by mayberry on April 3, 2010
I don’t think too many (white, Midwestern) 8-year-old girls sit down to a homecooked Indian meal on their birthday and eat it with gusto.
I don’t think too many eight-year-old girls accidentally open their younger brother’s birthday present and really wish they could have those boys’ size 5 plaid Bermuda shorts for their own.
I don’t think too many eight-year-old girls give away 99% of their Easter candy, cheerfully, because they can’t eat it thanks to their recently installed orthodontic devices.
I don’t think too many eight-year-old girls want to spend part of their birthday building a Lego spaceship with their uncle.
Then again, I don’t think too many eight-year-old girls are as great as you are.
by mayberry on March 22, 2010
I came back from visiting my sister with a new pair of jeans. And she also picked herself up a wedding dress. That right there is some successful shopping, wouldn’t you agree? If only one of us had bought a bathing suit: trifecta!
I spent the whole day on Saturday with my sister, my mom, and my sister’s future mother- and sister-in-law, looking for my sister’s wedding gown. My sister surprised us all by rejecting many dresses for insufficient bling. This is a woman who wears steel-toed boots to work every day and who, even when she’s not working, is extremely practical and down-to-earth (ha! because she’s a gardener! I kill me). She is most certainly not without style, but she’s never been one for frippery and bows. Plus, she’s getting married outdoors, on the side of a mountain, in August. That didn’t scream “20-foot train” or “lace, crystals, and lacy crystals” to me.
So she kept trying on ruffly, lacy, bedazzled dresses. They were all beautiful and she looked beautiful in them. But she didn’t start crying until she put on a simple dress that made up for its lack of sparkle with its understated elegance and delicate details. The. One!
Given the nature of our errand, we five spent the whole day talking about weddings. My mom recalled the time she had to wear a super-fitted silk sheath for a bridesmaid’s dress … days after getting a thigh-high cast off her leg. I remembered having a velvet bridesmaid’s dress that I couldn’t sit down in all day before the ceremony, because otherwise I’d get a crushed velvet butt-print on my back side. My sister’s future sister-in-law and her then-fiance reworked her grandmother’s wedding dress together, including hand-sewing beads and lace on the hem. How cute is that?
What’s the story you end up telling and retelling about your wedding, or one you attended? (The other one I trot out often is The Time the Caterer Ran Out of Food–and then accused the guests, of which I was one hungry one, of eating too much.)
(You can read about me geeking out over my smartphone during the trip over here, if you like.)
Edited to add: Magpie Musing and Painted Maypole played along at their blogs … don’t miss their tales of Weddings Gone Wrong.
by mayberry on February 23, 2010
(That’s not a reference to a certain Disneyfied pop star, BTW.)
One of the quirks of our old house is the second-floor layout. At the top of the stairs, there is a wide hallway with five doors visible: two on the left, two on the right, one straight ahead. On the left is the bathroom and one bedroom. On the right is a little storage room (we have no attic) and another bedroom. If you open the straight-ahead door, you enter an odd little anteroom where you’ll find another three doors. To the left, there is a small bedroom/office. Forward is another odd-shaped closet, and on the right is another bedroom which adjoins, via a connecting door, to the adjacent bedroom (the one on the right from before, you follow?).
When we first moved in, Jo was just turning two and of course Opie wasn’t born yet, although we hoped we’d have another child in the next few years. We were a little stumped, at first, about how to allocate the bedrooms. Except for the office, they are all about the same size. The stand-alone one was already painted an incredibly girlie shade of pink. Of the adjoined rooms, one is a bit brighter (it has two exposures) but its closet is outside the room and doesn’t have much hanging space. Also (see below) it had this crazy coral-with-white-stencils thing going on which mayyyyybe could have worked for an adult room but not a kid’s. The neighboring room–it was yellow then–has some nice built-ins and a good closet. We thought about making it the master and giving Jo the pink room, and turning the tangerine!! room into some kind of den or sitting room. But then what would happen if/when we had another kid? Or we could give Jo the sunny room (who cares if a two-year-old has a closet) and keep the yellow one for ourselves. We’d be right next to each other, but could still close the adjoining doors, and we’d save the pink room for another child.
In the end, we took the pink room for ourselves (but painted it pronto) and for a year, Jo had herself a two-room suite. The yellow room, equipped with closet, became her bedroom, and the sunny room became a playroom.
I told you the paint job was wacky.
These days, that yellow room is–surprise!–pink. Opie has the adjoining, once-coral playroom (and no place to hang his clothes, but that’s yet to become an issue). You can see part of the set of connecting doors at that pink link. The kids get to be very close, but still have their own separate spaces. Tonight, we’ve dragged one of the mattresses from his trundle bed onto the floor of her room, and he’s sleeping in there. When we first put up that trundle bed, Jo slept in it for months, alongside her little brother. Lately, they’ve designated the spot behind the big armchair in his room their “office”; they sit back there and read books together and eat contraband candy. They haven’t yet learned to hide the wrappers.
I don’t know what we’ve done, if anything, to foster their closeness. Maybe they’re just different enough not to grate on each other too much: one boy, one girl, three years apart in age. Maybe we said some magic words once upon a time that have kept rivalry largely at bay, thus far (universe, please notice my caveats). Maybe they were just born with compatible temperaments. Maybe we’re just lucky.
