A List

• First, something that's been bothering me:  In a recent post, I stated that tea is nasty.  And I do think some forms of tea are nasty:  unsweetened iced tea, regular black tea, just about any type of tea that tastes like actual tea leaves and hasn't been otherwise flavored.  However.  I drink tea most nights when it's cold outside, but it's this stuff:

Does herbal tea even count?  Are there bona fide tea leaves in herbal tea?  These are the questions that burn through my brain.  I mostly just drink it because it's warming and smells amazing (I spend more time with my face above the mug vigorously inhaling than I do actually drinking) and, with a tiny drizzle of honey, tastes like a treat- a caffeine-free, sugar-free (well, without the honey), everything-free treat.

I feel so much better.  My conscience is once again light as a feather.

• A friend generously gave us a sack of hand-me-down costumes at church last week.

Caedmon has worn that muscle-bound suit for five straight days now.  On Wednesday he ran into the library, tore his coat off, then announced to everyone who was surely just waiting for him to arrive, "IT'S JUST A COSTUME.  These aren't my real muscles.  But I am really Batman."  We went to go have lunch with Adelaide at school Thursday, and he wore the suit "so I can show all the lunch people, if I have time."  This entire post is brought to you courtesy of my procrastination, because that kid needs a bath but I don't yet feel up to wrestling him out of that padded costume he's wearing even now.  Caedmon is very wriggly.

More scenes from his muscle-bound week:

Batman reading about himself with his Daddy, and below, playing Don't Lose Your Head!  

In truth the above photo was a happy accident of perspective; Caedmon was a good three feet away from that sword and this photo catches him mid-stride as he runs through the house and past the sword, gasping for breath.  Derek was... being an over-sized boy playing with a sword, I guess.  Or a fun dad.  Or both.

• I got the best birthday present a couple weeks ago:

My dad got me an Amazon gift card for my birthday back in early December.  Now, I don't know if you know this, but there's a lot of stuff to choose from on Amazon.  It can be the tiniest bit overwhelming.  So I've spent the past month thinking and thinking and then thinking some more, before I finally found it.  A library embosser.

This is a fantastic gift idea for the bookworm in your life.  It can be surprisingly hard to buy an actual book for such people, as they go through them so fast and people's tastes vary so much, but a library embosser allows them to mark their own literary territory, so to speak, so they (hopefully) get all those books they tend to loan out to friends back someday.  Plus it looks pretty dang snazzy for only $20.

The end.

A Purposeful Paucity of Lists

I've been trying to wean myself off of lists.

Not in general, but here, on the blog.  I've been leaning so hard on them that, combined with the cheery nature of my Five Things Fridays lists, I've begun to feel a bit like Tiny Tim with his crutch and his "God bless us, every one!"  I'm afraid that down this list-strewn path lay the inability to form a cohesive story and an attention span that lasts no longer than four sentences.

So far all that's come of this is a certain paralysis anytime I think about the blog.  I know it may often seem as if my upper limbs engaged in an ill-advised date with the rototiller and this blog is written by two bandaged stumps merrily smashing away at the keyboard.  (They have unerring aim for the bullet point button.). There is a certain amount of thought that goes into these posts, however, and yet take away my list format, and all I can think about is how for a time my sister believed our dad was the Zodiac Killer.  This sounds absurd, unless you actually know my dad- not that he's the type of person you meet and think,  I bet you drive a sketchy white paneled van, because he's actually very charming and funny and makes a mean pot of chili.  It's just that he's also a little eccentric and has serial killer handwriting, plus he's a crack shot- I mean, I'm sure if his neighbors were informed of his newfound criminal status at first they'd be like, "WHAT?  No way! He's such a nice guy!"  But then after a day or so they'd start saying, " Yeah, I can see that."  Kelli did eventually decide our father is not a mass murderer (phew!), although not before I read a murder mystery where the demented villain just happens to share the first and last names of my father.  But then, so does one of our local meteorologists.  I don't know what that says about the weather guy- I'd have to see his handwriting.

Haha!  I did it! It's barely coherent, but I wrote a list-less post.  Not listless, you understand, just lacking a list.

