thesok

my last week with the kids really went by fast. this week has been all about paper airplanes and knock knock jokes. i could have really gone without either one. zach has about six knock knock jokes in his repertoire, so you can understand how annoying it could be to do them about 29484 times each every day. we even googled some jokes to try and get some good ones, but didn't have much luck. the best thing i came up with was:

knock knock
who's there?
amsterdam
amsterdam who?
AMSTERDAM TIRED OF THESE KNOCK KNOCK JOKES.

but zach didn't get it. his favorite is here: http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/pictures/seattle/knock.MOV

the paper airplanes are kind of annoying too. we have this big book that shows you how to make many different kinds, and in the back you can tear out really cool looking paper to make them with. the Condor is the best, we've found. the book also comes with a target you can use to make a game out of it. the irritating part is that invariably, the plane i'm using is the plane he needs to have. i give him mine and make a new one, but if it even once gets a better score than his plane, i'm cheating and need to make it so that we both have the same plane, even though we're on our fifth or sixth condor and have given up on the shark, the ace, the feather, the glider, and the bomber. i know he's four, and this is a very four thing to do, but the kid can read and do the beginnings of algebra, so i expect a little more. today he said, and i'm basically word for word here, "ice cream is good in the sense that you like eating it, but bad in the sense that it doesn't help you grow."

IN THE SENSE?

so anyway, you're in a very weird world with zach- a world in which the person that asks the waiter if they have anything similar to beef satay is the same person who cries when his face paint gets smudged.

his sister is getting more interesting, too. she is getting much stronger on her legs and can kind of half-walk if you're leading her. the biggest news is that she's finally eating some real food. mostly cheerios, but that's fine. she still doesn't have any teeth. i bet she ate about 20 tonight. i also gave her some couscous and tiny bits of nectarine. we think she will skip crawling and baby food altogether and just go into walking and normal food.

as usual, she is not willing to be put down without a fight. sometimes it scares me how much she can cry over this. most times it just annoys me. she really embarrassed me in the library this week when she wouldn't let me set her in the stroller for five minutes so i could check out the books at the self-scanner. i took her out back behind the building and gave her a good licking for that one.

oh, also i have been putting some baby cereal in her bottles sometimes, just to beef it up a little bit. you have to do it in the morning when you know you'll be home in the afternoon because the POOP after that is terrible.

i'm actually about four feet away from her right now; ellen's sister and nephew are visiting from california and have taken over my room for the next two nights. these are also the last two nights that i'm staying here so i'm basically packed up and ready to hit the road. i am having this internal conflict right now about what to do with elena. i kind of want to bring her in the bed with me so i don't have to get up three times in the middle of the night. as a principle, i'm against that kind of thing. but, you know. i want to sleep. i think what i'll do is leave her in the crib until 3am, and any time after that, she can stay with me. it's almost certain that i'll never have to get through a night with her again after this weekend, so what do i care.

hello, i put some new pictures up from the last couple of weeks. you can go through them here:
http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/pictures/seattle/new/

hello.

i know it has been a little while since posting anything, but it's not because nothing has been going on. if anything, the opposite of nothing has been going on. my mom and sister flew in for about a week during which we did many things. when they left, i had the kids for the rest of the week. on saturday everyone went downtown for lunch and the science center before i came home to do laundry and they all went to a family function. bright and early on sunday, we left for oregon.

we did a lot of things on the way to, in, and on the way back from oregon that i really don't feel like writing about.

what i am going to write about is elena.

i'm actually hesitating to write about her now, because i really do love her and i don't want to say anything bad about her. but, i'm sure it's fine. she will never know that i'm telling 5 or 6 strangers THAT THE GIRL IS CRAZY.

first of all, she has decided to quit sleeping at night. i don't know why, but the last couple weeks have been really horrible at night. it feels like she is constantly waking up, and it's not so bad when we're home because i hear her and then go back to sleep when her parents go settle her down. in oregon, though, we shared the same hotel rooms and it. was. a total. nightmare. she took a small morning nap and a long afternoon nap today. then she went to bed around 10:30 before waking up screaming at 11:15. so it's been about a half hour since i re-put her to sleep and i'm sure it won't be too long before the same thing happens.

the hard part about putting her to sleep is that you can't just put her in the crib and leave. when i watched jenna a few summers ago, i would just tell her that we were going night-night and she knew what to do. she grabbed a crappy sesame street doll and her blanky and went to sleep. brie was more difficult because about half of the days, she just would not nap. but when it was time to go to bed, she could usually be talked into it, even if you had to pretend to go with her.

