Yesterday was yet another dreary, cool and rainy day in a string of such days. And so it seemed a perfect day to destroy my clean and pretty new dining room by filling it with all the crap from the laundry room and painting. My bogus trip to IKEA has left me with no organizational unit to fill the newly painted laundry room, but that is neither here nor there.
Gone are the weirdly mustardy beige walls and ancient linoleum floor, replaced by three white walls and one pink wall and a floor that I can't decide if it is shabby chic or just plain shabby. Which ever it may be, it is better than the crumbling, blue, water-damaged linoleum that was there before. And this means that I finally get to use my washing machine and dryer instead of the old ones that came with the house! (Well, after I have Jeremy help me move them from the workshop...)

Now I get to drag Dorian around with me today on a quest to find some appropriate storage furniture and a work table.

**************************

And in totally unrelated news-- I had this conversation with Dorian a couple of days ago:

Dorian: Mom, you're the greatest woman in town!

Me: You think?!

Dorian: Well... maybe Miley Cyrus is.

The fact that Miley does not live anywhere near our town, probably has never heard of our town and quite possibly will never visit our town did not matter to dear DeeDee. So, currently, I have a 4.5 year old obsessed with Miley Cyrus and a 7.5 year old who is in love with a video game character. Lord have mercy on me this summer vacation!

The whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

Sebastian lost his 6th tooth on Friday.  He still hadn't left the 5th one he lost months ago for the tooth fairy yet, deciding instead to keep one for himself.  Now he had 2 teeth in two of the little tooth necklaces that come from school when your mouth starts falling apart there.

And for the first time, he questioned the magic.  "Maybe the tooth fairy doesn't really exist." When pressed, he wasn't sure where the money might come from or where the teeth might go.  Santa Claus made more sense than tooth fairies and Easter bunnies, he decided.  (Even though he claimed to have caught a glimpse of said bunny last Sunday.)  So I told him about what happened when I was his age and thought the same thing.

I decided to wait up for the fairy.  My tooth was in a film canister under my pillow, under my head, and there was no way she (or whoever was masquerading as the tooth fairy) was going to get past me.  I struggled to stay vigilant, and in the dark I checked to be sure I could hear the rattle of my little tooth in the plastic.  But it was full of coins!  And so I was convinced, for a little while longer anyway.  Sebastian pointed out that I may have dozed off briefly, but seemed to reconsider.

He didn't want to (or forgot) to leave his teeth for the fairy on Friday night, but remembered to do it last night.  After discovering the dollar he received last time still folded neatly inside his tooth pouch, he took his little calcified treasures upstairs to rest on the pillow next to his head.

Cue anxious whispering by his parents:  

"Do you have $2?"

"No!  Do you?"

"I think I have $1 in my wallet.  What should we do?"

"We'll just have to 'borrow' some from their wallets, I guess."

But then we went back to playing Mario and totally forgot.

This morning, more anxious whispering by me at 7:45am to my sleeping husband:

"Did you remember to be the tooth fairy?!"

Shit.  Now what?  The kids are up.  Sebastian has by now discovered that the tooth fairy has neglected to visit.  All wallets are downstairs with the children.  Panic! Panic!

Piggy banks!  Those are upstairs.  Who says the tooth fairy only brings bills?  She certainly didn't when I was a kid.  

Whose stupid idea was it anyway to have the kids take their change to the CoinStar machine?!  (Mine.)  The total from the 2 banks was a whopping $1.76.  There was another 15 cents on our dresser.  Jeremy told me to check his underwear drawer, but that only yielded his neckties, an "I heart Styx" button and some marbles.  (It's better not to ask.)

Now I had to sneak downstairs to get his wallet with the lonely bill, quietly put the excess change back in the banks, exchange the money for teeth and somehow not get caught.  Success!

Being the impatient person I am, when I returned downstairs some 45 minutes later I asked if the tooth fairy had come.  "She didn't," Sebastian sadly replied.  "She forgot."  