A List

• Isn't it strange how little things can evoke sudden and unexpected pangs of nostalgia?  There's a pastor at our church that occasionally preaches in the regular service, and more than once I've heard him pronounce the word "wolf" the same way my dad does: "woof," with no detectable 'L' sound.  I remember for a while Dad worked with a man named "Wolfgang" who went by the nickname "Wolf," or "Woof" in the case of my dad.  This was endlessly amusing to me, no doubt because word pronunciation was something I could understand, as opposed to talk of thermodynamics and the ever-present injection molding machines, which might just be the most boring topic of conversation in the entire world, unless of course you're a plastics engineer, in which case they're apparently fascinating.

• Derek and I got to go on a date the other day.  We went out for lunch, then did some last minute Christmas shopping, along with the rest of the population of central Iowa.  I was distracted half the time by the blaring music (why do so many places insist on blasting your eardrums with their poor choice of music?    I thought music played in restaurants and stores was supposed to be subtle, something to set a certain tone to your eating or shopping experience.  Am I just getting old and cranky?) of horrible- horrible- popular renditions of traditional Christmas music.  After listening to some talent-less pop star breathe her way through Let It Snow and some other current music flunky growl an almost incomprehensible, electric guitar studded version of Oh, Christmas Tree, I decided that unless your first name is Nat, Bing, Judy, Dean, Ella, Frank, or Harry, you should not be allowed to record Christmas music of any kind.  I can think of a few rare exceptions, and perhaps you can, too, but in the future any playing of those is going to need to be approved by me in advance, because my opinion is always the right one.  Obviously.

• It snowed last night.  And this morning.  In fact, it's still lightly snowing now.  Not a lot, we've accumulated somewhere in the four- to five-inch range, but enough to give us a white Christmas.  Oh!  And here's the forecast for tomorrow:

This is just fine with me, as I don't have to leave the house.  Derek does.  Poor Derek.  He also had to get up at 5:30 this morning before church to clear all that snow on our sidewalk and driveway.  He also took care of our neighbor's sidewalk.  Poor Derek.  Nice Derek.  

Another reason I don't mind that forecast is that I've finally learned how to layer!  In the past I thought "layering" meant wearing a long-sleeved shirt with maybe a short-sleeved shirt underneath.  Then I moved north.  Right now I'm wearing lined pants with long johns underneath, a sweater, a heavy cable-knit cardigan, thick socks with slippers, a scarf, and a knit hat.  I may look homeless, but I'm warm.  

• And finally, something that made me laugh and laugh and laugh.  It's very name is pure adorableness.  And yes, that's a word now, if only because of this video.  Be sure to turn your audio up before pressing play so you can force everyone around you to share in your joy.

          Adorable Talking Porcupine Loves Pumpkin

 

To Future Caedmon

Hey there, Future Caedmon.


I'm writing this because I realize that there may come a day when you don't want to look exactly like your Dad; when you think all his attire is totally square (or dumb or lame or whatever word the cool kids are currently using to denote a negative connotation- I don't know what the current "it" word is now and I'm sure I won't know it in the future- and if I do, you should definitely be checking to make sure I'm not a body double sent down to earth by the aliens who now have me captive.  Try scanning my forearms for numerous burn scars from years of clumsy baking [BUT I'M NOT GOING TO SAY EXACTLY WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE IN CASE YOU'RE READING THIS, ALIEN BODY SNATCHERS] ).

If that day has arrived, I'd just like to remind you of simpler times- like any given Saturday morning here in present day Iowa when Daddy opens the door to your bedroom to get you out of your crib, and although you have a silly, faux scowl on your face that you use on me every day, when you see that it's Daddy in the doorway your face just can't help but break into a delighted grin.  And after he lifts you out of bed and eats breakfast with you and it's time to get dressed, you carefully watch as Daddy puts on each item of clothing and take your wardrobe cues from him:  jeans because Daddy's wearing jeans, the same color socks, shirt, and sweater as Daddy, and a hat you managed to find when you saw Daddy was wearing one.  You're kind of like this loyal, devoted dog following Derek around.  And I mean that in the best way possible.

You don't even like smiling for pictures these days, but when "Cheese" and "Cookie" didn't work, I had a stroke of inspiration:  "Caedmon, say, 'Daddy!'"

It worked.

