Nathan was texting ("texting") with Uncle Nick and found out they were taking Ali to one of the indoor city pools, and talked his (our) way into joining them, and so suddenly in the middle of an icy cold week we got all swimmy and had a fun afternoon.
And I daresay I haven't seen a cousin so adored in... maybe ever. They see her every day. And yet.
We have had a spell of trecherous* weather that has resulted in like nine days of missed school, and they haven't officially announced how/when we will make it up, but I'm assuming we just enjoyed our "spring break" of sorts (fine by me, we have no spring break plans over actual spring break, we are taking ours later anyway to go to the beach with my dad like we do every year).
(*The NC version of trecherous = some legit snow, some legit ice, and a lot of days - A LOT of days - waiting for all the icy patches to melt on even the smallest of shady no-light back roads, so the buses can safely drive, because we ain't got no snowplows, etc etc etc.)
The first day it snowed, the kids wanted nothing to do with it. They stood inside and watched it and were glad for a day off school, but I couldn't even beg them into the yard to play. I think they were traumatized. Their last snow experience was something else. (It was a sheet of ice and no fun for playing that day anyway, not that it stopped everyone else in the county, according to my instagram feed.)
Once we had some real snow, I went out and walked around in it (enchanted like a proper southerner) and eventually the kids joined me.
Some pictures of the snow, because it's still novel enough (or so we claim? even though it has happened several years in a row now?) that it warrants photographing.
Our backyard:
Across our front yard, at the last snow which was really heavy and wet:
By the time Mark and the kids were building a snowman in the front yard, it was super warm out and Mark was in a t-shirt. Yes, it took baring the grass to get enough snow for even that tiny snowman. This is... so North Carolina:
Snow selfie:
Also, find me something more delightful than a five-year-old who is delighted by swinging in the snow. Go ahead. Find it. (It doesn't exist. This is the most delightful.)
Oh! And! I bought new snow boots back in the fall (for no good reason, they were just there at TJ Maxx and impossibly cute) and I was not ashamed about feeling glad for an excuse to wear them.
In related news, I had a whole rant ready about how annoyed I am at moms (parents) (but mostly I see moms) who complain about having their kids home for days on end. I mean, yes, I get it. We all get stir crazy. Especially when the roads really aren't safe. (I'm not taking chances with that again.) But! There are people who have to miss work when their kids miss school, and therefore miss pay when their kids miss school, and some of those are the same people who need their kids at school for free and reduced lunches, and backpack buddies for weekend groceries, and the like. Having extra mouths to feed for extra meals a day when you're suddenly with a lower paycheck? Sucks. But those are not the people who I see complaining online, it's the white rich ladies and I just want them to shut up, or do it with nuance, or something, Everyone has feelings and I get that, but. Don't be gross. Don't be a dick. That's all.
(This is the short version of my rant because it's snowing and I am still enchanted.)
(Also I've been getting to sleep later, because no school! And Ali hasn't been coming since her parents are off work. And sleeping til 8 makes me a better mom, TRUE STORY. Thanks, snow.)
So today is Presidents Day, except not really, because Nathan has school. Except not really, because I didn't make him go, because I told him it was a holiday (I thought it was! my calendar said so! my calendar doesn't lie! except this one time) and the girls are out of school, and it's supposed to snow/ice tomorrow which means we will be out of school all week anyway, and what's the point of going for just one day? There is no lasting education happening (that won't need to be repeated) in a one-day week. Anyway, I decided to let him stay home and make the most of my mistake.
And that's the story of why Presidents Day isn't Presidents Day this year. Which is... not a story.
But what we did do with our Presidents Day non-holiday is go... ice skating. I KNOW. MY KIDS. I KNOW. But we tried for a trampoline jump place and they were closed, and ice skating was next door, so we tried something new.
Well, the girls did. Nathan wanted none of it. Although he did take some pictures for us. So, thanks for that, grumpy gus?
Charlotte mostly wanted to hold my hands (ask me what makes ME unsteady on skates? a three-year old hanging on me, that's what) but Anneliese got braver and braver and was off in the middle of the rink, pushing around the stacks of buckets they had on hand for young kids. Really cute, and she was so proud. She is asking for ice skating lessons now. Cute.