elena is by far the most difficult. she WILL NOT fall asleep on her own. one time in the entire summer have i put her in the crib and walked out of the room without going back in to rescue her 20 minutes later. so, fine. you have to rock/walk/massage her to sleep. but it's not over then, because if you want to go on living your own life you have to eventually put her in the crib. this is also a problem. you basically have to make three attempts to get it to "stick". otherwise she will wake up and throw a fit the instant her body touches the mattress. i try to avoid this by getting her to sleep and waiting a minimum of 20 minutes before putting her in the crib. i try to wait until i can hear the deep-sleep breathing sounds, and until i can lift up her arm and drop it without her waking up, before i lie her in the crib.

what this all means is that putting elena to bed, even when she is fed and changed and tired and dozing off anyway, can take an hour.

i could almost ignore this about her if she was easy in other parts of the day, but she's not. she's actually gotten worse about being left alone as the summer moves forward. it's gotten to the point where i have to make the choice between a headache from all of her crying or a sore left arm from all of the carrying. to take a shower this morning, i had to put a comforter down on the bathroom floor so she could be with me the entire time. so i'm showering with the damn door open, getting water everywhere, talking to her, all so that this now-9-month old baby will not feel the need to cry until she spits up.

you know it's really bad when even zach tells me to pick her up. if i say something like, "i know you're not going to like this laney but it's only for a minute.." zach will cover his ears and say WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?

considering that this is the same kid who says he wants elena to d-i-e, i hope you can picture how frustrating it is to have to console her every second of the day. it's really pitiful sometimes. heartbreaking, really. she will cry and cry and you want it to stop, you want her to feel better, but you just can't fix it. it is impossible to do dishes with one hand, no matter how many times i try. i could put her in a high-chair or her carseat or this little jumping thing she has, two feet away from me, and she would still cry. what's most pathetic is that you can't look at her when she's crying. if she sees you see her, and then sees you going on with your business instead of rescuing her, it's like a stab to the heart and she just can't bear it. her face gets twisted up and red and huge tears roll down her little cheeks until you finally release a giant sigh and pick her up. almost instantaneously, she stops crying and starts smiling and grinding her face into your neck and wanting to play as if she hadn't really been driving you mad for the last half hour.

so that's what's going on with her. she is the same way with her parents, especially her mom. the girl has real issues.

and, you did know that the "playing peek-a-boo" thing from the last post was a video link, yes? some had trouble with that.

Playing Peek-a-boo

zach ran away today. right after this peekaboo game, actually. he left the playground and ran all the way home. not that i knew that. i found him after frantically searching the neighborhood and calling his parents and almost the police. he was in elena's room watching the local news. so a rough day for everyone today. related to zach's newly extended-to-11pm bedtime? possibly.

it's about eleven thirty at night, and i'm just about to go to sleep. a couple of minutes ago, i heard zach start to cry. not a screaming bloody murder cry, but loud enough for me to hear up in my room, which is right above his.

a few seconds after the crying, i either heard one of his parents or a dozen buffalo storming out of one room and into his. so i was sitting here, wondering, 'if i have kids... am i ever going to care enough to race to their room when i hear crying?' it's not like he's going anywhere.

but then i thought about how maybe they were just racing to his room to shut him up before the baby woke up. that is probably the case, and in my opinion, in matters of elena's sleeping, even 1/10th of a second of noise is too much. she's a very light sleeper if she's not being held. so then i wondered, 'if i have kids... will i be completely above knocking them out with some children's motrin from time to time?' sometmes i feel tired from waking up throughout the night when the baby cries, and i never even go down to take care of her.

i've got quite a few pictures to share, but i'm just putting up the webspace link. you can go through them if you care to, and have the time to.

http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/pictures/seattle/weekend/

things are going well here in sea-town. i'm really not looking foward to going back to c-town.

just a little joke, folks. take it easy.

anyway, i continued a relatively pointless job search today and have a couple of things i am interested in, so we'll see if those go anywhere this week. i also met up with kate when she got done with work today and she used the word "balls" when we were sitting on the back porch. bob didn't appreciate that and asked me to be more careful from now on because zach is such a sponge. i already screwed up last week when i called a local playground bully a little snot.

tomorrow we're back to the grind. i hear the weather is going to be pretty good this week so hopefully i can work on some even worse tan lines. i found out about a puppet show in the area on thursday, so i think we'll check that out.

after that, i'll be spending a few days with my own family, as anna and my mom are coming out for about a week. and after that, i'll be going to vancouver with my summer family while bob and ellen talk about jobs at simon fraser. and then... then it won't be too long before i head home. so we'll see how that goes.

