Of note this week

There really hasn't been anything of note happening in our house this week. Except that we've been watching quite a bit of Star Trek: Next Generation. I think the kids have figured out that if they want to watch TV in the evenings, it's a pretty safe bet that we're incapable of saying "No" to Jean-Luc Picard.

Actually, one thing does stick out as happening this week. Somehow I made the mistake of referring to growing up and going through puberty.

Marxo: What does puberty mean?
Me: Well when you get older and stop growing taller, your body goes through puberty which means that it's getting ready to have babies.
Fellan: How do you make babies?

(Oh crap... It was at this point that the husband, who had been listening in a different room, said something like, "I just remembered - I need to go downstairs for something!" He didn't actually leave, though. So, we just looked at each other and giggled nervously, waiting for one of us to break down and respond in some way.)

Marxo: You get married and you kiss. That's how you make babies.
Me: No, you don't make babies by kissing.
Fellan: Then how does it happen?!
Me: Well, the egg gets fertilized and then the baby starts growing.
Marxo: What's fertilizer?
Fellan: It's dirt! You put dirt on the egg!

(Oh for geez. Now I'm imagining all the crazy images that the kids must be creating in their minds and I can't let them think that girls get pregnant through bizarre gardening incidents. I finally work up the courage to take it to a little more technical level...)

Me: The fertilizer is not dirt. Boys have something called sperm and it's the fertilizer. Girls have the egg. So, the egg gets fertilized by the sperm.
Fellan: Where do I have sperm?
Husband (thank goodness): The sperm is in the boy's body, but you don't have any sperm yet because you haven't gone through puberty.
Fellan: Oh.

And finally, no more questions. The husband was a little worried about what the kids would go off and tell their friends, imagining that they're going to be running around yelling, "Hey! The egg gets fertilized by the sperm!!!"

My only response? Well, it's true.

Freddie

Even before I ever got pregnant, I knew that I would want the sex of the baby to be a surprise, so when the time came for us to potentially find out whether we were having a boy or a girl, we politely declined to find out.

Of course, this has all kinds of ramifications when getting ready for the arrival of the baby. There's the obvious problem regarding what kind of clothes to get, but also, decorating the nursery becomes a problem.

So, we did the same thing that everyone does: we painted the nursery yellow and green.

And for some reason, I like frogs. So, we made it a frog theme, but tried not to go overboard. I really didn't want frogs all over the place. We found a bumper set with some cute frogs on it, I made some crib sheets out of frog fabric, and we bought a gigantic frog named Freddie and put it in the room.

Freddie is so big that we used to take a monthly picture of Fellan with Freddie in order to judge his growth. We tried doing the same with Marxo, but as with all second-children the novelty quickly faded.

As the years have passed and we've accumulated more and more stuff in the kids' room, Freddie had to give up his spot on the floor and sit on the foot of Marxo's bed. But, she eventually got too tall for that, so he's been shoved between the dresser and a storage basket for the last couple of months.

Until last night...

Getting ready

Last Friday it snowed in Houston - and everyone lost their minds!!! By 4:30 in the afternoon, all the traffic from people going home early had completely cleared out and it was incredibly easy to make it home from Tae Kwon Do practice.

It was actually a great way to kick off the weekend. We spent all day Saturday and Sunday hanging out at home, putting up the Christmas tree, and making beef stew (Fellan and the husband made it and it turned out really, really good - even if Fellan wouldn't try it).

We also watched the Cornhuskers ALMOST beat UT. And if the Huskers just had any sort of offense at all, the score would have been 42 to 13 instead of 12 to 13. But, at least when the defense was on the field (which was most of the time!), I felt like I was watching the old Huskers play.

It took me back to the days of Turner Gill and Mike Rozier and my eighth grade American History teacher who would come in to class every Monday morning stating triumphantly (and measuring the unseen with one hand up high and the other just slightly lower), "Here's God. Here's Tom Osborne."

Finally, I think Nebraska Football is getting ready to indoctrinate another generation into believing that the Huskers have complete dominion of the game.

Mud, mud, mud

Well, they're still working on the first side of our street. And the husband still doesn't have a sidewalk. He's taken to just working from our house these days because all his shoes are muddy and he's sick of it.

He sent me some pictures of the sidwalk in front of his office the other day. The title of the e-mail was "No man is an island".

As you can see from this picture, they've been building forms for the street and they've actually poured some of the concrete and a small portion of the sidewalk. Of course, not this part of the sidewalk.

I gave up my hope of having a new street for Christmas well over a month ago...

Writing

Both the kids have become obsessed lately with writing. Everything. And displaying their writings. Everywhere.

Here's a sampling of the sticky notes that are currently adorning all walls of the house.

These two are hung up in our bathroom:

These are stuck to the kitchen cabinets:

This is on the side of the desk in the office:

I'm not sure where this one is stuck (the husband took these pictures and sent them to me on my request) but I know that it's from one day that we went hiking at the Arboretum. The kids got hooked on the fact that "poison ivy has three leaves" and decided to post notes all over the interior of the car.

I have no idea why Fellan put this one up:

And I have several notes in my purse to the captain:

...of the Titanic:

Written inside is an ice warning:

If only he would have gotten this in time...

