Da Damene Dro

When the Ladies Left

There is a show on Norwegian television with that title. I have to say that I was a little surprised, although the ad makes me laugh every time.

Little boy jumping on the bed bonks his chin on the shelf and begins to wail. Dad looks on helplessly, while the song "Highway to Hell" plays in the background.

I was surprised, because this is a country pre-occupied with sexual equality. This is a show about men being left to their own devices with the house and kids, while the women head for vacation. The presumption being that all hell breaks loose when men have to take care of their homes and children when the women aren't around.

Something doesn't quite fit. I mean, a show about the men leaving the workplace would never fly.

When the Boys Bail
Women in a staff meeting. One begins to cry. All the women gather round, clucking and asking what's wrong. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. "It's my period." The women nod knowingly -- one cannot function under the hormonal onslaught of a period -- and start discussing their feelings. Meanwhile, another women glares at the others from the corner and mutters, "Bitches," under her breath. She is the bitter Office Harpy around whom all of the drama will center. Playing in the background is, "Man! I feel like a woman!"

Yeah. Good luck with that. In the year 2009, should men being hopeless caretakers of their children REALLY provide entertainment value? Isn't the "right" answer to the question, "What happens when men take care of their own lives with no women around for a few days," that they will be just fine?

Wait! What was that? A gasp heard round the world as women exclaimed, "Are you freakin' kidding me?! Do you KNOW what happened last time my husband was alone with the children? Let me tell you. . ."

Yes. Yes. I know. All women have these stories. I have many a few um, one (?) of my own. I'm just sayin'.

Personally, when something goes horribly wrong and I'm not around, I prefer the much more egalitarian attitude, "Better you than me."

Art of Flattery

Relevant background info:
synes = think or feel in Norwegian
Laney regularly mixes Norwegian in with her English. Anyhoo. . .

Laney likes to give compliments. She adopts a very girlish, sweet tone and says, " I like you" or "you're pretty." Today, she told her father, "I like you best. And Mommy. And Nicky. I like all of you three." She was also in a kissy/huggy mood and gave them generously.

The other day, she pulled me close and whispered in my ear, "Mommy, I synes you're not stupid. I synes you're pretty."

Awww, kiddo. Sniff. Sniff. That's the best compliment ever.

What's that called again?

A couple of people at my husband's work really enjoyed a batch of butterscotch-oatmeal cookies he took with him recently. When trying to recall the magic ingredient, he just couldn't come up with the word.

"What was it called again?? Butter? Butter-something. Buttercrotch? No, that can't be it."

No, honey. That's certainly not it.

"Here you go, lovely co-workers. Have a chomp on some lovely buttercrotch, why don't you?"

Needless to say, he knows the correct name for the magic ingredient now. Buttercrotch is not it.

Candyland

The rules of the children's game, Candyland, are simple. One chooses one of four brightly colored gingerbread men and places them at the start. Then one picks a card from the deck of face-down cards and moves the gingerbread man forward to the appropriate spaces, generally one or two colored spaces. To make the game more exciting, there are several points along the trail with a special picture, a gummy drop or lollipop. If one gets the card with one of the special pictures, one moves to that space. It can be a great leap forward or back, depending where you are in the game. The object of the game is to reach the Candy King's castle first.

My kids love this game. Laney, especially, LOVES this game. She wants to play it all day long. ALL. DAY. LONG. Now, I know what you're thinking.

"Nothing sounds more exciting that an all-day marathon of Candyland. Playing the game again and again and again and again must be such fun!"

You'd be wrong, my friend. Oh. So. Very. Wrong.

Mostly, it's a problem of the rules. There are The Rules, and there are Laney's Rules. She knows how to play correctly. She has even done so on occasion, but she prefers to live dangerously, playing by her own Candyland rules.

Laney's Rules for Candyland

1. The picture cards are the best cards. The others, boring. Take all the picture cards and put them on the top of the draw pile. Even if the cards are face up, act surprised and happy when you pull your favorite, the lollipop girl. Joyfully move your gingerbread man to the appropriate space. When all the picture cards have been drawn, put them back at the top of the pile and start again. This way, the game NEVER ends, because you move only among the "fun" spaces. Remember to act surprised every time you pull a card from the pile.

