Woohoo! We have Internet now!

Emily asked me to send up a flare from the suburbs, so here it is.  Got our Internet working like 5 minutes ago.  Woohoo!

Also, we have ducks on the pool.
Also, did I mention we have a pool? 

Okay, I have a lot to report.  More later. 

The First of the Lasts

Earlier this month I worked my last parent volunteer shift at the kids' co-op.  This is a job that I selfishly dreaded every time I was required to do it, because it took away my precious few weekly hours of kid-free time, even though once I got there and was doing it, it was generally a pleasure.  Besides, June was old enough this year to really get a huge kick out of having one of her parents be "Parent of the Day".  And this last time, while working Waylon's nursery room, I found myself sad and nostalgic for the ending of this job that I never particularly looked forward to in the first place.  Co-op is a place where we signed up looking only for a few hours of childcare and preschool for our two youngest, but after two years of involvement, I'm leaving with a handful of good friends.  Suddenly now that it's time to say goodbye, the place has risen in my esteem to "World's Greatest Preschool", filled with the most loving people on the planet - a place that surely cannot even be approximated in the suburbs.  (I know that's ridiculous.) 

This month has been a whirlwind of ups and downs.  Vacation!  Packing!  The first anniversary of my father's death!  New home renovations!  End of school!  And with each simple, mundane activity of our daily lives, I wonder if it will be the last time.  I try not to think too much about it or else I get all sentimental and start crying.  You have to rip it off like a Band Aid, right?  Pack the bathroom into boxes quickly, or else you'll pause and realize the significance - that your children have already taken their last group bath in that tub together.  (I know that's ridiculous.)  They will still bathe in the new house.  And Lord knows I've taken 1,000 pictures of most everything we've done in the last six years.  It doesn't matter; I'm still sentimental about it all.   

Will this be our last time to (somewhat dangerously) play in the boulevard together?

Will this be the last time that we play at Haas park and wait for Joe to meet us there on his walk home from the El station?

Here's a positive one:  Today will be the last time that I have to yank June and Waylon up from naps and throw them in the car at the last second to go get Georgia from school.  That I will not miss.

Another positive:  Soon I will make my last drop-off donation run to our local Salvation Army, an otherwise good place where the collection guys are so mean!

I hope my friend Maggie isn't groaning and rolling her eyes while reading this.  As a pioneer of the suburbs, she's quick to remind me that we are not moving to Siberia, just a town 35 minutes away.  I hope my sister isn't crying and rolling her eyes while reading this.  I've promised her we'll be back to the city to visit all the time.  

We're excited for the move and all the positives that we hope are in store for us.  I'm just sentimental, that's all.  The first of the lasts have been bittersweet.


He thinks he's climbing this tree.  Good try, buddy. 


For some reason he calls my purse a "package" and loves to carry it around.  How 'bout that vocabulary, though?  It has really exploded in the last month or two. 




 

Tonight Is My Night!

We're doing this alternating every other week dinner date thing with each of the girls to give them some parental one on one time.  So far, Joe has taken June, and Joe has taken Georgia.



This sounds all lovely, I'm sure, but I'm sorry, I just can't help myself from sharing the pictures of the hysteria that has been left in Joe's wake. Especially since so far, I have gotten the joy of feeding the remaining two sorrowful children left behind and getting them ready for bed.


{That would be the "calm jar", not doing its job.}


(She asked me to take this photo, by the way.) As you can see, the kid whose week it is not is none too pleased. These girls love their daddy.

But tonight is my night! June and I will be out on the town! Ten bucks says no one cries when we leave.

Stuff June Says

I'm doing a terrible job of recording all of the hilariously wonderful things June says, and has been saying for about two years now.  Like when she announced about her grandfather who retired from dentistry last year, "Gampa Gave can't check our teeth anymore because he be tired."

She asks lots of questions on a wide-ranging list of subjects, several of them scientific things that I struggle to answer.  Today I was hit with, "If the ocean is just water why does it have waves?"  Um, gravity, moon....(are you buying this, June)?  June also asked why people do not ride in the cars that are being carried by car transporters on the highway, and after trying to answer this to her satisfaction about seven different ways, I finally gave up and basically agreed that it was horribly inefficient not to, as if they should start selling cross-country tickets to ride as a "hop-on" on a car transporter.

One of my favorite June-isms of her three-year-old year is her use of the phrase "talking of" instead of "speaking of".  She loves to try it out, but it's almost always followed by a total non sequitur.  For instance, we'll be sitting around the dinner table and suddenly it's, "Talking of butterflies, I have to poop!"  Or, "Talking of broccoli, Ms. Winda was not at school today." 

