Neti Pot?

I am getting sick, a party I have planned for graduation is being overtaken by my in-laws' demands (now with extra houseguests, including Great Grandpa in the upstairs office), and the flight I have to book to Arkansas in a couple of weeks takes off at 6:35. In the A.M., people. I really need to start saying no to stuff.

And every time I return from a trip the kids' behavior goes straight to hell. I am getting tired of people in this house thinking they can start crying and carrying on every time a simple request is denied. And the phrase "But I want it" or "But I need it" is not something I need to hear repeated 80 thousand times at the level of a shriek. Just saying. I'm tired.

I am in a bad mood. But anyway, getting sick has me thinking about the neti pot. A lot of people have sworn by it so now I am thinking, I should probably go get a neti pot. It seems kind of disgusting but on the other hand, I suddenly remembered tonight that I basically used to do the exact same thing in a less controlled manner during my childhood summers.

We used to go stay with our grandparents in Pennsylvania, and I had allergies there. I couldn't breathe and it made it hard to sleep, so my grandmother would prepare a bowl of warm salt water. Then she would tell me to snort the water up one nostril, and then the other. It was uncomfortable, but it worked. She always knew how to make things better.

Trip

Huh. What a great trip!

Good session, interesting comments and insights that helped me think through a couple of issues with the paper I'm revising.

Fun times with people I haven't seen in a long time. Decent food, good wine, laughing so hard I cried.

I talked on the phone with Nora today and I wonder if maybe it was a mistake to call. She chatted on and on happily about all kinds of things that I couldn't tell you, because I was outside and there was traffic noise and I couldn't really hear her well enough to understand anything, other than the fact that she apparently climbed the stairs while talking to me. But when it was time to say good bye she got very upset and started crying, and I felt bad for her and for Jake because I introduced chaos into the house that he now had to deal with.

I have had so much fun at conferences this spring. Each one has been great. But I feel so guilty for traveling so much!

My Weekend Ends a Day Early

Nora's hair has been kind of a disaster as it's grown out; it's still thin in that toddler way, different parts are growing at different rates, and she's suffered under my hack job attempts to trim her bangs and hair. So today I finally took her to get an actual professional hair cut in an actual salon to try to neaten up all of the weirdness her hair has suffered. I didn't know how she would handle this, but I took her to a place that specializes in kids' hair cuts figuring that if she cried, at least they'd be used it it.

And she was a trouper! Nora got to sit in a seat shaped like a car for her haircut; it was a yellow taxicab. There were also cartoons on but she ignored them and instead spent the entire time driving the car and, unbeknownst to us, slowly unscrewing the bolt that held the steering wheel on, so it fell off and clattered to the ground halfway through her haircut. But it was all fine, and although Nora was basically silent throughout (a true rarity), she didn't get scared or cry, and her hair looks better now. It's still kind of wild, halfway in between wavy and curly, but at least it's out of her eyes.

Buddy came to work with a cold last week, and now the kids are sick. Milo had a 103 temperature today, and his cheeks were bright pink. In the afternoon Jake took Nora outside and in an unprecedented move, Milo didn't want to go out. He just wanted to sit on the sofa and read books with me, so that is what we did.

I go to Denver tomorrow. At least it's a direct flight. The weather isn't even supposed to be nice, which is kind of a bummer, but I'm looking forward to seeing people.

And now I have to travel again in 2 weeks down to Arkansas, which is weird. It'll be a short, 2-day trip. I have to go down there to get filmed providing some expert commentary on something. I am not super concerned about what I'll say, but I'm worried about the important things, of course; what should I wear? I kind of remember that solid colors are better than patterns. I suddenly feel like I need a light blue fitted collared shirt, why of all things do I need that? I don't know. I totally lack the appropriate professorial accoutrements for providing this kind of commentary (i.e. pipe, elbow patches, beard...). Also, all of my jackets are either too dated (from interviewing or early professor times), too edgy (cute but not good for looking authoritative), or otherwise flawed in some way. I feel like if I were the kind of person who had it more together, I'd have a better collection of hip-but-not-too-hip jackets for occasions such as these.

