BOO!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!



The pumpkins:

mama's

papa's

the boy's

baby girl's


I am particularly proud of Jackson's costume this year. We were planning on doing pirate costumes but suddenly Jackson started telling everyone he was going to be a bat so I had to come up with something quickly. Black turtleneck, fuzzy fabric sewn on the front, wings made out of an old umbrella, and hat made out of the rest of the fuzzy stuff with left over umbella fabric inside the ears, and black fleece pants.




The kids had to wear their uniforms to school today but got to bring their costumes to put on at lunch time. There is a haunted house in the gym and lots of activities planned but the parents weren't invited to peek so I'll have to hear about it after school.

Tonight Darren and Frances will stay home to give out candy while I take Jackson trick-or-treating for the first shift, and then Darren will go out with him to do the other side of the neighborhood. It's supposed to be freezing again tonight (it was -1 celcius last night) and I don't have a cozy costume for Frannie this year so she'll be better off staying in.

Have a safe one!

Things they say.

Jackson was telling me about what his classmate brought for show and tell:

Jackson: "He brought beach money, but he couldn't pass it around. It was fragile... He said OH GOD."
Me: "Wait, what? He brought beach money? Like, money he found in the sand at the beach? That was for show and tell?"
Jackson: "Yeah, and we couldn't touch any of it. And he's the one who said 'OH GOD' but that's naughty talk, is it?"
Me: "Well, no... I mean... sort of, I guess. Not really. But wait, what? Tell me more about the beach money because I don't understand what that is or why he was showing it."
Jackson: "Well, um... it was white and when he shook it you could hear something inside that he said was bones but you can't see them and it's really fragile so he couldn't pass it around. We couldn't touch ANY of it!"
Me: "OH! You mean he brought a sand dollar!"
Jackson: "Yeah!"

Yee Haw!

Last Saturday night was the Junior School Barn Dance. What fun!! From 5:30 - 8:30, we ate hotdogs and chili, decorated paper pumpkins, and danced to live music in the gym. There was a caller and three girls playing very skillfully on their fiddles, and we all square danced, and circle danced, and line danced. Jackson was my partner and he did such a great job do-se-doing and promenading around with me under all the twinkly lights and cornstalks and haybale decorations.

I had forgotten how much I truly love group dancing. I used to belong to a group of Scottish Country dancers and Thursday night practice was the highlight of my week. These days my ankles wouldn't hold up for regularly scheduled high-impact activities, and I did wake up with bruised shoulders from turning-my-partner in such close proximity to the 300 other people there, but we sure did have a great time.

Something that struck me more than everything else was how many boys were there, dressed up in cowboy boots and cowboy hats, with hankerchiefs around their necks, holding hands and dancing with each other. There were girls dancing with girls, and girls dancing with boys, fathers dancing with their sons, and nobody was self-conscious, and there wasn't a group of mean-spirited kids standing against the wall pointing and making fun of anybody. That just doesn't exist at this school. I LOVE this school.

Ow.

Darren and I bought some really great pots for the deck yesterday. Two are round, about 2' across and 20" high, and the other is rectangular, the same height and almost twice as wide as the round pots. I ordered some black bamboo from the BC interior and hopefully it will arrive safe and sound in a few days. I have never ordered plants online before so I don't know how well I can expect them to travel.

I love the exotic look of black bamboo, and we picked a variety that does well in pots so we can expect to have a really lovely screen to hide our neighbor's pile of shit, which has shrunken and grown twice since I last complained about it publicly.

Anyway, I'm just saying this to explain why my head is killing me now. Those pots are effing heavy and we had to haul them up on to the deck ourselves. I think the rectangular one probably weighs 180 lbs empty. The round ones we were able to roll across the lawn to the deck stairs, but I knew I was going to be sorry today after moving all of them. And I am. So sorry.

The tension in my neck is so high that my head has been literally throbbing all day. I just took 3 motrin and am still in pain but sort of don't care.

And the pain prevented me from writing about something really fantastic that happened yesterday and that was our VERY FIRST PARENT/TEACHER INTERVIEW!!! WOW!

Just 15 minutes with Mrs. Lincoln was long enough to find out that Jackson is doing well, but has the same issues at school that he has here - which are probably all common kid things. Like, he doesn't really like to be put right on the spot and with his tendency to want to please, sometimes answers the teacher's questions with things he thinks she is likely to want to hear. We learned that everybody likes him, especially the girls ... His preschool teacher said the same thing. She said we'll be in trouble in a few years with this boy!

And we saw some of his artwork, and heard about what he likes doing best in class, and who he spends the most time with ...

God, I am so distracted I can't even finish talking about that right now. You know what happend to me in the mall today? This Russian guy who works at one of those carts in the middle of the hallway selling hand cream and nail oils and stuff pulled me over to his little table. If you know me at all you know that my nails are what I would vote least likely to be asked out to the prom, least likely to succeed, least likely to grow up to marry a rich man, least likely to graduate from beauty college, etc.

