May 9th and 10th

Euphie loves being pretty. In addition to proudly displaying her jewelry (stickers (band aids)) to people, she brushes her hair whenever she sees a brush available. One day at dinner she tried to brush her hair with a fork. At that point we decided to show her Little Mermaid to encourage her confusion. Now that she has seen Little Mermaid, she has been brushing her hair with a stick of RAM.

If you want to take a personal leave day and too many other people have it off, you just can’t take it. This is the way jobs work and such is life. Even so, I think it is crap that I have to do dishes on Mother’s Day.

We went to the movies last night to see Star Trek. We had to go to a fairly late showing though—it started at 10:00 pm so didn’t end until after midnight. It was awesome and I really enjoyed it. Needless to say, so did Sleep Frankie.


Euphie exhibited another sign of how quickly she is growing up by engaging in the weekend grown up practice of trying to stay up late playing video games and then just falling asleep on a chair instead.

April

Adelaide was tired and crying, and we put her in her crib for a nap. Her immediate response was to stop crying, start giggling, and then to roll around with her blanket wrapped around her--immersing herself in comfiness. She just loves blankets that much. Adelaide loves pillows just as much as blankets and will even carry one around with her to either fall on or just occasionally squeeze. Euphrates has no exceptional affinity for pillows beyond what normal people have, but she does love blankets. She always has to be wearing one—not like a cool cape because she wants to be a super hero, and not dragged along behind her like a comfort object for a baby, but more securely wrapped around her like she is a permanently cold old lady with a potential thyroid problem who really should just go buy herself a Snuggie. At least Euphie hasn’t picked up the wearing gloves while she types habit, too.

Adelaide is one of those one year olds that still puts everything in their mouths. Euphie was never like that. Euphie was also never one to engage in one of Adelaide’s most enjoyed activities of digging in trash cans. There’s just a feeling unlike any other when you see your little put-anything-in-her-mouth baby digging in the garbage. Well, hmm, maybe it’s similar to the feeling you get when they put your dirty underwear on their heads and run around.

Euphie loves cars. She loves seeing real cars and being in cars and playing car video games and watching the movie Cars. A trip to the store has Euphie staring out the windows of our car and is filled with excited screams of, “Car! Car, car, car!” Her happiness can almost bring her to tears. I wanted to get her the Handy Manny Transforming Fix-It Truck toy way back when for Christmas until I was barraged from four different people jokingly saying I’m just cornering her into a stereotype. Seriously? Four people have to make that joke? Anyway, her love of cars makes going out a real treat for her. Unless that anywhere is Reams and there aren’t any car carts where there usually are because if there aren’t any car carts…well…it is not a treat for anyone.

A pretty long time ago, Euphie discovered the wonders of butter. Not the taste, just the...texture? color? I don’t really know. But I caught her painting the walls of her closet with it. Being a neat freak baby that doesn’t like to touch anything, this painting was done very carefully with a couple of spatulas. After this, I kept a close eye on the butter. Under Euphie’s grandparents’ eyes, such a close watch on the butter was not always kept, and I soon found myself scraping globs of butter off the carpet after a more Pollock style painting in the dining room. Her fun with butter was still being held back, however, as she could still not bring herself to touch it. This is where I’m actually impressed with the jump her brain made to allow her play. The one thing she can stand getting on her hands is soap and shampoo as they enhance one’s cleanliness despite being temporarily messy. That is why she shampooed her hair with butter a couple months back. And that’s why shampooed her hair with butter three additional times this month.

My girls are fairly open to food. The only things Adelaide ever has put in her mouth and not liked to the point of spitting back out (including the garbage) are eggs. Euphie is quite picky—but she changes what she is picky about from day to day. She has never consistently hated anything (except inedibles like garbage—the only garbage she has ever eaten, in fact, is egg shells) but she’ll also turn down a cookie if there is even a chance she can score a green olive.