2. When forced to use the boring ole colored cards, if it indicates you are to move ahead to the next blue space, you can really move back a blue space or ahead three blue spaces, or to another colored space of your choosing. If your picky older brother starts yelling about "cheating" and "not playing with you anymore," just shake your head from side to side and say, "Noooo." Watch his face twist in frustration. You can also yell back, thus increasing the amusement of the other players, namely, mommy.

3. You can decide to be a different gingerbread man at any point in the game -- your older brother's will cause the most excitement. If he objects, just pick up his gingerbread man and run. Run until he catches you (because he is bigger, stronger, and faster) and wrestles you to the ground. Scream at the top of your longs in outrage. Don't give in until the fight ends in tears for both of you. As you may have guessed, mommy is generally very entertained by this behavior.

4. When you are finished playing, scatter the cards to the four winds and hide the gingerbread men. When no one can find them later, act very confused indeed. If mommy does find all the pieces and puts the game away, let her have her minute, then drag it back out and ask to play again.

One can never play too much Candyland.

Laney's Hair

Pre-mommy-of-a-three-year-old girl, I thought my relationship with my daughter's hair would be one of joy. . .of braids and ponytails, pretty bows and clips. I was excited about all the cute pigtails and fun I would have with my daughter's hair. What is it about little girls' hair, anyway? She was so adorable and would be even cuter with bows in her pretty hair.

I didn't think I'd have to wait too long. When my son was born, he had a head full of thick black hair that quickly grew into a head of thick light brown hair. I could have put little choking hazards cute clips and barrettes in his hair by the time he was four months old. Laney was born with a bit of downy brown hair, but not near as much as Nicky, and it grew slowly.

Then, finally, FINALLY her hair began to grow out. First, it was her bangs. I thought I would let them grow out and just put them back. Clip went in her hair, two seconds later, little baby hands took them out again. Clip went back in, one second later, little baby hands took them out again. It was a battle of wills. I, of course, lost. Poor thing went around looking a little shaggy until I finally gave in and cut her bangs on a regular basis.

Then, last summer, her hair was just long enough to really run a brush through. Not long, just long enough. As I gently pulled the hairbrush through her hair, it felt unbelievably good. I had no idea that brushing my daughter's hair could make me feel so gooey inside.

I remembered all the times I sat in a chair as my mom brushed my own hair and braided it or put it up -- the brush tickling my scalp before it began the descent down the long length of my hair, lightly tugging my head backward. I could feel the my mother's hands gently parting my own hair and forming it into braids or putting it up in a ponytail.

Now, it was me on the other side of the chair. I was doing the brushing and running my fingers though my daughter's silky soft hair as she sat quietly in the chair. The surge of memories from the past, of me and my mother, combined with visions of the memories-to-be, of me and my daughter. The past, the future, and the now, all connected through this ritual, the brushing of hair. It felt a little weird to feel this sudden onslaught of emotions over a simple, everyday thing, but I was a little emotional. I loved brushing my daughter's hair.

That feeling lasted exactly one afternoon.

The problem is my daughter comes with a strong personality, one that isn't so fond of having her hair brushed. Actually, she hates it and carries on like a lunatic whenever she sees the brush coming toward her hair. From that blissful afternoon to the present-day, our hair-brushing ritual has degenerated into me chasing her around the house with a brush. If these walls could talk. . .

"Laney, get over here now!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Most days I am bothered to try and catch her. Often enough, I get the brush through her hair a few times while we're both on the run. What a ridiculous image. How did I end up here, again?? Maybe I get a barrette in to try and keep her long locks out of her face. She yanks them out and throws the cute little barrettes on the floor.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I don't WANT to wear these! I ALWAYS have to wear these!"

If I try to force her into submission, she shakes her head violently and musses her hair with her hands, tangling it further.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Is that me or her? We're usually screaming in unison at this point.

Our hair-brushing encounters often winds up in tears, hers, and migraines, mine. That's when other memories of me and my mother come flooding back. Her, in the mad dash of the weekday morning, yanking my hair back into a quick ponytail while tangles were brushed quickly and painfully into submission. All the while, I was yelling, "Ouch! Stop! You're pulling my hair!" My tears. Her migraines.

