Lux et umbra vicissum…

I was checking the stats for our sites yesterday, and I found that some random guy we’ve never heard of had a link to one of our sites (a fouse.net site… not sure which one) in his archives somewhere. He’s blogged so much that there was no way I was going to find the link, but I started randomly reading his posts and he’s highly amusing. 🙂 Check it out. I especially recommend his Further Proof I Hate Pants entry.

Forgot to mention yesterday that Branwen is just right size-wise for her age (20 lbs. 12 1/2 oz. and 29 1/2 in. long), but she’s in the 90th percentile for head circumference. She’s a Fouse all right! She’s got that big ol’ German head. 🙂

She had to get two shots at this appointment, and she was not at all happy about it. Alexis used to be fine with it until she got old enough to actually understand what was coming. 😛 Branwen, on the other hand, is absolutely awful about it. Anyway, the nurse gave her both shots as quickly and deftly as possible, then took the needles and other dross and left the room. Alexis, who had been sitting in another chair watching this procedure, looked at me and said in a very indignant tone of voice, “What was that woman doing to my baby sister???” I had to fight back a smile as I tried to explain shots to her. I don’t think she quite understood, but that’s ok. 🙂

To flu shot, or not to flu shot…. that is the question. I should decide by the time we go for Alexis’ 3 year appointment in a few weeks since the doctor said they’d have the vaccine in by then. Maybe I’ll post more about that later. For now I should go and do my Bible reading for the day. My friend April and I have started reading through a One Year Bible. It’s easier to keep up with it if I know someone else is going to be asking me whether I’ve done it or not. 🙂

When I think about it practically, it was really such a small incident in my day… but it got me mad to the point that I was actually trembling when I got out of my van. Ok, so that was partly because I needed to eat, too. In any case, I want to type about what happened, and maybe that’ll finish getting it out of my bloodstream.

As I was driving back from the pediatrician’s where Branwen had her one year appointment (she’s doing great, btw, but hated the shots), I came to a point in the road where I have to cross some railroad tracks. Let me set the scene a bit more… the road is one lane in either direction. The tracks, which are used daily though I don’t know the schedule, are for freight trains and they cross the road a little ways before you reach a traffic light (there’s probably room for 6 cars or so between the tracks and the light). Not far past the tracks, there’s a parking lot entrance on the right, and some people like to cut through the parking lot to get to the road rather than wait for the light to turn green.

I should probably remind you to keep in mind that I’m coming back from an appointment where my one year old daughter made it abundantly clear that I was torturing her, so I wasn’t in the best emotional state.

The line of cars extending from the traffic light was pretty long, so it was taking several green lights to get everyone through. I watched the car in front of me pull across the railroad tracks, but when he stopped his back bumper was about even with the white line on the other side of the road indicating where people should stop their cars to be safely off of the tracks. So, what did I do, irritating old-fogey driver that I am? I stopped behind the white line in my lane of traffic so that I wouldn’t be dangerously near the tracks. Before I go on, I will state that had I pulled across I would not have been straddling the tracks. I would have had my back bumper within a foot of them, though.

I saw nothing wrong with what I had done, and was consequently startled when someone behind me started beeping their horn. I didn’t do anything because the situation hadn’t changed for me. The light ahead was still red, no one had moved, and the train tracks were still quite clearly before me. I figured they’d just deal with it, but next thing I know, an SUV two vehicles behind me whips into the oncoming lane of traffic, goes around me, crosses the tracks, and pulls to the right of the people sitting at the light so that he can turn into the parking lot. Well, I was irritated, but the thought that went through my head was, “At least he was turning right.” But it didn’t stop there! The lady behind me started beeping, then SHE pulled into the oncoming lane of traffic and started passing me. ARE THESE PEOPLE INSANE???? I actually rolled down my window and yelled, “I AM NOT GOING TO STOP ON THE TRACKS!” as if that did any good. She didn’t even turn right. She just pulled across the tracks and sat there, all of one car ahead of where she would have been had she just stayed in place. Her car did fit a little better in the spot than my minivan would have, but it still would have been bumped by the train signal arm when it came down. Oh, and she was in front of me from that point until she turned off into a shopping center parking lot.

