Is it more embarrassing if your mom talks about your mental or gastrointestinal health?

If Bella is going to be a more typical kid — pickier eater, better sleeper, stranger aware, fall down on the ground tantrums, frustrated by her inability to speak intelligible words, sharing and smacking in equal measures — boy, the next year is going to suck.

I feel cheated by the lack of rain. Rain is not my favorite part of spring, but rain now would wash away the dirty icky snow (and dirty icky airmass hovering over Wisconsin). And the dirty snow needs to go. Instead of drenching rain, we have fog.

Drifting fog + stagnant green water in the far fields + ice patches + winter trees = the landscape of a ghost tale. In Scotland.

Just because you know what you’re doing is potentially and probably dumb, it doesn’t make it any easier to do the smarter thing. Self preservation may be smart, but it isn’t easy. This is probably universally true, not just in worklife.

I am struck that Scott Walker’s idea to break MPS into 10-12 districts is not nearly as interesting as if he suggested a county wide solution. You know, creating a city-county school district. Of course, the 10-12 districts could each be the suburb at the edges of Milwaukee, each taking a piece. Leaving behind maybe 2-3 smaller fully urban districts.

I can’t even tell if I hate this idea.

I really can’t even believe I don’t live in Milwaukee anymore.

And I wonder where the suburbanites who fled Milwaukee would flee if there were combined city suburban districts.

How can I be frustrated with my daughter’s pessimism when I am not exactly a ray of sunshine?

Just rain! Rain! Rain! Blow in some new weather.

Henry has more homework in kindergarten than Miranda had in first and second grade.

Miranda got her state test scores and her MAPS scores. She is doing well. She finally wants to read harder books.  I wonder if testing well is an inherited trait? They make her more nervous than I even remember feeling.

We had a quiet weekend ahead of us. I hope.

I came home, dyed my hair, started reading a Jennifer Cruisie novel. This was the highlight of my day. Then I was off to a doctor’s appointment at 1. Henry was seeing the same doc at 3:45. I didn’t notice earlier in the week when I could have combined those appointments.  After the doctor, I went to Walgreens. They had the missing item from Target. I finally got a prescription filled that I have been trying to have approved for 2 weeks. Another small plus – 90 day supply for $30 for a name brand drug. Even though it was to my favor, the line on my receipt that said my insurance saved me $370 seems ridiculous. I don’t want to pay $400 for the medication. But I hope my insurance company doesn’t pay that much either. Or that Walgreens doesn’t eat the $370.

I head home, make the homemade blueberry mini muffins I promised Miranda for her half day birthday at school tomorrow. Yesterday, I decided I was too lazy to follow a recipe from scratch. I wanted a mix. The first mix had lard in it.  No. All the rest had partially hydrogenated oil. Ugh. I buy the Hodgins Mill Whole wheat blueberry muffin mix. Whole wheat. Some molasses. Add egg and sugar and milk. And then I give in and buy some of the Betty Crocker.

The whole wheat muffins are so stereotypically hard and chewy that I think I could make crunchy granola out of them. I made the “regular” muffins as well. And then the plan to give each kid 2 mini muffins fell apart. And I was out of butter. Despite 2 store trips, no butter. Did I mention we had a miserable whiny snow  all day? It was messy and wet and I just didn’t want to go out again. My mom rescued us by heading to the grocery store and getting grapes – so each kid will get 9 grapes and 1 mini muffin. Happy half Birthday.

I get 39 rock muffins. And 35 fluffy muffins. I head to school to pick up Henry for his doctor’s appointment. On most pickups, Henry is sitting in the office, dressed in his boots and snowpants and hat and gloves. Waiting. Not today. I am a bit later in the day, there is no parking. I double-park with my flashers. And Henry isn’t there. The office confirms Henry should be there. I head down to his room. I grab all of his stuff and pull him from class.

The doctor’s appointment was fine. We head home. We see Henry and Miranda’s bus. And after we’re home and Bella is watching at the window…the bus with Miranda on it? Doesn’t stop at our house. We wait. It circles the block. Then it stops.

