Kate here. We've had a bit of nasty weather in these parts, as you may have heard on the news. Tornadoes passed quite near Nashville and did a fair amount of damage in some outlying suburbs, but thankfully, we didn't find ourselves in their path of destruction. Anne, Grandma Carol, Cora, Ollie and I were actually at the mall, of all places, completely oblivious of the tornado warning. We were on the upper level, en route to a store, when I happened to look down and see a man with a walkie-talkie motioning to us. He was some kind of mall security person, and was busily herding all the shoppers into an enclave of sorts under a large stairway and away from the massive skylit ceiling nearby. So there we went and there we sat, for about ten minutes or so, crammed in with a bunch of strangers on cell phones. Cora was pretty freaked out (I was too, but I had to pretend that I wasn't), but seemed to understand that we were in a safe place. Then, the walkie-talkie man said everything was clear and let us go. So what did we do? We kept shopping!
On a side note, I took Cora to an art class today at a local botanical garden and overheard a woman talking with the art teacher about the tornadoes. She actually said, "I mean, I keep thinking they'll find a way to control the weather," as if it's unbelievable that they haven't already. That's the last thing we need -- George Bush deciding, God-like, who gets the tornadoes, the wild fires, the hurricanes. Hmmm...Katrina...maybe they've already figured it out...
I hit "send" this morning on the second of two manuscripts. Ahh...relief. I've been hoarding my words lately.
We're all passing around a springtime cold. Cora brought it home from school and it has slowly infested the house and our sinuses.
Our hermit crab Hermie has a new roommate--another hermit crab named Abigail. Abigail is the third in a procession of now-dead Hermie roommates: Clancy and Clancy Junior never survived more than a week.
Hello, Kate here. It's about time I added a few of my own words to the blog, especially because Brian is so busy with his own writing these days. Cora is home sick today. She woke up three times last night, congested and delirious, looking for tissues. This morning she put on her most pitiful sick-kid face, coughed a few times, and asked very sweetly if she could stay home from school today. Even though she was laying it on a bit heavy ("My throat hurts, my eyes are watering, I've got a tummyache..."), it was obvious that she really was sick, so we agreed to let her stay home. She got this look on her face, like she was trying to maintain her pitifulness despite being overjoyed to be allowed to miss school. I remember putting on that face myself as a kid...
We went to the park yesterday and enjoyed the warm weather. We've all been a little stressed so it was nice to get out.
Kate fell prey to one of Oliver's abiding interests this morning--shoe relocation. He likes to walk around the house with a shoe in his hand. The problem is that he manages to leave the shoe in an obscure spot that takes extreme searching to locate.
His other passion is toilets. Two mornings ago Cora used the bathroom and forgot to close the door behind her. A few minutes later, as I was preparing breakfast, I heard some splashing in the bathroom. I discovered Oliver playing happily at the toilet. He had dropped a shampoo bottle in the bowl and was stirring it in Cora's pee. When he saw me, he of course said "nuh nuh nuh."
Springtime is here and the kids have been playing outside. The Bradford pears are blooming and the daffodils are blooming. It's too early for mosquitoes, so it really is one of the nicest times of the year. G'ma Sally and Kate got the spring garden started and the radishes are already sprouting.
Here's a 30 second clip of Oliver walking.
There's also a clip from Ollie's first birthday. Enjoy!
Oliver has learned the meaning of the word "no" now, with amusing results. He likes to touch the computer power button, look up at me, and say "nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh." Yesterday morning he went into the bathroom, unspooled the toilet paper, put it in the toilet and then tried to flush. When I came in--"nuh nuh nuh nuh." He went behind the chair to the power outlet yesterday--"nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh." He's obviously watching and learning.
He's walking in bursts, usually from one "station" to another a few feet away.
Kate and I just finished watching the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" last night. Highly recommended grist for the mill.
The Grammys are on tonight, and I'm proud to say that Alison Krauss won Best Country Album against some heavy hitters. This is great news because Aunt Sarah wrote a song on the album. Congratulations Sarah!
