Looking Back to Look Forward

It's been a good year.

This year's holiday card

We're getting ready to head off on our last holiday journey for the year.  Packing (rather, laundering and re-packing), cleaning up after the Christmas and Channukah toy explosions, and cramming in as many last minute important appointments as possible.  Which means that this is the last you'll hear from me for the year.

As I think back on 2011, I have a hard time distinguishing it from pretty much the entire length of time that my children have been here- out of the womb and in the world.  I know that will pass, that eventually time will return to something resembling the progression I knew in my pre-SuperMommy era.  But in order to get a handle on the year, I went back and reviewed everything I wrote here, in this blog, over the course of 2011.

So today, rather than an expose on my incredible OCD tendencies (which I promise I will subject you to as soon as we return from Michigan), I will instead share with you again the eight posts from the year that I think best summed up my 2011, with a little introduction explaining why they mean so much to me.

This year's holiday card- inside

I know, I could have thrown in announcing my pregnancy or my thoughts on the tenth anniversary of September 11th to round it to a nice solid 10 posts, but neither of those meant as much to my year as individual events as the general feeling of the other eight to explain the whole effect of my 2011.  So please excuse the random number, and instead take them for what they're worth- the entirety of a year in the life of Yours Truly.

I hope you enjoy them as much the second time around as I did.







Glaciers and Caterpillars
I don't know how it happens.  They just keep growing up.  Every once in a while M comments that he SWEARS that when he went to work the previous day, they didn't know half the words they did when he came home again.  Some days, he seems to be right.  This post really summed up those feelings for me.

One of our Holiday Pics

Teacher's Helper, or, Childcare Disaster Zone
This post sums up two very important aspects of my life- the first, how incredibly difficult it can be to be a parent AND a college student.  Seriously.  The second aspect of my life it illustrates is how absolutely VITAL it is to keep a sense of humor.  Seriously again.  If you have days like this and you CAN'T laugh it off, you will lose your mind.  And not in a good way.



Aunie Lea's Home for Wayward Orphans
I've spent a lot of the year looking towards the future.  Maybe it's because I'm finally narrowing in on my degree, maybe it's because we decided to have another baby, maybe it's because of some other reason bubbling up from my subconscious.  Whatever the case, this post is very much about what I want from (or for) the future.

The Pitter Patter THUMP of Little Lubricated Feet
This is, quite simply, the funniest thing I think I've ever written.  And I'm proud of that.


It Wasn't My Fault

A wonderful moment, caught by a stranger.

This post is another thing that I've been very proud of this year.  It was hard to write, and it's hard for me to read.  But it helps me, and I really do like to think that it might have helped somebody else.  It became almost immediately my top-read post, and I doubt that any other post will ever take its place.  If this was my five minutes of internet fame, than I can be truly proud of that.  And if not, I can always hope that I'll get noticed for writing something funny instead.


The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts
One of many posts this year waxing rhapsodic about my father's philosophical approach to parenting.  More than that, this post sums up my beliefs about parenting as activism, and the vital importance of constantly setting an example.  I'm sorry to say that I haven't been able to donate blood again since this post, as when I was next both eligible and available, I was also pregnant.  For some probably extremely good reason, pregnant ladies aren't allowed to donate blood.  But you can bet that I'll be bringing my nursling along to a blood drive sometime late next summer.

Another of our Holiday Pics

SuperMommy and the Potty
This post represents all of my failures.  Yes, there are lots of them.  Many of which I haven't shared with you.  I keep coming up with excuses for why we haven't just gritted our teeth and freakin' potty trained properly.  I've been sick.  I've been pregnant.  We've been traveling.  I am officially out of excuses, and I am determined to have the girls OUT of diapers before Baby X arrives and is IN them.  So, you can bet that this one is back on the resolution list for this year.  And of course, this post is also utterly hilarious.


Pouring My Heart Out
Last but not least, the most important person in my life... M.  I always have a hard time giving friends advice on their own marriages, because I think that mine is fundamentally different.  Not because of some Princess Bride-esque "true love" reason, but simply because we know every day how lucky we are to have each other.  Because M might not have lived for us to have this time together.  That's what this post is about.

I love this man more than anything in the whole world.

