A Buncha Blocks

We're Moving (the Blog)

2010-08-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

As I keep telling Sammy, Change is Good. As a family, we just up and moved ourselves, and in that spirit, I've up and moved the blog as well. My new blog has the same name, at a brand-spanking-new host. So please update your settings and look for this blog at

http://abunchablocks.wordpress.com/

Thanks for sticking around through the switch!

Liza

"Princess and the Frog": Zoology 101.

2010-08-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

Molly: Can I kiss a frog?

Nana: Well, I have a frog in my garden.

Molly: NO! I mean a REAL frog. One that TALKS.

Good Hair

2010-07-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

After the haircut.

Molly got a haircut today. Molly's hair is a subject unto itself. It's a source of admiration, but also, strangely, controversy. Because her hair isn't typical for Ethiopian kids. It's not what most people would think of as "African" or "African American" hair. Ironically, her hair most resembles Emma's at the same age: big fat ringlets, fine and soft and wispy as cotton candy. I can't oil it because it turns into a grease slick. She can't really wear the braids she wants like her friends, or like Keyana in I Love My Hair, which is one of her favorite books. But on the other hand, most days I can throw barrettes in it (which she loves) or put it in a ponytail (which she hates), which makes it easy for me, and for her. I'm in awe of my friends who create beautiful, intricate braids and hairstyles for their little girls. Molly's hair doesn't lend itself to that, and I think that's probably ok because I don't think I have the styling chops to pull that off. Certainly can't do anything with my own hair.

But no matter what, this hair thing is fraught with peril, isn't it? Because hair is bound up in our culture--certainly in African and African American culture, and in European American culture too--"good hair," "difficult hair," "bad hair days." In my family, we've got Jew hair, thick and crazy and wavy, grows like crazy, doesn't respond to blowdryers or product, takes heavy-duty artillery to straighten, gets increasingly wiry and difficult as we grow older. Molly's hair is none of that. It's magical. It's soft as spun silk. Her ringlets are like a fairy princess's. But somehow, I don't think that's going to let her off the hook.

At the salon today, the stylist and I discussed Molly's hair. I was talking about how hard it is when it gets tangled up (that spun sugar turns into mats--fast) because we have to be so careful with the product we put in. Anything heavy or oily turns her head into an oil slick. Many of the products for African American hair don't work at all on her. Well, the stylist said, she doesn't really have African American hair. Her hair is "more like ours." It's "nicer," she said. And so it goes. I flinched, inwardly, and said nothing. Should I have stopped her there? Of course. Should I have told the stylist--with her flimsy stick-straight blonde hair--that of course it wasn't "nicer" than more typical AA hair, just different. And of course her hair is just as African as "typical" AA hair. It's not "white" hair, either--whatever the hell that means anyway. My hair is nothing like the salonista's, either. What did she even mean, "more like ours"? But I said none of that. In fact, I didn't say much at all. Just agreed that yeah, it wasn't typical. And then we left.

So is this what Molly will be saddled with? People telling her how "lucky" she is because her hair is atypical for an African American child? The backhanded compliment that will make her feel crappy--at the same time an outsider and denigrating the other kids she knows? What kind of message is that sending? And what about the message that she doesn't really have "black" hair, either? Will Molly have to defend her hair for not being "black" enough? Will she feel like she can't be proud of her hair, as gorgeous as it is, because it's different? Cuz as far as I know, if Molly's African American, her hair is, too. How bad am I for not calling the stylist out on her thoughtlessness, her casual racism? How crappy a mom does that make me?

Every day, I tell Molly how beautiful she is. I know it's retrograde of me. I know I'm not supposed to do this, as the mother of a girl especially. So I also tell her how smart and kind she is. But the thing is, she is beautiful. Really, really beautiful. And so is her hair. And, as retrograde as it is, I feel like it's important that she never forget that. No matter what messages she's getting.

Three Years

2010-07-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

Here's where I get to get sappy and maudlin. Three years ago today we met this amazing little person for the first time. I am in constant awe of her, of her bright spirit, her joyous self, her funny, quick mind, her beauty, her kindness, of the amazing little person she is. And I stand in wonder of the process and series of events that brought us to her. When you have a biological child, there's this weird combination of random events that goes to create this child, and of course, the one you birth is the one you get. But adoption feels so much more, and less, random in its way. Because this little person was on the planet before we ever knew about her. And she has another family that loves her halfway around the world. And yet, it doesn't seem possible that we could be without her in our lives. And the idea that she could have left her home in Ethiopia and gone to live with someone else is inconceivable. If you believe in meant to be, she was meant to be. She is always and forever part of her first family. And she is, and was, always and forever meant to be ours.

Three years ago, this little person entered our lives. I can't imagine our family without her. We are so very very lucky.

July 7, 2007, the first day we met Molly Fanaye

With one of her nannies on the day of the official ceremony when she came home with us.

Back with us at the guest house in Ethiopia.

And here is the girl she is today.

So today is about Princess Molly Fanaye. Her silly, goofy, effervescent, beautiful, sweet, brilliant, luminescent self. About how she gives the best hugs and kisses in the whole world. About the way she completed our family in the most perfect way imaginable. And it's about her first family, and her birth mother who, even though I don't pray, I still pray for every day. I hope she knows the gift she gave us.

Happy Famiversary, Baby Girl.

Lies My Mother Told Me

2010-05-04T14:14:00.001-07:00

I am a very mean mom. And a liar. Just ask my son. He's keeping a list in his head of all the times and ways that I've fibbed, prevaricated, obfuscated, and otherwise misled him in his short life. There was the American Idol debacle he was 4 and, for reasons that have never been completely clear, frighteningly, scarily, unhealthily obsessed with the state of North Carolina. As you may recall, Season 2 of American Idol featured a showdown between Ruben Studdard and the Tarheel State's favorite son, Clay Aiken. My little Sammy was single-minded in his devotion. And when, as you no doubt recall, Ruben pulled out a nailbiter of a victory, Wisconsin's Littlest Claymate was inconsolable. Truly inconsolable. So I did what any good mother would. As Ruben stood in front of America, with confetti floating over his ample lapels, I told Sammy that Ruben and Clay tied.

This was, in my mind, the only humane thing to do to stop my hyperventilating, hysterical preschooler. But several years later, Sam learned the truth. And now, he says, I am a liar. I hid the real facts from him, and he won't let me forget it.

Fast forward several years. Emma and I are watching the first season of "Project Runway" on DVD. We all agree that the odious Wendy Pepper is a disaster. Emma and I know the results of the finale, but we decide not to spoil it for Sam. So we tell him that Wendy Pepper won. Sam is irate: How could they do that?? His anger simmers all through the Bryant Park runways and then, SURPRISE!, Jay wins, not Wendy!! I thought that this harmless little fib would keep from ruining the show for Sam. Apparently not: In his mind, this is Lie Number Two.

Which brings us to this past Sunday. I decided about a week ago to think about moving. It's actually something I've wanted to do for a while, but never seemed like it would be feasible. But after a consult with a carpenter who told us that it would cost $40,000 to rebuild our porch into a 4-season room, moving to an actually bigger place started to make a lot more sense. The rest of the family is more or less onboard. Matt thinks I'm crazy, but whatever. But Sammy, the guy who said he would never move from our house because no other house would have the same white ceiling fan he has in his room, Sammy is not ok with the plan.

So I started checking out open houses in nearby neighborhoods, while Sam turned paler and paler shades of gray and looked unhappier and unhappier. He said the new neighborhoods freaked him out, because he heard they did things like send "welcome to the neighborhood" letters, which he found creepy.

That's when I hatched my plan. I created a fake email address from the "Welcome to the Welcoming Committee" of a neighborhood we're considering. And I sent him this letter. To fully appreciate it, you need to know that Sam can neither swim nor ride a bike, and that I do harass him all the time about going to my old high school, West, instead of, Memorial, the one we're districted for and where Emma goes.

*Name of neighborhood poorly disguised in case we do end up moving there:

Congratulations! I heard through a "friend" that your parents are talking about maybe possibly moving, and that they might move to Sunnyvale*! You must be so excited!!! After all, nothing could be better than moving to Sunnyvale!! All your friends are here, and the streets are flat for bicycle riding all around!! Plus, you know how much you like swimming?? Well, we have a pool!! The adults in Sunnyvale love to drink alcohol, a lot, but since they all live next door to each other you don't have to worry about what that pesky Officer Emily says about them driving cars afterwards!

But you know what the best thing about moving to Sunnyvale is? You guessed it: It's the Letter!! Yes, you get a Letter. Welcoming you to Sunnyvale. I'm sure you've heard that we have an email listserv, too, to keep each other up to date on the most important information. But nothing compares to the Letter. It's friendly and warm, welcoming and full of good cheer, much like all the folks in Sunnyvale. It's sort of like an outdoor cookout with margaritas for your soul. See? I can tell you're feeling better already!

Don't worry, this isn't the last letter you'll get. This is what we like to call the "congratulations on maybe making the best decision of your life by even thinking about possibly moving to Sunnyvale" letter. Don't ask me how we know this, we just know. If you actually move to Sunnyvale, we will send you another letter, even more glorious than this one. You can frame them both and hang them on your wall in your new room in Sunnyvale.

Oh, and one more thing: Sunnyvale is actually WALKING DISTANCE to Memorial High School. You know how your mom keeps bothering you about transferring to West? (Don't ask us how we know, we just do.) It's pretty annoying when she does that, isn't it? Well, moving to Sunnyvale would put your fears (and her incessant, mindless, chatter about that inferior school) to rest. You could go to sleep every night knowing that the World's Greatest High School is right outside your window. No way your mom could try to send you anywhere else for high school. She'll have to go down to some elitist coffee shop or something to sing her stupid "West" song. We won't let her sing it in Sunnyvale.

So that's about it. I need to let you go so you can start packing your bags. You'll want to be ready to go on a moment's notice when you get the news: It's time to load up the van... for Sunnyvale!

Comfortably superiorly yours,

The Welcome to the Welcoming Committee

See? That wasn't so mean, was it? But Sam was a little wigged out. He thought it was very 1984 of "Sunnyvale" to know so much about his innermost thoughts. Eventually, I had to tell him because he was just getting more and more freaked out and morose about the whole thing. He's better now. It's just more fodder for his inevitable tell-all memoir.

Break's Over

2010-01-03T13:04:00.000-08:00

We're back in school tomorrow after two weeks of winter break. We had a great time off: took Molly to The Princess and the Frog (her first "theater" movie), cleaned the pantry (thanks, Matt), and went to Chicago--shopping, museums, good food. Sam and Em went to the Art Institute to see Van Gogh and Monet, while Molly and I went to the Disney Store--a cultural experience all unto itself. We saw The Addams Family Musical, which was fun, and a little strange, too, but that was part of the fun. We went to the Museum of Science and Ind ust ry, where Molly could have played for hours and hours in the room with the balls and the pn eumatic tubes. As seen here:

Molly tugs on the pulley...

really really hard...

and a little gun thing shoots water all over the place.

The girls on the hotel pull-out couch our final night in Chicago. The most exciting thing about our 2-room "junior suite" was the presence of 2 (count 'em) flat screens, although as Emma pointed out, they were often both turned to the same channel.

And now, it's 3:37 on Sunday afternoon and I am in this weird denial about going back to school tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's because I'm woefully unprepared, my own fault because I have taken the whole "break" thing pretty seriously, thank you very much, or if I am just not constitutionally and emotionally suited to work, anywhere. Although, if I could find gainful employment watching ridiculous amounts of cable television and writing about it snarkily, I would be a happy happy girl.

Last night, Sammy had a meltdown at the thought that he has to go back to school tomorrow. I get it; I really do. He has all this anxiety that's not tied to reality--worries that he won't do well (he's making high honors now) or that he will be yelled at by us, or his teachers. Freakouts because he can't find his lunch box. Feelings that he "just doesn't like that place." I guess if home wasn't so fabulously fun and exciting, or if we were meaner to him, he'd be looking forward to going back to school. But it is more fun to sit around at home. I told him that if I homeschooled him, his curriculum would probably consist of watching Lifetime movies based on true-crime novels (Language Arts), The Price Is Right (math), Degrassi (health), and Hoarders (social anthropology). And he agrees that this isn't adequate. Still, at this point, the only one who is looking forward to going back to school is Molly. That's probably not good.