Outing

This morning the twin whisperer came by and we took the kids to the capitol building. They like to run around on the lawns, make music on the big bell with their coins, and ride the elevator (Milo) or walk up and down the marble stairs (Nora).

There were about 200 elementary school kids from around the state visiting the capitol today.

It's always good to run around and let off some steam before lunch:

Toddlers are Strange

Today I talked to Nora on the phone briefly before I came home from work. After she told me about how she ate blueberries and was going to go outside, it was time to say good bye. I said, "Bye sweetie, I love you!" and she said, "I love you Mommy! I'm hugging the phone!" That last part was said to Jake to explain her weird behavior.

Tonight at dinner Milo said "Hard shovel!" and I was all, "Uh, hard shovel?" Jake clarified "Milo worked hard shoveling today" and Milo chimed in, "I'm a hard-working man!" As I was laughing at that, he said, "Actually I'm a wild thing!"

I didn't exactly have children just to provide endless amusement, but, I kind of did. So far it's working out.

Meetings That Give Me Heartburn

I know that this was a blog that started out being about the kids and now it is about the tenure process. But that is my life right now.

My tenure meeting was today. In years past this meeting always lasted about 5 minutes. People would look at my stuff and say "looks good, keep on keepin' on", and then we'd all go home. Today it lasted an hour, because it's shifted from "looks good" to "here are all of the things we need to start doing now to begin building your case." These are logistical things like who to solicit for letters, how to begin assembling data on the journals I publish in, etc., etc. We are gearing up to write the case and I'm not even going up for another year and a half!

One of the members of my 3-person tenure committee is currently on the divisional committee, which is extremely helpful. She knows what makes a good case and has all kinds of specific advice. We are also going to add a 4th person to my committee who is currently the chair of divisional, as he has been helpful to me so far. So I feel like I have very savvy and knowledgeable people on my side in this process.

One of my committee members started off the meeting by saying "As far as I'm concerned you could go up in the fall. You're ready." I am not going to revisit that decision, I'm taking all the time I can get and will not go up next year, but it felt nice to hear. My committee thinks I have a strong case and I trust their judgment. So that's good.

It will be important, as I approach this process, to separate my body of work from the tenure process itself. I think my body of work is strong. But it is also true that the tenure process is unpredictable and always changing, and that means there is no way to have confidence that it will be a success for me. It should be, but due to the nature of the process, I know that it might not be. I need to remember that that's about the process, not about me or my work.

Kids: Tonight at dinner, Milo told me he'd like his peanut butter toast (what can I say -- Jake made dinner before I got home). Then he took a closer look at his plate and said "It's peanut butter bagel, actually."

After dinner Jake picked up Nora while I was busy doing dishes. She hugged him and said "I love you Daddy!" (Awwww!) Then she demanded, "TAKE ME OVER TO MOMMY!"

Too Tired for Coherence or a Theme

Posts detailing lists of things people have to do are deeply boring (sort of like writing about your dreams), so I will refrain, but suffice it to say that the list of stuff I have to do in the next couple of months dramatically outweighs the amount of time in which I have to do it, and this is anxiety provoking.

I took on too much, and it was a mistake. Now I have to figure out how to dig out of the hole.

Meanwhile, this week is sandwiched in between two trips and involves us hosting two post-doc candidates, which means meetings, talks, and hardest of all, dinners out.

We had rain all weekend. You know what rain all weekend means, when there are no story hours or toddler gyms and the children's museum is closed until August? It means two antsy kids.

Some guy exposed himself on the bike path to a female jogger near our house. Same route I took this morning on my run. I am angry about these creepy bike path incidents and refuse to start being too afraid to use the path.

While I was gone, Milo slammed the door on Nora's fingers so Jake had to take her to urgent care today. She seems to be okay (they aren't broken, apparently). It was pretty bad, though.

I have solid meetings tomorrow 9:30 - 4:30! Including, at the end of the day, my tenure committee meeting. We'll see how that goes.

The hardest thing for me about parenthood is the never-ending exhaustion. Every single morning I drag myself out of bed with my brain and body kicking and screaming. Exhaustion is like a second skin I wear all the time. If I took my sleep issues seriously enough to change careers because of it, you'd think I would have thought twice about how children would mess with that. Kids are not night owls (at least mine aren't).