The alarm clock has been going off on Saturday mornings when it is not supposed to. I usually figure it goes off half due to me turning it on by habit and half due to Euphie or Addie turning it on for me without me noticing. A couple Saturdays ago, however, I couldn’t sleep and I was up at three in the morning just staring at the clock when the alarm went off. Since I was wide awake and my eyes were open and already adjusted to the dark I was able to discover two things. The time wasn’t set to go off until 6:12 as usual and not the three o’clock time it was and the alarm clock button was also not even on. With the vast knowledge I have of ghosts from watching the psychic Sylvia when she is on Montel (my holy trinity of potential belief in stuff consists of Sylvia while on Montel, Ghost Hunters on the Sci Fi channel because some of those shadows are pretty epic, and some reality show psychic competition that I watched three episodes of a marathon of before I had to go and have ever since regretted not finding out who won or remembering what the show was called) I know that ghosts often use electronics to communicate. So there you go, we have a ghost.

Update: the show is called America’s Psychic Challenge and it is AWESOME.

Euphie was running around in circles screaming because there was a fly flying around. I would have killed it, but Euphie wouldn’t give me the fly swatter since it is her favorite thing to hit Adelaide with.



Babies love putting things in other things. Some of my cousins once put bread in a subwoofer. We’ve got batteries in VCRs, absolutely anything can fit into a toilet, and many of Euphie’s toys have gotten a good dishwashing. That’s why Easter Egg hunts are so great for babies. Regardless, Euphie loves to work with CDs and DVDs because they’re so thin she can squeeze them into all sorts of things that other things can’t squeeze into. Now I’m not one to let pictures do the talking for me, but this is just too…I don’t even know and that’s why I’m not going to bother trying.

But yes, that is Monster Squad slid into Adelaide’s diaper.

Marchish 3

On the 26th, Frankie slid off the road. He is fine and the car just has a little dent in it, so no lasting damage for anything that actually matters, but something like that happening really makes you think. When people say there are always people out there who are worse off than you, you just think, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course there are. But can’t my life suck, too?” It’s different however, when it’s you who has it worse off than yourself. You know your own feelings and how you work—people tend to have an amazing ability to empathize with themselves. So the Marchish posts are dedicated to the Kiri in the parallel universe that is maybe a whole lot worse off than me right now.

Euphie graduated! Yes, that’s right. Her life with candy will never be the same—in a good way. I was eating a handful of Mike and Ike jelly beans (an Easter thing, I think-- the sour ones are delicious but the normal ones just taste like jelly beans and I was really hoping for more of a Mike and Ike essence to them) when Euphie came downstairs and spotted me. I try to avoid giving her candy in general, and it’s easiest to do that by not eating it front of her, but she had been upstairs so I risked giving myself the snack. Anyway, so there she suddenly was asking for some. I decided to give her just one. This is a perk about having children that people don’t typically mention. “Just have one” means you can give away the crap candy—like when you’re a dalmuti in the Great Dalmuti—it just means you end up with an all around better hand. Hey, wait a second, now that I think about it--the reason why I had the jellybeans in the first place was because my own mother was rather disappointed with the non-Mike-and-Ike Mike and Ike jelly beans and thus I inherited them… Anyway, so I gave Euphie a yellow. But she said no! And so I gave her a green. And she said, “No.” And she kept pointing at my hand and saying, “I want one.” Then I realized there was a stupid pina colada clear flavor which I hadn’t noticed earlier since it’s just a stupid flavor that shouldn’t even exist. So I gave her one of those and she said, “No.” So yeah, even as rarely as she gets candy, she now understands that reds and pinks will always taste the best.

Euphie goes poopoo in her potty a couple of times a week and once she even realized her pee was about to come and went peepee in her potty as well, so I think we’re coming along nicely with her potty trainedness. That said her favorite use of her little girl potty is still for fashion purposes. It’s kinda cute though, because even in wearing pieces of toilet as a hat, her nature as a good big sister still shines through. She takes Adelaide’s comfort into account by taking the harder, outer pieces for herself and shoving the much softer butt pad on Adelaide.