Ok. I'm not sure why I started down this road. But now I've got to go and figure out what the hell I'm doing with my students tomorrow. Still in some kind of denial that I actually have to plan an outfit and wake up at 6 a.m., but what'cha gonna do?

Yogurt on the Floor

2009-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

I have had my lovely new Macbook for 6 months now, and my fabu little Flip-type camera for just as long. Yet we've been ridiculously neglectful about capturing video, until lately, and it took me until today to figure out how to transfer the video clips into a usable form, say, on this blog. Of course, today I figured out that it's embarrassingly easy, and iMovie is my friend. So, my shameful technological pokiness notwithstanding, I'm pretty psyched about my newfound cinematic abilities.

Molly turned three on Monday, and of course she just keeps getting funnier and cuter, and more bossy, too. Mostly, her hilarity is self-explanatory, but this video probably needs a little backgrounder.

About a month ago, I was on the phone with my mom when I noticed a big glob of yogurt on the living room floor. This might be shocking to some of you "hygienic" folks, but here at the Cibula house, it's pretty much par for the course. So I looked down and mentioned it, and soon, Molly was yelling "There's yogret on the floi! There's yogret on the floi!"

Mom told my stepdad, Dennis, and the rest is the stuff of song legend. Because Dennis decided to compose a little musical number, to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Lyrics to the song go something like this:

In the kitchen and the bathroom there is yogret on the floor
In the living room and dining room, there's yogret on the floor
In the hallway and the basement, I think there's even more
There's yogret on the floor.

Who is cleaning up the yogret?
Who is cleaning up the yogret?
Who is cleaning up the yogret?
There's yogret on the floor!

Quickly, as you might imagine, this became Molly's favorite song. When she is upset, crying in the car, whatever, a jolly burst of "Yogret on the Floor" can perk her right up. Here she is, singing it herself, although as you can see, she's way too Mariah or Beyoncé to totally perform for the camera:

Today's Tidbit

2009-08-08T15:03:00.001-07:00

Molly: "When you go poop on the floor, you say, 'Mama! I have to go potty!'"

Pity Potty

2009-07-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

I don't want to offend the potty gods by jinxing this, but on Day 6 of the Great Underwear Experiment, things are going better than expected. A week ago, we visited Molly's new preschool and talked to her old preschool teacher, who said "Just put her in underwear." We'd tried underwear a couple of weeks ago, but after one accident, Molly asked for a diaper again and I thought, OK, too soon. But Molly's teacher said, no, if Molly's asking for diapers she's ready for underwear. She also said that two of the little girls in her class were already in underwear. So, you know, she shamed us into it.

But damn if it didn't work. At least so far. The first day was kind of... challenging. We went through 7 pairs of underwear by late afternoon. It was messy. But it got better and better. Yesterday we were down to 3 pairs. Today, she stayed in one pair ALL DAY LONG. It was magical. She stayed dry through her nap. She was a potty rock star.

So, we'll see if this keeps up, but I have to give big ups to Molly's teacher. Maybe it's too easy, I don't know. If it does work, we'll have done it without the help of the "It's Potty Time" video, a time-honored classic that caused Emma (and Matt and me) nightmares for years. A bonus, for sure.

Props to Andrea McArdle

2009-07-18T15:12:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, it was all "Annie!" all the time. And this week, we're having a hard time letting go. So we're pretty much all still belting out "It's the Hard-Knock Life" and "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile," on a moment's notice. Sam and Em were, respectively, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Miss Hannigan in the Children's Theater of Madison Summer Drama School production of "Annie!" And they were knock-em-out fabulous. I'm not even kidding. And yes, sure, I'm biased. They're my beautiful, talented children. But all of that aside, as my beautiful, talented children can tell you, I can also be unreasonably harsh and critical, even when things are pretty good. So I would tell you lovely folks, all of you who may actually at some point be reading my blog (and thank you, btw), the honest unvarnished truth. If they were cute, and ok, but really, it's just a kids' summer drama production and, well, it was fun and fine, but whatever--I'd tell you.

Honest to god, it was amazing. Not just Sam and Em, either. Everyone was amazing. The sets were great. The costumes were gorgeous. The staging and choreography was truly fantastic (even the numbers--and there were lots--that my kids WEREN'T in :-) ) Honestly, it was incredible. Even more incredible when you realize that the kids were assigned their parts exactly TWO WEEKS before opening night, so they had 10 working days to get the whole production together. I wish you all could have seen them. And I wish I had a video--but no one was allowed to tape it, so no record exists. You'll have to take my word.

Emma was scary as the drunken orphanage-runner Miss Hannigan. I can't tell you how many people came up to me and said "I didn't think she could do it. Sweet little Emma, she's always so quiet... I had no idea she could be so mean--or so LOUD!" And all I could say to that is, you haven't talked to Sam, have you? He could tell you just how mean and loud his sister can be...

Miss Hannigan a.k.a. Carol Burnett

Miss Hannigan a.k.a. Emma

For his part, Sam had his heart set on being FDR, even over bigger parts. And I have to say it was the perfect role for him. He spent the past 3 weeks watching Fireside Chats on YouTube and telling the folks at Whole Foods "You have nothing to feah but feah itself."

Sadly, Emma is smiling in all the pictures I took after the show. She didn't smile during the show. Believe me.

Sam also wrote a monologue in the character of FDR in the year 1933. He performed during the show just before the start of Act Two (one of several monologues and skits). I wanted to preserve the performance in some form, and since I don't have a recording of the show, I am reprinting Sam's monologue here, in its entirety:

WHAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT FDR by Sam Cibula
Hello, my name is Franklin D. Roosevelt, known to most of you as FDR, and I am dead. However, I have come back to life for just two days. But I will not take this time for granted, no. What I will do is I will tell you things that you possibly didn’t know about me. Such as did you know that I am the only president to appear in a musical? I didn’t think so. Another fact is that I join JFK and LBJ as the only presidents known mainly by their initials. And not just the only one not to half to deal with the Vietnam War, and not just the only one that doesn’t have a J somewhere in their initials, but also the only one born in the 1800s. Did you know that in no other year than 1933, I survived an assassination attempt that missed me but unfortunately hit and killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermcurk (small shrug)? Did you know that when I was a boy, my family and me went to visit at that time President Grover Cleveland, who personally told me never to become president. Grover, God love yah, but you coulda chosen anyone else in my family, you had to choose me. Did you know that in order of Presidents, such as George Washington 1 John Addams 2, I am thirty two. Joining James Madison, Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Regan as presidents who’s number orders are factors of 4. (Bodyguard whispers into my ear) Barack Obama? Who’s he? Whatever, and Barack Obama. And lastly did you know that I am the first president who could have his mother vote for him. Thanks Mom, and thank you.

I was incredibly proud of both of 'em. Lemme tell ya.

Emma.

2009-07-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

Most of the pictures on this blog end up being pics of Molly. But these are some pictures we took of Emma outside our house last weekend. I needed to share a couple.

Emma starts high school in the fall. I know, right?

Second Famiversary: July 7, 2009

2009-07-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

Not sure when this happened, when this tiny little baby turned into this big grown up funny young person. But on July 7th we marked the second anniversary of our trip to Ethiopia to pick up Molly Fanaye. She likes to tell the story: "Nannies pourin'." "We saw you first minute." And finally, "Handprint on the wall."

Here are the pictures that complete the story she tells:

Courtyard of the CHSFS Care Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 7, 2007. Fanaye age 7 months

Madison, Wisconsin, July 10, 2009. Molly Fanaye age 2 years, 7 months.

Every day I ask how I got so lucky. We love you so much baby girl.

Suuummmmeeerrr

2009-07-14T17:02:00.000-07:00

Summer is really a glorious time. Although 4 + weeks in, I'm still getting used to not getting up to go to work in the morning. Actually, that's not really it. After the first three days or so, my brain had totally adjusted to not getting up and going in to work in the morning. I went in the Tuesday after school let out to clean out my room, and that was that. I'm pretty sure that I left something big and important under a table, but can't think what it might be, so whatevs. Next year, I'm moving to a new school, a new grade, a new part-time schedule. It's all really good: the I'll be at my "home" school so I'll be close to home, and I'm hoping that there will continue to be a spot for me there so that I'll still be there in three years when Molly starts school. But even though it's exciting, it's also really weird. Especially the not-teaching-kindergarten part. I think I'm in denial right now. After I left, I think my brain shut off, because it's been very hard to remember that I ever WAS a teacher, much less what I might've actually taught anyone.

Weird, how quickly we readjust. Four weeks really isn't that long, yet it seems like forever since school ended. And at the same time, summer feels like it's flying. It's mid-July. So I keep reminding myself, "it's only July..." The upside of having a state government that's controlled by the bozos in the Wisconsin Dells, and who set the start of the school year for Sept. 1, meaning that the school year seems to last FOREVER (and those last few weeks really did seem to go on and on and on) is that we have ALL of August off, which is a psychological bonus right about now.

But the summer was accounted for before it started, and I have tons to do: About a million cleaning projects around the house, more every day as our cats have decided that every place EXCEPT the litter box is an appropriate place to pee. Work for KU. And now that all three kids are home all day, we have to organize excursions or we get a repeat of today: by noon, we were all home, done with errands and Sam's morning enrichment class, watching Demi Lovato on "Sonny with a Chance." I think my brain turned to pudding.

Oh, and I think I'm launching a new website for highschoolers. I'll keep you posted.

So in the meantime, we marked the second anniversary of bringing Molly home, which really deserves its own post, so I won't belabor it here. Emma's already been to DC with her eighth grade class. Sam's already finished his little league season. And Sammy and Em have already rehearsed and performed in their summer drama school production of "Annie!" which was honest-to-god-absolutely-phenomenal-and-I'm-not-just-saying-that-because-I'm-their-mother. I'm thrilled that the kids take after me with their affinity for drama and total lack of interest in team sports.

But that deserves its own post, too. So more later.

Molly and I have been hanging for the last month or so, and that's been really cool. She's exhausting, my little girl, but so smart and sweet, and especially when her brother and sister weren't around and she had me to herself, very fun and very dear. Molly has had no trouble adjusting to summer. Here's Molly, getting ready to head out to drop off Sam and Em and head to Whole Foods on a hazy, humid summer day in Madison:

Like Navin Johnson in The Jerk: "All I need is this lamp, and my thermos, and this pumpkin, and my dog..."

Ready for a summer outing in Wisconsin.

Molly loves the splash park and she rides her trike like Danica Patrick. We've also been watching "Cinderella" on an endless loop, along with many many episodes of "The Muppet Show" on DVD. And I say it again: the 70s were a very strange time.

Catching Up... Maybe Not

2009-05-30T08:31:00.001-07:00

Oh, my poor blog. I have neglected you so. Not for any good reason. Honest. I don't have any good excuses. Just crazy busy, crazy tired. Teaching, and toddlers, and sinus infections. But nothing too exciting or meaningful. I've missed my little blog and the catharsis it brings. Facebook status updates are a quick fix, but they're just not the same.

I feel like there's so much to say that to try to cover it all would just be stupid, so I'm not going to try. No recaps here. Can't post any pictures, because my computer is dead. Good news: I get a new computer. Bad new: my dead computer is sitting at our lovely IT friend's house until I figure out whether it is worth putting on life support for Sam and Emma. How much life is left in my 5 year old machine? It's been rebuilt so many times (new hard drive, new motherboard, new keyboard, new battery, new superdrive...) but now it needs a new display. Worth another 120 bucks to pass on to Sam and Em? They're chomping at the bit to get their hands on a laptop, so maybe. Me, I'm psyched because my new MacBook will come with a new iPod touch, giving me the capability to Facebook and blog on the go. So I'll never be off-line. :-0

Meanwhile, Molly is setting some kind of record for 2-year-old time outs. At preschool, she's fond of saying "I love poopies!" So they put her in time-out in the bathroom. It's not working. She comes home and says "I say 'I love poopies' at school!" And when we ask, "are you going to say it again?" she says, "yeahhhhh...."

Went to a retirement party last night for my principal and another teacher in my school. It was lovely, a nice tribute, both are very deserving. But as I'm leaving, my principal says to me, "You're going to be a marvelous teacher. But you need to put in more time. At least five years." Hm. Quite a ringing endorsement, wouldn't you say? I'll tell you: It made me feel super-good about my career choices and the work I've done. So thanks for that.

