juliloquy

he doesn't dig on swine

Only a short post today. We are exhausted from preparing for Shmoo's party, then the party itself (bounce house again this year, and s'mores, all in our own back yard), then packing up and driving 3 hours to PA grandparents' place.

Shmoo's quote to the crowd during his party. "I don't eat any meat except turkey bacon. My mom says I'm a veterinarian."

He turns 5 tomorrow!

to bump "grueling and thankless and monotonous" down a notch

Shmoo, today, on observing a nearly-empty sippy cup:
"My juice is at low tide."

Unexpected things Roo has labeled "tyoot" (cute):
a worm
a cicada
a spider (well it was itsy bitsy)

guess HPR will have to rename his blog

HPR has accepted a job here, so we will be moving to Maryland probably sometime in May. We are excited about the move, but sad to leave our Philly community. I told my boss today that May 8 will be my last day, although I want to help in the transition as much as possible and can probably devote some time to my employer after that date, too. I am about as weepy as they come, so I was a mess as I shared the news. Wish I could have kept it together a bit better. I have worked here six years with two consecutive outstanding bosses. I'm not sure what sort/level of work I will do after the move; might wait on that until the dust settles at our new place.

We have asked Shmoo what he'd think of living in a new house and he responded with an unreserved YES! He even started packing up his train set on Saturday. Yesterday as we were driving home from Quaker Meeting, we had the following conversation:

Shmoo: Are we moving now?
Me: No, not for a long time. We have to sell our house, pack up all our stuff, get a moving truck . . .
Shmoo: So, after quiet time?

I'm sure that two days after we've moved, he'll ask when we're going back to our house in Philadelphia. He will not be happy about leaving his school.

We're going to look for houses on Friday - we haven't even been to the area! (The park interviewed HPR by phone.) It turns out they are not going to pay for our move, so we have a lot of work ahead. I keep reminding myself that at least it's not moving to New Orleans with a 1-month-old Roo. That helps me keep it in perspective a bit.

Roo, of course, is oblivious to the news. She is too busy pretending to tuck in "beebee" strawberries beneath dish cloths, holding her finger to her mouth and saying "shhhhh." At age 18 months, she has become a complete mother hen.

So wish us luck in the next 6+ weeks! And visit us in Maryland! (Really.)

kid vignettes

We went to the Museum of Art on Friday, our first visit there since Rooie started walking. Gone are the days when we could buy a drink and listen to the jazz performance from the stairs in the great hall. The best part was when we got to the ramp near the gift shop (which has always been a favorite spot for da Shmoo). Roo started to walk up, then paused and you could just see "mind=blown" in her face. Descending was also very amusing, when fat little legs could no longer keep up with the body's inertia. There was much "uh-oh"-ing and dusting off of the chubby hands.
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This morning.
Shmoo [looking all around]: Where's the trash can in [Roo's] room?
Me [nursing Roo, therefore unable to gesture]: It's between the changing table and the crib.
Shmoo locates it and discards his used wipe.
Me: Shmoo, that was good listening.
Shmoo: Yep, my ears are up.

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Roo has begun using a version of "May I please" when she wants something. It comes out a bit like "bay'p-EEZ" in a whimpering, panicked tone, accompanied by leaning toward the desired object and fingers waving. HPR pointed out that all the work we've done to try to instill manners in da Shmoo are paying back now that the second child is imitating the first. For once, one facet of parenting is easy.

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Shmoo has been pretty exact in language from the start. It seems to be part of his personality. So his flubs are that much more amusing to us. Some recent examples are "I'm be-carefulling" and "I'm make-suring there are no ghostes." He also mixes up "braid" and "shave." Out of the blue yesterday, Shmoo said "[female relative] has whiskers. She has to braid them."

we propose this toast

Shmooie requested French toast today, then helped me make it. This is our conversation as I put it into the skillet.

Me, reviewing [everything's a teaching moment with us, poor kids]: So, what is the mixture we dipped the bread into?
Shmoo: French!
Me, laughing: egg and [waiting] . . . milk, right?
Shmoo: Why do we call it French toast? Is it French?
Me: I don't know - I don't think so. Maybe people just wanted a fancy name for it . . . Oh and we put cinnamon in it, too . . .
Shmoo: And cimmanim comes from French, right?
HPR, from the next room: Cinnamon comes from India.
Shmoo: So we should call it India toast! Indian toast!
Me: Yes indeed. India toast!

how now

him: When I tell my friends at school that I drink cow's milk, they say "ewwww!"

us: What kind of milk do they drink?

him: They just drink regular milk.

random stuff a post makes

Here are some things. A topic-jumping extravaganza!

I finally got to meet Lori! The kids' daycare was closed on Veteran's Day, so I took the kids to see the giant high-def screen in the Comcast lobby. We were the ultimate white trash tourists, sitting on the floor and pulling out snacks; Roo crawling around. Afterwards we went downstairs to find the secret hallway to SEPTA's Suburban Station and there she was. Lori gives the rundown, but I have to add that I actually told Shmoo, as I introduced them: "This is my friend from the com-PYOO-der!"

Also Comcast-related, through Facebook I discovered that a friend of mine from high school is a consultant there. She lives in northern New Jersey but takes the train in and stays overnight 2x per week. So she came over for dinner on Thursday. I wonder how many near-misses we've had in the 2+ years she's worked there. Another hooray for Facebook.

Shmoo turned 4 on the 8th. We secured a bouncehouse for his party and set it up at Clark Park on the rain date, November 9. Despite our chronic disorganization, it went well. I've said it elsewhere, but 1 bouncehouse + ~10 kids + no major head wounds; everything else was gravy.

