Do you have…The Guts???

It all started the other night when we were carving our pumpkin. Bee asked if she could help scoop the guts. Then Gracie interjected that hey, people have the guts, too. “I do, Mom. I have the guts.” Did you catch that? The Guts. Not just guts – the guts.

“Me too, Mom,” Bee insisted. “I have lots of The Guts! (Gracie, what’s The Guts?)”

“If you have The Guts,” Gracie answered, “it means you’re brave. You’re brave if you have The Guts.”

Meanwhile, I was afraid I was going to bust a gut, I was laughing so hard. Don’t worry – I didn’t correct them. Maybe in a week or two, after I grow tired of hearing them talking about bravery like it’s a contagious disease.

Little MissMatched(s).

This week is spirit week at the girls’ elementary school. Today is mismatched day. To say we’ve been having fun is an understatement.

Freedom from uniforms is a wonderful thing, people. If only they could make the bagged lunches go away.

And on Sunday, because they were driving me crazy…

…we went to the park. It was a beautiful October day, the kind we won’t have much more of, and I thought letting them burn off some energy for an hour – completely and totally away from meeeeee – would probably be best for all of us.

I’m pretty sure I made the right choice.

(P.S. – It turns out pushing shrieking, giggling girls on the tire swing is pretty dang therapeutic.)

It’s the Great Pumpkin Hunt, Charlie Brown!

To make up for Friday’s Frightfest failure, I took the girls to the pumpkin patch on Saturday morning. There were pumpkins there that I swear were bigger than the girls. Hayrides, barbecue, and…lots of rides that were for much littler kidlets. Hmm… we might need to find a different pumpkin patch next year.

As much as I love that the girls love having their pictures taken (or, at least that it isnt the fight that it used to be to take 4,326 pictures), it’s hard having to tell them, no you can’t ride the adorable little tractor pedal cars because you’re too big. No, that playground is really for little kids. No, you’re too big for that straw “maze” that is one bale high.

 

Have I mentioned how grateful I am that they like having their pictures taken? So we did that. I took pictures and then I let them take pictures of each other. This one of Bee is actually all Gracie’s doing. I think I have budding photographers on my hands. In fact…Santa should maybe think about getting Gracie her own camera. Putting a pin in that thought…

 

The weather was twice as pretty on Saturday as it looked. The skies were blue, the temps were in the high sixties that early in the morning, and it just felt – perfect. More like September-ish weather than late October, but I’ll take it!  Nothing tastes as good as “fall foods” eaten outside in the sunshine and the fall breeze. I was tickled that Gracie asked before we had even left the house if I thought they’d have that sweet roasted corn again – and how many she could have. Turns out, we can each eat two ears of roasted corn before we give up. Heh. I was surprised that Bee passed up the corn in favor of the biggest. pickle. I have ever seen. I wanted to post a picture of it, but she couldn’t separate her face from it long enough for me to get a good shot. Too bad she didn’t like it much. Heh.

 

 

But I think our biggest accomplishment – besides successfully stalking a couple leaving to we could pounce on their wagon to carry our pumpkin-y goods – was that we actually made it out of the corn maze alive. AND we did it twice as fast as we did last year. Total coincidence, I assure you. But just look at that picture – last year Bee-girl was chasing after her sister, her piggy-tails down to her butt and her baby fat still hanging on. This year she is rocking a chic haircut and is leading the pack.

So many similarities. So many changes. It makes it easy for a mama to buy the biggest pumpkin we can lift. We gotta carve while the carving’s still good.

Friday night frightfest.

I thought it was ingenious when I first saw the flyer posted to our door: our Halloween-crazy neighbor was joining up with our community association to show a Halloween movie in the park at the end of our street. I hadn’t heard of the movie – Monster Squad - but the flyer said it was family friendly and our neighbor has daughter about the girls’ age, so I thought it would be fun. And so at 7 o’clock Friday night, Corrie and I took our gaggle of giggling girls trudging (for those of us laden with chairs and bags of goodies) and galloping (those would be the gigglers) down the sidewalk towards the park.

Now, I know it was in the park. I’ve been there, so I knew (pretty much) what to expect. Our park is pretty new, and it is made up entirely of about a mile’s worth of running/biking trail looped through a bunch of open land. It’s flatlands built up near the gorge where the river branches out, so it can be pretty smelly. Thankfully it was only a little dank on Friday. But hey – that just adds to the Halloweenyness, right? And while there was plenty of flat grassy areas in the park, it’s not like it was mowed or anything. And then there were the bugs. If you opened your mouth, you were likely to swallow a mosquito. I had sprayed us down with ‘squito spray before we left the house, and when I saw the sheet of mosquitoes hanging in the air, I did it again. Of course, that didn’t stop the grasshoppers. At one point, I thought someone had beaned with me a rock, only to find a grasshopper the size of Montana hanging out on my leg. Thank god that sucker didn’t fly into my face when I shooed him away because I would have screamed like a little girl.

