More spoken word courtesy of Henry:
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August 30, 2007
August 29, 2007
At the end of July, between traveling to the Wiggles concert and our trip to Virginia we spent a lot of time on the road in a 24 hour period. We also got cut off a lot in a 24 hour period. Getting cut off is pretty bad, but what really gets under my skin is how people will zoom out in front of you, then instead of maintaining their speed, they instead slow down. Why? To see if you're going to hit them? Every once in a while someone making a turn will jump in front of me and as they're slowing down I can see them in their rearview mirror watching my car to see what's going to happen. If you're going to be a poop and cut me off, at least do me the small courtesy of carrying on at the speed you started off at.
After getting cut off for the fifth time on the way down to Reading for the concert, I (once again) vocalized the five million reasons why I hate driving. To add salt to the wounds, for whatever reason people were cutting us off when there was nobody behind us. They couldn't wait the three seconds it would take for us to pass them. Because gas prices have been one of the main topics of news of late, and because I'm American and thus eager to find any reason whatsoever to sue my fellow Americans, I told Dave we should develop the idea of a microlawsuit that would allow you to recoup the cost of gas used up by unnecessary breaking whenever someone cuts you off. So you could sue somebody for, say, a nickel.
Pretty cool idea, right?
Right?
Hey, where did everybody go?
August 27, 2007
Friday night the stress of Henry's impending party had gotten to us. We got into an argument over the leftover chicken in a bucket of KFC.
me (taking off a piece of crispy skin): Oh, I see you grabbed the piece I had started to pillage the night we got this.
dave (annoyed that I was once again pillaging a piece of chicken): Okay, are you going to eat that entire piece of chicken now or what? I heated it up for me, but if you're going to pillage it you'd better take the whole thing and eat it.
me(consciously deciding to make a big deal out of it all, because Henry's not the only one around here who's two.): You know what, I am going to take this piece of chicken, and I'm going to take the other piece of chicken you heated up because they're both extra crispy and you always make a big deal about ordering half extra crispy and half original because you don't like the extra crispy.
dave: Are you going to eat both of those pieces?
me: Maybe. Maybe I'll just throw them out. I can do whatever I want. THEY'RE MY PIECES OF CHICKEN!
dave: I can never tell the difference between the two...
We apologized later. Much later. Like, the next day. Then we laughed hysterically.
August 23, 2007
2nd Birthday
Henry turned two really, really early this morning at 3:53 AM. To mark the occasion I slept through it, quite possibly punctuating the exact time with a snore. Hey, I can be sentimental.
We're having a big bash for him on Saturday. I don't know how it turned into a big bash because I feel like we really don't know anybody, but there you have it. Despite the impending weekend celebration, we couldn't let the actual day go by without some pomp and circumstance, so after dinner we opened some presents and ate some cupcakes. We sang Happy Birthday and blew out a candle. Then Henry played with the boxes his presents came in while Dave and I played with his toys. So far, Dave really likes the Thomas the Tank Engine train set I got Henry, Henry really likes his new car racing set and Harold the Helicopter, and I really like the radio controlled ladybug Dave got him.
We're all very happy over here.
August 18, 2007
The fortune in Henry's fortune cookie today said: "Today has to be better than yesterday".
What do you suppose that means?
August 16, 2007
When I was a kid, sometimes I'd peruse my parents' bookcase looking for something interesting to read. They both love to read so there was never any shortage of interesting books to choose from. I narrowed my choices down by first deciding whether the title on the spine caught my eye. If it did then I would check out the cover. If the cover passed muster, I'd move on to the back cover to read the synopsis. Many books were (unfairly) deemed unworthy using this method, and other books created years of confusion. For instance, every time Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton caught my eye, I often wondered which was the name of the author, and which was the name of the book, because both were given equal billing on the spine. I took it off the shelf every now and then to remind myself, but would quickly forget, and so on it went until my senior year of high school when my humanities teacher, Mr. Hayward, assigned us the book and then took us to see the movie, which had just come out.
One of the authors who consistently fell victim to my ruthless system of weeding out books was Willa Cather. To my teenaged mind, how could someone named Willa Cather have anything interesting to say? Also, O' Pioneers and My Antonia weren't titles that made my heart go pitter-pat. Then, the one time I took My Antonia off the shelf to scope out the cover art, the picture of a woman standing on a prairie pretty much sealed the deal for me, and back she went onto the shelf, never to see the light of day again, unless it was by someone else's hand.
So I didn't think much about Willa Cather after that.
