Lather, rinse, repeat

(Speaking of, who actually repeats? Do the shampoo people really think we're not on to them?)

It's been forever yet again and, during my silence, there have been lots of goings on around here. We traveled to WV/Lynchburg for my 10 year college reunion (more to come on that), Will spent some time with our families in WV, we had our floors refinished, I did some painting, Laura got even cuter and sweeter (I know!), Will had some doctor appointments, and we've done copious amounts of yard work.

Since it's 10:06 and I tend to sort of mentally devolve starting around 8:30 or so, I'll just leave you with some pictures and a promise to try to write something more substantial in the next day or so. Hopefully. It kind of depends on when the yard work situation becomes more manageable, so we'll wait and see when that happens...



Laura has four bathing suits. Each time I put another one on her, I'm certain it's the cutest one she has. I think it's more likely that she's the common denominator here, that each of her bathing suits is cute but really becomes something to behold when she wears it.



I look at her now and can't believe I ever felt anxious about having a girl. Little did I know, right?



Little did I know how much this one would teach me about patience and patience and more patience and also perhaps about boys and their nonchalance concerning the whole wearing pants thing. (He's only wearing clothes on his top half here, which is pretty normal in our house.)

Little did I know that the same man who once lamented the fact that they were required to get Blackberries for work would become addicted to his. (Please also note his computer glued to his lap. One can never have enough screens up simultaneously, apparently?) His job has taken over our lives, it seems. But he hasn't worked yet all weekend so this could be a new record. It's been grrrrrreat!

Happy Memorial Day!

Blogging, interrupted

I feel like I haven't written anything in approximately six months and thus I don't remember where I should start or where I left off (which would be easily remedied, of course, by reading back over my last post but that's too sensible). We've had what I imagine will become the usual May busy-ness, with school events and home projects and landscaping woes and wet basements and rain, rain and more rain and there's more to come (of all of the above).

I managed to infect my computer with some sort of tenacious, hellacious virus so I'm writing this on a new computer after Jamison decided that it wasn't worth dealing with in all of his abundant free time. This wasn't really a bad development, seeing as my keyboard was less a few key players (hardy har har), namely the f, k and u. That sounds like I'm trying to curse cryptically but I'm not. Or at least not at you. Maybe at Will, but only in my head since he repeats every single thing he hears, usually at the most humiliating possible moment that he can. It's also nice to have a computer that actually has a functional CD player (drive?). My computer-ese is pretty limited. Hence the virus.

Tomorrow is Will's final day of school for the year, believe it or not. He says that he's excited for summer but I'm not sure if he grasps that all this really means is that he'll be spending more time with me at home. What he does know for sure, though, is that we're going to the beach in T-minus five weeks and counting. He is absolutely beside himself with anticipation and we've discussed the various details of the trip (driving, hotel, more driving, luggage, ferry, golf carts, swimming, beach, sand, cousins, sun, playground, who's going, who's not, where everyone will stay, what we'll be eating [he is truly mine in this regard, as I like to plan my lunch before I've even eaten my breakfast]) at least four hundred times. Laura is indifferent. Sweet as pie, but totally indifferent.

Speaking of Baby Sister, we finally switched her to her big girl carseat this weekend. Not because of size issues, of course. She's well under the weight limit for her baby car seat and still fit in it comfortably, but I think 16ish pounds is about my own personal weight limit for carting her around in it so we decided it was time she got a more comfy upgrade. Her own personal Britax chariot arrived Saturday (thank you, $3.99 overnight shipping, Amazon) and she appears to be pretty happy about it. I think it's my favorite pattern yet (a very subtle black and gray/grey paisley) out of the three car seats that we have. (Yes, Will is still in his and will remain in it until he outgrows it, which is probably being a little bit overprotective but I'm not messing around after our experience a few springs ago. The weight limit for their car seats is 70 pounds, so Laura will be in hers until 7th grade or so. And then I plan to just transfer it to the driver's seat for me since I'm about two inches and a few more pounds, admittedly, from being required by law to be in a booster seat myself.)

I really didn't start that last paragraph with the intention of writing an entire paragraph on car seats. I could have easily summed it up as: Laura got a new car seat, a Britax just like both of Will's. We love them and they'll be in them forever. Moving on.

We're having the floors in our bedroom refinished this week before we head out of town for my college reunion. (10 whole years. What the?) This has turned out to be a surprisingly loud and cold operation, since the front door has to be left open to accommodate the various hoses and tubes since we opted for the fancy no-dust option (code for "we are lazy and anything we can do to make our cleanup easier, we will be a sucker and pay for").

So. Those were my words. Now for some pictures:

Will remains Laura's favorite person in the whole world, which I alternately find completely heartwarming and mildly terrifying.

Crazy flower that popped up out of nowhere for the first time since we've lived here. It's purple and white and very vivid. And tall.

Speaking of vivid, I'm breaking my usual black and white routine since I really like the colors of these flowers. And the fact that it wasn't raining the day I took this.

As for her, I like her equally in color and in black and white. She's such a little worm.