Today she served up another classic.  Let's just say, I was duly impressed with the contractor in our new house who did not flinch, giggle, or even bat an eye when I told June in front of him to trade ride-on toys with her younger brother, and she came up with the ingenious excuse of, "Well, I can't ride the red bike because it hurts my vagina."  I mean, how are you going to argue with that?  Clearly, the guy is a dad. 

That's just a handful.  I'm sure all of our relatives could regale me with hundreds more that I've forgotten or weren't present for.  I love this age.  And by "this age", I basically mean June from age two until now.  I'd be happy to freeze her in time forever.  (I feel like that little girl from Tiny Toons who always says, "I will hug him and squeeze him and love him forever!")  June's just so darn happy and soft all over!

Alright, gotta run!  I have so many blog posts swirling in my head, and so little time to actually create them.  Everything from the stuff I'm always complaining about having neglected (birthdays, Christmas, vacation) to the current stuff clouding my thinking (the things I'll miss about the city, the things I'm looking forward to in our new house, and how I wish I could write it all down so that I can look back and laugh at myself later).  I'm really looking forward to the move being over and life starting to feel normal once again.  When do we think that will happen?  July?  September?  The movers come on June 8th.       

We Interrupt

We interrupt what?  For starters, my vacation blog post in which I dump tons of photos here.  That's on hold.  Also, packing.  OH MY GOD I SHOULD BE PACKING!!!  We closed on our new house on April 29th (yea!), left for Florida a few days later (yea!), and are moving in in early June, and I feel like I have done NOTHING.  I walked backed into the house after vacation and let out a sigh of overwhelmedness (that's a word now) after just looking around me and realizing that every single object in sight must be packed and moved.  And God dammit, the children still expect to eat every day!  The nerve.  And like, play.  And occasionally be read to.  And have diapers changed.  ETC. ETC. ETC. 

So, I had every intention of really digging into the packing this week, except all of the above got interrupted because of LICE.  It's officially lice week here.  There's been an outbreak in Georgia's classroom, and they called to send her home Monday after discovering her head was infested.  Then, in the yuppiest of all possible yuppie moves, I immediately, (and I do mean immediately), signed us all up for screenings and treatments at a pricey salon that does nothing but lice eradication.  In theory our insurance may eventually pay for it, but even if not I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  Bugs on heads creep me out beyond belief, and I just couldn't figure out how on earth I could methodically pick through Georgia's hair for hours without June and Waylon wreaking havoc in the meantime.  Oh, and pick through my own hair, too, I should mention.  Turns out that when kids get lice, 80% of the time their mothers do, too, and I landed squarely within that statistic.  Ah, the indignities of motherhood.  Plus, I am supposed to be PACKING! So despite the cost of going the professional route, I needed to minimize the time lost to dealing with lice this week, although I'm not sure whether this salon solution has really accomplished that or not.  Thank God for Frances, who generously (and bravely, considering the circumstances, I might add) babysat June and Waylon while Georgia and I got treatments that ended up lasting 3 hours!  Joe also swung by the salon but was declared lice-free.  June went today and had only a few eggs discovered, which resulted in a full, albeit much shorter, treatment.  Waylon thankfully was found to be in the clear.

In the grand scheme of things, lice week will not go down on the list of life's biggest problems, but right now?  Pain in the ass!  Joe is swamped and working late every night, which means I'm running out of gas generally speaking.  I am starting to drown in laundry that is piling up, because our washer is so occupied with cleaning all of my and Georgia's bedding that according to protocol must be changed daily through Friday.  I'm considering going to one of those drop-off laundromats where you pay by the pound to catch up on the rest of it.  Is that crazy?  Things are really out of hand.  I couldn't keep up unless I started doing laundry around the clock.  

So, that's what's up around here.  Plus a parking ticket, a shark tooth, an injured toe, and a case of mystery hives, but I hate to complain.  : )  Venting I'm great at, though.  What's up with you?

P.S.  Yes, this is so totally gross, but if you comment only to say "Gross!" then that is not helpful, and in fact, rather karmically risky.  Besides, this is my PSA, because I've learned a lot about lice myths this week.  There's really no good reason for stigmatizing it any more than say, getting a mosquito bite, and yet it is its stigma that helps lice spread, because people are embarrassed to tell school teachers when their kids have had it!  I'm sure none of you would do that anyway, though.


That face!


Happy homeowners on closing day. Thank you, Grandpa Dave, for mowing our grass in our absence!

And in the meantime, life goes on. At least we were able to bring a little bit of Florida weather back with us.