Author Archives: metamegan

>We All Have Our Quirks

>I have been working a lot. It’s very annoying. I have been home 3 days with sick kids and I have been making up the time in the evenings. Also, when I go in to work, I still have more to do in the evenings. It’s really cutting into my blogging time. Also, my life.

And that is how I found myself putting away laundry and cleaning the kitchen at 11:05 p.m. this evening.

Earlier today I picked up all the recycling from the bathroom (toilet paper roll, shampoo bottle, soap box) and carried it some of the way to the recycling bin. Later, I saw Luke standing a toilet paper roll on the counter and he said, “Please don’t move this toilet paper roll unless I say it’s OK.” I said, “OK.”

After his shower, Luke came out of the bathroom holding some towel thread. I said, “What do you have there?” He said, “some thread. It’s very special to me. I am going to put it somewhere special.” I said, “OK.”

So when I was trying to clean off the counter before bed, and I knocked over the toilet paper roll, I wasn’t surprised to find some frayed towel thread and a shell inside it. Amused, but not surprised.

>Bean

>I have had a few posts about how Bean is sort of still with us, because Jack acts like Bean all the time. He rummages through peoples bags looking for crackers, hides food behind the curtain, ransacks the lazy susan, barks at squirrels, eats crumbs off the floor, etc. But lately I started thinking that since Jack was there when Bean died, that maybe something supernatural occurred. Instead of thinking that it is as if Bean is still with us, I am thinking that Bean really is still with us. I think I could re-remake the Shaggy D.A. into a movie with a baby that’s really a dog. (The concept needs some work.)

I suppose most of those things listed above are normal baby activities, except for the barking at squirrels. At this age, Luke could copy every animal sound I made, and perform them on demand. Lion=roar, Cow=moo, etc. Now Jack hears a bird in the wilderness, or a train miles away, or a siren, or the dishwasher running and can imitate it perfectly. But after 3 days with his Aunt Suzy and Grandmom and kitty cat Cleo, he would still not meow. But he would chase the cat and bark at her.

But what I think really clinched it for me with this whole Bean possession thing, is that today while I was making dinner, Jack got hungry and impatient and so he crawled under his high chair and started whining.

>Hello Labor Intensive Cupcake!

>I bought Hello Cupcake this year with a Christmas gift certificate, and I am on my third creation. The first was simple, and the second wasn’t worth photographing. The third, and the reason I bought the book, turned out quite well:

And it was easy. All I had to do was bake the muffins, and then have my father in law cut mini donuts in half, my sister in law cut starburst and chocolate cookies, my mother in law cup up marshmallows while I iced everything together. Then after the last layer of icing, my sister in law and mother in law helped me assemble all the pieces. Then we spent about 20 minutes figuring how to transport them to school. Huge success! They were devoured in under 5 minutes.

Thanks for your help, family!

>Six

>http://www.youtube.com/get_player

Luke and his posse hit the terrain park this weekend for his birthday and we filmed another video or two for the retrospective at the X-games in a few years. Dave says, “Go Tommy!” But Luke goes first, then Tommy, then Fritz.

This next one is the chip off the old block video:

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

So far six is an interesting age. He can be very polite when he wants something, yet he thinks “No” is an acceptable response when I ask him to do something. He is so much bigger than that little skier that everyone thought was so adorable when he passed them,
but from the lift over the terrain park I still hear, “Did you see that little boy go over that jump?!”

He can mountain bike and ski, but I still get to tuck him in at night, and he’ll still slip his hand into mine when we cross the street.

He has become modest enough to say, “I need privacy when I change my clothes!” And yet my reply has to be, “Then don’t change in the living room.”

>Doodely Do

>I taught Luke how to Doodely Do this weekend, and it was awesome. I suppose there are different definitions of doodely doing; it’s a method of picking up your house. It may mean shoving things into drawers, or throwing things away just to regain some semblance of surface order. (My brother’s 6th grade photos may have suffered the fate of the doodely do, never to be seen again. On the other hand, 6th grade is an awkward phase, so maybe it was like with Luke’s kindergarten picture, where if they made it into the recycling bin, it would have been accidentally on purpose. I used two of those photos with the summer camp application, and let’s just say he better not go missing because I do not want to see those photos on the news. Among other reasons, of course, lest I jinx myself.) I chose to implement the doodely do thusly: Luke and I ran around putting away toys as fast as possible. They needed to be put in the correct location, and you had to run to do it. It was sort of a good workout, and the living room was picked up in record time. Then we doodely did the laundry, and it turns out that Jack’s pjs ended up in Luke’s drawer, but no other problems have come to light so far.