Did he call me over because I look like the kind of person with really awful nails? Or did he think I looked like the kind of person who spends a lot of time making them look good? I have no idea. But he was SUCH a good salesman! He either has natural talent or went to a special school. His accent was really cool and he kept saying things like "polishink" and "buffink".

Of all the nails he could have grabbed to demonstrate his product on, it had to be my thumb that only JUST RECENTLY recovered from the allergic reaction to the nail strengthener. Remember that? Seriously, it just finished peeling. The peeling moved all the way around my thumb to the other side. And the nail grew out with little indentations of the blisters that had been on my skin. GROSS. (Uh oh, I just noticed that all the images from before I switched over to Goole's new beta version of Blogger are missing. That really sucks. I hope they can fix it!)

So he grabs my thumb (Jackson, by the way, was with me and we were on our way to get a cookie so it was not a relaxing experience) and goes to work on it with this four-sided buffer made of diamond dust, cotton, silk, and I don't know what else. Maybe the other side is just the space for the label. And he doesn't let me see it until it's all done and then TA DA, he reveals it and you know what I said?

I said, "EW!". Because anybody who feels like I do about their nails does not want to draw attention to them at all. As Jackson put it, "All the lights were shining right from it!". It was soooo shiney. It still is soooo shiney. It feels like plastic and I can't stop feeling it, it's totally weird. It looks wet, and as he was doing it he kept talking to me about it in his thick accent which sounded so cool that I just stood there feeling embarassed but sort of wanting to keep listening to him.

I was looking at his nails, which were also very shiney, thinking it looked a little silly but not knowing that was how my own thumb was going to look. He said it would take a couple of weeks for it to not be so shiney but I have a big stack of sandpaper in the kitchen I can take to it when I get sick of touching it. The good thing is that he buffed out all the little blister pocks.

Doesn't it look like there is polish on it? It's soooo weird.

So anyway, what with the headache and the distracting thumb, I can't really go on about the parent/teacher meeting. But it was good.

Over and out.

Happy Thanksving.

Well, it was actually a few days ago, but here's a picture of the turkey apple Jackson made at school. Photo by Jackson.

Notice the TJ's coffee, sneakily smuggled over the border.

Like angels.

Crazy, irritating, adorable angels.

Today while Frances slept I thought of a picture from when Jackson was just 11 weeks old. They have so many similarities, don't they? Besides the way they look, they both have amazingly sophisticated senses of humor, are both thoughtful and kind, and are incredible clowns.


Frances is 19 months old now. What was Jackson doing at 19 months? Let's take a look back:

Finger painting (with my fingers).


Jamming with his Papa.


Listening to dope beats.


Running down the dock at Swan Lake (this was seconds before he lurched forward and missed skidding on his face only because the bill of his cap got stuck between two boards).


Sitting on the bench at the end of above dock.

What's Frances up to?

About 27 lbs. Bump cha!

Yesterday I,
picked out my own clothes!

peeled my own banana!




Today I,
spent some time watching Blue's Clues.

Birthday Boy

Jackson's birthday ended up being a fairly mellow day. He opened up presents first thing in the morning and spent a few hours playing with his toys. His favorite was the gigantic remote control car from his Nana.






I dropped him off at the other boy's birthday party right before noon and didn't pick him up again until almost 4 pm! He had a lot of fun, enjoyed the movie, ate pizza and cake, then played some more when we got home.


We had a cake for him that evening too. I didn't have the energy to make one myself, I'm ashamed to admit, but this one from the bakery was very tasty!


Next year, if he's still interested in swimming, I think I'll do one of the organized swim parties at the rec center where he has lessons.

Wow!

Guess which 19 month old has been using her potty for TWO DAYS now!? All on her own, she thought it would be fun to try and she's had 5 pees on it. What a super star!

Hey, you.

Yeah, you! :-)

Hi. I've noticed a lot more people have been coming around here lately. If I don't know you, why not introduce yourself? I always like making new online friends. Especially since I'm so much wittier on paper, and I'm usually too out of it to maintain an in-the-flesh friendship for more than a couple of weeks.

Thanky!

Favours

I decided that Jackson can go to his classmate's birthday party - maybe even the whole thing, I'm not positive about that part yet - but I am going to try my hardest to make next Wednesday special for him by taking party favours and some kind of sweet treat in to his class. Here are the favours I made:



9 pink and 9 blue. They are made out of balls of streamer crepe paper with little things hidden in the layers so the kids will have little suprises as they unwrap them. There are charms, hairbands, stickers & erasers in the girls' packages and those little parachute men, put-together cars, stickers and dissolve-in-water sponge creatures in the boys' packages. I got everything from the dollar store so each one probably cost about $3 to make.

I wasn't sure how to finish them off but then found this great ribbon I have been carrying around with me for the since 1998 (I knew it would be useful one day!) and thought it really made them look special.

So that the things inside don't get lost as they are unwrapped I might put them into individual containers of some sort with maybe a small bag of jelly beans? I don't know if I want to do cupcakes. Very messy. Jelly Bellies are so pretty and who doesn't like jelly beans? Nobody, that's who.

I got the idea from here.