...hello?

Hi?
Peanuts?
Anyone still left in the gallery?
We're here!
We've been whacked by a succession of holidays, traveling, and illnesses.  Little One has been very busy building up The Immune System of Titanium-Alloyed-Steel.  And I have been very busy supporting Her in that effort.  I mean, literally, I have been underneath the child ALL DAY LONG.  "Mommy hugs please! Mommy, Snuggles!  Mommy tuckies with Little One, no Mommy go!  Snuggles Mommy Pleaaaassse!!!"
All. Day. Long.  And all night. 
At least I saved on the heating bill, having had a 105.9 degree heating blanket constantly glommed onto me.
It hasn't left me much time to get anything done, like housework or blogging or preparing for the big AFC benefit THIS SATURDAY.  Or, you know, showering, eating.  Little things like that.
J has temporarily relieved me, so I thought I'd let you all know that we are alive and may even have actual posts coming sometime.  But in the meantime, I'm on my way back to the electric snuggle-blanket.  I hate when She gets sick!
To tell you the complete truth, though.  Even though it would be nice not to have to perch a small person on the bulge containing another small person while I PEE, I do kind of love the snuggles. 
Better stock up while they last.

Yesterday while we were out shopping, Little One received a nice compliment from a stranger.

Little One: "mumblemumble".

C: "What's that, Little One?  What do you say to the nice lady?"

Little One: "Tank you".

C: "We can't hear you, Little One.  Can you please say that louder?"
 
Little One: "LOUDER!" 

Taking the Trunki to Texas

On the downside, telling Little One about our trip tomorrow (2 cars, 2 trains, 2 planes to Texas) seems to have triggered in Her a desire to continue Her tradition (this will be the 3rd trip running) of getting acutely ill the night before we are to board a train.  Stomach flu on airplanes! Fun! I hope we get the middle seat! Her effort at keeping up Her record was so inspiring that the dog decided to participate by puking all the way down the hall! On the carpet!  Did I mention J is on call tonight! And we are getting up at 5am!  Ah!
Buuuuutt, on the upside.  Little One having known about this trip for two days now has resulted in two days of exponentially increasing excitement on Her part, which has bee really fun. Ok on paper it might not sound that fun... putting away various containers and bags full of toys that She "need bring wif me", listening to "Nana! Nana! Nana go house now!" 500 million times in a day, and having meltdowns in the car on the way home from seeing J because She wants to get on the plane NOW and "no home! no go home! Now go airplane, go go Nana Jaju. No dinner! No bath! Airplane time mommy! You turn right, go straight, airplane go now!"  But it actually is pretty cute.  Especially when She makes up songs about how Nana's house is fun, and we will play and have a smeshal carseat, and trick-o-treat there.  No pressure, mom. 
(At first She was a little distressed that Gramma would not be there also, but consoled Herself by informing me that Gramma will be flying the plane. (?)   I love this age.  I get to dip my toes in another world, and I don't even have to buy illegal drugs to do it!)
Here's hoping the airplane is a good a time as She's expecting.  See ya'll in a couple weeks!

Things I Love

I love:

That Little One calls a Band-Aid a "Band-Owie".  I love it so much, that I let Her have one to stick on Her forehead all day. I love this too.  And the fact that the word "Bindi" only further confuses things.

That She is pushing Her stroller around talking to Her "baby sister".  "Baby sister, come out! Go walking.  Park, playground...fun! Come stroller baby sister! Come with me!" 

That the leaves from the maple and oak tree in my yard are falling so fast in the breeze that it looks, from the corner of my eye, like it is raining.  Red and yellow rain.  A blizzard of color against the kitchen window.

That Little One laughs and dances when She sees them.  And then stops, looks at the deck, and shouts, "Oh no! Mommy! This trees, make MESS!"

Veterans Day

Veterans.  When the commitment you made to Protect takes you away from us- for a short time, or forever- we miss you. 
We sacrifice together. 
But we love you. 
We have faith in you to serve with honor and integrity.
And so we are proud, and we are thankful. 
I'm speaking for myself, and for my daughter who doesn't quite understand yet. 
But I think I can speak for some others, too. 
We fight beside you in our own way. 
And we thank you. 

