Backwards and Forwards

When we put our dining room table on the free page of craigslist a few months ago, a church's social services person snapped it up, and asked us to please call them if we ever had any other items to donate. So today Jim, after calling them and arranging the pickup, put out on the front patio the crib, the changing table, the toddler bed, and about twenty bags of baby and toddler clothes. So long, babyhood! We didn't think anything of it, but when we were actually moving the things out this morning, we both felt a bit of a pang. There was this cute striped shirt that had been Muriel's, and was so Muriel, right on top of one of the bags. Not to mention the legion of little fuzzy sleepers. (I had kind of been hoarding the old clothes, too lazy for a trip to Goodwill.) Aw!

Through a random turn of fate known as a dead car battery, I had to work from home today, so when the church guy came to pick up the stuff, I was at the kitchen window, listening to my weekly install writers' meeting on the speaker phone. He took a few things down to the van, then I heard him talking on the phone, and the stuff just sat outside the window for the longest time. After a while I looked out, and I could see him crouched in the front yard, pulling tiny baby clothes out of a bag, one at a time, examining each article, and laying it on the ground. He did this for quite a while.

Finally, bested by my curiosity, I went out there to ask him if he needed help sorting, if perhaps he had been instructed to make sure he got only clothing for a certain age, something like that. He explained in his eastern European accent that he had been holding the key to the van in his hand, picked up one of the bags, and the key had fallen somewhere, he was pretty sure into the bag, but he had searched through every tiny item in the bag, and still no key. I started looking around with him, had one of those momentary realizations that this is exactly how women get themselves kidnapped- helping a gigantic stranger look for some missing thing right outside the open door of a van... We didn't find the key. He said someone was coming with the backup key, so he would just start loading the other things. I asked him if he needed help with the toddler bed, which was not heavy but a little unwieldy. He laughed. "I am former coal miner," he said. So, no then?

So the part of parenting that involves cribs has officially come to a close. And what lies ahead? Kindergarten. Last night I went to an open house for a Spanish immersion school, where kids learn completely in Spanish for all six years of elementary. I could understand the benefits they presented, enabling your child to be fluent in another language, earning college language credits in high school, experiencing other cultures, it all made sense. But I could tell that if we chose this school, it would mean a lot of challenges, and frankly, inconveniences to our family. And here's where it begins, where we have to start choosing things or not choosing things, knowing it's good or great for our kids, knowing that we might not love it (or we might). I bet for some parents this kind of choice is easy- you always choose what's best for your kid, in the long run. But it didn't seem obvious to me.

We'll be visiting the neighborhood school, too, to see how we feel about that one. I see this kind of thing stretching ahead of us, the stakes of our decisions raised a little more each year. I am not usually nostalgic for the bleary sleepiness of the baby years (though I loved them very much), but the heaviness of parenting older children makes me long for that feeling that I was a superhero just for managing to feed and diaper and soothe to sleep a tiny human just a few weeks old.

Although it didn't make me feel old, exactly, here's something that did: on the way home from the open house, hearing a U2 song... on the OLDIES station. Sigh.

Puppy Love

OK, I admit that is a super corny title, and I'm a little late in posting this, but Luna had her 15th birthday last week. I got Luna from the dog pound in Tucson. It was a depressing place, concrete pens with chain link. The dogs were variously hyper or mopey, but in one pen was the most beautiful dog, red and white and black, with long silky ears, and eyes that matched her red gold hair. And her angle was to sit as close as possible to the chain link and BEG you with her whole self to love her. I gave in without a fight.

She lived with me in Rochester, in my perm-smelling walk-up over the beauty salon. She lived with me in Red Wing, where she jumped into the water and swam for the first time, in the freezing Mississippi on a day that was eighteen below zero. She lived with me in St. Paul. She cried for WEEKS when Naomi came home from the hospital. She moved with us to Washington, and reacted much less dramatically when Muriel was born. Thankfully...

Right, so, fourteen years of Luna, is what I am celebrating this month. She is the best dog ever.


Birthday Popcorn Trail!


The girl in all her glory.

Finally, Trip Photos!

Flower girls in action. Right before the flower girl stop work action.

Can you see by the look on Muriel's face how smitten she is?


Wedding banquet fun!


Naomi and Daddy and the new promotional bear.

Putting out baskets, and cookies and milk for Santa, on Christmas Eve.

The awesome pool at Siloso Beach Resort in Singapore.

Luge, dude!


Singapore Giraffes- good and hungry. For sweet potatoes.

Mostly about Muriel

I know I said there would be pictures... soon! In the meantime...

Things I am finding cute:

Muriel says, when she has a good idea, that she has a goodea. I have a goodea!

Also, she has taken to adding emphasis to things, like if something is huge (say, a monster), it is now really, really, really huge. Only she says "willy" instead of really. A willy, willy, willy huge monster!

Things designed to drive me crazy:

The chanting. I may as well just teach them some football cheers or WTO protest chants. These girls can't stop the repetitive chanting. They have now seen Mary Poppins twice and simply cannot stop singing/chanting about how a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in the most delightful way. Wait, I don't mean the chanting is delightful.