When I was 7 or 8, my mother took me took me to a beauty salon and spoke conspiratorially with the beautician in Japanese. When I left, I had a little pixie cut. My mother also got me a perm once, leaving me with a semi-afro, a highly unnatural look for a half-white, half-Asian girl, but that's another story for another day. I never thought I'd want to do this, but I some days I want to give my daughter her own little pixie cut and be done with it. I'll spare her the afro.

I will wait until after Christmas pictures, at least, but I don't know if I can wait until she's 7 or 8.

There is no gown

When one moves to a new country, one inevitably compares their new country to "home." Things are done differently here and there. It's not always good or bad, just different, although one's stage of culture shock can color the comparison.

In the early stages, the honeymoon period, ones sees only the positives of the new country and feels secure in the decision to have moved. They can't breathe in enough of the crisp, clean air. The beautiful scenery astounds them on a regular basis. Medical care is free. Crime rates are low, literacy rates are high. It's cold but not THAT cold, and summers can actually be quite pleasant and warm.

In later stages, comparisons become less favorable. People begin to have doubts. They begin to wonder -- wonder why the hell they ever let their husband drag them to the end of the planet where one could buy a small plot of land in the rest of the world for what it costs to fill up the tank of a car, where people don't tell you to have a nice day, where it is never, ever, ever, EVER warm, and for the love of all that's good in the world, why the hell don't people hold the damn door open for those that follow?!?!?!

Oh, sorry. Lost my train of thought. By the way, it's not as if I've ever thought those thoughts. I'm just sayin', hypothetically speaking. . .

Where was I going with this?

Vaginal exams, right.

Didn't see that coming, did ya? Since I didn't move to a country with a vastly different culture from my own, I was never hit with big waves of culture shock. Instead, it was always the small things that would startle me into the realization that, yes, I've moved to a different country. It's in the subtleties that I notice the difference.

Small things, like in the control of the underlife. (Tee hee. Norwegians don't understand why sometimes their lovely language can send me into peals of laughter. A womanly exam is called an underlivets kontrol, meaning an underlife appointment, but kontrol sounds like control. . .get it?? Voice tapering off as no one else finds it quite so amusing.)

So while the big picture is not much different, it's in the details.

In both countries, when a woman submits to this decidedly unpleasant but medically necessary part of preventative health care, she is shown in to the examination room and told to undress.

In the States, after a woman undresses and lays her neatly folded clothes on the chair. I can't be the ONLY one who does this. She puts on a paper gown and drapes a paper blanket over her lap while she waits for the doctor to come in. You know, to protect her dignity for later when she is laying back on the table, legs in stirrups while a total stranger inspects her most intimate regions with a spotlight. Many American doctors also have some kind of picture on the ceiling for the woman to stare at while they are trying to pretend they are somewhere else. Oh, look! Pretty flowers! I'm in a garden. Twirling! Dancing!

As much fun as you could have making light of all these little niceties, hours of unadulterated laughter, I'm sure, you miss those niceties when they're gone. Desperately.

In Norway, there is no paper gown.

Do you hear what I'm saying?! No paper gown. This means that once you're undressed, you stand there, naked (or, at least, half-naked). What exactly are you supposed to do when standing naked in an unfamiliar, well-lit room? Just get on up in the chair, put your legs in the stir-ups, and wait? You don't want the doctor to think you're unprepared, do you? Or start rifling through the drawers to take your mind off the fact that your ass and, gulp, front are just hanging out in the breeze? We're never more free than when we're naked, so maybe we could just start dancing to pass the time.

The worst was, the worst was, please don't tell anyone. I'm just sharing this with you. . .and everyone else with an internet connection, but really, it's private. The worst was, shortly after my daughter was born, I had to go in to the doc for a check to make sure all was okay with my underlife. I had only recently moved to this country and didn't understand the no-paper-gown-thing. The dressing/undressing area was at the back of a cavernous exam room, which was roughly the size of a football stadium. I dutifully went back, undressed, and looked desperately for the safety of a thin paper gown. There was none. The doctor and the nurse and, I think, half the hospital staff waited for me to come out. Finally, someone asked me if everything was okay, clearly expecting me to walk out in all my post-baby nakedness to the exam chair, which was placed on the other side of this gigantic room.

If I think about it now, it was probably that moment I began my descent toward Stage 2 (everything in the new country sucks) culture shock. And of course, there are no pictures on the ceiling here. Doctors don't chat away. Instead, they do the exam in cold, stony silence.