i don't have a calendar handy and i'm too lazy to find one right now, even with the internets, but i think my stay here is about half done. it's weird because the time has been flying by. i wondered, in the beginning, if this was going to be a really long summer. however, i think i have gotten enough of a handle on things that my days have become easier and i don't get as stressed out as i did the first week or so.

i'm most happy about the changes i have seen in zach. we have now had more good days than bad, and i'm glad that i can do little things with him as rewards. this mostly involves us walking somewhere and me buying him something. yesterday he got a giant green vending machine ring for a quarter. today he got a ball for $1.39. we might buy some tissue paper when we go for a walk tomorrow to do some new crafts. it's nice that he's young enough to be psyched over these little things.

ellen's parents are in town this week, so she and bob have been entertaining them for the last couple of days. today they took elena with them so it was just zach and me for most of today. in the morning, he was a real pill for his parents and i was wondering if today was going to suck on account of a poor night's sleep last night. but, by lunch-time i had beaten him on a forever-continued monopoly game without him throwing a fit and even brought up a tray of food for us to have a "balcony picnic" outside of my room. then we read a zoobooks magazine, listened to guster, and started another game of monopoly even though i think it is the stupidest game in the universe and would rather shove a stick in my eye than play it. i asked zach why we were having such a good day and he said he didn't know... he doesn't really think about it, but sometimes he just has good days.

this started a long conversation about why he is good for me and bad for his own mom and dad. he told me something like, "this isn't a very good answer, but i'm the best for people who aren't the best to me." so i asked if he was better for me because i was not fun, and he said, "no, you ARE fun SOMETIMES but only if i am being good." then he said, "remember when you dumped out my berry water?"

so it turns out that he has really registered how i react. he hits me about once a week, whereas he hits his parents about ten times a day. he doesn't run away from me on the sidewalk anymore or intentionally make messes or start crying when he gets some of his cereal on the counter. he knows that i will slap back, take him home, make him clean things up himself, or put him down for a nap like a baby.

even though i think i am more strict with zach than anyone has been before, he still likes me. today he even said he loves me. he asked me to stay home tonight instead of going to dinner with kate and rich, and when i got home he ate the food i gave him, played monopoly for just twelve minutes, and then brushed his teeth before bed without much hassle. i think that the limits we have set are pretty good for us.

the only bad part of the day was right before i left to go to dinner. we had walked a long way to a drug store, bought the ball, and had to deal with transporting the bouncy orb of fun about 18 blocks without him carrying it/losing it in the street. we stopped at a school playground to shoot at the 8' basketball hoop, but when we were done i wanted to carry it home. he got really bent out of shape and then i was getting grumpy that i spent my whole day on him and now he was being a little turd. so, he told me that he wasn't grumpy because of me, he was just grumpy with himself. so i told him to just yell "i'm grumpy" until he was in a better mood and he did it. he screamed for a good couple of minutes. then he told me that tomorrow we have to remember to have a real H-hour (we had about 20 minutes of semi-H-hour today on account of elena's absence) and bring snacks in my bag so that he doesn't get too "weary" in the afternoon. he said that if i was 20% weary, he was more like 80% weary, and that's really really weary.

anyway, this is long enough. i uploaded two new videos:

http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/claphands.MOV
this is of elena showing off her new trick. the best part is her face right after i say "do it".

http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/piano.MOV
this is zach playing "happy birthday" on the piano. i taught him how to do it so he could play for ellen last night. it was her birthday, obviously. elena almost wiggled off my lap and that's why the camera strays about halfway through the song.

aaaaaaand two more pictures for the road

Uhh... did Elena think I wasn't going to catch her going through my stuff?

a couple shorter movies, of zach then elena.

http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/ow.MOV

http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/pooping.MOV

zach ate a "peanut butter and jelly sandwich, minus the peanut butter and the crust" today. then i got the sound of music song stuck in my head- "ti, a drink with jam and breaaaaad" so i hummed that for a couple hours and zach said it sounded familiar... keep humming it. so i did and he said "i think that's from the sound of music. i think that's the part in the thunderstorm." so i said, "nooo, the thunderstorm part goes like this: hum hum hum". i thought it was a reasonably accurate rendition, but zach said, "that's not even a real song."

