Man and Wife

There is a whole new Mrs. Dernovsek in the world, and that is my first time typing my sister's new name.  It's kind of freaking me out.  I took almost zero pictures of the main event at the Best Equinox Ever.  I hope the photographer got a few good ones.  I did get one or two pre-wedding of the flower girl, bubble boy and tortured dog.

Poor Elsa.  She was chased around her vacation home by a giant yellow puppy all weekend.  Sorry, girl.

The game is either Will it Float? or Can We Empty the Woods of All Its Twigs?

 

Greta was very enthusiastic about the game.  And, as it turns out, Greta does not float.  But she is remarkably calm when she kerplops into a cold lake fully clothed. 

Here she is all dressed up for the wedding and seriously excited about it.  Hairspray and everything.

 Noah was all dressed up too, but he wouldn't let me take his picture, so here's another one of Greta.

Noah was meant to hand out the tiny tubes of bubbles before the wedding ceremony.  He did not sign up for this job.  Approaching strangers and even extended family with bubbles?  It wasn't meant to be. Not for him.  Fortunately, Greta was more than happy to introduce herself to all of the guests.  I'm Gretagenevieve.  She says it all slurred together like that, and refuses to be called just plain Greta some days. She was happy to pass out the bubbles, then scatter rose petals down the aisle.  Meticulously.  One. Petal. At. A. Time. The bride may have wished she'd hurry it up a little.  Silly Lindsey.  Haven't you ever been on a walk with Glacial Greta?  This is her pace.  Still, Greta, your socially awkward mom and brother thank you.

Magpie went to the wedding too, but she won't remember because she slept the entire day (and because she's eight weeks old).  Now I know what to do when I can't get the baby to sleep.  Bundle her up in her fleece bunting and hat and take her outside in the cool and misty weather.  Go ahead, light a bonfire.  She doesn't mind.  Fireworks?  Whatever.  She doesn't care.  More fireworks? Try her.  Live band?  She'll only sleep harder.

Here she is loving her play mat.  The toucan is popular, but she is crazy about the elephant.  He gets the big smiles.

Happy Birthday Sarah

44.86 N, 92.63 W

A picture from Kevin's phone. Old already. This was weeks ago.  In the present, Maggie holds her body much straighter, Noah's hair is much shorter, and Greta still tries to wear that sundress every day, even though we have had several nights of below freezing temperatures this week.

Magda, the Magnetic Center of the Universe

This chair started with just me and Maggie.  The siblings were drawn to us within minutes.  They wanted to see the baby's eyes or give her a hug or count her toes or kiss her cheeks.  She's a Leo.  Of course she's popular.

Several Moments of Clarity

Ruby joined us for our walk this morning.   I totally made that mei tai sling and her pants.  Craftastic.

The first few days he was gone all day, I missed him.  A lot.  I still miss Noah while he's away at school, with someone else shaping his attitudes and ideals.  But there are some really great things about spending the day with just the sisters.  One of them spends a lot of her day dreaming.  The other one likes to go for nature hikes with me.  Slowly.  Greta just gets it.  She covers a tenth of a mile in an hour, but she has explored every anthill, found every dandelion that the cold overnight didn't kill, and helped every caterpillar find his way across the sidewalk.  She even shares her Goldfish crackers with them. 

She picked him up, squealed, and dropped him. "He tried to cuddle up to me!"

On this walk, there is no one to yell at or argue with.  Greta gets to set the pace and make up [most of] the rules.  This kind of walk doesn't happen with a big brother.

Mags loves to stroll.  Never before have I had a baby who likes to stroll.  For Noah and Greta, the stroller was a torture device to be escaped from.  This one actually likes the bumping and swaying the way babies are supposed to.  She also likes the cold on her cheeks.  Just a little.

Bundle of joy.

You're Creeping Me Out

Greta screamed her first bug scream today. It was a good one. A leaping on top of a chair, shrieking at the top of her lungs, eyes filled with fear one. I kept it together. Sort of. I mean, this giant, creepy insect came crawling over my shoulder while I was feeding the baby on the porch in the back yard. It would freak you out too. At least I didn't drop the baby.

After the scream heard 'round the world, we took a moment to observe nature and take a picture. Zoomed in from as far away as we could get with the camera phone. Then we retreated inside to watch Nick, Jr.

