Memory

No, don't worry, I am not going to sully this blog with some boring American Idol commentary about how bad the dread lock guy's rendition of Memory was this week, and how he said, "A cat sings this song? I had no idea." (More bad use of quotes since that is just what I vaguely remember him saying, and not what he actually said.)

No, I want to write about memories of real people that I actually know, like my children. I was putting Jack to bed last night and he fell asleep in my arms. He really snuggles into the crook of my arm, with one arm around my waist and the other grabbing the neck of my sweater with his fist. He has quite a grip, and today I started calling him Pinchy. His cheeks were rosy, eyes were closed, and he smelled sweet. I noticed all of this out of the corner of my eye because, while I was holding him with one arm, I was holding my book with another. I tend to read a lot. When I turned 16, I sat in the driver's seat of my parents minivan and looked out the window for the first time. I didn't know how to get around town, but I had gotten a lot of reading done over the years.

I can remember painting a sign with my grandma that she hung on the door for my mom to see when she came home from the hospital with my baby sister. I was three and my job was to paint little evenly spaced lines of green across the bottom to represent grass. My lines got bigger, longer, spaced further apart and, in general, messier as they crossed the page. My grandma said, "Oh no! Paint the grass like this." I looked at her grass and my grass and thought, "It looks easier than it is." The point of this story is that I have a great memory. I am the official expert on everything that ever happened. I am so good at remembering things that some people think I just make stuff up.

So you'd think that I would not need to worry about whether or not I am going to have vivid memories of everyday life with my baby. But my worrying skills rival my memory, I'm that multi-talented. Currently, when I try to ingrain a tender moment into my brain, I also think of memories of Luke. I probably have 3 or 5 or maybe only 1o vivid memories of nursing Luke. So I worry that I am doing too much reading and not enough memorizing of every moment with Jack. Pictures help, but this morning when I tried to capture the look on Jack's face when I went in to get him in the morning instead of capturing 1000 words I got maybe 5. Those 5 words were "Oh. there's the camera again." What I was trying to capture was that his eyes are still blue, with a glint of joy, a little devil, that he was happy to see me, but also that he had been content to look at the mobile before I got there, and maybe wants to glance back at the mobile right this second; a shade of worry passes over his brow, but then it's gone as he breaks out into a big smile, which is also fleeting, and then he's overcome with the joy that one can attain only by seeing how much blanket can be crammed into ones mouth, and then I snap the picture. OK, words aren't going to do it either. But the process of trying to come up with the words or the picture may be what helps me with the memory.

And I guess if I have 10 vivid memories of Luke five years later, that's pretty good. And I did a lot of reading when he was a baby too.

Lies and Fabrications

Jack is not napping well at daycare. Or at home. But at home, if I want to get a lot of work done, I sometimes let Jack nap in my lap. That allows him to sleep for over an hour and forces me to work instead of foraging for snacks. However, for some reason, Dave told the daycare about my bad parenting and I got lectured. Then I had to avoid three consecutive drop off/pick ups because I don't like to get in trouble.

Short story long, yesterday Jack took one OK nap in the crib, one relatively good nap in the crib, and one fabulous nap on my lap. As I was falling asleep last night I was strategizing to myself. "Just tell her he slept fine. No, tell her you made him cry it out with mixed results. No, tell the nap stories accurately as to length and location, but say you were forced to let him nap on your lap because before you got a chance to put him down you ended up on a two hour conference call and you don't have a cordless phone. Yes! That's it!"

Stress much?

Why can't I just take this fabulous advice I got from a good friend:

"The daycare just needs to pick a consistent routine for him there. He's smart enough to follow a routine with them and then be treated like a king at home."

(The picture is from yesterday morning. He slept from 8 until 6:30. Then had breakfast in bed and passed out, milk drunk.)

Don't Quote Me On This

"Bean" was a pleasure to have. That is what it said on the note from the kennel. Dave wondered about the use of quotes around his name. I suggested that maybe the kennel thinks "Bean" is Bean's nickname. But I really shouldn't make fun of them for two reasons.

1.) I started to look up proper and improper uses of quotation marks to research this blog "article" that I am writing here. But then I got sort of lazy and decided to "give up".
2.) I should probably have put quotes around the first sentence since I am quoting a line from the note from the kennel. Is that right? I don't know - see point 1.