Euphrates is terribly afraid of bugs. When she sees these tiny little things that move she immediately freaks out. Her reaction sequence consists of a priceless look of fear on her face, sometimes crying other times just stunned silence, and then running towards anyone who can pick her up. That’s why it was rather impressive when Frankie went into her room and she took his hand and brought him over to a box. She lifted up the box and under it was a firebug. She captured a bug under something and then had Frankie deal with it after. She’s growing up so fast! As a side note, later on she saw one and immediately stomped it, but little tiny Euphie extinguishing an even little tinier life isn’t nearly as endearing a story.

I burnt my burgers. On the upside, Euphie’s tomato hit Frankie’s face.

Marchish 2

Adelaide gives kisses now. Well, she gives them to some people like Poppy and Grammy and Aunt Katie--and then she claps and claps for herself. For Mommy and Daddy she still just thinks it is funnier to pretend like she is going to and then turn away at the end--and then she laughs and laughs at us. The other good thing is that Adelaide’s new found capacity for expressing love has melted Euphie’s cold rarely-kiss-giving heart because, miraculously, Euphie will go around trying to give kisses now whenever Adelaide does.

Adelaide is essentially off of formula and bottles now. She has had a lifetime of practice stealing Euphie’s cups and drinking milk out of those, so she has made an easy transition. I’m pretty excited about it, though. Not having to pay the cost of formula will be nice, but more importantly—all of those old bottles that hide in corners or under couches or beds that have rotten old nasty stuff inside that you can’t open to clean unless you want to puke, so you just need to throw out but feel guilty about throwing out because they’re bottles and you have no money so you really should just clean them but you can’t bring yourself to, so you just move them to high shelves somewhere where no one can breathe in the toxic crap they’re releasing and pretend you don’t know they’re there—those can all finally be tossed.

After having to vacuum daily, I finally abandoned my method of snack dispension—the easel (or sometimes Cozy Coupe II trunk) trough. It worked so nicely for Euphie and Addie to have such easy access when they wanted a quick bite, but they got to the point where they just played with the food a little bit too much. After having gotten rid of it, I came to the realization that they throw their food all around no matter what, so the trough is back.

I was cleaning out the room and reorganizing our drawers so our clothes would fit so I could actually put some laundry away. I found a pizza box from probably two months ago in one of the drawers. The box was empty so it’s not like it was that gross. And I mean…it wasn’t that weird either. I remember putting it in there and all, but still.

Marchish 1

My relationship with Sleep Frankie has always bugged Frankie. I guess it’s like how you always wonder what it would be like to meet yourself in a parallel universe and the parallel you experiences stuff and it’s you who is experiencing stuff but it isn’t the you you. Like when the Doctor has to watch Bluesuit kissing Rose and he’s not the one experiencing it so it sucks but you can’t fault either of them ‘cause Bluesuit is almost the Doctor, too. Well, “almost” is kinda stretching it. He’s so not the Doctor at all. Anyway, Frankie has kinda gotten to feel what that’s like as I’ve told him various Sleep Frankie stories over the years. I’m kinda jealous that I don’t know other Kiri. I don’t even know if there is a Sleep Kiri because Frankie is incapable of not turning into Sleep Frankie when Sleep Frankie wants to come out, and Sleep Frankie won’t tell me whether or not Sleep Kiri exists. I doubt they know each other though because although Sleep Frankie is pretty witty with the responses, he rarely initiates the conversations and if there is a Sleep Kiri, I don’t know that she would initiate one either.

Here is a case in point of Sleep Frankie being the dominant personality that happened this month.

Frankie and I were having an argument and it was late. He knows I get mad if he falls asleep during the middle of an argument, but he was tired so the impending presence of Sleep Frankie was a possibility I expected and Frankie feared. The argument was a nearing a resolution so I was starting to be funny with my comments and Frankie was starting to become less fearful of falling asleep. Frankie was cold so he pulled more than his fair share of the blankets away from me. I say, jokingly, “Oh, so you’ll steal my warmth as you stab me in the heart?”

