Not feeling photogenic

Bright eyes

Mom, please stop.

Squee

About 7 years ago, in our Yonkers apartment, I awoke in the early morning to Seamus playing with a toy. It kept making the most peculiar sound. Pad...pad...pad...Squee! Pad...pad...pad...Squee!

I realized, in my half-asleep state, that we didn't own a toy that made that noise. My eyelids flew open, I sat up to see Seamus playing with a baby mouse. He dropped it. It would scurry away. He padded after it, picked it up by the scruff of its neck, and it would squeak.

I elbowed Alec who retrieved a plastic container to capture little Mickey, and freed him outside.

This morning around 5 AM, I sat in our bed feeding Lindsay. Seamus came into our dark room and meowed loudly about a dozen times before hopping up on the bed, dropping and recapturing his prey. I stood up quickly.

"Alec, Seamus has brought you a present!" I hollered.

He turned on the light to discover our geriatric cat had brought a freshly killed pipe cleaner, and was presenting it proudly. It was lying unsuspectingly on the table, leftover from an art project that Auntie Jules and Lauren were working on.

"Good boy, Seamus," Alec said, putting the pipe cleaner away in his nightstand.

Less

Candy II has been laid to rest. I let Lauren see him this morning, and though she thought it was sad, she was OK. She asked if we could get another Candy, and we told her we have to take the tank water to be tested so we can figure out why her fish keep dying. So, although she (and you in the blogosphere) would like Candy III to move in today, it will likely be a couple weeks before we try to add another fish.

In other news, Alec fixed this dishwasher this morning! It turns out it was just improperly loaded last night.

Fingers crossed that the rest of the day goes smoothly...

Now, with weird photos!

I'm going to apologize in advance, these creepy photos were taken with Lauren's digital camera. It has a much lower resolution than my Canon Sure Shot.

It turned out that Dos was not left on the bus, but rather just outside Lauren's classroom. She must have set it down to put it in her back pack and missed. I forgot to mention that Dos is (well before its battery ran out) a Flashy Quacker and a fund raising item for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It's a pink duck with a pink ribbon.

Here's Candy II. This photo was oddly exposed, but he is a Betta fish - also known as a Japanese fighting fish. You cannot keep 2 males in a single tank. Candy II is a bit bluer than his predecessor, who was mostly pink and purple. He's posing for the picture, so I think his acclimation is going quite well.

Portrait of the Artist

Hard day

Lauren has 4 ducks that we play with every day at bathtime. She named them Uno, Dos, Tres (which she pronounces Thess), and Quattro. Friday is Share Day, and she asked if she could bring one of the ducks to school. Why not?

Well, I didn't think that Lauren would decide to share Dos with a friend on the bus and she would get lost.

Bathtime was very, very sad.

She mopily got out of the tub, wrapped herself in a towel, and announced she didn't feel much like a story tonight.

"Ok," I said.

She went into her room where Alec and Lindsay were waiting. He found that Candy, Lauren's betta fish, had died. When I came into the room to give her a hug, she was lying on her bed, still in the towel, face down sobbing. "I want another fish like Candy."

"Ok," I said. "We can go to the pet store tomorrow."

Hopefully, the weekend will get better.

What's going on Chez Stoll?

Lindsay has her first tooth!

My bathroom almost looks like a catalogue picture in this one.

And less like a catalogue here. Hey, can't a cat have some privacy?!

The closet now has baseboard moulding!

And some crown moulding! And light fixtures!

We're thinking about the lighter of these 2 paint colors - butte rock.

As we were getting into bed last night, Alec kept saying "Heh heh heh. Butte. Heh heh." So, therefore it must be a good decorating choice.

"I still love you, but...

"...you're no longer my favorite person." Lauren announced in the car last night.

"Oh. Ok." I said, matter-of-factly.

"Lindsay is my favorite person."

"I think that's nice," I said.

"Yeah. She does too."

And with that, Lindsay cackled with delight.

Her friend Martin

In the school yard, waiting for her teacher...

"My friend Martin's birthday is on Monday." Lauren announced.

I puzzled this for a moment. There isn't a Martin in her class. "Martin who?"