(Speaking of worms, Will got his first little tangible lesson in death the other day when he found a worm outside. Instead of allowing this worm to just slither around and be happy in the dirt, Will decided that it [Slimey, or Swimey, as Will says] needed to "swim" so he put it in his sand and water table so he could swim. Needless to say, Slimey didn't fare so well.

The mailman walked by and Will showed him the worm. When he asked Will if the worm needed a bath, Will acknowledged that the worm had been "wiggling around" but now it was "still." He then looked up at the mailman and deadpanned, "He's dead." No emotion whatsoever. Then he dug around in the dirt until he found another worm and repeated the exact same scenario, except for letting this worm escape the bath of death before he or she met his or her ultimate demise. Not sure what this says about Will, but I'm thinking that it's going to be a while before we get a more complicated pet, like a dog.)

Hopefully this computer will remain virus-free for the duration of its life with me. Regardless, more coming soon!

A rare event (and some butterflies, too)

It's 6:46 am and I'm just now starting to hear Laura stir. This is, in case you don't know, a big deal for her since she's been up at six (or well before) pretty much every day since she was around four months old. So I'm taking this time to have a little bit of coffee and some quiet time before the madness begins. (The "madness" being mainly of the Will variety.)

Yesterday was Will's last field trip of the year (only five more school days left!) and we got to make it a family affair since Jamison was able to go with us. Besides the 30-minute wait in the holding area/tent outside the actual room where the butterflies were, things went pretty smoothly, considering there were 15 or so antsy three, four, and five year olds involved.

The field trip was at the conservatory here, which was really nice. The kids went to see the butterfly show after learning about butterflies and their life cycles at school. The butterflies in their classroom had conveniently hatched (is that the right word?) right before the field trip so they were excited to see other kinds of not-caterpillar-or-boring-chrysalis butterflies (butterflies of Brazil, to be more specific) flying around everywhere.

After a while, Will figured out how to coax the butterflies from the flowers onto his finger. He was (surprisingly) gentle and let them crawl around without bothering their wings like the nice volunteer ladies had instructed the kids to avoid doing. Laura was also interested in looking at the butterflies but wasn't quite as gentle. (I had to act quickly to avoid a tragic homicide-type situation when I held one too long too close to her curious and quick little hands.) She decided about half an hour into the butterflying that she had kind of had it and so we had to make our exit and go have some lunch.

A few pictures from yesterday:

Will's fake smile is slowly improving. Now he just looks like he may be in some type of pain when he smiles for pictures. Maybe by kindergarten he'll have it perfected.

Moving on

Jamison says that I've been "too dark" in my recent ramblings and I think maybe he's right. Of course, it's also been "too dark" weather-wise here for the past month (the wettest April on record in Cincinnati) and I think that's part of everyone's problem, including my own. So...

I'll just say that perhaps I was a bit unfair in my last post. I fully realize that I'm judging others based on small talk and that I probably shouldn't do that. I understand that we're not going to discuss Shakespeare or existentialism or the pros and cons of a free market economy in the hallway while waiting to pick our preschoolers up. In case I rubbed anyone the wrong way, I apologize.

And now I will complain. (Doesn't that make you just want to keep reading?)

1) The rain. It is never going to stop. The rain has resulted in our (finished) basement being soaked, which means that all of the toys and furniture and everything else down there has been shifted and lifted and moved and I'm really ready for some drier weather. For many reasons.

2)The landscaping. It is never going to stop either. We've actually made a little bit of progress but it's so overwhelming a task that I sometimes wonder how on earth we ever thought we could keep up with it before we bought the house. The man who lived here before us was someone who truly enjoyed working out in his yard and really knew what he was doing. He was retired and basically saw his yard and flowers as his job, so that's all he did. One of our neighbors stopped to chat this weekend while we were out (during the one sunny day) and mentioned that the previous owner often gardened with his wine in hand. And I said that I understood why he did so now. I think he had to combine his wine and his gardening because it helped him deal with the sheer amount of shrubs, plants, flowers, and trees packed onto this small lot and all of the tasks, time, and money it requires to keep them looking good.

The good news, though, is that I actually enjoy being out there when I don't think about how much we have left to do, not to mention the state of our house when I spend the majority of my time outside.

3) Jamison's job. It, also, is neverending. He's never home. When he is home, he's either working, thinking about work, or laboring in the yard. (Speaking of laboring, my mother-in-law was here this weekend and watched the kids while Jamison and I picked up dinner. [Thanks Mamaw Di!] We were still in our working outside clothes and, on our way in, Jamison looked down at his dirty clothes and said that people were going to think he was a simple laborer. That probably doesn't seem very funny but I've laughed about it for probably way too long.)

4) To continue with the neverendingness, Will has what I believe is the World's Longest Ear Infection. We're on ear recheck #3, and what I think is Round Four (or maybe Five?) of progressively stronger antibiotics. He's not complaining, though, so it hasn't slowed him down any. We have another recheck at the end of May, so hopefully everything will be cleared up then.

Enough with the bellyaching, right? Our week ahead looks to be full of field trips, swimming, and, shockingly, rain. With a little bit of yard work and mulch thrown in the mix there, too. The next time you hear from me may be from the pontoon that I think we should start constructing in our basement.