This is what Naomi comes up with to do while her father plays Medieval II on the computer...
We're headed to Arizona- Merry Christmas, ya'll!!
Monday, December 17, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Holiday Petits Fours
It's four blog entries in one!
Open House, revisited
This past Saturday was our holiday open house, the method I have been employing in place of making a cookie plate for our neighbors. This way, I invite them to our house, where they can eat cookies (among other things), but if they don't come, in a sense, no cookies are wasted. Selfish and lazy? Or a good motivator to get our house cleaned in advance of Christmas? Either way, it was Saturday, and...well attended! We had four different neighbor houses represented (though I expected more, as I actually delivered the invitations in person, at a reasonable hour, and in most cases handed them to the neighbors), as well as two family groups of our friends, and a couple, one half of which is a coworker of Jim's.
Long time readers of this blog may recall that last year's open house went ahead even in the face of a ridiculous power outage during a very chilly week. That party was fifty-three degrees and lit like a pioneer house. So heat and light were two of the exciting innovations at this year's shindig. Everyone was chummy, the house looked decent, our tree is really pretty this year, and overall I would have to classify it as a success.
The only weird part is that no one really ate anything. I am a firm believer that if you are having people over to your house, there should be way too much food. So, there are always leftovers, but this time, it was like I had mice for guests. The toddlers did manage to finish off the bowl of grapes, so that was gratifying. Anyway, if you are hungry for a cheese ball, stop by- I have seven-eighths of one in my fridge.
Idaho-Ho-Ho
We visited our neighbors to the southeast on the weekend straddling November and December, and had a really good time. There was some madness at either end, as we navigated through the airport with a carseat, a stroller and baby bucket, additional carseat base (for the bucket), five carry-on items, two rolly suitcases, and two tots. Going through security with this caravan of babies and related items was pure theater of the absurd. We rented a mini-van on the Idaho end of the flight, and man-oh-man did it become obvious why people buy and drive these vehicles. Sheesh. It was all worthwhile when we got to spend time with our dear friends and their 18 month old son, Charlie, who is clearly infatuated with Muriel. She doesn't try to be irresistible...
Boise is a fast-growing town, and we could appreciate our friends' feelings of ambivalence at the beautiful new house they bought, built on land only recently repurposed from growing corn. They can see a farm out their back door, but their neighborhood is anything but rustic. The sky, of course, is still wide open in a way that it absolutely is not in our part of the country. Which reminds me...
Wait a Minute...What?
Normally I am an NPR commuter, there and back, which means I get lots of overly sobering news of the world, relentless presidential candidate coverage, and an occasional light-hearted feature. Jim is an NPR guy too, much of the time, but when I got into his car to go to work this week, the radio was tuned to a station with a format I must lovingly refer to as "JAMMIN' OLDIES!" I don't know if it was because I was driving to work at 7:20, a full two hours earlier than my slackerly time frame of late, or if it was just the particular song that was playing when I started the car on Monday, but I have continued jammin' to the oldies for a couple of days now.
And that is what led me to this realization (that of course I have had many times before, so it's not really that profound): songs are not always about what you think they are about. Although I am sometimes surprised how many songs from the eighties I can sing by heart, as a rule I am bad at making out lyrics in songs. But when you are commuting along, alone in the car, with the oldies jamming, it becomes somewhat easier to follow along. Which is how I discovered that a song I remember us singing the chorus (and not much else) to as kids is not about any of things I might have imagined it to be about -rather, the message of the song is, you are a cheating whore, and don't think I don't know it, because... I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and so forth. Really, I don't advocate for people cheating on their partners, but this guy sounds like a bit of a jerk. Just break up, you guys.
If I knew you were coming, I'd have moked a cake
I have been keeping track of funny things that come out of Naomi's mouth for a few months now, and trying not to clog the blog with too much overly-precious observations about my kid, but I can wait no longer. These are a few of my favorite things:
moked - past tense of make, as in "I moked you some cookies!"
Doan forgot - forgot. She always adds a doan (don't) on the front, I think because she hears me say "Don't forget to do X". Her version is not negative, though. If you doan forgot to do something, you forgot to do it.
underpits - armpits, or underarms. I have taken to saying it this way, now, too, because it slays me when she says it, and I don't want her to catch on that it's not the common idiom.
Line used in defense of self, when she perceives me to be using an uneccessarily harsh tone with her - "Don't shout at me, I'm a friendly girl!"
Evidence that she is a glass-half-full person- While reading a book of Charlie's that demonstrates feelings by picturing Sesame street characters making various faces (worried face, happy face, confused face), upon encountering on the sad face page a picture of Elmo with a now empty ice cream cone, Naomi said "...But he could still eat the cone, though."
Finally, a quote so wacky, I had to write it down immediately. I love it because it sounds like she is speaking English as a second language. She has all the words to say this right, but the idea is coming too fast, so she just has to scramble around to get it out: "I figured out a thing! If you wear sunshine glasses in the wind, your eyes won't water!"