Your Cat Died! or How About a Goldfish? or The Wilson Memorial Post

An adorable kitten was born in the spring of 2001 somewhere in Minnesota.  He was named Patrick by his adoptive parents, and along with his brother, Michael, he was given as a gift to a ninety-something year old grandmother. Though the grandmother loved her granddaughter dearly, she had never expressed any love for cats or desire to care for kittens at the age of ninety-something.

This is how Patrick Wilson came to our family.

He was (not very warmly) welcomed by two year old Pete, but as the years went by, they grew to love tolerate each other.

Wilson died at the young age of ten on August 23, 2011.  He will be remembered for all the UPS, FedEx and pizza delivery people who he startled at the door with his astonishingly good looks gargantuan size, for all the furniture that he claimed his own by straddling the head- and arm-rests with his imposing presence enormous belly, and especially for the girl he tolerated loved best of all.

Secret Language

Magpie doesn't make many sounds yet, but Noah has identified the one word she can say.

Noah: Mom, what does inglaaaaa mean?
Me: Noah, I don't think that's a word.
Noah: Yes it is.  Magda says it all the time.

Pronounced, INGLAAAAAAAAAA! at the top of her small voice.  It has many meanings.

1. Hold me.
2. I'm hungry.
3. Hold me, please.
4. I'm cold.
5. I'm wet.
6. I need to poo.
7. Someone please, please pick me up and cuddle me and cover me in kisses.
8. I love you all so much I don't know how to express it.

Back to School Blues

The second day of school was rainy in the morning.  Fitting for the gloomy mom.  It was the first full day of school, and the first day of the bus.

Waiting anxiously

Our neighbor expresses his political views (and Noah gets on the bus)

Before the bus came, I think that sending Noah off to school was just a concept for me.  It wasn't really happening.  At least not any time soon.  Then it really happened.  And it was so much harder than I imagined.  But we don't have to get into that.  Instead we can talk about the small moments that I tried to memorize for him.  I have a terrible memory, but on important days, I try really, really hard.  Better write it down before it's gone.

On September 1st the entire family was together, all of us scrambling around the house earlier that any of us has scrambled in weeks, and all of the scrambling was focused on him.  Magda and I were in our pajamas, and she is still so small that she can barely smile or hold her head up properly.  Greta was eating her second bowl of cereal because the first on had gotten soggy before she could finish it, and the sister will not eat soggy cereal.  Kevin was drinking coffee and wearing his glasses, which he only sometimes does.  Like Noah.  He packed Noah's lunch: a roast beef sandwich, an apple, pretzel sticks, an apple juice box and a special dessert.  The first day of school was a hot day.  Really, really hot.  The kindergartner played in the pool in the yard with Greta when he came home bursting with information about how to cross the street in front of the bus and what voice levels are OK to use under varying circumstances.  Greta missed him so much when he left.  She tried to bribe me into letting her go to kindergarten too.  If I eat all my supper?  If I clean up my room?  If I remember my shoes? The second day of school Noah wore his purple Vikings jersey.  The one that used to be Kevin's when he was a kid and that Noah would wear every single day if he were allowed to and that I sometimes hide in a corner of my closet just to keep him from wearing it every single day.  There were a few small crises.  In the moments before the bus was due to arrive, we couldn't find Noah's left shoe.  We found it.  Then he had to go to the bathroom.  Like, number two.  He made it.  When he got off the bus in the afternoon, he had no backpack, which was disappointing only because of the art project inside that he was dying to show us.  A hand print with a heart sticker in the middle entitled, The Kissing Hand.  We got it back later in the afternoon from another elementary school in town where he had to stop in the afternoon to transfer buses.  Greta and I made this sign for Noah to see when he got off the bus.

He came home in an explosion of new songs and games, but could remember the name of only one kid - the other Noah in the grade above his.  He couldn't tell Kevin about his day when he came home from work because he'd already told me, and it would be just too much work to recount everything a second time.  Only, he didn't really tell me anything about his day because all he could remember was the excitement of the bus ride.

There is a moment that I would probably remember even without writing it down.  It was a defining moment for me as a mother, because it reminded me so much of my own mom.

Mom /mɒm/

noun informal

1. Woman who stays up very, very late at night doing remarkable things for her children because she loves them so much that sometimes it fills her with an anxious energy that makes it impossible to sleep.