So, I’ve been working very hard on the whole mercy thing, and I find I can usually think of reasonable stories that would explain why nice, average, kind-hearted people (yes, I’m trying to be positive here) would do seemingly ridiculous (or in some cases mean) things. I’m having trouble thinking of reasons why these two drivers would have done something that seems so… well… stupid. Why in the world would you risk your life (even if it’s a moderate risk) to get ahead of someone who’s sitting waiting behind some railroad tracks at a red light? Perhaps the second driver thought, after the first one passed me, that I was broken down and she should go around… but I don’t think so. Maybe they both had emergencies and needed to rush to get to the… um… dry cleaners! Maybe a herd of wildebeasts was chasing them!

I don’t do this often, but I will open this post up for comments because I’d honestly like to hear if anyone has any idea why someone would drive like that.

Well, at least writing this all out helped a good bit. Now maybe I can settle down and figure out how to get Alexis to finish her two bites of turkey wrap. 😛

Forgot to mention, I was up late last night because Joel and I rented “Cold Mountain.” I don’t really recommend it. The acting was good, but there was a good bit of foul language, quite a bit more sex than was necessary, and the plot was well-worn enough that I was able to predict what was going to happen with 99% accuracy. Not really worth the rent, in my opinion. Oh well.

I’m going to try to type fast. I’d like to get to bed early tonight for a change. I didn’t sleep well last night (after getting to bed late), due in part to my nervous state of mind. I agreed to teach a once a week older-two-year-old class during the Women’s Bible Study at our church on Tuesday mornings. I’ll only be teaching it for two months until the regular teacher will be taking over, but I’m still terribly nervous. I start this coming Tuesday. This knowledge is already spawning such lovely dreams as the one I had last night in which someone had placed all of the children in one big room and told the teachers to go gather their classes together, but I had never received a class list.

Anyway, another Alexis memory is of her when she was crawling age (roughly 8-ish months to 11-ish months). For some reason, she always seemed to be afraid of bumping her head on things. She would never crawl under things, even our dining room table (which was plenty high above her at the time) or our grand piano (the only really valuable thing in our house). 🙂 You’d think she had bumped her head numerous times because of the way she acted, but I don’t know that I saw her bump it once! She just had some innate sense that she didn’t want to be underneath anything. It was somewhat convenient at the time since it meant I could push a couple things I didn’t want her to get into underneath the piano and not really worry about them. 🙂

Branwen has no such innate sense. She goes under, over, around, and through. 😛 She bumps her head on purpose just to see what it’ll feel like. She’s active, athletic, and overly curious. I don’t know how many times I’ve found her up on top of things where she shouldn’t be. I try not to keep things climbable, but she actually moves things around – boxes, toys, etc. – to form steps for herself. No fear. 😛 Well, that’ll probably come with time.

Time to shut down, wind down, and go to sleep. Fiddle-dee-dee… tomorrow is another day.

I realized as I was walking back from the playground that, the way life is, I should probably just plan on typing one rememberie at a time and build them up gradually that way. So here’s number two, a memory generated by our playground trip.

When we got to the playground, I decided to let Branwen have some relatively unrestricted playground time for the first time. Up to this point, when we’ve played outside I’ve pretty much held on to her or at the very least walked everywhere with her. So this time, when I set her down, she walked several paces, sat down in the mulch, and started having a grand time playing in the mulch and dirt. This was rather a shock to my neat and respectable soul because my first child was quite different…

One of Alexis’ earliest words was “dirt” (pronounced “duht”). She would walk around the house and if – heaven forbid! – she should find a fuzzy or something on the carpet, she’d stand right next to it, point down at it, and repeat, “Duht! Duht! Duht!” until I came and threw it away. When we played outside, she had a horror of getting herself dirty, so she generally kept everything but her feet off of the ground whenever possible. If she happened to get dirt on her hands or face, oh the horror! We usually ended up having to go inside at that point to clean her up.

When she went to one of her well child visits – it was either her 15 month or her 18 month visit – the doctor was asking me how well Alexis was talking. By that time she was speaking in some decently long sentences, but she was shy in front of the doctor and wouldn’t talk. Feeling put on the spot, I was having trouble thinking of an example sentence that the doctor could write on Alexis’ chart. We were most of the way through the visit, when suddenly Alexis, still sitting on the exam table, piped up. She was looking down behind the table and said, “There’s duht down there!” The doctor smiled, said, “I’ll take that!” and wrote it down on her chart. 🙂

Well, the dirty baby is now hungry, too. 🙂 Better go get lunch ready! And it’s a good thing we were planning on giving them baths tonight.

I do plan on posting more about Joel’s car shopping experience at some point (he did buy the one I mentioned in my last post), and I also plan on posting about VBS at some point, but for now I have something else on my mind.