So whatever. Nine more days of school. And then I can spend the summer pondering all the ways in which I'm not "marvelous" and trying to figure out how to fix them so I can be marvelous by next year.

A Sailor's Promise

2009-02-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

Would you trust this man to keep his word?

In our family, television = love. It's how we communicate and connect and understand the world. Some might think that's sad, but, frankly, I have enough to feel guilty about and this one doesn't really bother me. It works for us and it gives us a lot of cultural capital, which we can share with the world. Sam can ride to Sunday School carpool and reenact the opening skit from Saturday Night Live for all his buddies, and Emma and I can have meaningful discussions about the pitfalls of meeting your future mate on a reality television show; or the reasons that it's not necessarily advisable to put your toddler in a beauty pageant; or the dangers that ensue when you're Tori Spelling and you have a secretly psychotic boyfriend, or your dad is Tony Danza and he secretly has multiple personality disorder. It's all part of the joy and wonder we call "parenting."

So it's no surprise that, like the rest of us, Molly loves her TV. Since our old DVR died, we lost all of our old Teletubbies episodes, which was a little sad, but Sesame Street still comes on every day, and at last count, we had 29 archived episodes taking up TiVO space. Her favorite episode changes weekly. Lately it's been all about the Curly Bear. She has her favorite episodes memorized, word for word, so that she sounds like the annoying guy you know who insists on quoting lines from Caddyshack all day long. Or like my late grandmother who, when for some hard-to-fathom reason we took her to see National Lampoon's Vacation, proceeded to loudly sing along with "La Marseillaise," much to our dismay. But I digress.

Molly has "Curly Bear" memorized, and "Mine-itis," and many other classic episodes. But as I've mentioned here before, she also loves the opening themes for all television shows. When we watch a grown-up show, she wants to see the opening credits again and again: "Again Teeth?" she asks at the beginning of Ugly Betty or "Again Gone?" at the start of Top Chef. It's kind of cute, but then it quickly gets annoying because we want to watch the actual show instead of watching the credits roll again and again and again.

So one night, Emma, being an expert in child psychology and a highly motivated television watcher, came up with a plan. She told Molly that she would make her a "Sailor's Promise" that we could watch the "song" at the beginning of the show we were watching as soon as the show was over. She and Molly shook on it and sealed it with the immortal words, "It's a deal."

I feel a little bad about this. A "Sailor's Promise"????? It's not as if sailors are particularly trustworthy. It seems to me that a "Sailor's Promise" is what Fletcher Christian gave to Captain Bligh, and look how it turned out for him. But now, Molly thinks it's a thing. And so, whenever Molly wants something and we don't want to or can't do it right away, we shake hands and solemnly pledge a "Sailor's Promise." Molly pledges right along with us. I know this will come back to bite us all.

So Much Drama

2009-02-12T20:33:00.000-08:00

Molly has really been an incredibly healthy child, especially considering the amount of time she spends in daycare. So we've had very little cause for complaint, health-wise. In fact, Matt took her to the doc on Monday for her (overdue) well check and I was shocked to learn that my little peanut is in the 70th percentile height and weight. When the flip did that happen? (She's still 15th percentile head size, which also makes no sense because her head doesn't look especially small to me for the rest of her.)

At any rate, wouldn't you know, 2 days after her checkup and Molly woke up and her right eye was a little goopy. We were a bit concerned about burgeoning pink-eye, but, hey, it wasn't really pink eye, and her eye wasn't really pink, so we sent her off to daycare with a warning that her eye was a little goopy. We didn't get a call all day long, so figured we were out of the woods. Then, happily late in the afternoon, my phone rings and sure, enough, Mol woke up from her nap with super-goopy swollen eyes, and a charge to leave immediately.

Today, I got to stay home w/her, which was really fine and kinda nice. Since I started teaching Matt gets most of the kid sick days, because it's a pain to write sub plans and because he has a lot more sick time than I've got. But he was at a meeting yesterday and since he does most of these, it made sense for me to stay home on this one. Molly woke up with her eyes glued shut w/eye goop. Really gross. Although after being initially disturbed that she couldn't open her eyes, Molly decided it was really funny and went around squinting and waving her arms around like she was in a really weird game of Marco Polo. Sorry to say that I don't have a picture of that to post here.

So since it was pink eye and nothing more serious, Molly felt pretty good all day long and we had a fun time. We watched India.Arie sing the ABC song on Sesame Street with Elmo an estimated 58,932 times. Seriously. For a while I thought I would keep replaying it over and over as many times as she asked to see if she would EVER STOP ASKING for it independently. But then I gave up. She won. Plus, by the second series of viewings Molly was incredibly tired but watching the ABC song woke her up and made her wired, so I had to put on something boring just to get her to sleep. (Hint: No one can stay awake for "Guiding Light.") I made Valentines cards for my students, which was good because otherwise I'd be doing that instead of blogging now. And I took care of all those stupid appointment phone calls I never have time to make during the day. Read: My cats will finally go to the vet and Emma and I will finally get our hair cut. Good news all around.

So things were perfectly fine. Early illness averted. The rest of us will probably get pink eye, but not for a few days at least, so all is well. Life is calm and happy. And then Sammy comes home.

Being a 5th grader, Sammy is a safety patroller this year. One of the things that patrols get to do is vie for a trip to Washington D.C. as part of this Patrol Thing. I'm not even sure who's in charge, or how many kids go, or if it's a Wisconsin thing or a Madison district thing or a national thing or what. But Sammy had to give a speech to all his peers and all the 4th and 5th graders voted, and then the teachers voted and they chose a winner. Sam has been talking about this all week. We read his speech over his shoulder, but he wasn't really looking for our input, which was fine, because, well, whatever. I figured that whatever input we gave he would take it, or not, and the odds of him, or any single kid, getting the trip were pretty small. Sammy had some jokes in there about Elmo and telling kids to slow down in the halls, and I figured--hey, whatever happens.

Well, it appears that Sam was a little more invested in it than I thought he was. Which in hindsight I should have known. It's Sam, after all, and the kid is wonderful, but he's also the one who's going to go around in high school with the guitar and the black t-shirt, sighing. Life is always hard. Always. Even when it's not. So today he comes home and announces that another kid got the trip. And I'm trying to tell him that it's ok, that the odds were small, that the teachers had half the votes, etc. I even point out that as he's a kid who mostly just wants to sit on the couch, he may not even WANT to go jaunting off for 5 days to another time zone with a bunch of people he's never met before. And he says no, he really would RATHER go with people he's never met before. And he's crying and inconsolable and telling me how he was dying to go to D.C., it's all he's ever wanted, and he had all his hopes and dreams pinned on this trip. Oh, god. You'd think Obama himself was going to be playing b-ball with him. Then he tells me that the kid who won gave such a good speech that even he, Sam, who is dying to go on this trip, voted for her. Oh, boy. Now, in retrospect, he realizes that he probably should have voted for himself. Why oh why did he vote for her? He doesn't know. Now he's beating himself up about it. Was that the deciding vote. I'm sure it wasn't. Was it a good strategic move? Decidedly not.

So Sam's a mess. And he shouldn't be. Because in the middle of all this angst and misery about this trip, all this good stuff is happening to him. A couple of weeks ago, he spearheaded an effort and organized a bunch of his classmates to make notecards and other stuff to sell at a school event to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. The entire impetus for this came from Sam and he got a whole bunch of kids on board. It was fantastic and they raised more than $100. Which is really super-cool. It was quite inspiring, actually. And he got an invitation to audition for a role in a new play that's coming up, which you'd think would be enough to take the sting out of any trip. But apparently not.

He'd rebounded by the end of the night, but not before he had another mini-meltdown over finishing his (many) Valentines, which he'd only just started tonight, and finishing his homework. And not before Emma had her own meltdown on learning that her school is going to have school on a teacher inservice day to make up for our many many snow days this year. Although Em was consoled when she learned that Sam and I will have school that day, too. It's really all about parity for Emma.

So my little day with Molly got amped up in a hurry. Back to my kinders tomorrow. I don't think I can handle any more days off.

Sometimes It's Enough to Make You Wonder About Yourself

2009-02-03T15:41:00.000-08:00

As a kindergarten teacher, I spend way too much of my day trying to get young folks to sit still and pay attention. Often, this is a losing battle. Today, one of my students had spent much of the morning avoiding following directions, so he was missing part of his free choice time as a consequence. I'm very mean. So I go to sit down and talk to him about the situation. We talk about the need to listen and follow directions, and mostly this means I say things like "did you make a good choice" and he says "no," and I say "will you make a better choice tomorrow?" and he says "yes." So a lot of "yes" and "no" on my student's part. And this is what transpires:

Me: Do you think that you would get more points from your friends for doing the right thing and listening and following directions?

Student (chastened): No.

Me: No?

Student (looking at me, seriously): I don't understand what you are saying.

At this point, I burst out laughing, lecture over. I didn't really understand what I was saying, either.

It's Winter. In Wisconsin.

2009-01-17T16:50:00.000-08:00

So I've been really really bad about posting lately; I apologize for that. It seems like anytime I have access to a computer, I also have a little person sitting on me, making typing hard. In fact, she's sitting on me now, but she's engrossed watching Tilly and the Wall sing the ABCs on Sesame Street. You have no idea how conflicted I am about this.

So what's been up? It's been really really flippin' cold. So cold that I'm questioning why the hell we live in a place that's so cold. So cold that I'm re-considering moving someplace like North Carolina, which we considered years ago, before I started Ed. school. So cold that I bring this idea up about every 5 minutes and Emma's gets really really mad at me. But to be fair, Emma's 13. She's always in the process of getting really really mad at me.

It's always cold. It feels like it will never be warm again. But this past week it got extra super cold. And that was actually kind of a good thing. There are many times when it's not especially helpful or convenient to be a teacher. Getting sick is not really a good option when you're a teacher. Because when you're a normal person and you get sick, or your kid gets sick, you can call in and expect that your work will just be waiting for you when you get well. But you can't work from home when you're a sick teacher. And even if you're sick, those students in your class, they just show up anyway. Who knew? So you have to spend a ton of time and energy organizing and Xeroxing and planning for your sub, just so you can be sick. Not convenient.

But there are other times when it's super-convenient to be a teacher. Like this week, when the windchill was 40 below. For two straight days. That's the kind of cold, the weather folks like to tell us, where exposed skin freezes in under 10 minutes. And so, as a matter of policy, when it gets that cold, they close school. And the nice thing is, if Sam and Em are off school, and Molly's daycare is closed for weather, I'm off, too. So childcare isn't an issue and we can all hunker down together.

Of course, even with this benchmark, the school district never announces ahead of time that they will close school. And we have such crappy weather here that school closings are never a given. We still had to get up at 5:00 on Thursday and Friday to confirm that it was still JUST THAT COLD and that there would be no school. But sure enough, our 3-day MLK Day weekend magically turned into a 5-day Cold-plus-MLK Day weekend. And I can't say that I'm complaining. It was actually kind of lovely. We didn't go anywhere. We cleaned up. And watched TV and drank hot chocolate.

I can't remember anytime since the ice storm when I was in 4th grade that school has been closed for 2 days in a row because of weather. It was wild. And what's even weirder, we'd already had 2 snow days, which means that as of today--mid-January, with at least a month and a half of solid winter left--we've already had 4 snow days. It's unreal. Good thing that "climate change" thing they keep talking about is just a liberal myth, huh? Uh, ok.

Of course, they'll have to figure out a way for us to make up all this lost time. There's already speculation about where they'll add days. Last year, we only had 2 snow days and they had to add 7 minutes to each of our school days for the rest of the year, because, for some unknown reason, they apparently only build ONE snow day into our school year. In Wisconsin. So it's an open question how they'll make up 3 extra days (at least...). But honestly, and I know I'm in the minority here, I'd rather make up the days in the spring or even pre-summer, when it's muggy and hot but it doesn't physically hurt to get out of bed because it's SO COLD. So I'm fine with it.

Today, we had the birthday party we were supposed to have for Molly a month ago. Of course, Molly's really birthday was at the beginning of December, but we had to cancel her party last-minute when Em got sick. So today was birthday party make-up day. And we had a great time. I think Molly truly couldn't picture the idea of her friends being here, with her, in her house!! Super fun!! She just kept running around, bringing out her toys and showing them to her friends. I had a little craft project planned, but we never really got to it because the kids were happier just running around and climbing on Sam's slide/loft bed. You gotta love toddlers. I do. Molly was in fine form, playing and dancing and jumping around. She ate all the frosting from her piece of cake and mine too. And then as soon as everyone left, she got really cranky and crashed. A successful party, for sure.