Generally, I appreciate the European/Norwegian attitude toward nudity. I think it's much healthier than our puritanical American attitude. Nudity is natural. It's not that people run around in the streets naked (too cold), but children's butts aren't blurred out on the television either, because really, we're talking America's Funniest Home Videos not depravity.

I also think this attitude lends itself to healthier body images. In any case, people shouldn't feel uncomfortable in their own skins. I can respect that. A commonplace medical exam is not exactly the time to be modest. All of the other stuff is simply unnecessary. I can understand that, too.

But seriously. What the hell is so wrong with paper-gowns?!

Fun Links for Friday

Have way too much time on your hands? Then check out your color vision. Why not? It's Friday!

Warning: Doing so may make you feel blind and dizzy for a few minutes following.

The best score is zero. Mine was 7. I almost went blind getting that score!

Early Bird

You know what I envy my daughter?

BESIDES her youth and her perfect, unblemished complexion. . .

I envy her the way she wakes up in the morning. The rest of us in this family are slow to get out of bed -- the two adults being the worst. If we had our way, we'd never get out of bed. (Not as sexy as it sounds, really. We're talking about snuggling under our own covers, in blissful sleep, inflicting our morning breath on no one). Nicky also loves to luxuriate in the mornings. If I don't miss my guess, he will be crawling out of bed at two in the afternoon when he's a teen. Don't get me wrong. He's not difficult in the morning. As long as I let him wake up at his own pace, he gets up and gets dressed easily. (We'll see how that changes once he HAS to be up early for school).

Laney, on the other hand, bounds out of bed. I often hear her wake up. First, the covers rustle as she rolls this way and that in those last moments of sleep. Suddenly, she pops awake and pat-pat-pat-pat, I hear running across the floor, full of life and full of chatter. If I have to wake her up before her own internal clock has, it generally takes just a soft whisper in her ear that it's morning, and she sits straight up in bed, still half asleep, but quickly forcing herself alive.

She is so excited for every new day.

I hope that she will always love coming awake in the morning. I hope that she'll always bound out of bed because there is so much she is excited to do that day. Of course, it won't be every day. I just hope those days outnumber all the others. Of all of the dreams and hopes that I have for my daughter, that she continues to love starting her day is at the very top of my list.

Election '08

I was fascinated to see an advertisement yesterday on TV2 (one of the larger TV networks here) for 24-hour Election '08 coverage. This is the American election we're talking about. The Norwegian elections are next year.

It made me really stop to think how powerful the president of the United States is. His (one day her) election is covered the world over, not in passing, but in 24-hour special coverage.

A little ironic. Most Norwegians can tell you who the president of the U.S.A. is and many will watch this coverage of the next president. Most Americans, however, don't know the difference between Norway and the Netherlands. No! They're not the same place! And yes, Seven has been asked if they have wooden shoes where he's from after he has said he is Norwegian.

Many Americans can't even name one other world leader. I can, but I cheat, because I live in a foreign country. I know the Norwegian prime minister is Jonas Stoltenborg. (Ha! Just kidding! Trying to give the Norwegians in the crowd a little heart attack.)

To be fair, Americans live in a country of 300 million people. There is a lot going on there. Like everything American, the election is BIG. Big enough to travel oceans and make it top news in other places.

In honor of Election '08, the cutest election conversation ever.

A friend of mine told me her son's class is studying a little bit about the elections and is holding a secret ballot. My friend's son said that he has decided to vote for Barack Obama. His four-year-old sister chimed in, "Yeah, I'm going to vote for A Rock Omama, too!"

I'm sure one could collect all the cute ways kids say the candidate's name.

*For those of you who don't know and are curious, the prime minister's name is really Jens Stoltenberg (2005 - ). You never know. That piece of knowledge may be the answer that will win you a game of Trival Pursuit one day. Hang on to it.

You know you're out of it when. . .

When you think you've been doing a better job of posting to your blog and realize that you've posted LESS this month than in any other. I think I might have been fired if I was actually getting paid to write this thing.

Do you ever read the comments? I try to post back to comments. So even when I don't post, I might be on here commenting. Maybe.

Others post funny or touching stuff, too, but I haven't been too successful in getting others to comment, yet. Then again, maybe it's better this way? A blog is kind of an ego-trip. I can go on about myself without having to actually listen to what others have to say. It's all about me, baby!