“I don’t want to stab you. Oh, although I did bring a knife.”A decently long pause.”Oh SHOOT! You’re not talking to Sleep Frankie!”

Wanting to get it word for word, I say, “Oh, I gotta remember this. How did we start on this train of thought?”

“Well, I called you by your Japanese name.”

“Wait, wait. Get me a pen and paper. Do you know where a pen is?”

“Yeah! I put spearmints in the love boat.”

I start laughing as I write and Frankie keeps asking what I’m writing. “Ewan McGregor? Does that have something to do with it?” So then Frankie wakes back up as Frankie and wonders what he has been saying about Ewan McGregor ‘cause he’s certain he’s been talking about Ewan McGregor because Ewan McGregor is awesome and apparently that’s all Frankie can remember thinking about while Sleep Frankie was talking to me. And then he just decides to start talking about Ewan McGregor as actual Frankie.


I wanted to test their relationship by trying to have Sleep Frankie hide something for me to see if Frankie knew where and what it was the following morning. The problem was Sleep Frankie refused to betray Frankie and would always tell me no. The only way to get Sleep Frankie to agree to it was to first tell Frankie I was doing it and then to convince Frankie to go along with it. Only after Frankie’s awake permission did Sleep Frankie then hide something for me. Well, he tossed it under the bed after seeing what it was. The following day, Frankie didn’t believe when I told him he had hid something. It was at the point at which he finally believed that he did hide something that he also remembered it was under the bed. The interesting part, I think, is that he had no idea what the object was, but he did remember what it felt like in his hand. Oh, and for the record, Sleep Frankie does keep his eyes open, Frankie described the object as hard and round, and the object was Dwight’s Bobble head’s head—Dwight didn’t make it in one piece when we moved.

Note: The March posts seem somewhat parallel universe heavy, but I’ll have you know—I’m a liar. The Sleep Frankie response was really back in the last couple days of February and not in March at all. I was just too lazy to put it up—yeah, I’d even typed it up then. And the car thing was just a couple days ago so really there was a month when I didn’t think about parallel universes at all. I’m just too lazy to post things…so don’t get all worried thinking I think about parallel universes more than the average person—it’s really just monthly.

February 23, 2009

I have pittly weak joints that always hurt. I take glucosamine pills to help make the joints stronger and less extremely painful. They no longer keep me up in the middle of the night so I figured the pills were working. But if they were really working, then should Adelaide be able to win the tug of war for my plate of Cheetos?

Homemade pasta can take time to prepare, but the benefits from the freshest of ingredients always come through when cooking. That’s why I thought it was rather interesting when my mom brought home, to stuff inside my fresh, homemade cannelloni noodles, parmesan cheese…in powdered sprinkle-on-your-sketti form.

Frankie has been on this I-want-to-be-one-of-those-guys-who-wears-a-cap kick lately. To surprise him, I have secretly been looking online for a good one. I found this one that was totally perfect and HELLO it has frickin solar powered lights on it. I was about to buy it, but I figured since we have no money I might as well check with Frankie before, “just in case.” No worries though, because who the heck wouldn’t want a solar powered hat. Well, apparently Frankie doesn’t. I’m at a loss. I’m just…I’m at a loss.

February 21, 2009

The babies were taking a nap, so I decided to throw a jelly bean into Frankie’s mouth. The beans had to make it over a distance of roughly two feet…maybe less after my step forward during the throw. My 19th throw landed in his shirt pocket. The 26th shot made it!

Frankie and I got into a slap fest today. It was awesome. It reminded me of when we were dating/first married and I would wait until he wasn’t paying attention and try to throw myself off the couch/bed and he’d have to catch and save me. Ah, young love.





Euphie just learned a new trick! She has been able to open some doors for a long while, but the trick of the bedroom doorknobs has always eluded her…until now. Oh the pride… Wait, is it pride or boredom when you have to sit outside a door for an hour to keep it shut?