Here's to a wonderful 2012, filled with new life, new love, and new adventures.

2011 has been one of the best years of my life.  I've grown, I've changed, and I really like the person I'm becoming.  Perhaps it's because I like all of the changes I've seen in my children, and in my husband.  Perhaps it's that I've reached a point in my life where I'm done with the petty drama that used to be so much of my life before kids (I can already hear my parents laughing at that one).  I don't know.

But whatever it is, I can't imagine that the New Year will bring anything less than the best.  M and I will finish our degrees, Baby X will join our little family, and DD and SI will continue to grow and change and blow my mind continuously.  And hopefully, I'll manage to keep you all more up to date and in the loop than I have this year.

Kisses from SI and DD

All my love, lovely readers.  Thank you for spending the year with me.  :)

Post-Mid-Holiday Insanity Update

With thanks to the artist.

Just a quick check in with you, lovely readers, to wish you again Happy Holidays and to share a few highlights of our chaotic season so far:

1. SI loves nothing more about the holidays than lighting the candles.  To the point where, if she is not able to light the candles, the sight of them will throw her into a fit.
2. After a nice first-night discussion with M about the story of Channukah, new family traditions have been established.  The most important of which is the Ceremonial Watching of the orginial Star Wars Trilogy.  More on that later.
3. My children are officially obsessed with Muppets.  No, we still haven't seen the new movie.
4. Our trip to Minnesota did not involve any major car troubles, not did it involve a great deal of misery.  The worst things that happened were my children picking up really nasty colds from Grandpa, and me not being able to eat junk food in a house utterly filled to the brim with Grandma's indescribably amazing Christmas sweets.
5. Thanks to Aunt Engineer's gifts, my children are now able to jump up and down and shout, "I LOVE MONEY!"  My inner socialist pinko is weeping.

It's the last night of Channukah tonight, and after another round of candles and gelt and dreidle (and maybe even latkes) we get prepared for our trip to the east- up to Guppy Lake for a belated Channukah and a New Year's celebration with Aunt Genocide, Poppa, and Grandmommy.

And then I promise you a ton of photo spam that will melt you into puddles of, "OMG such cute monkeys with their little slippers and microphones and pretty dresses and what on earth is THAT?"

And just in case you haven't been subjected to enough holiday cheer, a super-fun Channukah song, my FAVORITE Channukah song, and one of my favorite artists singing my favorite Christmas carol.







See you on the other side of the New Year!

Family Vacation Disasters- Thanksgiving Edition

The only truly peaceful moment of the trip- right before M was pulled over for speeding and they both woke up.

Doesn't look like much, but trust me it was.

We don't always have the best luck with our family vacations.

Take our very first family trip.  The girls weren't even three months old.  We hit the road early on December 22nd as the snow was falling.  A few hours later, we spun out on some black ice, miraculously spun through three lanes of busy traffic untouched, and then slammed at 65mph into the cement barrier between east and westbound traffic.

The car was totaled.  I had a concussion.  The girls were fine.

We made it the rest of the way to Minnesota in a rental car that M couldn't quite fit in to drive properly- have I mentioned that I'm married to a giant?- and then home again in Grandpa's car.  And that was our very first family vacation.

Cold and wet in August

Take our last vacation as another example.  We went to Michigan to visit my childhood paradise for a week.  A week in the middle of summer, where it rained continuously and temperatures fell below fifty degrees.

Nobody was injured, but the day M went home (we followed a day and a half later) the sun came out, and the temperature climbed at least twenty degrees.  It was a huge bummer to have M miss out on the best part of the vacation.

There was our very first experience going somewhere without the girls.  We went to M's cousin's wedding, and left the girls (who were about 8 months old) at a hotel with M's sister-in-law.  A few hours into the reception, a tornado was sighted basically between us and the hotel.  I spent a very tense evening listening to tornado sirens and praying that everything would be fine.  It was, but it's not a night I'll soon forget.

Am I morbid for photographing this?

That same summer, while we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa a neighbor's house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.

Basically, each time we traveled that summer we were followed by tornadoes, hailstorms, and all manner of acts of God.  I think I heard more tornado sirens that summer than I did marriage vows, and we went to at least five weddings.