Another reason that I haven't posted is that my camera has been broken since Halloween. Very sad. So I have a picture backlog. My mom took some pics of Molly's big day today, which I will post very soon, along with pics from Em's Bat Mitzvah, and Sam's star turn as "Spirit Child" in "A Christmas Carol" last month. I promise.

Opia

2008-12-24T05:52:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Christmas. And although they don't observe Christmas in Ethiopia til January (I love the Ethiopian calendar--in Ethiopia it's also 2001). But it still seemed like as good a time as any to publicly share our love and thoughts and prayers and wishes for Molly Fanaye's Ethiopian family, who we think about every day.

When we brought Molly home last year, the agency gave us DVDs with video of her family, her time in the care center, and her first days with us. Precious precious video. Lately, these DVDs have been in heavy rotation on our TV. Molly is not ever tired of watching "Baby Molly in 'Opia.'" She jams along to the cool Ethiopian jazz soundtrack, and she's especially excited when her friend's grandpa Larry shows up on screen ("Larry! Larry!"). Now all grandpa-aged men are Larry.

Molly watches these DVDs intently and incessantly. I want to know what she's thinking about, what she's taking away. What does she remember about her first 7 months in Opia? What about her first three months and a half months with her birth family? I don't think it's as simple as "she likes to watch herself on TV," although she most definitely does. I wish I knew what kind of imprints and impressions these images are making on her or calling up for her. I wish I knew how these videos are laying themselves down and gelling in her psyche. I wish I had more answers for the questions she will undoubtedly have for us as she grows.

Now, Molly watches the Baby Molly video and then she snuggles up and attaches her mouth to my boob. Through my clothes, on the side, sucking on my sweater. Does she remember nursing? She hasn't nursed since she was 3 months old, but she sees herself nursing on the DVD. What does that image call up for her? Sam and Emma nursed for a year, and when they were done, they were done. No going back. But Molly didn't get her fair share of boob. And she's kind of obsessed with breasts. She likes to stick her hand down my shirt, and just kind of leave it there. For comfort. It's weird but, whatever. I figure if it's what she needs, it's what she needs. Doesn't bother me.

When Molly first started at her old daycare, before she was even a year old, there was a little boy who was about 3 in the preschool class. He was also adopted, from someplace in Southeast Asia. He had black hair and beautiful caramel skin about the same shade as Molly's. And for some reason, he and Molly were instantly bonded. They weren't in the same classroom, but on the playground and wherever he could, he sought her out. Molly, who wasn't especially friendly or attached to strangers, would go and lie down with her head in this little boy's lap for half an hour or more. We have pictures. And the little boy would sit, still and quiet, while Molly just lay there, content and quiet. Was she missing her brother back in Ethiopia? He would have been close to that age. What does she need that she's missed, that she didn't get because she was separated too early from her first family?

Things in Ethiopia are horrible right now. There is widespread drought and people are starving. I'm looking out the window at the snow falling down and Mudula, Ethiopia, seems very far away. Yet also so close. We're bound to a family there, forever, through this smart, silly. sweet, bossy, beautiful little person sitting here on my lap watching "Sesame Street" with her hand down my shirt. So, even though I am not much for praying in general, today, and every day, I pray for our Ethiopian family. I pray that they have enough to eat, that their lives get easier. I think about when we will be able to go back to Ethiopia and see them again. I wish them peace and grace and happiness. And I wish the same for all of you. Merry Christmas, Happy Eid, Happy Chanukah, Merry Solstice, Happy Kwanzaa and all good things for 2009.

Career Opportunities, Part 2

2008-11-29T15:07:00.000-08:00

And speaking of my children and their future careers, I think, at the tender age of 2, Molly's revealed to us her true calling:

Diner waitress.

I'm being unkind, you say, locking her into a life collecting tips and slinging hash before she hits preschool? I'd have said that, too. But that was before yesterday.

Yesterday, my mom gave Molly a little play kitchen for her birthday. We opened it up and this is what happened.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I think there'd definitely be a job for her at Mel's Diner. She strikes just the right note of annoyed exasperation as she explains that she's "makin' coffee," and especially as she tells the inconsiderate customers to "Hold on!" Flo, eat your heart out.

Career Opportunities, Part 1

2008-11-29T14:45:00.000-08:00

Everyone seems to agree that the election of Barack Obama has had historic implications. Perhaps none more earth-shaking than on my son's future career ambitions. Sammy, as those of you who know Sammy know, used to want to be an actor. Not just an actor, though. He's enough of a New York snob that he wanted to be a Broadway star--no frou frou Hollywood career for him. His plan for the past year or two has been: college at NYU, a job on a soap to get him kick started until his Broadway career takes off. No sweat, easy-peasy.

Well, leave it to the seismic shift of the 2008 election to change all that. Sam was, to put it mildly, OBSESSED with the election. And by November 4th, he had a new career goal. Not president; that's too much stress and pressure. But Senator. These days, Sam worries not about which soap he should audition for, but which state he should run for Senate from--should it be New York, which he loves loves loves? or Wisconsin, where he feels he'll have a better shot? But New York's a more liberal state... Hmm. It's a conundrum.

Still, the path to senator is not a lock, by any means (not like NYU => Days of Our Lives => Broadway or anything). So what's a 10-year-old boy who spends way too much time worrying about the future to do when planning his career path? Then, Barack started announcing his cabinet and it all became clear. The key? Rahm Emanuel.

Because before Rahm Emanuel was a semi-fascist representative from Illinois, he was, of course, a ballet dancer. And then it hit us: he's not the only famous ballet dancer/politico. I'm speaking, of course, about Ron Reagan Jr., former twinkletoes, current radio host on Air America.

So Sam's journey to Washington is now clear: He needs to change his name to something starting with an "R"-"Rodolfo"? "Romulus"? And he needs to become a professional ballet dancer. Although if you believe Ron Reagan, he can just flop around the stage at Sarah Lawrence and he's all good. Easy-peasy.

Now if only he knew ballet...

It's an outrage.

2008-11-16T06:13:00.001-08:00

Ok. The fix is in. I don't know how to explain it, but I'm not happy about it. Let me start at the beginning.

In an episode of "Elmo's World" on Sesame Street, Elmo's goldfish, Dorothy, casts her fishy mind back to the day Elmo was born. Here is the scene, with Elmo's parents, George and Gladys:

This seems about right. George is clearly Elmo's bio dad. They look exactly alike. Gladys and George are happy, excited about their new baby. God knows why they chose to name him Elmo, but whatev.

Fast forward to our favorite episode of Sesame Street, the one with the elephant stuck in the bathtub. There's a song segment called "Elmo's Riding," that features Elmo learning to ride his bike with his "Daddy." A man who is clearly not George in any way shape or form. In fact, this is Elmo's new "Daddy":

I know, right? He looks nothing like Elmo. Look at the face shape. And the nose. According to the Muppet Wiki, his name is "Louie," and this Arlo Guthrie-looking, folk-song-singing, hemp-wearing dilletante has entirely elbowed George out of the picture. We figure that Louie must be Elmo's stepdad. And that's fine. Maybe George and Gladys broke up when Elmo was small, so Louie's the only Dad Elmo's really ever known. Maybe George is a crappy absentee father who doesn't pay his child support. Maybe George died, which would be really sad, and you'd think there'd be some acknowledgement of it. Maybe Gladys is just a tramp. Who knows? But I bet there's not even a picture of George on the mantle at the Monster house. And that's not OK.

I'm not implying that Louie is a bad dad, although he does seem a little shady to me and he has a weird Willie Nelson-esque accent and a creepy goatee and apparently way too much time on his hands. God knows that I'm not saying he's not Elmo's "real" dad, if he's the one loving and raising Elmo. But the Muppet Wiki claims that the reason for the George bait-and-switch is that Dorothy the Goldfish "imagined" what Elmo's birth-day and his parents looked like. Imagined!?!?!?!? Since when do goldfish possess that kind of imagination? And why on earth would Dorothy "imagine" them names like "Gladys" and "George"? If this is the case, then Elmo's mom probably looks like Mama Cass or Suze Orman or someone equally improbable. Muppet Wiki, you have really failed.

It seems to me that George's parental rights are being denied here, and if I were him, I'd quit paying my child support, too. I'm just saying.

More Bear, Please!

2008-11-15T07:04:00.000-08:00

Parent teacher conferences are barely over. Matt's out of town til Sunday. Sam's running all over town with choir and rehearsals for "A Christmas Carol." He gets to play the spooky kid "Want" who sits on the grave at the end of the play :-) I have a mountain of planning to do and lamination to cut out. And a million things to return to Old Navy. So weekends are not so much, well, anything but running around.

But that's not why I'm blogging today. Today I'm blogging about Bear. Not just any bear. Bear. See, Molly has had the great good fortune or misfortune (depending on your perspective) of landing in a TV obsessed family. We watch a lot of television. And so does Molly. Our DVR is filled with old "Daily Shows" and "Mad Men" and "Sesame Streets." Something for everyone. But Molly is a discriminating television viewer. She won't watch just anything. But the things she loves, she LOOOOOOOVES. And she wants to watch them again and again.

It started with "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." She calls both shows "Obama," and she's generally perfectly happy to sit through them. Because she's got a finely-honed satirical comic sense.

But lately, things have gotten more stratified. We have hours of "Sesame Street" on the DVR. But recently, we discovered an episode where Oscar the Grouch is the anchor of GNN--"Grouch News Network"--and he goes around Sesame Street looking for the yuckiest, grouchiest news. Specifically, he discovers that Horatio the Elephant is stuck in Maria's bathtub. Molly has watched this episode so many times--hell, we've all watched it so many times that we can reenact it--but Molly's watched it so many times, that as soon as we pull up to the house after we pick her up from daycare her first words are "More Oscar Pleeeease." We have tried other episodes of "Sesame Street," but nothing is acceptable. Even the episode where Gilbert Gottfried is "Denny the Distractor" and his job is to distract Telly, who was trying to recite the alphabet as a contestant on Guy Smiley's game show.

But it doesn't stop there. A couple of weeks ago, we watched an old episode of "Teletubbies," featuring a little Punch-and-Judy-type Italian handpuppet who runs around a house and sings, badly from the windows in an operatic voice. Molly calls him "Bear." She loves "Bear." She thinks "Bear" is the best, most entertaining singer she's ever heard. She would watch and re-watch "Bear" for hours, if we let her. "Bear" even caused a major blowout between Emma and Sam, because Sam got really sick of "Bear" and he accused Emma of goading him by continuing to play "Bear" for Molly. When Molly watches "Bear," and he's done singing she cheers "Yay, 'Bear'!" Or she says "Oh, 'Bear,'" with a kind of affectionate mock-exasperation, like "what have you gotten yourself into now, 'Bear'?"

But really, I can't even do "Bear" justice in a description. You really, truly, have to see him for yourself:

You can see the appeal.

It's mutated from there, of course. Now Molly's really gotten into all the opening theme songs for the shows the rest of us watch. She likes the part of "The Simpsons" where Homer says "'Doh!" so she says "More 'Dope'" and we watch that over and over. Sam and Emma like to yell "Gone!" at eliminated contestants in the opening credits of reality shows so now we watch "More 'Gone'" at the start of "America's Next Top Model." She discovered the theme music for "Mad Men" where the guy's falling, and so now we have to watch "More Song." The other night we had to watch "More Opening" to see the title credits of "The Office" 3 or 4 times. It's a wonder we get to watch anything at all. :-) Perhaps that's her diabolical plan.

Well, I think it's funny.

2008-11-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

Molly has a little toy, one of those popper things where there are like six pop-up doors and each one opens with a different switch or button or key or whatever. And out of each door pops a Sesame Street character. And Molly LOVES LOVES LOVES Sesame Street. So she tongue-kisses all the characters when they pop out. Which is pretty funny to watch. Ernie comes out of one door, and Bert comes out of a different one. But she calls them both "Bernie." Which makes sense, I suppose, but I still find it really amusing.

You Heard It Here First

2008-11-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

Sam has been obsessively analyzing and re-analyzing the electoral map for the last month now. Here are his latest electoral college projections.

Obama: 299

McCain: 149

With 79 electoral votes too close to call.