Finally, after thirty or forty minutes of music and Halloween music videos (including several Ghostbuster selections – I don’t know why they didn’t just show that movie), our neighbor announced the movie was going to start. He warned us that it was PG-13 and Corrie and I were like, WTH? Because that would have been a good thing to put on the flyer. But whatevs. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Corrie and I hunkered down in our chairs and tried to keep the creepy-crawlies from crawling down our shirts. The girls were spread out in front of us on our blankets. Everyone was ex-ci-ted! Because a movie! Outside! In our park!!

The movie was exactly that bad. Corrie’s 3-year-old jumped up during the first scene and leapt straight into her mama’s lap. I figured Bee would be next, but she seemed transfixed (although it may have been a case of They-can’t-see-me-if-I-don’t-move. We tried to hang in there, figuring it would get better. Twenty minutes later, Corrie’s hubby showed up to rescue us. And berate us a little for not having ditched sooner, but you don’t yell at the cavalry, I’ve learned.

We headed home and watched Monsters, Inc. and Shrek instead – real family-friendly Halloween movies. Frightfest in the Park might have been a bust this year, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for next year. Hey, maybe if I pester my neighbor from now until next October, I can convince him to go the Ghostbusters route…

 

Hello fall! (I miss you, summer.)

Yeah, so I’ve been totally tripping down memory lane lately, but they’re important stories for the girls to remember, so stuff it, okay? (Just kidding! I love you, bloggy audience!) Er, so I was saying. It’s been cooler, finally, lately. And even as the first lovely days of fall have me reaching for my yoga pants with sweet, sweet relief, I’m finally uploading my summer vacation pictures and reminiscing. Like that time we took the girls to the beach? So. much. fun.

Notice how sand-free that blanket is? Yeah, that’s because Auntie Kim is the Sand Gestapo. You do NOT get sand on her blanket. Or else the Sand Gestapo will do a mean impersonation of the Queen of Hearts and be all OFF WITH YOUR HEADS! For reals. But! At that particular moment in time, there was no sand on the blanket, no crazy seagulls chasing my sister or making swirly holes in the sand, and it was alllll relaxed. See how happy and warm we look? Peaceful. Happy. Perfect.

This is why I love having a big family. There are lots of aunts and uncles for the girls to con into doing something. It was minutes, MINUTES I tell you, before Bee and Gracie had talked Auntie Rhi into going swimming with them. And that water was COLD, people. Fuh-ricking c-o-l-d. (I know because the girls soon conned me into getting in, too. Drats.) But hey – the girls were happy and isn’t that what vacations are about? Darn the kids.

I think it is an actual law that Thou Shalt Let The Waves Bury Thy Feet In The Sand when you’re at the beach. The girls lurved it…until one of them just didn’t any more and kinda freaked out that she couldn’t move her feet. See? This is totally why I should write about these things when they happen. Not when it’s 42 ° outside. So then we unstucked someone’s feet and went back into the water. (And esplained for the tenth time why there weren’t any sharks in the water. Because it’s a LAKE.)

 

This is my sister mocking me and my picture-taking ways. (And Joey dissociating himself from us, just a wee bit. Ooh, or maybe he had been banished because of a sand incident. Quite possible. We like to flagrantly foul each other’s rules. Heh.) But it was okay that Kim was mocking me because shortly thereafter, the seagulls decided they were on Team Katie. See, Kim is Quite Afraid of seagulls. I forget why, other than Kim is weird. So I’d be in the water, helping the girls find rocks – which really meant picking them up off the bottom of the lake with my feet and then bringing them to the surface for inspection – and then Kim would start yelling for me. I’d look over and the seagull was staring at her. Just sitting there, staring. And then he’d hop once or twice, just a little closer. It was hilarious. Then she’d scream for me and I’d have to go chase away the stupid bird. Joey, who could have scared away the bird, was too busy laughing at her to bother helping. (See? with the rule-breaking?) Then I’d go back to the water until the seagull came back. We didn’t have food, Kim didn’t have on Eu de SeagullBait so I have no idea why that bird was so fixated. It could have been seriously creepy if it wasn’t so frickin hilarious.