Then there was our last quick trip to Michigan- when DD nearly took her eye out in the process of falling off a couch.  I still get chills when I think about what would have happened if her face had been turned just a few millimeters to the left.

It was quite a shiner.

And this started before the girls were even born.  On the second to last day of our honeymoon, M devoured one of the most amazing sandwiches I've ever seen- you would not BELIEVE what people put on hamburgers in New Zealand!- and found himself dramatically ill until well after we had made our way from Doubtless Bay to Auckland by car, from Auckland to Los Angeles by plane, slept a night, and then flown from LA to Chicago and finally made our way home.

So our family vacations are a bit... dangerous.  For us and for anybody near us.  And at the very best, they're just interrupted by inclement weather.

I got M an LA an Oscar because even though the only
 part of Hollywood he saw was the bathroom, he was still
absolutely the "Best Husband."

When we decided to take off for Thanksgiving. we were already too busy with current disasters to worry much about this.  I have been extremely ill, and had spent the previous week in bed.  Which meant that I hadn't looked into a certain matter... the tire on the car that had been a little low.  We just hit the road.

We drove to that lovely Bed and Breakfast.  We had a nice spacious room, we had a ton of privacy, and we had a very nice night.  And in the morning, while our host baked us some wonderful pecan and peanut rolls, an older gentleman walked up to us and announced that we had a flat.

We were optimistic that we could make it the rest of the way on the spare- but there was a problem.  As M soon discovered, we did not have a spare.  We had a huge rusted out spot on the undercarriage where once there had been hardware to mount a spare, but the hardware, the apparatus, and the tire were completely gone.  It was Thanksgiving day.  We were in a tiny, isolated town with a population close to 0, and we were miles from the freeway.

That's the whole town.  The big red building is the B&B.
 Everything else was closed.

We had no AAA.  We didn't have our checkbook.  We had no cash.  The only bank in town (just past the Town Hall which was annexed to the gas station) had no ATM.  The gas station had no air pump.

The owner of the Bed and Breakfast called a friend of a friend of a friend of some sort, and after a few hours he came by to assess the situation.  Another three hours and more drama than I care to relate later, he had taken our tire to his shop, filled it with air, and returned it.

This cost us $150.  And a home made pumpkin pie from our cooler (it had been destined for dinner at my in-laws, thankfully I had brought two) that I had given him in thanks for taking time on Thanksgiving to help a stranded family.

Grumbling and frustrated, we hit the road.  We had just enough time to make it before the meal started.

The girls loved dessert- big surprise!

M got overenthusiastic and began speeding to make up for lost time.  He forgot that he was in Wisconsin, driving a car with out of state plates.  Not too surprisingly, he managed to rack up a $275 speeding ticket about an hour later.

Dinner was lovely.  The company was excellent.  We had a wonderful time with our family.  But I'm afraid the woe doesn't end there.

The day after Thanksgiving, I became violently ill.  I nearly had M take me to the hospital in the middle of the night, but decided against it and spent much of the night in the bathroom having a gall bladder attack instead.  (For those of you who haven't been following closely or long, I've been having gall bladder issues off and on since I was pregnant with the girls.)

I called my doctor the next day, and stayed off of solid food for as long as I could take it.  I thought things were looking up.

Maybe this picture of the girls playing will help distract you
from the imagined pain.

And then, bizarrely, inexplicably, I got a small piece of broken glass lodged under my big toenail.

I'll let you think about what that must feel like for a minute before I go on.

...

Worse than that.  Try again.

...

Yeah, there you go.  I managed to get the thing out a few days later, by which time we'd already made it home.  By which time I had been yelled at by not one, but two doctors for not going to an ER when I had my gall bladder attack.  By which time I had managed to crack the rim on the flat tire (oh yeah, we made it back on the same stupid tire) by basically rolling it the four blocks to a gas station where I could put enough air back in the tire to get me to my gall bladder ultrasound.

That little green thing is the cause of my current woes.

And now?  Now I've had a doctor's appointment approximately every other day since the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.  I'm on a SERIOUSLY restricted diet, and I'm consulting with a surgeon next week who is most likely about to remove my gall bladder.

Which I am not thrilled about, to say the least.