As I write this, only 2 states have been called: Kentucky for McCain and Vermont for Obama. Sam's got Virginia. Nevada, and Colorado going Obama. He's got Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, and Indiana as toss-ups, too close to call.

Let's see how Sammy's projections hold up as the night goes on. Here at the Cibula house we have the champagne and the root beer floats ready.

Halloween

2008-11-02T18:52:00.001-08:00

It's late and I need to plan for school tomorrow, but I thought it important to get these Halloween pictures up for anyone at all who's reading this.

Emma did in fact dress up at Sarah Palin. We followed the costume suggestions of eHow.com and bought a pair of magnifier glasses at Target. Only problem was that they left everything blurry for my 20/20-visioned daughter, so she had to wear them down her nose as we walked house to house.

I got worried that Molly's tutu would leave her too cold as we walked around, so I got a last-minute costume at Old Navy and Molly went as FiFi the Pink French Poodle. We inaugurated it a few days before Halloween with a trip to Whole Foods, but people there thought she was dressed up like a pig. Nevertheless, it was stunning. Polar fleece, so she was toasty all night long, and sickeningly cute. Molly LOOOVED it and didn't want to take it off. The costume won't fit her next year, so I'm trying to figure out other excuses for Molly to wear a big puffy French poodle outfit. Maybe Christmas?

Sam did, in fact, go as the Global Banking Crisis. He wore a pair of pants with a big hole in the knee, holey socks (which no one could see, but they helped him get in character) and a too-small t-shirt, with his new Bat Mitzvah-purchased sportcoat over the whole thing. He had me draw 5 o'clock shadow on his face. So people thought he was a hobo. But he was so much better. And if you were paying attention, he was carrying a red folder marked "MY STOCK PORTFOLIO" that said inside: "AIG: 22%, Lehman Brothers: 40%, Merrill Lynch, 38%."

All in all, a very successful costume night. We went out trick-or-treating with my high school friend Ellen's family, who were visiting from Paris and her sister, Laura's family, visiting from D.C. Ellen's daughters were a vampire witch and a black cat, and they wore their costumes til Sunday, which was pretty fabulous. Laura's son was Blue (of Blues Clues). Molly thought the whole concept was fantastic--the idea that you could stand on people's doorsteps and they would put bowls of candy out for you was pretty glorious. Laura's son, who's 3, was ready to move in with some of the neighbors--after all, free candy!

Of course, the night wouldn't be complete if I didn't feel guilty about something. We had to start trick-or-treating late because Emma and Sammy had piano lessons. So even though it was a PERFECT night to be out (the best weather we've had in, like, ever, here in Madison, home of the chilly, rainy, sleety Halloween) the candy yield was pretty small. So yes, I'm feeling guilty that my kids didn't get ENOUGH candy, despite the fact that the candy they got, was plentiful enough to make them sick and put them into sugar comas. And yes, I realize that I'm crazy. Thanks for asking.

Gov. Palin and the Banking Crisis. Note the pageant stance. Sam is dejected because, well, what's to be happy about when you're the banking crisis?

Emma's paper sash reads "Miss Wasilla." She had to practice the wink.

Molly at her preschool for the Halloween parade.

In character, on the floor.

Seriously, who wouldn't be stylin' in a suit like that?

One Week Later

2008-10-25T08:06:00.000-07:00

Exactly one week ago we were sitting in the rabbi's office waiting to start Emma's bat mitzvah. Seems hard to believe that it has only been a week. To everyone who read this and sent their messages of support and concern, thank you! Meltdown averted, everything really went beautifully. Emma was amazing, although that was never in doubt. She looked beautiful. She read her torah and haftorah and all her prayers fabulously. And she was so poised and confident and impressive in every way.

Amazingly, everything showed up and everyone was where they were supposed to be. I was pretty sure that the photographer wouldn't show up or the DJ would forget or something. But everything actually came together. The photographer was way on time (although we were late--sorry!). The flowers were beautiful, the DJ did a great job, the vegetarian moussaka was yummy. The weather was sunny and fall-ish and perfect. Even my grody ear infection couldn't ruin it. It was way better than my wedding, when the limo that was supposed to take Matt and me to the reception broke down and we had I think about six mechanically challenged men (including my dad and Matt's dad) peering in at the steaming radiator before we drove off to the reception in Dennis's hatchback.

I think (hope) that everyone had a good time. I know that Emma did and that's the most important thing. After the ceremony, I thought she'd fly away she looked so relieved and happy and lightened. We don't have the official pics yet, and I wasn't the "unofficial" photographer (thanks, Dennis, for doing that job!) so as soon as I get pics I'll post 'em here. But take my word: she was gorgeous.

I do have one pic that I'll post here, taken at the luncheon reception. Thanks, Genita!

Molly and mama and Sammy, everyone but Emma!

Chris Duffy came from New York, my mom's cousins and her friend flew in from Florida and Connecticut, Matt's family came from Oregon, Danny and family came from LA (poor Danny's plane arrived less than an hour before the ceremony) and Gillian and her family and Genita all came up from Chicago. We hadn't seen some of these guys in YEARS and YEARS, which is criminal in itself, but it was pretty fantastic that so many people made such an effort to be there for us. As Gillian said, it was a great excuse for us to all get together.

Before this weekend, Sammy was claiming to be on the fence about whether he wanted a bar mitzvah or not. He kinda wants to go to New York or Barcelona instead. But after seeing and experiencing Emma's gala, he wants one too. More to the point, he wants the same DJ, the same parties, and the same spinach-phyllo pies that Emma had. So that's compliment enough.

So all in all, it was really great. Now only three years till we do it all over again! Woo-hoo!

In other news, the Cibula family is preparing for Halloween. Which means the Cibula children are planning their costumes. Molly will most likely be going as a ballerina. I've got her this cute little tutu. Although I think that Molly would prefer to go out as "girl who doesn't wear anything but a diaper."

Emma wants to be Sarah Palin. I'm pretty stoked about this, although I think it will take a phenomenal amount of hair spray to get her hair up.

Sam's first idea was to trick-or-treat as Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke.

Which means that when my kids went out trick-or-treating, it would look like this:

But then we decided Sam would just look like someone's uncle. So now he's going to go as the Federal Banking Crisis. I'll let you know how that works out.

Today I Am a Wreck

2008-10-05T04:13:00.000-07:00

It would be disingenuous to say that I wasn't warned. I was. I knew it would be like a wedding. Only with less sympathy from outsiders and coworkers, who don't know it's like a wedding. I had all summer to plan and prepare and keep myself out of the position I'm in now. But the summer was a rilly rilly long time ago. And now Emma's Bat Mitzvah is in 13 days. Holy fuck.

It's not that she won't be beautiful. She will. Or that she's not prepared. She is. As I keep telling her, there will only be like 5 people who know Hebrew at the whole thing anyway (and I am not one of them) so it really doesn't even matter if she messes up because she'll sound like she knows what she's talking about, regardless. But she won't mess up. She's beyond ready, and she'll be amazing. And she's excited for the chance to wear pretty new dresses and run around the temple with 22 (!) of her closest friends.

But yeah, I really don't have my shit together, which is becoming increasingly evident. I woke up at 5:15 this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep because I'm pretty sure we won't have adequate servers at the bat mitzvah luncheon. We have a caterer, and they're wonderful, but I can't remember what we told them about the number of servers we'll need, and they've never catered at the temple before. So I'm pretty sure that everyone'll be folding their own napkins and hewing their own grain for bread.

The temple's a pain in the ass because they basically expect that everyone'll use the same caterer, so they want ours to send in all these proofs of insurance and whatnot, and no one's talking to each other--they're all talking to me. I can't do anything about it so I try to relay messages.

I'm stressed because my computer died a week ago. My computer with all my lists and names and spreadsheets so I am convinced I'm forgetting about someone who's coming--probably a family of 10 who'll show up in a maxivan with no place to stay and no placecards for their kiddush meal.

I'm stressed because before my computer died I counted everyone up, and then I re-counted yesterday and came up with 10 more people for the lunch. Inexplicably. I guess I can't count. Good thing I'm a teacher. I can't remember now whether I told the temple to order enough napkins and tablecloths. (A task, btw, that I managed to complete at the last possible moment.)

Stressed because I still don't have a florist or a photographer. I have a line on both, but nothing nailed down. This could be bleak. And I have to figure out how to decorate a barn, where the dance party will be held. No clue what to do there. I don't even have shoes. Or a suitable dress. How can I be expected to decorate a barn?

Stressed because I'm quite sure I'm forgetting about 50 things I need to do. I can't take more than a day off to do it all. My basement smells like cat pee and I'm not sure when and how we can clear it out to clean it.

And I'm not really dealing with how we're gonna pay for it all, since we're maxed on our HELOC and I keep putting off the call to the bank to incrase it.

I've got a cold that's not going away and at this point, I'm pretty sure it's mutated into some kind of low-level infection that probably won't send me to the doctor but won't clear up by itelf, either. So instead of sleeping on a Sunday morning, I'm up, at 5:15, watching infomercials, but not even the good one about Colon Cleanse, and looking for scissors so I can cut out patterns of eggs with letters on them. Wondering if my twisting stomach is the result of too much wine on Friday, or my burgeoning sinus infection, or the stress of not knowing how this is all gonna work out.

It's gotten so I can't even fret about the election.

This is your brain on kindergarten.

2008-09-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

On Friday, not one, but two of my students decided that it would be a really really good idea to put rocks in their ears. They were the little gravelly rocks that you find under the jungle gym, and they shoved them in while they were sitting in their specials class. You know, just for kicks. To see what would happen. Makes sense. Both of them went home with pebbles lodged in their ears and notes from the nurse.

Meanwhile, another one of my students has figured out that he can make a really fly tooth grill out of the foil cover of his little juice container. Very bling-bling. He looks like Flava Flav. Except not.

It's Potty Time

2008-09-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

I just watched as Molly stood in the middle of the living room and pulled off her diaper with a sense of purpose. Think she's trying to tell us something?

Nature's Perfect Food

2008-09-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

As I write this, Molly is sucking down MY cup of coffee. Full disclosure: my coffee with tons of sugar in it, so it's really more like a lukewarm liquid coffee lollipop. But still. She grabbed it away from me and screamed and cried when I tried to take it back. Emma took a sip and she slapped her hand til she had the mug again. She's an addict. This morning she woke up saying "Bunna. Bunna. Bunna." Which is the Amharic word for "coffee."

Matt has these horrible stories about when he was like 3 and supposedly he went around one of his parents' dinner parties when everyone was out of the room and finished off all their drinks--toddler Long Island Iced Tea. No one's feeding Molly alcohol (and even the veracity of Matt's story is hotly contested within the family). But I can't help but wonder what kind of effect all this fully-caffienated bunna is having on my daughter's developing brain. As she is slurping, she occasionally stops to babble urgently. I've never heard her speak so quickly. And this is what she's saying:

"A beee bee da bunna bin."
"A bunna be bunna be coffee. Chocla milk."
"A kiki juice. Bunna."
"Emma aggiggiggiggiggi bunna bunna bunna bunna ababa."

Should I be concerned?

I'm thinking diaper time will also be interesting.

Auf Wiedersehen

2008-08-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

On a recent episode of "Sesame Street," Elmo is talking with Heidi Klum about the word "cooperation." Molly, who only half-watches SS most of the time (Elmo and Cookie Monster are interesting, Maria and Alan, not so much) got very animated pointing at the screen and yelling "Mama! Mama!!" This has happened again on several repeated viewings. (Have I mentioned that the TV is a wonderful babysitter?) so I know it's not a fluke. Yay for me! I am Heidi Klum! Now Molly has identified lots of people as Mama and Daddy (incl. Daddy=cowboy singer/sometime actor Vaugh Monroe in the 1952 movie "Toughest Man in Arizona." Still, this is encouraging.

Daddy?

The resemblance is striking.

Sleeping and Other Pipedreams

2008-08-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

I've been putting off posting because the weekend before last we went with our lovely friends Will and Jennifer and their gorgeous children, Eli and Max, to an Ethiopian "culture camp" (which sounds somehow like an indoctrination facility and which I can't say or write without quotation marks) in Lake Geneva. I have many adorable pictures, mostly of Eli and Molly pulling around a rope. But I need to make room on my hard drive for the new pics, and since that day doesn't seem to be coming yet, I thought I'd post quickly (ha!) here.