"That's not possible.  I have heard of her having trouble in bad weather, but not forgetting entirely.  Are you sure she didn't come?"

"Yes.  I checked when I woke up and my teeth were still there and there was no money."

"Hmm.  That's odd.  I wonder if she came and saw there were 2 teeth and had to go back for more money.  She probably was only expecting one tooth.  I'm sure she'll come."

"That's a good idea, Mom.  I did hold onto that other tooth for a long time."

Lo and behold, when he checked a few minutes later, the money was there... but short one dime.  Argh!  Will this nightmare never end?  I told him to check his bed and retrace his steps from his room to where the tooth pouch was now on the dining table, scrambled into the kitchen to get a dime from my wallet to throw on the floor next to the table and vowed not to worry about it when Jeremy wondered how I would explain it when Sebastian finds the original dime later.

Fit to be tied

Sebastian and I have been in a bit of a power struggle the last couple of years over when he would learn to tie his shoes. He was clearly winning, as I was continually convinced to buy slip-ons and velcro models, and every time I tried to teach him how to tie a bow, he would respond with limp fingers and I with yelling.

For the last few months, he has been wedging his thick wool socks into a pair of shoes a full size too small for him, despite owning a pair of low top Chucks in a more appropriate size. But I couldn't very well send him off to school with shoes he couldn't put on himself when the boots came off, so off he went day after day looking more and more like the ragamuffin he is.

Well, along came February break, and when I removed his shoes from his backpack and discovered that the elastic had completely ripped free from its moorings on both sides of both shoes, I made a bold move to win the battle. I threw the pair, along with its dry-rotting velcroed brethren, into the garbage and announced that he would be learning to tie his shoes before he went back to school because he had no other choice. End of the line.

The first few days of vacation passed with multiple refusals to learn and statements of intent to procrastinate. Finally, two days before his return to school, I told him the time had come. He tried. He failed. He tried again. Better, but not right. He tried again. And he did it! High fives all around... Lots of cause for celebration...

The next day we were out shopping, and he was very excited about his future of shoes of all sorts, and pointed out several styles he would love to have. I told him that when he outgrew this pair, I would take him shopping, but that most likely his shoes would not be coming from the large chain store where we were.

The next 3 days of school go by, followed by a weekend of wearing his shoes with no problems whatsoever. They fit. They are tied competently by Sebastian. All is right with the world.

Today I go to pick him up from school and am confronted by the information that my child was shoeless during library and told the librarian an elaborate story about how when his father came home from his business trip that he would be taking him to Target to buy new shoes because the ones he has don't fit. Umm... no, no and no.

And he apparently wandered the halls shoeless all day yesterday as well. One would think that his teacher would have told me about this. But one would be very wrong.

I suppose I should be thankful it wasn't his pants he was neglecting to wear.

Yes, I'm still alive.

I was just waiting for at least 10 people to complain that they hadn't read anything lately. I'm just vain like that, I guess.

Not really. I just haven't been in the mood. And I didn't feel like boring everyone with my minutiae for a while. But if you want it, here it is:

Crazy neighbor update: No nudity lately, but there is a pile of garbage as tall as the house behind ours that includes a big screen TV among other things, and is so voluminous that it is hard to imagine it all fitting in the tiny house (which is where I assume it came from). However, I have seen enough episodes of Hoarders to know that it is more than possible.

Also, I witnessed the boy who sucks on nails come out of his house barefoot, walk into the snow, scoop some up with his bare hands and go back inside with it. I will never figure those people out.

Dorian and Kindergarten update: Dorian will not be attending Kindergarten next year. The board declined to make an exception. This disappoints me on selfish levels, but is fine. He'll be fine regardless. Now we just have to decide if he'll continue at the same preschool, and if so, for how many days a week.