Things designed to drive me crazy that I also find cute:

Muriel and I, eating a yogurt, looking at the lemon on the container:

Muriel: That's a melon?
Me: No, it's a lemon.
Muriel: A ...lemond.
Me: Right, lemon.
Muriel: A melon.
Me: ...

Naomi and Muriel, playing Queen and Princess or Queen and her cat or Queen of cats and her cat courtier or whatever:

Naomi: Say "Your Highness."
Muriel: My Highness.
Naomi: No, YOUR Highness.
Muriel: MY Highness.
Naomi: Not My Highness, YOUR Highness.
Muriel: MY HIGHNESS!
Naomi: MURIEL!!

Far East Trip, The Final Chapter

I decided to wait until the horror of the plane ride home had a chance to fade a bit before summarizing the last part of our trip, but it turns out that jetlagged preschoolers are also not the greatest side benefit you can get from an international jaunt. Oh well. Things will be normal soon. Things will be normal soon. Things will be normal soon...

Naomi was fine, if a bit sleepy, after her Benadryled Christmas nap. We had our Christmas dinner at one of the local restaurants. Allow me to ramble for a few minutes about two random Malaysia-visit fun facts. One is that the Malaysian language seems to be written out more or less phonetically. So you can read signs out loud and feel like you're kind of speaking Malay, which of course is not true of Chinese signs. Also, though, it seems as though whenever a concept is in need of a word and there isn't an obvious Malay one, they just throw in an English word and Malay it up a little. (I am sure this has something to do with the fact that Malaysia was an English colony for a long while, right?) So, after your stop at the klinik, you may need to head to the farmasi for some medication. Hope you have insurans!

My favorite one of these, restoran, is the segue to my next fun fact: everyone eats out there all the time. It's hot all the time (so who wants to cook?), and restaurants (or restorans) are cheap and ridiculously tasty. All over the place, in every building, the bottom floor has shops and restorans- these restaurants are open air, brightly lit up with flourescents, with cheap plastic chairs and big round tables covered with chintzy cloth. The restaurants have wacky names- I wish I had just written up a list. The ones I remember, though, are Restoran Okay (didn't eat there), Restoran Shanky (did eat there- yum), and one near Jim's parents' house called Restoran Extra Super Tanker. So for Christmas dinner, we ate at the one around the corner, can't remember the name, though I do remember Jim's dad jokingly calling it "Regular Tanker."

So, day after Christmas, back to Singapore. Jim's sister's family has this Honda station wagon with a third row seat which miraculously accommodates ALL of us, even his parents, who came along on this jaunt. The day after we got there, we headed to Sentosa, which is like that Pleasure Island place in the Pinocchio movie, except we didn't see any kids turning into donkeys... it's covered with fun and they continue to develop the heck out of it. We went to a beach resort called Siloso for one night. It took me about half an hour on the beach to get a sunburn, but the kids had a great time. The pool at the hotel was extra super tanker dreamy- huge waterfall thing, water slides, and a long beautiful pool to stroll around in. The girls responded exactly as I remember doing, as a kid, to the combination of vacation and pool: they wanted to be in it every second.

The resort was on a beachy area with other tourist attractions. We decided to do the "luge" ride, which meant putting on a semi-smelly borrowed helmet, riding up a ski lift thing, and zipping down a hill in a go-cart. The luge part was over so fast, it was a little stunning. Hence the slogan of the ride- "Once is never enough!" Ha. We ate our meals at the hotel restaurant, which was not that great, but maybe it's because I'm spoiled by all the Malaysian joints. It was good enough, and convenient, and had Naomi's new favorite restaurant meal (besides rice with soy sauce, which she ate about ten pounds of on this trip): Fish and Chips!

It was hard to leave the pool, but we headed back to the apartment on Monday. Tuesday was the Singapore Zoo, which is so lush and gorgeous, you almost forget how hot it is. It was a better view of many animals than I have had before, but in a few instances I think that was because it wasn't so great for the animals. A cheetah let me know exactly what it thought of me. And Naomi and Rachel got to feed a giraffe!

One more night out, to eat Shanghai style dumplings (I think), which are like the Freshen-Up Gum of the Chinese dumpling world (but you know, not minty). On Wednesday, we had to be at the airport at 5:30 a.m., and our gracious host and tireless driver, Jim's brother-in-law, got us there in plenty of time. They fixed our seats so we were all together, the first flight was not too bad, the flight from Tokyo to Vancouver was pretty terrible for the first four hours, but OK for the last four. In Vancouver, the nearly endless security screening was a bit loopy, especially when I had to coax Muriel into letting the nice CATSA lady give her a full body pat down. Oh well.

Short plane ride from Vancouver, short town car ride from the airport, freezing cold home sweet home. I am glad to be back, even though our house seems so dark and cold compared with the warm, bright homes we left behind. Soon, Muriel will stop behaving like a deranged maniac, Naomi will go back to sleeping all night, and we will re-acclimate to this cold damp place. Next post will be pictures!