Henry got in trouble for talking 3 times at school today. Miranda couldn’t sleep between staying up later than normal watching American Idol and thinking about her half birthday. Arabella took a later nap and didn’t want to go to sleep. I should be trying to sleep right now. But it just hasn’t been that kind of day.

The Help really bugged me. I think it bugged me not because it wasn’t well written, it wasn’t an interesting story, or not even that it wasn’t the kind of story we should read. It bugged me because it reminded me that we didn’t all learn civil rights in history in high school or college. And if this book was a suggested book for high schoolers, I’d say bravo. I guess having books bug you isn’t a bad thing, as long as you think about why that might be. I am ready to be done thinking about it for a while.

I’d really rather talk about the ideas it raised for me about child care. What does it mean – what the the legacies of having child care being treated as such a lowly job? Poor pay, terrible hours, impossible wells of patience and care for children that may love you and look down at you, all at once. I don’t have an answer, other than the suspicion that it could tie into the stay at home / working mom battles of viewpoint.   And I want to know about the next 10 years. In the early 1960s, before the Voting Rights act and the Civil Rights Acts, segregation was legal. By the early 1970s, it wasn’t legal. What did that transition look like? What are those stories? Miss Hilly was evil in The Help…did she learn to keep quiet by the 80s? Racism certainly isn’t dead today, but it is more subtle. I have to think that’s better, it just doesn’t quite seem good enough.

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In other news…We went to the children’s museum today. There is a cow, a horse, a silo and a corn field sign. You can velcro the corn to the field. Then pick it. Drop it in the silo. Then wheel barrow a load over the animals. Henry walked each piece of corn from the silo to the field. 20+ pieces of corn. A little girl came along, saw the corn stuck to the field and figured out it was to be picked. After watching Henry cross the 10 feet from the silo to the field 20 times at least, I was amused to see the little girl walk over, grab as many ears of corn as she could hold in her arms, approximately 12, and walk over to the cow. Henry was quite outraged.

In news of the first order, my laptop’s hard drive died last Monday. I think I am nearly through the 5 stages of grief. I spent 2-3 days in absolute denial – I’ll just run upstairs and check my email. Oh, I’ll check the bills files.  Oh sure, you can play on my laptop, child. In 2005, I lost a computer to a massive hard drive failure, which I have come to think of like heart attacks. Some times, hard drives go bad. And data can be restored. Like a stent. Or a heart replacement. I seem to have really bad hard drive problems – the drive is unusable, the spindle doesn’t spin, there is no Hope.

The 2005 debacle did push me to make backing up my data a higher priority. After sporadic DVD backups, I bought an external hard drive in 2008 or 2009. And it saved me, mostly. I have all of the photos. I lost about  a week, as the hard drive was sending little hard drive signals that it was dying. But I didn’t know it. Despite its SMART system, it didn’t send me a message like “back up all your data, the barbarian horde is coming.” It did keep restarting and had a hard time coming back on.

In January, the family room computer, which was my old desktop computer, had a motherboard problem. (brain tumor?) The hard drives had been flaky and Rob doesn’t have time to build computers anymore. We did the unthinkable to ourselves circa 2000 – we went to Best Buy and bought a clearance desktop. It works. And as I am typing on it right now, it is a good thing in our lives.  But it isn’t my old desktop – it doesn’t have the programs, the bookmarks, the settings of my life. And that’s why I feel so a sea.

This hard drive failure has shown me that having pre-installed software, while convenient, is worthless in so many ways. My laptop is being reborn as Rob’s Ubuntu laptop, mostly because Ubuntu is free and we don’t have a free way to install the Windows Vista license we bought with the laptop. I am taking over Rob’s Windows laptop. I am pleased that Adobe is going to let me re-download my legal copy of Dreamweaver -I have a 3 year time-limit. Still not perfect, but better than the new copy of Office I had to buy for the family room computer. We had legal copies of Office, but not on a disc that I could just install.