February 20, 2009

My fingernails needed a good clipping. I have always been one to clip on the fly. It wasn’t until I watched a Malcolm in the Middle episode when the oldest brother was staying with a friend and they showed how horrible it was to live with this friend by showing the friend clipping his nails in the middle of the room—not even in a trash can. I was blown away. Whoa, clipping straight into a trashcan. It’s like when you realize that some people use different sponges to wash dishes and wipe counters or that some people think that the kid dies at the end of the Giver—until you find someone who feels the other way you didn’t even realize the other possibility existed. Ever since that episode, I intended this to be my modus operandi. Sadly, my "intentions" rarely hit the mark as my accuracy is, apparently, lacking.
(I was aiming for the small cluster where there is a slight concentration of about 8 clippings a little to the right of the center. 5 clippings did not make it on the chair.)

Frankie made homemade pasta. Euphie tried to help him. We’re usually all for letting kids help with chores despite the fact that finishing those chores takes a little longer when a kid is helping. However, the fact that the ingredients Euphie likes to add don't really work for food meant she got shooed away. No worries though, she moved right on the next best thing and provided Adelaide some dinner of rice cereal flakes. She provided them right on Addie’s head.


Segment 1 of things Frankie says when I wake him up in the middle of the night to do stuff for me

“Frankie. Frankie, go check on Euphie.” Smack, smack, smack.
Shake Shake. “Frankie, Frankie. Go check on Euphie.”
“Hmm, Okay.” Nothing…
Shove. Shove. “Frankie, go check on Euphie. I thought I heard something.”
“But I don’t have my tape measure.”
Giggle. “Hmm. Yeah, maybe there’s one in Euphie’s room. Why don’t you go see.”
“Can't I use yours?”

February 17, 2009

Euphie managed to grab a brown marker. She has little stashes of markers of all over the place because she knows we take them away from her whenever we see her with one. Luckily though, today when she pulled one out and tried to draw on stuff, Adelaide helped me take the marker away from Euphie. Thanks, Adelaide. That’s really so much easier on me.

Awhi le back my glasses broke. I don’t remember how--it had something to do with Euphie. Since they were fairly new, we could still get them fixed/replaced at no cost. Naturally, I just took some electrical tape to the frame instead. It even formed a sheath of tape so that the temple could be inserted and stay put despite there being no stickiness of glue left. It worked wonders for half a year. Baby's spit, on the other hand, works wonders when it comes to unraveling tape sheaths. The last couple months have been a horrible chore of me attempting to insert the temple into a farce of a sheath every time I move my head more than an inch at a time. A couple months and I still haven’t bothered to put on new tape.

Euphie likes to clean up messes. She has figured out, in her infinite wisdom, that there must first be a mess in order to clean it. Thus, she makes messes and tries to clean them. Euphie, now complete with an extra centimeter of height, gained the range to reach all counter space in the kitchen. Her new favorite thing to take off the counter (and subsequently dump on the floor to make a cleanable mess) is Adelaide’s formula. Today however, she surprised us as this latest exploration into formulaic fun ended not with wasted powder all over the floor but with a couple scoops of formula in an empty bottle. She even followed it up with trying to put water in after. How can you be angry at such a nice sisterly gesture? You want to know how? You remember how much formula costs.

Frankie came home and told me a factoid about Bruce Lee. The expectant look on his made it obvious he expected me to say, “Oh, did Austin’s Triad buddy tell you that?” But I didn’t because Bruce Lee can do anything, and I don’t see why Austin would tell Frankie something that’s actually true.

February 12, 2009

I have had one of those calcium deposits (the ones you have to just smack really hard with a book if you want them to go away) on my head for awhile now. I often feel it when I’m otherwise just chilling. I thought I felt what might be a second one, and my immediate response was, “Whoa, it’s weird, but I think they might be in a line.” That’s right. I managed make two points into a line. I’m a friggin’ genius.