Most of the time I feel like just a girl living with some kids.  I'm supposed to be trying to nurture them and teach them and fill their brains with creative brilliance, but mostly I'm trying to figure out what to make them for lunch and to not yell at them or get too frustrated with their unending boundary-testing.  Some moments, though, I feel like a real mom.  Like the night before Noah's second day of school when I could have gone to bed with the baby two hours earlier, but instead I stayed up waiting for pumpkin bread to bake.  Because it is Noah's favorite, and I needed him to have it for his lunch in his brand new Star Wars lunch box.  That was a good night.

Good night.

You Enjoy My Kindergartner

Someday Noah will be a senior in high school and he'll write something novel and profound like, "What a long strange trip it's been," in his friends' yearbooks.*  We'll be here to sigh a melancholy sigh and remind him of his first day of kindergarten.  He won't care.  We'll force him to reminisce anyway.

Noah chose this shirt himself.  I asked him to wear something nice for his first day of school.  He declined nice.  It needed to be cool.  If he wore something nice the other kids would make fun of him.  Seriously.  He honestly told me that.  Even Kevin, who has a rather strict personal policy about not telling the kids what to wear, suggested a polo shirt.  No way.  Buzz and Woody were the only right choice.  Nothing says cool like tie dye.

*Do people even still do that?  Maybe he'll post it on his friends' Facebook walls or tweet it or something.

Unglued

OK, family, this is going to be one big photo dump of a post with only a few words.  I have a lot of pictures that wrap up the month of August, and way too many emotions at the start of September to sort through and put into words.

Noah is starting For Real School tomorrow.  You've been there.  You know better than I do what that means.  I'm nervous and first-day-of-school jittery about it and will probably have dreams tonight that the entire family has overslept and Noah has missed some gigantically important exam on his very first day of kindergarten and his entire future will be ruined.

But still no tears.  There is definitely something wrong with me.

You know you're five when you can play on all the playground equipment.  You're brave enough for the tube slide, you're tall enough to boost yourself up onto a swing, and you're strong enough for the monkey bars.

There are so many things I love about having a baby around the house again.  These small fingers and giant pacifiers are two.  Poor girl has horrible baby acne right now and is in no mood for a photo shoot.  That hasn't saved her cheeks from a zillion kisses a day.

Grandma took these two to the Renaissance Fair a weekend or two ago.  There has been a lot of fairy and knight pretending since.  I love Greta's expression in this one.  She's Tinkerbell with Peter Pan's sword.

Moments later, Noah got stung by a bee.  His first.  Like any good mother, I naturally took a picture of the crying before asking him what the pain was about.  Actually, they were pretty far away and it wasn't until I looked at the picture on the camera display that I could see there was more than the normal brother-sister fight whining going on in the distance.  That's my story, anyway. Greta was just as oblivious, which makes me feel a little better.

Watercoloring with neighbor friend Owen.

Greta scraped her finger on the driveway.  She cried a lot. She begged for a Strawberry Shortcake band aid.  Which she applied to her knee.  She stopped crying.  The end.

Yesterday it rained, today there were puddles.  Puddles = galoshes. There is something about splashing in puddles that they love more than anything else.  I think it's the mess.  Anywhere else in life, they are pleaded with to not make messes and to please for the love of all that is holy clean up their messes.  Different rules with puddles.

Why don't I have galoshes?



These two had some good laughs today.  Greta is just barely starting to catch on that tomorrow Noah will be gone to school, and that she's not allowed to go with him.  This will probably make us both cry.  In the month since Maggie was born, Noah and Greta have been thrown to the wolves a little bit.  OK, a lot.  That baby is needy and the big kids have been expected to figure out their own games and play them without anyone around to even break up fights.  There have been a lot of fights.  And a lot of really good games.  Like chase each other around the puddle, for one.

I just like this picture.  Like the skirt was going to be saved from getting completely drenched in muddy puddle water.  Right.

Some other follow me game.

And more splashes.



Greta hasn't been asked to take a nap in many months.  When Noah gave up the habit, there was no way she was going to break up her day like that anymore.  But if I time a movie in a dark room or a car ride in the afternoon just right, she'll be gone for hours.  Beauty sleep.

The Big Fat Wilson memorial post will have to wait for another day.  Rest in peace, large kitty.  Mom, I think, said it best.  Backs and arms of furniture are naked without you.