Month: July 2007

Reason #412 why Elaine would make a lousy Southern Baptist

Jerry and I went to a funeral yesterday for the mother of a dear friend. While the friend isn’t particularly religious, the mother was, so the clergy was a Southern Baptist preacher.

It was all smiles and praising, and while he was smiling and praising he started talking about the second coming. My conscious brain shut completely off at that point and I started making a grocery list in my head. Jerry needs new shampoo, we’re out of mayonnaise, I really need to get some more bread, and I think the girls are out of apple juice. I came back to reality for a moment, and he was still talking about the Rapture so I wandered off to think about quilts for a while…

I much prefer the casual approach of the Episcopal church when it comes to this stuff. I don’t think I could sit in church every Sunday and listen to the idea that we’re just waiting and waiting and waiting until the second coming, and how nothing else matters.

Consideration

Alice, for all her mischievous flaws, is very very considerate about sleep. Helen, not so much.

Helen can’t stand to be alone, so if she wakes up, she thinks she needs to wake someone else up to enjoy the day with her. This is a pain in the butt at 5:45am, her preferred waking time. We’ve snarled at her so many times that she doesn’t come upstairs to annoy us until 7 most mornings, but that doesn’t protect poor Alice, who is not a morning person. Helen wakes her up frequently.

Alice, on the other hand, does not wake Helen up if she gets up first. Nor does she wake us up. And because she likes to wake up slowly, she doesn’t get into stuff, either. Thank goodness.

This morning, I came downstairs to go for my morning run at 6:20, and Alice was already up. Helen obviously wasn’t, since their bedroom door was still shut. Apparently we tired Helen out at the pool yesterday. So Alice was reclined on the floor with a sofa pillow behind her head, watching “Fairly Odd Parents” on Nick. One leg crossed over the other, looking very comfortable. I filled up a juice cup for her and got a Pop Tart (unfrosted brown sugar and cinnamon — the girls can’t stand the frosted ones), and went down to give them to her. She just smiled at me with her sweet little smile, and didn’t say a thing, since she was still waking up. I told her I was going to go for my run and asked her to please stay inside like a good girl, and she nodded happily and went back to the cartoon.

When she wakes up on her own terms, she wakes up happy. And doesn’t bother anyone else. I love that. I wish she could teach her big sister how not to be a prat in the mornings.

Up for Air

I have spent the last 12 days of my life with my nose in a book.

Well, books.

Since Sunday the 15th, I have read all seven Harry Potter books. 6 of them were repeat readings, since I felt like I didn’t remember enough to go straight into the last one. Even though my wrists are tired from holding the heavy books and my eyes are tired from reading and my brain is tired from holding all of that information, I’m glad I read them straight through like that. I remembered SO much more detail and got a lot more out of Book 7 than I think I could have otherwise.

I am exhausted from reading 4000+ pages, though. And seriously behind on my quilting and scrapbooking magazines that arrived during this time period.

Helen and Alice are very glad I’m not reading this morning, though.

Busy Busy

Today was busy. This morning, I sabotaged Alice with a swimming lesson with Brock, since Alice, who doesn’t know how to swim, has been getting increasingly bored at the pool. Alice screamed. her. guts. out. for 45 minutes straight. Brock did a great job with her, though, and if he lost his temper with her I never knew it. I did discover that when I sat up in the pavilion out of direct sight, Alice did a lot better. I told him before the lesson started that the trump card with Alice is to act like your feelings are hurt if you want her to do something and she won’t, and usually she’ll try to comfort you. So when she didn’t want to swim with him, he pouted, and she kicked over to him in her floatie. SABOTAGE. Poor thing kept crying for Mommy… so he let her swim over to me, and the Mean Mommy that I am, I gave her back to him. She was quite peeved with me and glowered at me over her celebratory ice cream at the end of the experience.

Her next lesson is tomorrow morning, but don’t tell her. Even though she’s WAY more stubborn than Helen in general, she’s not as scared. So she’ll probably learn to swim pretty quickly, and then we’ll ALL have a lot more fun at the pool. And she’s not holding a grudge against Brock — said bye to him as we were leaving for lunch, and then hi when we came back this afternoon. So that’s good.

After Phase One at the pool, we went to the pediatrician’s office to pick up the girls’ blue cards (required for child care or school, showing how current the kid is on vaccinations), then to Wendy’s to wait in line f.o.r.e.v.e.r. for lunch, and then up to the school where Helen will be going to Kindergarten. I had a huge packet of required paperwork to enroll her, and today was the first day the office has been open in 6 weeks. When we arrived at 12:52, there was a sign taped to the office door: “Closed for lunch. Back at 1:30.” Argh. So we ate our lunches in the air-conditioned vestibule, refilled our cups with water from the drinking fountain, and went out to play on the playground for the half hour until the office opened back up.

Then it was more waiting as more parents arrived at 1:30, and I got Helen’s paperwork all turned in. We were given a supply list, a school bus schedule (not sure if we’ll be putting her on the bus; depends on how close to the house it picks up), and we came back home. At 2:30 we went back over to the pool, and came home at 5:30.

Busy day. But I had a good time with the girls, and I think they had fun with me. Nice change of pace.