Video Games

I have to be honest about this one: I hate video games. I was horrible at them when I was little and they only existed as arcade games at the YMCA. I really hated people watching me lose so quickly. I'm sure if I would have practiced more, I could have gotten good at them, but since I didn't like being embarrassed, I never played them.

And then came the Atari. Oh, how I loved the Atari. I could be bad at a game in private. We didn't have an Atari for the longest time. I would always play PacMan over at a friend's house. But Santa brought us an Atari for Christmas one year and I was absolutely ecstatic. I remember my brother mapping out the game Pitfall on a huge piece of paper. He wasted HOURS on that thing!

But we never did get PacMan and I never did become a video game addict. And now that I have kids, I'm very grateful for that.

I just hate video games and my disdain for them is getting worse and worse.

We were with another family one day and while the parents were off procuring food, their four-year-old son was telling us about a game they have on the Wii and how you have to knock some guy down and then you hit him and you kill him and you kill him and you kill him. *shudder*

And this past weekend, we were at a friend's house and their four-year-old daughter was playing some game on a Nintendo DS. Our kids were desperate to play with her, but she sat there, completely entranced by that game for at least 30 minutes until they tore her away.

We had been considering getting a Nintendo DS for the kids for Christmas so they could do reading and spelling games, but after about 2 minutes of watching our friend's daughter play on this thing, we both simultaneously looked at each other and mouthed, "Maybe not!"

Nope, our kids are going to be the unlucky, deprived kids of the neighborhood. Because as long as they've still got imaginations, they're playing with them. Period.

Possible secret?

I came in to work on Friday and worked out in the fitness center. There are lockers provided in the locker room, but nobody is allowed to leave their clothing or other stuff in there - you are supposed to use the locker for only the time you're working out.

This really is a pain, but I think it led me to come up with a potentially good hypothesis on Friday at lunchtime.

I was putting away all my stuff and making sure that the locker room was the way it was when I got there. I turned off the fan and diligently put all my stuff into my bag and got ready to leave. And then a weird thought entered my mind - maybe the secret to being organized and staying organized is to think of your own house as somebody else's house. I was cleaning up the locker room and putting everything back the way I found it because it's not my space.

I would never treat someone else's house the way I treat my own. I leave crap out all over the kitchen counters, thinking that "tomorrow, I'll actually put the stuff away". I leave things out after I use them (like wrapping paper, for instance) because I just can't be bothered to put it away immediately and I'll get around to it sometime.

And then, when we have people over, or when we get into a "cleaning mode", I get so frustrated and angry that the house is the way it is, that I fly into a complete rage at whoever happens to be standing closest. (which is usually my husband)

I get mad because the nanny can't be bothered to actually put things away instead of stuffing everything into a box for us to eventually put away. I get mad because there are piles of papers all over the house that the husband and I both create because we still don't have a filing system.

And I feel like all of this stuff around the house is piled up because "people" in the house are not being respectful of "us" and our desire to have a clean house. Finally, I'm realizing that I'm one of those people who is not being respectful of myself. If I were to just treat my own things as someone else's, maybe I would be able to force some sense of order. ???

Well, I took a step towards being respectful of myself this weekend. I cleaned out all the crap that was under my bathroom sink and left only the things that I use regularly and I cleared out the spot for my "toiletries caddy" again. I usually leave it out on my counter all week - only putting it away on cleaning day so that the cleaning lady can clean off my bathroom counter. Today, however, is not a cleaning day and I put it away! Let's see how long this lasts...

The Great Butterfly Release of 2009

As promised, here are the pictures from The Great Butterfly Release of 2009...

I didn't get a good picture of the butterflies on the flowers after we released them, but they seemed to be very happy and were both sucking up nectar from the flowers. It was really pretty cool to watch them.

Halloween

Ok, I finally got the pictures of both Halloween and The Butterfly Release of 2009 from the husband. I'll wait and post the butterfly pictures later, just to keep you in suspense - I know you're waiting anxiously for them!

We spent Halloween with some friends and trick or treated around the neighborhood. I think since it was on a Saturday night, everyone else got out earlier than us, but it was still good. The kids succeeded in getting plenty of "non-approved" candy, which I then replaced with "approved" candy and all was well.

We also attended a Halloween costume party at a friends' house the night before Halloween. The whole family had vampire costumes, but then the husband ended up being out of town. We still got a picture of me and the kids, though. They're really enthused.

And here's a pic right before trick or treating...

That's a light-up bat headband that you can't see on her head.

Started yet?

So, has everyone started their Christmas shopping already? I've been quietly saving Gift Ideas to my wishlist.com for everyone in our family for the last few months. Now it's time to start ordering! I'm bound and determined to be like Courtney and get all my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving this year! :)

Today at lunchtime, I worked out and as I was showering and getting dressed, a couple of ladies came in to do their lunchtime workout. Which, I think, included just as much chatting as "working out". They were talking about the Christmas shopping they had already done. I wish I could make this an audio blog, but you'll just have to take my word for it: Never before has a locker room been filled with so much southern drawl from two grandmothers talking about the clothes they've already gotten for their grandchildren.

About two weeks ago, though, the locker room (approximately 10 feet by 15 feet) was filled with towels when I was in there.

This is the normal place for the towels.


Occasionally, they also get piled onto this bench, too.


This was new...

Not really going anywhere with this, but I laughed quite a bit when I saw them stacked all over the place. Time to go home...