Day 49: Grasshopper on my watering can

This guy here hopped onto my watering can while I was watering the flower boxes the other day. He wasn't there, and then all of a sudden, he was right there on the tip of the spout, less than a foot away from my hand. Creepy. One would think I'd be happy to have a beautiful creature such as this to grace the day with is presence, but I screamed and nearly dropped the pail. I am fascinated with insects and their tiny, intricate details, but that doesn't mean I like them. On the contrary, they freak me out. After I get in close like this to take a picture, my skin starts crawling and the next hour I keep thinking bugs are crawling on me. But I am always drawn to taking their pictures as detailed as I can. Is this normal? Does anybody find themselves fascinated, yet freaked out, by bugs like this?

Day 44: Eight Years

This isn't really the best picture of any of the kids, but it's cool because none of them are crying yet, and there's Camp in the background. You see, this was just before the shit hit the fan. We were in the row boat, me rowing and my sister in the front. Benny the bug-eyed dog was with us too. I snapped this photo just before my sister thought it would be a good idea to throw Benny overboard and see what he would do. (This isn't as cruel as it sounds, we in a man-made lake and there's a considerable sand bar smack dab in the middle of the lake).

Benny fared well for a couple minutes; he poked around the island, sniffed at some stuff floating on the surface of the lake. Then the wind came in with a huge gust and Jacob's precious Yankees hat flew off his head and into the water. He started crying for his hat, and so I started trying to row back to it, but the wind was killer and we were all laughing so I was experiencing the temporary loss of my abdominal muscles. With the sudden rise of emotions going on in the boat, Benny started to get freaked out that we were leaving him on the sand bar for good.

That's when Marisa starting bawling her eyes out because Benny had surpassed the point where he could touch bottom and was now swimming to the boat. Problem is, he's a abnormally-bred dog whose behavior doesn't really even resemble a dog - he's more of like a gremlin - and his breast stroke resembled someone drowning (not to mention his ever-bug-eyed look); hence Marisa crying: She thought he was going under.

Project Yankees Hat Recovery had to take a back seat to the dog and my sister and I were still laughing our butts off. Actually, she was peeing her pants (her words) and I was struggling to maintain my composure so that I could row the boat. And do you have any idea how hard it is to row a boat to a precise location while struggling against the wind and a boat full of hooligans? Sabine was the one laughing her butt off. She was cackling away, pointing at Benny, as if it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. And on either side of her were Jacob and Marisa, each screaming at me to save their precious belongings.

Anyway, the dog and hat are both safely back in their respective homes, and we all made it out alive without having to jump overboard. It is a nice memory, one I am recalling in honor of Marisa's eighth birthday (Today) because I was there when she was born, and I love her, despite the fact that she often makes me want to throw her out the window!

Day 2: Sabine's Birthday

Today Sabine turns two! I had a really hard time picking what picture to use for today. I took a couple today while we were strawberry picking, but neither of them were exactly what I was looking for. I had wanted to use this one where you can see the '2' I painted on her cheek but you can't see her face very well, and there's another one that's perfect except it is both Jacob and Sabine, and since this is her day, I wanted it to be of just her.

I've gone back and added a rule, plus I edited another, because I had such a hard time picking today - one photo only, and no more.

Anyway, this picture took the cake (haha, birthday joke) because it so accurately represents Sabine these days; she's all quirky with her little arm bands she insists on wearing and her hair is all over the place and beautiful, and she's always watching what's going on. I took this picture at Jacob's last baseball game on Saturday. I said that day she looked like she stepped out of a Molly Ringwald movie, that or an old school Madonna video...and you can't even see what she had on her feet.

You can see the runners up here and here and here (oops, last link to be added later, flickr is being extremely slow right now).

Cheek to cheek

My children have never gone to sleep easily. Sabine is a quirky little thing and always finds quirky new ways of demanding to be put to sleep. With Zach, Sabine sort of has a routine and that is all good and well, but if he's not around then I have to do it. And there is not much that I hate more than putting my kids to sleep. After all, I'm the one they got the sleepless gene from, so it's sort of useless for me to try to induce sleep. I get in there and my non-stop energy shakes everything up.

