http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: June 2012

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Can it be? Can it be Christine?

Ha ha. We're still all singing The Phantom of the Opera soundtrack all the time around here. Did I mention the time that the girls were fighting in opera? They really were, they were singing their disagreement. It was hysterical.

But really, can it be that Maggie wants to spend the night at Grandma and Grandpa's? I've been floating this idea for I think years now, and she's always shot me down. Erik asked this afternoon, and she said, "I appreciate that, but no, I want to go see Chester." I appreciate that! Her vocabulary cracks me up. She described the Windjammer Days fireworks last night as "glorious," "dazzling," and "gorgeous." Too funny.

Anyway, I think Maggie overheard me say that I didn't think she "was capable" of spending the night away from me, so all of a sudden she's psyched for it. She wanted to sleep over there tonight, in fact. I didn't want to lay all my cards on the table (one has to play things carefully with this girl), so I didn't let on that I was excited. But I asked her if she was sure she could handle watching a movie, eating sugar, and then getting up and watching TV all morning again? You can imagine the size of her grin.

So maybe the parents' babysitting for the wedding is a go? Can it be???

In other news, Nina hasn't thrown up since last night, and before that she hadn't thrown up since Monday, so hopefully she's in the clear. Her fever had gotten as high as 101.4, but that's gone too. Unfortunately, she did throw up in bed last night, so I had ever more laundry today.

Also, the Olympic trials are on TV, and Nina LOVES watching the gymnastics. Yay!

Monday, June 25, 2012

What's even better than lice the week before an international move?

Vomiting!

Poor sweet Nina. She woke up with a stomach ache last night, and I told her, "It'll be OK, my stomach has been hurting too since this evening." And she said, "I'm going to throw up!" and dashed for the bathroom. And bless her little heart, she made it in time! Thank you Nina!! The last think I would have wanted is to clean all that bedding again 2 days later. Knock on wood and all.

She threw up again this afternoon in the downstairs bathroom. Maggie came over to see and remarked, with disappointment, "is that all?". There wasn't enough vomit for her, apparently. Poor little Nina felt too sick all day to do much eating. And on top of that, she ran a slight fever all afternoon. She did take a nice long nap at least, but still felt sick at bedtime. Cross your fingers that she has a good night.

Oh, a funny. We were talking about their great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmothers (great^n) and what we know about them (just that they're dead. How about our great^n+1 grandmothers? Great^n+x? You get the idea...) and Maggie asked about their "greatest grandmother of all," which I thought was an adorable and precise way to put it, and I said "Well, we do know a lot about her, because that's Eve from the bible!" and then a few days later Nina asked a question about "Alvin and Eve." Ha ha! I cracked up. Alvin and Eve!!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

You know what's a fun game when you don't yet know that you have lice?

Pretend winter!!

The good news though is that all that stuff is getting packed up and put away for 6 months to a year, so any lice that got on it will die anyway. Whew!

My new haircut!


I got it before "the outbreak," so it was just a well-timed coincidence. I love it!

Saturday, June 23, 2012

You know what would be perfect?

If, 2 weeks before I packed up my house and moved my family overseas, something that is a really big pain in the butt to deal with would land in my lap.
OH! Wait! It did!
We have lice.
Unbelievable. I really didn't want to spend this weekend washing all the bedding, vacuuming all of the couches, carpets, and mattresses, steaming the mattresses and couches for good measure, and picking through the girls' hair strand by strand to get the little buggers. We did the lice shampoos, all 4 of us, but that doesn't kill the eggs, and to really wipe them out in one go, you need to get out all of those eggs.
Anyway, I won't go into too much detail, because it's stressful to even write about. The girls have been champs, though. They did the shampoo treatment like it was nothing, and neutrally endured regular shampoos today because I wanted to get the leftover chemicals out of their hair. And they've been sitting so calmly while I've picked through their hair. Such little troopers!
The other depressing thing is that we were so, so close to being in the clear with this lice thing. See, it's been making the rounds in the first grade since January. And all that time, we'd managed to avoid getting it. When school let out, I thought to myself, hooray! We did it!! But, no, we didn't. Nina must have gotten it right at the end of the school year.
Oh well, I'm fairly certain we've killed every louse in the house, and that if there are one or two little eggs I've missed on the girls, that I'll get them over the next week. Plus, check out their adorable new haircuts!
And yes, Nina is wearing makeup, and no, I couldn't convince Maggie to look at the camera. :-)




Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Hot hot hot!