Not much new, really. Sam has been free and easy since his drama camp ended a month ago. He's honing his mathematical and shopping skills simultaneously by obsessively watching "The Price Is Right" and toting up all the prizes he would have won if he'd been a contestant. Although Drew Carey is such a disappointment; his heart's just not in it when he weakly reminds us to "spay and neuter your pets--it's really important." Emma is babysitting like a babysitting fiend. Part of it is for her "mitzvah project" which is her "good works" project that she has to do as part of her Bat Mitzvah preparation. For that, she's volunteering over at Molly's old preschool and she comes home with many stories of the political machinations of three-year-old girls.

Speaking of which, I just checked my class list for the new school year and as of right now, I have 7 boys and ONE GIRL. That will change, for sure (for one thing, they wouldn't let me have a class with only 8 kids, they'll let me go and absorb my class first) and in our school, mobility is so high that the class list I see today may not bear any relationship with the one I find on the first day of school. But still. Last year, I had 9 girls and 5 (then 4) boys and it was a Mean Girls Fiesta. I felt like Tina Fey in a class full of Rachel McAdamses. I won't have that problem with 7 boys, they're just not mean and petty like that. But they do like to run around a lot and hit each other with blocks. Good times.

Molly's pottying proceeds apace, and I couldn't be prouder. She peed yesterday, pooped this morning. If I were home with her on a permanent basis I'd be tempted to just put her in underwear and upholster the house in plastic wrap. But since that's not the case, and since she's not yet 2, I figure we'll let it ride. I'm so proud of her; she's WAY ahead of Em and Sam at the same age.

Molly's latest trick is to take off running any chance she gets. But when she does, she announces it, yelling: "Running! Running!" She's pretty fast and I figure she's got a genetic predisposition to be an Olympic marathon superstar. I like to think of her at the 2028 Olympic Games, chugging down the road in wherever the hell the games will be, far ahead of her competitors, yelling, "Running! Running!"

In less impressive news, my lovely youngest still will not go to sleep in her own bed. It's becoming a real problem. She's 20 months old. Because of her particular history, I have been even more reluctant than I was with Em and Sam to plunk her in her crib and close the door and let her cry it out, "SuperNanny-style." We tried to "Ferberize" Em and Sam this way, with less than stellar results. (I slept on Emma's floor for years.) In Molly's case, since she had so much early loss, it quite literally breaks my heart to let her cry in her room, as I did for a little while tonight until I couldn't take it anymore. Matt's solution to get her to sleep is to take her out in the car or the stroller until she falls asleep. I think it's sort of the ANWAR-drilling approach to baby sleeping: a quick fix but one that doesn't lead to long-term independence. Of course, I have no better options. Tonight she was quite simply exhausted, screeching, rubbing her eyes, whipping herself around, it was painful for me to watch how tired she was. She wouldn't settle on the couch, she wouldn't fall asleep in the mei tai, so I finally took her to her crib and put her in. And left the room. And she wailed pitifully for 2 minutes til I came back in. Thanks, Dr. Ferber. Then I tried one more time, with equally horrifying results. I couldn't take the crying and the "mamas" and "daddys" and finally the "all dones" coming from her room. So we came back downstairs and, finally, she settled on her couch with all her accessories: blanket and blue doggy toy, and finally finally fell asleep. But it was painful. And she still can't sleep alone. Apparently she falls asleep fine at preschool. I also know at preschool (because I've seen it) that even if she's crying pitifully when I leave, she stops within seconds of my being out of sight and is perfectly happy and content. So why is sleeping time so different?

At this rate, I'm not sure what we'll do. She goes into her crib generally when she's already asleep, wakes up halfway through the night, and comes into our bed, where usually she can sleep just fine. I worry that she not feel abandoned. This is actually my deepest fear for Molly, that she not feel abandoned. And so I'm inclined to let her keep up this ultimately unhealthy sleep pattern until she's old enough to sneak out after curfew.

My work here is done.

2008-07-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Last night we were all sitting on the couch watching "The Daily Show." The theme song had hardly finished and the camera barely stopped zooming when Molly started chanting "'Bama! Obama!"

P.S. The first story that night was about... Obama.

Feliz cumpleanos a mi

2008-07-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow's my birthday. Today seemed like the time to ask a few important questions.

1. Why does it feel like summer's over even though there's still a month left?
2. Now that Molly's in daycare, why is it still impossible for me to clean the bathrooms?
3. How do I keep a toddler from sticking her hands in the toilet bowl?
4. How do I get a 10-year-old boy to take showers on a regular basis?
5. How can ordering Bat Mitzvah invitations take up so much energy?
6. How did I end up with a 13 year old daughter, anyway?

Adriana, my girlfriend from Brazil, emailed me yesterday. I still feel like I'm 16 and rockin' the caipirinhas with her at a samba club in Sao Paulo. How did I ever get to be 41?

Maternal guilt and other certainties

2008-07-20T13:49:00.000-07:00

Big doings at the Cibula household. Well, not really, but we did set up the kiddie pool and the slip 'n' slide in the backyard. Everyone had a grand old time, although Sammy's still perfecting the art of slip and sliding--he goes down the track on his knees.

Yesterday we bought Sammy a brand-new bike for his birthday. This was especially exciting because Sam is only now learning to ride a bike. He'd hate me for printing this for all the world to see. But he takes after his athletically challenged mother's side of the family. We never really saw the point in all of this "exercise" and "locomotion." Until recently, Sammy has had no interest in learning to ride. But out of the blue last week, he announced that his goal this summer is to learn to ride a bike. So it's a really big deal for him. We got him a beautiful new blue Trek bike as an early birthday present (after mean mommy rejected the yellow and gold "Low-rider" that Sam and his dad found :-( ) and I'm happy to say that Sam's doing just great, thank you.

Last weekend, Sam lit up the stage as the Third Knight in the Children's Theater of Madison production of "Once Upon a Mattress." He was bitterly disappointed at not getting a bigger role, til he learned he had a line. Such a diva. He also got to write and perform an original monologue in one of the shows where he explained his character's back story (he informed us all that he was "Sir Juan the Disgruntled O'Mayhem" and the rightful heir to the Irish throne). He had a totally fantastic time, and much to his chagrin he apparently became the mascot/pet of all the middle and high school girls in the show. They liked to "hoist" him and carry him around. Unfortunately, if he wants to continue in theater he'll have to get used to that. Emma's doing a class at the Four Seasons Theatre and she's performing a musical dance/singing dealy this week. As part of her class, they brought in professionals from different aspects of theater so she not only learned how to slam someone's head into a chair, but she also got made up like a geisha. Take a look.

Emma as a geisha. She had a wig on, too, but they took that off before the picture was taken.

In other major news, Molly started her new daycare this week, which has led to much guilt, angst, and consternation for, well, me. As I've said before, I believe that the entire daycare/preschool process is fraught with peril. The preschool Molly attended last year was fabulous, but I knew that because both Em and Sam went there, and the teachers haven't changed since they were there, which is rare enough in itself. But last year, when I was searching for a spot for Molly, I visited some places that were pretty damn depressing. Last year, Molly did a daycare hybrid. She spent 3 days a week at the old preschool and 2 days first with her dad and then with our friends and their little boy. Which worked out really well. But our friends just brought home their second little boy from Ethiopia and needless to say, they're a little busy. And we wanted to send Molly to the same place every day. The old preschool didn't have a 5 day spot, so we had to find something new. Originally, my plan was that we wouldn't have to start a new daycare til the fall. After all, what's the point of being a teacher if you can't spend the summer with your own kids? But best laid plans, blah blah. The daycare that we chose had a guaranteed opening in July or not at all, so last week I loaded her up and sent her off.

There are some really nice things about this new place. They feed the kids lunch, which means we don't have to pack it, and the food is actually really nice; homemade scones and pasta and ratatouille and lots of fresh fruit. An astonishing amount of meat, but they have a vegetarian option every day, so Molly's taken care of. They sell fair trade coffee to the parents, which is a bonus. They have music and Spanish classes for the kids every week. It's cheaper than the old school and drop-off time is earlier, which is a bonus since Matt and I both work on the other side of town and I have to be at work at 7:30 :-(. That's a.m. I think if we get ourselves organized Matt and I can actually carpool to work this year (which we couldn't last year because the preschool opened too late) and save a buttload on gas.

And to be very honest about it, although I love hanging out with Molly, I think she was getting pretty bored with her mama. Don't get me wrong, I think she likes me fine, but 6 hours a day going up and down the stairs gets old. The park is fun, but my tolerance for swinging isn't nearly as large as hers. And my tried-and-true strategy of getting her to nap by setting her on my tummy and putting on a Lifetime movie to bore her to sleep may be effective, but probably isn't in Dr. Brazleton's book of childrearing tips. When we visited the school, I kept my eagle-eyes peeled for signs that they beat the children or subcontracted them out to soccer ball factories, but so far no evidence of any wrongdoing. And Molly, who spent so many of her early months surrounded by peers (not to mention the last year while I was working) loves all the stimulation, different things to do, and the little toddler-size sink where she can wash her hands 150 times a day. Drop-off time is still hairy. After about Day 2, she figured out that I might leave, so although she trots happily into her classroom, once we get there she tries to make sure that I stay there with her. Good news is that, since it's summer, I have more time to spend detangling myself from her, and hopefully by Sept. it won't be an issue anymore. I have to sneak out while she's washing her hands for the sixth time in order to avoid major problems, which makes me sad, but the day I tried to make a big production about saying goodbye it was way worse. When we pick her up at the end of the day, she's showing no signs of PTS or trauma. Usually she's just riding a Big Wheel. So I think all will be well. Her Lifetime network viewing has dropped substantially. On the other hand, Emma's seen the light and the joys of the Lifetime "Moment of Truth" movie. When one door closes, another opens.

Then and now.

2008-07-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

Molly Fanaye at the guest house in Addis Ababa a day or so after we took custody of her, July 2007.

Molly now, July 2008

It's been a year. A whole year since we traveled to Ethiopia to bring Molly home. And a crazy year, with my new job and a whole lot of adjusting--Sammy had to adjust to being a big brother, Emma had to adjust to being a mini-mommy, and we all had to adjust to having a baby-now-toddler in the house again!

I'm writing this as Molly sits in her high chair--an increasingly rare occurrence as she'd much rather be sitting up at a big chair at the table--and eats some peanut butter on bread. She's nodding her head, her crazy/beautiful curls are everywhere, and she's looking at me with a very serious expression, nodding her head, and yelling "No, no, Abe!" Abe is our cat, and he hears "no" a lot.

I've been trying to figure out how to write this post without it devolving into triteness and cliché. It's going to be hard.

People ask us about the adoption, and what it was like, how Molly's adjusted, and all that. And I tell them, it was the most wonderful, amazing, and life-changing experience. But it's something that I also feel like I can't adequately explain to people without resorting to words like "wonderful, amazing, and life-changing." It's really a case of "you had to be there."

I can't imagine not having this little girl in our lives. She is gorgeous, smart, funny, and kind. She's a whirl of energy; she never ever ever stops moving. And she's stubborn and strong-willed and she knows what she wants. She is no pushover. She loves bubbles, and Teletubbies, and Elmo, and kitties, and dancing, and music, and splashing in puddles. And cheese. I feel like we're the luckiest family in the world, with the most wonderful children. Sometimes still, a year after she came home, I still look at her and I'm overcome by how much I love her, how incredible she is, how amazing. I still can’t believe I get to be her mother.

Molly turned 19 months old on July 7th, which was the anniversary of the day we first met her. (As Sammy likes to point out, we met Molly on her 7-month birthday: 7-7-07.) The whole family—Matt, me, Sam, Emma, my mom and stepdad, and Molly’s cousins, Belle, and Nicholas—celebrated “gotcha day” with an ice cream cake and a song for Molly. The first day we met Molly she was so scared and passive. She didn't cry, just stayed really still, staring with her big beautiful eyes. She did smile and laugh for her nannies at the care center but she was very wisely wary of us, these strange people who kept talking to her and wanting to pick her up. The first morning we met her I held her for hours but she wouldn't sleep, just sat tensely in my lap. Finally, Emma held her and after a long long while she drifted off. I didn't really see her smile much for us that whole first week in Addis.