Shmoo still wears pull-ups at night. He had said to us "when I am 4 I won't need a pull-up at night." So we brought it up as we were getting him ready for bed on the night of his birthday. Wouldn't you know, he got up to use the potty at least once that night, and was dry the next morning and also the following morning. And my fellow parents are waiting for the "but" - then followed 4 nights of wetting. I got tired of washing sheets every day, so although he protested, I sneaked in after he was asleep and put a pull-up on him. He protested the next morning ("I didn't want a diaper on") but that's our decision for now, and we'll try again later.

Roo is on the cusp of walking, and has been for several weeks. She has now passed the age where Shmoo was taking his first steps (13.5 months), so I'm hoping she will do so soon. This seems to be the pattern with her: take her sweet time with physical milestones, just past the point where her pretty-low-key parents start to worry, make phone calls, and set up assessments, then voila, bust out the skill with no fanfare, as if she had been doing it all along.

She has also been adding to her vocabulary of words that only her family can understand. I love the verbal stuff. She's doing lots more imitating and self-sufficient stuff, like holding her own sippy and pushing herself on a plastic car - things that Shmoo didn't deign to do until he was much older. She's also cut most of her one-year molars in the past few weeks. Open letter to teeth: bite me.

I'm probably going to have some moles removed from the left side of my face. One I've had since birth that started out as kind of a kicky little "beauty mark" has - ewww - grown since my pregnancies (could just be due to the aging process, wheee!) and a couple new ones have - EWWWWW - sprouted up in the past few years. I feel self-conscious about them, like it's the first thing people see when they look at me. Anyway, when Shmoo was having quiet time on Saturday I went into his room and saw that he was stirring. I lay down on the bed with him. He touched the largest one and said "what's that?" I explained what a mole was and that I was thinking of having them removed. I asked him what he thought and he said "just [the largest] one. I like this one [pointing to the on my upper lip]. It's my favorite." Then he gave some reason like it's the happy one - wish I could remember the words he used. So, with the doctor's input, of course, I'll have all of them removed except that one.

Thus ends the post.

early morning snippet

Shmooie's bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from ours.

This morning at 5, I hear pad pad pad pad of Shmoo-sized feet down the hall. He comes to my side of the bed:

"Miss Michelle [preschool teacher] says I can't have Nemo as my friend at school. She says that nighttime pets aren't allowed at school."

"That's the rule," I respond, and roll over.

pad pad pad pad back down the hall.

Thirty seconds later pad pad pad pad back to our room.

"Mommy, you hurt my feelings."

"Here, let me kiss them."

*kiss*

pad pad pad pad back down the hall.

"F" is for fairy

Shmoo is going through a bit of a tranny phase. I say "phase," but we can trace it back at least to the silly girl bison days.

He gets into my makeup, especially the lipstick. I let him have a Fanta-scented lip balm and he's obsessed with it.

He frequently asks me to paint his fingernails. I do, sometimes. I don't have girly colors, so he ends up with gold, metalic blue, or bronze paint. HPR doesn't approve, but I don't want to get into the whole "that's for girls only" mindset. He has plenty of time to get all self-conscious about his manliness; he's not now, and I certainly don't want to project that onto him.

When we told him about Roo's impending arrival, he had no interest in a brother and only wanted a girl baby. He plays mostly with the girls at school. I can see it now: years of token-guyhood.

Whenever he pretends to be an animal, it is a girl animal or a mommy animal. To wit:
"I am an orca. A mommy orca."
"I am a girl baby."
"I am a mommy lion."
"I am a fairy. And fairies are only girls."
"I am a girl rooster." (I didn't have the heart to point out the impossibility of that one to him.)
"I am a mommy mermaid sea monster."
"I am a girl dragon. My 14 babies just hatched from their eggs and I am nursing them." (Again, we didn't get into the technicalities of eggs = reptiles, nursing = mammals, although he would probably have grooved on such a discussion. Sometimes when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed we say "hey, Grumpy Gills" ala Dory and he responds "I don't have gills; I have LUNGS")

Besides the nursing and babies, the animals don't do anything overtly female, like sashaying or primping or tee-hee-heeing demurely behind their gloved claws. So we're a bit mystified about the importance of gender in Shmoo's imaginary world.

HPR started to ask him, the other day "why aren't you ever a boy dragon?" but then thought about it and said, "well, I guess you'll be a boy your whole life, so I can see how it would be more fun to pretend you're a girl."

In related news: Roo makes the bbbbbbbbb noise when she pushes toy cars and trains. Another gear-head!

out of da Shmoo

A coupla things.

At Shmooie's school recently the teachers asked kids what they want to be when they grow up. Shmoo thought about it, then got a big smile on his face and said: "I want to make donuts!" I'm so proud. (So you see the obsession has continued. I look forward to the family discount.)

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Last week we were walking back from the park, the kids in the urban minivan. As we crossed the street, someone turned left and blasted right by us, a few mere feet from the stroller. Before I could censor myself* I said "Shit!"

The car didn't hit us and as I regained my composure I wondered whether Shmoo had noticed the new vocab word. He didn't say anything for a long while. Then he chuckled and said "Silly Mommy. You're supposed to say 'shoo' for flies, not cars." I laughed along with him—heh heh heh Shmoo, you're so right. Silly Mommy.Whew.

*We're not big swearers. I admire the artfulness with which others swear, but it's not us. We are in fact the Flanders family, you know, with our usage of words such as piggers and bunsers. I did go through a bit of a cussing phase when I was in Bulgaria, however, because I was nostalgic for American swearing.