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This morning Holly and I made a run for Target, but halfway there I looked in the back seat and Holly had her pre-nap, thoroughly dazed look going full blast so I turned the car around and we came home. We'll make another go for it after lunch. Ostensibly we're going so I can load up on some household stuff that they have on sale this week, but mostly it's an excuse to look at Halloween decorations. I'm a major sucker for Halloween stuff. Slap a pumpkin or a ghost on something and I'll be itching to buy it.

My parents are coming on Friday. Their plan is to arrive before Henry gets home from school so they can surprise him at the bus stop. Barring any major road construction, which unfortunately is something that Pennsylvania is known for when the weather is suitable, they usually manage to get here around one, so there shouldn't be any worries to that end. It's been exceedingly difficult not spilling the beans about their trip to the young man. In fact, on Thursday evening while driving around in the car, Dave and I had a whole conversation about all the fun things that are going on around here the Saturday they're going to be in town before we realized what we were doing. I nervously looked at Henry, but he was in such a daze from being sick that he wasn't paying any attention to us. I'm hoping that he's not currently processing everything that he heard over the two days he had a fever now that he's feeling better. It would be just like him to come home from school today having made the connection.

Posted by Jenn at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

henry: I made another fountain. I made it a little bit diwagonal.
me: It's great! You made it a little diagonal?
henry: Uh, I said "diWAGonal".
me: Ah. Oh course.

Dave's been fighting a wicked cold since Sunday or Monday and now Henry is home from school today. He woke up with a fever and a sore throat. I gave him a juice box this morning for a blast of vitamin C and about fifteen minutes after he finished it, I caught Holly sucking on the straw, trying to get the dregs out. Her days are now officially numbered. It was bound to happen. There's been a cold making the rounds since school started and for the last three weeks I've been waiting for the shoe to drop because Henry is usually the first to catch whatever it is that's going around. All things considered, I'm pretty impressed he made it this long.

Posted by Jenn at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I haven't been testing my limits much lately beyond doing some knitting and reading, as well as making my usual efforts to make sure the house doesn't reach the stage of being condemned. Although I was sad to see the free-wheeling months of summer vacation come to an end, I have to confess I've welcomed the structure that Dave and Henry's school schedule brings to our lives. I don't like getting up at 6:30, but it's not terrible because we have to get off to a running start in order to get breakfast into the young man in a timely manner before heading out the door to catch the bus. Later in the day, dinner has to be ready at 5:30 or the evening bedtime schedule gets thrown out the window both for the kids and the adults, and that always results in a somewhat dazed morning. Since Dave gets home around 5:30, I've been making dinner far more often than I did in the summer, when it was easy to talk for an hour about making something then ultimately deciding to just eat out. Sometimes it's nice to let your schedule dictate how things have to be and to revel in not having to think, instead just having to do.

Posted by Jenn at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

me: So, this morning I asked Holly where her nose was and she very proudly patted her left ear.
dave: Awwww, that's so cute! *long pause* You know what's great about the second kid? When she does something like that you don't automatically assume she's going to grow up to be an idiot like you did with the first.
me: *laughing* True, true...

Posted by Jenn at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

For the last five or six weeks, Holly's been flirting with the idea of walking. Every day she'd take a step or two, but crawling was where it was at in terms of wreaking the most havoc in the shortest amount of time. Fast forward to our trip to Boston a week and a half ago. I'm online madly looking for a key lime pie recipe that I should have just printed out and brought along with me when suddenly Dave comes charging in and says "Quick! Come to living room! Quick!" Out I go and what do you know? Suddenly Holly's walking. Apparently she was waiting for the proper motivation to get up and go. A week and a half later, walking is slowly overtaking crawling as the preferred method of motoring around. She also sprouted tooth number 8 a few days ago. And she can say "down". And, according to Dave, "uh-oh", as of this morning.