I’ve heard it said that the first child gets the nice baby book and lots of pictures (not to mention a clean binky), while subsequent children get less well kept baby books, less pictures, and a binky that’s cursorily wiped and shoved in their mouths. Well, as far as the baby book goes, I wasn’t very good at keeping Alexis’s up to date, so you can imagine how Branwen’s looks! I’m actually relying on this blog to remember some of the dates when she accomplished various things. 🙂

In light of the fact that I’m rather terrible at keeping up with baby info, I want to spend a couple of minutes remembering things from the kids’ youth and pulchritude. 🙂 Most, if not all, of this will be about Alexis since Branwen just hasn’t had as much opportunity to really do as many things. She’ll get there soon enough. 🙂

The other night I was remembering a time when Alexis was, oh, maybe 14 months old or so. We were at Aunt Jane’s house – that’s Joel’s aunt on his father’s side – and we had sat down to eat dinner. First, Alexis reminded us to pray before eating (looking around rather aghast, she said, “Pray!”). She had just picked up on that tradition, so she was pretty adament about it. 🙂 We prayed, and then as we were eating she started saying one of her favorite phrases of the time, “Azzat? Azzat?” (Read, “What’s that?”) Joel was sitting next to her at the table, and as she pointed at something repeating, “Azzat,” he started poking her under the arm and repeating back to her in a jocular tone, “Azzat? Azzat? Azzat?” Alexis started giggling really hard, and then out of the giggles came her answer to his question. “Armpit!” she cried. 🙂

I wanted to type more, but Alexis has come to me a couple of times now saying, “I’m thinking maybe we should go to the playground a little bit,” and I’m thinking maybe she’s right. We haven’t had a chance for a while, and it would be good to get out of the house while it’s nice out. Maybe I’ll be able to type more later. I’m working on a cross stitch baby announcement thingy for Wendy’s baby, Reagan, right now, too, so that’s taking some time. I’m not making it because I’m a wonderful, selfless friend… I’m making it because I got a creative urge last week and it was the first creative thing I managed to pick up. 🙂 I actually checked around for audition notices first, but there weren’t any local auditions that seemed appropriate. Anyway, off to the playground we go!

Joel’s almost found a replacement car at this point, but we’re trying to make sure it’s the one the Lord means for us to buy. He’s going back to the dealership today to make a final decision. If he gets it (or doesn’t), I’ll post more about it. At this point, I want to hold off on details.

We have an official first word for Branwen as of two days ago. It’s “Amen”. 🙂 She’s started saying “Aa-meh” every time we pray. Holy cow!… er… baby! 😉

Branwen’s walking pretty well now, too. She’s not falling nearly as often. And when she does fall, she gets right back up and keeps going. I hope she retains that toughness. Her sister is the queen of melodrama when she bumps, scrapes, or stubs anything.

Alexis is still doing well. She can now write both an “A” and an “L” on her own. We’re working on the “E”. The “X” will be difficult. She doesn’t quite grasp diagonal lines yet. She likes writing, though, and I have a small printing workbook for her that she likes to play with. I don’t push her with it, but if she wants to do it, we do. She’s not quite three, after all. No reason to push her to learn to write all of her letters yet.

When she counts, she’s been skipping 15. I’m trying to correct that, but I haven’t found a good way to help her remember it yet.

I’m planning on having a dual birthday party this year. I never do big parties, but I like to have “birthday plays”, which are basically little play groups with a birthday theme. How is this different from a birthday party? Well, it’s mostly just that I like to keep them less formal than the “parties” that a lot of people throw. We invite a few moms and kids over, have a tray of fruit and cheese and such, and let the kids play together. I started a practice when Alexis turned one that I’ve continued thus far and hope to keep going for quite some time. When we invite people over for a birthday, we tell them not to bring gifts but to consider bringing items that can be donated to Western Fairfax Christian Ministries instead. The girls get plenty of gifts from family and a few from friends, so it’s not like they need a bunch more, and this way we’ll show them how we can give to other people instead of always looking to get things for ourselves.

I was just thinking, I never did a detailed post about my VBS experience. It was good, and I saw God working in a lot of personal ways. I don’t want to take the time to write about it right now. My eyes are pretty tired and I’d like to rest a bit, but I would like to write about it at some point. Maybe I’ll get a chance sometime soon.

Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned anything about my sister recently. She’s leaving the army on a medical discharge because her knee just isn’t up to the task, but her husband, Kevin, is staying in. He’s being stationed in Germany for three years, so they’ll be heading over there later this year. It’d be really fun if we could manage to visit them at least once while they’re there, but we’ll have to see how things go.

Ok… time to go get a little rest before Alexis’ VeggieTales video ends and Branwen wakes up from her nap. 🙂

Between family illness, various obligations, and a very recent car accident which totalled Joel’s car, I haven’t had much time to post anything. I’m only posting now to keep the site from being blank. 🙂

We’re hunting locally for a Honda Civic we like. That’s what Joel’s car was and he loved it. There are plenty out there, so we don’t feel like we have to jump at the first one we see. Anyway, car-hunting only seems fun when you don’t really have to do it. Kind-of like house hunting.

Just as a quick update, Alexis is learning to write her name now (she can make the A by herself and the L with help), and she’s learning to sound out easy words. Branwen can walk across the kitchen to me now, though she’s still at the drunken baby stage. 🙂

The cats got some bacterial thing recently and passed it on to Branwen (and possibly Alexis, though I’m not sure). The doctor said it would go away by itself, and it has, but that was yet another thing to deal with. Ah well. Better a full life than one that’s completely empty.

Oh, and Wendy had her baby yesterday. 🙂 She had another baby girl, Reagan Paige Nostheide, so now Branwen will have a playmate. 🙂

And I have to go. I’ve been trying to figure out how to word an email and now Alexis needs to use the potty. Gotta keep running!

There are some days when Alexis seems so grown up. Today is NOT one of those days.

I woke up with Alexis standing next to me. She said she was going back in her room, so I said ok, and I got out of bed. I made my way to her room, at which point she started crying and said she wanted to go back to my room. I just said, “No, it’s time to get you changed so Mommy can feed Branwen and get a shower.” She continued to cry and said, “No, don’t change me! I want to sleep some more!” I asked her if she was sure, and she said yes, so I told her to climb back in bed and lay down. She did; I got Branwen out of her crib and took her to the changing table. As I reached down for a diaper for Branwen, I heard the toddler siren start up from the bed, “Noooooooo, it’s my turn fiiiiiiiirst!” *sigh* “Alexis, you gave up your turn when you said you wanted to sleep some more.” After some sniffles, she got out of bed and started undressing herself so I could help her get dressed.

After she was undressed, I asked her to use the potty as par usual. She insisted she didn’t want to, but I made her get up and sit on it anyway. She cried. I told her to try to go because I had to nurse the baby and then shower and I wouldn’t be able to take her there again for a little bit. She cried. I asked her if she had tried. She said no. I told her again to try. She cried and said she had tried. I said ok and had her get up and get dressed. She doesn’t always pee first thing in the morning since she’s often gone some in her pull-up over night.

Since she was so fussy, I asked her to lay down while I fed Branwen. I told her I wanted to see her still laying down when I brought Branwen back in the room. As I was nursing the baby, I heard Alexis walking through the bathroom (she sneezed at one point, so I was sure she was there). I called to her to go back to her bed until I was done with the baby, and I heard her go back. A couple of minutes later, I went in her room and found her sitting in her bed. I told her that I had asked that she stay laying down, so I was going to have her stay in bed until I emptied the humidifier (we’ve been using it since the girls are coldy right now). It takes a couple of minutes to get it emptied and wiped out, and she was still laying down when I was done, so I told her she could get up and play with toys…. only, as she got up, I saw that her shorts were soaked.

“Did you pee, Alexis?” Alexis looked down. “Alexis, I said, ‘Did you pee?'” Alexis says, “Yes.” Well, that led to a spanking. I told her that she was getting a spanking because she lied to mommy. We’ve gone over what it means to lie before, and I’m pretty sure she understands. At any rate, she knows that if she’s had a chance to use the potty, doesn’t do it, and then pees in her pants, she gets a spanking. If she hasn’t had a chance, that’s another matter. Anyway, I changed her, gave her another potty chance, stripped her bed, and told her she’d better not pee on the mattress since her other mattress pad was in the dryer and I couldn’t put it on right now. *sigh* I was pretty mad.

I then took my shower. It was good timing because I needed some quiet, down time right then. I prayed and asked the Lord to help my attitude and to be patient and loving for me since I was feeling so tired and helpless. I got out of the shower feeling refreshed and ready to start over. I opened Alexis’ bedroom door and she said, “I needed some tissues.”