Soon the girls had fetched half the rocks from the bottom of Lake Winnipesaukee to bring back to Grandpa and one of them had tracked too many paths of sand onto the blanket for Kim to quarantine, so we all trekked back to the bathhouse to change. We hit the bumper cars and then grabbed some food on the boardwalk. Ice cream, pizza, and my favorite – fried dough. With everything on it. And can I just say – that’s not as easy to eat as it might seem. I had sugar and cinnamon in my hair, all over my shirt, and I made quite a mess of the boardwalk – see?

That, in no way, does it justice. Passersby were staring. It was awesome.

Yep, messy, sticky, full of laughs and a far cry from the beautiful fall weather we’re having now – that’s what makes it all so perfect.

Slow and steady wins the race.

It comes as no surprise that my five-year-old believes in magic. Fairies really do live in her fairy garden and deliver messages, Santa totally catches her tattling on her sister, and if you just believe hard enough (and perform the requisite snow dance), you can make it snow. The problem is that all of that magic can be a wee bit difficult for us grown-ups to fulfill. More often than not, I find myself in the hot seat, trying to write in teeny tiny fairy handwriting and surreptitiously place the scrolls in the garden when she’s not looking. But this time – oh, this time it’s her kindergarten teacher who is failing to meet with Miss Bee’s magical standards.

Every day, Bee comes home from school, and when I ask how her day was, she gets all still and serious and sad. “I didn’t learn how to read today, Mommy.” A little sigh. Some days there are even tears. I kid you not. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” I tell her. “I promise Ms. B. will have you reading by the end of the year. I bet she’ll even pinky promise if you ask her.”

And finally (THANK GOD), it’s happening. Bee speaks, thinks, writes in capital letters – she’s an all-caps kinda gal – but she finally knows all of her lower-case letters nearly all of the time. She knows the sounds all of the letters make. And while she is horrible at remembering her sight words, that kid has latched onto phonics like it’s the very air she breathes. Finally, Bee-girl has blown on the lock just right and the tumblers inside are starting to turn.

Our methods might not be all that orthodox, but when have I ever worried about being orthodox? I summon my inner two-headed monster when I sound out the letters and prompt Bee to put the sounds together closer and closer and closer. You know…the purple two-headed monster from Sesame Street who would sound out the beginning and end of a word and then gradually blend the sounds? Yeah, that’s totally me. (And my sister would have listened to me once and totally called me on it, too.) Bee’s method is also rather…interesting. First, she sticks her right arm out in front of her like she’s going to straight-arm someone. Then, as she says the first sound, she claps her shoulder: “Rrrrr.” Then she says the second sound and claps the inside of her elbow: “uhhhh.” Then she’ll say the last sound and clap her wrist, “nnnnnn.” She might repeat this a few times until she’s sure she remembers all the players until finally she slides her hand all the way down her arm, putting the sounds together: “Rrrun! Run!” She’s so pleased with herself. What tickled me so much was that when I quizzed her down about where she learned her “arm trick,” Bee said no one taught her; she made it up. She said it was like clapping out syllables. And, kind of, it is.

Whatever our methods, whenever the key turns all the way and Bee becomes, officially, A Reader, I am enjoying it all, especially mornings like the one we had today. On the car ride to their dad’s (who now drops them off at school every morning – long story), the girls were happily showing off their mad skillz. I would spell a three-letter word and Bee would sound it out. Then I would ask Gracie to spell a big word. We bragged our way through leg, bag, hop, enough, cough, and educate. Yeah – we’re geek chic and we love it.

And that seems awfully magical to me.

Quote of the Day.

I’ve been watching The Sing-Off with the girls. Gracie is fascinated with singing and anything rocker-girl-esque. (Yes, my little diva. Shocking, I know.) So I figured watching the show with them was one way to help clear it out of my Tivo queue a little faster, rather than waiting for them to be gone or asleep before I tried to sneak it into my already crowded lineup of shows. (Instead I find I’m trying to find snippets of time when my very busy children have time for TV, and so it is taking even longer than if I just watching it myself, but that is neither here nor there.)

So, we’ve been watching the show and the girls quickly realized that there is a lot of drama involved in the backstories of the contestants. A lot of drama. Bee, for instance, seems to think that every other group lost a family member because two – out of about a hundred singers! – mentioned during the group interviews that they had recently lost someone.

It must have made quite an impression on Bee, because the other night when we were watching, they showed clips of the groups practicing and bickering and a few of the singers started crying because they were sick and possibly couldn’t sing that week. Faced with the possibility of elimination, those singers got a little dramatic with the sobbing and the tears, oh yes they did. And that’s when Bee said to me…

Bee: Did their mom or dad pass by?
Me, quickly interpreting: Pass away. No. They’re just sick.
Bee: ”Pass by” means died.
Me: It’s “pass away.” And yes, it does.