Love, 

Your Second-Favorite Parent

I Did Not See This Coming

This week's edition of what I didn't anticipate ever seeing in my children:

Atticus

As I've stated many times before, I didn't have any brothers growing up, so when our first son came along, my expectations of what "little boy" meant may or may not have been largely based on what I'd read about in books and seen on television sitcoms.  I don't remember any of those (fictional) boys having a heavy interest in clothes, and yet Atticus insists on picking out his own clothes every day (except for church, I've put my foot down there), which means that most days you'll see him walking around in jeans (he doesn't care for wind pants: "I don't like making noise when I walk, Mom."  You're four years old- who cares?), his Vikings jersey (if it's clean), Spiderman socks, and a red necktie.  Except I don't know how to tie a necktie, so it's just slung around his neck.  I suppose I should just be happy his taste is leaning more toward sporty/dapper and away from sleepwear/drag queen.

Caedmon

Also preoccupied with clothes; our youngest, however, doesn't seem to care as much about cultivating his own sense of fashion as he does about looking as much like Daddy as possible.  A while back, Derek had gotten dressed, and Caedmon spent a few moments inspecting his dad's outfit, then announced that he, too, wanted to wear his blue sweater with a Vikings shirt underneath it.  On the 5-6 days a week he can't wear that particular outfit, he asks me (all.day.long) where his blue sweater is, and where his purple vikings shirt is, and why he is not wearing them.  His tone is always vaguely accusatory, too, like I'm the only thing standing between him and complete oneness with Daddy.  

Adelaide

A couple days ago, we were listening to music after supper when Atticus asked to have a song repeated.  I did so, then he asked to listen to it again, in part because he loves the song, but also because "Mom, this is the song the other Atticus sings!"  I decided that it was okay, but that this was the last time.  Adelaide groaned and said, "Mom, now he's never going to stop singing that song, and you don't have to share a room with him and hear it all night long!"  I assured her he would probably forget all about it.  She didn't believe me.  About thirty minutes after bedtime, I went up to check on them.  As I walked up the stairs, I could hear Atticus singing, "I will wait, I will wait, for you!  *ten second pause* I will wait, I will wait, for you!  *ten second pause* I will wait, I will wait, for you!"  I peeked around their bedroom door, and was greeted with the sight of Atticus building a block tower, singing happily, and his loving big sister, wedged in the corner, hands clapped over her ears, glaring at her brother, a look of deep loathing on her face.  

I don't really know why I didn't expect that.  I remember plotting ways to kill my sister in the longest and most torturous fashion possible every time she uttered the word, "Jubilaka."  (Oh, what does that word mean, you ask?  NOTHING.  It means NOTHING.  Or, in childhood Kelli's case, it meant everything.  "I just feel so Jubilaka."  "Oh, Jubilaka, I dropped my spaghetti again!"  "Jubilaka, no school today!")

Adelaide also has a game she plays at school with a friend of hers.  It's called "Cheetahs."  In this game, they pretend to be cheetahs.  (Revolutionary, I know.)  These cheetahs have special powers, but mostly they're just cheetahs.  This is fine.  She can play that game aaaalll she wants at school.  But when she comes home and refuses to speak to me in anything but yowls and snarls because "Cheetahs don't speak human," and she slinks around the house on all fours, hissing at her brothers, it's not going to take long for this mother to wish she had a rifle and permit to hunt cheetahs.  

Kids are weird.

Another Belated Birthday Post

Hey guys.

Sorry I haven't been posting.  We've been busy- I'm sure you can relate.

Here's a post I meant to write for Derek's birthday.  Which was a week ago.  Whoops.


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In honor of Derek's birthday, I'm going to jot down a little conversation I had with Adelaide a few weeks ago:


"Hey, Mom?  You shouldn't worry about Daddy being the boys' favorite parent.  It's really just because they get to see you all the time, like all day, and they only get to see Daddy in the evenings and on the days he doesn't work.  Well, and it's also probably because he chases them around and plays golf and running soccer ball with them, and because he jumps out and scares them.  And because he builds stuff with them.  And because he lets them watch football on tv.  And he makes really good omelets... but you really shouldn't feel bad."

"Thanks Adelaide.  You're such a comfort to me."

Happy (Belated) Birthday to my husband and the favorite parent!

Mother-Son Bonding

Caedmon is becoming more independent.

He's 22 months old now- which means in two short months, he will be two years old.

Two, two, two, two.

More and more often, he's asking to walk.  When I'm carrying him, when I try to put him in shopping carts, anytime he sees his older siblings walking.

He doesn't want to sit in his high chair anymore.  I try to let him sit at the table with Atticus and Adelaide at lunchtime, because it's just not happening at supper- he's still way too messy.