Finally, the first day of summer and it really feels like it! We've had 60s all month it seems like, so hitting 90 today was kind of nice. The night's cooling down nicely too, which is lovely.

Interestingly, Nina barely swam today. Temps in the 60s outside and a pool at 64 degrees, and she's a little fish. But 90 outside and the pool at 75 and the kid is gingerly dipping her toes in and proclaiming it too chilly. The girl is an enigma!

Today both girls talked about changing their names. Maggie wants to legally change hers to Nina. This might be confusing, were it not for the fact that Nina wants to change hers to Crazy BeanBean. Then we agreed that if Vanessa and Micah want Crazy BeanBean for their kid, they could have it.

Nina's diving full force into learning German this week! She's studying the picture dictionary to increase her vocabulary. So cute! It's killing two birds with one stone too, because she's reading the German words. I'll have to get Nick to let her read our German story books aloud to him, and hopefully he can help her learn some vocabulary that way.

Tomorrow's supposed to be another scorcher! Woo hoo!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Catch-up blogging: Saturday and Sunday

Saturday morning the girls woke up bright and early and ran over to mom and dad's house to wake our guests. It was 7 am and daylight was a-wastin'!! The girls opened the presents Aunt and Unk had brought them and the rest of the morning was a blur.

But then, Erik and Isabelle took the girls out for ice cream. Without me and Nick! It was 2 solid hours of alone time with their Aunt and Unk, and I don't think either of them even thought of me once. Woo hoo! Nina has adored her alone time with them for years now, but it's a new thing for Maggie. She has really grown up a lot since turning 4. Sleeping through the night, trips for ice cream and candy (and then the playground!) without me. I have to say, it's pretty nice!

All that fun tuckered little Nina out, because she fell asleep right after getting home. She'd been up late the night before. Then we had a lovely family Father's Day/Mom's birthday dinner at Sarah's Pizza.

Since Nina had had a nap, she got to stay up late that night and sleep over at mom and dad's with Aunt and Unk. She finally wore them down, too, and got them to let her sleep in bed with them. And of course, Chester too. I hear it was a very restful night. Ha ha! According to Erik, Chester bailed on the madness after half an hour and jumped into another bed by himself. Erik decided to join him there, and Isabelle and Nina had the floor bed. Nina woke up rested at least!

On Sunday an even bigger miracle happened. The girls went out for a boat ride and loved it!

Nina hadn't ridden on the boat since last year, but we've been working up to a ride slowly. First she and Maggie played on the boat in the garage, then they played on it for short bits while it was tied up at the dock. Once, we were on there when another boat drove by and its wake rocked our boat. The experience definitely pushed the envelope, but Nina wasn't scared off. But I digress. The boat ride was a blast! Sure, little Chester shook pathetically on Isabelle's lap the whole time, but my girls loved it. Woo hoo! Hopefully we'll get a few more trips like that in before we ship off for the year.

Then Nina swam in the pool again (it was a balmy 69 degrees in there on Sunday), and then she went a hike with Aunt and Unk. What a busy weekend!

We managed to convince them to stay one more night, and they just left for home early this morning. Thanks for a fun visit guys!!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

No blogging for the past few days because Aunt and Unk are visiting!

Usually I do my blogging at night after the kids go to bed, but they've been staying up late because Aunt Isabelle and Uncle Erik (or, Aunt and Unk, as they're now called) are visiting. And of course, Chester. It's funny to see how much mellower Chester is now that he's older. When he was just a little puppy, he could play with the girls all day and never get tired of it. Now, the poor guy tries to take a break every now and then, but the girls just keep hounding him (hounding him! haha!). This evening he even sat outside on the deck by himself to chew his stick in peace for a few minutes.

It's been a great week though. On Thursday or Friday we opened up the pool and Nina went swimming! It was amazing. The water was 64 degrees but she loved it. Maggie dipped one foot in and wailed that it was too cold. It's a cold, harsh world Margarete. Especially when you're dealing with a swimming pool in Maine.