One of the best things is how weird and funny kids are. Especially mine. They're awesomely entertaining.

Postscript

Before bed tonight I had this conversation with Nora:

Jake: Did you miss Mommy when she was gone in California?

Nora: Yeah!

Me: I missed you too, sweetie!

Nora: I was sad!

Me: You were sad, and I was gone in California, but then I came back home, didn't I? It's so nice to be home with you now!

Nora: I'm happy now!

They're Growing Up

I was only gone for 4 days but it feels like I left a couple of toddlers and came back to a couple of kids! The kids are talking so much now, and say new things all the time. There have been noticeable changes even in this week when I've been gone!

For instance, Milo, our very boyish little boy, now wipes off any kiss we give him.

Nora has glommed onto the phrase "I love", so this morning she told me, "I love down by the station!" (a book). This afternoon she was sitting on the potty and she told me, "I love this potty!" Then she hugged me, while on the potty.

Also, it's hard to describe, but just the nature of their talking feels like kid talking now, especially with Milo. He was chattering away all afternoon telling me things like "I caught several ladybugs today", and "I want to make Lucas go on the garbage truck! Lucas will climb on the garbage truck and put the garbage away!" Lucas is a stuffed moose that Milo has taken a liking to, which is also new as of this week. I don't know why he named the moose Lucas.

And Nora, she's greeting people like she's the town butterfly now. This evening at the park our neighbors approached and she said "Hi, Millie! Hi, Sue! How are you?"

The changes are coming fast and furious.

Conference Life

Oh, it has been SUCH a good conference. So many ideas! And connections! So many compelling talks! I love it when the talks I attend get me totally fired up to make a connection in my own research, or try something new. Some of the speakers are doing things strongly related to what I've been doing, so we shared notes and found out that we have much to discuss and connect, and that is so invigorating.

I had a working meeting with a couple of co-authors for another book we're going to write for NCTM. The first book just came out, and now I'm slated to do two more with different people, and one of them is so nebulous and ill defined and kind of out of my area of expertise anyway that I sort of wonder why I'm writing it. But I have some ideas, and so do my co-authors, and it looks like we're going to get together in late May for a couple of days to try to hammer out an outline. The only problem is that they both live far away so this means travel, again...I don't even want to think about telling Jake. I'm trying to convince my co-authors to fly to my town instead. Since they're very nice people they seem pretty open to that.

The panel that I gave with a couple of other people about how to publish in a particular journal went so well that it looks like we're going to try to write it up into a little article, which is a great idea. I'm psyched about that.

A more senior professor at a different institution chatted with me for a while and started praising my work a lot...this matters only because now I can put him into the category of letter writers. Phew! It looks like this guy will be a good person to get a letter from. Every time somebody says something good about my work I get this feeling like "Oh! Wow, so you don't think I totally suck? Holy cow! I'm going to mentally file you away as a potential letter writer now! This is great!"

My mentor saw another senior person chatting me up and immediately thought of this guy in terms of letter writers too. He was on the same page as me: "Maybe we should have [famous guy] write a letter...but I'm not sure. Do you think he likes your work?" "I don't know," I said, "I'll need to send him a draft first and feel him out. I'm wary." My mentor replied, "Yeah, so am I. Be careful."

Speaking of my mentor, here is the best thing of all. One night we went to a reception for my old grad school institution. So anyway we went and talked to everybody and so forth, and there was this one lady there who had an iPad. So we were playing with it and admiring it, and my mentor, who had had a couple of beers by then, suddenly said "You know, I just got notice that I have $1500 from the secondary project fund that I have to spend by the end of May, and I can't spend it on salary, it has to be equipment. So how about I get us a couple of iPads with that money?" And I said "Uh, YES, that sounds like a GREAT idea!" and then started jumping up and down. How cool would that be?

Later we went to dinner with some other colleagues and one of my old grad school friends, who has 10-year old twins and she kept talking to me about how much better and better and better it gets, which was super awesome to hear. Seriously.

It has taken a decade of attending conferences but now I finally feel like I'm at a point where I feel like I belong. It's kind of hard to explain.