There is a complicating factor in all of this, one which I'm not ready to talk about (it's always hard to know what medical information is pertinent and what is best kept to ones self) but I'll probably get to that once a little more is known.

So in short, yet another family vacation where somebody was injured, where our car was damaged, and where illness played a significant role.  Part of me is actually relieved that I was the one to take the brunt of our travel curse.

...and in two and a half weeks we'll do it again.

On second thought, maybe I should just sit that one out.

Despite it all we still had fun.  And no, I won't be sitting out vising Minnesota again for Christmas.  Or visiting Michigan again for New Years and belated Channukah.  I promise.

Into The Great Blue Yonder

DD, snuggled up for a long trip

The suitcases are packed and in the car.

The cooler is filled with oven-ready Three Sisters and a plethora of pies.

Our traditional road trip themed mix CD has been burned, and along with the weeks medications is tucked snugly into my purse.

The diaper bags are fully stocked, it feels like every bib in the house is in one Mental Floss tote.

My children have been thoroughly fed- actually, they haven't stopped eating yet today.

The diaper service has been put on hold for the weekend.

The dishes are clean.  (!!!!)

Our Mary Poppins is pre-paid, has functional keys, and is planning on watching a few movies with our disturbed cat while we're away.

The car is filled with blankets, spare sweaters, tissues, etc.

We're ready to gorge ourselves on the bounty of Pilgrims and Natives, to celebrate our gratitude, and to spend several days in a food induced coma.

In short, all systems are go.  Out to the breach once more.  It's time to hit the road.

...as soon as M gets home.  He'll lug the cooler and the diaper bags out to the car, and then?

Minnesota, ho!

SI, happily distracted and ready to road trip

In case you're wondering, I'll have my laptop with me, and continue my daily NoBloPoMo blogging.  Between the four blogs (two public, two private- sorry if you won't see them all!) and the end of the semester, we'll hardly be off the grid.

So... no worries!  You'll hardly miss me!



...I'm so addicted to the internet.

Giving Thanks for my OCD

And for these incredible little people.  <3

For the first time since we've been living together, M and I are going to visit his family for Thanksgiving.

Before you throw your hands in the air, and say Oh, how unfair! there are a few details you should know.

First of all, that's only a five year span.  With this being the fifth Thanksgiving.

Such sweet little monkeys!

We've been to see my family twice- once when it was actually visiting my family for Thanksgiving (a drive only two hours shorter than heading to the Twin Cities), and once when Thanksgiving basically overlapped with Channukah, and we were visiting my family for Channukah in Ann Arbor- easily half the distance to the Twin Cities.

And while we decided long ago that Christmas trumps Channukah for important times to be with one's family, Channukah trumps Thanksgiving.  (Passover trumps Easter, in case you were wondering.)

The Twin Cities are pretty freakin' far, when you're driving in the snow, or dark, or pregnant, or with babies, or with toddlers.  It turns from seven hours to ten hours extremely quickly.  Or rather, not quickly at all.  At a glacial pace.

Rocking chairs are fun!

Every other year we have actually stayed in Chicago.  We stayed in Chicago the year we got married because we were exhausted from the travel involved in the summer that led up to Thanksgiving.  We stayed in Chicago the year the girls were born, because we had two six week old babies we didn't want to take anywhere.

But this year?  Minnesota, ho!

Due to my newfound obsession with planning ahead as much as possible, I've come up with a great way to make this insanely long car trip with toddlers significantly more pleasant.  I've booked us a room, just over halfway there, at a really sweet looking Bed and Breakfast.

Not only will we have a comfortable place to stay, we'll have a REAL breakfast.  We'll be on a lovely farm where if we want to exhaust the girls before putting them back into the car, they can run around and play outside.  Our room?  Actually has two rooms.  We'll even sort of have privacy from our own children.

Not usually what you expect from a pit-stop between Chicago and St. Paul.

Any time spent with these two is the best time- even in the car.

We'll take off mid-afternoon, and then drive all the way to the B&B, where we'll eat a picnic dinner.

And in the morning, we'll finish the drive to Grandma and Grandpa's house, refreshed and ready to chow down.

If it goes really well, who knows?  Maybe I'll book the place again for our trip back for Christmas.