Work update: I'm still holding down the fort on Sundays which continues to be okay despite the fact that sometimes people show up at closing time with massive knitting disasters they expect me to fix. Like the woman who was making a blanket on circular needles, but blankets are flat (you know this, I know this, everyone but she knows this), and two inches in she started making it in the round and didn't understand why that was a problem. Time to put down the needles, ma'am.

Knitting update: I "finished" the red riding hood. You will notice it has no closure of any kind, which means it isn't really finished. I'm thinking of knitting some frogs with the abundance of left over yarn, but it probably also needs a zipper. In the meantime, I used a kilt pin to hold it together when I wore it as a jacket yesterday. It was quite warm.

And in honor of the Olympics, I made this rainbow cowl. Rarely do I buy yarn without a specific project in mind, but I just loved these colors. It is a fairly expensive yarn, so I only bought one ball which is only 95 yards. So I needed a small project. I wanted to keep the rainbow intact, so I knit this as a long rectangle (like half a scarf) and then grafted it together to make a tube. But the K3P1 rib that I made was a little too stiff, so I dropped all the purled stitches and now it is nice and drapey. I am pleased.

There you have it. Maybe I'll even update the kids' blog now...

The bus decision has been made (for the time being anyway)

Citing "too much commotion", Sebastian has decided he'd like to take a break from the bus for a while.

The pros:

• He gets home 40 minutes earlier and in a better mood.
• I have learned not to swear out loud on the drive home (unlike most Kindergartners he knows).
• Dorian doesn't usually punch him in the car. (He waits until we get home for that.)
• There's less guesswork involved. (Will I get to the bus stop before the bus comes? Or will I wait there for 45 minutes before it finally arrives?)

The cons:

• Less time to hang out with parents with whom I have nothing in common other than being the parent of a public school student.
• No standing in the rain for half hour stretches every week.

I think I can live with this decision.

I'm ready for February

I know an awful lot of people who were quite happy to shake the dust of last year and jump into this one. I, on the other hand, have not been too pleased with January, which will be going out on the same sour note it has been playing for weeks.

True, it hasn't been all bad. I did get my ring, after all. And my little brother came to visit. But people are getting me down with all their nonsense.

• I really need to get my child development book out and find out whether it is just seven year-olds in general or mine specifically that are such a pain in the ass. Add to that not knowing what to do about him and the nightmare that is the school bus, and parenting does not top my list of fun activities.
• Despite my reassurances to myself, this PTA stuff just really weighs on me. And even though part of me knows that 3 months isn't a very long time, it seems like an eternity until I can get out of this gig.
• A certain person in our family has been unwell for quite a long time, and things are looking particularly grim these days. And because of the nature of the situation, it is a very draining experience.
• Dorian's school has announced that they will be going sledding every Tuesday for the whole month of February, thereby messing up one of only 2 days a week that he goes, because of course they want drivers and chaperones for these little excursions.
• And I get to end the month with Jeremy leaving on a business trip for 4 days to floody California. At least I'm not dealing with poopy 10 month-old twins alone like that brave soul Mr. Listmaker.

You know, I learned from my nature program puppet show that chipmunks are dormant through the winter, lying on a pile of seeds they collected, waking only to take a little nibble here and there and fall back asleep. Doesn't that sound grand?

Socks and mittens

Sebastian has been a bit jealous of Dorian's "Mommy socks" that I have made, since he doesn't have any. The guilt trip has been long and ridiculous lately, including an Eeyore-esque statement of "I guess these must be Dorian's since Mom never made me any socks." (Actually, they were mine.) So, the little whiner will get these for Christmas.

And Dorian's old mittens are looking a little sad since his thumbs are way too big and are splitting the knitting open. So I decided to whip up these for him.

Now I just need to finish everyone else's presents in 3 short days...

I'm not dead and the computer isn't broken.

I just haven't felt much like blogging lately. I'm trying to wind down from all the PTA rigmarole and remember what to do when I'm not counting other people's money and having meetings and answering endless emails. (Hint: it involves laundry. And having coffee with Amanda while we both fight falling asleep in our armchairs.)