And then Nathan and Anneliese had been asking for Chinese food (I don't even know) and since I am the kind of lady who loves a Chinese buffet, we had planned a buffet date for the "school holiday" (remember that thing about how I didn't remember it was a holiday, so).
Y'all, they loved it. My picky eaters tried all kinds of new things, they made lists of what they loved and didn't love, they went back for seconds, we had dessert, we left full and happy and it was the most random thing but also delightful.
So we celebrated President's Day by trying ice skating for the first time, and then pigging out with picky eaters at a Chinese buffet. Anything else would have been unamerican, amiright?
Charlotte is three and a half, and I was all ready to say what she's up to these days but first - can I just say, three looks SO MUCH BETTER on her than it did on her siblings? Three was awful with Nathan, awfuler with Anneliese, and last summer when Charlotte started showing signs of the dreaded Threenager, I was both dreading it and ready for it.
Dreading because it sucks, and ready because I'm a seasoned mom now, and I know two very important things about Age Three:
1.) It is a phase. Threeness is not an indicator of future good citizenship. She is not being ruined forever by my inability to parent her well, and anyway -
2.) IT'S HER, NOT ME. Whatever three is, it's on her. And it will pass.
Aside: my dad once told me that the best parenting advice he could really give to anyone, with kids at any age, it is this: JUST WAIT. Be patient. Almost everything passes. Even if hard things drag on for very long seasons, just keep loving them, don't give up on them or yourself, just wait. I have decided that's really good advice.) (He knows what he's talking about, he had some rough teenager years (side eye: a Certain Brother Who Shall Remain Nameless).
Anyway, after the whole IT'S HER, NOT ME mantra of dealing with little Charlotte Booler, my third three-year-old, well, it turns out... she's fine. All of those months of Brace For Impact were notsomuch needed.
I mean, she has her moments. She's had a few epic tantrums, usually when someone comes or goes out of our driveway and doesn't wave to her (side-eye: Daddy at 6am on the way to work). She is sometimes shrieky, and often slower than Christmas, both of which make me batty. But! She isn't nearly as three as the others were, or maybe she just isn't there yet, or maybe I just getting better at not internalizing threeness as a parenting failure. (I'M DOING IT. I'M BREEZY.) But whatever is happening, it's easier.
So besides being sunshine with a sometimes side of storms, the most important thing about Charlotte these days is that she is talking so much better. Speech therapy is a dream. She thinks it's fun and games, it's not social-worker-stressful for me, and it's working. She rarely stutters now, unless she's really frustrated. We no longer need to rank her days on a speech scale of 1-5, and she is full of cute opinions she can actually voice, and those adorable things that all three-year-olds say in their own funny three-year-old ways:
Instead of singing her ABC's, she sings the EFG song.
PJs are pee-tays.
Nightgowns are nightdowns.
Her window: mynindow!
When she has an opinion to declare: I pronounce you... not sharing!
When she's finished something she's proud of: ta-done!
When she needs something: can you help with me?
Her blanket is and remains bank-o-link.
When you ask her a question she isn't sure of: singsong voice i-ah know...?
Her life motto with two older siblings: wait fo me!
Her life fear, being left behind: don' weeve me!
She told me recently that she saw a bear in the backyard. A bear! (There is a Bumgarner family legend about my brother seeing a bear in the hall; it was a mouse.) I have no idea what Charlotte really saw. But she told me in all earnestness that it was a bear, and answered detailed questions about it, and opted to play inside after that in case it came back, and all I could do was clap proudly and say EXCELLENT TALKING, BABY BOOLER.
Speaking of imagination, she and I told a story today, doing that thing you do with your kids where you take turns telling one part at a time, making it up as we go. And it turned out to be about a mom who can climb trees, and in the backyard she found a house of fairy ballerinas in a tiny treetop house. Their favorite food is strawberry spaghetti, and their favorite thing to do is to dance on top of the water in the pool when no one is looking.