All in all, I feel pretty darn good about it.  :)

Watching History- 9/11 and Ten Years of Hindsight

I remember when I was in fifth grade, learning about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  I had known that he had been killed, I had known that he had been president, and I had known that many people had loved him.  I hadn't even come close to understanding what sort of national tragedy it was until that day.  Our teacher, an African American woman some years older than my own parents, was nearly in tears as she told us that all of our parents would know where they were that day.  That she had been a freshman in college, and that she had huddled around a small television with her friends and watched the news.  I understood that what had happened that day was history.

I never expected there to be such a day for me.  And yes, I remember where I was.

That summer had been the best of my life.  For my birthday (which is in April), my parents had given me the coolest present any teenager could possibly want.  They had given me the keys to the minivan, a few hundred dollars in traveler's checks, a loaner easel and set of paints, and permission to take off at the end of the school year and just hit the road.  I had planned out the whole trip- I mostly visited friends and family all across the east coast.  I started out in Michigan, drove through Ohio and Pennsylvania, and went visiting all on my own from Pittsburgh. PA (where I spent the first part of my life) to Smith's Falls (home to a now closed Hershey factory), Ontario, to Washington, D.C. (where my uncle,an AP reporter lives).  I went to the National Holocaust Museum all by myself, an experience I knew as it was happening I would never forget.  I got robbed in Cape Cod, and made my way to family friends in New Hampshire by making my very first art sale.  I stayed at my grandparents' house while they were in Spain, befriending a friend of theirs and spending a week in their guest room, writing a dreadful screenplay.  For over two months I drove around, singing along to Madonna and Lisa Loeb, flirting with cute boys in Providence and sketching crows in the Finger Lakes.

I had one week left in my trip.  I was in New Jersey.  I'd already visited my uncle and aunt in Manhattan (they were so cool- they had me push their baby in a stroller into bars so I wouldn't get carded when they bought me margaritas), but I'd taken the train rather than drive in.  I called home and my sister mentioned some party where all my friends would be, and for the first time I was suddenly homesick.  I suddenly wanted to blow off the last week of my trip, and just head home.  As I headed towards the west, I realized I hadn't gotten a look at the New York skyline.  Taking the train, I'd missed the view.  I had a moment of hesitation, and then I decided.  The New York City skyline wasn't going anywhere.  I'd be back.  But if I hurried and drove through the night, I could make it to that party.  I decided not to go to the bay and look, and instead I turned towards Pennsylvania.

That was in the August of 2001.

A few short weeks later, school had started up.  I was taking a biology class that started at 9am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  As usual, I was running a little late.  As my sister and I headed out the door, Bev- who's birthday it was- popped her head out of the kitchen door.  "It's Grandpa on the phone- he says a plane just flew into Eliot's building!"  (Eliot was my uncle in NYC.)

Knowing that Eliot worked at NYU, and lived in a NYC high rise, I figured one of two things had happened. The first was that a probably drunk celebrity in a private plane had crashed into a random high rise in Manhattan, or that my Grandpa had his information skewed.  Probably both.

When I got to campus, I got on the elevator to my lab.  A girl in the elevator was telling her friend, "TWO planes hit the World Trade Center!"  I looked over my shoulder and said, "My grandfather heard that one, too.  Sounds like a hoax."

But class was cancelled.  And all the televisions on campus had been turned to the news.  I started watching, standing in the hallway outside of my art class, as the third plane hit the Pentagon.  I went into shock.  I knew that my uncle didn't work in the World Trade Center, but he lived just blocks away.  Manhattan is a tiny island.  In fact, he was standing in the park with his son in a stroller, expressing shock and horror with every other New Yorker- stopped in his track.  His wife, on the other hand, was stuck in train under the city.  She would be there for most of the day.

I started running to the cafeteria, where there would be pay phones.  I needed to know that not only Eliot and his family, but also my family in D.C. were okay.  Of course, nobody could reach anybody.  Eventually it became clear that at least Eliot and his baby son were alright, but nobody knew about my aunt.  And my uncle Seth in D.C. had done what any reporter worth his salt would do- he had run out of his office to the Pentagon to begin interviewing people.

Around the time I got all that information, the first tower collapsed.