We're staying at my parents' for at least a few days while we get some work done on the house. We figured it was time to move Oliver out of the bathroom into a proper room of his own. The only problem was that we knocked down the bedroom wall when we moved in to make a spacious master bedroom. Adios spacious master bedroom, hello old wall. The new wall is actually better than the old one because it is now a custom wall with a four foot opening right in the middle. That way the room shouldn't feel too small and during the day we can keep the doors open. The wall is framed out already and it looks really good. Meanwhile, we've had a wonderful time and have soaked up the feeling of familial "village" life.
Cora is also getting a new floor, toilet, and sink in her bathroom. She's very excited of course, having acquired a taste for the finer things during her stay at the bed and breakfast last weekend.
We made it home safely last night and drove straight to G'ma and G'dad's for a Super Bowl viewing party. Cora refused to sleep on the way home from Asheville even though she was completely sleep deprived over the weekend. I don't know what she thinks she'll miss. I guess it will be a few years before she realizes that her parents are completely boring and not good for much except food, shelter and transportation.
I had been looking forward to the drive to Asheville as we had not been on a road trip with all four of us in the same car. About twenty minutes into the trip I realized I had been romanticizing things. Asheville was still over five hours away and two young children were strapped down just three feet behind my ears. I realized on this trip that minivans are designed to keep your children as far away from you as possible while driving.
Kate and I both pinched ourselves that we are now the parents carting the kids around. We have our own memories of family road trips--both dads always finding the old staticky radio stations that barely came in at all, John managing to always find a polka station somewhere in Pennsylvania. As we left I had a strong memory of my Dad stopping at the gas station on our way out on road trips and picking up a cup of coffee for the road. As he pulled out of the parking lot he would hold his coffee in his right hand, steer with the left, pull into traffic and start exploring the lid with his lips, testing the temperature in a combination blow-sip-slurp. I never knew how he did all those things at once. I just thought he liked coffee (and never understood that either). But now I understand the valuable self-medication aspects of coffee--it acts as some sort of psychic insulation from other stimuli. Car sleep was also a fond memory for both of us. We shared our fond view of sleep with Cora but she's not buying.
Asheville itself is a beautiful city nestled in the North Carolina mountains, and Anne and Nathan have a sweet little place just a few minutes from the city and just off the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Nathan's parents were there for the weekend and we all had a great time hanging out.
Cora had two sleepovers with G'ma Carol at a bed and breakfast. They had wonderful girl time together. The proprietor made Cora a special order of Belgian waffles(Cora called them "bargain waffles") on Sunday morning.
Oliver took about twelve steps at once on Sunday. He looks like he's walking over hot coals or a very cold floor.
We are in Asheville for the weekend visiting Anne and Nathan. The trip took about six hours and went pretty smoothly.
Last night Oliver took his first steps. Two shaky staggering steps and then he hit the floor. But it's a start!
Things have been relatively quiet around here....Cora and Oliver both weathered their sicknesses pretty well without taking nosedives.
We've had a stack of shingles in our yard for two weeks now, waiting for the roofers to come give us a new roof. They dropped off the shingles and have not lined up a time to actually use them. The tarps are holding up well so far, but I imagine there's only so much sun, wind, and buckets of rain that tarps and duct tape can withstand. Since our house is at the top of the "T" in a T-intersection, our yard is highly visible to all the cars that stop there. Word must have spread in the "shingling" workers pool that our house had a large amount of shingles sitting in the yard with no one to use them. A guy approached Kate last week and offered to shingle the roof for cheap. This morning as I left our driveway a truck pulled out of another driveway nearby. He backed out and blocked the road and gestured for me to roll down the window. I did, and he pointed to our front yard.
"Do you have someone to put on those shingles?"
I assured him that we did. It feels like we're being staked out by opportunistic shady shinglers.
As soon as I got to work I called our supposed roofing company. Evidently our work order got lost in the shuffle. So hopefully the roof will soon be out of our yard and on the roof.