Brings a whole new meaning to passing someone by in the hall, doesn’t it? And yet, exactly how my days seem to feel at a certain place we shan’t discuss.

If you know me, you’re not surprised.

Not much of what I did this weekend would surprise anyone who knew me.

Friday night I forced my friend across the street to abandon what she was doing (mommying) and come over for a glass of wine and to pick out my outfit for a little shindig I’m going to Tuesday night. Even less surprising than my inability to dress myself was the botched way I told her she was doing  it: “Hey, come by my girl.” Er, um, what I meant to say was, “I have no girly genes, so come be my person who knows these things.” See? Totally me.

Once we had that problem figured out, I went shopping on Saturday with my friend Jo to find some shoes (check), and some clothes for Jo (triple check), and some…jewelry for me. See, that would sound all normal except I just spent $80 on jewelry at Corrie’s jewelry party the Friday before. And I had justified it with Christmas presents and to wear to my work function. So when Corrie called to see if I was home so she could run it over? Yeah, I was at Charming Charlie’s spending more money on more jewelry. Even though my girly status is on probation and I don’t do jewelry. Gonna be hard to sell that one now. (And yet still totally true.) But I did find some killer jewelry sets to go with the outfit Jo and Corrie chose and I have the jewelry I ordered last week to go without Emergency Backup Outfit. I am such a planner, yo.

And then there was Sunday. Sunday was my Do Nothing day. So of course I ran for 15 minutes and walked two more miles. Then I cleaned up and went to Starbucks and worked on my research project while looking for a cute boy to kiss. Maybe it was become I live in Dallas Cowboysland and I was decked out in my Pats shirt and Pats flip-flops (blingy!), but I didn’t get any takers. [Aside: I need a new Starbucks. Blech.] Then I rushed home to watch the game and work on constructing Gracie’s tornado. I had the wire cage all built, so I was focused more on hotgluing the grey tulle onto it. Folks – you should never use a hot glue gun while you’re watching a game that makes you scream and run to the TV every other play. I have three, THREE, major burns on my hand, fingers, and wrist. Once, after an interception, I ran towards where I could see the TV, forgot I had the glue gun in my hand (or that the cord is as short as it is), and the glue gun whipped out of my hand and landed on the floor. Thankfully, no carpets were hurt in the process. Sigh. Still, I’ll call it a win since I was texting my brother the entire time and didn’t get ANY hot glue on my phone. Ta da!

Yep. Sadly, this is a very typical weekend at Casa de Katie. Who needs kids to keep things crazy?

 

Five Things I Love About Running.

I did it (again, really, since I already did this C25K thing once already) – I conquered my week of 12:00 of running. To celebrate my badass self (ha!), I give you Five Things I Love About Running. (Otherwise entitled, It’s Friday And I’m Too Tired To Be Creative. DEAL.)

1. Being pissed off helps. My pace is better, my endurance is better, songs song groovier floating through my earbuds if I’m just a little upset at someone or something. It’s gotten to the point that when I am really stressed at ThePlaceWeShallNotDiscuss, I get a little annoyed if it’s not a running day. Running saps everything out of me, including all that icky stress. Win!
2. Those crazywacky thoughts that inevitably happen. Sometimes it’s further along in the run, sometimes it’s almost right outta the gate. But at some point the exhaustion takes over and the silliest thoughts fly through my head – like the time last winter when I was marveling over how hot I was, and thought if we could only make our houses run with us, we could save SO MUCH on our heating bills. Yeah – see?
3. The point when I reach the top of the massive hill slight incline on one side of my loop and everything seems so! much! easier! for a good while. Sometimes you’re just so flippin’ thankful for the little things that you stop feeling all outta breath and exhausted for awhile.
4. I love when a kickass song comes on and I just can’t help dancing down the sidewalk while I’m running. Yes, I look crazy. But do I care? No way! Everyone should be as confident and as full of fun as I am. When I’m running, I rock. Betcha booty.
5. I feel so. frickin. PROUD of myself every time I finish. I did something for me. Myself. And I DID it. I didn’t procrastinate. I didn’t justify sitting on the couch or running errands or doing something else. I ran. I took control, did something I didn’t wanna do – something I used to think I couldn’t do – and I did it. Taking action is pretty intoxicating. And so is running. I? am all kindsa awesome.

Not a bad feeling to head into the weekend with, is it?