I ran into the room expecting to see the tissue box empty, and it wasn’t. Instead, the wipes box was on the floor with every single wipe pulled out of it. It was a nearly full box. I was livid. “You know not to take things off the changing table, and you know not to play with the wipes, Alexis!” I said in a very controlled non-yell. My voice was probably shaking I was having so much trouble keeping from yelling. She got another spanking and I put her on the bed, telling her to stay there until I was ready for her to get down. I threw away the wipes from the floor and went about getting myself ready to go downstairs. Alexis, from her bed, piped up with, “I’ll remember not to take things off the changing table again…” and I immediately, and rather sharply, responded that she had not forgotten this time. I knew she knew not to do it, and she did it anyway. She was quiet after that.

I was still pretty angry by the time I was ready to go downstairs for breakfast, so I told Alexis she would stay in her room until I was ready to come get her. I took Branwen, locked Alexis in the room, and went downstairs. This is the first time I’ve used the “go to your room” type thing, but I could see definite worth in it. It gave me a chance to cool down again. I called my friend Wendy and got some of my feelings out to her so I wouldn’t take them out on Alexis, and got breakfast together. It didn’t really help that as I was trying to cool down, Branwen was getting into cabinets and pulling things out of them (something she’s recently learned how to do). I tried to put cabinet locks on the other day, but I couldn’t find Joel’s drill bits and was having trouble getting the hole started with just the screw. Anyway, I had calmed down pretty well by the time I was going up to get Alexis.

I brought Alexis down and put her in her booster seat for breakfast. I had given her blueberries and cream oatmeal with extra blueberries in it, and I had put some blueberries on my cereal. As she started eating, I noticed that she seemed to be eating around her blueberries. I asked her why she was doing it, but she just responded that she was eating. Then she started asking for my blueberries. I said no, she had some in her bowl. She asked for them a few times, and I refused every time, pointing to the ones in her bowl. Finally, after being refused yet again, she put her spoon down and refused to eat any more. I didn’t try very hard to change her mind. I was too tired. I just let her down. If she gets hungry, I figure it’s her fault. Lunch will come soon enough.

Since then, she’s been ok. Branwen tried to climb the stairs once while I’ve been online and I had to block them off with chairs. Then she crawled back in the kitchen and Alexis went in after her. Alexis came back in the living room, and when I asked what Branwen was doing, she said, “Playing in the cat food,” and walked away. I ran in again and got Branwen. Not long after I started typing this, Branwen crawled over to me and fell asleep in my lap. Alexis came over and said, “Branwen’s asleep. Shhhhh,” and then proceeded to start shaking my office chair, which, of course, woke Branwen up. (Thankfully, she went right back to sleep.)

At this point, Alexis is under orders to stay away from Branwen. That also keeps her a little distance from me, which is not a bad thing right now. She’s reading a book, which is a relatively safe activity. She asked for chocolate milk and a video, and I’ll probably let her have them. That’s a fairly normal morning routine, and it’ll keep her out of trouble for a little while anyway. If I’m lucky, she’ll choose a video that’ll take us right up till lunch time. *sigh*

I know I probably haven’t responded well at all this morning. It’s hard to think straight when you’re tired, coldy, and upset. Right now I’m just feeling like I can’t do anything right. I think I’ll need to take a brief nap when they go down this afternoon. Maybe some extra sleep will help me gain perspective.

Branwen is awake now and pulling magazines out of a magazine rack. Here we go again…

Branwen took three steps to me yesterday. Eight and a half months old, and she’s starting to walk! It’s way too early. I still have things to baby proof!

The girls and I are sick again. We all have colds. Alexis has the worst of it, though. She got the oral herpes virus – that’s the virus that causes cold sores. Once you have it, it never leaves your body. It just lies dormant between times, and every now and then you have cold sores pop out. Joel and I both get cold sores, so she could have picked it up from either of us. Poor kid. The first time you get the virus, it’s often worse. In her case, she has a huge sore covering about a third of the surface area on the underside of her tongue. 😛 She has other sores along her gums and such, too. She doesn’t want to eat or drink, so we’re really having to encourage her. And the doctor says she could have these for a week. *sigh* I hate it when I have just one little sore! My poor baby.

Anyway, my parents are coming to visit soon, so I should probably go. We were going to do a cookout, but the weatherman changed the prediction last night (for a week they’ve been saying it would be sunny, then last night they change it to say it’ll be rainy all day and night), so now I don’t know what we’ll be having for dinner. 😛 Gotta go try to plan.