So maybe Doodely Do is the new method for getting help from the kids. On the other hand, maybe he was just feeling helpful. First thing in the morning, he pretended that I was a king and he was my cook and he made me some muffins. (Delish.) Then later, when Luke was pretending to be a tiger, I convinced him to be a helpful tiger who does my bidding. So there you go, lot’s of ideas from my parenting repertoire, help yourself!

>Who Needs A Puppy?

>http://www.youtube.com/get_player

Jack keeps getting into the lazy susan, he never met a food scrap he didn’t like, he’s been known to did through guests purses to sneak snacks, and well, he barks at squirrels. Or gwirls, as he calls them. So we miss Bean, but sometimes we think he may be trying to speak to us through Jack.

Yesterday at breakfast there was a lot of barking (uf, uf) and pointing at the gwirls outside, so I had to get out the camera, even though Jack was covered in food. Too cute.

Then I tried to get him to film some of his other tricks. Jack loves to pretend to talk on the phone, and he loves to imitate sounds. The other day, he was making a weird sound while we were walking into the house and I stopped to listen. I determined he was imitating a train way off in the distance. Here, Dave is dialing the phone and he imitates that, then as soon as it rings, he has to pretend to answer. If you’ve been pranked by a baby recently from my cell phone, it may have been Jack. In other news, my cell phone no longer works.

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

>Books Read: 2009 Edition

>This will be a short post. I have read 1001 Arabian Nights. Yup, that’s it. One book of short stories in the whole year of 2009 a.d. I am not really sure what the deal is, but I think maybe I have a lot going on. Or else I am watching too much TV. I also don’t count non-fiction. One book that is taking away time from my fiction reading is Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. So far the results are mixed. Tastes great, looks weird.

I’ll be working on improving the bread every day, for five minutes.

The Pecan Caramel rolls, (from the same dough recipe) on the other hand, both looked at tasted delicious. The other book I am reading is Hello Cupcake. I started with an easy one.

Then I’ll work my way up to extremely complicated for Luke’s kindergarten class birthday party. What could possibly go wrong?

>Coffee, Sweet, Sweet Coffee

>Last Saturday, Luke had an 8:00 am basketball game. I had gotten up with Jack at 5am, and when I heard Luke’s alarm go off at 5:55, I was able to murkily figure out that his clock had been set an hour ahead. Luke ran upstairs already dressed and there was no way he’d be going back to sleep, so I just went for it. By 8:45, all the laundry had been folded, breakfasts made, eaten, and cleaned up, and Luke and I were 3 quarters into a basketball game. That’s when one of the parents said to me, “Meeeeeeegan. I’m outta coooooooooffeeeeee.” I said, “Me too. And mine was decaf.” And then it occurred to me that I don’t need to suffer from caffeine deprivation anymore just because 25 months later I have gotten pregnant, given birth and am nursing a toddler.

Fast forward to Sunday morning at the Southside Walnut Cafe, where I ordered a cappuccino. Fast forward again to 10 minutes later when I was saying to Dave, “Right now, I feel like everything in my life is totally perfect. I am so happy. I am almost worried that later I’ll feel just the opposite. This bliss seems so extreme.” Dave said, “What you are feeling right now, are the effects of caffeine. And yes, you will crash later.”

You may have gotten a combined Christmas-Birthday-thank-you-Valentine-package-of-Luke’s-art. That was the first thing that Luke and I did. Then we melted down crayons and made 12 heart shaped crayon necklaces. Then I did about 17 other things, and then I was looking at something on the bottom shelf at the grocery store and when I stood up the shelves got all wonky. It was a loooong bike ride home.

It seems like caffeine and I do better meeting occasionally. On Sundays. Let’s just say I organized a lot of closets today, and leave it at that.

Photo Credit

>If You Feel Yourself Starting to Blow Away, Grab Onto One of Your Friends

>“If You Feel Yourself Starting to Blow Away, Grab Onto One of Your Friends.” Those were the wise words in the announcement that was made at Luke’s school before lunch recess. I think lunch recess may have been around the time of the peak gust recorded by NREL for the last 24 hours. That would be 77.9 mph at 11:08 am.

I was holding onto a Target shopping cart around that time and hoping not to careen into a parked car. Dave’s building had a power outage and was running on the generator. I’m not a big fan of wind, so I was pretty glad I didn’t ride my bike to work today.

Charts and graphs courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Labs Wind Technology Center.