Oh, Santa

Zizza came home from school with a stack of holiday paper mess in her back pack. I shuffled the stack around from place to place a few times before I went through and filtered the trash from the treasures. One of the papers was titled "Wish list" on it Ziz had written what appeared to be "suspects puppet."

This rather perplexed me. What did she suspect the puppet of doing? Or was she suspicious that there may be puppets lurking somewhere in her Christmas future?

Every time I rifled through the papers I wondered about it: "suspects puppet"? I guess puppets can be rather suspicious, but what does that have to do with her Christmas wishes?

Eventually I took the time to sort through the pile and decipher exactly what she had been meaning to say on the wish list paper. It was "Zhu zhu pets, Pillow pet" This made vastly more sense but was rather less interesting.

Lucky for Ziz, her bestie knew of her wish and gifted her a Zhu Zhu pet. Zizza carried it around, talked to it, snuggled it and generally loved it all to pieces for a solid 24 hours after receiving it. Wait, that's not entirely true.

Inter-dispersed with the carrying, talking and snuggling of the Zhu Zhu she also poured over the brochure that came inside the box outlining the full range of Zhu Zhu products. Then she took the time to list off all of the things her Zhu Zhu Roxie wanted.

"Roxie wants the playground, the house, the blah the blah and the blah" She said. Then I commented on Roxie's worldly greed and Ziz came to her defense stating that Roxie wasn't greedy at all and really only wanted the aforementioned list of things to which I replied "What do you think I would say if you asked me for that much stuff?" and Zizza said with a nod "Oh, Santa"

one potato two potato

Some time in the spring a door to door type asked me as part of his schpiel, "How many kids do you have?" This can be an amazingly difficult question to answer.

"I have two." The response came unbidden to my lips. And then I died a little.

Moo was upstairs napping.

When had my answer changed? Who gave it permission to? It seems like the kind of thing I should be consulted about. Apparently it was already real. She was leaving. The fact had been absorbed into my psyche without my being aware of the change.

......


Today at the grocery store I got my favorite cashier. She's nice and twinkly and she makes good conversation. The first time I went through her line I ended up giving her my hot chocolate recipe. Today she was discussing Eggplant Parmesan with the fellow ahead of me who was purchasing a giant pot and pound upon pound of Roma tomatoes.

"Looking at you makes my heart smile," she said to Enz as he peered at her over the counter. "It's just like seeing one of my own boys little again." she told him.

"Do you have more children?" she asked me after we discussed my plans for the two dozen pint jars and six bags of chocolate chips I'd just purchased. "yes," I said. "I have...more."

Then winking at Enzo and said "Are you going to help your mom? I bet you'll be a big help during your nap time!" and to me she added, "Grandma's know these things." I ask you friends, is it not obvious why she's my favorite?

.....

The question's become something of an ambiguity again. There are the two constant of course, then the one inside looming. Not changing the number quite yet, but making it necessary to tack on "and one on the way" in circumstances where my abdomen is in full view. Then there's the other one, the one who as of two weeks ago is mine again. Though paperwork, and approvals and travel dates still need to be attended to before she can reenter the family in the flesh.

The short of it is: Moo is coming back home.

The tale of the bald headed boy.

You remember don't you how broken up I was about Enzo's decision to shed his flowing locks? So how, you may ask did I reconcile myself to this?

I'll be honest. It hasn't been easy. Let me tell you how it happened.

One week ago today my Tuesday was winding down, and it had been a long one. I'd been home all the live long day with the pair of restless kiddos Sunday, then again on Monday (Dear strep, if I ever get the opportunity I'll punch you in the face) Tuesday Ziz had finally had her full 24 hours of antibiotics and blessedly went to school. Then she came home and it was like she'd never left. The three of us had our evening stretching out before us like something long and arduous an example of which I can't currently think of.

So, anyway, we did homework and had dinner and I was getting happier and happier as bed time crept up and then it was time for them to get their jammies on and to make things even better my Bosom Friend called to chat so I shuffled them up stairs with promise of rewards for those who put on their pajamas with no fuss and enjoyed some actual adult interaction.

Soon enough, the phone call ended leaving me to get back to my motherly responsibilities so up the stairs I went to brush little teeth.

With Enzo's head nestled in the crook of my right arm took to the cleaning of his teeth. As I finished my gaze shifted and I noticed a peculiarity at his hairline. "Enzo," I said. "did you cut your hair?" My mind was racing through possibilities. Cutting is his favorite pastime he'll sit at the table and snip away as long as his paper supply lasts. He'd spent a good portion of the afternoon doing this very thing but I'd made sure he only had access to the plastic scissors that hardly even cut paper so how would he have? Also, could I have gone that long without noticing? Even in my distracted brain fuzzy 3 days home alone with restless sick-but-not-sick-kids state?

Then he answered, "Zizza did it." A completely calm, matter of fact statement. I called Ziz. "Tell me about your brother's hair," I directed her. "Oh, he did that," she informed me just as cool and confident as Enzo's conflicting report had been.
"But how?" I stammered. "What did he cut it with?" "your sewing scissors" she told me.

