Ham

Sawyer has always been the hide-behind-my-leg kinda kid when we walk into a room. You'll also remember that he was the angel that cried at last year's Christmas Pageant. When we walked into his preschool today, I noticed that they had built a small stage and apparently had been playing "actor" all week. The teachers read aloud books and the children act out the parts and even say some lines. So, guess who their number one actor is? Really. Can you guess? I was FLOORED when Miss Molly told me that OUR Sawyer is the first one with his hand up desperately waving in the air "ooooh-oooooh-oooooh pick me pick me" and that he not only says a few words like the other kids do he recites entire lines, sonnets even. Then, again, I look at his genes (you know who you are people) and I wonder why this should surprise me. I guess I wouldn't be shocked if this kind of behavior was occurring within the confines of our home. But, this is public, people. PUBLIC.

Boo!

Months ago, the One Step Ahead catalog — Halloween Edition — showed up in our mailbox. Sawyer flipped through the first few pages, pointed to a costume. And said: "I want to be [THAT]!"

Months went by. We moved. Halloween was pretty much at the bottom of my list. Until last week when I realized that if I didn't get a move on, Sawyer would not only NOT be THAT for Halloween, he would just be plain Sawyer, dressed as himself.

I started frantically looking around and discovered that THAT must be the single most popular Halloween costume for boys ages 3-5. There were none to be found online, anywhere. I tried to talk him into something else. A backup plan perhaps. He would have none of it. He looked at the picture online again and said he wanted to be THAT and only THAT.

So on his way across Kansas, Scott took the time to call all the Target stores on I-70 between the Colorado State Line and Empire. And, wouldn't you know it, he found THAT in Sawyer's size somewhere outside Denver and had the salesclerk set it aside for him.

Meanwhile, Arden could really care less what she is for Halloween, and so I instructed Scott to find something that was neither fairylike nor princess-ish, since i figure we'll get plenty of THAT in the years to come. I also ruled out ducks, pumpkins and bumblebees anything too mainstream babyish — which effectively limited him to one costume in the whole store.

When Scott arrived home with the costumes, the kids did not react quite the way he had hoped. Well, Arden could really have cared less. And, Sawyer . . . do you see where this is going . . . Sawyer leaned over to me and said, "Mommy, I don't want to wear THAT."

Typically, he was scared of his own costume.

Scott promised that he'd have Sawyer wearing THAT around the next day and, low and behold, I haven't been able to peel the costume off him since.

If you are wondering, yet, what THAT is, I guess you'll just have to wait to be surprised.

Happy Halloween . . . almost.

Wooo Woooo!

I've lived in a military town, a government town, a college town, a mining town, a fishing town and, now, a railroad town. I love how the train clocks my day from a distance as it heads into the mountains or the canyons. I love that there is a passenger train twice a day. I love the anticipation in any drive, wondering: Will we see a train? Will it be a working train? A people train? I love that for all the times I've called him an engineer, Sawyer wants to literally be an engineer when he grows up.

In Like a Lion

This video is messed up. Will repair and repost.

If there haven't been enough obstacles to Scott's westward move to date, a huge winter storm — with lightening — swept through the area at the precise moment he was crossing the 11.315 foot Berthoud Pass with a fully loaded truck and trailer. It had yet to snow in Granby proper, but today we had sun, rain, sleet, snow, pea-sized hail, wind, lightening and thunder in the course of an hour. And on Thursday the Middle Park Times predicted: "mostly sunny, warmer with highs in the 50s." It was a weather anomaly for the record books. What a way to arrive!

Things I left behind

In the insanity that occurred the day we loaded up the U-haul and Scott pulled out of the driveway, I forgot to pack a few things that would have been handy to have on this side of the Great Divide during the past four weeks. To name a few:

• Kitchen knives. (I've been using a 1-inch pocket knife blade to cut everything.)
• Shoes. (I have two pairs: Crocs and cowboy boots.)
• Jackets. (I didn't bring a single jacket, which makes life interesting when it's 34 degrees outside. I've been getting creative with a fleece Melanzana vest over blazers and the really awesome scarf my mother-in-law knitted me.)

On the other hand, I've been surviving just fine without a lot of the stuff that's not here and I'm wondering why I couldn't part with so many of those boxes.

Adams Falls

The Adventure:


The Reward:

Long time gone

Apparently I've used that post title before. The cliches just pour out of me, I can't help it. To update you, after Scott finished scraping the scum off the refrigerator shelves, hauling (most) of the trash to the dump and touching up paint, his truck decided to crap out. To quote Sawyer: "AGAIN!" About every six months or so we have to throw some major cash into the Beast, a big black 1999 Ford F250 with 180,000 miles that's jacked up high enough for Shaquille O'Neil. But, it's paid off and, since Scott's still unemployed, we don't really have another option. This time it was the mainframe computer. Go figure that a computer can leave a truck dead on the side of the road. A week and a half later, plus some major oral surgery to remove an infected wisdom tooth, Scott is sitting at my parent's cottage in the Northern Neck twiddling his thumbs with no way even to get to the grocery store. He's waiting for . . . well . . . waiting for the Northern Neck, if you know what I mean. Things get done when they get done and impatience just isn't tolerated. No t.v. No Internet. Just the dog for company.

