Our Everyday

(image curtesy of www.jmurphybears.com)


We are off on our Christmas adventure, traveling west for the first time. I may try to post some adventures but if you don't hear anything, I catch you up in about two weeks time. Happy Holidays to all.

Alas, the last mighty soldier has fallen to the ear infectionyuhnnnnnnnnnnnnnjhkl;. nm,kl;;;;;;;;;./,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,l. That is Emma's commentary.

So some how we all have ear infections save Emma. Let me tell you that now I know why babies cry constantly when they have them, because they really hurt! Please, can we just get better and have a merry christmas without any virius or bacteria setting up house.

Yesterday my dad had his hip replaced. The surgery went as close to perfect as the doctor could have expected. I called this morning and he seemed to be doing well and in good spirits after a bit of a rough night and early morning. He was wanting to have some breakfast so he could have some Starbucks if Debi brought him some during her visit today to give some indication of how he was feeling.
We have all been battling a nasty snotty virus around here, and of course Sadie is having the worst bout of it. She has had fever off and on the highest being 104 which freaked me out. I was on the phone to the doctor right away and he assured me that this was okay and normal for child with a cold. We managed to get it to drop quickly but it has been yo-yoing all week and went back up to 103 tonight. I just feel so bad about all of the stuff she has to go thru with medications and all.

Back to the doctor's office, the women who answer the phone for Sadie's doctor's office are so rude! I called on Thurs night at 5pm about Sadie's fever and the woman sounded like I was asking way too much to talk to the doctor about it all. Maybe it is just the rude east coast/New York thing with her but of all doctors you would think that someone working in a pediatric office would be the most compassionate. I was not asking her to remove one of her limbs for me. I must admit that I have some kind of a phobia of doctors and since becoming pregnant with Sadie I have had to overcome that in many ways. I think I have made a lot of progress but it is these types of instances that do not encourage me, It just makes me think,"If you don't like your job that much, find some thing else." Whatever.

Emma is eight months now! I can't believe it. I still think of her as a tiny baby. Well, she is pretty tiny. Her little fuzzy head was making me laugh tonight when I was waiting for her to settle down. There is something so cute about messy baby hair, sticking out in every direction. I have made a observation this past week. Something funny happens when you have a fever, your hair looks like it was rearranged and put on backward or something. Sadie's hair is so funny right now.

I am sort of babbling in this post. My nerves are shot, I am so tired of everyone being sick. I really just want Sadie to be better and everything back to normal. I have been spending so much time taking care of Emma I realize that I don't really know all that has been going on with Sadie. Nathan has been caring for her for the most part. This lead up to Christmas has been totally wacked out. I have found myself missing my childhood traditions again, longing for the opportunity for creating those with Sadie and Emma in our own home. I have been totally stressed about shopping and shipping for everyone everywhere, making sure that everything arrives in time. It has hit me again that when we moved so much changed. It seems to come in waves. I have never lived outside of San Diego until this past year, and there are so many things that are different now that we are not within driving distance of any family that we grew up with. Or I guess that I grew up with. I have had most all of my family with in eight hours of my home, the majority within an hour. I am really missing San Diego these days, these cold, cold days.

It has really cold since it snowed last. Last night the low was predicted to be 6 and yesterday morning when Nathan went to work it was 10!
Everyone is sick here. Isn't that wonderful! Sadie and Emma came down with the same thing pretty much at the same time. And I had it a day later. Now Nathan is coming down with it. He cancelled his trip to Italy, thank you , thank you , thank you. When Emma is sick she requires lots of help staying asleep and comfortable. So that usually means her and me sleeping in the bed downstairs. With everyone in the same state of misery, last night took forever to be over. We all made it to morning. Sadie was in bed with Nathan in our bed which is her usual landing place after waking up in the night. But four in one queen sized bed does not usually bode well for a restful night sleep.
Emma is a crazy little mighty machine. She climbs stairs and anything else that she can pull up on. Luckily she is too short to climb up on most stuff, but she tries even so. But this climbing and pulling up leads to her attempting things that she is just
not strong enough to pull off. She has a bruise on each side of her head from knocking into something. Sometimes when she is crawling she will crawl into the door or wall or whatever happens to be in front of her. She is a little wrecking ball.

Emma can palm the ball!




Here I am cheerily "plowing" the driveway.

While Sadie and I were shopping after school one day, she asks,"What are dose, Mama?", pointing to a basket of tangerines. I say, "Those are tangerines, we used to have a tree with those on it and you would go out and pick them and eat them. Do you remember that?"
"No Mama, those are small oranges because that is how God made them."


After the first snow, which amounted to a mere inch or so, Sadie and I went out to make "snowbells", aka snowballs. She also refers to snowflakes as snowangels.