Posted by Jenn at 07:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last Thursday there were a few rumblings from Camp Henry that he didn't like having to be at school all day. Friday morning there were many tears at the bus stop, but he did get on the bus when it arrived with nary a protest. Yesterday he saved his tears for after he got on the bus. After he sat he looked out the window at me and his whole face crumpled. It broke my heart. It also broke the hearts of a couple of the other parents who saw it happen. Today he did the same thing, except it wasn't a complete crumple. Tomorrow hopefully he'll feel even better.

There's no question he doesn't like spending the whole day at school. We ask him if anything else is going on, and he says no, everything else is fine except for the fact that he has to be there ALL DAY! His favorite times are: snack time, music time, computer time, and quiet time. A sure sign he's not thrilled is that quiet time made it onto the list.

Watching him process his angst has caused me to delve into the past and rehash all of the things that I've had to buck up and work through that I hadn't particularly wanted to. Unfortunately, what could be a cathartic activity resulting in major personal growth has boiled down to me obsessing over every grudge I've managed to hold onto over the past 34 years of my life. I'm a big-time grudge holder, so I'm going back to things that happened in high school, and in one case, 8th grade. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but it is what it is. The end result of sifting through all of the ways people, mostly passing strangers relative to my life, have said or done unthinking and hurtful things is I've been wandering around with an attitude that's got a slight bent towards anger. I've got to do something about that, but mostly I'm running with it, swimming around for a while, and when I come out on the other side, it'll all be roses. Until next time.

Posted by Jenn at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We got back late last night from a quick trip to Boston. We left Friday afternoon, as soon as Henry got off the school bus, and got to my parents around 10:30 or 11. Both kids nodded off in the car around 8 and slept until we arrived. Henry hasn't slept in the car like that in a few years. When we did arrive, Holly was very confused by all of the activity going on so late at night and ultimately decided that if everyone was going to be social, she would too. In fact, she made a brief but heartfelt argument against going to bed at all. Despite her best and most charming (and some not-so-charming) attempts at persuasion, she lost that particular battle.

We spent Saturday kicking around the house, going to Whole Foods, taking naps, going on train rides, etc. My dad had suggested a few days before we arrived that we end the summer the way we started it when we were at the beach, so we loaded up on all of the ingredients for a wicked seafood boil, which Dave cooked up to perfection. In the afternoon I made a Key Lime Pie, which was our dessert of choice while on the Outer Banks. I say "our" but really I mean "my mom's and my". I think in the end, the best way to describe Saturday is to say I cracked open the first communal beer at 12:30 in the afternoon and the rest of the day went up from there, which was a pretty high point to start the afternoon off at in the first place.

On Sunday, the six of us piled into two cars and headed out to central Massachusetts for my annual family reunion. We hadn't gone last year because Chocolat had just arrived, so I was pretty anxious to go this year. It was a lot of fun. There was an infamous reunion just after Dave and I were married where we showed up before my parents and instead of hugs and kisses, everyone gathered into small groups to discuss who we were and why we were crashing a family reunion, then once my parents arrived, there was a collective "OOOHHHH!!! Jenni!" It was a high point. One of the perils of dyeing your hair as frequently as I do is that not even your own family recognizes you, much less anyone else. I'd like to say that shortly afterwards I kicked everyone's butt in croquet, but that would be dramatic embellishment, and I won't go there. Anyway, it was nice to reconnect with everyone again this year although I didn't get a chance to really sit and have a conversation with anyone because if it's not one kid, it's the other. Events like the reunion were far more civilized when we just had Henry. Actually, they were extra-super-duper civilized when we didn't have kids at all. I told Dave I have mastered the art of handing whatever kid I happen to have with me off on my Mom and Dad and running like the wind in the opposite direction.

We had to leave before dinner was served in order to make it back home in time for Dave to get a good night's sleep before teaching this morning. Fortunately Henry had the day off from school so we all got to sleep in until 8:30. Tomorrow morning is going to hurt.

Posted by Jenn at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)