On another night I got to catch up with one of my very best friends from grad school, who still lives in San Diego, as well as my sister, who is the sweetest person ever. So much fun. Even typing this, that I had fun doing these things, leaves me a little guilty because I feel so guilty for being out of town. Jake says that Nora has been asking for me constantly. Being away is such a huge luxury but the pull to get back home is always very strong, like I'm doing something bad by being gone. And so off I go, now, to get on that plane.

Moments

There were some nice moments this weekend.

Jake and I took some time off Friday night and watched a few episodes of Mad Men. Man, is that show amazing. It felt great to goof around and not work.

My knee has been injured this week, so instead of running on the bike path today, I strapped on my ankle weights and took a 4-mile hike along the lake. It was sunny and beautiful.

Today we spent the whole afternoon at the park by the lake, which is about a 5-minute walk from our house. The kids played in the playground and then we walked to the dock to look for ducks. There were no ducks, but two dogs were playing in the water. Nora and Milo ran through the giant grassy field. Back at the playground, Milo spent a good 20 minutes using small shovels to pour pea gravel into a bucket. The shovels belonged to another kid, Aiden. Later Aiden and his dad, Hiro, pushed Milo around on a trike.

There was a family nearby picnicking on the lawn. That seemed like a nice idea that we should do soon.

Milo gave me many hugs and kisses this weekend.

Yesterday, I thought I heard Nora say "I want to wrestle like a moose!" I said, "You want to wrestle like a moose?!?" She replied, kind of exasperated, "I want to wrestle with a moose!" Like get with the picture, Mom, nobody wants to wrestle like a moose. That'd be crazy!

This afternoon Nora said "I don't like summer. I want summer to go away. I don't want summer to watch me." I said, "Who's summer?" Nora thought for a moment, and then said "This wipe is all dried out!"

Toddlers. You never get a straight answer out of them.

Tomorrow I have to travel, but it'll be okay. There are moments I'm looking forward to.

Like seeing one of my best grad school friends, and the inevitable late night of drinks and confessions that will follow.

And freshly made tortillas, and tamales, and ripe avocados.

And the evening wine hour at my hotel.

I'm looking forward to the slate of interesting talks, and to the feeling of relaxation and looseness that will come the moment that my own talk is over.

And the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners arranged with people I'm excited to see.

I'm also looking forward to the night of margaritas that my mentors have promised me, designed to soothe the savage tenure beast that threatens to destroy my very existence.

Okay, that was way over the top, but there's nothing like an out-of-town night on the town to decompress together after what has been a pretty hellish couple of weeks for everybody.

I See Me

We have some books that we store up high because they're kind of fragile. Tonight Milo and Nora asked to look at them, so I started reading one of the books to Milo while Nora started paging through the other one. Nora kept saying something over and over again and I finally tuned in. She was pointing to something on the front page (the copyright page, not part of the actual book) and saying "This spells, 'I see me'."

Which it did. It was the logo at the bottom of the copyright page.

I asked her "how did you know that?", which is a crazy thing to ask a 2-year old. Of course I didn't get anything out of that, so I asked "Who showed you that?" She said "Daddy."

I asked Jake and he said "I never told her that. We haven't read that book in weeks or months." My guess is that he or somebody else did, a long time ago, and we creaky old grown ups have forgotten, what with our fuzzy memories.

Kids have amazing memories.

Questions

Why do thunderstorms almost always seem to happen at night? I'm sure there is an explanation for this. We get rain in the daytime, but the thunder and lightening almost always waits for night, particularly after midnight.

What is Nora plotting here?

Why is Milo trying to walk down the slide? It had something to do with a ladybug, but it wasn't clear to me.

What on earth is going on here? Yoga? Is Nora praying that I won't make her go to bed?

Today at the park Milo embarrassed me by being a toddleresque jerk. He and Nora were on the merry go round, and another little boy got on with them. This kid was half a year younger than M&N. Milo said, "I don't like that girl." I said, "That's a boy, honey" and Milo said "I don't like that boy." Fortunately the kid was too out of it to have any idea what he was saying, but his PARENTS were right there. I told Milo that it's not polite to say you don't like people, and the kid could be on the merry go round if he wanted, but it seemed like a completely insufficient response to his mean remark. Huh. Come to think of it, I probably should have made Milo apologize after saying that. It didn't occur to me at the time. I was so embarrassed that my mind turned into a complete blank.

