Home

Home from 4 nights at family camp at Camp Laurel in Maine.  Big fun this year!!  Lots of friends, time together, activities, campfires, and one very tired family.  We drove back home in tropical storm Irene and it was a non-event.  Lots of cute stories, but most of this year's uniqueness centered around Owen's obsession with a 5 year old girl named Clover.  They always like to hang together at church-related events, but this year at camp he became fanatical.  Clover was mostly receptive of his attention and they spent 3/4 of the week happily together, but sometimes she needed more space than he was willing to give so we had to have some talks with a very frustrated boy about being a gentleman.  Who knew we'd be dealing with this at 4 years old?!  As an indication of how serious his attentions became, he woke from a nap one day a bit woozy and instantly sat up saying, "Clover!  Clover!  Where is Clover?"  It's very funny that they picked each other because they are uncannily alike (don't complements usually attract?).  Very adventurous, talkative, strong-willed and full of ideas.  They were not always the best influence on each other.  Clover has a wandering habit, and while Owen is usually trustworthy about not wandering off, one time a small search party had to go looking for them and it turned out they'd wandered off together to go find a tree to climb.  When scolded, Owen insisted ad nauseum, "But MOM, Clover knows ALL the inches of family camp!"  It was clear who was boss in the relationship...Owen doesn't accept 'no' happily from many people, but took whatever lumps Clover was handing out.  Owen:  "Clover knows how to find trees to climb for us, but she doesn't let me climb them."  Clover:  "I can make him into mashed potatoes."

Here are a couple pictures of joyful Owen, now barely big enough to attempt the (30 ft?) climbing wall.  Well, he was basically hoisted by the staff worker...but he had a blast and felt like big stuff :)

 

Whaddaweek

To all of our sweet family:  thank you for caring about us!  It is wonderful to be sympathized with :)

By way of update, here was our week:
last Friday noon:  Reuel's work picnic; fun, but felt onset of cold during picnic
last Friday 6pm:  full blown cold, as if I'd had it for 48 hours already.  Very weird.
Saturday:  out. of. commission.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday:  pretty bad, and Reuel got it somewhere in there too.
Tuesday night:  5pm ears start filling up, by 4am still awake from steak knife pain in ear and eardrum bursts
Wednesday:  General practitioner looks in my ears and shudders, instant referral to ENT; ENT poked holes in both eardrums with suctioning ice pick (my medical term), probes brain, tells me that should feel better, sends me home where I feel all kinds of worse.
Thursday-now:  deaf, deaf, deaf, ears full, full, full and draining (full and draining at the same time, how is that possible) and I am instantly in awe of deaf people.  This is neither fun nor easy, and creeps me out. 
Friday:  call ENT sayin' something ain't right.  Told to hang in there til Monday
Makin' it through the weekend until Monday and really hoping this is fixable!!

And drum roll for the grand finale....
Backed into husband's car this morning while attempting to leave driveway!  NOOOOOOO.  Yes.

Oh yes, it's a peach of a week.  I am mostly spending time being thankful for a patient and wonderful husband.

What not to do...

Disclaimer:  Any seeming relation of following thoughts to writer's own situation is purely coincidental.

If you ever find yourself increasingly rotund and coming off of the worst head cold of your life, here are some things NOT to do:

1.  Do NOT imagine that there could be nothing worse than staying home with 2 energetic boys on a rainy Monday morning.  Even if you know they will be in weekend withdrawal, you are not up to entertaining them, and they will fight like cats and dogs if you stay home, don't assume other options are always better.
2.  Do NOT imagine that if you take them to that place of mothers who've officially given up, that haven of infectious disease, that birthplace of ADHD, that kiddie casino---aka Chuck E. Cheese--do not entertain visions in your head of them running around with smiles on their faces, playing games, collecting tickets, climbing and sliding with glee, all while you sit comfortably in a booth and look on, nursing yourself quietly back from the brink of sinus pressure devastation.
3.  Do NOT assume that your 2 year old will find giant animatronic cartoon animals as fascinating as your 4 year old did at his age.  Do not leave him near the animals without realizing the 'show' is about to begin while going to get game tokens, and then wonder where that skin-crawling, terrified screaming is coming from.
4.  Do NOT, with a sweet smile at the corners of your mouth, watch your 4 year old help your 2 year old shimmy up the climbing steps (which are technically too tall for him to manage on his own) into the closed-tube hamster scramble running around the room at ceiling level.  Once again, do not assume your 2 year old is a brave as your 4 year old was at his age.
5.  Do NOT find yourself forced, at 21 weeks of pregnancy, to shimmy up into a space designed for 6 year olds to retrieve your child.
6.  Do NOT feel your uterus contracting on the way down the slide while getting kicked by your upset child.  Oh yes, just don't do it.
7.  Do NOT hand your younger child a cup full of 4 or 5 tokens at 25c each and sit down exhausted in a booth to finally blow your nose and sanitize your hands the 10 or 12 times that you bypassed doing so when it was really needed.
8.  Do NOT wonder where all his money has gone in a 30 second time frame and walk around looking for it strewn across the floor.  Another mother will politely inform you (with a snide chuckle) that she watched your child methodically and purposefully deposit all coins quickly and sequentially into the same game (perhaps imagining how she herself could never sink to such poor parenting supervision).
9.  Do NOT imagine that with 50 different games strewn across the establishment, your two children will not fight over the same game.
10.  Do NOT imagine that there will be any level of independent play when accompanying a two year old who needs total supervision, help, and a single coin meted out at a time.
11.  Do NOT attempt, in a moment of weakness, to play the only really fun game in the room, skee-ball, which involves 10 or 12 rock-hard, heavy plastic balls that descend at one time, long lanes for rolling them, and the perfect opportunity for a 2 year old to grab them and chuck them at passers-by's skulls, other games, his brother, or anything that moves.
12.  Do NOT assume that 4 year olds will not try to play games that are beyond their ability, and then get really frustrated and want help, all while you are trying to reassemble the skee-ball diaspora.
13.  Do NOT try to educate your child about the difference between games that actually offer something fun to do, and games that are essentially slot machines, earning you a whopping pile of 8 penny-value tickets (to buy penny-value candy that has been inflated in price 500%) in exchange for 1 quarter.  He will not be able to hear you over the sound of the tickets being dispensed from the machine.
14.  Do NOT assume that 'separate but equal' prizes bought with the tickets will be accepted by both parties involved.
15.  Do NOT look around at the dismal-looking faces of bedraggled mothers all around you and realize that you too fell prey to a master marketing operation!

 (The mother in the picture may be smiling, but if you examine closely, it's really the wide-eyed look of half-crazed lunacy.)

Testing

Let's see how posting from iPad works...pictures from our flight home.

Back home!

Got home Sat. night, church bright and early Sunday, stop at Target, go to open house we were interested in, head home, naptime + grocery shopping, friends arrive!  Super-fun with friends til 10am this morning, and now we settle back into time at home.  We had such a great relaxing time at Nunu's house in NC.  She has a knack for entertaining kids, and they had 10 days of full-on attention and fun.  Nice for all involved (except my mom deserves a vacation now!).  The kids were adorable when meeting Reuel at the airport and I saw one onlooker tearing up watching their reunion!  (I decided not to spoil the image by explaining that probably later that night one or both of them would be throwing a tantrum about not wanting Daddy to do a job that only Mommy is sufficient to perform...ah well, the reunion was sweet while it lasted :).

Now back to 'normal', Owen brought me his kid's westminster catechism book, and wanted to have it read to him, cover to cover.  He did not tire of listening!  I guess he needed some downtime :}  I thought this was funny:

Me:  #13.  Does God know everything?  Yes.  Nothing can be hidden from him.  Psalm 44:21
Owen:  "Does that mean that God knows where pirate treasure is buried?  Even without a map??
[...]
Me:  #17.  How many persons are there in the one God?  Three persons. 
        #18.  Who are these three persons?  The Father, the Son (that's Jesus!) and the Holy Spirit.  Matt. 28:19
Owen:  "So JESUS knows where pirate treasure is buried even without a map, TOO??"

While at Nunu's house, Owen was getting into the idea of doing chores for money (a dime per normal-size chore) and has continued this at home.  Just now he was *desperate* for a job.  I asked him to take an envelope down to the mailbox, put it in, and push up the flag.  I knew he'd need a stool, so suggested he take his lightweight Bilibo toy (a strange but fun open-ended toy that is just a big plastic bowl) with him as a stool.  I watched the errand through the window for fun.  Here's how it went:
1.  Take Bilibo + mail to curb
2.  Put Bilibo on ground, open mailbox and start to stuff in mail.
3.  Discover mailbox is already full of mail.
4.  Throw outgoing mail to ground.
5.  Throw all mail in box to ground.
6.  Get outgoing mail in box, push up flag.
7.  Run to garage to get tricycle
8.  Ride trike to mailbox and attempt to fill back basket on trike with incoming mail + newspaper
9.  Mail is too big; fold all envelopes in half to stuff in. 
10.  Leave Bilibo + newspaper + 1 stray piece of mail on ground
11.  Attempt to ride up drive; get stuck on hill.
12.  Push trike to top
13.  Go back down and retrieve excess items
14.  Put trike away
15.  Bring rumpled mail to house announcing, "I went and got my trike so I wouldn't have to walk so far!"
16.  Leave Bilibo in driveway.

I'd say that was worth a dime!

Sniff!

We miss you Daddy!!  10 days is too long without Daddy hugs.  But at least we have Skype :)  See you soon!

Love,
Your Fam