This is not Going to Help

And now they are gone

This has been a great week.  Mom and Sammie have been visiting and just left this morning.  Sammie (my grandmother) has not been well since my grandfather Debs died last year, and one of the things she kept regretting aloud over the course of the past few months was that she hadn't gotten to visit us since we bought our house.  So, my mother, angel that she is, whisked her up here for a five-day visit.  (She was able to tear herself away from her house while they were sheet rocking it.)

Thanks, Mom.  The past five days were a gift.

Caroline

My old friend Caroline has been taking care of these kids every Friday, and last night she stayed while Adam and I went to see the new James Bond.  (It was just OK, but what's not to like about 90+ minutes of Daniel Craig getting all dirty and changing clothes.)  Anyway, Franny painted everybody's face while we were away.  I'm told that Franny and Caroline were eagles and Henry was a mean pirate.

 

 

We got word yesterday that we get to go to Obama's inauguration, which is very exciting and means that we will spend two nights away from home.  Caroline has agreed to stay at our house and take care of these children and dogs and frogs.  Sucker!

Language and some other crap

So, Henry is still learning to talk.  He has cute pronunciations of things.  All "F" sounds come out as a hard "T" so he calls his sister, plainly, "Tranny."  Sometimes the letter "S" is also a "T" so tonight when he got out of the bath himself and ran across my bedroom floor, he looked behind him and said, "Mommy!  Tee my toot trints!?" 

When he counts, he regularly leaves out "ten" and skips right to "elenen."  I recall that Franny used to skip a number as well, but I think she skipped "thirteen" so perhaps she was just precociously superstitious.

Franny can pretty much pronounce everything now and is learning to describe things.  She was telling us a story the other day and said that she had "whistling ears" and "fainting eyes."

I was feeling fairly terrible recently when I couldn't remember Henry's first word, yet I had a crystal clear memory of Franny excitedly telling everyone:  "Henwee's fuhwst wuhd was ___!" I asked her if she could remember, and, at first she couldn't.  Then about a week later, she came running up to me and said "Down down.  Henry's first word was down down."  And she's right.  I remember it now.

Franny woke us both up for the day at 4.30 this morning, which might explain the fascination quotient of this post.  She was clutching her left ear and crying.  She is an excellent self-diagnostician, but we've got to go in to the doc in order to get meds -- they are never willing to take her word for it.  The doctor looked into her ear and then told me that Franny's ear was terribly infected and she was probably in agony.  Poor thing.  She's much better now, the dear little girl.

Our dishwasher ist kaput.  Glenda, our sweet cleaning person, has called to say she won't be here tomorrow.  I have a cold and a headache.  I'm really tired. My hair seems inconsolably fuzzy.  I even paid $$ for a "treatment" at the salon. The End.

(For those of you who know me well, please don't panic.  Glenda will be here later in the week.  OK, she'll be here Thursday.)

Rahm

I feel compelled to make this completely uninteresting confession.  In spite (or perhaps because of) being described by Paul Begala as having an aggressive style that is a "cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache" I'm a tiny bit hot for Rahm Emanuel.  (He reminds me a little bit of Adam.) Do with this information what you will.

Franecdote

On Friday, Franny asked our friend and babysitter, Caroline:  Are you Jewish or Episcopalian?

  

Nablopomofo

So, maybe I'm posting every other day?  I must be busier than I was last year?

We were supposed to go to Deerfield Day at Adam's high school today, but it is looking rainyish outdoors, and we're a bunch of lazy bastards around here.  So, instead we are still in our pajamas, taking recreational baths and trashing the house.  And Adam almost passed out when he stood up from bed this morning, so he might be busy croaking today or something.  (He seems fine, but I'm sure I've got his mom fired up now!) 

Robin and baby Annie are gone, which has left a giant, sad, gaping hole in our lives.  Both kids are complaining about it.  She's already called me this morning to tell me about a particularly fine fit Annie threw on some errands.  It was pretty funny, began with my sister and Annie being trapped in a checkout line for 45 minutes trapped between chocolate and breakable glass lights, and culminated with my sister standing outside her car at a Christmas open house and stage whispering "mother fucking god damn cocksucker" something or other, which is a bit out of character for her.  Not that she doesn't curse in general, but that particular string of words is not something we've come to expect from St. Robin. 