"Martin Luther King." she replied.

"Oh yes, his birthday is Monday." I said.

"Do you think I will get to have some of his birthday cake?"

"Well," I said. "Honey, Martin Luther King is dead."

"He is?"

"Yep. Since before I was born."

"Really?! How did he die?"

I paused a moment, trying to think of a good answer. Finally I said, "He was assassinated."

"Oh. Ok." she said. "Do you think he's buried underground?"

"Uh. I don't know, honey. Probably."

With this, she ran up to a boy in her class. "Hey, Miles? Do you know that Martin Luther King is dead?! He was assassinated and is probably buried underground!" she announced.

"Oh." said Miles. "That's cool, I guess."

Monday musings

All dressed up, January 2007

On Saturday morning, we drove 2 hours to Alec's grandmother's condo in Upstate New York. It was sad to see how much she's declined. It was several minutes before she showed even a glimpse of recognition of who we were - and at that, she only really recognized Lauren. She smiled a little at her. I helped her hold Lindsay for a few minutes, which also earned a small smile. But otherwise, she didn't seem aware of us, or where she was.

Lauren and Lindsay with Great-Grandma Jean

Lauren spent Saturday night at Nanny and Poppy's house. It's always so quiet here without her...even though Lindsay is a loud babbler these days, it just wasn't the same. But it allowed us a good chunk of time for Alec to work on the bedroom, and for me to finally sweep and mop the upstairs foyer.

We met Alec's dad around lunchtime and picked up Lauren, ate lunch at Uno's where Alec had to crane his neck to watch the Jets game (they lost), and stopped off at the Home Depot and bought Alec some pneumatic equipment and a compound mitre saw for finishing up the bedroom project.

I've got quite a lot of clothes and books to unload as part of the bedroom project, and just general cluttering Chez Stoll. There's a clothing drop pretty much every 10 yards here, but where to donate books? The library's Web site offered only that "the reference librarian must review all book donations", which sounds like an incredible hassle. There is a used book store in town, but they only offer store credit which would sort of defeat the purpose.

I'm tired today and having trouble motivating. It seems these days the sleep strike occurs the day before Alec leaves now, so going into 3 days alone on a sleep deficit is particularly painful...and only more so on a Monday when there's a lot of house related stuff to do.

New Years

Photo courtesy of Karen. Nota bene: Alec rigged the Emergency Back-up New Years Eve ball, not Karen. Delphi appears to be awaiting a call on the Fisher Price cordless phone, and is hiding the Baby Bowling Ball under her chair. Amazingly enough, I don't appear to be the drunkest person in the picture. I am, however, wearing a knit blanket and drinking out of a tupperware pitcher. Classy.

Amateur night

We had company to ring in the New Year with us. We were talking and laughing. Dinner came together easily and at the right time...and was rather tasty. And then this is where things get a little fuzzy for me.

I took Lindsay up to bed. She mostly went down easily. I thought I'll just sit for a minute on the twin bed in her room when everything in my stomach suddenly rebelled. Oh my God, I thought, I'm going to be sick!

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the bathroom floor listening to Lindsay fussing in her crib. Maybe our guests would just think I had trouble getting Lindsay to sleep? I worried someone would come up and check and find me lying with my face on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. I peeled myself off the floor and got onto my bed. I lay there for what seemed like a very long time. My stomach lurched and the room was still spinning. I tried to remember if I was mixing drinks...no...how many glasses of wine did I have? I realized I was going to have to go back downstairs. The kids were still playing in the living room, and the adults were drinking champagne around the dining room table over the last of dessert.

I have no idea if I looked as sick as I felt, drinking a tall glass of cold tea. Alec brought me a blanket to wrap around me before we watched the ball drop in Times Square on the television. Our guests left, and I put Lauren to bed and climbed into a hot shower. When he got back from the train station, I was drinking another glass of tea in the kitchen.

"You ok?"

"Uhh. Yeah. I got sick."

"Just now? You haven't been drinking in a while..."

"No, when I brought Lindsay up."

"Huh. Let me get you some Advil..."

"Do you think everybody knew?"

"No...I think everybody just thought you were tired."

And that's why I love that man.