I should also not be making fun of the kennel because they let me take Bean without paying since I forgot my wallet. "Oh, we trust you! We'll see you soon."

Regardless, I think that a more accurate sentence would have been, Bean was a "pleasure" to have. Just "kidding" Bean!

In other Bean news:

Today I brushed Bean's hair and got such a big pile of hair that I was thinking of taking it to someone I know who spins fiber into yarn and then weaves things out of the yarn and asking her to make Bean a dog hair sweater. I wish I could take credit for this fabulous "idea" but Dave and I have been joking about the "dog hair sweater" ever since I overheard that same person accepting a zip lock bag of dog hair and saying, "I can't wait to work with this and see what kind of yarn I can make."

Lastly, I thought a "funny" blog sidebar to have would be something along the lines of "Bean has gone N days without an accident in the house." Where N=number of days. But then I realized that it would just be so depressing to keep resetting that number back to zero. On the other hand, I guess the number would go up more often than it would go down. And today we could be celebrating "1" day without an accident. Yea "Bean"!

Update: While I was dropping Luke off at daycare this morning, Bean ate a granola bar and a mocha clif shot (contains 50mg of caffeine). Dave is out of town, so if history tells me anything, I should be rolling up the rug and covering the floors and walls with plastic. (If I had been blogging at the time, I could now link to the "eating everything out of the refrigerator incident", the "eating the care package from Beth incident", the "eating a bag of chocolate chips and jumping out of the window and running away incident", the "eating a bag of whole wheat flour incident", the "eating a bag of brown sugar incident" and everyone's favorite, the "eating a box of Malley's Chocolate and you don't even want to know the rest of the story incident".)

Pacifier Peekaboo

Where's my pacifier?
There it is!



Let's play again!



Where's my pacifier?
There it is!

Fruita

I jinxed myself the first night by hoping for warm weather. I think it's safe to say that since I came to my senses, stopped winter camping in the snow, and bought a Eurotrashvan, I have never shivered through such a cold night of camping. Luke did a lot of tossing and turning but every 2 hours or so I said in a loud whisper, "LUKE. If you are too cold, come sleep down here! Do you hear me? Are you too cold?" He never answered. Once, around 5am he said, "Mommy, I'm freeeeeeeeezing." But Dave told him to get all the way inside his sleeping bag and to pull it up over his head and he'd be warmer. Jack slept the whole night and didn't even fuss when I checked his head and hands to see how cold they were every half hour or so. Dave also slept really well, and only stirred every 15 minutes or so when I quietly whispered, "Dave! Do you think everyone is too cold? Should we make Luke come down here and snuggle? Or would he roll over on top of Jack? Do you think Luke might be smothered inside his sleeping bag? Dave?"

We did get have some great cuddle time in the morning though.








And Dave refused to get up and "start the long laborious process of making my coffee and breakfast" until he could see someone out the window wearing shorts. I'm not sure the person in shorts ever materialized but Luke and I begged and pleaded and Dave finally got started on breakfast at about 9:30am.




But the best part of the day was when Dave put Jack in the stroller and Luke and I hopped on our bikes and did some serious mountain biking. Luke said, "I love camping because I love to mountain bike." I was very proud of my little mountain biker.






Two quotes.

Luke: I was climbing the tree and the highest I had gotten was level 5. I was about to go to level 6 when I noticed people were packing. I said, "Are we leaving?" And Daddy said, "yes" and then I started crying because I didn't want to leave.


Jack (when we got home and he saw his mobile over his bed): Aaaah!

Yes, it was a good time, and it was also nice to get home and sleep in our warm, soft beds.

(Click on any of the pictures to see the whole album in a normal size. You'll see that it did warm up.)

Is That A Poem In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

It's National Poem In Your Pocket Day.

We're off to camp
Cuz in Boulder, it's damp.
In Fruita it's not
I hope that it's hot.

Excuse Me Ma'am, Did You Pay For That Donut?

As previously noted, my grocery shopping schedule is totally out of whack. Instead of going Friday with just Jack, I picked Luke up from daycare and took both boys with me after work.

I didn't bring a snack for Luke because I figured I'd let him have one of the free cookies when we got to the grocery. We made a bee line over there, which screwed up my usual traffic pattern through the store and somehow caused us to circle the entire store about 6 times. But worse than that was the fact that the cookie section was... EMPTY. He decided he wanted a donut instead and being the good, health conscious, anti-dinner spoiling, trans-fat avoiding mom that I am, I said, "OK, but you need to share it with me."

