by mayberry on April 4, 2010
On your fifth birthday, you hunted Easter eggs and wore your new frog boots to church.
During brunch, you sweetly sang “Two little blackbirds sitting on a hill…” Then you sang it while accompanying yourself on the ukulele. Then you sang it while accompanying yourself on the drums. Then we said “Enough singing.”
You played with your Lego Star Wars X-Wing fighter allllll day, except when you were making movies, starring Zhu Zhu Pets, with your sister. (But one of your favorite presents was the giant cardboard box that came in the mail from Grammy.)
Instead of a cake, you asked for parfaits. This turned out to mean chai tea concentrate, milk, strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and red and green sugar crystals in a glass. With a piece of cinnamon-pecan roll on top to hold the candles.
You rode your bike to the playground so you could go on the spinny merry-go-round. Later you biked to a different park just so you could roll down the sledding hill.
In 10 days you’ll attend kindergarten orientation.
Just don’t run too far too fast, okay?
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 April 1, 2010
I truly am grateful for
- A big work project
- Two children celebrating birthdays
- The opportunity to fix my child’s crooked jaw and teeth
- A holiday featuring yummy food, fun traditions, and one of my favorite hymns
- Family coming to visit
- Days off from school
- Stunningly amazingly beautifully gorgeous weather
I would be EVER SO MORE grateful if all this were not happening simultaneously.
by mayberry on December 26, 2009
… a meme, found at Swistle.
Eggnog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate.
Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Mostly he wraps them, especially when he is also visiting our niece at the same time. (Because her daddy thinks Santa should wrap and why would he wrap for only one out of three kids?) (Also, here is the SIL #fail of this trip: Requesting that our kids wait to open their Santa gifts until their cousin arrived from the hotel where she was staying. At 1:30 p.m.!) (Request: denied.)
Colored lights on a tree or white? Colored, but I have given in to my husband’s preference for white. (See additional tree-decorating guidelines.)
Hang mistletoe? No. But I still remember the giant, fake ball of it my mother used to have.
When do you put your decorations up? Outdoors: If there is a warmish day somewhere near Thanksgiving, grab it. Otherwise, first or second weekend of December. Tree/indoors: I prefer the second weekend in December.
What is your favorite holiday dish? Here at the Laws of In, homemade pierogies.
Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Here, all of them (except for Santa’s). At my house, only one on Christmas Eve, the rest in the morning.
How do you decorate your Christmas tree? See link to rules above. This year, our tree was very finicky and it took a long time to secure it in its stand. While they were waiting, the kids drew ornaments on colored paper. So those are prominently displayed. Also this year, Jo took extreme pride in being permitted to hang up very fragile ornaments herself.
Snow: Love it or hate it? I like it while it’s falling, and I like it lying prettily on the ground (but not the roads) for Christmas, but basically I hate it. (Answer stolen 100% from Swistle.)
Can you ice skate? If by “ice skate” you mean “remain upright and locomote forward while wearing ugly, rented boots with dull blades attached” then the answer is Yes!
What is your favorite holiday dessert? My grandmother’s pumpkin bars with cream-cheese frosting.
What is your favorite holiday tradition? Listening to holiday music. When I was a child, we used to have Christmas Eve dinner at my grandmother’s, then go to church, then drive down a nearby street on which the neighbors collaborated to depict the 12 Days of Christmas with wooden cut-outs.
Candy canes: Yum or yuck? I prefer them in the form of peppermint bark.
Favorite Christmas show? The Grinch.
And you?
by mayberry on December 15, 2009
It’s a bloggy tradition — the unsent holiday letter!
Dear friends and family,
If you’re in the mood for something really ho-ho-ho and fa-la-la, you should probably just go ahead and recycle this and move on to the next envelope in your stack. Because really, what good can I say about a year that started with (a) a dead baby and ended with (b) a 6-week-long (and counting) migraine?
When I wasn’t crying about (a) or (b), I was putting on a chipper face and working on my fitness site and other freelance projects. I learned that three days of child care during the summer months was not exactly sufficient, and also that attempting to work during a vacation at my parents’ house was a lousy idea. Yep, I am blessed to work for myself and from home but I am also here to tell you it isn’t always a picnic.
Jeff weathered some pretty big storms at work and came out on top. He also decided to take my attempts at Shredding and raise them, to the tune of a 50-lb.-plus weight loss. I am super-proud of him. However, I believe I deserve half the credit due to the volume of laundry his workouts generate.
