Scissors -- Addendum

More from Gretchen:

Addendum...the fix! Not too bad...Of course, Gilly wanted to have the
scissors and try herself...Right! Mommy had to get mean and got the
boo-boo lip for it--just for a minute, though...all smiles now!

Scissors

Guest blogger, Gretchen:

So, Gilly has been getting up anywhere from 2-5am (since the time
change) to come into bed with us or tell me about her trip to the
potty. I've been trying to get her back to her bed so that the habit
doesn't form, if you know what I mean (visions of Gilly at 15 trying
to cuddle in our bed...yikes!).

Well, some nights, like last night, I am just too tired to get my butt
out of bed. So I try to convince myself that it's close to 6am (the
alarm time) and I let her in. Last night, she wouldn't settle down and
ended up roaming the house for a bit before finally coming back and
dropping into a deep snore.

A few weeks ago, Nicky picked up the hobby of jewelry making. Last
night, he lovingly made Harry(this is rare) a necklace, which Harry
was thrilled about. Unfortunately, Nicky left the scissors out on the
table, even though I reminded him to put them away.

So it seems, Gilly came up closer to 2am than 6am and in her
subsequent ramblings, found the scissors on the kitchen table, cut
some advertisement, a corrected piece of Nicky's homework (wasn't his
best mark, anyway) and moved on to her bangs.


It's not too bad, just that Aunti Edie and Binnie were planning Santa
pictures this weekend.

I will try to fix her "look" today, but I just wanted everyone
(including our wonderful hairdresser and best friend) to see what I
had to work with...including the attitude--yes, that is her 'tude
towards me right now.

Oh yeah, her occupational therapist says she doing wonderfully with
scissors and that I should let her practice at home. Right!

Buddy

Columnist Paul Krugman wins Nobel economics prize
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar, New York Times columnist and unabashed liberal, won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect international trade patterns.

Dear Mr. Krugmen,

I heared you wonned the Noble Peace Prize. I myself was once
nominated for the Noble Peace Prize, too. We are so much alike,
aren't we?

I don't know if you have any plans yet for all that money. I know, if
I had all that money, I would have a tuff time figgering out what to
do with it all.

Wait!!! I have an idea! There are lots of hard working people who
are in trubbel rite now on Wall St! You and I could help them with
that money!

What do you think, Mr. Krugmen? We could be heros if we help them.
You waant to be a hero, rite? I know I do. And you and me are alot
alike!!!

You're Pal,
George "W" Bush, President

PS. You can call me "W", buddy.

Vacation photos!

So this August we rented a beach house in Rhode Island for a week.  It was great!  Everyone enjoyed it.  Especially Gilly.

It was an easy walk from the house to the beach -- Gretchen's favorite, I might add.

We lucked out on the week that we picked for our vacation:  both of my brothers could spare some time to come to visit!  That meant that Scott and Julia came to visit with Sage and new, cute, and somewhat pneumatic baby Jura (despite Scott's new job at Harvard) and that Seth and Lana flew in from Texas with Katelyn and James (despite their hectic work schedules and Lana's night school classes).  Here's a pictures of all of Grammy Donna's (Did I mention she came, too?  So did Gretchen's mom) grandkids on the couch:

I don't want to start another "sea monster" craze, but what is this thing? Mom took the picture and says it's a big bird of prey taking a sizable fish out of the water for its dinner.  I have my doubts, though...
Especially since I think that this could be one of the monster's partially decomposed feet, washed up on the shore (which would explain the stink at certain points along the beach, come to think of it).

Anyway.  The kids had a lot of fun even if, come bedtime, they were all parked on the floor of one room like SUVs on the Block Island ferry.

They're still working on that bike path to Block Island, by the way.  So if you're planning on biking there, make sure you bring a towel in a Ziploc bag to wipe the salt water off your frame afterwards.

Lots of fun.

Maybe too much fun.

James and Harry played with Star Wars toys and Legos much of the time they were there.  Mom took this picture and originally captioned it "James and Harry or Seth and Ben?"  I still like Lego, and I know Seth still digs Star Wars.  Oh, and if you happen to be the people who rented the house after we did, I'm so sorry for the Lego bits you probably stepped on in the middle of the night.

Well, that's about it.  Except for one strange bit of deja vu.  When I first walked into this rental, I thought to myself, "I've been here before."  See, I had some friends who went to URI for college and these beach houses get rented out to college students in off season.  But there are lots of beach houses, probably all built at or about the same time.  Probably all look similar, right?

Maybe.  But when I banged my elbow on the corner of the sink while using the bathroom in the middle of the first night there?  That clinched it.  I've definitely been there before.

A Big Day

This is a big day at our house. First and foremost, Gillian turns four!


Harry, who has been on a whirlwind tour of grandmothers' houses, is coming home.


AND Nicky is coming home from camp!


Gretchen and I can kiss goodbye the bliss that comes with having only one child at home. But we missed them. And boy howdy, did Pablo miss Harry.

A day in my life...

Guest blogger, Gretchen

It takes me twice as long to get anything done.

Case in point: I was lining the pan for the brownies. I finished the
roll so I put the box in the recycle bin.

Gilly goes behind me, pulls it out and starts marching around the
house with it.

Normally ok, but not with this--metal cutting edge!

I ask her to give it back and end up chasing her down to wrestle it
from her and dispose of it.

Now...where was I??

Wedding

We went to a wedding this weekend. A family friend and our former babysitter tied the knot. It was a lovely ocassion and the kids looked fantastic!