Anyway, here's the method she chose yesterday:

She asked to have Baby Honey in the carrier and then stood around swaying with her (which happens to be my default method of getting her to sleep) going "Bye Baby" - which is how Sabine sings Rock-a-bye baby. I think she was feeling the futility of the whole effort and chose to highlight the fact by making fun of my meager attempt.

Sabine would not take that thing off and the one time that I tried to by unclipping one of the latches, she had a Royal Fit that continued for five minutes after I'd put it back the way it had been. So to make a long story short, she eventually fell asleep like this. And even though Baby Honey is still awake in the photo, she looks very happy, doesn't she?

Our 'Special' Child

I posted this picture a couple weeks ago and since then Sabine has been really into that helmet. As you can see from the picture below, Jacob was responsible for Sabine ending up in the crock pot box - zooming around the house at top speeds (hence the need for the helmet) - which anyone could have guessed. What I think they were trying to do was invent a new Olympic sport, one they could enter as a brother-sister team. Good luck with that endeavor, I say, as long as they don't use any of my good boxes ;-)

When I was showing pictures one day, someone remarked that Sabine looks like a 'special' child in that helmet. Indeed she does.
Here she is after putting on her own jammies. Poor thing couldn't figure out why she wasn't walking right, but Heaven help the person who might try to fix her right leg into the proper place. The one butt cheek look was kind of darling though so I would have hated to see it be corrected anyway.


But when you consider the man that half my children's genetic material came from....is it any wonder? Neither of them really had a chance for normalcy.
What a special girl she is....

And she does the laundry too!

To keep Sabine occupied while I'm doing laundry, I encourage her to help me with the laundry. I've been gradually training her in the art of housework since she could walk. Finally, it is beginning to pay off. Just the other day she completed an entire laundry transfer ALL BY HERSELF. She took all the diapers out of the washer, placed them in the dryer, double-checked that she had them all out of the washer, then closed the dryer, set it and hit the start button. I SWEAR TO GOD. And all I had to do was open the washer for her. If I could find my video camera charger I would have taken a video to prove it.

Providing for the family

Despite the fact that's it's the middle of winter, in our house it's never too cold for ice cream. We have the ice cream maker that you roll around to make ice cream, and we use it a lot. I'd decided we needed some coffee ice cream to go along with the opening ceremony of the Olympics so as the evening progressed we were all pretty bent on having that particular treat.

The one ingredient that seems to be the most difficult to keep around is the actual ice that you put on the outside to freeze the other ingredients. It takes a lot more ice than I can make in the freezer, so usually Zach gets the ice from the college if we've done a good job of planning ahead. A couple times this year we've just used snow, I think that was actually Jacob's idea. So when we were faced with the situation where I'd completely forgotten about the ice, I naturally thought to get some snow from outside.

I guess I hadn't realized the tiny bit of snow that had fallen earlier that day was mostly gone. Zach told me to scrap the idea altogether, but I couldn't let go of it so I snuck outside with a pair of gloves and scraped snow from the walkway. I felt pretty ridiculous out there carrying out my idea of hunter-gatherer but I came in ten minutes later with a ball full of packed snow and we had our ice cream to help kick off Olympics '10.

Kenny

Doesn't he evoke memories of a certain South Park character? What's even more funny is that he sounds just like Kenny when he tries to talk.

Every year it takes a couple months for Jacob to adjust to the weather changes that come with the shift in seasons. This past November he was still insisting on leaving the house in a t-shirt and shorts. When he finally got the hang of dressing weather appropriate, this is the extreme form it took. Come summer, it'll be easy to spot Jacob at the playground: He'll be the kid sporting winter boots and a flannel shirt.

Mango's eating disorder

So Mango ate my chocolate earlier in the week. First off, that bitch. No one messes with a woman and her chocolate. Secondly though, I had an interesting conversation with Beckie.