This post-mortem excuse-apolooza is not as entertaining as it might be if I had more distance and less rawness. I also got a winter cold the weekend before my laptop died. So I was congested, gooey, feverish and cold, exhausted and drugged up…and having no laptop made me just sad. After a visit to Best Buy (how can this be?), I saw an adorable HP laptop. And the price was almost fair enough. But it turns out for a freelance job, I need to connect with a 32-bit version of Windows. So no new laptop would work. Thank goodness I can take over Rob’s laptop, I guess.

The only file I lost, I think, is my bills files in Excel. For some reason the most recent backup was from August 2009. The vagaries of backup are mysteries I don’t understand. My priorities going forward are definitely to keep up the automatic backups. They saved my bacon. But I have to figure out a way to not lose my software. Maybe I need to rent software? Would that help?  Probably not with an OS…

I have been thinking, so more posts soon. I hope.

She wants to come up too.

Henry has become quite good at video games. I should not not proud of this. It shows the hours he has logged on the Wii and the DS. But I am of the opinion that this generation will spend most of their lifetimes with elctronica aroudn them, entertaining them, employing them, educating them. He is starting to master real games, not just the Diego and Mii creation that might have previously satisfied him.  His hand-eye coordination is growing. His amblyopia was more mild – it is now corrected to 20/20 with glasses.

School is OK. I think Henry enjoys it. He shares stories at random, and never when I am prepared. He was proud that he was the only one at his table to pick out that Elephant started with E. He has friends. He plays at recess. He enjoys gym class and regularly gets posture? sitting? conduct awards in music. The art teacher has her hands full with him. He has never enjoyed coloring per se. And he is coloring a lot this year. It is mostly free-form, which is probably better for his brain but less charming for the baby book.

At 5 and 11 months, I am awed at how big he is. How smart he is. How nice he is. He still is working on some assertiveness with his peers. Working on using words with his sisters instead of light sabers. He feels boo-bbos strongly and cries at the slights and sadness in his day.

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And now on  to Miranda. Miranda is nearly 8 and half. She can’t have grown 5 inches this year already, but it feels like it. Having already been tall, I feel foolish to say she’s so tall. Yes, it is true. But she has reached that next stage of equilibrium, of grace. She is more at peace with her body. She still fights with her hair, but her long think mane is a source of pride too. There is a foreshadowing of adolescence when I look at her. I hope that the transition into puberty is kind to her.

School is harder this year for Miranda. Not too hard, but she has to think more often. She is reading well, silently, my biggest dream for this year. Math is pushing her boundaries. She understands how to do the work, but sometimes the mystery of why she has to do it that way (number lines specifically) eludes her. And she is not buying my explanation that it is good to have as many strategies as possible to approach numbers. The drama of friends is still with us. She is better at figuring out how to play with her friends. She is realizing that sometimes it is just as important to have someone to play with as it is to get to choose what to play. I am glad to see her loyatly and kindness develop more fully.

Miranda challenges me in such interesting ways. Like making me realize how mainstream a thinker I am.  She likes conspiracy theories (was the moon landing a hoax? did dinosaurs really rule the earth?) and she loves routine. I think she would like a few more routine classes, whereas I am afraid adding more into our schedule will upset her applecart. She feels things so deeply and shares that with us.

I will admit I am going to miss the kids over the next few days. And taking them away on a long weekend out of state would be both quite expensive and tiring for all of us. I will try to think of their funny as well as their sweet. They are nice kids. And I am not as easily amused as I would like to be. Maybe when I return.

My mind is a jumble with travel. I am off to SF this weekend. Not to excite any people who fit within the Venn Diagram of burglers and people who read this blog, as my parents and the kids will be home all weekend. And there is nothing like planning 3 nights away from you children to make your heart all ooey-gooey for them.