Gilly got dressed up to be the flower girl. It didn't stop her from squashing bugs, though.


The kids behaved themselves exceptionally well, even through a long church service.
Well, mostly behaved themselves.

Harry was the ring bearer, and looked killer in his rental tux.

LOLs

...just stuff I do when I'm goofing off. And yes, I wrote them all.

Muppet Spin-Off?

I was talking to Gretchen the other morning about the Muppet Show.



Like so many around my age, I was a big fan of the show. My favorites were Prof. Bunsen Honeydew and his hapless assistant, Beaker.



I actually used an impression of Beaker as part of the courtship ritual I used on Gretchen. Regardless, I've always thought that Bunsen and Honeydew could have spun-off from the Muppet Show to have their own TV series.

"They did," Gretchen says.

"Really?" How could I miss it? I would have watched every episode!

"Yeah, it's called Mythbusters."



Of course. And I do watch every episode.

Breathing Normally Again

I gotta tell you, it's nice to breathe without making bubbly gurgle noises.

And in response to my last post, I made it to 2PM before I had to go lie down. I reawoke at, like, 8PM. So that experiment had mixed results.

Gilly, we think, is getting better but has a wicked case of "sick baby syndrome". She can't bear to do anything but cling to Gretchen and complain bitterly about her lot in life. Not fun.

Speaking on Gilly, a funny thing happened the other night. We have an old baby monitor. Gretchen got it when Nicky was born so it's about 10 years old. Has two different channels, "X" and "Y". What with the creeping illness, we started using it to keep an ear out for Gilly during the night.

So the other night we start hearing a baby crying through the monitor. Gretchen is up and out the door like a flash. I've never seen anyone move that fast, let alone Gretchen. Me, I'm none too swift when awoken in the middle of the night so it took me a few minutes to realize that something wasn't right.

Gretchen races into Gilly's room, but I don't hear Gretchen through the cacophony on the monitor. Then Gretchen comes racing up the stairs, and bursts into Harry's room, across the hall from our upstairs room. And there's this wild, panicked look in her eyes. "It's not Gilly!" she screams as she charges back downstairs to check on Nicky and Gilly again.

Blink, blink. Um, what's going on here?

Gretchen whirls back into the room, and she's electric with nervous energy. "I checked Gilly, she's asleep. Nick's asleep. I think I woke up Harry when I checked on him. The crying isn't coming from our house!"

Oh, yeah. I guess someone else's monitor was tuned to our frequency. Oops.

But you know, in the time that it took Gretchen to check on all her babies twice, our neighbors still hadn't gotten up to take care of their kid. So how's that for a Super Mom?

Tales from the Sanatorium

Yes, Harry is much better. Sadly, Gretchen is a little worse -- she probably is having another recurrence of bronchitis, perhaps lighter than in previous years -- but Gillian is very sick. Yesterday, she had a high fever and earaches. Any sudden movement would cause her to start vomiting rather violently. And because she didn't want to be separated from her Momma, Gretchen got very little sleep last night.

Right now, Gretchen is upstairs napping and Gilly is passed out on a rug. Although the darling puke-monster was doing much better this morning, I don't care to risk moving her.

Me, I still have an occasional coughing fit, but so long as I take it slow, I'm doing pretty well. I'd like to see how long I can remain upright today before I grow short of breath and need to lie down. Should be a good indication of how my lungs are doing.

And the sweating! Ugh!

Good news: I'm not in the hospital.

Bad news: Evidentially, just having the flu isn't enough these days. I also have pneumonia.

So I've got the rocking pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu, only without the "rocking" and "boogie woogie".

Harry and I will be keeping each other company for a while longer. No, Harry's not as sick as I am, but he has excellent taste in cartoons.

With occasional bouts of consciousness,
-- Ben

Guests of Texas

I just heard from my brother, Seth.

While I was moving to Connecticut with my family, he was moving to Texas with his. Same reasons -- job moves.

He's doing well! My niece Katelyn loves school, even though it's a full day session instead of the half day she'd been doing in Rhode Island. Her younger brother James is digging the scene, too.

Seth asked what the weather was like here. I told him about the snow we have on the ground, and how the 4 inches of rain we receive (in one day!) had pretty much turned it all into tiny glaciers. Seth told me that the weather in the Dallas/Fort Worth area was maybe in the 40s F in the morning and in the 60s during the day -- cold for the locals, idyllic for a New England transplant. Hail is the big concern there. And lightning. A sudden overhead bolt scare the dooky out of him the other night.

Now, I have a request of all the folks living in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. I know that moving to Texas does not make you a Texan. You have a national identity there. I can understand and respect that. I have heard that even having your children in Texas does not make them Texans. "If your cat had kitten in the oven, you wouldn't call them biscuits."

Fine. But I would really appreciate it if you would look a little more favorably on those who are new to driving in your area. I'm not pointing fingers, I'm not going to single anyone out. You know who you are and you know what you're doing. Just, please, be a little nicer to people who are inexperienced in the ways of, say, merging and lane changing in your fair land.

Okay? Thanks. Or, as you say, "Much obliged."


UPDATE

Looks like Seth took a little of our fine weather with him to Texas:

All moved in

Thanks to the hard work of Gretchen,
the garage now has room to hold both

the car and my scooter!

And, while she was moving stuff around,
she found the $%@#ing bike pump I've been looking for.

$%@#ing bike pump.

No joke too obscure

"I wish I knew how to C'thul-you."

Swiped from the [hopefully forgiving] folks at
http://www.velvetdicebag.net/2006/10/2006_hp_lovecraft_film_festiva.html