2 and a half

I wish I may, I wish I might

Audrey is staying with Grammy tonight. We talked to her on the phone and she wanted to communicate this wish to Grace:

I wish I may

I wish I might

I wish I...[inaudible]

That Grace has sweet dreams tonight

Love, Audrey.

What a loving big sister. We'll miss her this evening.

3 hugs and 3 kisses

Sometimes, on my to work, I take Audrey to school. It's fun because she sits proudly in her booster seat (no car seat in Daddy's car!) and likes to show me that she can operate her seat belt and get in and out of the car herself.

On the way I like to ask her what she expects to do at school that day because getting information out of her later can be tough unless she's in the right mood. But generally her retort is, "Why do you keep asking me that, Dad? I'm haven't gone to school yet." Can't argue with that.

In the school parking lot teaching staff wait to escort the kids inside. But Audrey always prefers that Daddy walks her in instead. I suspect that each time we do this I'm disrupting the orderly flow of the drop-off process but no one seems to mind as far as I can tell.

Audrey is outgoing but generally requires some warm up time before she is comfortable. As a result she'll cling to my leg or act shy when we approach her classroom, reluctant to engage with others. Her teacher usually has an exercise set up for the kids to as they enter the classroom which I suspect is to get their little brains going but also to ease their transition from home to school. It seems to work.

Audrey likes to add one extra step though and it has become a bit of a tradition. She gets 3 hugs and 3 kisses from Daddy before I leave and that seems to really put her at ease. Sometimes she requests a 4th which is perfectly fine by me because the hugs and kisses are harder and harder to come by nowadays.

If you're a parent it's good to come up with small rituals like this for the transitions that take place during the day - it helps make those transitions easier and more fun.

Audrey's addiction

We have restricted Audrey's pacie usage to night time only, although she tries her hardest to feed her addiction during the day.

Daddy: "Audrey, put your pacie away, you don't need it."

Audrey: "But I DO need it. I can't breathe without it."

Daddy: "You can't breathe? I'm sure that's not the case. In fact you can probably breathe better without it."

Audrey: "But I NEED it!"

Daddy: "Put your pacie away right now or you won't have it tonight."

Audrey: "Okay... But can I have just one more suck?"

Daddy: "Um, sure."

Comedy relief

This is not real. But it could be. So be a good parent and then hope you're lucky.

---

A father passing by his son's bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to "Dad." With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter. 

Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you and mom.

I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice. But I knew you would not approve of her because of her piercings, tattoos, tight clothes and the fact that she is quite a bit older than me. But it's not only the passion... She's pregnant. 

I know that's big news but Stacy says we will be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children. 

Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone. We'll be growing it for ourselves and also trading it with people who live nearby for even stronger, more eye opening drugs. In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She's such a good person and deserves it.

Don't worry Dad. I'm 15 and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'm sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know our kids.

Love, Your Son

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the report card that's in my center desk drawer. I love you. Call me when it's safe to come home.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's to my wife and to my two little girls.

Hope it's full of love.

When it gets quiet

When it gets quiet, something is up.

Take Audrey and her friend Alexa. They have more fun together than Audrey does with most of her other friends and, as a result, tend to make lots of noise. You know - running around chasing each other, climbing on furniture, yelling and screaming - the sort of thing that toddlers do together.

But while we were eating dinner at Alexa's parent's house this evening suddenly the background noise stopped. Sure - Grace was on the floor playing with blocks and making a small racket but the noise upstairs stopped. In the midst of our conversation during dinner I noticed it, but, seeing as how we were talking and all, I figured it wasn't worth interrupting anyone.

When Audrey came down the stairs her mouth was full of something; when I asked her what it was she opened her mouth and could barely keep the mushed-up mass of brown, melted chocolate from spilling out of her mouth. "I'm eating choclllllit," stammered Audrey.

As if I didn't know.

She and Alexa had been upstairs getting into Alexa's candy stash. By her own account, Audrey had one hard candy and shared three Hershey's Kisses with Alexa. But my wife told me later that Alexa's mom said at least 10 chocolates were missing from the bag which means Audrey very well could have had 5 or so, and perhaps a lot more if Alexa wasn't matching her 1 for 1.

That's on top of a generous dessert of brownies and ice cream.

Surprisingly neither one was overly hyper but perhaps it's because they spent all their energy playing together.

Noise good, quiet bad.

Jewelry

If you have little girls, keep your jewelry locked up. Here's why.

Now that she is tall enough to reach it, Audrey loves to mess around in Mommy's jewelry drawer and doesn't distinguish between things that cost say, $10, and things that cost, um, quite a bit more. Like Suzanne's wedding band for example. It disappeared the other day and Suzanne asked me to stay on the lookout. Normally I'd say "no problem" but not when it comes to the wedding band. I'd find it then and there.

We both knew Audrey had been into the jewelry drawer earlier. She had just woken from a nap and I asked her, "Have you seen Mommy's ring?" She looked at me sleepily and then said with nonchalance, "Yes, I was playing with it."

I looked over at Suzanne and I think we were were both nervous about what she might say next. "Can you tell Daddy where it is?" I asked, smiling. "Sure," she said, beginning to walk down the hall to show me. "I put it in my laundry underneath all the dirty clothes." Generally one would pause here to wonder why on earth THAT particular location would occur to her as a place to stash a ring. But I was just glad she remembered where it was. 

But when we got to the laundry basket it was empty - no clothes and no ring. "Well, I KNOW I put it in here..." said Audrey. I looked around on the floor but saw nothing. Then Suzanne recalled, "I just did all her laundry! Let me go check the washer and dryer." I still had hope but was thinking that finding the ring in a pile of clothes would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Not to mention the danger of all the drains and pipes and other nooks and crannies of a typical laundry room.

Moments later Suzanne walked back in smiling. "Here it is!" she announced as she showed the ring to us. "It was in the bottom of the washer." 

We smiled at Audrey because she had really helped us find it. I mean, who would have thought to look in the washer?? That ring could have been in there for days or even weeks.

Clearly we need to do something asap about safeguarding Suzanne's jewelry, but at least we had found it, and at least it was sparkly and clean.