I had to call her and fess up that Mango had eaten some mildly important Playschool papers that I was going to give Beckie. Somehow that led Beckie to say, "You know I give Taz Pepcid, right?" No, I hadn't known that. And I hadn't even told her about the chocolate bar yet.

She explained the vet we both take our animals to had long ago recommended giving her dog, Taz, Pepcid. He doesn't get it every day, but I guess most days. I asked her if he recommends this for all dogs, or only some. She replied that it was specific to Taz's case because he was eating whatever crap that was laying around the house, was eating all day long, burped a lot, etc. I said, "Um, that's Mango to a T."

"Oh yeah, you've said that before, that it's like Mango has an eating disorder."

That's right she does, although my mom just called it Pica.

So I'd previously put two and two together about the missing chocolate and the throw up on the floor, but it hadn't yet occured to me about the paper that Mango has been eating all week. See, normally she'll pick off some random object if we've left the dogs home alone for too long. And usually only when we're away from the house, or if we've committed some particularly attrocious crime, according to dog mores. But every time I turned a corned this week there was some half-eaten paper laying on the ground.

I expressed my confusion (as to why all of a sudden she was doing this) aloud many times throughout the week. But not until I was on the phone with Beckie did I realize that dark chocolate is extremely acidic and by eating the paper Mango was probably trying to neutralize her stomach and alliviate the heartburn she must have been experiencing from eating Mama's sweets!

So I went to the store today to get Pepcid. I can't believe no one (Beckie nor the vet) ever mentioned that to me before, but it makes perfect sense. Mango took a dose today and I have left the house, we'll see the status when I get back.

Dear Sabine: Months 13 & 14

Dear Sabine,

It seems like just last week that I was at the grocery store with you as a tiny newborn, all the little old ladies oogling over you. You were a mere week old and I was so proud to be going to the store with you all by myself, much less walking. How did over a year go by already? How can one little person grow so much in such a short span of time? In 14 rapidly passing months you've blossomed into this little person. You totally understand everything we say to you, and you love going to do the things we ask you to do; throw something in the garbage, go get the phone, where'd you put your socks?
As I sit down to finally finish writing this post, you're already almost 15 months old, so don't expect me to have another one for quite a while. I wish I could keep to the once-a-month post, but with two of you kids now, it's been impossible. The most encompassing remark I can make about you to this date is that you are so funny and quirky. You're really fitting into our family quite well. I'd feel sorry for any baby who came to live in this house and was not well-equipped with a sense of humor.
We have family rumbles at any given moment of the day. One of us will start it, give a certain look, make a certain noise and everyone else is like, game on. No one can resist it. Then the jumping onto one another begins, the tickling, play wrestling, and the hiding and racing around the house. You really mess Jacob up when you play with him. You splash him in the bath, lunge at him when you're in a funny mood, and lately you've been taking to biting people! Bath time is always a favorite, you and Jacob both feed off of each other so much. When it's just one of you in the bath, as it sometimes is, things tend to get a little boring.
But you're really lucky to have ended up with Jacob as a big brother. He really is great with you. He loves you so much, and I think you idolize him in your baby way. If you fall and get hurt, and Jacob's the closest person to you, he'll scoop you up and you cling to him, both of you patting one anothers' backs. You both request hugs and kisses from each other at random times during the day. You are a good kisser. You'll walk up to a loved on, lean in close to them waiting for a response and then you give a perfect baby kiss. Sometimes you're in a particularly loving mood and you'll go around the room kissing everyone there repeatedly. It's so rewarding to one of those people!
You've got clear likes about things, but it's harder to pin down things you don't like. You love music, breaking into dance when you hear just a few notes. In the car I'm usually able to calm you down with some kind of music if you're getting fussy. You like putting funny things on your body, and hiding in tiny places. You'll call us into the room to show off an accomplishment. And you love your belly button. I've probably written about that before, but you do love it. You poke your little finger in it, and if someone in another room happens to say the word 'belly' in a sentence, you start struggling to get to your belly button so you can make sure it's still there. If you're wearing a onesie and can't find your belly, then that is a problem which we must fix for you.

