weird, there's still two children living in our house

Trying to get a decent picture of both childrens is a tedious and impossible task that I like to take a crack at from time to time, in case I'm feeling too capable or something. If I change my standard from "decent" to "both looking vaguely in my direction" I think I've succeeded masterfully.





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On the local news this morning one story was that the New York Times knows something about the governor, something big, that will cause him to resign or not run for re-election, or at least break down weeping in public. They noted that they had been refreshing the Times website all morning, to no avail. Thank you, local reporters, for your diligent clicking on my behalf. Also, what is the story?! It's still not up as of 11am. I saw an equally vague one online about a whisper campaign, but with no actual content. Now you can all refresh with me the rest of the day. Click away.

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I read that babies of 11 or 12 weeks spend 2/3 of their time playing with their hands. I keep laughing at Ollie because who spends 2/3 of their few waking moments playing with their hands? At least he's right on target developmentally.

groupie

Since Dylan proved herself to be capable of sitting through a show when Aaron took her to see Annie, I brought her to a performance of School House Rock with her two best buddies today, as performed by 10-14 year olds. She was just enthralled with the kids. I was also enthralled due to: so much awkward in one room. They had lovely voices, but it was clear that some unseen puppetmaster was in control of all movements.

At intermission Dylan would. not. budge. Her friends went out to run around, but she was so concerned about missing the rest of the show that she could not be moved. At the end there was a Q&A with the actors, with the whole audience still seated. Dylan raised her hand and when the nice lady brought the mic over told them she loved them.

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Speaking of Dylan, she is also moderately useful in shoveling the driveway. Aside from actual physical labor, the jobs gets done more throughly with her around as she has inherited the family compulsion (see: intermission) and will not let us go inside until it is done, and done right.

baby: has ceased sleeping; remains cute

dueling dummies

Did I tell you about the time when Aaron was supposed to fly out of Buffalo? But it didn't work out because he conflated the "hour it takes to get to Buffalo" with the "hour you're supposed to get to the airport ahead of time?" In fact, those are two different hours. Well, that's what happened, and it wasn't so very long ago. Thanks to his excellent live-in travel agent he still flew out successfully, although a few hours later and with more layovers (which undeservedly increased the number of frequent flier points he received).

The question Monday was, was that little incident dumber than my own actions of the day?

We sent our bags ahead with my parents, who drove down and picked us up at the airport. On the way back we had a few more things, so I sent one more bag home with them. That, it turned out, was the bag where I had cleverly stashed my house and car keys so I wouldn't carry them all around in my purse and lose them on the trip. As the shuttle pulled away in the airport parking lot in Rochester I suddenly realized exactly where they were. Aaron, keyless himself, asked me if this meant I was dumber than him before turning his thoughts to such tasks as getting the kids out of the cold, accessing our car, and entering our house. Luckily we have friends who both have a key to our house and are apparently not vital to their jobs. Whatever. The day was not a total loss as it involved the baking and eating of thirty cupcakes.

the traveling circus returns

Having mistaken "harder" for "easier," what we thought was, now that we have two kids, traveling will surely be easier. And so we went out of town again last weekend, this time to Long Island for some family birthday parties. Dylan and Ollie got to hang out with their second cousins, who have cakes and Mercedes. We'll have to work on yielding to pedestrians.


Actually, Dylan's pretty easy to travel with. She thinks planes are the most exciting thing ever, and she's good for about four hours in the car. Plus, with the magical ipod we always have games, movies, and music, except for those unfortunate times when portable electronic devices are not approved for use.

Ollie still doesn't care where he sleeps, so he travels okay too. And he thinks he's a parrot and goes to sleep when I put a blanket over his head.

Check out our young recruit in action.

We devised a system of getting on the plane where Aaron went ahead with Dylan while I waited until the last minute to get on with Ollie. We failed to realize it was one of those walk down the steps, over to the plane, and up the steps again situations, so I had an unfortunate jacket-less wait at the end of the line in the 15 degree weather. Little did I know the plane had just come out of the hanger and wasn't that much warmer. Then I got on the plane, only to have Aaron and Dylan working their way towards me, muttering something about spilled orange juice. I glared at Aaron because this was eerily reminiscent of a similar unpleasant incident where my seat got doused with water while I waited to board with Dylan. Then I realized, wait, I have our orange juice. It was the adult couple sitting next to us that had doused my seat with juice while I waited to board with Ollie. I switched to glaring at them, only in my head.

The flight back was cool because 1) Dylan got to see the top of the Chrysler Building (oh yes, it continues) and 2) it was so clear it was like looking at a map the whole time. I could follow along by the shapes of the finger lakes, and we got to see Ithaca for a while. Here is Cayuga Lake.


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Speaking of birthday parties, as I assure you we were earlier in the post, it's Aaron's birthday season again!


We've kicked off the proceedings with a full slate of activities, but festivities will surely continue all month and into next.

sleep deprivation; brain washing

Kate: Hey! I've had my shirt on backwards all day.

Aaron: I had my underwear on backwards all morning.

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Adults, in car: ...blah blah blah...politics...blah blah...socialism

Dylan, looking up from the ipod: That is not a nice word!

Kate: Who told you that?! Was it someone as school?

Dylan: No.

Aaron: Was it Daddy Warbucks?

Dylan: Yes.

testing, testing

We got back from Philadelphia last night. I had to take the next part of the medical licensing test, the one that costs $1200 and involves actors as patients, a la Kramer. [life is resembling Seinfeld lately, I guess]

There were 24 people taking the test at the same time, which meant that we needed to be herded around quite a bit. Doctors! they would announce, much as Dylan's preschool teachers address the children. Doctors! line up along the wall, in order, and file into the hallway. We don't eat until we're all sitting down, do we doctors? We don't discuss test content now, right doctors? You know we MONITOR THE INTERNET for such discussion. I love the idea of MONITORING THE INTERNET. It sounds like such tasks as scouring the ocean or walking home from school with Dylan the day she insisted every step must be taken in a snowbank. That is, painful, and possibly fruitless. Well, we did ultimately arrive home the snowbank day, but I thought for a while that we would expire right there, stubbornly standing in a snowbank.

I brought my whole entourage and we made a weekend of it. Ollie seized the moment to stay up most of the night, but I have actually learned to function, albeit grumpily, on no sleep. I estimate that we have been out of town for about a third of his nine weeks of life, but as long as he doesn't have much of a schedule, we might as well not sleep on the road as at home. Actually he does have the vaguest outlines of a schedule, but it involves staying up until 1-2am, so I don't mind if we mess with it. He made up for it by sleeping about 10 of the 12 hours in the car, and remaining pleasant for at least another half hour of car time.

We visited Tommy at College as long as we were in town. That was good because Dylan keeps hearing about College but has no idea what that means. Now she knows: it is a place with a cool swing.