Jo was on-trend this year. She grew a pretty impressive set of vampire fangs thanks to the loss of several baby teeth. She made amazing progress in reading, swimming, ice skating and watching every episode of “iCarly” ever shown on Nickelodeon (multiple times).
Opie? Well let’s just say his biggest accomplishment of this year involves tighty whities and leave it at that. He has also developed an unpleasant obsession with the phrase “punch your booty.” He’ll totally be ready for kindergarten in the fall!
Our dog Folly is still with us, trying to protect us from the mailman and the puppy next door. The kids are still waiting for her to die so they can get a kitten.
Bah humbug,
Mayberry Mom
by mayberry on December 1, 2009
When I lived in France, I often lunched with a family that included twin four-year-old girls. Their mother spent quite a lot of time during each meal issuing the reminder “Les deux cuisses sur le tambour!” (Both cheeks on your stool!)
Similarly, meals with Opie involve a lot of reinforcing, reminding, and pleas to use utensils and keep his butt in his chair. I figure this is par for the course for age four, and he is slowly learning decent-enough manners. We can take him to a restaurant and he can be trusted to sit fairly quietly and not make a huge mess or spectacle.
Still, he doesn’t have a great track record for Big Family Dinners of the Turkeyish Kind (or other special occasions). I think that he can sense his father’s nervousness (and, in my opinion, unreasonable expectations) about his behavior, and he also sometimes doesn’t like to be in the spotlight–this is why he refused to trick-or-treat, because he didn’t like people looking at him.
We were quite pleasantly shocked when on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he sat at the table with nine other guests and politely, beautifully, neatly ate soup and salad. It was a thing of beauty–and this was after being in the car for nearly eight hours that day.
So is it any wonder that on Thanksgiving itself, he arrived at the table naked from the waist down, growling “i hate you i hate you i hate you” at anyone that glanced in his direction?
Eventually, I ate with him in the kitchen and then later he did reappear at the table and was perfectly charming. And the next day, we went to a football game at Grandma’s school with a bunch of VIPs and he voluntarily shook hands with strangers and said “Hello, Mr. Howard” politely and stayed until halftime without a single complaint.
Oh four. You are a mystery. A growly, adorable, ear-pinching mystery, and I am thankful for you every day.
by mayberry on October 31, 2009
Jo woke up yesterday morning coughing, sneezing, and with a fever of 102. Since then she’s probably consumed all of 100 calories and none of that was candy. So who knows if it’s swine flu, but it definitely sucks.
She rallied long enough to put on a costume (basket o’ puppies!) but over all, this was nowhere near as fun as last year. Or the year before that. Or that.
We did, however, continue our streak of running out of candy (10 bags’ worth) by evening’s end. So there is that.
by mayberry on July 5, 2009
As you might expect, we do it up big on the 4th of July in Mayberry. An evening parade on the 3rd featured, among other entrants, our town’s brand-new chief of police wearing a flak jacket and cruising down the street on a Segway, handing out candy, while his 5 children and wife followed him … each one riding a unicycle.
And a guy on a boat angling for a large fish.
On the Fourth, we follow with the kids’ bike parade, in which Opie was not feeling the USA loooove.
He cheered up after cheating death on the carny swings.
A dose of cotton candy may also have played a role.
We followed all this excitement with a barbecue at Nick’s including a lot of pyrotechnics in the street in front of Nick’s house (of course “Nick’s dad buyed $250 worth of fireworks and blowed them up”). Then back to our tarp, placed in the park the night before, for Mayberry’s own fireworks show. Of which no photos, because I was too busy doling out snacks and blankets and glow sticks to even bring my camera.
All in all, a happy Fourth and I hope yours was too.
P.S. I spared you the pictures from the clown show. You’re welcome.
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 January 26, 2009
Valentine’s Day always catches me off-guard. I always feel I deserve a longer break after all the giftiness in December. Then along comes February 14 and suddenly I need dozens of teeny tiny cards for the kids’ classmates and oh yeah, maybe I should get cards for the kids from me too, and I guess one for my husband while I’m at it. I was shocked the first time my kids got not just those cards with the see-through envelopes, but little bags of candy and other goodies. I missed the memo on that one (and I still resist).
So. If you want to be more prepared than I usually am, please to visit The Full Mommy’s Valentine Gift Guide. It features goodies galore for kids, spouses, and even a little something for your favorite dog. Thank you to Leighann and Amy for tons of great reviews.