In March or April I was camped out on the couch one evening after having put Henry to bed. I was snuggled up with some knitting and hot cocoa, checking to see if History Detectives was on PBS. It wasn't, but a biography of Willa Cather was. So I watched it. And it was fascinating. They talked about how she wrote her first novel in the style of Edith Wharton, and that a good friend of hers read it and told her to stop writing like other people, and write about what she knew. So she did, and it really spoke to people. They also mentioned how when the roaring 20's came in, her writing style was deemed old fashioned, but she didn't care, she kept writing in the style she had established as her own.
It was such an interesting program it made me think that perhaps I had judged her books on my parents' bookcase a little too harshly, which is surprising considering what my criteria for a good book was back in the day, right? I also decided it would be fun to read her books in the order in which she wrote them, just to see how her style evolved, although I have a tendency to get too wrapped up in the story to pay much attention to anything else. That probably makes me a very bad Lit Major. Anyway, I've read the first two, Alexander's Bridge and O' Pioneers, and so completely enjoyed them that tonight I'm going to head over to the library to get the third.
I always get a little thrill when I find an author whose books I just can't put down, I suppose because it doesn't happen very often.
August 14, 2007
I went shopping for fabric for my belly dancing veil today. The instructor suggested we buy fabric that we can use to do something else with once the class is over. Because it's August, all of the stores are gearing up for autumn and Halloween, which meant there were some pretty cool fabrics for me to choose from. I ended up with three yards of a black chiffon fabric that has glittery fuzzy skulls all over it. (Props to Phoebe for spotting it.) The skulls are small, approximately 1/2 an inch. It's very light so I'm going to have to practice flipping it over my head without having it get stuck on my hair, but the fabric is so totally awesome, the more time I spend holding it and swishing it around, the happier I'll be.
Tonight we took Henry to the park that's adjacent to the pool. He saw the water from a distance as soon as we arrived and got pretty excited. I told him we were only there to play because the pool was going to be closing and we didn't have any swim gear with us anyway. He seemed okay with that and commenced running around. We teeter-tottered and slid down some slides. We crawled through a tunnel and then ran to the creek to scare off the ducks. (For the record, the ducks flew off before Henry got anywhere near them. Apparently hanging out all summer in a creek that runs through a playground has engendered quite a sense of duck-self-preservation.) He ran around like a madman for fifteen minutes but as we neared the fence at the back of the park that keeps people out of the pool area, the vision of the giant umbrella of water in the kiddie pool was too much, and he made it very clear that he intended to go swimming, whether we supported him in his endeavor or not. Thus commenced the saddest most broken-hearted crying jag I've heard in a while. We stood holding him while he cried, telling him we understood how badly he wanted to go, and that if he still wanted to, we would go later this week. After five minutes of sobbing, we decided it would probably be prudent to take him away from the pool so he wouldn't be tormented by the sound of all that running water. He cried all the way to the car, then snuffled all the way to the video store, and by the time we got home he was okay.
I had no idea the pool had made that much of an impression on him.
And guess what we're doing Thursday night?
August 12, 2007
Again with the youtube, but when we were in VA visiting with Dave's parents a couple of weekends ago, I managed to sneak in some VH1 time and I saw this video:
The thing is, if I were a pop star and I had to make a video, this is exactly the one I would make and I would totally pick out a blue sequined tube top jumper to wear in it too. Not to mention, the choreography in this video is probably as complex as I could manage.
I really dig it.
August 09, 2007
Belly dancing last night was an unqualified success. We stretched, we laughed, we walk-walk-paused, we felt silly, we swished around with veils. (Some of those veils may have kicked our butts a little. Ahem.) Can't wait for next week when we get to learn some hip-movements.
In the meantime, I captured Henry practicing some talking over a milk and cookie break:
August 08, 2007
Late last night a tornado warning was announced for our county. This is the second tornado warning we've had in just over a year. I remember going upstairs last summer to get a sleeping Henry out of his crib and bringing him down to the first floor in case we had to make a run for the basement. Yesterday's warning was not quite as bad as last year's, but only because the storm cell itself was concentrated on such a small area that they were able to tell us which towns were in the thick of it at a given time. Given that information, I was able to restrain myself from grabbing my kid out of a dead sleep so we could cower together in the basement with the spiders. This also means that I was glued to the t.v. in case it made a beeline for our town. I was concentrating so hard on both the news and listening for the tell-tale freight train sound, that once, when our dishwasher started back up with a squeal after falling briefly silent at the end of a cycle, I nearly pooped my pants. And where was Dave for all of this? Why, he was out on the front stoop eating popcorn of course. My only consolation was knowing that most likely Megan's husband was also freaking out across town. Also, now that I have looked death in the face (not really, but, you know) I have come to the conclusion I do not want to die in Pennsylvania. Of all places. If I'm going to die young, I ask that Death do me the courtesy of waiting until I'm on vacation, or at least waiting until I'm anywhere else but here.