 

Oh, man

I'm just going to gloss over the fact that I'm 30 minutes late with this post and continue as if I didn't actually miss a day of Nablopomofo.

I was driving all day, kids to school, niece to the plastic surgeon in NY, errands, kids from school, then Robin and I went into the city to have a birthday dinner (belated) with Adam.  Adam, darling that he is, let me choose the restaurant. 

I am very happy to be home, and I'm eager to catch up on all that I missed in news and comment today.  I am also very, very sleepy, and for some reason my teeth feel like they are wearing tiny sweaters.  And I swear I'm not stoned.  Not even a little bit.  Maybe I forgot to brush them?  But I think I remember brushing them like twenty times today.  It is an occupational hazard, though, the not brushing.  Or so I'm told. 

Twenty is a really funny number, for some reason.  You know what else is funny?  Making up terrific gross-out words and texting them to your friends late at night.  Robin and I have had ourselves in tears this evening doing just that.  I cannot repeat any of them here, because that would just ruin my reputation as an upstanding citizen.

You know, I should have just lied and said that I wrote this earlier and forgot to hit post before midnight.  That would have been a pretty easy lie to tell.  I hate not lying.  Just kidding.  I just love not lying -- also known as telling the truth.  It is the very most fun thing in the world.  Night night.

I just re-read this, and it really would appear that I'm stoned, with all the denials and punchiness, but I'm really not.  Sometimes I am.  That's believable!

Live-blogging the election results

9.22 p.m.  OHIO

9.11 p.m.  I think someone gave Axelrod a haircut in the past 30 minutes.

9.01 p.m. This is going so well for Obama that I feel a little bit dizzy.  Like it might not actually be happening.  And CNN just projected a win for Jeanne Shaheen.  Yay Marissa!

8.49 p.m. 

 

8.39 p.m.  PENNSYLVANIA

8.28 p.m.  They just asked Axelrod what Obama was doing.  Adam said he was sitting in a hot tub with three blondes, talking to Hugo Chavez.  Axelrod says he's at home with his family.

8.23 p.m. I've been so cautious about permitting myself to feel excited about this election.  If I force myself to look back to the primary, I can remember how I was excited about a McCain v. Obama race -- it seemed almost win-win to me, especially compared with the choices I've been presented in my voting life.  Then came Palin, and the bottom really fell out for me.  I have felt really freaked out (to use a technical term) since McCain made that insulting, disappointing selection. 

But Florida is looking promising, right?

7.51 p.m. I'm laughing as I type the heading above.  I've always wanted to live-blog something, even if it is only to comment upon how creepy it is that all the female newspeople look like they are on their way straight to the discotheque after work -- all short skirts and blow-outs and shiny charmeuse. 

We've got Franny's fantastic godparents here watching the results with us, and I at least wanted to post the drawing that Franny made, sua sponte, last night.

 

Cousins

The theme for this month, so far, is:  WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH.  We live too far away from each other.

An ear-ripping good time

One of the benefits, for me, of having Robin and Annie here, is that when my children wake up at the crack of dawn, they just can't wait to get upstairs to see their aunt and cousin.  This permits me to sleep at least ten or twelve extra minutes in the dark morning, and if that doesn't sound like heaven to you then you're not a mother of preschoolers.  Just in case it makes me sound like less of an asshole, it is usually Annie's endearing morning baby screams waking my kids up anyway. 

This morning, Franny came into my bedroom at 6.30 with her legs shaking.  She told me that baby Annie had fallen off the bed upstairs and was bleeding.  I was expecting a fat lip but found a partially severed ear.  I could actually see the cartilidge.  It was freaky.  Poor girl.  So, we packed my kids off to Pearce's house to play and Robin and I took Annie to the ER in Greenwich.  They called in a plastic surgeon from the city, who was there in less than an hour.  He did three layers of the teeny tinest stitches I've ever seen.  Little Annie was papoosed to a board, and I tried to cheer her up by telling her I'd give her some chocolate when the doc was finished.  That wasn't soon enough for her, so the second half of the procedure she spent wailing:  "chocolate, sob, sob, CHOCOLAAAAATTTTTTTTTTE..."  She seemed not really to notice the fact that she was immobilized and being sewed up by a Lebanese doc singing in beautiful French. 

Annie was and is aces, as is her mother.  I wish they'd never leave, even though Annie's been instructed not to bathe for the next two weeks.