Hold on to your hats folks...its a long one

Try to keep up through the “return tabs” of my thoughts. It may be long but try to stay with me, it could be a good one, you never know. Here, I’ll help us all out and outline my post. That way, you can skim through the index and read what is of greatest interest. Or just look at the pictures, I’ll never know.

I. The move/adjustment
II. My funny family
A. Clark
B. Me
C. Mia
D. Abby
E. Haley
III. Toy Genocide of 2008
IV. The Circle of Life as seen on our very own front porch
V. The greatest ironies in life
VI. Conclusion
VII. Addendum to the conclusion

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. Even as I write this from the somewhat comfort of our new home I am doing so in Microsoft Word as our Internet (aka connection to the outside world) is still not up and running as promised almost a week ago. I have a feeling I will be cursing AT&T a lot in the next two years…my first grudge will be the slow or complete lack of Internet services in Connecticut. The next might be their poor taste in cable television programming followed closely by my inability to check voicemail. The upside? I finally have a home phone/land line that allows us to actually talk to people without losing reception three times. Do I sound a little bitter? No! I am actually in a much better mood since I can walk through the hallway without stubbing my toes. The rooms are clear (all except the office which has been the recipient of all unplaced items so that I may feel like we are done with the rest of the house…even if we really aren’t…we are pretty close.) I have a solid commitment from Clark to hang pictures tomorrow and then we will be almost there (except for the office, remember.) So maybe it’s a good thing that the Internet is not up yet, I wouldn’t be putting the office together…oh wait, I’m not. I’m writing a blog in Word in anticipation of having the Internet. Hm. I’ll work on it tomorrow.

In the meantime, life has continued on and from what I haven’t been too busy to appreciate I have noticed a few funny things about my family.

Let’s start with Clark. Dear, sweet husband. He is a true constant in this sea of emotion and estrogen. His only flaw during these times of transition is a heightened awareness and worry about finances. He told me today that we couldn’t afford bagels…which I continued to giggle about all evening. If we suddenly are so destitute that we can’t afford bagels I won’t be laughing. And our daughter Abby will whither away seeing as how that makes up a third of her daily diet. We had to chuckle at the Colbert report the other night when he so eloquently said "Remember, money can't buy you happiness...but it can buy you things that make you happy." I suppose he was referring to bagels. Don't blame Clark though, he's just harboring a grudge at the fact that we essentially paid people a lot of money to buy our house in Texas.

Me. I have adopted a rather random and gooberish catch phrase. I use the word “bologna” several times a day in response to my daughters. Anything they say that sounds remotely ridiculous, untrue or unreasonable gets a “bologna” from me. Example. Mom, I can’t drink water to cool off. I am so hot I need a Popsicle. My response? “Bologna…go get yourself some water.” (I hear this one a lot…it’s going to be a long summer seeing as how we haven’t even reached 80 degrees yet. In their defense, they do spend most of the day outside.)

Mia has had another language burst. This time its not just words, its entire phrases. The other night at dinner she put down her corn on the cob and told us that she can’t eat it. “I have it in my teeth and its driving me crazy.” And she has begun telling me on a regular basis that she is “too busy” to do things. I swear she hasn’t picked this up from me. “Mia, will you please put these in your drawer?” “No, I too busy”. She sometimes gets more specific and tells me that her hands or feet are too busy. Sheesh, she’s only two and already overbooked. Mia’s catchphrase? She likes the expression “Weehoo!” and says it a lot for the simple joys in life like riding her bike and jumping over sidewalk cracks.

This morning Abby took my face in her hands and called me “my darling”. She is always good for a laugh. Me laughing threw her into a fit of giggles. She tends to have a very regular fit of the giggles during dinner each night. It’s infectious and usually has the rest of us laughing as well. Yesterday I took them to a favorite spot here, Cows and Cones (a darling little farm with homemade ice cream.) They have cows and chickens, rabbits, pigs, flowers, lots and lots of flowers and a produce stand with the most divine fruits and vegetables ever grown. Abby was holding her ice cream cone too close to the chickens and one took a peck at it. I was trying to decide whether or not it was safe or sanitary for her to lick there and she beat me to it. I tried to explain that sharing chicken saliva could indeed make her sick (after all, they do peck at the ground…dirt, poop, etc.) I hear her tell Mia a couple of minutes later not to share her ice cream with the chickens because they could give her chicken pox. Then she was trying to convince us all that the rooster was a Chinese Rooster. When I asked her how she knew that she ever so casually told me “I’m a smart kid”.