When I was a kid, we would spend the night at my dad's, I think it was every other Wednesday. In the morning, he would get us up and out the door while we wiped the sleep from our eyes. The truck would be running and the heater blasting when we opened the door. We would slide in and head up over the hill along Coronado Ave. In the middle of the dash board would be a green cup full of hot, black coffee. The steam would form a cloudy circle on the windshield.

Yesterday afternoon, we headed out to the fabric store( where else?) to pick up a few notions for some projects that I really need to finish. But before I could head out the door, I needed a cup of coffee. We had one of those fancy steel hot cups that keeps things warm forever, so I poured the coffee and the milk in the cup and loaded up the car. As I was driving out of the driveway with coffee in hand, I realized I am acting awfully adult at this very moment. I am not really sure why it seemed so shocking or why this is the first time I have ever done this (I am going to blame it on New Jersey) but there I was laughing at myself. Sadie asked what I was laughing at. What could I say?

The cup my dad used was one of those with the very narrow top and really wide bottom. It was the 80's technology at its finest, I guess. It seemed that everyone had them. I remember a friend's mom who would sometimes give me a ride to school had a pottery cup of the same shape.

All of you who have seen the critically acclaimed movie, Dumb and Dumber, this one is for you. You know the scene where the two guys are driving and Jim Carey says, "Do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?", and then he proceeds to produce what maybe the most annoying sound in the world? Well, Emma is really good at making that exact sound. She is not crying or screeching, she is just trying to make sure you know she is present and she is not really that happy. It is just wonderful. For those of you who missed the movie, you might want to watch it, I think it won an academy award or two.


The morning of Thanksgiving I looked out the front window to see the neighbor lady walking out to get the paper at the end of her driveway. Her hair was in big pink rollers and she had her old robe on over her pajamas. I laughed. It was a picture from the Sunday comics for sure.

I have sunken to new lows. I am letting Emma crawl on the kitchen floor. Okay, so that is not so big of a deal. I was meaning more in a literal sense. She had really grown to dislike the "saucer" which is where she ends up when I am making dinner. The constant annoying sound mentioned above or crying made me give in today to just plopping her on the floor with a basket of tuperware. Actually the kitchen is rather safe as all the appliances that procure heat are above her reach, but there is a tall set of stairs on one end that Sadie and I have already christened with our blood and tears, I would really like to spare everyone else the trip down.

All day I have these marvelous ideas of what to write in this thing but once I sit down to do, all those ideas have vanished from any part of my brain that I am capable of accessing!

Did I mention that Emma has a new tooth?

There is a book I saved from childhood written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel in which owl sits down in front of a warm fire with a bowl of hot pea soup and warm buttered toast. He hears banging on the front door and comes to find it is winter. He invites it in but winter is not much of a guest and soon has blown out the fire and turned the hot pea soup into hard green ice. Owl asked it to leave before he starts a new fire and warms his soup again.

I think of this story often on cold nights like tonight. And I have taken a liking to warm buttered toast. It does have a way of warming you up along with a hot cup of tea.

Sadie had her first bowl of cranberry juice and snow this week after the first "big" snow of the season. We built a snowman, shoveled the driveway, and threw snowballs before heading inside to warm up. Emma sat like a little hot potato bundled in the stroller and watched all the goings on.
The first picture is from Monday morning and the second is from this morning. We had a bit of snow last night. But not enough to have to shovel, whew! As you know, we have two two-wheel drive cars and a steep drive way with does not allow for much snow to be down before climbing the thing becomes a slippery mess. My work on Sunday morning paid off and this afternoon when it was time to take Sadie to school, most of the snow has melted away.

For dessert tonight we had hot chocolate with marshmallows and home whipped cream. Sadie stirred the cocoa while I whipped the cream. Emma just watched, wondering when she was going to get a cup. It was a bit of nostalgia for me. The dessert I remember having most often as a kid was popcorn and hot chocolate. My mom usually used the Ibarra bar chocolate, a mexican chocolate that is really sweet with some cinnamon. We would grate it on the cheese grater and add it to the yellow enamel pot with some milk. The popcorn was popped in the "popcorn pan", an old sauce pan that was blacken with oil from many, many batches of stove top popped corn. The popcorn was warm and buttery and went really well with the hot chocolate.

Here is the look of a sneaky little girl.

She charms you with her sweet smile but she is really out to conquer the world...


...one mountain at a time.

This is the scene(re-enacted without actors)I found when I came back from loading some wash into the dryer.




This is the second time I have found little Miss Emma standing up to one of these chair with a big smile across her face. Do seven month old babies really climb stuff? I have a feeling that she will be walking sooner than I thought. Sadie was not walking until she was almost 13 months, and she never tried to climb things. I think I have a monkey in the making!
Emma has begun to crawl as well. She tries the tradition means occasionally but if she really needs to get some where she goes on her elbows and pushes with her toes really fast.