I can't specifically remember what we did on Thursday and Friday day (that's why I have this blog, because if I can't remember what happened 3 days ago, how will I ever remember all the fun we had 30 years from now?), but on Friday night we let the girls stay up late to wait for Aunt and Unk. Oh, I remember--Nina had taken a nap on Friday afternoon in this luxurious outdoor cabana I'd made for the girls on their balcony from the couch cushions and a sheet. It was a lovely afternoon: warm, breezy, and shady under that sheet. How could she not conk out?

Since Nina had taken the nap, we all decided to wait up for everyone at mom and dad's house. And luck of all luck, what was playing on TCM that night but everyone's favorite monster movie--Godzilla!! It was the original one too, not the Americanized version with the Raymond Burr scenes added in and English language dubbing. Nope, just the Japanese version with subtitles and everything. I felt like I was watching highbrow classic foreign cinema! The only irritating thing was that I had to read the subtitles aloud for Maggie, and since she's not content to just watch, slack-jawed, like a good child should, but instead insists on understanding everything that's going on, by way of asking a million questions, it meant a lot of talking for me. So, not a relaxing classic foreign cinema kind of night like you'd expect. That's a joke, you should all know that classic foreign cinema is not something you'd expect around here.

Well anyway, all that questioning must've worn Maggie out, because one second she was worrying about why they killed those fish in the tank, whether actual fish had been killed, and how they might film it to merely look like the fish had been killed, but actually not hurt any, and the next she was sound asleep. Not 10 minutes later Aunt, Unk, and Chester arrived too! It was ok though, we had a nice long weekend, so she didn't miss out on anything.

A nice long weekend that I'll tell you about tomorrow, because that's enough typing for now. I'm pooped!

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Nina is a second grader!

Way to go Nina!!
She's been coming home with all kinds of neat schoolwork for the last few days too. Look at some of her drawings. She's a good little artist! Aren't they great?
Yesterday, her class had a field trip to DEW Animal Kingdom. Maggie and I chaperoned. I'd never even heard of it, but it was great! Lions, tigers, bears (oh my!), a hyena, too many animals to list. The kids had a wonderful time. I didn't take any pictures because I had 2 kids besides my own to keep track of, but you know what lions and tigers look like anyway.
And today I picked Nina up at 10:30. It rained all day, so it was an inside kind of summer vacation day, but tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful. Hooray for summer vacation!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

A field trip and mini golf

On Friday, Nina's class did a scavenger hunt field trip to Ocean Point. It was foggy and cold (probably 50 degrees max right there on the waterfront) but once we started hiking over those rocks we got hot! Maggie and I came along more as tag-alongs than chaperones, because I had to devote all of my attention to helping Maggie hike over the rocks. It was really tough going! The girls both did a fantastic job though. I was so proud of them!
Then on Saturday we finally had warm and sunshine! Finally!!! We took the girls mini-golfing and had a blast. It was the first time that Maggie stayed with us and played together as a family. And Nina hit a hole-in-one on the loop de loop! Most importantly, I won. If there's anything I learned from my rounds of golf with Nan and Peter, it's that you must, must, must penalize your spouse with the one stroke penalty when the ball leaves the green. Show no mercy.
Today was another perfect day. We went to church, took our first trolley ride, played outside, and went on a boat ride. Well, it was just me and Nick on the boat, but Nina was impressed by how slowly I boat, so she's actually looking forward to going out with us next time. Cross your fingers that she doesn't change her mind!
Here's a picture of her from this evening. The stack of books is her to-read pile. I love it!

Thursday, June 7, 2012

The little ham!

Today Maggie was in a (mostly) fantastic mood. (Mostly Fantastic Mood -adj: A temperament characterized by fewer than 15 tantrums per day, with most tantrums resolving with minimal help in less than 5 minutes). Ha ha! It's funny because it's true!

Anyway, the point is that when she wasn't dissolving into wails and tears over the toast being wrong, or someone moving something, or turning the TV off, or a perceived slight, or whatever, Maggie was a ray of sunshine today. Singing, cuddling, jumping off the couch into a pillow pile while yelling "Geronimo!" and making silly faces, and being her funniest self at Hannaford.

And that's where this anecdote begins.

