A Mannequin, SOS, and Batwing List

• I'm beginning to sympathize with the boy in The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except instead of freaking out villagers, I told Caedmon that mannequins come to life if you squeeze their hands just right.  And actually, it was Adelaide's idea in the first place, I just jumped in to elaborate, making the story more believable and giving it a bit of weight.  In our defense, we were at a sporting goods outlet, Derek was in the dressing room, and we were bored.  Plus Caedmon kept reaching up to shake the mannequins' hands, so the story kind of wove itself into being; Daughter and I just gave it a (slightly whimsical/menacing) voice.  Caedmon didn't even act that freaked out, and I figured he'd forgotten the whole thing until a few days ago when he made a sharp left turn in an otherwise normal conversation and suddenly asked, "Mom, were you just teasing me about squeezing those guys' hands?"  I clarified, asking him if he meant mannequins, which he did, then admitted that yes, I had been teasing.  Mannequins don't really come to life if you squeeze their hands.  (That we know of.)  Caedmon gave me a bit of a talking-to about teasing and how I basically shouldn't do it, then I didn't give it another thought, until I realized today that he's continuing to insist that Adelaide is still eight because he thinks I'm teasing him about her turning nine.  Nothing I say will persuade him otherwise.

This lady is my kind of people.

• Adelaide has started her own blog.  She's been talking about it for awhile; everyone got the chance to create one in a class at school, but I didn't know if anything would actually come of it until the other day when I passed over the laptop and she began laboriously typing the address.  I'd been a little unsure about letting our daughter have a steady online presence, but once I realized that she wouldn't be posting anything at school, only at home, my fears were more or less assuaged, not to mention the fact that anyone who is funny enough to name their blog "Social Outcast's Spot" has a voice that needs to be heard.  She's posted once, and my only input was to look it over to make sure she wasn't saying things like, "Tender nine-year-old midwestern morsel, here.  Here's my address, here's my favorite kind of candy, and here's the time and place that I'm probably most vulnerable.  Toodles!"  Thankfully she seems to have more sense than to put anything like that out there, but just in case I said the previous sentence to her pretty much verbatim, to which she rolled her eyes and gave me a mini-lecture on how I constantly underrate her level of intelligence.  First Caedmon, then her; I've been getting a lot of dressings down from our children lately.  I can't imagine why.

She gives me this look a lot.

• I received a text message after school today regarding an Amber Alert for Iowa.  I made the mistake of sharing this with our children, who proceeded to ask me ten thousand questions for which the only answers I had were "Dodge Neon.  Two-door.  Blue.  I don't know."  Caedmon refused to come inside for his snack but instead proceeded to sit on the front porch, hollering through the screen every time any car drove by that was not just blue but anywhere on the cool side of the color wheel.  He did the same thing on our walk to the library, alerting the other three of us by yelling, "A blue car!  THOSE COULD BE THE PEOPLE THAT STOLE THE KID!"  Every car to whom his ire and suspicion was directed did, of course, have their windows rolled down.  Not one was a Dodge Neon, or even blue, for that matter.  Still:  Although it was State of Iowa officials who found the missing persons, Batwing was on patrol.

Currently Loving Vs Not So Much

We haven't had a list on here in at least a week or five days or something, right?  Let's correct that.


My Current Favorite Things:

• Kale.  There's a local restaurant that has a salad on its menu right now that consists of kale, feta cheese, apple slivers, dried cranberries, candied pecan bits, and grilled chicken, and it is so. freaking. good.  I've managed to re-create it at home, but because I'm lazy and don't want to spend time doing things like actually cooking chicken or candying nuts or slicing granny smith apples into matchsticks I've discovered that if you just get a little bit of kale, a little feta cheese, and a cranberry on each forkful you have the perfect combination of sweet, salty, and fresh.  I'm not always so great at eating my veggies, so this is a good thing for me.  Anyone know anything about growing kale?  I'd like to put it in our garden this year if at all possible.  

• Adelaide's eyes.  She's had sporadic headaches recently and has been complaining of some blurry vision; I was all set to ignore her anyway until she pointedly asked me to make her an appointment with the eye doctor.  We went this morning, and her vision is fine (Hallelujah!).  I asked the doc if, given Derek's astigmatism and having to get glasses in kindergarten and my extreme myopia and having to get glasses in third grade, we should really be on the lookout for vision problems in the near future, and he said that you just never really know- some kids have parents with perfect sight but have terrible vision themselves, and vice versa.  Here's hoping for some super-strong recessive genes from our kids' glasses-free grandparents and a mini-miracle (I'm looking at you, God)!

• I get to see my sisters and their families in three weeks.  This is a good thing.

• I found a cache of winter clothing that I bought for Adelaide at a garage sale over the summer hiding in the back of the closet.  They still have their $1 and $.50 stickers on them- I don't know who was more excited, Adelaide or me.  She randomly has a whole new wardrobe.  I'm still waiting for this to happen to me.  

• Our boys.  Specifically, our boys and food.  Yesterday I opened a drawer to get a pen and piece of paper and instead found a three-day-old, half-eaten slice of pizza resting atop the paper clips.  I took it out and was getting ready to throw it away when an indignant Caedmon spotted me and cried, "HEY!  Dat's my snack!  Don't frow away my snack!"  This morning, the boys and I were upstairs playing (because it's much warmer upstairs than down), when Atticus disappeared for five minutes.  When he came back up, he was chewing something.  We don't really snack much and I like to monitor what the boys eat between meals, so I was a little surprised and asked him what he was eating and why.  His response:  "I just had to go downstairs and get a spoon and eat some peanut butter because my stomach was so hungry it was about to eat the rest of my body." 

• You guys.  Adelaide had been begging to write a blog post for a couple weeks, and when I finally caved, she did nearly all of it herself:  She took the photos, I uploaded them and showed her how to put them on the blog, then showed her where to type and which buttons to click to publish, then held myself back from correcting every little thing.  Then you guys came along and commented and commented on her post, and she was absolutely thrilled.  You all are the nicest people ever.  Ever.  

• Books.  Because, well, they're books, but also because it's so unbearably cold outside, and is there anything better than curling up with a book and rejoicing in the fact that we live in the age of central heating?  

Tomorrow:  My Not-So-Favorite Things Right Now.  Good luck getting to sleep tonight with that on your mind.

My first horses.

This is not Mommy's  blogging.I GLAZED MY FIRST HORSES!They are beauties.I just love them.If you   see them you will have to admit that they are beautiful.I'm honest.You'll love them.One represents wildlife.It has different wild animal patterns.Here are the three.Cheetahs tigers and zebras.Oh well.Here they are.

Isn't it beautiful?  

                                          The end. Adelaide.