, where the kids had lots of fun doing things that had very little to do with actual farming. I managed to get not one good photo, but when has that stopped me from posting them?:

A large bouncy convex jumping surface (I'm sure there is a technical name for this, but what??):

These fun go-carts:



A "hay" ride, sans hay:


A "pumpkin" patch, which was really just the back 40 with some miniature pumpkins sprinkled about:

And we ended the day with the place all to ourselves after the masses of school kids left. We did the zip line around 20 times each:


We continued the Outdoor Fun with a weekend camping trip, evidence of which will appear in the next post, because while I've been typing up this masterpiece, the big kids have been performing Cirque du Soleil, Lord of the Flies edition out on the swingset, while Helena has been playing in the dog's water bowl and repeatedly dialing China on my old cell phone.

Jesus rains.

The kids and I were in the car and it started raining and a song came on about Jesus and His reign and I was anticipating some questions and was trying to remember if it's homophone or homonym and then I wondered if the DJ had played the song because it was finally raining (we've had a bit of a drought here) and I decided if I were a DJ, I would totally do that, because, like Jason Mraz, I am All About the Wordplay. That sentence is exhausting. In other theological/weather related news, one day last week when the wind was particularly gusty, Harper and Hudson were out on the swingset and Harper came sprinting in. She ran into her room and ran back out toting her Jesus Storybook Bible. "Whatcha doing?" I queried. "OH, Hudson is yelling at the wind to STOP so I am going to show him WHO makes the wind and that he shouldn't yell STOP." I couldn't really argue with that. Actually, though, now that I think about it, perhaps I should have double checked with her regarding WHO she thinks does make the wind because it's possible she told him it's the guy who illustrated the Jesus Storybook Bible.

A conversation I jotted down recently:

Harper: HUDSON! (every single time she says his name it sounds like an indictment) You are NOT doing what I expected!

Hudson: Eww.

Harper: HUDSON! That is NOT what you say when you watch a movie. It is NOT a compliment!

Hudson: Ew.

Harper: HUDSON. You MAY NOT say "EW" over and over. It is NOT what you do when you watch a movie.

Hudson: (very very quietly) ew.

Harper: HUDSON! Do you need to go to your room? HUDSON! Big boys do NOT suck their thumbs.


I like the way, when the discussion wasn't going how she planned, she changed into personal attack mode, and brought up something completely unrelated to her original complaint. Where in the world did she learn that?

I have bits of paper with scribbled reminders about things I want to remember to write about strewn all over my desk. (exhausting sentence Exhibit B) Some unedited samples:

**"Hudson just tripped on his hoop skirt. And I think I shall say no more about that. Harper can be scary persuasive."


**"People who are wont to intone 'GOD is sovereign' at every circumstance probably feel pretty satisfied with the way things have gone for them."
(I should note that I do, indeed, with all that I am, believe that God IS sovereign. What I despise is when folks in the church use it as a call to inaction. So there.)


**Harper: How did God make mountains?
me: I don't know!
Harper: I think he stuck lots of sticky tape together then painted it.


**"Harper: HUDSON! You can either play dress-up with me OR...I will squish up your toes and eat them for a snack. What's your choice?" (this one perhaps explains the hoop skirt)


I feel as though I should use this very public forum to confess that, yet again, I did not vote in the recent election. I did buy a teapot at Ikea yesterday. We have yet to turn on our heater, even though it has gotten a little chilly this week, and we've all been drinking lots of hot tea to warm up.Cold enough for a hat, but not pants, apparently. I like my teapot, especially the fact that it only cost $9.99, as opposed to the one I saw at Pottery Barn that was $39.99. The real purpose of the Ikea trip was to buy a storage shelf so that I can organize all of the spectacular school materials I acquired from my fairy godmother, who is also known as "Mrs. Spivey, Retired Kindergarten Teacher Extraordinaire." I'll be sure to post a picture when I get it all situated. My dream is to have everything the kids need on a daily basis where they can reach it without any assistance from me. Then I can go off and eat my bonbons while they essentially teach themselves.

For probably a month now, Helena has been eating more than the other two. I have yet to find anything she won't eat. She is also getting tooth #11 and she can sing the ABC's tune, although her pronunciation of the letters is not quite English at this point. In fact, while she babbled during dinner one night, Hudson exclaimed, "Huhyaynuh can talk!" then he listened for another minute and added, "She's speaking Spanish!"