He hates being told he's too little- especially when it pertains to something the A-team are currently involved in.


One of the few times he still lets me baby him a bit is at naptime and bedtime.  I read him a couple books of his choosing, pick him up, and he permits me a few seconds of cuddling before lunging for his crib, signifying our time together is over.

Today's naptime was the same.  We read one of his favorites by Sandra Boynton followed by Goodnight Moon, put the books away, and I picked him up.  He must have been feeling especially generous today; I got a good thirty seconds of swaying him back and forth as he sucked on his fingers.  I decided to make the most of this moment and softly said, "I love you, Caedmon."

He picked his head up off my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and replied,

"Where Daddy?"


Hmph.  "Daddy's at work."

"Daddy-work-home-buppertime?"

"Yes, Daddy's at work, but he won't be home at suppertime tonight; it will be a bit later."

"Okay."

I laid him in his crib, and began to rub his back, the way I normally do for a few brief moments before exiting the room.  Today, however, he said, "No, I do it," and did his best to wrench his arm around and rub himself on the back while lying on his belly.


As I stood in the doorway, preparing to leave his room, I tried one last time.

"Goodnight, Caedmon.  I love you."

"Daddy work?"

Sigh.  "Yes, Daddy's at work.  I love you!"

"I want Daddy."

"GOOD NIGHT, CAEDMON."


Any guesses how our bedtime routine will go tonight?

Random Thoughts

As we knew it would be, it was an extremely busy weekend.  As a result, my mental processes are all discombobulated and my thoughts are scattered.  I feel like if I could just catch hold of one, I'd be able to pin it down and work it into something coherent.

Since that doesn't seem likely, how about a fun list to help me make some sense of what's going on in my head?  And you lucky dogs can come along for the ride.

• We (and by "we," I mean Derek and his dad) ripped the cabinets out of our kitchen.  We discovered a couple layers of awesome wallpaper, awesome linoleum, plaster, scary holes, and wood paneling.  I'd love to see what this kitchen looked like in the 60's; if the wallpaper and flooring are any indication, I'd say pretty darn amazing.  And by amazing I mean incredibly ugly.

• When Derek's parents generously offered to give us the cabinets out of their rental property that had burned down (well, except for the kitchen, of course), I said, "Yes, please!"  Do you know how much kitchen cabinets cost?  Well, neither do I, but I do hear they're really freaking expensive.  

• Although the cabinets made it through the fire, they are coated in a thin layer of soot, which is not so surprisingly difficult to get off.  After watching my old standby of vinegar and water fail miserably, I was contemplating using an actual manufactured cleaner (gasp!), when I decided to try give my magic eraser a try.  Let me tell you what, the person that named that product was no marketing genius; those things seriously have some kind of magical properties- I wouldn't be surprised to find that J.K. Rowling herself had written them into existence.  

• After Derek's parents stayed way later than they intended, re-hooking up our dishwasher, sink, etc, they finally headed back to Kansas.  Ten minutes after they left, Caedmon found a container of screws and created two large piles of them- one on the floor in front of the back door, the other by the front door.  I can't help but feel that this was no accident, and that the poor child may have inherited some of his mother's paranoia.  His sharp screw-booby trap reminded me rather forcefully of my sister's- only hers involved upside-down shoes, sharp high heels pointing upward to ward off any intruders.  While I won't say precisely which parent we inherited this tendency from, I will say it's not my mom that sleeps with a gun under her pillow.

• I was again reminded of just how useless I am when it comes to home improvement.  I'm terrible with power tools and have a tendency to break things.  My major contributions to the weekend involved sweeping the floor every ten minutes in an effort to appear useful and whimpering every time Derek asked me to go down to the basement for something.

• What does the expression, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" mean?  What's a gift horse?  Is it like the Easter bunny, breaking into your house to leave you unhealthy gifts, or more like the tooth fairy, giving you money in exchange for body parts?  Can anyone enlighten me?

• Shortly after midnight last night, Adelaide woke Derek and me up by knocking on our bedroom door, crying softly.  She said her ear hurt and she couldn't sleep due to the pain.  I gave her some Tylenol, water, and sympathy, and tucked her back into bed.  After eventually falling back asleep, I had a nightmare, in which I took Adelaide to the doctor the next morning, and when he inspected her ear, instead of an infection, he found a cancerous tumor.  After a drawn-out illness, Adelaide died.  I woke to a sopping wet pillowcase; I had been crying in my sleep.  When we actually went to the doc this morning, there was no tumor in her ear.  Nor was there any infection.