Meanwhile, I've gone Martha in my single momhood. Really. I don't know what's come over me. Tomorrow I'm planning to take the kids on a hike in the morning. And then I'm cooking a baked chicken and sweet potato dinner (I'm thinking about putting marshmallows on top to make the kids eat them) and I'm baking . . . no, wait . . . BAKING! pumpkin bread for dessert. I do laundry every night and get on my hands and knees after dinner to wash the kitchen floor. I do think the altitude has caused me to go mad. Also, just to top it off, I love my new job. Not only do I get to edit stories and layout pages up against deadline — love the faster pace — I'm also cranking out two or three stories for every paper (three times a week). I'm in overdrive. Other than a few low moments with the kids, like the pukorama weekend or the 5 am screaming Arden wake-up calls or Sawyer's nuclear meltdown in the grocery store parking lot that sent several women running to help me because apparently I looked like I was in over my head, I'm really happy.

Scott hasn't really been a part of our day-to-day lives in the past year, so it doesn't seem that different having him gone. Over the past year, and especially the last month, I've learned that I can do this alone, something I wasn't so sure of before. I can do it alone, and everyone is surviving just fine. But, now, I'm looking forward to finding out what it's like NOT having to do it alone. To have a companion in the craziness, good and bad. To bring back the male dimension, the Yang. It isn't going to be easy. A year feels like a lifetime, especially to the kids. There's going to be a major adjustment when Dad arrives. It's going to be a challenge, but I'm hoping that we'll all be better for it in the long run, and that ultimately we'll be a stronger family.

What happens when it's too quiet

Lately my kids have found a knack for getting "into stuff" so quickly and so completely that it makes my head spin. A lot of it has to do with the move. When I was packing up the old house, Sawyer got into a stack of board games in Justin's room that hadn't quite found their way into a box yet. In a matter of minutes he had Justin's entire floor carpeted with a mismatch of Trivial Pursuit, Taboo and Pictionary game cards. It took three adults an hour to sort the mess back into proper piles. On this end of the move, in the time it took me to go upstairs to grab my hat and scarf, the kids tore apart an old 3-inch floppy disk they found in an open box and Sawyer came screaming and crying to me with a small metal spring from the disk somehow punctured into his finger. I didn't even know those things had springs. The other day, as I was coming down with the stomach bug and everyone else was recovering, I needed like five minutes of alone time. While the kids were engrossed in a movie, I crept upstairs to my room to lie down on the bed, and things were actually quiet downstairs for about three minutes. All the sudden, Arden, who I had overheard saying something about needing milk, appeared next to me with an entire 3/4-full gallon jug in her hands that she had somehow heaved up a flight of 15 stairs. I got up and headed downstairs to find her a cup and discovered this in the kitchen:



It makes me laugh how people baby-proof for 3-month-olds. It should be called kid-proofing. The apple was in the fridge in the vegetable drawer and the straws were up on the counter (not near the edge mind you), It was the first thing the kid had eaten in two days, so I had to cut him a break. Besides, his preschool teachers would be very proud. This puts potato clocks to shame.

Swindled

We all bounced back quickly from the weekend's stomach bug, but now I'm in a total tizzy over the Swine Flu situation. I've NEVER bought into hype, but after covering this story, I'm pretty freaked. Maybe not so much that my kids are going to die, which — let's face it — they could, but that if somebody caught it tomorrow I could be home with sick kids and my sick self and still paying for daycare for THREE weeks! I mean, let's get practical people. I can't afford Swine Flu. So, I'm seriously considering getting the shots when they are "released" next week. They are being carefully "released" by the state government, which makes me highly suspect . . . again, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but why dole the stuff out like trick-or-treat candy when 60 kids in a 200 kid school are out with the flu this week alone? By the time they finish distributing the stuff mid-January, most of us will either have already survived it or died of it.

Typical

There are no photos to describe what the past 24 hours have been like for me. So you will just have to use your imagination. The photo here is from a hike two weeks ago with our friend Mary, who visited from the Northern Neck the weekend we arrived.

A very old and dear friend from Salida came to visit me in Granby Friday night. I have seen her only a handful of times since moving away from Colorado and this was to be the first time she would meet my children. Since she doesn't have children of her own and isn't the world's biggest fan of little kids, I was hoping my children would win her over with their charm, wit and utter cuteness. Or at least not be brats.

Five minutes before she arrived, Sawyer said he wasn't hungry, his tummy hurt and he couldn't wait for my friend anymore, it was time to go to bed. (It was almost 6 p.m). I should have seen the warning signs. I should have bolted the door. I should have known.

My friend walked through the door, said hello and set her bags down, and Sawyer promptly welcomed her by exploding from both ends all over the upstairs bathroom. Arden, terrified that I was leaving her with yet another stranger, clung to me screaming while I tried to keep her a safe distance from the contamination. My poor friend sat downstairs, made us some dinner and probably texted her husband several times requesting a rescue mission.