And Sabine, you are quite obsessed with shoes. Particularly Crocs. I don't know why, I think they're hideous. I first noticed it when I was in the mall looking for a new pair of shoes to go with a dress for the wedding in Virginia. This was before you were a year old. I was holding you and walked past the shoe section and you almost jumped out of my arms tyring to get to the shoe racks. You pointed out all the shoes you liked and I handed them to you so you could just stare at them in wonder. From that point on it was a full-blown obsession. You a hold of someone's shoes, and it's hard to get them back when it's time to leave. You really like wearing your shoes. One of the first commands you started understanding was, "Sit down so I can put your shoes on." I really should write more about your shoes obsession because it is something that clearly consumes a lot of your brain energy, but I'll just leave it at that.
Some cute tricks you've developed include clicking your tongue and little grunting noises you make, like fake madness when we're playing around and rough-housing. You do a couple cute tricks with your mouth, one being the tongue flapping thing where it makes a sound like "blahlalablahlalalala" - oh dear, I have no better way to describe it! You also do the thing with you mouth open making the 'ahhh' sound so that when someone pats you on the mouth it mimics what people associate with Indians. Jacob taught you that one, I think. You give high fives too. And you have a humorous little scowl you give people before breaking into a smile.

You were starting to say a lot of words in the early part of the summer, but that pretty much stopped at that point and you took up the more physical aspect of your development. You now pretty much say "Mom" or "Mama" or something variation of that) for everything because you know, if I'm not standing right before you in plain sight then what is life worth living? You do follow me around endlessly. It's like all your words are now going to evolve from some version of Mama. There's different versions of it, and as the days pass we can see they're becoming more distinct, but it's so hard to tell. One day we'll think a word means one thing, and then the next day we'll decide, no, she's just looking for me again, checking up on what I'm doing. Maomoa kind of seems like 'more'. maimai, kind of sounds like 'mine' - I realize these are very bad phonetics here. It's like you're learning about everything in the world in terms of how it applies to the place you came from (me). Oh, and speaking of that, you have five teeth now, and you're finally able to eat some normal table food.

And speaking of eating, you ate hot dried hot peppers a few weeks ago. There'a little container of them in with the spices and no matter how many times I tell you not to eat stuff like that, you don't want to listen, because you know, you're a baby. So one day I was making dinner in the kitchen and you started gagging right behind me. I turned around and was immediately frightened because your face was beat red. It took me just half a second to see (from the amount of them on your face and around your feet) that it wasn't because you were choking, but because you put a handful of the peppers in your mouth and they were HOT! That'll teach you to keep putting inappropriate things in your mouth. In the picture below, that's dirt on your face because you were eating it.
A lot of people say that their kids are complete opposites of one another, but I have to say that overwhelmingly you are just like Jacob. There's some differences, but as a whole, you're the same kid of kid - sweet and loving, funny and quirky, smart and responsible, but also with a streak of trouble-maker and boundless energy.