Not having all that to do certainly doesn't mean that I'm not busy, but it has been a more positive kind of busy-ness. Like the boys' birthdays happening last Friday and today. 7 and 4 is a little crazy to think about, but sounds about right. And Rob's birthday falls in the middle, so it has been a week of birthday celebrations, including a trip to the Montshire Museum on Saturday.

Poor DeeDee has been a little under the weather. Friday he was very sensitive and a little snippy. And Saturday he slept until 10am! (I'm not sure when I will stop thinking that oversleeping is a sure indication of my children's deaths, but if I don't get over it soon I'll have quite a time when they are teenagers.) He was healthy and happy when he did finally wake up and was fine Sunday and Monday. But this morning he didn't want to wake up for school and fell asleep again before dinner and then at 6:30 announced it was time for bed. (He did find time to open his presents first.) He doesn't have a fever or anything, but has complained of some leg pain and a headache, and I wouldn't put it past him to be growing again.

Sebastian has been doing well and we had a good parent teacher conference yesterday, which was much better than the other four where either his teachers didn't know what to do with him, didn't think he belonged in their class, or provoked me into an argument. He even won a little prize at All School Sing for doing some extra math problems, so he was excited by that.

I have been trying to fit in the knitting time and am about 10 rows from finishing the first sleeve on my sweater, just have the toe to complete on the first mystery sock, and finished the knitting for the purse and purchased the lining fabric and buttons and just need to buckle down and get it done. Of course, all that has been interrupted by another design for the store. So I am also in the middle of a lacy cowl done in this yarn.

And Jeremy is up to his usual nonsense, monkeying up the English language. In one day he managed to admonish the children to use a "food towel" (napkin) and to ask why all my "hair bops" (rubber bands) were lying around.

As Dorian would say, "The End. That's it."

For the third time in my life

This morning I was, yet again, obliged to pronounce that "there is no use crying over spilt milk" when Dorian was covered in spilt milk from his cereal bowl and was, of course, crying.

Longest day

Today I:

• got up and helped hustle the boys out the door.
• wasted the hour and a half I had to myself doing laundry so Sebastian wouldn't have to go to school pantsless tomorrow.
• went to work.
• had Dorian dropped off at work where I somehow managed to keep him occupied and do my job for 4 hours.
• was hit on by a drunk man who also asked me if I sold anything alcoholic at a yarn store.
• came home for 5 minutes to find 2 messages from the school about how Sebastian thought Christine was picking him up at school instead of the bus stop like I told him 20 times and could I call them to let them know whether to put him on the bus. (No, I can't because now it is 4:50pm.)
• found out he was with Christine and had taken the bus like he was supposed to.
• went to the last of a series of parenting classes I've been attending where I could at least sit down and eat a pizza I didn't have to cook myself and have someone else watch the kids.
• brought the smelly boys home for a bath while I folded the laundry.
• read aloud another chapter in Ralph S. Mouse, a book that just isn't doing it for me but is almost done, thank god.
• put those kids to bed. (Fingers crossed that Sebastian actually sleeps after a cup of caffeinated root beer-- thank you very much, babysitters.)
• collapsed on the couch.

Good night.

J'aime le futbol!

That's what I'd say if I were a good little French soccer mom. Instead, I'm an okay medium-sized American mother who happens to take her child to soccer because he asked her to and it only costs $15 for 8 weeks. (Let's pretend I didn't spend the morning having the oil changed in my minivan and buying soccer socks to help hold up the shinguards on his scrawny little legs.)

He doesn't just have a potty mouth

Yesterday, Dorian wore his new sweater to the bus stop to pick up Sebastian. Along the way, he showed it off to the neighbors announcing, "Look at my beautiful sweater! Mama made it." That would have been heartwarming enough, but then we had this exchange:

Dorian: My shirt says, "A is for Astronaut."