Or maybe it’s that double door, the one that lets them have their own special relationship, different from any other they have with parents or teachers or friends or other relatives. They’re a team within a team, and they have the clubhouse to prove it.
by mayberry on September 14, 2009
My brother and his wife love to hike and bike and do crazily outdoorsy things like sleep in tents and wash their feet in icy mountain streams. They also like to take pictures of each other posing atop terrifyingly high rocky ledges and outcrops. Once they realized how much this raises my mother’s blood pressure, they of course began making an extra effort to record all of their death-defying stunts on film.
So when I showed my kids their last batch of pictures, I mentioned (like a fool) how Uncle Steve and Aunt Amy like to take pictures just to freak Grandma out.
Guess who took that ball and ran with it? (Can you find her in this picture?)
On an entirely different note … I’m giving away a copy of EA Sports Active for Wii at The Full Mommy. Today’s the last day to enter.
by mayberry on September 9, 2009
The other day I landed (as you do) on an article from some newspaper about a family with seven children who had just adopted three more. The three new additions, plus one of the original seven, had Down syndrome. Okay, so that caught my eye but if that’s what they want for their family, more power to ‘em. But there was an offhand comment in the story that stopped me for a minute. Something about how one of the newly arrived children had developed a strong attachment to an older sister, to the point where the older child sometimes had to hide or switch places with her twin in order to get a break from the clingy toddler. My train of thought chugged along the track something like this:
ME: Well, that seems excessive. Should that really be the older kid’s responsibility?
MYSELF: That’s how the Duggars do it. All the older ones take care of the younger ones while the parents, like, blow-dry their hair or or something.
I: That’s also the way it’s been since time immemorial. Siblings did the child care while parents hunted/gathered/farmed/riveted.
ME: Yeah, but this is now. Aren’t the parents right there? I can see a child being required to help, but how much is enough?
MYSELF: How is it different from having to mow the lawn or scrub the kitchen floor?
I: Dude, that’s a totally different kind of outsourcing.
ME: Let’s ask the internet.
by mayberry on August 6, 2009
My son wants to make a cake for his sister. And he wants it to say: “I love you Jo. I know you are at a sleepover right now. And I will see you when you come home. Love, Opie.” (We only had enough cakes for parts 1 and 4.)
I know it’s a big fat jinxy risk to say this (especially heading into 72 hours of nonstop Together Time) but these kids, they get along. They love each other, and they show it. They share. They back each other up. They want to spend time together. It is a beautiful thing.
Of course I also know it doesn’t really have anything to do with me being a good mom. I am just very lucky. But I try hard to notice and acknowledge and praise.
And supply cake mix.
Thanks for the prompt, Julie.
by mayberry on July 13, 2009
For some words (crazy ones? You be the judge), go visit Binkytowne, where I am guest posting today on behalf of the vacationing Amy. She asked me to describe my most memorable vacation. You’ll have to click over to find out if I followed the rules.
by mayberry on April 22, 2009
When I went on a trip to Urbana illanou. My uncal said my hol famliy cood see a huge mashing called Shop Bot work.
In orter to make it work my ant Amy, hoo is an artist, and I had to cerate a dasine. We drew a bunny for a dasine on her conprter. My ant Amy sent the dasine on her conprter to my uncal. My uncal uploaded the bunny dasine into the Shop Bot. The Shop Bot cut the bunny shap out of a picee of wood.
Then we took it back to my ant and uncal’s house. To pant it with my ant. We panted it wite and this weekend we will pant it with pingk spots.
I named it Stefeany.
The end.
By Jo and My Dad
(Editor’s note: Opie got a plane, natch.)
by mayberry on April 12, 2009
If you’re looking for charming Easter pictures of my shiny-haired children (and why would you be unless you are my mother), move along. They both had the rattiest, sticky-uppiest, messiest cases of bedhead this morning. Jo’s was reasonably decent by the time we went to church, but Opie’s … forget it.
It actually reminded me of the day of my grandmother’s funeral. My brother was in the middle of one of his months-long bike trips and for whatever reason had decided not to cut his hair or shave his beard until he completed the trip. Just try to picture the result of the combination of bike helmet, sweat, and longer and longer hair, day in and day out. Trying to whip him into shape for the funeral, my sister and I each took a huge handful of hair gel and attacked the wiry mop on top of his head. It worked about as well as my attempt to flatten Opie’s locks this morning.
And it’s still cold here. Which inspired a haiku.
Breath visible on
sunny Easter morn — want a
nice cool Eggsicle?
“Spring” break ahoy this week (finally). In a few days we’re off to visit my brother, who these days has hair so short that hair product is entirely unnecessary.
by mayberry on February 7, 2009
Of the many things that surprise and please me about my children, their relationship with each other tops the list. They truly enjoy each other’s company, play together nicely, show mutual affection, and have each other’s backs.
Sure, they squabble, but Jo is remarkably patient with Opie’s 3-ish-ness, and Opie happily allows himself to be bossed around by his big sister most of the time. If he’s having a tantrum, she creeps up next to him and tries to calm him down. Then she runs back and forth between him and the adult on duty, negotiating a truce. Several nights a week, they sleep side by side in the two trundle beds in Opie’s room.
Jo recently brought home a worksheet from school called “My Special Feelings.” It’s a series of sentences that she had to complete: “I am happy when,” “I am good at,”I am afraid of.” My favorite: “I feel safe when … my brother hugs me.”
See, now this is why I wanted (still want? not sure yet) another one.
Extremely adorable photo filched from my brother and sister-in-law. Topic inspired by this week’s Parent Bloggers Network blog blast for the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education.
