Halloween Candy

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm good

Eating Raisin Bran is Like Hunting Treasure

Halloween in November

This is not a case of the kids still wearing their Halloween costumes weeks later. This is a case of Sara finally downloaded 2 months of photos. Eliot was a happy (he was very specific about the happy part) pumpkin (a French one - isn't that hat something) and Naomi was a clown.


On the actual day Eliot was a whiny, clingy pumpkin and Naomi was a conscientious objector dressed as a little girl in black pants.

Fingernails

I clipped Eliot's fingernails this morning for the first time in a very long time.

In his life he hasn't really had very substantial fingernails. They used to get to a certain length and then just peel off. I think his little body was trying so hard to keep his brain and heart working that it didn't put much energy into making fingernails.

That could be a bunch of BS. I really don't know what I'm talking about.

What I do know is that this morning I clipped actual, real, long fingernails off of Eliot and it felt like just the kind of normal, regular thing a mom should do.

It wasn't normal or regular. And it was normal and regular.

Gosh it was wonderful.

I feel like I'm walking out of the ocean lately. You know that feeling when you're walking into increasingly shallow water. When all of a sudden you can move your arms without resistance. Then parts of your torso. Then you're only dragging the bottoms of your legs through the water. Then all of a sudden you can run.

[And for the sake of feeling hopeful I'm going to ignore the part where you end up walking in sand that makes it hard to move.]

My brain is coming out of this feeling of dragging along the closer and closer we get to the 1 year anniversary of Eliot's diagnosis.

I keep remembering different things about his time in the hospital like how much I wondered about the students I could see out of the hospital windows and how bitchy the guy was at the nurses station. And what it was like on Christmas to walk into the family lounge and see and smell people from at least 3 different nationalities celebrate Christmas.

Tonight this question popped to the front of my brain. What was the last thing I blogged before Eliot's diagnosis.

Here it is. And I put this one up the same day. Goodness. Tampons and finger puppets. I guess that's what you do before chaos blows your life into a million shiny and unrecognizable pieces.

I'm Thankful....

...that Eliot woke up this morning in a DRY pair of Cars the Movie inspired underwear.

Is it in their Genes? Or maybe Jeans

It snowed enough today to leave a little, teeny, tiny sprinkling on the ground.

The kids and I were standing at our front door (each of them stark naked except for their new winter boots) looking at it when Eliot asked, with a look of glee all over his face, if he could pee in the snow.

I said he could and that when there was a lot of snow he could even pee shapes and his own name in the snow.

He said he wanted to do it right now. RIGHT NOW.

I warned him that if he went outside in only his boots he'd be very cold.

He said it was okay.

So I opened our front door (remember, we live across from a co-op and this is the day before Thanksgiving - the street in front of our house was very busy) and Eliot went outside on the front porch and crouched down like a frog. Ready to pee right there.

Peeing in the snow.

What is it about these men with outdoor plumbing?

Motherhood: I'm in it for the glamor.

A Major First

Finally. Finally. Finally.

We took the kids to an actual movie in an actual movie theater. The big day - one to be put on record - was November 16, 2007.

We took them to see Jerry Seinfeld's new movie Bee Movie.

Naomi absolutely loved it in the beginning. She sat, literally, on the edge of her seat (my lap) with her little hands gripping the chair in front of her and her little legs kicking all over the place.

She was so entranced.

Eliot laughed and enjoyed the beginning of it too.

Then, because for some reason all kids movies are kind of terrifying, it got scary and then insanely boring (WHO likes court room scenes?) and we tried to bribe them to stay with popcorn. And then that didn't work so we left.

Before it ended.

We did it tho.

All four of us had movie tickets.

If we actually kept baby books I'm guessing Aron would tape the tickets into the book.

Butts

I was in the bathroom this morning when Eliot walked in and asked me, with some bit of disappointment in the tone of his voice, if I have a big butt.

I paused, tried to consider the source (one young Eliot Kramer who has been running around the house stark nekkid with his little sister for the past 3 days) and said that I do have a big butt.

All family butts considered mine would be one of the big ones.

I tried to hear the question from a place of objective observation not culturally sanctioned commentary on the size and shape of my currently larger than ever before mom-butt.

I couldn't resist tho and asked Eliot if he liked big butts.

Inside of my brain I was already singing that great song from the 90's or was it the 80's - I like big butts and I cannot lie, you otha brothas can't deny.....

Eliot said no.

No I don't like big butts.

What kind of butts do you like Eliot? I asked

Little butts. He said.

Little butts like Naomi's and Eliot's.

Well I can't compete with that.

Happy Anniversary Eliot

3 years ago today Eliot was baptized. On that day I had big plans for celebrating this day every year. We were given a candle that day and told to light it each year in memory of his baptism.

That candle has never been lit.

I just keep not setting the day aside in any meaningful way.