At times your curiosity gets the best of you. Experimenting with gravity is a favorite pastime. For instance, there was the time last month you took a couple glass bottles from the shopping cart at the grocery store while I was putting the empties into the return machine and you smashed them onto the floor, breaking both bottles. That was embarrassing.
You do like to clean up though, and I can see the developing sense of order in your little baby brain by the way you like to have things arranged. Already you're helping with the laundry, taking it from the basket of dirty things and putting it into the washing machine. And approximately 45 minutes later you accompany me back downstairs to take them from the washer to the dryer. You know the drill and you like helping out. It's the same story with the dishwasher. We've been doing an assembly line lately: You pull things out of the dish washer and hand them to Jacob. He stacks them into the right piles and then hands me the stack to put in the cupboard.
One day I'd had two DVD's by the front door, waiting to be returned to the library. At one point in the day I'd noticed you messing around in the spot where we keep our own DVD's next to the TV. Later on when I saw that the videos on the shelf were messed up I went to straighten them out but couldn't get them all the fit back in the way they'de been. I finally realized there were two extra movies there - the ones from the library. You'd found them and traveled halfway around the house to put them back in order!
Not only do you like things in order, but apparently you like them clean as well because I'll often find you digging into the wipes container or kleenex box to retrieve one and then set to work rubbing the floor or some other surface you've seen me cleaning in the past.
For all the good you do around the house though, you certainly like to cause a ruckus from time to time. Most instances of damage are from the aforementioned 'Gravity Game', as I call it, but a lot of the heart-stopping moments don't necessarily results in permanent structural alteration to the house, they just really alarm us. The thing is, just like your brother, you are a climber. You've been doing it for many, many months. Even months before you were walking, you were already scaring us with your climbing. It's hard to keep track of children like you, the ones who are so tiny and quiet in their stealth-like way. It's a good thing we never bothered with a crib, because that wouldn't have kept you down. You like to climb the baby gates, the couch, the back of the couch, the cupboards, stairs, and you're proficient at going back down them as well.
But most of all, it's utterly thrilling to see the way that you care about the people around you, and the animals in your life. You've started sitting on a ball to bounce just like that way we do with you on the yoga ball, showing us that the things we do out of love have value to you. And last month I watched you climb into the little bed, grab Baby Honey and start to sway and pat her back, mimicking what we do with you. It was then that I realized the emerging person I thought you were becoming already has a rightful place in the world with your own sense of right and wrong, and that your father and I are on the right track in raising loving children who will be the future good people of the world. That knowledge alone is worth is all the trouble this parenting business have ever given us.

Dear Sabine: Month 11

Dear Sabine,

I can't even believe you are 11 months! In one regard I can't believe you're no longer a newborn. Like, how the hell did ELEVEN months go by already??? But on the other hand, you have never been a baby. You were born a person. You act more like a three year old, I'd say. And the most notable thing about you (other than not acting your age) is that you refuse to sleep. What the hell.
If there was a game or battle or something where the object was to just keep staying awake, my kids would win it. Hands down. You don't get tired. You fight sleep until it knocks the shit out of you. Today you were up around 6am and you stayed awake through all of the morning routine getting ready and out of the house stuff, you stayed awake through the car ride to gymnastics. You stayed awake all of gymnastics, whereupon I let you grab on to one of the uneven bars and I let go of you. You just stayed there, hanging, by yourself. I see a future in gymnastics for you. You also like to imitate Jacob's forward roll. You get into the down dog yoga position and just hang out there being funny, then I flip you over so that you complete the motion and you crack up.

But back to the non-sleeping - so you finally fell asleep after we left gymnastics but when we go to book club you woke right up. And then you were awake for the next four hours. Back at home you were screaming at me in this deep scream that comes from your gut and there was nothing I could do to stop you. I started thinking that I was terrified this is the kind of kid you're going to be. The kind they like to label 'difficult', and that I might have trouble connecting to you, and maybe we wouldn't be the best of friends when you're older. It's my sincere hope that when my kids are older they will like their mom and want to be friends with me. It's one of my fears that you guys won't. But then you finally fell asleep and your body shook with those post-cry tremors for ten whole minutes, after which you proceeded to take the longest nap of your life. So I don't know, maybe it was just exhaustion.

Sabine, you are such a funny, quirky little baby. I'm sure I've said that before, but I can't say it enough. You do funny shit all day long and you know it's funny. Lately you've been crawling through our legs from behind and then when you get to the front you look at us and guess what, crack up. You hang out on the couch and look out the window, then you climb up to the top of the couch and press your little face up to the window screaming baby obscenities out the window to the passing cars. There's a bunch of other stuff you've been into this month which I've been keeping track of throughout the month, so I'll just go through the list:

You toss things to see if they roll like a ball, then you scream and chase after them. You do this with anything, blocks, random toys, shoes, socks, a cup, anything.

You loves little seats, climbing into them, getting down and doing it all over again. The potty chair, the carseat that's sitting in the house, the Bumbo, the booster seat, but the baby rocker is your favorite. The other day you climbed into it, put your arms out on each arm rest and started leaning your body back and forth to set the chair into its rocking motion. You totally knew what you were doing.
You've taken a recent fascination with opening and closing doors, especially the baby gates we have around the house. You sit there on one side opening it, then closing it, then peeking your head around the side to alert us to the fact that you've just done something amazing. You say, "Eh, eh, eh" to get our attention and when we look up you give us the biggest, most proud smile.