Maggie was sitting in the part of the cart that kids sit in when we saw a baby in a carseat in someone else's cart. Maggie's really into babies these days, which surprises me. But anyway, the carseat wasn't up where the kids sit like people usually have them (I'm so descriptive today! I can't think of what to call that part though), it was in the basket where the groceries go. Which is probably far safer, but certainly doesn't leave much room for groceries. Also, you don't usually see the babies in that part of the cart, so obviously Maggie was a bit confused because she said,

"Oh look, those people got a baby at the store!"
Now, I wasn't sure if she was just being a ham or if she really thought they'd picked up a baby at the store. I've given up trying to figure her out, so I just went along with it.
"Yeah, maybe," I mumbled, or something like that. I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner. "Isn't he cute?"
"Look at his little feet!!" she squealed. She's really into the feet. "Where did they get him?"
"Like, where in the store?" I said. "I don't know. Do you want to get one too?"
"Yes," she said.
By this point, we were right up next to the baby, but the mom and grandma were distracted so they didn't hear our conversation. But then Maggie looks over at the grandma and says,
"What aisle did you get the baby from?"
I cracked up, but the grandmother didn't hear her quite right or didn't get where she was going with the question and said something like, "Oh thank you, he's cute isn't he?" but Maggie just repeated louder, "WHAT AISLE DID YOU GET THE BABY FROM?" and then I really cracked up, as did the people who could hear us.
The grandma was awesome though and said that they got him at a different store. Maggie was satisfied. Later, at dinner, she speculated that he was probably expensive. Like, $29 or something.

What a funny kid!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Austria

The girls are so excited to go to the opera when we're in Austria. Tonight they were picking out the dresses they want to wear (and what they want me to wear), and Nina said to Maggie, "You know you can't wear pajamas to the opera, right Maggie?" Fortunately, Maggie responded "Of course I'll wear a dress!" Of course! Why would we worry otherwise?!

It was mostly sunny today and even hit the 60s. Then it briefly started to rain while the girls and I were playing outside on the swingset (one of their favorite games these days is for someone to stand over the slide, straddling it, while the others slide under her. It's called 'bridge'. And when the bridge person flops down onto the slider, it's called 'collapse'. Maggie loves to flop down on me during a rousing, slightly dangerous game of collapse). Then it got sunny again, and now it's raining. Hopefully the forecast gets better, but I don't dare look.

Monday, June 4, 2012

So much rain!!

According to my friend with an official weather thing on her roof, Boothbay got 7.26 inches of rain from Saturday through today. Craziness! There's been minor ponding on Route 27 and even a spillover from the Adam's Pond drainage pond onto Adam's Pond Road (the section that was formerly Dover Rd.) Fortunately whatever problem our basement was having seems to have resolved itself and we didn't get inches (or more!) of water in the basement. So hooray for that!

We're definitely getting sick of it all though. It's let up a few times, and we were outside in the drizzle some, but it's been so cold (55 today) and windy that it just hasn't been any fun out there. I'm sure my garden is going to be a moldy pile of mush by the time the sun comes out again (they're predicting Thursday at this point), but whatever. Worrying about it won't get me anywhere. Mushrooms are popping up all over it though, that's all I'm going to say. Fungus.

Nina said something at dinner today that totally cracked me up, and I can't remember!! Mom or dad, remind me if you think of it. Maybe sleeping on it tonight will help.

Nina and I seem to be coming down with a head cold. She's been coughing and sneezing a lot, and my throat's been sore for a few days. Plus now I'm sneezing too. Hopefully it's just a tiny thing, but I'd really like to see that cough get better. Poor little Nina!!

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Look at these cuties, sharing a smoothie. They're so sweet together.
This morning Nina woke up with Maggie snuggled against her. She was in heaven! I have a picture, but it's on the camera upstairs, and I'm on the couch... I'll put it up another day.
It rained pretty much all day today. We went out to Orne's Candy Store before it got bad this morning and then holed up the house playing games. The kids weren't very tired because they didn't get to run around much, so we even did a family movie night after dinner. We watched Matilda (the movie version of the Rohld Dahl book, which Nina is reading and loving right now), and ate lots of popcorn.
Overall not a bad day. Now if the rain will only let up!