In other far more exciting news, earlier this summer I convinced Megan and Phoebe to take belly dancing lessons with me. They start tonight.
I'll wait for you to stop laughing before I go on.
There is currently much fretting about what to wear and who the teacher is and who else is going to be in the class. The beauty of small town living is the complete lack of anonymity. Chances are good we'll be shaking our bellies with a bunch of people we know and would never in a million years choose to jiggle with. And there will be jiggling, because I will be there.
August 06, 2007
Two and a half weeks ago Henry started to tentatively repeat words that Dave and I said. One week ago, it stopped being so tentative. This has finally progressed to his using words to reference things without the one-time prerequisite "Hey Henry, what's that?" prompt. If I may, I'd like to reiterate that "finally" that's back there in that last sentence: FINALLY! It only took you 22 and a half months to pipe up, kid. What's up with that? Huh? Did you enjoy all of the funny looks the nurses were giving us when we said you weren't talking yet, not even a "mama" or a "dada", starting with your one year appointment? It's not nice, you know!
Anyway, I first noticed him labeling things on his own last week Friday when we stopped by Megan's house before heading over to Phoebe's for lunch. Henry went straight to her kitchen so he could rummage around in the cabinet where she keeps her Goldfish. While he did this, he repeatedly said "cracker". I was completely blown away. He has never used either sign language or spoken words to indicate what he wanted before. Now there's officially all sorts of talking going on over here. If I ask him if he wants milk he says "Milk!" If he sees a dog he says "Dog!" When he discovers the moon is out he says "Moooooo!" "N"'s are a little tough. You get the idea.
On Friday when we finally made it over to Phoebe's, Henry had a grand time exploring her house. It's big and there are lots of cool things, his favorites being the piano and a light Otto has in his room that projects moons, stars, and planets all over the ceiling and walls. Another object he found fascinating was the digital photo frame they have in the living room that runs through a series of photos. This one in particular caught Henry's attention:
In the photo, from left to right: Eric, Otto, Henry, my headless body, Leo, Ade's hands.
I thought he liked it because he noticed he was in it, but I was wrong. He pointed at Leo's shiny, bald pate, definitively declared "ball!", then turned to go back upstairs to look at the stars and moons.
August 03, 2007
Soon after my family relocated to the Boston area in 1983, a mall opened a few blocks from where we lived. It was, for many years, the premier mall for miles and miles around. People would take the bus in from Cambridge just to shop, it was that awesome.
It was glorious to live so close to the mall. About once a week we'd go and have dinner in the food court and let me assure you, there's no better place in the world for a picky eater to dine. All of those choices! Taco Bell! McDonald's! There was even a Souper Salad which had the greatest salad bar I'd ever seen, so great that it provided enough incentive for me to want to eat a salad, which is no easy feat when it comes to the palate of a nine year old. That was where we discovered the preservatives they spray on lettuce was what was making my dad sick everytime we ate there, which was useful knowledge 15 years later when I started getting sick from grocery store salad bars. Fun and educational!
The other reason it was great to live near the mall was the bookstore. We're all avid readers in my family so a trip to the mall always included a stop at Waldenbooks. I didn't think a bookstore could get any better, until I discovered WordsWorth (R.I.P.) in Harvard Square, but for a while it was the greatest bookstore on the face of the Earth.
There are three specific sections I gravitated to over the course of my relationship with the store. Working backwards, the last was the Sweet Valley High collection, which eventually evolved to also include the Sweet Valley Twins and Sweet Valley Jr. High collections. The second was the Nancy Drew section, and the first was the Berenstain Bears.
I loved the Berenstain Bears. There was always a sense of great anticipation whenever I approached the revolving racks that housed the collection of stories. Would there be a book there that I hadn't yet read, or would they all be stories I already had? I read a lot of them before I outgrew them, although looking back on it, I don't think I ever actually owned a lot of them. I must have sat on the floor and read them all in the bookstore. Anyway, the individual stories have long since merged into a big mushy ball of fuzzy non-descriptness in my memory.
Except for one.
The moral of this particular story was never judge a book by its cover. To demonstrate this point, Mama Bear cut into two apples. The first looked like it had been around the block a few times, but when she cut into it, it proved to be a perfectly fine apple. The second one was a model apple that most apples only wish they could look like. When Mama Bear cut into it, it was wormy. I picked up on the purpose of the symbolism of those apples straight away, but the importance of the message was soon over-shadowed by a much bigger question: how did Mama Bear know the good-looking apple was wormy? That seemed at the time like it would have been a pretty good skill to pass on to the readers, especially those who really liked apples.
Since that day, every single time I've cut into an apple (Including the one I cut into last night which is what inspired me to finally write all of this down.), I think about that story and wonder if this is going to be the day I discover a wormy apple.