Open House, revisited
This past Saturday was our holiday open house, the method I have been employing in place of making a cookie plate for our neighbors. This way, I invite them to our house, where they can eat cookies (among other things), but if they don't come, in a sense, no cookies are wasted. Selfish and lazy? Or a good motivator to get our house cleaned in advance of Christmas? Either way, it was Saturday, and...well attended! We had four different neighbor houses represented (though I expected more, as I actually delivered the invitations in person, at a reasonable hour, and in most cases handed them to the neighbors), as well as two family groups of our friends, and a couple, one half of which is a coworker of Jim's.
Long time readers of this blog may recall that last year's open house went ahead even in the face of a ridiculous power outage during a very chilly week. That party was fifty-three degrees and lit like a pioneer house. So heat and light were two of the exciting innovations at this year's shindig. Everyone was chummy, the house looked decent, our tree is really pretty this year, and overall I would have to classify it as a success.
The only weird part is that no one really ate anything. I am a firm believer that if you are having people over to your house, there should be way too much food. So, there are always leftovers, but this time, it was like I had mice for guests. The toddlers did manage to finish off the bowl of grapes, so that was gratifying. Anyway, if you are hungry for a cheese ball, stop by- I have seven-eighths of one in my fridge.
Idaho-Ho-Ho
We visited our neighbors to the southeast on the weekend straddling November and December, and had a really good time. There was some madness at either end, as we navigated through the airport with a carseat, a stroller and baby bucket, additional carseat base (for the bucket), five carry-on items, two rolly suitcases, and two tots. Going through security with this caravan of babies and related items was pure theater of the absurd. We rented a mini-van on the Idaho end of the flight, and man-oh-man did it become obvious why people buy and drive these vehicles. Sheesh. It was all worthwhile when we got to spend time with our dear friends and their 18 month old son, Charlie, who is clearly infatuated with Muriel. She doesn't try to be irresistible...
Boise is a fast-growing town, and we could appreciate our friends' feelings of ambivalence at the beautiful new house they bought, built on land only recently repurposed from growing corn. They can see a farm out their back door, but their neighborhood is anything but rustic. The sky, of course, is still wide open in a way that it absolutely is not in our part of the country. Which reminds me...
Wait a Minute...What?
Normally I am an NPR commuter, there and back, which means I get lots of overly sobering news of the world, relentless presidential candidate coverage, and an occasional light-hearted feature. Jim is an NPR guy too, much of the time, but when I got into his car to go to work this week, the radio was tuned to a station with a format I must lovingly refer to as "JAMMIN' OLDIES!" I don't know if it was because I was driving to work at 7:20, a full two hours earlier than my slackerly time frame of late, or if it was just the particular song that was playing when I started the car on Monday, but I have continued jammin' to the oldies for a couple of days now.
And that is what led me to this realization (that of course I have had many times before, so it's not really that profound): songs are not always about what you think they are about. Although I am sometimes surprised how many songs from the eighties I can sing by heart, as a rule I am bad at making out lyrics in songs. But when you are commuting along, alone in the car, with the oldies jamming, it becomes somewhat easier to follow along. Which is how I discovered that a song I remember us singing the chorus (and not much else) to as kids is not about any of things I might have imagined it to be about -rather, the message of the song is, you are a cheating whore, and don't think I don't know it, because... I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles. I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and so forth. Really, I don't advocate for people cheating on their partners, but this guy sounds like a bit of a jerk. Just break up, you guys.
If I knew you were coming, I'd have moked a cake
I have been keeping track of funny things that come out of Naomi's mouth for a few months now, and trying not to clog the blog with too much overly-precious observations about my kid, but I can wait no longer. These are a few of my favorite things:
moked - past tense of make, as in "I moked you some cookies!"
Doan forgot - forgot. She always adds a doan (don't) on the front, I think because she hears me say "Don't forget to do X". Her version is not negative, though. If you doan forgot to do something, you forgot to do it.
underpits - armpits, or underarms. I have taken to saying it this way, now, too, because it slays me when she says it, and I don't want her to catch on that it's not the common idiom.
Line used in defense of self, when she perceives me to be using an uneccessarily harsh tone with her - "Don't shout at me, I'm a friendly girl!"
Evidence that she is a glass-half-full person- While reading a book of Charlie's that demonstrates feelings by picturing Sesame street characters making various faces (worried face, happy face, confused face), upon encountering on the sad face page a picture of Elmo with a now empty ice cream cone, Naomi said "...But he could still eat the cone, though."
Finally, a quote so wacky, I had to write it down immediately. I love it because it sounds like she is speaking English as a second language. She has all the words to say this right, but the idea is coming too fast, so she just has to scramble around to get it out: "I figured out a thing! If you wear sunshine glasses in the wind, your eyes won't water!"
Indeed!
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