Baby Tara(h)

Apparently, people are getting annoyed with the fact that I haven't posted here lately. So, to appease the masses, here goes:

Towards the end of my pregnancy with the girl, we gave the boy a little baby doll so that he could get used to the idea of having a baby around and so that in case he felt the need to hold a baby once his sibling arrived, he would always have an "unbreakable" option.

The boy definitely takes after his father in the fact that he is a caring nurturer and he has bonded quite deeply with his baby doll. To this day, he doesn't sleep without his baby. And several months ago, he named her Baby Tara(h). [The husband and I don't agree on how this should be spelled - I say "Tarah", he says, "Tara"]

I'm quite proud of the fact that he named his baby. Not just because he named her, but because he chose a name for her that doesn't already belong to someone we know. It seems to have been a unique thought and considering the difficulty we had when we were trying to come up with names for our kids, I'm even more impressed!

Anyway, meet Baby Tara(h) - pronounced (tah-rah):

One eye open and one eye closed - isn't that the way all well-loved baby dolls are supposed to look? :)

So, one day last week, Baby Tara(h) went to school with the boy. Upon his arrival, a group of his little classmates (all girls) told him that boys can't have babies. This incited a very lively discussion between Fellan, the girls, the boy's male teacher, and my husband. The husband tells me that he excused himself from the conversation after they had covered the difference between having a baby and giving birth to the baby and after they talked about all the different methods of feeding a baby. I think the girls were satisfied by that point, but I predict there will be many more of these types of conversations.

(Especially since last night as the kids went to bed, they were having quite a lively conversation about penises and paginas...)

Code name for the girl

Since I've now got a code name for the boy, I thought I'd check out my T9word function to see what would come up for the girl's name. Her name is not very popular, so I expected a similar outcome as for the boy's name.

But I typed in her name and oddly enough, it worked perfectly. Well, I couldn't have that, so I typed in an alternate spelling that we had considered for her name. Much better: Marxo.

Fellan and Marxo. Those are some code words I can live with. :)

Fellan's Story

Part of the requirements of the boy's preschool is that each parent must work at the school about 5 to 6 times per semester. My turn to work at the school was a week ago on Friday.

I always have fun working there because I love seeing the boy play with his friends and I get to see what he actually does every day at school. But last Friday was even more fun because they've started something at his school that is pretty neat - the kids each get to tell a story and then act it out. It wasn't the boy's turn during my "parent-helper day", so I've been anxiously asking him every day after school if he got to tell a story that day.

Finally, this past Friday, I forgot to ask him about it, but found a sheet sitting on the dining room table. The front page was an explanation of the project:

"We are please to contine to participate in a variation of the Classroom Storytelling Project that originated with participation in the School Literacy and Culture Project at the Rice University Center for Eduation... As a part of the literacy curriculum, in our school, your child will act out adult written literature. S/He will also be dictating and acting out his/her own stories. Copies of your child's storieswill be sent home so that your child can share them with you. We encourage you to take the child's interest in these stories as far as they wish to go. Act them out with siblings and friends. Enjoy the enthusiasm your child brings home along with the stories. The stories may be factual or fictional, or some combination of both. Children tell stories that help to make them part of the community of children in our school and to cement developing friendships... The stories will be dictated by your child and as children go through stages in making sense of this language, occasionally a story will have nonstandard grammar. For example a child might say, 'He goed to the store.' We will then give your child the choice by rephrasing the sentence as 'He goed to the store, or he went to the store?' If the child chooses the nonstandard grammar, we will write what he/she says. Ultimately the words of the story belong to your child..."

Ok, I know that's a really long explanation of the story, but I just think this project is so cool. After seeing how excited the kids were about the story on my parent-helper day and how important is makes the story-telling child feel, I couldn't wait to see what kind of story the boy would come up with.

The day before the boy told his story was "teddy bear day" at the school - every child had brought a teddy bear to school and then the teddy bears spent the night at the school. When we arrived the next morning, the kids weren't allowed to go into the school room right away because the bears had gotten into some "mischief" the night before. :)

So, Fellan's story was:

My bear was stringing on the beads. Then I found him. I got him to the circle.