3 years ago we watched the most amazing northern lights ever. That was in Duluth. Eliot was our only kid. It was Howard Anderson's last day at St. Paul's Episcopal Church.

Life was awfully different.

Today we have two kids (one of which insisted on sleeping in her bed NAKED tonight), we're in Minneapolis, we're not in Duluth, Eliot is in remission for a disease that 3 years ago I thought would kill ME if I had to face it.

Happy Anniversary Eliot, boy of the stars, moon and magical night sky.

Operation Pee Pee in the Potty Cancelled

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now is not the time for this. What was I thinking. What in the world was I thinking.

They will both learn to pee and poop in the potty before they turn 5. They will both learn to pee and poop in the potty before they turn 5. I'm to write that on the chalk board 500 times before recess.

They will both learn to pee and poop in the potty before they turn 5.

Let it go Sara. Get a LIFE!

Do it when you're up for it - which isn't now.

House of Class

I was gone for a good chunk of today which was a true joy after all of my time spent alone with the kids these past several days. Well alone with the kids and my Anthony Bordain fantasies and more fantasies.

While I was gone I learned from our angel-like nanny that during potty training day #2 (the day which started with 2 children refusing to wear any clothes at all and Naomi slapping her private parts and yelling jina, jina, jina) one of my lovely children peed on the floor and didn't announce it.

Later Eliot was running around and slipped in the puddle, got full of pee, surprised as hell and pretty upset.

Poor kid even wanted to call me on the phone.

I'm laughing out loud just writing this. That is so completely and uttelry gross I can do nothing but laugh.

I also got this email from our heavenly neighbor Summer who you can clearly tell loves our kids by the fact that she uses the word 'adorable' at the end of her email.

Hi Sara,
Naomi is so cute! Today she welcomed me at the door
with a pink marker stuck up her nose! Then she
continued to giggle, pull it out, notice the booger on
the tip, pinch it and then press it nicely onto the
door window. Then she returned the marker into her
nostril..... adorable!!!

Potty Training Day 1

4:19 am Naomi wakes up saying, "What. That. Noise." For some reason all sentences have lots of spaces in them.

4:19 am Sara thinks, "oh shit, I promised myself I'd go right upstairs the moment they woke up and get both of them on the potty. I. Am. Not. Going. Up. There. At. 4. Fucking. Thirty. In. The. Morning. For some reason before 5am all of my sentences have a lot of spaces in them. And a lot more swear words than I let on.

4:20 am Whats. That. Noise.

4:20 am and 3 seconds. Whats. That. Noise.

repeat every 3 seconds for 10 minutes.

4:30 am Eliot is now awake. Its Mama Naomi. Mama is making that noise.

4:30 am I think. Oh boy. I have to go up there. I have to potty train the kids today.

4:31 am Whats. That. Noise. Its Mama, Naomi, its Mama.

repeat until Mama thinks her brain is scrambled.

4:45 am Mama yells up the stairs. Its time to be asleep you guys. I'm not coming up there. She lays in bed for the next hour or so reading and feeling her sanity drift away as her children talk incessantly upstairs.

6:00 am Mama gets the kids and announces that we're going to sit on the potty and pee. Eliot asks why. I say because you're learning to use the potty today.

He pees. Just like that. Right in the potty. When given a choice he picks some Cars underwear. We high five. He says he is going to keep his underwear dry.

Naomi (who sat on the potty 5,000 times yesterday) refuses to use the potty.

6:04 am We go downstairs to get breakfast.

6:10 am Eliot says he needs to use the potty.

He has already wet his underwear. A lot. How did so much pee still come out when he just peed. It is a lot of pee.

Eliot clearly feels bad about peeing his underwear. He insists on a training diaper. Part underwear. Part diaper.

He has now been being potty training for 12 minutes and he has had an accident and the wind is out of his sails.

6:15 am Eliot says his chair is wet. Somehow 3 gallons of pee squirted out of his diaper and sprayed all over the dining room. All over the floor. All over his chair. All over the floor under the table. On the garbage can. Not one drop of pee is in the diaper. Is this how the diaper trains you to use the potty. It disperses your pee all over the house?

6:21 am Mama is still cleaning up pee. Eliot asks Mama if she is happy. Mama describes that she is happy and she also peed in her pants when she was a little girl too. And guess what. Daddy did too.

Mama remembers the time she peed her pants in 1st grade and sat in soaking wet pants all day denying the fact that she peed.

6:30 am Mama calls Daddy so he can tell Eliot about how he peed his pants too when he was little. Daddy doesn't answer the phone.

6:45 am Daddy sends text message. He is in a deer stand and can't talk.

6:48 am Mama texts Daddy to explain what is up. Says he doesn't need to call. Moment is over.

6:51 am Daddy texts back to say I should tell Eliot that he is so cold he is thinking of peeing in his pants to warm up a little.