I had no guess as to which was lying though I tended to go with my original supposition that Enz had done the snipping himself based on his love of cutting things and the fact that he's younger and less accustomed to the wrath that comes when you mess with my stuff.

I was too beat down at that point for any wrath though, and that's probably a good thing. I was just worried about that clump of hair lying somewhere in the house waiting to be strewn about and become an awful mess. Either that or already strewn into the awful mess and just waiting to be discovered. I asked them both what had happened to the hair once it had been dis-joined from the boy's head. Neither of them had an answer. I looked in all of the trash cans, I did a close scan of the carpet as the hair would blend right in with that to lie in wait for a scattering force. I couldn't find it. I still haven't found it. I'm working under the assumption that it was flushed because how else would a sizable chunk of hair vanish so effectively?

I was still looking when the Mr returned home and put an end to the "whose lying" portion of the conundrum.

We currently have a marble jar reward system going. When you're obedient or thoughtful or whatnot you get a marble for your jar and when your jar is full, you are treated to an agreed upon reward.

Zizza was mere marbles away from her reward. She'd been working a long time for it and just a few more batches of dishes would make it hers.

"I guess we'll just have to take away half the marbles from both jars." Stated the Mr. "since we don't know who's lying there's nothing else to do. Of course if the one who's lying were to tell the truth, they would only have to lose a quarter of their marbles..." And that's where Zizza burst into tears and came clean.

Then The Mr took Enz to the bathroom, got the clippers and finished the balding of him.

I've been encouraging Enz to wear a hat as often as possible. Oh, sure I realize a little cue ball head boy is not the worst thing in the world and of course he's adorable hair or no hair. It's just that I miss his hair.

The end.

Dear Mr, don't read this post.

Last week I helped the kids make gifts for their pop. It's the only holiday crafting I've done thus far. I was feeling pretty good about it and then I looked through my photos from last December and now I feel like a slacker. I used to make a lot of stuff. During the past six months? Not so much. But I did make these!

The Mr is a big Phineas and Ferb fan. It all started when we went to Disney land for Zizza's fifth birthday and he received the pleasure of kicking it in the hotel room with Enzo and Moo while they napped. Well, Moo napped. Enz did not. So Zizza and I wandered around Disney Land doing a few bigger birthday girl things, Moo slept blissfully in the dark of the walk in closet and Enzo and the Mr watched a Phineas and Ferb marathon.
Did you know they don't make Phineas and Ferb t-shirts in adult sizes? I guess maybe somebody does, but they don't sell them at Target. So Enzo and I bought a kid's shirt and also a mens shirt and we put the two together with the following result.

Enzo's jobs were to supervise my cutting, pull the paper backing off the steam a seam, sit on my lap and help guide the shirt through the machine as I sewed and putting it in the box. He did a great job. (I shall address his fresh baldness in a separate post)

I didn't have a suggestion ready for Zizza when it came time for her to select a gift. Actually I'd been planning on the shirt being from both kids. She had an idea though, so that settled that. She wanted to make a bag to hold all of The Mr's ping pong paraphernalia. So we looked through the fabric, settled on gold fish and knocked it out.

Her jobs were cutting, operating the machine pedal as well as helping to guide the fabric and writing the label. (we just used a sharpie cos we're classy like that)
She did find that wielding sewing shears is trickier than she expected (more on that later) also, it's really hard to write near the edge of a piece of fabric with a sharpie. When she was done she had the honor of being the first to put a gift under the tree. It was a proud day for Ziz.


Now I just have to make a whole bunch more stuff and we'll be ready to go!

In my back yard

After four years of waiting we finally have fruit on our little orange tree.

As a bonus it's even turning orange! How cool is that?

Over in the garden things aren't looking quite as happy. Our poor little tomatoes got the freeze. Very sad.

Broccoli on the other hand, loves the cold.

Also, it does a great job of collecting beautiful drops of water for folks to marvel at as they happen by.

Look what else is growing out here. It's a jam-faced boy!

He looks pretty happy considering he'd just been side-lined after I caught him jumping with that there dum-dum in his mouth.

I guess it's hard to frown when your not-quite four and you've got a dum-dum. Even if the dum-dum is keeping you down on the trampoline pad when you'd rather be trying to launch yourself over the fence.

What's great about six.

 

When your six and you get a false negative on your strep test so a week later (even though you're feeling fine) you have to stay home from school (again) while you wait for the antibiotics kick in and render you non-contagious you're actually thrilled when your mom suggests that you could wash some dishes to keep the boredom at bay.

That is what's great about six.

Dear Baby

Do you have any idea how many people wept tears of joy today (12-1-2010) at the thought of your existence, or at least the your existence as part of their day to day/month to month lives.

A lot.

People all across northern Utah, a few in Nevada (probably) one or two In California and definitely some here in Arizona.

I thought you should know.