My husband wasn't home until almost bedtime Friday night, but when I found the story, the kids and I read it over and over, acted it out, and the boy was thrilled about his story. By the time Daddy got home that night, both the kids knew the story by heart and were very excited to tell him all about it.

We went and got the page with the story written on it and the boy stood in front of his Daddy, holding the page with both hands, proudly reading his story. When he finished reading, he put the paper down by his side and took a very deep bow. I'm not sure who was more proud, the boy or his Daddy. It was the cutest thing.

Fellan

I've been trying to get better over the last couple of years about being organized and remembering things, so one of the tools I've begun to rely on heavily is my phone. I set reminders for myself in it all the time these days and when I go to edit the "content" of the reminder, the keypad on the phone automatically goes into "T9word mode" - it's supposed to be kind of smart and predict what you're trying to type - a pretty cool feature when it works.

But, most of the time for me, it doesn't work. I set reminders for myself to go pick up my son and when I try to type in his (not very well-known) name, it comes out "Fellan". And because I'm too lazy to change the mode to the regular, horribly time-consuming text messaging mode, I just leave it!

I just set myself a reminder to "Go home" early today and instead, it says "In good". If anyone ever gets ahold of my phone and tries to snoop into my life, they're really going to wonder what kind of strange code words I use for myself. :) It's always good to keep people guessing.

What will the teachers think?

I was away last week for work and when I returned, a new term had entered the vocabulary of the boy (aided by my husband, of course): Going commando.

The boy now loves to announce, "I want to go commando!" and he immediately strips off his pants and his underwear (or pull-up in the mornings) and puts back on his pants.

I can't wait for him to pull out this phrase at school...

Busy times

Just in case anyone has been wondering, I really am still alive. I just can't believe how busy I've become in the last couple of months and how different this is from my previous job. I actually go through entire days without an opportunity to peruse the internet. This work thing is really getting in the way of my life!

This past week, we finally wrote our Christmas letter! I think we're going to try to send out our Christmas cards this coming weekend. Pretty late, eh? But since we haven't sent any out in about 4 years anyway, we figure we're doing well to get them out at all.

My husband took the first stab at the letter and he included a section talking about our potty-training woes (which are still fairly large woes around our house even still!). And while this has pretty much consumed all our time over the last 6 months, I still thought maybe we should foreg0 the details of our trials. I just don't think that's something the boy would be very happy about reading a few years from now, if he goes through our old Christmas letters someday. (of course that doesn't seem to stop me from writing about it to the entire internet! Hmmm...)

So, we toned it down a little bit and instead talked about the kid's general demeanors and how different they are. I added a sentence saying that if we were to predict our kid's future professions, we think we'll have one independent and dramatic theoretical nanophysicist and one compassionate and empathetic professional bicycle racer. Which do you think is which? :)

Since I mentioned the potty-training topic, I should give you a quick update! The girl is done - except for night time. She still wears a pull-up to bed at night, but otherwise, I can't remember the last time she had a real accident. Of course, the boy is still fighting it, but he is doing much better. I'd say we might be to about 40% with the boy. He has finally determined that "going nekkid", or at least sans-pants, helps him to remember to use the potty. And that's a big step.

And the girl just likes wearing no clothing, period, so I'd have to say that probably 75% of the time in our house, the kids are runnin' around in minimal (if any) clothing. We have resolved ourselves that we are going to get new carpet and new furniture once we finish this little phase of our lives!

Anyway, that's what's been going on around our house! Now it's time for me to go check on some other peoples' blogs and see what's going on elsewhere. Until next time...

Creating bad habits

Over the last couple of months, my husband and I have gotten into a really bad habit: we've been staying up late every night after the kids go to bed, working! Last night we were up until past 4am and the previous night, I was up until 3am.

My problem is that once the kids go to bed, we'll come down and sit down on the couch to decompress and watch a 30-minute program before going downstairs to start our "homework" for the evening. Inevitably, though, we'll both end up falling asleep for an hour or more and after I've slept that long, I'm wide awake. So, why not get in some time working? I work for an engineering consulting company, so I get paid for my time, no matter where I work it. It's a win-win situation, right?