I was planning on taking some pictures today, but the batteries were dead. Was it because digital cameras are just so hard on batteries these days? No. Was it because Adelaide figures if they give various electronics power, they might give her power, too, if she tries really hard to eat the energy right out of them? The twenty-odd pictures of the floor and Euphie’s feet make me think the answer to that one is no as well.

We had teriyaki chicken rice bowls for dinner tonight. I got up at some point to get a cup or something for Euphie. I had taken a couple of bites so far with a fork I had gotten myself because I don’t trust plastic ones. When I came back, there were two forks in my bowl—one metal and one plastic. So my question is, “Where the heck did the plastic fork come from?” Did someone put a second fork in there because they didn’t see my other one and thought they were doing me a favor? Did someone take a bite out of my bowl because they thought I wouldn’t notice? I don’t know who put the fork in and if they didn’t see my fork or they just didn’t care, but my curiosity is getting out of control.

Update: Although Frankie did not put the fork in the bowl, after seeing two forks in it he assumed some sort of community pot and had some of my chicken. The mystery continues.

February 11, 2009

Euphie drew on her chalkboard quite a bit. Her works are mainly carefully placed lines and dots, but Frankie is most proud of a drawing from awhile back. She proudly brought us to her gallery and showed us the masterpiece she labeled “Ball”--her fourth favorite genre of objects after cars, cups, and binkies. I am impressed at how well contained its form is. Frankie simply can’t get over the skill it took to achieve the three dimensional look with its shading and depth.

One of the many responsibilities of a parent is to never compare their children. That's why I dressed Adelaide up in the exact same outfit (albeit with a few extra stains) that Euphie wore when she was ten months old.


































Frankie plucked my eyebrows tonight. Yeah, that’s right. I make my husband pluck my eyebrows. The basic shape is already there, so he just does upkeep on the random strays. Hey, he's the one who has to like them. It’s good times. I get to just sit there, and he gets to cause me pain for making him do it.

I would like to think that we have and will continue to instill good gaming taste to our children. At the wee ages the girls are still at, I don’t expect them to get into any of the high quality more mature games, but I am proud of Euphie complaining when she can’t log a daily minimum of 30 minutes into sliding down hills in Mario 64. This is why I was rather perturbed today when I looked up and saw that she had downloaded the Scene It! demo on Xbox Live. I mean, Scene It! isn’t bad or anything—but if you were going to go on a rogue download behind your parent's back, is that really what you would choose?

February 10, 2009

I've worn the same clothes for three days in a row now. I feel too guilty to put on clean clothes if I don’t feel completely clean myself. So…it’s been three days since I have taken a good shower—only little dinky ones where I either haven’t washed my hair or haven’t really soaped up or didn’t shave my legs. And that’s how we get to the sad part—I haven’t shaved my legs and yet the outfit that I chose three days ago happens to be partly made up of shorts.

Today’s mixture for snacking in between breakfast and lunch for Euphie and Adelaide consisted of Cheerios, Corn Pops, and Goldfish. I figured the Goldfish and Corn Pops would give it those nice dual flavors—like chocolate covered pretzels—I love those things. But I’m a mom who really cares about balanced meals—even just for a snack-- so I threw some shredded deli turkey meat and string cheese on top.

Adelaide is at that developmental stage where kisses and head butts are easily confused. Luckily, the action, which is still rare in occurrence, is preceded by the appropriate MMMMMMM kissing sound. This sound tends to make a person look towards her—eager to receive her kiss—instead of away in a more rational dodging of the attack. If you think about it, though, my bloody, fat lip is really just proof that she gave me one.

Tonight was the weekly cheap meal of breakfast-for-dinner. Before the parallel weekly fast food replacement for me and Frankie came into effect, Grammy came downstairs feeling sick. Buying into the all too common assumption that Burger King is the best answer to an ailing stomach, the previous dinner plan was scrapped. The onion rings failed to come through for Grammy, but Frankie didn’t have to go out and I got a night Dr Pepper in addition to my afternoon one. Success!