Activities coordinator

My three year-old and I were discussing the events that transpired over the weekend while I was away. On Saturday she attended the birthday party of her good friend, PJ. Happy Birthday PJ! She told me about the party activities and said that they painted cheeks, ate Poprocks and a castle cake.

And we played a GAME!

What game was that, dear?

It was called SHOW YOUR UNDERWEAR!

Oh REALLY. And whose idea was that?

It was MY IDEA!

Fantastic.

(But here's the funny part: We played the same game at the retreat!)

Returning

The theme of the retreat was The Living Water of God and so of course it rained the entire time we were there. The best part of the weekend was that it was like a slumber party for 7th graders. Staying up until 2 a.m. with my friends and laughing about the silliest, goofiest things we could think of was completely refreshing. Four of us stayed an extra night and we had the entire main lodge to ourselves Saturday night. We pretended it was a little bit spooky but it wasn't. We arranged the furniture so we could sit right by the fireplace and talk about anything and knit and eat cheese and crackers and chocolate and cry and laugh and be stupid and be thankful for big things and little things, and be friends.

And there's nothing better than coming home to a happy family who has missed you and greets you with a CLEAN HOUSE!!

rain, rug doctor

Retreating

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye -- Goodbye!
I'm glad to go, I cannot tell a lie
I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Goodbye!

I love you, Bickerson Family! Kids BEHAVE for your dad, okay? A little bit?

Gjetost

How many miles do you have to run to justify eating 1/8 pound of this most delicious cheese? Answer = 2.6 miles. Totally doable.

At this point in my marathon training I like to fantasize about what I will eat in the days after the race. See, that's my focus. That's how I make my marathon happen. Number one item on my list? Gjetost Fondue with Strawberries and Chocolate Cake Chunks? (I don't know; I'm kind of making this up.)

Picture of the day

Click it

Regifting or Worst Mom of the Day

You know how your average three year-old likes to pick things up off the ground and give them to her parents as gifts? Hope gives Gary and me so many things. Early in the spring she liked to pick up sidewalk salt nuggets (the ice-melting kind) on our way to preschool, to give to daddy when he got home from work every day. There was the mother/father rock collection in January. Every day she would pick several rocks from the landscaping near our front door as special treasures for Gary and me.

We love the sentiment. Really, really we do. But how many gifts of rock salt and gravel can you keep?

Tonight I was busted. We were sitting out by the fire in the yard, enjoying the beautiful early evening. Hope brought me one after another of these little clover flowers. Or something. They looked like teeny, tiny pansies. They were pretty but, come on, they are weeds. I was willing to hold and keep and maybe even press one of them. But they kept coming. And I had chocolate in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. And so I figured out that Peggy (our dog) was more than willing to eat the flowers. Hope would walk up and give me a treasured flower weed and as she walked away I'd let Peggy eat it. An efficient system, in my opinion.

So I thought.

She was counting them! And when she was done -- at 10 -- she expected to see the bouquet.

MOM! I gived you TEN flowers! Where these flowers go??

I could have lied but I told her the truth -- that I fed them to her dog and her dog REALLY, REALLY liked the flowers she picked!! (Happy, happy, smile, smile!!)

I'll let you know if she's forgiven me in the morning.

Disturbing the peace

Look what Peggy and I discovered on our walk this morning:

I hope the mother goose comes back. She was pretty mad that we interrupted her egg-sitting.

egg, souffle

The trip to the zoo was a bummer

My brother got to go to a three-hour no-holds-barred birthday party at the science center and all I got was a trip to the crappy zoo.



crap, zoo

Audition

85 minutes to go. I'm trying out for a choir this afternoon. Hank gave me his special brand of encouragement. He said he likes it better when I play the piano and don't sing. Thanks, Hank. Now I have a new weapon in the behavior management tool box. Guess who's going to have to listen to his mom sing during time-outs from now on?

Anyway, I have a mantra that I will be repeating in my head during the audition and it goes like this:

Don't barf until it's over;
Don't barf until it's over;
Don't barf until it's pver;
Don't barf until it's over!

UPDATE:

It's over and I didn't barf! Hooray for Mrs. Bickerson keeping her food down! Right after the audition I went out to my car and wrote down exactly what the judges said to me so I could share it with you. This is word-for-word...

Randy said

Yo, yo, yo Dogg! Yo W-Dogg. Here's what we got. It was a little pitchy, man. It started out kind of in tune and then, man, I don't know what happened. It was a little pitchy. And dude, was that your vibrato? 'Cause, man, I'm just tellin' you like it is, that was not good. It sounded to me like your larynx was having a seizure. Dogg, I want to but I can't, I just can't say you're in the Doggpound, dude. Sorry man.

And then Paula said

Whitney, oh Whitney! Look at you! You are ADORABLE! I just want to give you a big hug because of all of your adorablessness. I mean adorableness. Not less. You...you are so adorable. And you know we are going to love you no matter what.

And then Simon

Look. Whitney. If I were to characterize the performance you just gave I would have to say it reminded me of a drunken great-grandmother singing in an airport karaoke bar. I'm just tryyying to criticize you constructively. But it was beyond horrible.

vocal music, kevin covais

Jedi ennui

jedi, star wars

My favorite saz player

is my nephew-in-law, Bahri.

music

Picture of the day

This one, too: Dog race

tulips

A link to share

My good friend, Cathryn, has a new website. Simple and beautiful.

This Little Site of Mine

peace

Spring cold

Poop. Every year I get one and it got me good last night. While I seem to have developed immunities (or just didn't touch) the bugs that got everyone I know this winter, the warm weather plays a dirty trick on me. Could germs have survived the winter on the playground equipment? I was climbing with the kids last week. I must have grabbed a monkey bar in just the wrong spot.