earlier, on our way to swimming lessons this morning, he was singing twinkle twinkle little star as a way to ignore me. he was mad at me because i said i wasn't helping him do any more little things if he didn't help me. he said that's not what grown-ups do. he might be right, but i think it's mostly fair to not help him put his shoes on if he won't get a bottle out of the fridge. anyway, he was singing so he didn't have to talk to me and when he switched over to jingle bells, he asked me what the verses were. i could come up with a couple of lines but then i couldn't remember the rest, and he goes, "well do you know it by heart?" and i said that i used to. then he goes, "try harder kelly, it has to be in your heart still."

he has been saying funny things all day. he told me on the way to the far-away park today that sometimes he just tells his mom "I KNOW I KNOW" so that she quits talking. he doesn't want her to talk to him about brushing his teeth or being nice anymore because he already knows it. she gets mad if he says something mean so he just says "I KNOW I KNOW" or "OKAY OKAY" because it's a little mean, but not mean enough to get in more trouble. it's funny how he tells me things like that. last week he said he didn't want to "show it" regarding his tendency to not do things he is able to do at swim lessons. today he said it was so that mr. jordan can think he is teaching zach everything about swimming.

in still-babysitting-related news, i had a bad dream last night that i ruined darrell and sandy mossburg's cabin's new carpeting when some boy peed mid-diaper change. there was pee going everywhere and i couldn't seem to get it together enough stop it. it was even more embarrassing because a co-author of ellen's was over to observe me and then she thought i wasn't good with really little ones.

in real life, elena has peed mid-diaper change twice now. and a third time for ellen. i don't know what her deal is.

today was a MUCH better day in zachtown. after swim lessons, he ran down 15th avenue (a busy street) in the opposite direction of home. when we got back together, i latched onto his hand and fiercely led him home zoo-style. on the way back, we had a long talk about good and bad behavior and all of the things that go with that. we made a plan for a code-word to help him remember that being good now equals more fun later. the code word (words) is "first time" as in, listen to what you are told the first time.

his parents went to some college in the city today so the three of us had quite a bit of time by ourselves. we made a schedule that looked something like this:

11:30- Fun Pages
12:00- lunch
12:30- clean up
12:45- go to salmon park
2:45- come home
3:00- H-Hour (horizontal hour, a resting time)
4:00- coffee shop, "good behavior permitting"

we actually went to the coffee shop around 5:00 because the first half of H-Hour was spent reading harry potter, and then he fell asleep for 80 minutes. anyway, it was just a good day and i HOPE that we can have more like this, if we keep it very structured and more sans-parents. they really do complicate things.

here are two pictures from H-Hour:







and here is a link to some video i took of zach today. quicktime will play it, but it takes a few minutes to load.

http://filer.case.edu/~krb13/zach.MOV

this morning, after the swimming lesson, zach had lunch and worked on some fun pages. fun pages consume a lot of time here. they're coloring-book-like collections of things like word searches, crossword puzzles, connect the dots pictures, which picture doesn't match the others, etc etc. zach completes an entire book of fun pages every few days. he works on these, practices cursive handwriting, reads books, has books read to him, plays math card games, and colors. that's basically what he does if he is sitting. sitting at home in his bed, sitting at a table at a restaurant, sitting in the car. every minute of zach's day should be spent exercising the brain.

if we are not sitting, we are often outside, either walking somewhere or visiting somewhere- playground or park or coffee shop or whatever. this is obviously the more difficult part of our time together. it's so hard because elena goes with us wherever we go. she is not difficult at all, but having the stroller, all of her crap, and then the baby herself, is kind of a big deal. if zach runs 400 yards ahead of us, i can't really leave the baby and her associated items on the sidewalk to chase him down. but, i also can't let him run ahead and hide in people's garages or wander into oncoming traffic.

for this reason, every outing we go on requires an elaborate prelude. i try to include: where we are going; how long we are staying; what i consider good behavior; what happens if there is good behavior (read him a book when we get home, get a bubble tea on the way back, etc); what happens if there is bad behavior (no books, i take away a fun book or his pacifier [yes! you heard me. pacifier.]).

these preludes need to occur in an optimal atmosphere. no yelling, no conniving, no threatening. if we start out on a good note, the preludes are just a little refresher for the expectations ahead of us. if we start out on a bad note, it can only go downhill. for this reason, we could not go to the new playground today after lunch, because it wasn't a good time for our prelude. he had been yelling at me and ellen, knocking the phone off the wall, making a big mess, and being a general pain in the ass. i was not in the mood for any preliminary talks and decided that zach needed to lie down for one hour before we headed to the park.

