Ah, to be a kid with a box.
Look hard and you will see a pug-like nose and pencil-thin mustache… a robot’s gotta have some style.

“Portrait of My Brother”
little she-who-is
marker on white board, 2008
———–
I’m in a writing workshop this week at Downtown Cathedral. There are three workshop leaders—I am in BBT’s group. (Those who care already know; those who don’t know, don’t care.)
We have each morning free to write, then there are afternoon group sessions, individual conferences with our […]

A note to the nefarious:

You have been warned.

We got a new vacuum cleaner.

Today was R’s company picnic, which was fun for the whole family, but we are paying for it tonight. The kids were strung out. J-man is not settling well.
We always try to leave events right when the kids are at the crest of Fun Mountain. It’s silly to leave way too soon just so […]

Here’s my idea for a new kid product that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist: a pictorial clock.
Our toddler will often get up before everyone else and just kinda wander around. Once it becomes clear that everyone’s still asleep, she can easily be coaxed back to bed.
The trouble, of course, is that she can’t […]

The war in Iraq is five years old today, but let’s turn to a different five year old, the one living in my house.
Two quotes:
————
“Only things with heads can make noise.”
R and I spent an embarrassing amount of time pondering this hypothesis.
Does the person teaching the Parks and Rec science course know what s/he’s […]

Five years ago, I wasn’t reverendmother, just mother. She made it happen.
Happy Birthday to little she-who-is!
from the archives…
On the eve of my daughter’s second birthday

Two years ago tonight
You woke me up in the dark morning.
You had done so once before,
without incident,
And many times since, too many to count,
all of them melted together into a single […]

Quotable Quotes from C, Dessert Edition…
“Cake is cake.”
“Whenever you say banana pudding, it’s going to make me dream of banana pudding and how good it is.”
Speaking of Mental Processes…
Apparently, sometimes unpleasant stuff comes into C’s head unbidden. Usually it’s the stepmother in Cinderella. She’s working on how to train her brain to think of something […]

This is a Christmas gift for C (little she-who-is), who is afraid of Santa. The pseudonyms don’t quite work but you get the idea.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would […]

First, we are all doing well here. J had a visit with our ped today (our practice doesn’t go to the hospital where we delivered) and he’s fine, though they want to test his bilirubin again tomorrow morning. He’s also lost right at 10% of his birth weight, which is as much as they really […]

little she-who-is: G-mommy, my baby has leprosy! How can I make it stop? Her nose is about to fall off!
———————-
The girls are having a great time with G-mommy, or as the divine miss M calls her, Me-Mommy. They’ve spent the day playing hide-and-seek and hospital (see aforementioned) while R and I picked up the bassinet […]

[The room-sharing is going very well, by the way.]
So this morning C didn’t want to get dressed—cozy bed and all that—so I suggested she get dressed under the covers. I told her about getting dressed in my sleeping bag while camping and how the sleeping bag kept me warm in the chilly tent. She […]

Little she-who-is is smiling to herself over her cereal and banana…
RM: What are you smiling at honey?
C: [pats her chest] The red thing under my bones.
RM: Your heart?
C: Yes. It pumps blood to my body but Jesus is there too.
RM: And that’s what you’re smiling about?
C: Yes.
Mr. RM: Tell Mommy about your leg.
RM: What, did […]

Here are some of my favorite words the divine miss M uses:

gah-gen: water (I don’t quite get that one but it’s cute)
duck: stuck (when she can’t get down from the chair)
dah-dah: MaDear
ah: yes (I actually think that’s “yeah”—I know, I know, but I say it all the time)
tiss: tissue
peep: anything that happens in her diaper
wah-woo: […]

I have no idea where this came from. Other than the fact that my girls get the hiccups a lot.

There was a little princess; Little-She was her name,
She had a sister M, who was a princess just the same.
They’d play and giggle all day long, and splish-splash in the tub,
Until the fun was interrupted with […]