After I dropped Tom off at Volvo today, I turned the wrong way out of the parking lot. As I was grumbling under my breath about how there weren’t any turnarounds, suddenly the heavens opened and angels began singing and I found myself face-to-face with a vision of blue and gold.
I had stumbled upon the nearly-complete IKEA.
Cancelled trip #846 to Obtain Holiday Tree. Foiled by snow followed by freezing rain.
Seriously, it’s going to be March by the time we have a tree.
We’re kinda in survival mode around here. All my quality parenting skills have gone to the dogs, and I’m just trying to figure out how to get through the days, since the nights hold hours of folding, tagging, and preparing packages. Good news for the business, not so good for the kids, as I’m tired and grouchy.
I decided to take off for the the Other Big City, since I recently discovered their children’s museum honors our children’s museum membership. At the end of the day, the kids are logging about 2.5 hours in the car, but we made it through until dinner, the kids got an enriching experience (when not in the car), and I got to chit-chat with Anne on the way there (still no baby) and Marlo during the drive home.
I only took one crappy photo on the iPhone, which was awful, so instead you can just imagine me, unshowered in the midst of three antsy kids at a museum.
Susie and I were wondering recently, whatever happened to the playpen? When did people stop using them? I remember babies in them all the time in my childhood, but now they are non-existent. We suppose it has to do with that whole thing where you’re supposed to be holding/interacting/stimulating your baby 24/7. But instead, we all plunk them in their exersaucers in front of Baby Einstein so we can actually prepare dinner or vacuum or pee. At least in a playpen, a baby can practice crawling and standing, right?
So we’re bringing back the playpen. I’m not saying Ellery is going to live in there, but every now and then I need to get something else done that requires nearly my full attention, and she needs to be somewhere safe. Of course, the moment we rolled the pack-n-play into the living room, Neko and Shep declared it their own private fort and climbed in and out, watched tv, ate dinner, and filled it with pillows and pretended it was the ocean and they were mermaids.
So I’m bringing back the playpen. For pre-schoolers.
Four years ago, right about this time of year, we bought this playgym. It wasn’t cheap—definitely equivalent to a nice armoire. Why fork out the dough? The one my parents bought from the same company over 30 years ago is still in fine working condition. My whole childhood, it was a rocket ship or a boat or a monkey cage at the zoo. It is pivotal in my childhood memories.
We initially bought it for Christmas that year, but Tom and I got too excited, and let Neko start crawling around on it a few days early. We ate dinner at the coffee table for over a year, since it took over our dining room.
In the past few weeks Ellery has mastered the stairs, and happily climbs to the top, delighted with herself. She laughs in the mirrors and crawls through the tunnel. It’s gratifying to see our third enjoying it just as much as our first.
See? We use it way more than we’d use an armoire.
So clearly my New Year’s resolution should be to check my Yahoo email account more often. It’s an account I keep for all my online orders and it’s what I put down whenever I don’t want someone spamming me.
Okay, with that said, let’s backtrack.
Some time ago I read this thing about LG and YouTube having this contest. Pretty simple really…put together a 30 second video about why life is good. You upload it, people vote, blahblahblah.
So I compiled a 30 second version of this video I had made of Neko when she was about 4 or 5 months old. I uploaded it and never thought about it again. Except I checked my Yahoo email today and found this threatening notice from LG saying if I didn’t respond by November 20th, I would be disqualified.
From the contest? What?
Apparently I’m in the 20 finalists and they needed my info. Whoops.
So if I’m not disqualified, go vote here!
I’m now wishing I’d spent a little more time on tight editing. Oh, well. Bygones.
First of all, happy birthday to my sister Susie. For 35 years she has let me tag along after her while she imagined, invented and explored. I feel so lucky that after all these years, here we are, back in the same town, watching our kids run around together. That beats the Colorado mountains, hands down.
In not-so-fun news, Shep is sick. Way sick. Pathetically sick. Snot is pouring out of his nose and he’s so congested that he’s drooling, too. So he’s just one big mess. I took him to the doctor and discovered that he’s got an ear infection to boot. Poor kid. You just want to scoop him up and hug the germs out of him.
I dropped Neko off with my dad so she wouldn’t pick up germs at the doctor’s office, and when I returned, she and my dad had built this fabulous castle.
I moderated my session of the Comprehensive Plan meeting tonight.
As I suspected, my sister (not in my small group) reported her session was a lively, inspired group full of ideas and problem-solving. There was true visionary thinking and she left feeling energized and hopeful about our community.
Ironically, I landed the age 70+ crowd. This is weird, particularly because they were trying really hard to make each group diverse. It is eye-opening to see what things matter to this crowd (a good shoe store and more parking), but I also had to write the words “need a bypass around Oxford.” I wrote it. Because I was playing the role of a neutral party. But inside? I was hoping the ink in my pen would run out.
(Special thanks to all who attended!)
Number of currently (and strangely) still not sick adults: 2
Number of seemingly healthy children: 3
Number of hours of adult sleep this weekend: 8 (maybe?)
Number of quality family meals served: 0
Number of cloth diapers that will probably need to be thrown out due to bizarre toxic material that emerged in Shep’s poop: 3 (the original diaper and the two it was washed with…the smell not only refused to be washed out, it SPREAD)
Number of laundry loads cycled: 3,463
Seriously. Packed with appointments and meetings and absolutely zero time for anything but rushing from one thing to another just hoping I’m not as late as I was to the last thing.