Sawyer was up about every hour for the rest of the night, alternating between vomiting and crying for water, which kept both me and Arden awake. Arden, who was bunking with me due to the puke-o-rama next door, ran around the bedroom munching on Ritz Crackers and drinking milk at 2 a.m. while I desperately tried to sleep a for even two minutes. Meanwhile, something I had eaten was churning in my stomach, and I was trying to imagine how I was going to do this sick and alone.

Eight loads of laundry later, sometime around 4:30 am, I still hadn't slept. Sawyer was finally holding down water but Arden was now too punchy to sleep. She was wailing at the top of her lungs — absolutely and uncontrollably hysterical in a way I have NEVER seen her — and I was facing one of those deep abysses of parenthood. Nothing I did helped. I was completely exhausted and concerned about my poor friend who had sequestered herself in my room, not to mention the neighbors who could probably hear the racket through the walls.

I carried Arden downstairs, bundled her up and did something I've never done in 3 years of parenting. I put her in the car and drove around the neighborhood. Twice. I just crossed my fingers that Sawyer wouldn't wake up. It worked like magic and I got her back to my room. Put her down in my bed and then crashed on her crib mattress in Sawyer's room. An hour-and-a-half later, everybody was up again and for good.

Sawyer seemed to have made a big recovery and was chatting with my friend downstairs, but Arden was still miserable, crying and clingy. I got the kids to sit down on the couch and watch a movie long enough to allow me a shower. That wonderful, refreshing shower lasted for about five minutes before Arden puked all over me and the bathroom.

My brave friend stuck it out, despite my suggestion that she should feel free to leave us with our own misery. She went for a run and, when the kids seemed somewhat stable, I decided we needed a long drive to conquer this day. We headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. Both kids cried and fussed through the whole thing, but we did manage a short walk. Everyone cat napped on and off in the car, and by the time we got home I was exhausted. The three of us passed out together on the couch while my friend was in the shower.

I woke up several hours later, somewhat refreshed, drank coffee, put my on game face. Only then did I realize that my friend had left . . . hightailed it back to saner places. The kids, of course, were now perky and jovial and playing nicely. They took a mellow bath and went to sleep promptly at 7 pm without the slightest sound. Of course, my friend will never believe me.

All I can do is laugh. No wonder there are about a million sayings for it. Murphy's Law. Par for the course. Typical. Really, I should have known that I was setting myself up. Of course I would have the worst night in three years of parenting on the same night it mattered to me the most that my kids were good and wonderful. What's that saying: If you want to hear God laugh, announce your plans.

I talked to the friend later on the phone and she swears she's coming back soon. We'll see about that, but I'm sure I pretty much drove that last nail in the coffin for her as far as having kids is concerned. Honestly, at this point, I'm kinda wondering about it myself.

UPDATE: Sunday night. The universe is laughing at me. I thought I was going to escape this one. Ha. That wouldn't be enough of a challenge. Moving across the country with the kids alone, starting a new job and new schools and then dealing with sickness all weekend, no sleep. Cakewalk. Let's see how I handle it all when I'm puking too. Tried to get the kids to bed before it started. They, of course, would have nothing to do with it. Wish me luck. It's gonna be another long night.

Simply for the expression

Uncle Ross once told me that he didn't smile for 23 years because when he was 3-years-old, I told him he had a funny smile in pictures. I can't even get Sawyer to smile for the camera most days, so after I took this shot, I told him he had a funny smile. It was a joke, of course, but my brother turned dead serious and said: Don't ever tell him that again. Sawyer, on the other hand, thought it was pretty funny and couldn't help but crack a smile. We hope to see a lot more of Uncle Ross who finds himself in Denver for work on a regular basis. Sawyer thought his uncle was oh-so-fun and cried three minutes after we parted ways: I miss Uncle Ross!

The other half

While we are having these GRAND COUNTY adventures, Scott is still in Pierce-ville dealing with cleaning the house, packing up the last of the stuff and taking care of a rather long 'honey-do' list on the house before the renters move in Oct. 10. He's feeling left behind (stranded in Pierce-ville as he writes) and is bummed to be missing all the firsts - first hike, first snow, first sight of Colorado peaks. But, he shouldn't be too bummed to be missing first night of High Altitude Insomnia or the second night, or the third. Nor should he feel too bummed to be missing out on Arden's first week sleeping on a mattress on the floor (a.k.a. trampoline). Or Sawyer's long stream (excuse the pun) of potty accidents this week. I'm sure it's not fun place to be, left behind to scrape the sticky stuff off the refrigerator shelves. There's no glory in hauling trash and bagging up empty hangers off the closet rods. I have to give him props too, because he's already made one haul across country to rent the house and move all our stuff in so that when we arrived last Saturday we could pretty much just lay down our heads. (And his reward for getting all that crap done will be the opportunity to make a second haul across country with a truck that has 180,000 miles pulling a trailer!) We are routing for him to get it all done this week and to sell those last few anchors weighing him down in order to get on the road! He has mountains to conquer in the process, both literal and metaphorical, but it will be well worth it in the end. Here's a little cheer from the stands. Go Daddy Go!



ps - Mimi's birthday is in January and Pop Pop's is in August. So go figure.