She should write a book, is what I'm saying.
She told me last week she was "beautiful like mommy" and then my heart
burst into a million tiny hearts and flew all around in a happy cloud, forever.
Here is Charlotte telling us she's three and a half.
She is eating a cupcake that we picked out at the grocery store for her. We decided if a Booler was ever made into a cartoon character, it might look something like that cupcake.
We have officially survived a sicker sick week than the horrible Sicksgiving of 2012.
First, Anneliese got pinkeye.
Two days later, Ali got the pinkeye. And a cold.
One day later, Charlotte got the cold.
Two days after that, Anneliese had a random one-time vom. We disregarded it because we are fools.
(Also because it was a horrible week for our community, burying one of our former youth choir girls, who lost her life to depression. It was tragic and gut-wrenching and we had way bigger things on our mind than assuming we had a g/i bug floating through our house on top of everything else. And yet, we did.)
That same afternoon, on top of her cold, Ali also started throwing up (she was home with her mom, because of the funeral), and the next day the voms hit Mark too, all night. I banished him to the guest house, because obviously. He slept for a whole day afterwards.
Two days after that, Charlotte got pinkeye, and a fever, and it turns out her cold had moved to an ear infection. Our first, after seven years and three kids (well, except swimmers ear).
That night, Nathan felt queasy, and by morning was throwing up. He kept at it all day, every fifteen to twenty minutes, constantly. I have never seen anyone throw up so much. It was like... fifteen hours of vomiting.
Meanwhile Ali and Charlotte still both had fevers, and Anneliese was as crabby as I have seen her in months, even though she seemed to have already made it through all the sicks.
By bedtime when Nathan's thing still hadn't run its course, he could barely stand, and couldn't pee, so we called his doctor and they sent us to the ER for fluids and zofran.
They tried the dissolvable zofran first and he promptly threw it up, everywhere. All over the triage area. It was so sad, y'all.
Eventually they got an IV in him and he got some fluids and some zofran and he slept for a spell, and dang he woke up a whole different kid.
Amusing anecdote from the hospital: when Nathan was awake and comfortable enough to talk to the doctors, one of them asked what the best book had read recently was. He told them a biography of J.K. Rowling.
"Oh, so you're a big Harry Potter fan?"
"No I have never read them, I just really like biographies."
(Picture me making the cry-laughing emoji face right here. Haaaaaa. So Nathan.)
Anyway we got home and slept hard, and the next morning, Mark woke up with pinkeye, AND THAT IS WHEN I LOST IT.
It was a very long ten days. I cried.
But! Brightsiding! In between Charlotte's ear infection appointment, and Nathan's never-ending upsturned stomach, we did have some half-birthday cake for him. Also, Charlotte never threw up. I never threw up. I never got pinkeye. I never had more than a bit of congestion. So if any of you want to know my superpower, it is apparently Immune System of Steel.
(Does not apply to mono.) (Or pleurisy.)
(Okay nvm I have odd sickies too, but NOT THIS WEEK UNIVERSE SO KISS IT.)
It's groundhog day, the snow days will never end, winter will never end, we are coming off a week when everyone is sick, so much fever and pinkeye and vomming and ear infections and and and AND.
That's a mess for another day. For today, tell me that even in my pure unfiltered* exhaustion, my new glasses are pretty.
Yes, I waited til I had a good hair day to take this pic.
My old lady eyes have new progressive lenses, and they are basically the sh!t because:
1- I can see everything now, including my phone screen! and food!
2- They are teal on the inside.
(When my eye doctor asked if I was having any trouble with my glasses, I joked and answered my only problem was that I lost them all the time. He was like... how do you lose them when they should be on your face? Do you take them off? Me: HA HA YES x1000 per day. Him: Like to eat and read and look at your phone and computer? Me: omg yes and now I feel really foolish for not realizing my perscription is indeed woefully wrong.)
Anyway, that's the story of how I can see my computer again. Maybe I shall be better at blogging catchup? One can hope.
(*I just lied straight to your face, there is an instagram filter allll up on that.)
