Minti - Member - Cathbuzz - Blog - Archive

12:42

44 Visits

This post is from from my other blog here

Despite all my good planning and anal practice of wrapping presents as they were purchased, we still had an exhausting countdown to Christmas. Sadie was sick. Again. Yesterday was our third doctor's visit for this particular illness, and this is round 4 of antibiotics. In addition to being sick, she was also constipated. This may be too much detail for some of you to stomach, but I just have to say that the child was producing granite from her back end just about hourly for days at a time. We're attacking it with medicine droppers of prune juice and glycerine suppositories. The illness barely touched Maya, but Mike was staggering around the place like the undead. Place a very busy week of work on top of that, and suddenly, you have a very disorganized Christmas Eve.

Mike had purchased several presents at the last minute, all of which needed wrapping. In addition, we had one simple gift to assemble. Based on the box, I had allotted about 30 minutes to putting it together. Lesson delivered: the box contained 3 billion parts, all of which needed to be unwrapped, organized, and then attached with a screwdriver according to IKEA-style directions. It took Mike and I about 3 hours to get everything done. The Christmas Eve I had envisioned where we loaf around and watch movies was toast. We staggered to bed, where (like nearly every night that week) I got about 3 hours sleep with a very sick Sadie before they both woke up.

Christmas morning, everyone was cheerful. Even Sadie postponed her suffering for the couple of hours it took to open presents. Maya has her most precious objects laid out on the dining room table (out of Sadie's reach), and we basically don't see her for most of the day while she plays with her Diego Rescue Center and the A-Z Learning Zoo. Occasionally she wanders into the living room to grab some dinosaurs and ask us to "make them talk" before she runs out on another rescue mission.

Sadie mostly loves the kitchen that took us so long to put together. She picks up the cell phone and says "Hi" and "Bye" into it (and I swear, people, I am rarely on the phone--she's just that sharp), and puts plastic food into the oven while she chatters away to herself.

Dec

2006

Now we're up to date

21:29

44 Visits

This post is from from my other blog here

We've been very busy driving the idea of Christmas into Maya's brain with a claw hammer. She's been primed with Christmas specials courtesy of Wonder Pets, Dora, and Diego. She's rediscovering the Charlie Brown Christmas special. She is aware of Santa and his alleged gift giving, stocking stuffing, and predeliction for cookies and milk.

In fact, she's talked a lot about Santa. She seemed outright happy when we mentioned that he would be attending the pancake breakfast we were going to. We told her about how you sit on his lap and tell him what you want, but as soon as she saw him, the affair was over. Later on she would tell me that she did NOT like a Santa that was wearing glasses, but at the time I had no idea that she would be so thoroughly freaked out. I brought her over to him, and she clung to me like a barnacle. I need to find a flatbed scanner to show everyone the scene. It's familiar to everyone, and was repeated when I decided to bring Sadie over for a picture. My children's screams filled the air, reminding everyone that it was indeed the Christmas season.

From there, we cut down a perfectly innocent Christmas tree, and then shoehorned the girls into the fancy dress you see above to go to the mom's group Christmas party. Maya ran around like a nut abusing that dress, but dammit, I bought it and she's going to wear it as much as possible. Sadie fussed from the minute I put the dress on until I took it off hours later. Santa showed up at this party too, and Maya retrieved her present from him very cautiously, with daddy as a bodyguard, and being very careful not to make eye contact. To be honest, I don't really want to freak her out with the idea that he will be trespassing on Christmas Eve, even if he is going to leave her presents. She might not be able to sleep from the terror.

Dec

2006

Sadie, Birthday Cake

21:06

78 Visits

This post is from from my other blog here

We had Jane's birthday party in November, and a good time was had by all. Sadie got her first taste of birthday cake, and unlike Maya (who at her first birthday decided she didn't care for cake at all), Sadie plunged in with gusto. She will not disappoint fans of 1st birthday pictures showing babies covered in cake.

Now, I'm a big fan of the sloppy, kind of sad looking homemade birthday cakes that I normally do around here. That is, until I saw the Madagascar cake at Safeway. Now there's a birthday cake. Inexpensive, big shock-and-awe effect on the girls, plus the toys are still being played with I presume. We were gifted with the palm trees from the cake, and every day, one of Maya's plastic dinosaurs is grazing on it. Perfect.

Unfortunately, it rained quite a bit on the birthday girl's actual birthday, but we managed somehow to have fun regardless. The next day, we went to good old Apple Hill for some pony rides. I'll make any excuse to go up to Apple Hill. I don't actual eat pastries every time I'm there, but I'm soothed by their presence.

Somehow, being trapped in the house with us for a rainy weekend with four little girls hopped up on sugar did not dissuade the Z's from having us over for Thanksgiving. We had a great meal (they cooked everything!), and the next day Mike and I thought Fisherman's Wharf sounded fun. Yeah, you read that right. People who had actually resided in San Francisco thought Fisherman's Wharf would be a good idea. I'm going to skip the negative and just say that kids love sea lions, and we went to the aquarium, which we hadn't done before.

Somehow, the next day, we still mustered up the energy to go out again, and we went to Train Town (?) in Sonoma. Mini carnival rides, a big train ride, petting zoo. We topped it off with a meal at an Irish pub where we ignored the imminent meltdowns and the place being pelted with food (Sadie) and had a pint while giggling nervously about how much fun we were having although a good 50% of our collective brains were grinning through clenched teeth. Or maybe that was just me. I was, after all, seated next to Sadie, who has the reach of an orangutan.

Before I end November, here's a shot of Maya in full Native American regalia. They made costumes for their Thanksgiving Friendship Feast at preschool, where Maya are more food in one sitting than I have ever seen her eat. I believe she clocked about 13 seconds of sitting and eating at the actual Thanksgiving dinner.

Dec

2006

Halloween

20:54

53 Visits