I hate that when you're, you know, like, talkin' and talkin' and still talkin' and then you look up to see that the other person has this glazed look in their eye just waiting for you to shut up. And when you do, they just, like, talk and talk and keep ON talking. And you start thinking about what you're going to say when they finally shut their yap, but their mouth just keeps movin' and movin'. Jiminey! Don't they ever shut up??

See, with a blog, you avoid all that.

This month, three years ago

My due date had come and gone, and we were anxiously awaiting our second baby. According to the ultrasounds, we were expecting a little girl. A daughter. I would finally be able to indulge in all the sweet, ruffly stuff that I couldn't buy the first time. As one does, I wondered what this new little one would be like. What would she look like? Would she look very much like her brother? I knew from the souvenir ultrasound picture that she had a cute nose and a perfectly-shaped, four-chambered heart.

I'd begun having contractions in the middle of September. Twice they'd gone on long enough for us to stop and time them. I thought she might even come early. Not so. She was just making sure we were paying attention. Even before she was born, Laney made everyone in the room stop and take notice of her. Then, on a cloudy afternoon in October, she made her entrance. She was here. Our baby girl.

Three days old

I was more confident in myself as a mother this time around. No longer scared, but still worried. Would I be a good mother of two? Sometimes I wasn't sure I was a good enough mother of one. How much would our family change? A lot? Too much? But mostly I worried for Nicky. How would he handle sharing his spot at the center of our universe? Turns out, he handled it fine. There were a few bumps along the way, to be sure, but she flowed easily into our lives. Our family was complete, because she was now a part of it.

I would swear to you that Laney smiled at four days old. Despite what the baby books say, it's not totally unbelievable. Had she been born two weeks early, instead of two weeks late, she'd have been a month old by then. I have, however, dutifully recorded a date for her first smile on a day in November, at about the right time frame. Truth is, I'd been seeing little grins for so long that I wasn't sure when she really did smile for the first time. She simply is and always has been smiles and sunshine. (Okay, mostly smiles and sunshine. She's got a temper, too, that child).

Now, she's three. Three! I can't believe it's already been three years since we brought her home to us.

Sometimes, I wonder where this little girl comes from. This little girl who loves to make people laugh. A little girl with a sunny personality who charms family and strangers alike. A little girl whose exuberant enthusiasm knows no bounds. She certainly didn't get those traits from me. She is Tigger to my Eyore. I leave it to you to decide who is Piglet and who is Pooh in our family.

It's appropriate to me that she was born in the autumn. Just as we head into the dark Norwegian winter, when the nights are incredibly long and the sun doesn't rise above the horizon for two months, we have her -- our own little ray of sunshine to light up the house on those dark winter nights and keep us going until spring.

Happy Birthday, Little Miss Sunshine!

Three weeks old

One month old

Two months old

Eight months old

Ten months old

One year old

Two years old

Sugar and Spice. . .And everything nice. . .That's what little girls are made of.

Touche

Laney was walking around, arching her back, and sticking her stomach out as far as she could.

Seven teased her. "Do you have a big stomach?"

She didn't miss a beat and said nonchalantly, "Not as big as yours."

Nice.

Tact. We'll work on tact.

The gliding chair

Seven bought me a gliding chair and ottoman shortly after Nicky was born.

We had a big living room, not a lot of furniture, and a baby that wouldn't ever let us put him down. Nicky and I spent A LOT of time in that chair. The chair faced the sliding glass doors to the backyard. Much of my time after Nicky came into the house was spent looking out those windows and at the big shady tree we had in back.

Sometimes I resented it. I spend my whole life in this damn chair. Other times, I reminded myself to appreciate it. I will only spend this one small part of my life in this chair. . .and soon it'll be gone.

For whatever reason, a few weeks ago, Nicky couldn't sleep. He asked me to lay down in bed with him, so I did. He began whispering to me about the dreams he had had -- one a scary one in which one of his toys had come to life in the box. I let him talk, knowing that these moments would be fewer and further between, and suddenly it was very much past his bedtime.

"Can we rock in the rocking chair," he asked me quietly when I told him I was to go. I thought about it for a minute. It was already so far past his bedtime, so I figured that a few minutes wouldn't hurt.