Bella is 16 months old. She is walking, running, climbing, singing, babbling, yelling, pointing, tattling, crying, stepping, and moving all the time. She is trying to open the kitchen cabinets, the living rooms cabinets, the drawer with the DS stuff, the keyboard tray, the computer printer all the time. She loves the remote controls, telephones, cell phones, toy phones, calculators, the DS, her doll, her doll’s stroller, and pulling blankets from the bedroom to the living room. She copies her big sister and lays on her tummy on the floor in front of the TV. She rarely angles her head correctly to see the TV while she does this.  She bangs on the refrigerator door for her milk. She thinks the pantry is her playground. She will pick up a toy or a remote control and run around the house. If you chase her, she runs faster. If you get close, she throws the item to the floor. She has dimples and a smile on her face most of the time.  When she gets into everything, without joy, but with a picking, angry purpose, then she is very tired. She will resist sleep. But she needs it.

Pigtails

Her hair is longer. Her bangs are in her eyes, but they are still baby bangs. We have been putting them into a pony tail nearly every day. One day I tried pigtails. She seems to like having her hair up. When it isn’t up, she pokes at it. She likes to rub her hair with mashed potatoes or other soft foods. She likes baths and hair washing, to a point. She hopped in the shower with me and did not like the spray.

She talks, a little. She says Mama. Grandma and Gr’pa, and M’Randa, and Enry and Papa. And baba and dada as all purpose words. She says cook-cook in a very breathy way for cookie. She loves cookies. One in each hand is best. She likes to tickle with sharp little finger nails. She laughs a lot. She wants to go bu-bye and gets her coat when anyone else gets to go away. She likes wearing shoes and boots. She like to try on bigger people’s shoes. She can take off her shirt. She can take off her diaper if she has no pants. Taking off her pants is hard.

She might get red skin after eating tomatoes or chocolate. It isn’t really clear. Her cheeks will get red or sometimes her bottom. We have tried to separate and/ or cut back on chocolate and tomatoes until we can figure it out.  She loves to eat. She will eat with as many people as have meals separately – so if I eat lunch, then Grandma and then Grandpa, Bella would prefer having 3 meals.

She takes 1 nap, usually in the afternoon. 1-2 hours long. She sleeps from 7:30 to 7, waking up once if at all. Or stirring at 5 and then cuddling in a warm bed until she warms up and goes back to sleep. The most exciting time of day is when the bus brings her big kids home. All is better in the world when the big kids and Mama and Grandma are home.

Tomorrow, Miranda and Henry, maybe in 2 posts?

I can come up with 19 reasons you will fall asleep.

I have been thinking and thinking abut falling asleep. And I just can’t. The first reason I can’t fall asleep is… I can come up with 2 reasons I can’t fall asleep.

The reasons were anxious and excited about tomorrow, and a headache. I think she could have made a case for 3.

While driving home from dinner Friday night (the smoking ban cannot start too soon), we turned into he dark driveway, pushed the button on the garage door opener and pulled into the garage itself. Henry must have thought we were going a bit too fast because he said whoa.  Or maybe he was taming imaginary horses? My mom asked him where we would go if we went through the back of the garage wall.  And Henry said “dead.”

I guess winter hasn’t killed my spirit, yet, as that amused me. Even if I should have driven just a bit more slowly down the driveway.

Rob was far better at detecting. He played another round. Came up with Miss Scarlett with the knife in the kitchen. I had started with the kitchen and had seen no cards about it. I agreed, silently, with Rob’s assessment. Rob checks in the secret file and what do you know, it was the dining room.

What?

Miranda had the kitchen card and neglected to notice or show it throughout the game. She was confused then contrite. We were mostly amused. Henry was really amused. We did not play another round.

In other news, Henry messed with his loose tooth all day long. Or so we infer from his teacher telling him to stop messing with his tooth already. And then after supper, after Clue, before bedtime it started bleeding and Grandma helped it along. Grandma with the tooth in the kitchen. Henry has lost his first tooth. 5 weeks to his 6th birthday. I am not ready.