What a difference in a year. Today, our Molly Fanaye is a joyful and vivacious little girl. So happy and ready to laugh. She is friendly but wisely wary of new people, although she warms up quickly. She loves her mama and daddy, adores her Emma and Sammy. When we brought Molly home at 7 months, she wasn't crawling or sitting up. But she sat up within a couple of weeks, crawled within a month and a half, and got up and started walking, as if on cue at 13 months. At her first checkup, she didn't even show up on the growth charts. But at her checkup on Wednesday she was 45th percentile for height and 30th for weight--within 2 months she popped right up on the growth-curve parabola and she's grown beautifully ever since. She's hitting all her milestones, she's so smart and funny and so beautiful.

Before we brought Molly home, and in those early days, I don't think we knew what we could expect. Whenever you have a new child, you don't know how they're going to develop, what issues you're going to face. Since Molly's first months were spent away from us, and since her earliest months became so traumatic, leaving her first family, I didn't know what kinds of issues we might face with bonding, attachment, development, lingering effects of nutrition--who knew? But if we could have ordered up a baby, we couldn't have had a more perfect little person to add to our family than Molly Fanaye. I just feel so lucky that I didn't get pregnant back when we were looking to have a third child. I can't imagine not having Molly in our family.

And at the same time, I think about Molly's birth mom every day. Especially now that we're celebrating our one-year famiversary. I have an unbreakable bond with a woman I met only once, and may or may not ever be able to see, talk to, write to, or hear from ever again. An amazing woman, to produce such an amazing girl. I don’t think there’s any way for us to express what a gift she gave to us, and although it’s a gift I would never wish she had to give away, I am beyond words with gratitude, respect, and love for her.

I wish that Molly's birth mom could see her now, and see how smart and beautiful she is. I know she wanted her to be smart and healthy and happy. I hope she would be happy with the job we are doing for her little girl. I know she would be so so very proud of her daughter.

We're not allowed to have direct contact with Molly's birth family. The reports that we send go to an office in Mudula, the town where Molly was born. Her birth mother can look at the reports and photos that we send, but we have no way of knowing if she knows that the reports are there, or has the resources to get to the office to see them. I hope that she does and that she can see what a gorgeous little person her daughter is. I wish I knew for sure.

In the courtyard of the care center on the first day we met Molly Fanaye. L to R: Emma, Molly Fanaye, me, Sam. Mom and Dennis are in the back. Molly was so tense, as you can see in her expression. When Molly was stressed sucked on her tongue--it's a calming reflex, like sucking her thumb. As you can see, she was sucking it hard that day. She still sucks her tongue when she's tired.

Fanaye, still in Addis, a couple of days later at the guest house.

Molly Fanaye now--a big 19 month old girl.

"You have got to be out of your freakin' minds."

Molly and her mama.

Sam, Molly, and Emma. Although Sammy looks like he has the mumps, he's really just eating a tortilla.

Hair Update

2008-07-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

Molly has dancer's legs. They're sturdy and strong. She's got these ridiculous calves that are completely well-defined and strong. And she's got my feet. A gajillion years ago when I took ballet, the one good thing that anyone ever said to me about my dancing prowess was that I had dancer's feet. They're basically rectangular, so the big toe and the little toe are almost on the same plane. It makes for a nice, stable dancing base and it's the best for toe shoes. Pity those folks with long feet and big toes that are much higher than their little toes--toe shoes are a nightmare. Molly's got my feet. They're adorable and square and they'll make a great base for dancing. I think she'll start with ballet but she'll decide it's too fussy. My bet: in the end she'll go a bit more avant: more Twyla Tharp or Alvin Ailey or Hubbard Street.

Right now she's doing a line dance with the Teletubbies.

We have to file a one-year post placement report for Ethiopia. Hard to believe that we've had Molly for a whole year already. It's amazing how much happened. A year ago today we were on a plane heading for Paris, to spend four days before we went to Addis. Or maybe we were already in Paris, sleeping off jetlag.

So in the service of listing Molly's accomplishments for the Powers that Be in ET, I counted over 30 words that Molly will say independently: from "all done" and "eat" to "sheep." She says "juice" (j00-eece) and "cookie" and "yogurt" (yo-yo). And she pooped in the potty last week. Of course, since then she's had no interest in trying again. Instead, she plays with the fab new Elmo potty seat we got her and says "Elmo poop." Which I'm sure he does, although I've never thought about it before.

Here're a few new pictures of Molly. In the winter and spring, after a few days, her hair straightened out into kinda wispy soft flyaways. But now that it's summer in Wisconsin (read: 100 percent humidity) she's always got this head full of crazy curls. They're still not the tight little curls--they're big fat soft curls that corkscrew out all over her head.

Molly is "hiding."

A shocking epiphany

2008-07-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

You know how you're in the grocery store and you hear a song like "Runaround Sue" or "California Girls" piped in over the PA and you think to yourself, "they're playing oldies to appeal to my mom and all the other middle aged people who shop here, so they'll be all nostalgic for their youth and buy more frozen asparagus or whatever"? You know how you get to feel all superior because get to avoid that kind of musical manipulation because the grocery store isn't really targeting your demographic because you're not old enough?

So yesterday I was at Whole Foods reaching for a can of tomato paste, and "Please Do Not Go" by the Violent Femmes comes on over the loudspeaker. And I start singing along. And then I stop dead. Because I suddenly realize that my beloved Violent Femmes are now the Beach Boys and "Please Do Not Go" is now "California Girls." And I'm the demographic that Whole Foods is trying to ply with warm fuzzy nostalgia so I buy more frozen asparagus.

When did I get so old?

My Girl Likes to Potty All the Time...

2008-06-28T19:43:00.001-07:00

Miss Molly loves the potty. She talks about it all the time. She points it out whenever possible. She pats our cat Abe and says "Potty. Potty." (Truth be known, I wish Abe would pay a bit more attention...).

So not to brag, but today Molly was in the bathroom and started getting really excited about seeing the potty. So I figured, why not try it? After all, Matt, Em, and Sam were at the movies, and we had nothing else to do. So I sat her down (we don't even have a toddler potty seat yet) and... she peed! In the potty! She's not quite 19 months old and it's not like we're expecting anything for like a year. I know it was serendipitous. But still! She peed! In the potty!

Now whenever she goes in the bathroom, she tries to pull down her little pants cuz she wants to sit on it again.

I'm so proud. At this point, she'll train way earlier than either her brother or her sister.

Miss Communication

2008-06-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

First of all, I need to send mucho amor and shout-outs to my beautiful and fabulous friend, Deirdre, whose gorgeous baby girl was born yesterday. Congratulations and love to you guys!

So lately I've been thinking that it's gotta really suck for Molly. She talks a blue streak and she knows exactly what she's saying. But we don't. All we can pick out are words. She's got more words every day; her new favorite is "cookie." Wonder why. But she'll be talking away and she'll say something like "Gack a bleep?" And we'll look at her and go, "What, honey?" And she'll repeat it, slowly and carefully because, well, she knows her parents aren't too swift: "Gack a bleep?" And we'll go, "uh-huh." At which point you can see her just get fed up and disgusted, and start with "mama. dada. Emma. Molly." Like, "ok, I can see that my higher conversation skills are lost with you people. I landed among a bunch of losers, and I'll have to come down to your level of discourse. You want me to point out my nose again? Sure. Whatever floats your boat."

Another oddity in Molly world: She's fantastic at learning new words and great with names. She quickly mastered mommy, dada, Emma, nana, Molly, her teachers' names, her friends at school (with complicated vowels and consonant combos), "Diss" (Dennis), etc. But her brother? He's called "Chhhhmmmmm." That's the Hebrew CHHH, like "CHHanukah" or "CHHHallah bread." No clue why she finds it so challenging to say "Sam," but there you go. A Molly roll call around our dinner table sounds like this: "Mama! Dada! Emma! Molly! Chhhhmmmm!"

The weather here has been beyond perfect and Molly, Chhhmmmm, and I made it to the park this week. Here are a few pictures of our adventures there.

Here's my beautiful baby girl. Note the ponytail spout. This was especially exciting because normally Molly protests when we put her hair up and her hair's starting to look like Einstein on a bad day.

Molly and Chhhmmm doing a little playground construction work.

Molly's a great Mommy to her Teletubby Po. Here's a meeting of the minds.

Molly singing Po to sleep.

Changing Po's diaper.

Molly favors all-natural diaper care products, like grass.

My other beautiful girl.

Why Johnny can spell.

2008-06-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

Three days into summer vaca and it's wonderful, even tho I've spent 2 of them at school so far. (Cleaning up my room and working on curriculum.) Planning to spend the next 2 at school, too. But whatev. It's summer. But before I leave the school year behind forever, I want to share one more story:

Kindergarteners are many things. But one thing that makes them kinda awesome is that they really truly love to learn. They haven't gotten tired of it yet. Most of them are totally into the idea of reading and spelling and all that stuff. It makes my job a leeetle bit easier.

So a couple of weeks ago, I'm walking my kids in from the playground first thing in the morning and one of my kids, J., looks at me and says "Ms. Cibula, 'F-R-E-E' does that spell 'free'?"

Now, it's 7:45 in the morning, which is, I'll point out, quite early, and I'm not at my mentally sharpest. But I look at her and I say, "You've been watching a lot of TV, haven't you?"

When your kids are learning spelling from the "FreeCreditReport.com" commercial, something is either very right or very wrong with the world.

No more pencils, no more books...

2008-06-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the last day of school. I have this recurring daymare that it's not really the last day of school and I have it wrong and I'm gonna get busted when I don't show up next week. But that's me. I have a crapload to do in my room and I haven't even stuffed my report card envelopes yet, so I need to get to school molto early tomorrow. School dismisses at 9:22 a.m. Yep, 9:22. It was 9:15 but we had to add 7 minutes to our day, every day, between March and now to make up for our 2 snow days this winter.

So today was our last real day of school. Tomorrow, I'm handing out diplomas and little presents and we're gonna have tearful goodbyes. I am a total wimp and manage to cry every time I leave a class. It happened with student teaching and I think it will be worse this time. I am going to try to hold it together, for everyone's sake.

I love kindergarten for a few reasons. One is that if kids are acting up, you can pick 'em up and move them to a safe spot. You can't do that with highschoolers; even short ones. But more to the point, kindergarteners love their teachers and they're not too cool to admit it. It's quite gratifying. I don't know if it's necessarily healthy, but my kids ask me if I can be their teacher next year. They're super excited to be first graders but at the same time they don't want to go. They really love kindergarten and they love our class and that's so fun, because I figure whatever I did or didn't do for them, they don't hate being in school. So I count that as a victory.

So yeah, I'm going to miss them this summer. I don't think it's sunk for me yet that the year's over. And next year they'll be big first graders and they probably won't even talk to me :-( . Plus, it's a little overwhelming to think that in the fall we start ALL OVER AGAIN with a brand-new crop....

Obama Wins!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-06-03T19:19:00.001-07:00

We have a lot of dandelions...

2008-05-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

...And Molly likes to eat them.

Nature Girl.

So pretty.

In case we needed another reason to avoid Scott's Turfbuilder.

It's 50 degrees outside, but we're thinkin' SUMMER

2008-05-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

Taking a temporary break from table dancing

Blogging instead of doing Spanish homework. I gave myself a year and a half to do a semester's worth of Spanish and now I have 12 days left to get in 11 assignments and 2 tests. Can it happen? Probably not. So here I am. Vamanos!

Four more weeks before summer vaca, which is pretty fabulous. Less fabulous is our always-changing daycare situation. When I started teaching last fall, I was really worried about the whole daycare thing, what with Molly being home only 2 months. So we put her in a great preschool 3 days a week and sent her to work with daddy the other 2 days. Which sounded like a great idea (I took Sam and Em to work w/me when they were babies) esp. since Matt works for my mom and grandma's a very tolerant boss. But our sleepy 9 month old turned into a very active 10/11/12 month old and it quickly became an untenable situation for Matt. Never mind that she loved her daddy more than me because she spent all day with him. So after winter break, we regrouped. Very lucky for us, our friend Jennifer, with her own gorgeous little boy from ET, agreed to watch Molly on her non-preschool days. I don't know how Jennifer does it, but it's been fabulous for us, because Molly loves her playmate, their toys are way cooler than ours, and she generally has an awesome time over there.