I began walking.  Just to do something.  I walked back to the art room, and stood in front of the first television I had encountered.  There, a friend of mine found me.  We were both watching, shocked, when the second tower fell.

She and I had a moment of anger- not at whoever had caused this disaster, but because there were people in the crowd behind us who began talking about building Arabic internment camps.  I was ready to kick him in the shins with my steel toe combat boots.  We decided we just needed to leave.

She took me to a friend's apartment.  As we passed the Red Cross, we got stuck in a gigantic traffic jam.  Already the roads were flooded with people trying to donate blood.

We sat in her friend's apartment, chain smoking and watching the news.  There were what seemed like hours of film from a doctor with a video camera- he had gone running with his hand held camera into the dust, looking for injured people to help.  I don't know his name.  He's still the first person I think of when I think about heroes.

We sat there and smoked and smoked, and cried, and just kept saying over and over, "I can't believe it."

Eventually, I went home.  My family, some friends, all sorts of people were gathered around our television.  I don't remember how long we stayed there.  But I do remember the occasional phone calls, letting us know our family out east were all right.

And somehow... the day ended.  That I don't remember.  That part seems to be a blur.   I don't remember how late we sat in front of the television.  I don't remember what we ate for dinner.  I don't remember what words my parents spoke.  I don't remember whether I slept on the couch or went to bed.

But I will never forget that day.  I will never forget the fear, and the confusion, but more than anything the shock.

And there are images that are forever burned into my mind.  People jumping out of windows.  That one shot of the first plane hitting the building.  Over.  And over.  And over.

The man with that video camera,his hand probing through an impenetrable cloud of dust and his voice shouting out, "I'm a doctor- does anybody need help?  Can I help?  Does anybody need help?"

Ten years later, I don't think we're really any safer.  I don't think we've really come to understand what it meant to be attacked that way- because we're still clinging to the same ideas of safety.  The idea that something bad happened, and we won't let THAT happen again.

I think the truth is that someday, we WILL be attacked again.  And again, it will be like something out of a movie.  Something that we never imagined,  Something that we didn't expect.  Not a trick out of the book of terrorist plots.

I'm a writer.  I have ideas, nightmares if you will, of what it might be.  The sort of thing that would make a great movie.  That nobody would believe would ever happen.

But there is one thing that came out of that day that I feel HAS strengthened us.  That has made us better.  And that is the sense of community.  Of wanting to help each other.  Of wanting to work together to make ourselves whole again.

I think about that traffic jam outside of the Red Cross, and I cry.  Because we didn't know who the enemy was, we didn't know the toll.  We didn't know ANYTHING, except that there were people- probably MANY people- who were hurt.  And that we were going to help.

And for any group of people, be they a country or a town or just a random collection of strangers, to head not to the many churches to pray, or to the gas stations to fill their tanks, or to run mad through the streets, but to go to the one place where they knew they could help...

That gives me hope.

That gives me hope every day.  Because I have seen that there is truly a best possibility for all of us.  And while it might have taken a horrific tragedy to show me that, I am grateful to know that it's there.  That despite all political differences or ideological clashing, when it comes down to it... we really just want to help.

We're all calling out, while rushing into an impenetrable cloud, "Can I help?  Does anybody need help?"

So when we do, as I fear we someday probably will, there will be arms in that darkness to hold us, and lead us back into the light.

DD's Shiner

DD's Shiner

It's always a wonderful thing when you go to a friend's wedding.

Especially the wedding of an old and dear friend.

You get to see all the people you love and miss from years gone by, you spend a wonderful night catching up, you witness the vows of wonderful people, you wish them nothing but joy for the rest of their lives.

And... these days... you show off your kids.

"He was so cute during the ceremony!"
"Look at their curls!  Wonder where they got those?"
"He looks JUST LIKE YOU!"

DD in back-up clothes after spilling juice on her dress

"Is she sleeping through the night?"
"That doesn't look like an allergy or... did she get in a fight?"
"Guess we should see the other kid, huh?"

Wait- what?

You read that right.  I brought my sweet, curly-topped moppet to one of my best friends' weddings with a black eye.

A real beaut, too.