ellen said that was a good idea, so we went upstairs together. i put the baby down for a nap and then sat in zach's room, reading, while zach lay in his bed. this is known as "rest time". i think that rest time is very important. i would rather put up with 5 minutes of anti-rest time than 5 hours of i'm-a-bear-because-i'm-tired-and-cranky in the afternoon. bob, zach's dad, apparently disagrees with me.

bob came in and saw that zach was just lying in bed doing NOTHING. no fun pages. no phonics worksheets. no math cards. so zach tells bob that he is bored in bed, and bob says, "well, kelly wants you to have rest time right now so you have to stay in your bed, but i'll get you some books." this eventually turns into bob reading zach a book but then having to stop half-way through because he and ellen were going to go out for lunch. telling zach that he was staying home for rest time while his parents go out to lunch was a great idea. but not as great as telling zach that KELLY would finish reading the book to him.

so rest time never happened. we walked to the new park, which is almost 20 blocks away, when zach's pathetic excuse for a rest time was over. on the way there, zach was feeling quite parched, and i had to get a new toothbrush anyway, so we went into the safeway supermarket about halfway through the trip. i bought zach a berry flavored propel fitness water. he loved it. i told him that we could get another bottle of "berry water" on the way back if he was good at the park.

we got to the park, and 10 minutes later, zach was throwing woodchips at other kids. i tried to react as quickly as possible but he ran away and yelled about how i am a meanie doo-doo head and he's not going to listen to me. i had the baby and stroller and everything, and was very pissed at this point, so i poured all of his berry water into the grass. this, of course, infuriated him and he became even more belligerent. i told him that we were going home, and we would try the park again later. he said he was sorry and that he would be good, but i wouldn't believe that if my own grandma told me. so, i said that we were walking home, and if he behaved and stayed with me on the way back, we would go to the old park (two blocks away) after dinner.

he held my hand and was very charming and pleasant to be around the whole walk home. when we got there, he said he was tired from all of that walking and was going to take a rest time. i was glad, because swimming lessons and playing outside and all of his fun pages really are exhausting.

i changed elena and talked with ellen in the baby's room after zach went to bed, and then heard bob go in there. YET AGAIN, bob was coming to the rescue to save zach from a wasted summer. he read a book to him and played with him just long enough to make bob ready for a nap, and zach ready for a night of dabbling in the demonic. zach must have hit ellen about 28 times while she was making dinner. he threw a ball at elena's head, wrote all over himself with ink (bob said that ink is poisonous and was mad at ellen for "letting" him do it), and screamed for a solid 10 minutes while bob was on the phone with his brother.

this is all a very typical day around here- constant battling over what is best for zach. i, of course, am the only one who knows what is really best for him. either that, or i really am the biggest meanie doo-doo head in the universe.

the only good part about today was that the baby preferred me to bob. by good, i mean, ego-boosting. sometimes i feel like i am the only one who knows what's best for her, too, i.e. insisting that she take naps in her crib instead of in the living room where zach is screaming like a maniac. i think bob and ellen are worried that she will become too light a sleeper if she does all her napping in another room. that battle, though, is one that i'm willing to fight.

i'm going to bed now. hope tomorrow is better.

ok! i am finally getting around to posting some pictures. a little late, but i will start at a logical beginning- my "area". it's the third floor of the house and we all had to learn the hard way that zach is not allowed in "kelly's area" unless escorted by kelly herself.





tomorrow, the cleaning ladies come, so my bathroom should be spotless by the time i get home from zach's swimming lessons OR ELSE.



the best part about "kelly's area" is the balcony. it looks out, over the city. you can see the space needle and other important buildings and mt. rainier when the skies are clear. the chairs are perfect for rocking babies people to sleep.









and here is the view for the other 75% of my waking hours. she is really the closest thing to a perfect baby i have been around. we hang out all the time because she doesn't like being left alone. if i am unloading the dishwasher i have to put her somewhere that allows her to see me at both ends of the kitchen, or else she thinks she's been abandoned. she is becoming more and more skilled every day. she can almost make airplane/buzzing type noises with her mouth, and she can ALMOST hold her bottle by herself. she can definitely do it if it's more than half empty. every time we go to a park or out for a walk, or at the zoo or store last week, she will smile and be totally cute for anyone who looks at her. people tell me what a cute baby i have, and i have to tell them that i'm just watching her. i'm no watson or crick but do these people have no idea how genetics works? she has the bluest blue eyes and golden blonde hair. plus she's always SMILING. she's definitely not mine.



i don't have any pictures of zach yet. maybe later.... heh. i'm going to use that as a reward for some kind of good behavior though because he loves posing. more on him later.

Helloooo