Luke: Just take a small bite
Mom: Mmm. Mmm. Yum.
Luke: That's all you get. Is this free?
Mom: No, they are 3 for a dollar.
Luke: So how much are they?
Mom: 33 cents.
Luke: How will you remember how much it costs?
Mom: I have a good memory.
Luke: Will I have to give them the donut at the checkout?
Mom: No, just eat it.
Luke: How will you pay for it?
Mom: I'll hold onto the wrapper and it will remind me to tell them that we ate a donut.
Luke: How much is it? 33 cents?
Mom: Yes.

Somewhere during the second lap around the store, I noticed he was still carrying the donut.

Mom: Eat that, or it will be too close to dinner when you finish it.
Luke: I decided I wanted to save it until we get home.
Mom: I don't like that idea
Luke: Will I need to hand the donut to the checkout person?
Mom: No, I'll say, "We need to pay for this donut." And I'll point to the donut.

--Repeat 3 more times --

When we finally arrived at the checkout I said, "We need to pay for one donut."
The clerk said, "OK"

Then 2 seconds later I looked down at Luke and he had empty hands and donut filled chipmunk cheeks.

I guess he was really worried I would forget to pay for that donut.

There's a Lemon in My Jewelry Box

There. I said it. Not much more to say, the title says it all. But since I can't stop myself, I'll explain. On Sunday we had dinner at our friends' house and I thought they needed a lemon so I brought one. Turns out they didn't need it. So I guess when I got home, I took the lemon out of my pocket before hanging up my coat in my closet. It appears that I put it in my jewelry box. That was two days ago. So when I noticed the lemon, I took a picture of it, wrote a blog post, but did not move the lemon. Stay tuned for "My Closet Smells Like Rotten Lemons."

Pencil Me In

Jack is five months old tomorrow, and I am happy, so happy, ecstatic really, to announce that we are finally on a schedule.

As anyone with a new baby knows, getting on a schedule is like summiting Mount Everest. There is planning, training, Sherpas, oxygen tanks, permits, trips to Tibet, guides, altitude sickness, a high risk of death. Ok, it's not really like summiting Mount Everest at all, it's much more challenging.

And the worst part is that the schedule is so fragile. Just the slightest imbalance can send the whole thing into a tailspin and it may take weeks to recover. Like taking a nap too late in the day, falling asleep in the car, or something like baby's first camping trip.

See this is our schedule: On Wednesdays we do laundry and on Fridays we shop for groceries. There, I said it. Other new moms, try not to be jealous of our awesome schedule. But we are leaving for a camping trip on Thursday so I guess I need to shop tomorrow for the groceries for the camping trip? But do I plan menus all the way through to the following Friday? Or just shop again when we get back? And then again next Friday? Do you see what I mean here? Don't even get me started on the laundry situation.

Oh, did you think I was referring to a nap and night time sleeping schedule? Oh, no. No no no no no no no. Have you ever heard of K2? It's like Mount Everest except it's a little shorter and the weather is worse, and fewer people have summited and more people have died on it. So I guess it's sort of like getting a baby to sleep through the night. Except not really. Although, attempts on Mount Everest and K2 are made in the spring, so maybe we'll be summiting our own little mountain soon.

I know I'll often stop and think about them

Luke is already getting nostalgic for his daycare days. He often waxes melancholy in the evenings and more often than not it's a bedtime stalling technique. But last night was no act. Sob after heart wrenching sob.

"RUUUUUUUUUUUUBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. I'll never see her again."

I tried to offer sympathy and solutions but they fell on deaf ears. I told a long story about the last night I spent with my high school friends before we all left for college. How we dressed up in 70's clothes and hung out at the airport, and topped the evening off with coffee at Denny's. And how it was sad, but if I had never left for college I wouldn't have met Daddy. He was not impressed. Or maybe he was just embarrassed that his mom was so weird. Yes, I said WAS so weird.

Then I gave a stern, "OK, now it's time for bed!" when he started worrying that he would never see Kobie and Kai again if they moved to Sweden. They spend the summers there, but this fall they will all be at the same kindergarten. No need to mourn for those friends.

I was thinking this picture may make Luke less nostalgic for his current daycare. Or at least make him laugh.

His reaction, "Who are those people?"