Usually Milo is so sweet with the other kids, so I don't know what he had against this random kid.

Today Jake was tickling Nora and she said "Stop harassing me!" Then a bit later Milo tried to give Nora a hug and she said "Let me be!" This kid does not welcome too much touching, that's for sure.

Last night we were eating pasta and Milo said "My pasta is red!" Then he thought for a moment, and said "Actually, it's orange!" Somehow his use of actually just cracks me up.

I have to travel again next week. I leave on Monday and return Thursday night. Poor Jake. Then I'm home for a week and then I have to travel again. After that, no more travel for 6 weeks.

US News & World Report came out today. Our dept. is #1. You'd think that if we were as great as we supposedly are, then we wouldn't be the worst paid group of faculty in the big 10. But we are. So, hmmm. Why is that? And why do I have to go on the market and get another job offer if I ever want to get a raise?

Speaking of which, why is my grad student, who just got hired at a nice state university in a hot deserty state, getting a salary of exactly 10k more that I currently make? It's called compression. I am genuinely glad for him, but ticked off on my own behalf.

In other news, we have this guy on campus whose job it is to communicate our research, awards, contributions, etc. to the public. So he called to see what additional venues he could use to advertise my recent NSF grant, where to get it written up, etc. And the only thing I could think of was, can you get me a spread in my alumni magazine? Because then all the jerks who dumped my ass in college can see how great I am now! Mwah hah hah. Okay, not really. They would probably see it and think "Wow, what a nerd, and boy does she look old, and her front teeth didn't get any smaller in the meantime either, and what's up with that hair?" So maybe it's best to stay away from any alumni news write-ups!

Tenure Vignettes

In the office yesterday:

Me: You know, I'm going to be your first case and I don't really like that.
Mentor: Well --
Newer Colleague: Yeah, I'm glad you're going up before me. You can be the test case for him to prove that he is capable of writing a successful case.
Mentor: Hah!
Me: Well, I don't like the idea of being a test case. What if you're no good at it?
Newer Colleague: Then you'd be screwed!
Me: This sucks. You'd better be good!
Mentor, with authority: I am good.

He better be.

Miscellaneous Bits from a Spring Weekend

I am so demoralized and am tired of waking up at 3 a.m. and breaking into a cold sweat of tenure-related fear, but I tried to enjoy normal life this weekend. I started to realize that putting everything in my life off until tenure is going to be a really bad strategy if I don't get tenure. So maybe I should stop thinking that way and should just enjoy what I have now, come what may.

The department was a grim place on Friday, but the neighborhood was a cheerful place this weekend. It got warmer and warmer through the weekend and culminated in a gorgeous 70 degree afternoon today. I got most of my plants planted, the kids went to the zoo and rode on the carousel, and we spent a lot of time outdoors.

I have ordered my cap & gown for escorting my grad students across the stage next month. It is very exciting. Jake is also graduating and his parents are coming to that, and he is thinking about having a party. Today Jake called up his brother to see if he would come out here for the graduation and the party. Predictably (in my mind), his brother said no, because he's not the kind of guy who likes to do things for other people or adhere to other people's agendas. Instead, he's the kind of guy who decides when he wants to do something or go somewhere, and then he tells Jake to do it, and Jake always goes along. Wanting to please everybody. Jake was sad and disappointed that his brother doesn't want to come to town (he lives about a 4-hour drive away). I feel so bad for him. Jake always does what his family wants, and his family pretty much never does what he wants, and I see how hurtful that is to him.

Jake is always so concerned about pleasing other people that I think it kind of surprises him when other people aren't like that.

I am remembering my own Ph.D. graduation (I didn't bother walking in my master's graduation), and a ton of my family and friends came. Like, actually flew on airplanes to attend, which was so great. I felt very lucky and supported and loved. Graduation coincided with my dissertation defense so it was a giant weekend. Meanwhile, this year I have two Ph.D. students graduating, but they're not defending until June, so there will be quite a separation between the two for them. But they're basically done (all but crossing the t's and dotting the i's), so it's all good.