When we're roughhousing you lunge at us and pounce on your victim. As you move through the air you shriek to warn the recipient of the incoming attack. Then you proceed to put your wet mouth all over us and wipe snot from your nose onto our clean shirts.

Lately you've taken to experimenting with objects in containers. You start with a basket and then put a block into it. You peek inside to see what it looks like, then put the block out and throw it across the room. Then you look in the basket again. You do this repeatedly, which one would think to be boring for the onlooker, but no, I am fascinated watching you do these these, learning about object permanence and getting to see the wheels turning inside your little brain.

You LOVE throwing things off of ledges or off of the staircase. You especially like having people pick them up and give them back to you so you can do it all over again. I call this the Gravity Game. Again, it's fun watching you learn about your world in this way. You'll be playing with an object upstairs, a sock, for example, and then finally you can no longer take it, you stick your bony arm through the railing and let go, then you look at me like, "Where'd it go?"

We can't keep you down, high chair, swing, stroller, you stand up in all of them. You're just too skinny to have all 16 pounds of you held down by a nylon strap. We tighten the belt, pack you in with blankets, nothing works, it's inevitable that at some point I'll turn my back on you, only to turn back around to see you standing up in the swing with it breezing back and forth through the air and I'm ten feet away. All I think then is: Acrobat.

You'll stay in the swing for a very, very long time. Actually, I don't think we've ever tested your limit but at the park the other day you were in one of those high-backed handicapped swings for 45 minutes. I kept thinking you had fallen asleep but when I would go to check you'd look at me like, "What? Did you forget I am of the non-sleeping breed?"

And oh how you LOVE your bath. Possibly your favorite thing ever. If you hear the water running, you shoot into the bathroom as fast as you can and it's all we can do to get your clothes off before you just dive right in. You splash around like your life depends on it, you shriek, put your face under the water, and come up laughing. I can only remember a couple times where you've asked to come out of the bath.

You love being outdoors . The few times I've left you with someone the last of my instructions as I'm walking out the door are, "And if that doesn't work, just carry her outside and let her be outside for a minute, watching the cars go by or something." You're clearly a nature baby, and by this fact alone we are sure you were sent to the right family.

Actually, we've never questioned that you were sent to the wrong family. I can't say that about everyone. From the moment you were layed on my chest at birth, I looked at you and the words that came into my mind were Oh, it's you. There was recognition in your eyes too and it was the most clarity I ever felt in my life. We waited for you and then you were here and pretty soon I imagine we won't be able to remember a time when you weren't with us.

Love,

Mommy

Just so I remember when he's older...

Often times I can't recall the when my kids stopped doing a certain behavior. Some of these things I'm relieved to find out have stopped, but others I really miss. Tonight Jacob has spent a long time with Smitty and Pilchard, feeding them, dressing them for bed and carrying them around as he's gone about the house. Right now I looked over to see him peacefully rocking in the chair with a quilt over his lap and a couple of pointy blue ears sticking out from the blanket.

"Are you nursing Pilchard?" I asked.

He shook his head yes. This is one of those childhood moments I wish I could bottle.

Mother Tongue

Ring....Ring...Ring....Beep:

"Hey Beckie, it's me. I'm just calling to let you know that...Jeanne put a garment in my trunk... which you'll be needing on the...19th of April. I wanted to call now so that I didn't forget because of it being in my trunk and all. So I'll either get it to you tomorrow, or next week."

Did you get that? Beckie volunteered to dress up as the Easter Bunny for the spring party our moms' group is having. I couldn't very well say on her answering machine that the Easter bunny costume for the party on the 19th is in my trunk because what if her boys heard the message? And basically everything I say in the presence of other parents has to be disguised like that. When they're Sabine's age, anything goes. But then they start to understand English and it puts a real kink in your ability to socialize. At first it's easy, you spell everything. But then they go and learn how to spell, or you over-use some of your favorite words and you have to come up with more creative ways to communicate with each other.