The glider sits in the corner of the kids' room loaded down with stuffed animals and other miscellaneous toys and stuff. We never found the right place for the chair in this house -- too many small rooms, too much clutter. Laney and I never quite got the same use out of it.

I took down the stuffed animals and threw them in a heap on the floor and sat down. Nicky crawled into my lap and we rocked in the chair the way we used to do. Sort of. He is much too big to sit comfortably on my lap now. He turned this way and that, curling his feet up, then stretching them out, trying to find a comfy spot and never quite finding it. We rocked for a few minutes anyway and then, content, he went back to bed and fell quickly asleep.

I think it was a little bittersweet for both of us -- that moment Nicky understood that he was just too big for the rocking chair. It was a part of his past -- a part he'd long-since outgrown. We can't have those moments back, even when we want to, even when we try really hard.

There's a tired mommy in the rocking chair and a baby who curled into her just so.

Where we were married

Do you know that show Little Einstiens -- children's television that pretends to be intellectual by throwing in a couple of classical music bits? Laney loves it.

In one episode, the four explorers are flying over Florence, Italy in their little red spaceship.

"Hey, pappa and I got married there," I said, pointing at the television.

"In a spaceship?"

Um, no. In Florence.

Mommy better watch herself. . .

Yesterday, Nicky threatened me with the following:

"If we don't play one more game of Uno, I won't snuggle with you tomorrow."

I can't tell you how hard it is to keep a straight face when you're being threatened with the word snuggle.

Tower of Babble

The observant among you may have noticed my little 'translator' on the side of the page. At the quick press of a flag, my blog is instantly translated into several languages. Cool.

I added it on to the page in the hopes of translating the site into Japanese. My friends and family in Japan could read what I wrote and be a part of my blogging experience. The first time I clicked on the Japanese flag and my words came up in Japanese, I was thoroughly impressed. It would take me ages to translate one of my own posts. My Japanese is not all that good. This was done in a matter of seconds. Very cool.

Then I started reading the translation. Ummmmmmm, not cool. English to Japanese or vice versa is notoriously hard to translate. Grammatics, word order, colloquial expressions, well, basically everything is completely different in the two languages. Computer translations have been very unsuccessful for this very reason. Apparently, they still are unsuccessful -- at least, the free download-off-the-Internet-types are anyway.

For example, my intro:

I am two 29-year-old mother. I am America. My husband is the Norwegian language. Yada. Yada. I speak one language and two other broken fluently. I have a riddle for your benefit: my mother is the Japanese language, my father is an American, my kids are the Norwegian language, so what does that make me?

You get the picture. The widget is aptly named Babel Fish.

My mother told me to take the tool down immediately as it makes me sound like a tool and a raving lunatic in Japanese.

Raving lunatic is not the image I was trying to send across the language barrier.

Today is the day

If my daughter had come on her due date, today would be her birthday. Instead, she decided to grow to gigantic newborn proportions and come fashionably late. Very fashionably late.

Like mother, like daughter. She will spend the rest of her life trying to get places on time. (Although I did my mother the favor of staying normal newborn proportions and arriving late. Then again, I came into the world ass first. That couldn't have been fun my mother).

It wasn't actually Laney's fault she came so late. I'll explain, but I need to back up for a second.

When I was still pregnant with Nicky, I went overdue. We hadn't decided a name for him. We were torn between three combinations. I went in to work the first Monday after my due date had passed and someone I worked with asked me what we were going to call the baby. I said I didn't know yet.

He said, "That's why that baby hasn't come yet! He can't come into this world without a name. You need to give that child a name."

I told this to my husband, and we picked our son's name and had a little "naming" ceremony. There was some flashcard waving and chanting involved. Sure enough, I went in to labor that night.

Fast forward two years -- we were torn between two first names for Laney. When I went past my due date again, and she showed no signs of coming, I told Seven that we should have another naming ceremony. This time we weren't as serious. Just silly. Days passed, she didn't come. I was huge and heavy and was tired of carrying her around on the inside. I told Seven we are going to do the naming ceremony again. We discussed changing her name to Laney, but I said we could stick with the 'other.' She still didn't come. The next day I wrote my parents that if she didn't come that day, then I would change her name to Laney. I went into labor shortly after midnight.

She just didn't want to be Helena. She's always known what she wanted. If I had known she'd be so determined and stubborn, I'd have given her name weeks earlier!! Her birthday would have already passed in that case.