I wish. I'm just worn out. It's great that the oil and gas industry is so busy and we have all this work now, but it's really bringing back too many memories of college. Everyone else talks about college as this really fun and great time in their lives. I, however, have absolutely no desire to re-live that time of my life. Homework until 2am every night, projects due all the time, studying all night for every test, and sorority obligations on top of all of that. Uhg. There's a reason that our school's alumni refer to "getting out" and not "graduating" from college.

The kids are actually both napping at the moment and I desperately tried to take a nap, too. But, for some reason, I was unable to really go to sleep. Our son has the hardest time turning his brain off and going to sleep for naps and at night time. I'm pretty sure he gets that from me. The next time I'm totally exasperated at him for not taking a nap and later turning into an out of control little psycho-boy, I'm going to have to remind myself that it's all my fault. In the meantime, I'm going to go try to make another feeble attempt at getting a little rest before the kids wake up...

I'm OK...

Lately, the kids have taken to saying, "I'm OK!" quite a bit.

That's because they seem to have suddenly become very clumsy and accident-prone. Every time they trip and fall, almost immediately, they'll say, "I'm OK!" It's fairly amusing, actually.

A couple of their other favorite sayings are, "Sorry about that." And "...but that's allright."

So, I've been sitting here surfin' the 'net, trying to find some kind of inspiration for a Christmas gift for the girl (every time we ask her what she wants Santa to bring her, she says, "I don't know." - and it's true. She seems to have nothing that she actually wants.)

Anyway, the girl has been bouncing on the couch and I just heard a THUNK! Followed closely by:
"I'm OK! Sorry about that! But that's allright!"

These kids - they never cease to crack me up. :)

First time in how long?

Tonight is the first time since Thanksgiving... no... since before Thanksgiving that I have NOT brought any work home with me!

The simulation is done, the datasheets are finished (well, except for the pumps, which someone else is doing), the drawing reviews are finished, and I'm looking forward to going to bed before 1am tonight for the first time in a while, too. What a relief!!!

Now then. We just need to finish getting ready for Christmas, check in with my dad, who had gall bladder surgery yesterday, and check in with one of my dear friends whose Opi passed away on Sunday. Funny how life goes on in the real world.

I'd better get back to that real world thing now. I'll try to get back to the blogging world soon, too. :)

Thanksgiving Update

What a great Thanksgiving we had!

We traveled to Nebraska to celebrate Thanksgiving with grandma, grandpa, and Uncle Scott. And during our visit, we also exchanged our Christmas presents. While this causes me to have to get some serious Christmas shopping out of the way before Thanksgiving, which is pretty difficult for my non-organized-self, it also causes me to get some serious Christmas shopping out of the way before Thanksgiving, which is really pretty nice. (I'm not nearly as good as my friend Courtney!) Now we only have to worry about the husband's side of the family...

Anyway, getting back to Thanksgiving, we headed up to Nebraska on Tuesday afternoon. I really don't think I saw the kids until we were ready to leave on Sunday!

You know, every weekend, the kids wake us by greeting us face-to-face and telling us, "IT'S SUNNY OUTSIDE!!" I half-way expected the same treatment while we were in Nebraska, but I should have known better. From the moment they woke up until the time they went to bed, the kids were all about grandma, grandpa, and Uncle Scott. It was quite nice for everyone, I think. :)

We managed to work in 3 meals from Runza during our time there but I'd have to say the highlight of the vacation came, of course, on Thanksgiving Day. My mom cooked the best meal - turkey, casseroles, mashed potatoes, more casseroles, Watergate salad, fruit salad, rolls... YUM!! And she did it with no help from anyone else. I kept thinking I was going to get into the kitchen and try to help her out, but somehow, something kept on coming up. Finally, after working the previous night and all morning on this wonderful meal, my mom had had enough. She exasperatedly exclaimed, "I'm trying to get everything ready all by myself! Would someone please come help me?!"

And with perfect timing, the girl strolled into the kitchen and said, "Grandma, are you freakin' out?"

Aren't kids wonderful? :)