Me: Yep.

D: What does my sweater say?

M: I don't know. Does it say something?

D: It says, "I love you, Dorian. You are my sweetie pie. I'm so glad I have you."

I was speechless and a little teary-eyed. That's exactly what it says.

And then this morning he used the word "muff" at the breakfast table.

An exciting day!

Today was a banner day at the Hott Pockets house. First we made oatmeal this morning and Sebastian ate it and liked it for the first time ever. Maybe it was because I let him spoon the brown sugar on himself... or maybe he finally realized how perfectly delicious oatmeal is. Either way, I foresee an autumn full of yummy hot cereal for breakfast. Maybe I can break their fried egg habit once and for all.

Then Jeremy and I finished the second coat of paint and the trim for Dorian's new room. All that's left is painting the floor, getting the window installed, and having Rob help me build a box to hide the exposed pipe. Minor details...

Then we took the kids to a park a little south of here that is still awesome enough to have seesaws. And it was there that history was made. On Saturday I decided that Sebastian really needed to try riding his bike again after a summer of refusing to ride and putting me off with a series of "maybe later"s. And boy was it ugly! Jeremy got all frustrated with Sebastian, Dorian was whining about his tricycle, they all came home and disappeared into the house while I searched for the pump to fill Sebastian's tires. Then I hollered something about being fed up with all of them and stormed outside. Jeremy threatened to call his mother to cancel her babysitting so we could have our date. It was not pretty. But then I took over with Sebastian and Jeremy dealt with Dorian, and things got much better, but his riding was still pretty awkward even with the training wheels. Sunday, his riding was better but he was still relying on the training wheels a lot.

In the big parking lot at the park today, though, we could hardly hear his training wheels at all. One of them was a little loose so I asked if I could take it off. And he was totally fine with just one, and didn't really need that one either. At this point, Jeremy had taken Dorian to the bathroom, so I convinced Sebastian that we should take the second one off too and really surprise Daddy when he returned. I almost cried when he took off across the parking lot on two wheels with no trouble. Much better the tears of pride than those frustrated ones two days ago. Now he just needs to learn to tie his shoes and he'll be all set.

While we were at the park and the kids were busy looking for trolls and Jeremy was busy cackling while reading a John Hodgman book, I finished these:

Dorian's new socks! Autumn here we come...

Today was one of those days...

... where I actually felt like I was doing something right. It is easy for me to get bogged down in the little dumb stuff in life and parenting. And it is even easier to get bogged down in the big dumb stuff. For example, I am happy that the kids have been much better behaved since I pitched a fit last Thursday, but I don't feel particularly good that I frightened them by threatening to leave them on the side of the road. I know that I don't always make the best choices or do the perfect thing, and that is really hard for me to accept so I have a tendency to beat myself up a little.

But there are days where I just want to cry because I think my kids are so goddamn lucky to lead the life they do. (Crazy mother and all.) And today was one of those days.

Crazy mother went out with several other crazy mothers last night, and when I say went out, I mean until last call. So I wasn't home until midnight and didn't go to sleep until later than that and woke up as tired as when my head hit the pillow. But I got some pants on and went and picked up Amanda and her boys and we all headed up to Putney to go to the orchard there. The plums weren't ripe, but there were blueberries, so Amanda and I picked nearly a gallon apiece while the kids played amongst the bushes in the glorious sunshine.