Grandmommy and Poppa, God bless them, had one again offered to watch the girls overnight while M and I stayed at a hotel (no gigantic iPod this time, though).  When we arrived in the morning of the wedding day, DD was so excited to see us walk through the door that she climbed on Aunt Genocide's couch and started to jump.

And jumped.

And jumped.

And before I could stop her and make her stop jumping on the couch, which she knows perfectly well is NOT allowed, she had begun to fall.  In slow motion.

It took ages.  First, the look of surprise.  Her feet weren't landing where she thought they would- how odd!

Then, the moment of paralyzing realization.  She was falling, falling, oh crap she's falling.

Then, the bind panic.  SHE'S GOING TO HIT HER HEAD ON THAT COFFEE TABLE!

"Show me your mean face!"

The impact- DEAR GOD WAS THAT HER EYE??????

The ricochet followed- SHE SMASHED HER DAMN HEAD AND SHE'S STILL FALLING!!!

And finally, the finale.  THUD.

I already had her in my arms when the tears started, but good lord was she one lucky girl.  The sharp corner of the table missed her eyeball by less than half an inch.  She has a bruise stretching across her entire face between her eye and her ear, and the corner only broke through her skin a little bit.  The swelling has even started to go down already.

You ever tried to put ice on the eye of a screaming toddler?  Doesn't work so well.

So eventually, she calmed down.  And eventually, she ate a bit of breakfast.  And eventually, she took a very short nap.

But when I tried to leave her with her Daddy for a few moments so I could deliver a toast to the happy couple?

Oh, woe betide the mommy who tries THAT stunt.


For a bit of comparison, here is my daughter before her terrible ordeal:

She's saying, "Draw me a heart please!"

And here she is now:

It puts the block onto the tower or else it gets the hose again.

...and one more shot, from the wedding itself:

"Hey Mommy, this little lady botherin' you?"

Ugh.

Three Mile Beach

Poor M had to leave us a day early to get to work.  And with him, he took the rain.  On our last whole day in Greenbush (which SI learned to say and is still saying every time she wants to express her joy at something) my mother, my friend Dan, his kids, their dog, the grublings, and I went to Three Mile Beach.

Three Mile Beach is in the running for my favorite beach of all time.  For some reason, it's always practically abandoned.  And it's stunning.

Grandmommy and SI on the beach of Lake Huron

Once DD remembered that she actually loves the water, she had an absolute blast.

Too much fun for one picture to hold.

STOMP!  SPLASH!

We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves.

Not surprisingly, SI was super smart about the lake.  Rather than try to wade in and fill her boat with water, she just sat the boat in the waves, and let the ebb and flow fill it for her.

DD and her watering can were inseparable.

When it's time to leave, it's time for snuggles.  Hugs for everyone!

Dinosaur Gardens

The SuperMommy family at Dinosaur Gardens!

On one rainy morning of our vacation, we packed up the grublings and went off to Dinosaur Gardens.

I know I've mentioned it before, but Dinosaur Gardens is one of the weirdest places possibly on earth.  At least in the country.  Some eighty years ago, a very eccentric man decided that he needed to bring to life a series of dinosaurs for future generations to... learn from?  Entertain themselves with?  Use to find a closer connection to God?

Wait, what?

Yes.  The very first dinosaur is a gigantic brontosaurus, complete with a stairwell that leads into its belly.  And from its belly you can view Jesus, the greatest heart of all, and the wise men than live in the dinosaur's tail.

Science!

This bizarre man constructed these things basically all by himself, with his own cement mixture containing, of all things, deer hair.  Eighty years ago.  Miraculously the things are still standing.

In every inch of their bizarre glory.

I loved this place as a kid.  As an adult I find it extremely hilarious.

Grandmommy and the girls approaching the brontosaurus containing Jesus and the Wise Men.

M and a T-Rex have a grinning contest

SI kissing a Triceratops

Aunt Genocide tries valiantly to rescue this poor guy, but I think it's too late.

Oh MY!

The girls particularly liked the dinosaurs with babies.  But those are prehistoric mammals.

SI: "Oh Grandmother!  What large teeth you have!"  By the way, that's supposed to be a velociraptor.

Bell learns quickly that nobody has more energy than a toddler.