But thank you, creators of Mucinex and Ibuprofen. Where would I be without you? I always feel grateful for my medicine cabinet when the effects of those chemicals kick in. It's almost like I'm not sick!

bird flu, monkey

Does she look like her children?

Mrs. Bickerson in the early 1970's (with her brother -- who has an amazing amount of hair in this picture! -- and first dog):



Funny, I can remember the feel of that shirt (polyester) and the smell of those shoes. Hank has inherited my love of knee-high socks.

cloning

Nuts.

Hank came home with a big grin on his face today from three hours of playing kick-ball, tag, and dodgeball with the spring break K-6th crowd.

Mom, when I was playing dodgeball and the big guy threw the ball at me one time I caught it and one time it hit me in the guts!

Wow, that must have hurt.

No, it didn't hurt but then one time he threw it and it hit me in the stomach and it felt like when I did a bellyflop at the pool. That hurt.

Wait a minute. You said it hit you in the guts and the stomach? That's the same thing, isn't it?

Nuh-uh, Mom. Your GUTS is your PENIS.

Ah. I see.

anatomy

The birthday boy

45 years young! Mr. Bickerson, you are loved.



birthday

Not The Mill!

HPIM1198
Originally uploaded by chadreschly.

A tornado (or several) tore through Iowa City last night -- right through the University of Iowa campus.

iowa city

Love triangle got you down?

Express your feelings in chalk.

relationships

And we have a winner

A bad habit has been festering in our family for the past several years. One or both of the kids finds it necessary to wake up at about 3:30 a.m. and climb into bed with Gary and me. They cling to me like monkeys until I either get up to be up for the day or we drag them back to their beds. On the rare occasion they both sleep in their own beds it has been heavenly. I LOVE to get up early in the morning when kids sleep in a little. The newspaper is easier to read and the coffee seems to taste better. And then when they do get up I am delighted to see their sleep-smushed faces and disheveled hair. If, on the other hand, I've been kicked and kneed in the ribs and head for three hours, and coughed on, I tend to not be as pleasant as I could be in the A.M.

So last night I announced that there would be a PRIZE for children who stay in their own beds all night.

What's the prize, Mommy? What will it be? Will it be an Xbox? A Gameboy?

I wasn't quite sure exactly what that prize would be but I knew I could come up with something reasonable in 10 hours. There was a risk that the winning child or children would not view the prize as something to covet and instead look at me as some kind of mom who cried wolf and secretly vow to never allow me a complete night's sleep ever, ever, ever again.

Lame or awesome? At six in the morning he was too drowsy to care but he was the lucky winner of the Totally Amazing Trix on the Couch/TV in the Morning Prize! Yay Hank! Way to sleep in your own bed all night!



Your sister, on the other hand...

child psychology

It's 4:30

Do you think it would be okay for me to tell the kids it's time to get ready for bed? I'm thinking about faking them out with an early supper featuring L-tryptophan, a bath, and then some bedtime books. I'd do it but I have a feeling they would be up in the morning by 3:30.

What is it about a sunny 75º day that wears a mother out so?

sleep deprivation

The Green Lagoon

watercolor

First backyard fire of the season

Hank and Hope's Uncle Jim and Aunt Lisa came up for the weekend and helped us burn the Christmas tree Friday night. It didn't make as spectacular an inferno as the last one, but it was still a BIG fire.

pyrotechnics

Ground Control

to Major Tom



space cadet

Stuff

I try to not love my stuff too much. I don't want to want stuff and I don't want my kids to want stuff. We all end up acting like Steve Martin's character in The Jerk if we love our stuff too much.

That said, CHECK OUT THE WATCH!



I LOVE IT VERY MUCH!!

Oh, I know there are a lot of people who could probably remember four splits on a four-mile run without the 50-lap memory feature. Furthermore, there are many runners who probably don't want to document that they are running >10:30 minute miles.

But I LOVE IT!

ironman

The Blue Lagoon

My six year-old doesn't want to take a bath with his little sister anymore but last night, when he saw that she had magic color tablets to add to the water, he asked if he could join her and I said sure. I pretended we were on vacation in the South Pacific. Which reminds me that I need to find me some Gilligan's Island DVDs. I think Hank would love that show.



Thanks to Mary for the picture idea.

Time

I have a new Timex Ironman that has both digital and analog time-keepers. I think I tortured myself for a solid 20 minutes while I tried to synchronize them today. It was worth it because the clock face is pink. Is there an easier way to make the big hand and little hand match up to the digital readout? I think I got it to within two seconds which I suppose is good enough.

Moving to Chicago?

No, not the Bickersons. But if you're looking for Chicago real estate I have a blogger for you:

Fran Bailey!

Do the best with what you've got

They both begged for playdates today but I had things to get done and some errands to run and a playdate just wasn't going to work. I found them playing Duck, Duck, Goose in the backyard this afternoon. Just the two of them. Giggling and laughing their heads off. A little peek at heaven on earth.

I need that hour back

I can't believe it's already 12:30. I'm trying to get some things accomplished today. I wonder if Daylight Saving Time has more of an impact when there's a three and six year-old in the house. I'm dragging...

I am no longer interested in who's on first

Hope: Is it tomorrow? You said we were going over to their house tomorrow.

Me: I said we're going over tonight.

Hope: Is it gonna be tonight today? Is it tonight? Is it still today? Are we going tomorrow? Is today tomorrow?

Gary: Yesterday, we were going to go tomorrow but we changed our minds and we're going to go today.