Today Nora tried an actual real carrot. Didn't like it, but she did eat it. Milo didn't try it, which is a bit of a switch. Milo has developed a bizarrely annoying habit of yelling at the cats, and then cracking up at his own cruelty. By yelling, I mean he'll just excitedly run around going "Aaaaaaaaaaaa!! Ah hah ha ha ha ha ha!"

Nora's latest activity is reading on the potty. Tonight she read an alphabet book for about 15 minutes, identifying all of the letters and the pictures. No luck on the potty front, though.

Here are pictures of Nora, taken when Milo was still napping. Milo naps at least a solid hour longer than Nora every single day. In the video below, my guess is that Nora uses gibberish to explain what the book says because she can't make any sense of it, unlike her own books that have pictures and familiar stories. So this grown-up book is like something in a foreign language to her. Interestingly, Nora really enjoys paging through grown-up books, pretending to read like we do.

Oh My God

I probably shouldn't talk about this. So I won't share the details. Somebody who should have did not get tenure.

I am going on the job market next year.

Phones

I have the dumbest, most ridiculous problem. Our house phone finally bit the dust. I was thinking, maybe we should just ditch the landline and use our cells, but the problem is, neither of us has a cell phone that works in the house. Our nanny's phone doesn't work in the house. My friends' phones don't work in our house. Cell phones don't work in our house. And when it's January and -10 out, I don't want to have to conduct all of my conversations outside. So I am very reluctant to buy a nice cell phone that I may not ever be able to use at home.

So I bought a new landline phone, which we got yesterday, but it turns out we need some sort of DSL filter (not included) to make this phone usable, as right now the static is so crazy you can't hear anything.

So tonight my friend called me on the house phone. She was calling about our other friend, whose tenure decision was today. I haven't heard from my other friend even though she said she would let us know, so I've been wondering. So when my first friend called, I thought, she has news! But I couldn't hear her through the static on my phone! So I said, I'll call you back on the cell. Well, Jake's phone had no bars and no reception. And no battery, so I couldn't use it outside because it needed to be plugged in. So I tried my phone, which is a cheap pay-as-you-go phone, and it had 4 bars outside but I couldn't make any calls because it said "service unavailable"! WTF, phone! I swear, why is it so impossible for me to have a usable phone???

3 different phones, no way to actually talk to somebody on the phone. I ended up pulling our old dying phone out of the garbage and plugging it in and calling my friend that way (thank goodness her number didn't include an 8, since that phone can't dial an 8). And after all that, I only found out that she hasn't heard anything either, and she was just calling to check if I had the news.

So the end result is, if you want to talk to me, call me at the office! Argh!

Crazy spring

It's April 8 and we woke up to snow! And then it proceeded to snow throughout the morning. It's currently 34 degrees with an expected high of 45.

You know what's funny, though, is that it somehow feels warmer than a day exactly like this would have felt two months ago. We had days like this in February, but the difference was that we still had about 2 feet of snow sitting around waiting to melt, and all of the trees were bare. Today it's cold but the grass everywhere is still a vibrant shade of green, and the buds are showing on the trees, and there are daffodils and tulips blooming. Somehow it just seems better, easier, to endure a cold day in April than in February.

I'm still jealous of my NYC friends who have had summer weather this week, though!

Little Things

Today the kids had story time at the library. There is a lady there who runs it whose name is Karen, and Nora seems to love Karen because she talks about her all the time. There is also a guy who helps out called Gorilla Ben. Is he in a gorilla suit? I assume so. Buddy takes them, so I've never been. Today I asked Nora if she could sing a song for me that she learned at story time. She thought for a moment and then started singing "duh duh duh duh...give a little clap!" (Claps hands) "duh duh duh...stomp your feet!" (Stomps feet). She then seemed to get sort of stuck, and declared, "I need to have my shoes on to do it!"

As we were going upstairs to go to bed I was standing in the middle of the gate, inadvertently blocking Milo's way. He waited patiently for a moment, and then he said "EXCUSE ME, Mommy!" That's the first time I've heard him use that phrase to indicate that somebody was blocking his way. Such a polite little guy!