• Derek's folks also took our children home after the first church service Sunday morning, which allowed me to sit with Derek in the video room during second service while he directed the video broadcast of our church's Easter service.  It was the closest thing we've had to a date since last November.  

• Garage sale season has once again begun.  I've already found some really cool- and really cheap, which only adds to its cool factor- stuff.  I won't bore you with the details.  Not today, anyway.  I'll save that for another post that you can already plan on skipping now.

Random Thoughts

The Crislers have spent the past week and a half celebrating Christmas by spending approximately 26 combined hours traveling in the car.  I had fully intended on sitting down in front of our computer and tapping out a post today to try and make up for the blog silence over the past two weeks, but I'm not gonna lie:  I got nothin'.

There's just too much stuff going on in my head right now; I can't seem to separate individual thoughts long enough to try and express any single one in the short story fashion appropriate for this blog.  So instead, I'm going to use this post as a kind of exercise in the hopes that when I'm done, my mind will be a little clearer, and I'll be able to go about my day and be a little more productive.


1.  Today is Derek's birthday.  I really need to hurry up and get his cake frosted/ get the pork loin in the crockpot for the pulled pork sandwiches/ have the kids make something crafty as a cute gift.

2.  Mmmm, pulled pork.    MMMMM, Head Country Barbeque Sauce.

3.  Atticus makes the best camera faces.

"Thank you Jeeeeesus for sugar cookies!"

4.  I got to see so many beloved friends and family over the past couple weeks, including my sister Kelli, who is pregnant and due with her and her husband's first baby at the end of February.  I am super duper excited about this baby, not least of all because I think she's going to be ridiculously cute, and also because I finally get to be the one loving on and squeezing a sweet little baby, then giving it back and going home to get some sleep.

5.  My baby sister Steph is also pregnant and due with her first baby in May.  I'm also excited about this baby, but my feelings are a little different about Steph having a baby.  This is probably due to the fact that Steph is my baby sister.  I remember changing her diapers.  I remember using a warm wet washcloth to clean the gunk off of her over-active-tear-duct-eyes so that she could open them in the morning.  I still call her things like Shteffer Beffer.  She can't have a baby; she's still a baby herself.  Except that she's married and out on her own and actually a legal adult.  A baby adult.

6.  The kiddos got Lincoln Logs for Christmas.

Derek's been having a great time building old-timey forts.  

7.  I wonder what manna tastes like?  

Head Country Barbeque Sauce?  Perhaps.

8.  I had my first vision-darkling, roaring-in-my-ears brush with claustrophia while stuck in an elevator with a friend in downtown Wichita.  I think I'll be taking the stairs from now on.

9.  I love Table Rock Lake.

10.  Mitt Romney and I are on a first-name basis.  He calls me Kristy.  I call him Mitt.  

No, really.  There were several messages on the answering machine when we got home, and in them he referred to me as, "Kristy."  As a result, when I answered the phone last night, instead of my standard, "Hello?" I said, "Hi, Mitt!"  It wasn't actually Mitt calling that time, but his Des Moines campaign manager.  I'm sure all this attention has nothing to do with the fact that I live in Iowa and there's a little thing called the Iowa caucus coming up.  I will say, however, that one of the messages actually sounded like Mitt talking, not just a recording.  He sounded tired.  It kind of made me like him more.

11.  Caedmon's new favorites are the Itsy Bitsy Spider and the Beaver Song. 

He's learning all kinds of new words.  He is so amazingly sweet.  He also eats a ton.  Non-stop eating is what our Spud is all about.

12.  I really enjoy having Adelaide home all day.  Maybe I just won't send her back to school next week.

That's better.  Time to go forth and be productive.

Multi-Generational

The Crisler Men Across Four Generations:

That's Derek with our two sons, his dad, Dennis, and his dad, Don.

Nothing says Thursday like alliteration fun, right?

I love looking at photos like these.  I like to search for the similar physical traits within relatives, and find it fascinating to see something pop up across several generations.  I love that when I first saw a photo of Derek's grandpa when he was young, I saw our son Atticus' eyes in a face born eighty-some years before Atticus.

I felt the same way the first time I saw my great-grandma's handwriting and realized it looks exactly like mine.

Heredity is a funny thing, isn't it?