An old bag of shoes

In the process of de-junking our attic a few weeks ago, I was handing down boxes and bags of who-knows-what to Seven. There was tons of stuff we needed to go through. How is it that we have a huge attic and no storage space? Oh, because our attic is filled with all kinds of useless crap antique things.

We inherited this house, which means we inherited the long-since forgotten things being stored in the attic. Additionally, we had to find a place for our things, the ones we shipped here but didn't have space for. We piled that stuff on top of what was already up there, so the attic became a great big pile of junk stuff. For the last few years, I have felt the weight of the cluttered attic suffocating me. This is the year we were going to get it organized!

Yeah, right.

We have, at least, started, despite my husband's protests.

On the appointed day, I handed down box after box. I handed down many a plastic bag. Who knew what treasures these boxes and bags beheld?

We found some things that were to be kept, like old linens handmade by Seven's grandmother and some old photographs. We also found all manner of junk, including some broken old trophies with no names, dates, or apparently memories attached and a tacky hula doll and wooden chickens and faded bed sheets and parts of furniture and stuff we shipped half-way around the world for no fathomable reason. . .this list could go on forever.

In the midst of it all, I tore open an old, gray AAFES bag, ready to throw its contents away. Instead of immediately tossing the contents in the ever-growing "Toss" pile, I sat there for many minutes as the memories came flooding back.

In the bag were some of Nicky's old shoes.


There were the first pair I'd bought him, a pair of brown sandals. I never bought baby shoes for him. I figured, if he can't walk, he doesn't need shoes. He didn't get his first shoes until he was one. He still wasn't walking by his first birthday, but I held out hope. Since we were celebrating his birthday in Hawaii, I bought sandals. He didn't use them much and they still look brand-new.

The little blue tennis shoes, though? The Sketchers? Those were his first 'go' shoes. Those are the shoes that he wore once he really knew how to walk. Those shoes went racing down the hall of our apartment building in Japan. They trekked all over Tokyo with us. He was wearing those while we were moving to Norway. These are the shoes Nicky used as he explored the world on two feet for the first time. These shoes don't look brand-new. They are dirty and beat-up. And a reminder of when my baby boy was one.

As I handled the blue shoes, I suddenly regretted throwing away Laney's silver shoes. They weren't her first shoes. (Her first real shoes were bright pink winter boots that we paid a small fortune for even she only needed them for a few months. We still have those.) The silver shoes, though, those were her favorite. She wore them everywhere last summer, even when playing. They weren't the best quality and were quickly run ragged, but she loved those shoes, and when she outgrew them, we bought her another pair, one size bigger. I wished I had the first pair back -- a tangible reminder of the time when my baby girl was one.

I packed up the old shoes, including the newest pair of silver shoes (too cold to use them now), and put them in the gray bag. They were going back into the attic. To add to the clutter. To collect more dust. In all likelihood, to be thrown away by the next generation of attic cleaners for whom those shoes will simply be trash.

For me, though, those beat-up old shoes are reminders of the chubby feet and little toes that used to fit into them, of the time when my kids were my babies. The next time I see those shoes (Have I mentioned there is a lot of junk in that attic I have to go through?), my kids will have undoubtedly outgrown several more pairs of shoes. They'll be off exploring the world in their larger shoes, on their own or with their friends.

I'll still have the little ones, though, the ones from the time we explored the world together, their hands in mine.

A conversation

Kids say the weirdest things when they think you're not paying attention. We were lying in bed this Sunday morning and Nicky crawled in with two favorite characters. The following is an excerpt from their conversation.

A conversation between Spiderman and a transformer called Bulkhead

Plllllllllllllwwwwwwwwwwfffffftttttt. (Extreme farting noise)

Bulkhead: Æsj! Gross! Spiderman, why did you fart?
Spiderman: I just wanted to.

Suddenly, the two begin wrestling. Conversation moves on.

Imagining this conversation taking place in real life between the real Spiderman and Bulkhead sent me into peals of laughter.

Kids are just goofy.

Blogworld

I had begun to notice that the chaotic state of my house was in direct proportion to how much I neglected it by doing other things. . .like blogging. I decided to neglect blogging for a time to bring my house back into control.

It's not, but close enough, so back to blogging!