The most amusing technique of late is simply the 'find different words that mean the same thing' method, of which you saw above. This is actually very good for a mother's brain because when you've got small kids it turns to mush, so this is good practice using big vocabulary for when you're back in the professional world.

My mom sometimes employs the foreign language method. She say Pater or Mater (for father or mother) and direct you to follow her line of regard to indicate a certain child when she would normally say the name of that kid's mother.

Sign-language is an oft-used technique, although with some kids, mine included, the children are taught sign language by their parents.

Jacob is starting to spell now so I'm trying to get used to spelling backwards. The advantage of this technique is that you can spell right in front of them and don't even have to leave the room. You can actually indicated to the person, ok, I'm going to spell backwards, and your kid is just left in the dust because their brains aren't that fast enough yet to figure out that B-O-C-A-J is just their letters in a different order. Or maybe you start to spell, P-L-A, spot your kid tuning into what you're saying, shoot your friend a look that says, "hold that thought," pause for a minute, then continue Y-G-R, pause again just long enough for the child to forget the letters that came before, and then finish O-U-N-D-?.

My personal favorite is the first one. It's fun. Like one big game of Taboo. There's certain words you can't use because your kids know 'em. There's other's they don't know yet and that's fair game. It's just a metter of combining them in the right way to form a complete thought. The complete thought thing, well.... I forgot what I was going to say about that.

The Refrigerator Door

Every once in a while I like to take a picture of the refrigerator door. I feel like it gives a pretty well-rounded idea of what life is like at that particular moment in our history; like a time-stamp of our days. The fridge door is where the pictures of the kids go, the shopping list, our little reminders, and it goes through various stages of cleanliness and organization as our lives together morph and shift.

Taking a closer look, you see the photos of Jacob, most of them older ones because things like that stopped being updated when Sabine was born. I only have a few tiny pictures of Sabine that were crafted together from the thumbnail size prints that came with my last order of photos. But I've got that bright orange pumpkin that Kate made us with Sabine's name on it. That makes me feel less guilty, that because he name is up there in print, she's an official member of our family. There's some other pictures: A couple of Marisa and then our dear friends, the ones we don't see as often and need reminding of what they look like! There's a to-do list of Zach's, odd jobs around the house. It's written on a dry-erase board because presumably those are the kinds of things that aren't going to have longevity on a list, but don'tcha know, they've pretty much become permanent words on the board. I should go back several months to the last time I got the fridge in a photo, I'll bet half those jobs were on the list then too. On the far left is the list I'm keeping of the foods I've introduced into Sabine's diet, the dates and her reactions (if any). You can tell I'm one of those anal moms (if you couldn't already tell that from the fact that everything on the fridge is straight and orderly).

On the bottom half of the fridge is my current favorite: The sign I made to keep Jacob out of the fridge. Time after time he's taken liberties with the contents of the fridge and it's ended in huge amounts of messes. I made that sign and told him no Jacob's allowed in the fridge. And more evidence of a baby in the house - the coin magnets we made are pushed to the top, out of reach of the littlest hands. Of course Mom's dry-erase board is the biggest, it's full of names of people that need to be called, and a list of things to tell Beckie next time I talk to her (because I have no short term memory anymore). Just below that lay the frustrated scribbles from Jacob. I wonder what thing I had just been yelling at him about when he did that particular doodle.

Taking a photo of the fridge is a way for me to mark the passage of time and show that life has been living itself to the fullest, but I also like to look at other peoples' fridge doors because I think it tells a story about their lives; it's somewhere you can go to get the little details of someone's life, to see who they really are. It's the one place in the house where you're not really trying that hard; you're not expecting people to go looking there to find out who you are, so you're not trying to be a certain way. This all makes me want to start taking photos of other peoples' fridges. So if I show up at your house and I happen to have my camera, don't be surprised if I ask to snap some photos in your kitchen. Just go with it.

Funny Smiles

(The sticker says 'place sticker on forehead and smile')