And after a quick return to the farm stand for an urgent bathroom visit (inevitable with 4 kids in tow) we put the kids in 2 wagons to go look for the reindeer. We didn't see them, but the kids were enjoying the wagon ride and I thought that Sebastian and Riley would probably have more fun (and I wouldn't hurt my back so much) if they tried to ride the wagon down the hill by themselves. And so Sebastian was the Hobbes to Riley's Calvin. And they loved it! And all I could think was that this was what summer should be-- riding in a red wagon down a dirt track amidst a beautiful orchard in this beautiful state that we are fortunate enough to call home. What more could these kids ask for than 2 mamas who love them enough to take them to an orchard to run and play and crash a wagon into a fence while the mamas pick berries for jam to enjoy all winter? Will they think of today when they eat a piece of toast with jam 3 months from now? Will I remember to? Who knows? But it is very nice to be able to appreciate these times as they happen. And now I sound too much like a certain other blogger who tends toward the sappy and often makes me gag a little but takes very pretty pictures, so I will leave you with this pretty picture in her honor:

A ginormous dragonfly I found in the grass...

(But I won't leave before telling you that as usual I have bit off more than I can chew by not only buying enough blueberries to make 4 pints of jam, but also a half bushel of apples I now have to turn into applesauce. It was only $8... how could I pass up the opportunity to add more work to my life for that price? And I finished making up Dorian's sweater... other than the zipper and button... but it is sewn together.)

Rainy weekend activities

It is nice to have a rainy weekend every now and again to catch up on things instead of running off to find a spot of sand at the lake. So, did we make good use of our time? I'd say so.

Yesterday, Jeremy and I primed the walls in what was the music room. We did, that is, until we ran out of primer with only 7 square feet to go. Then we went out to lunch and to the grocery store. A brief respite at home and then we were off Chez Flapdoodle for a pizza party to celebrate a variety of things including their refinancing of their house and our friend Henry getting out of the "clam shell" he has been wearing all summer after breaking his spine. Yes, his spine.

Today was spent making banana muffins from some fruit fly magnets, taking a quick trip to the hardware store for more primer, and blocking Dorian's sweater.


All that remains is to sew it up, add a collar, and insert a zipper I have not yet purchased. Details, details.

I also harvested some stubby little carrots. 4 months of growing for that.
And our first eggplant! Yum!

I also went to see Food, Inc. It was okay. But here's the thing. Even though I am all for organic agriculture and try to shop locally as much as possible, that movie was so over the top at some points that I basically left the theater wanting to eat a Mickey D's hamburger just to spite the filmmakers. Whoever was in charge of the score saw fit to have a horror movie soundtrack during portions involving Monsanto or slaughterhouses. We got it already! And any time there was a corporate farm or a corn field depicted, everything was brown and dusty; but if an organic or small farm was on screen, all you could see was green mountain vistas and idyllic red barns. Please. And don't make Stonyfield yogurt out to be some fabulous company whose president is raving about all the tons of pesticides and antibiotics that aren't being used because they are "organic". Well, I have to ask about all the oil that went into both the plastic packaging that went swirling past as the film went through the factory and the trucks that will transport these dairy products across the country.

But enough of that little tirade. If you've been under some sort of rock lately and have no idea about sustainable farming or the horrors of corporate agribusiness, maybe you should see the film, but otherwise I wouldn't waste my time if I were you.

After I came back from the movie, Jeremy and I painted the ceiling in the former music room, and then I broke out a pane in the window simply by painting the frame. And now for the room news: the music room aka Dustin's room is going to be Dorian's room (or miniDust's room). The drumset will go in Sebastian's room. Dorian is excited to have his own room, since he never has, and I think Sebastian will enjoy having a room of his own again.

After dinner, I cut the boys' hair.

And now I have 2 hours to kill until Mad Men...

Argh.

About 3 minutes after arriving at the lake on Monday, a certain friend of mine announced to the entire world that she was "not a patient mama today!" And despite her announcement, she totally was, but sometimes you just have to let everybody know how things stand.

Well, you know what? I am not a patient mama today. I'm not. I have screamed at the children several times for being, variously: rude, whiny, obnoxious, holier-than-thou, tiresome... you know, all the things I have been accused of being my whole life.