We have discovered this week that Haley can’t whistle or blink just one eye (especially frustrating since Abby can do both.) She had one of her front teeth pulled over a year ago and it still hasn’t even started to grow back. I hope it never does…her toothless smile makes my heart skip and I just want to grab her face in my hands and kiss her cheeks. She is so grown up and helpful that I sometimes have to remind myself that she is only six…and then she will throw a fit and remind me most assuredly that she is only six. She is most excited to have a big bed to sleep in her own room (until Hazel moves in with her). I love when she reads. It makes me feel so proud of her and I am reminded that all these frustration I have with her are from attributes that will serve her well as an adult. I only wish I knew how to keep them dormant until she was a tad older. I love that girl, she is my buddy.

Do you remember the great toy genocide of 2005? It’s time again. At a time when they least expect it. We’ll have Clark take them out for a treat while I, unknowing to them, creep into their closets with a big black garbage sack and fill it to the brim with toys that clutter our house. My irritation is their loss. Sometimes I feel sorry for them that I am their mother.

Our front porch. I like to call this segment of my post “The great circle of life” or "The living food chain". I have certain paranoia. Most of them stem from a fear of the dark and the fact that my husband is gone overnight often. (We have an alarm system and don’t forget, I sleep with a weapon under my pillow and I can be skittish and impulsive.) Even in “safe Connecticut” I refuse to sleep with our windows open for fear that a burglar will creep in and make off with my children in the night. I also insist on wasting precious energy to keep our entryways brightly illuminated to deter any possible perpetrators. This illumination draws a vast array of critters. Bugs an insects flock to the light. These critters draw out the bigger critters. We get frogs or lizards. These critters in turn bring out the even bigger critters, the ones that I really don’t care for: ie raccoons, opossums and snakes. These critters are unsavory in any form, their actual presence OR their poop. So it’s a dilemma. Would I prefer burglars or snakes? I might just go with the burglar unless of course those big vermin bring out even bigger predators like lions or alligators as unlikely as that may seem, weirder things have been known to happen, especially in Connecticut.

For my final segment I would like to draw your attention to some of the greater ironies in life. Why would anyone put out an advertisement for Vacation Bible School? I love the scriptures and glean a great deal from them. But vacation? Who are they trying to kid? Unless of course this is just a ploy to fool spouses into thinking their significant other is enriching their spiritual lives when really they are just gabbing over lemonade and coffee cake. If that's the case, sign me up. I'll study the scriptures on my own time.

And the other is commercials for violent and disturbing alternate-reality video games aimed at teenagers/kids. I guffaw at the end when they throw in “Rated M for mature”. Shouldn’t they say “immature”? I mean, it is a video game, right? And its being played by kids old enough to control a platoon of digital soldiers or zombies with great hand eye coordination and yet immature enough to be still playing video games. Mario brothers on the other hand? Rock on.

In conclusion, I would just like to extend my heart felt thanks to all those that endured to the very end. In all honesty, I’m surprised that I’m still here. I’d like to think this was just one for the personal journal but who am I kidding? I’ll be giving a quiz in the near future to determine which of my blogging public really were desperate for something fresh and which of you really just have nothing better to do. Now go clean up your office.

(How silly of me, I didn't even mention the trampoline, the fabulous new furniture, our interesting front step leading up from an even more "interesting" front lawn and our 8th anniversary. See our before and after pictures? There's just so much love...that's where a lot of love will get you. Four adorable little people. And just because I am going for the world record of longest blog post ever, here is a video of dinner last night where Abby is performing our favorite Abby thing right now. Don't worry, I made you read a lot of words, next time maybe they'll be a lot of pictures. I'm getting there.)