Dumplins

When J started this current rotation, otherwise known as ICU, otherwise known as H-E-Double Hockeystix, his mom decided to come out for a week to make the descent into the underworld more bearable.  When she came, I was feeling much, much less sick than I had been.  Which is awesome! Because MIL is a Cook.  With a capital C.
What did we do all week, you ask?  We went shopping!  Grocery shopping.  And we cooked. And cooked. And baked.  And cooked.  At one point she had me smashing dead chickens with a mallet. 
Yeah.  She's that good. 
And this is also true: when MIL came I had struggled to gain just 2 pounds over the entire course of my pregnancy.  During the week she was with us, I gained 5 pounds.  In one week! Yeah.  That good.
I have a lot of cute pictures of her with Little One from her visit here, but these are my favorites.  Because MIL is not just a person of various sorts who cooks.  She is a Cook.  She's amazing at it, in part because she puts a lot of love into her cooking. She takes painstaking efforts with details that most rush through, skip, or buy pre-packaged.  Cooking is how she takes care of her family.
I loved these particular moments in the kitchen, because in these photos MIL is teaching Little One to make Her great-grandmother's recipe for homemade chicken and dumplings.  Mixing up the dough, rolling it out and shaping it, stirring the pot...a tradition passed down.  There are a lot of things I hope Little One learned from cooking with Gramma.   How to start at the beginning, do things right, and see them through.  How sometimes the simplest things are the best.  How real is always better than manufactured facsimile.  And how to make something, truly delicious.  So that I don't have to. 

Free Parking

Last week something rare and amazing happened.  J had the day off. !
We celebrated by taking a gorgeous drive through the bright calico leaves to West Virginia, to hike along the C and O canal.  Yes.  Like the one in Monopoly!
We did not see any funny men with handlebar mustaches. But we did see a choo-choo train go across a bridge and into a tunnel! Which was so.awesome. that Little One momentarily forgot how cold She was.  And it was cold.  Almost bitter.  But it didn't stop the dogs from swimming in the river, and it didn't stop the air from being clear and fresh, or the sun from being bright and gilding everything in sight. 
We climbed the rocks and threw shells into the water.  We strolled the tiny town and had hot cherry cider on the terrace.  Where they were so kind as to give us the free service of branding our dog, when he backed into the propane heater.  (If you are from Tucson, AZ, you know that he can now drink at a  bar called the Meet Rack for free! Don't ask me how I know this).
Anyways.  Today I felt...cold.  But also, as I rode home with my doggies and daughter sleeping like angels in the back, and J's hand holding mine tight, and a tiny little person doing somersaults in my belly, I felt Thankful.
For a beautiful day and a lovely earth and a family that is all mine to experience it with.  For snot on my shoulder and slobber on my jeans, mud on my shoes and tiny feet tap-dancing on my bladder.  For sunshine and rock-skipping and hand-holding.

This is our 5th fall in this pretty place.  Our fifth time Passing Go, I suppose.  In between we've paid mortgages and luxury tax and utilities and come a long, long way it seems.  But on the way home from C and O I couldn't help but feel thankful.  We've collected a lot more than $200!  A couple dogs and a child and a half and a pocket full of red-yellow leaves and a Life.
I love this game.

You know.
I have never had a flu shot.
Last year I had the pig flu mist.  Which doesn't exactly count.
This year, I bucked up, caved to pressure and my public health-background-induced guilt and got the shot.
I didn't hurt. At all!
It was a great opportunity to show Little One that I wasn't scared of getting a shot.
But.
:(
Now my arm hurts. 
And.
No one told me it would make me sick.

By the Way...

I have some other posts on the way, but in the meantime I have to interrupt regular programming to make an announcement.  Today was a big day. A  day to wake up early, drink a lot of water, and try really, really hard not to pee for the next 3 hours. 
Ultrasound day! 
We found out some good things.  Like, there really is a baby in there!  And.  It has fingers and toes! It has kidneys and bones!  It likes to rest with its hand on its cheek, like a swooning southerner.  It wiggles and kicks and does A LOT of flipping upside-down and then downside-up.  It smiles! And!
It... is a girl. 
Sisters!  I am super excited because:
1) Girl! I love girl! Tea parties and dresses and trucks! (girls like trucks too) We have had the best time with girl!
2) I feel like J and I have just given Little One, and the new gal too, the best most amazing gift.  As a girl who has sisters, I know how precious it is that these two will have each other.  There is nothing like sisters.
3) I have practically NO shopping to do.  We are ready for this Sister like, now. 
4) To be honest, I was a teensy bit intimidated by the boy thing.  I'm sure I would have (had to) get over it. But now I don't have to!