Today for lunch Nora actually ate some rice and chicken (this was an Indian curry dish I'd made). I couldn't believe it. She is really making progress. She has also taken to eating meatballs recently, which is another development. Every step towards eating "real" food is great progress. I still haven't gotten Nora to eat any vegetables that aren't in pureed baby food form, but she did try a tomato, which was something. Baby steps. A while back we were really reaching crisis mode with the kids and meals, so much so that they would cry every time dinner arrived, and it would be a horrible stressful situation. At some point I just deliberately stopped caring about what and whether they ate, and now things are much better. I don't spend much time coaxing either of them to eat stuff. If they don't want to, fine. Dinner is no longer the nightly disaster that it used to be, and of course ironically now that I invest much less into their eating, they both eat better. There are some nights when they basically don't eat. And you know what, I think it's okay. They just eat more the next day at breakfast. Now some nights one or both kids will be so ready for dinner that they'll climb into their seats themselves and demand that the meal starts. What a change!

Easter

First we dyed eggs, the night before.

Easter morning, the kids got up and opened a couple of presents from their various grandparents while I made french toast. I wanted to get some real food into them before the Easter baskets and candy hit. They got some trucks from Grandmom Lee and love them, even though it is no substitute for the real thing! (For instance -- once the kids were happily eating breakfast and Jake was downstairs, I used that opportunity to go upstairs and go to the bathroom and get dressed. And...yup. Only about 1 or 2 minutes in, I could hear them crying and screaming downstairs. Now that Grandmom is gone, I can once again no longer go to the bathroom without all hell breaking loose. It's so...tiring.)

Then the kids played with their Easter baskets and searched for eggs, both real and plastic, in the sunroom. They didn't really get the point of finding eggs, and Nora didn't want to put them in her basket, instead attempting to hoard them all under her chin. By the way, both kids were very excited to eat a hard boiled egg for breakfast, after having dyed them the night before. The verdict, however, wasn't positive: "I don't like egg!"

I did let the kids eat some chocolate candy from their basket and mini egg hunt, and it was wild. Nora had chocolate all over her mouth and was practically frothing in joy. Milo ate slowly and steadily. Both were just amazed at all of the chocolate they were eating. It wasn't exactly a lot, but to have it actually in their hands, in their control, was something pretty exciting to them.

At 11 a.m. we had a big neighborhood egg hunt in the park. Fortunately the kids got to go by age, so the 1- and 2-year olds were able to hunt for eggs first and each kid got 12 eggs. They were not hard to find, since there were hundreds of eggs lying everywhere, but it was still pretty funny how hard it is for Milo & Nora to spot and pick up an egg.

Here Milo found one!

Milo shows off his stash:

Nora displays her egg. The eggs had little toys or candies in them.

Here Nora is a little peeved that she has to stop hoarding eggs (limit was 12 per kid).

And THEN the most exciting thing happened -- the Easter bunny came! Here he is giving Nora some candy.

Nora couldn't believe it. This thing kept giving her candy! She had absolutely no shyness with him, once she realized chocolate was involved. If I didn't stop her she would have hounded him over and over again for more and more chocolate.

This is Milo looking up at the Easter bunny. He had this incredible look of joy and amazement on his face. He was so blown away by the Easter bunny.

Here the Easter bunny is hopping around and the kids are following him. They had a blast.

And then it was time for the Easter bunny to hop away. It was a funny sight, once the Easter bunny got to the road and crossed it, to see half a dozen parents racing for their kids to make sure everybody didn't run into the road to follow him.

See Milo kind of hanging back there? He stopped and watched the Easter bunny hop away, and then Milo just started bawling. I mean, seriously crying his heart out. It was so sad, he didn't want the Easter bunny to go away. Which is what he kept saying.

The Easter bunny really was magic to Milo and Nora. Other than the trauma of having him go away, the kids had a nice day. They did have an argument that night at dinner over Grandmom Lee's departure:

Milo: She went on a jet plane!

Me: That's right!

Milo: She went on a helicopter!

Nora: No, a jet plane!

Milo: No, a helicopter!

Nora: No, a JET PLANE!

Milo: A HELICOPTER!

You can imagine how it continued from there.