So far today I have had to put up with

• being woken up by Dorian screaming about all the miseries of life.
• finding out that during his sleepover, Sebastian and a girl friend of his were kissing in bed. (But it's okay because they are "in love").
• listening to complaints about what kind of sandwiches I had to offer for lunch and how Sebastian would not suffer the indignity of eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
• taking the kids to the pool for an hour (even though I was already pissed about their behavior) because we had made plans to meet someone else there.
• allowing the kids to have ice cream mainly because they had been promised it as part of the whole pool excursion, only to have them end the experience by screaming at each other about whether or not a tagger should continue to tag after tagging someone.
• listening to Dorian shriek about how he needed to hold a CD case that he had just handed to me of his own volition.

I almost left them on the side of the road. It was only my slight fear of police intervention and my greater fear of the vicious gossip mills in this town that prevented me. And to think that when someone asked me if I was looking forward to the start of school I said "no".

The waster

Well, we now have a diagnosis for Mr. Sickly McLieAbout-- Lyme disease.

When I took him to the doctor on Monday, I had to hold him down forcibly to have his blood drawn for a variety of tests. It was not one of the most pleasant parenting moments I've had, I assure you. Even when he was announcing to the 2 nurses and the lab technician that he was "postponing this! This is postponed!" and everyone was trying to stifle the snickers, it was not pleasant. Only with the promise of seeing the lab and the microscope, and the opportunity to run his own urinalysis, did he relent and allow a couple small vials to be filled.

The initial test indicated that his blood count was normal, so that was good-- no cancer. The inflammation test was high, but was a non-specific test so it couldn't explain the inflammation, only announce its presence. There was also a Lyme test being done, but only because it is summer, and not because he was really presenting with Lyme symptoms other than the exhaustion.

I received a call yesterday saying that if the Lyme test came back negative they might want to do a chest x-ray to rule out juvenile onset rheumatoid arthritis. Ugh! And then this morning we came home from soccer camp (Hey, he still wants to go every day. I'm not a terrible mother.) to a message from the doctor saying the Lyme results were "interesting".

Apparently, "interesting" means "positive" and now Sebastian will be taking 3 weeks of antibiotics. The weird thing is that I never saw his bulls eye rash until today after the diagnosis. Being the 6 and a half year old that he is, I no longer dress him, or wipe his butt, or spend a lot of time around his nakedness. But today I happened to come around the corner when he was seated on the toilet to see a round mark on his hip.

So now I guess I'll go read some frightening information on the Internet so I can feel less relieved that I at least know what the problem is.

He's wasting away...

This afternoon I will be taking Sebastian to the doctor for the second time in about 2 weeks as he seems to be suffering from some sort of Victorian era wasting disease along the lines of consumption or melancholia or malaise. The boy took a 2 and a half hour nap yesterday afternoon after having a full night's sleep and slept all night last night as well. He has been subsisting on chicken and rice soup and yogurt and looking deathly pale. It would all be terribly romantic if it weren't sprawled all over my living room couch. Next thing I know I'll have to bring a wheelchair and blankets to the ocean with us next week.

But don't worry too much. He insisted on attending soccer camp this morning where he earned a green card* for winning a dodgeball style game.

* I haven't yet figured out who is letting a bunch of Brits pass out green cards, but when I do, I'll let you know.

Mr. Tooth

Now, if this child told me he was odd-looking, I'd be less likely to disagree. That snaggle tooth better fall out soon.

Mystery solved!

Many months ago, my darling duo came to me with my camera in hand complaining that it "didn't work". That was probably because the lens, which extends when the camera is turned on, was at a 45 degree angle. Of course, neither of them did it, but Sebastian suspected Dorian.

Well, Jeremy decides to have it fixed as a present to me for my birthday (probably so he wouldn't have to hear me whine anymore about being forced to use the other camera). A month later, it was ready for pick-up. On Friday we retrieved it and, lo and behold, there were a few pictures on the card.

Pictures of what? you may ask. Oh, just pictures of Dorian. Pictures that could only have been taken by one short person I know. And yet somehow I have been convinced to bake that boy a cherry pie from scratch...