Yay!   
I'm off to celebrate by making pink cupcakes and bringing them to J at work.  :)

Halloween with Pictures and a Physics Lesson at the End

HALLOWEEN.
I don't even know where to start.  What is the point of this crazy holiday?  Where did it come from? We get all obsessed with the macabre and decorate our houses with dead bodies and dress up like people (if we're pets) or animals (if we're people), like grown-ups (if we're children) or prostitutes and corpses (if we're grown-up) and go around getting high on pounds of sugar with as much artificial-coloring as POSSIBLE, and tell our kids that, oh-all-right-you-can-take-candy-from-strangers-after-all. Or, alternatively, you can throw eggs at their houses.  Just this once.
What the?  Can you imagine moving here from a sane nation and trying to understand what the heck goes on?  Why people are carving faces into large vegetables and erecting styrofoam tombstones in their yards?  This is to symbolize....that we like to play dress up? ...that vegetables have feelings too? ...that we really like gross stuff and CSI is not a big enough outlet for our gruesome obsessions? Or that we just really, really, really want people to give us candy?  Maybe it was created secretly by the dental lobby.  I have no idea.  But we are good, patriotic Americans, people.  So we dress up and we eat pixie-stix and we monster mash whether we get it or not! Especially, now. 
Though this is technically our third Halloween as parents, it's really the first Little One was old enough to participate in. And my goodness.  We Halloweened ourselves OUT.
First of all, I had truly NO idea how much candy comes in when you have a kid this time of year.  It pours in.  It flows like Hersheys left in the car cup-holder.  It floods the basement.  It's amazing.
With all the "fall fun" events we attended, Little One trick-or-treated 3 times before it was even Halloween.  This helped Her to perfect Her technique, so that for the real deal She wobbled up to the front door by Herself, said "tick-o-treat", smiled, said "thank you" and did a happy candy dance (and apparently got extra helpings for cuteness) coming home with a huge haul. 
There were also parties, festivals, street fairs....I tell you.  The costume She picked out got plenty of use.  And plenty of candy.  The best thing about the cow costume, I think - besides the irony of watching Her drink SOY milk in it because of course if She were really a cow She would be allergic to Herself- was that J had a matching one! And needed practically no convincing to make it a father-daughter herd of candy-nabbing cuteness.  I got to take Her to the birthday/Halloween party that day, so J got to take Her for "real" trick-or-treating later while I manned the door.

Every year, we have run out of candy and had to do an emergency run to the store.  There are that many kids around here.  So this year, I double-stocked up.  Aaaannnnd so did J.  I guess we should have coordinated that.  Because not only did we replace almost as much candy as we gave out (due to the happy-cow dance) but we have lots leftover.  Which means that soon, I will have slowly Snicker-ed myself into a cow-like appearance as well.  COME TO MY HOUSE. EAT CANDY.   Please.
The scariest thing I saw this Halloween?  The number of parents who came to my door holding out their purses for a "treat" also.  This is always annoying to me.  But what made it scary is that it was actually legit, because at 14/15 years old,  the parents were still children themselves.  Oh my.
Little One loved all the events in which She got to be a "t-ow", and clearly got into trick-or-treat.  But She had at least as much fun handing out candy to the late teenager crowd when She got back home.
"One, you. One, you. This one? You. Happy Ween welcome!"   This was one of my favorite parts, too.  Because out of each teen too cool to be wearing a costume at all, or wearing something totally gory/horrible/verging on nudity/inappropriate/all of the above, even the ones who sauntered up to the door all swaggery, even the least likely-looking to do it said, "Aaaaw!! She's so cute!" and "oh hi little cutie! Are you a cow? OMG! The cutest cow!" and "Thank you! Widdle baby cowie (insert funny face)." 
This was the epitome of one of my favorite things, by far, about having a child. It's that little children have this energy that bends space-time around them, altering the view of the universe like a subtle shift in the curvature of a camera lens.  So that everything comes into a softer focus and you can see people's Good Side.  Even teenagers! Even under costumes and make-up and masks.  Both real and metaphoric.
I still don't get the "real" origin and meaning of Halloween.  But watching Little One work the crowd of dominatrix devils and axe-murdered zombies made me think that maybe one of the points of this oddball holiday is just to simply remind us that underneath it all, monsters are just the awkward kid with acne in the back of history class.  That whatever we pretend to be, or seem to be....we're really all...just people.   And we pretty much all like chocolate.