So now we're looking to next fall, and our preschool only has the same 3 day a week spot (It's university affiliated--doesn't anyone take sabbaticals or transfer schools anymore?) So we're switching her to a new preschool. This makes me nervous because I truly love the place she is. I trust the teachers absolutely, they are well trained, have been there forever, are just all-around wonderful. The 2-year-old teacher has been there since Sam started there (she was his 1 year old teacher and then his 2 year old teacher) and he's STILL her favorite kid. So there. I'm frankly worried about starting all over again, and I have a lot less info on this new place. There are a couple of up sides, however. First, it's cheaper. Second, they have a Spanish program for the kids, which is pretty cool. Maybe Molly can practice with me. Third, they have great food! Not only do they feed the kids lunch and 2 snacks (so no more bringing our own cobbled-together lunches for M: A bag of grapes, some tomatoes, some cheese in a bag...). Not only do they have vegetarian options for lunch every day. But the food looks really GOOD. Like homemade orange scones and fresh fruit compote good. It smells really good in there. It's weird. I've never seen anything like it. Not that I'm complaining.

Most importantly, however, they've got a spot for us. Sort of. I heard from them last week and they said they can sign us up if we can start paying in July. This, of course, is problematic. I'm off til September, and I want to spend the time with Molly. Plus, I can think of a couple of other ways to spend a couple grand than in preschool when M can stay home with me. Hm. But we decided that bird in hand is the way to go, and otherwise, we'd be starting again from scratch. Plus, it's still cheaper than full-time at her current school, even w/the extra summer tuition. So Molly will start on a part time flexible basis in July. The bonus is that this will give her a chance to transition REAALLLLLY SLOWWWLLLLY to the new school, instead of being plunked in there 8 hours a day on Sept. 2. Also, as my mom likes to point out, it will give her a chance to play with kids instead of watching "Jon and Kate Plus 8" on TLC with me all summer. Thanks mom. Now we just have to come up w/$1400 in the next day or so. Huh.

Molly's favorite activity is table dancing (see above). With one sweep, she can clear away everything on our makeshift coffee table, push off our 20 pound cat, and climb on up. Then she stomps around to her inner music. She also enjoys dancing on the pole outside our favorite Indian restaurant. At this rate, maybe she'll be able to pay her own way through preschool.

Yay! Pictures!

2008-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the woeful lack of postings and pictures. Excuses are that my camera died and I still haven't gotten around to buying a new one, so these pics are actually courtesy of my mom's camera, which I borrowed. Also, you'd think that by now I'd have figured out that when school starts at 7:45 in the morning, and school is 1/2 hour away, I should really go to sleep before midnight, because even getting up at 6:00 is pushing it. But no such luck. So I go to bed at 12:00 or 12:30 or 1:00 and I'm chronically sleep-deprived. Also trying desperately to finish a correspondence Spanish class that I should have finished a year ago. I'm hoping if I can do 16 assignments in about a month (ha!) I can count the credit toward a master's program. I'm not optimistic about finishing, but who knows...

April/May mean crazy weeks and crazy weekends. Sammy's been skipping Hebrew School for Little League and skipping them both for choir practice. But his big choir concert's tomorrow, the kids have a piano recital in a week, Hebrew school is finally(!) almost over and then we're full-on into summer activities. I am finally getting our summer plans in order. And we've got just 7 more weeks of school before my kinders are officially 1st graders. Yikes.

So, without any more rambling, here are some kinda-recent pics (late March, early April). More when my new camera comes...

Emma in a rare picture with flat-ironed hair.

Emma as a "Doll" after her performance in Guys and Dolls.

Sammy kicking back before Emma's performance

And here's Miss Molly

We call this the "Hey, John McCain! You just won the Virginia primary!" smile

What Would Nietzsche Do... at Quiet Rest Time?

2008-04-22T14:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in my class we were discussing Earth Day and ways to help the planet. We had a spirited discussion about recycling, and why it's important to help save our planet.

Me: We need to take care of the Earth. Because if we mess up this Earth, do we get another one?

My students (all together): Nooooooooo....

One student (seriously): Because God is dead.

And yes, I realize that nihilistic German philosophy isn't technically part of the kindergarten teaching standards.

Cultural Literacy

2008-04-12T23:18:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that Sammy may be the only 9-year-old boy in the world who can recognize Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke from his picture but who does not know that a chicken is a bird.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

A chicken

Keith Olbermann, eat your heart out.

2008-04-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Sam: What kind of animal is a chicken?

Me: Hmmm. You really don't know? Well, what does it have on its body?

Sam: Uhhh, fur?

Me: You really don't know?

Sam: Yes! I know!

Me: Well, what is it then?

Sam: The question is, what doesn't it have on its body?

Me: Answer the question!

Sam: Uhhh, hair?

Me (to assembled family members): He really doesn't know! He's not a farmer.

Matt: Ok, think about this. "Which came first the chicken or the..."

Sam: Egg!

Matt: And what kind of animal lays eggs, and has feathers, and wings...?

Me: I can't believe Sammy didn't know that a chicken was a bird.

Sam: Mom! I blanked! You were yelling at me like Chris Matthews and I blanked!

It's just a little eerie is all...

2008-03-29T21:41:00.001-07:00

Molly's language is exploding and she has new fun things to say every day now. Today's trick was holding her face in her hands a la Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone" and saying "Oh, no, oh, no." Very amusing.

One of her very favorite words to say is "Emma," and she uses it to refer not only to her big sis but also apparently to every older girl/young woman she sees or runs across. And Sam. She also says "dada" very specifically and only for Matt. And she says "mama," but she doesn't seem to necessarily be referring to me when she says it. It's just a more generalized term.

So a couple of days ago we were looking at some pictures from our trip to Ethiopia. (Molly was 7 months old when we got her and 3 months when she was relinquished into the agency care center.) So we got to the pics that we took the day we went South to Hosanna to meet Molly's birthmom: pictures of Matt, Emma, and me standing with her birth mother. Molly looked at the picture, pointed right to her birthmom (out of all the people in that crowded picture) and said "Mama."

Ok, that's kinda weird, right?

Cloth Diaper Controversy

2008-03-29T07:31:00.001-07:00

It's the latest controversy in our house: To cloth or not to cloth. First, a little background:

When Emma was a baby, lo those many years ago (12 1/2 to be exact) wanted to use cloth diapers. This was in the dark ages, before baby wearing (we had a crappy snugli that didn't work at all) and glass bottles and Bisphenol A-free plastic cups. So I had no fun natural baby stores or really any resources at all. I just trucked over to K-Mart and picked up a couple of packs of Gerber cloth dipes and bought a few diaperaps online. Which was a disaster. I didn't know how to use them, or wash them. And I've since learned that those Gerber diapers at the discount stores are filled w/polyfill that basically makes them anti-absorbent. They're great for wiping up cat puke, but not so great for containing baby pee and poop. So needless to say, every time poor Emma peed we had a big wet mess, and I was changing her clothes 12 times a day. So cloth diapering lasted about 4 days and we gave up.

That was 12 1/2 years ago. I didn't even bother w/Sam after that experience. But times have changed, and I was determined to give it another go. Mostly for environmental reasons. I hate the idea of throwing out all that nonbiodegradable paper and absorbent gel and crap (haha) that's in disposable diapers. Plus they're spendy. But I wanted to do it right this time. so before Molly even came home, I went to a seminar at a cute little natural/crunchy baby store in Madison and learned about everything I was supposed to be doing and everything I'd done wrong before. We waited til Molly'd been home for a couple a months, and then I bought some cute little cloth diapers (BumGenius, to be exact, although the politics at the website of the manufacturer still give me the creeps, so I'm not linking to them). They're supereasy to use and they come in cute colors. The plan was to do a "hybrid" where when Molly was at daycare or Matt was at work with her (back when he took her to work) we'd use disposables, to make everyone's life easier, and at home and on weekends she'd use cloth. So we started on this journey and everything seemed dandy.

And it was, for a while. But within a month or so, things got weird. Specifically, whenever Molly peed, the diapers started smelling really bad. They warn you about this at the cloth diaper sites and tell you that it's because of a) hard water (which is always a problem around these parts) and b) too much detergent residue on the diapers. So now I use as little detergent as possible and baking soda, and I wash the batch of diapers (I've only got 8--because of our hybrid plan) 4 TIMES in hot water--once w/the detergent/baking soda and 3 times just the water, each time to get rid of the residue. Which kinda makes me feel crappy because it negates the whole "environmental" aspect of the experiment. But whatever. The fine folks at Happy Bambino, my little local baby store, suggested using this stuff called "sport wash" which you buy at sporting goods stores and which hunters use to take the scent off their clothes so animals don't smell 'em coming, but politically and morally I can't support any product that's designed to help anybody kill another living creature, so I think that's kinda out.

So I thought things were better. But still, when she pees, it smells really strong. I think it's mostly an ammonia smell. But Matt calls it a "toxic chemical" smell. Which i think is a little harsh. I think she's just in her dipes for too long, because we're used to disposables, mostly, and we need to change them more often. I also think that I'm lazy, so I don't necessarily wash the diapers after 2 days, per manufacturers instructions, and if they didn't sit (or sit in the washer between hot washes) they'd be better. Upshot is, Molly has gotten irritated and Matt's blaming my beloved cloth diapers.

Now I am not so crazy that I will continue to use diapers if they're making my baby sore. But it seems to me that people have used cloth dipes for thousands of years and they had perfectly healthy bottoms. So I'm not ready to throw in the chinese prefold, so to speak, quite yet.

Matt has made it clear he wants nothing to do with these diapers. So that's fine. But here's my plan: I am going to buy new detergent that's supposed to be even more residue-free than the stuff I'm using (which is supposed to be pretty good, but nothing's perfect). I'm going to be a better/more consistent diaper-washer, because i fear that the sitting is perpetuating bacteria growth and that's our problem. And I'm going to try adding tea tree oil to the mix, to see if that acts as an anti-bac, too.

But it may be a lost cause. We may soon have a lot of adorable BumGenius 2.0s to sell on Craigslist, because for whatever reason, they're not working on our adorable baby's adorable bum.

Anyone w/any cloth diaper advice? I'd love to hear it.

Posting from sick bay

2008-02-29T09:18:00.000-08:00

Home sick today. We've had the flu or whatever you want to call it whizzing through our house. Sammy was sick first, cuz he's a little magnet for whatever bugs are in the ether. Then Matt got sick, which is weird cuz he never gets sick. But he was a mess: coughing and shivery and miserable. I've been teetering on the brink and working sick all week and last night the combo sinus headache/migraine/cough just did me in. The only ones who escaped so far are Emma and Molly. Molly's got a perpetually disgusting snotty nose, but that's hardly news. Healthy, healthy Emma is unscathed, although she did sprain her ankle in gym the other day. I always said gym is evil.

So I'm home. Hope to nap--soon.

It's rare to be alone, actually. Molly's off at daycare, so no baby chasing. Last night when we got home, I had a yucky headache, felt awful. Matt is on an out of town author visit. And inexplicably, Molly didn't want to sit quietly rubbing my temples and saying "I understand, I'll let you rest." Luckily, we have stored-up "Teletubbies" on the DVR. Ah, TV. Nature's babysitter. "Teletubbies" is the only thing that will keep Molly riveted and still. The minute she sees that Baby Sun she starts clapping. And she looks at us as if to say "Could it be? Really? 'Teletubbies'? Do you see this? Guys? Guys?" When she is crying, we sing the "Teletubbies" theme and it instantly calms her down. But then she starts looking at the TV and is a little confused/distressed that it's not on. We're just a tease.

"Teletubbies" has also led to Molly's newest favorite trick. If you ask her a question, especially, "Where have the Teletubbies gone?" She cocks her head to the side lifts her hands, and shrugs her shoulders. It's awesome.

So I realized it's been so long since I posted, and much has happened. Mostly, Molly started walking. It was right in the middle of January, just after winter break. She was 13 1/2 months, which officially makes her the earliest walker among all my kids. She really is fantastic. Maybe she'll potty train early, too!

When she walks, she leads with her belly, and her belly is considerable., which makes her look a little like Alfred Hitchcock.

Our camera crapped out, so I don't have good walking pictures of Molly, but I'll post a few fairly recent pics here.

Molly and Sammy.

MMMM... yogurt. Note the hair flip.

Molly engages in her favorite hobby--making phone calls. Emma hasn't taught her how to IM yet.

Molly and her buddy Abe share a moment.

One last comment: Can I say how excited I am that Wisconsin did the right thing and voted Obama by 17 percent. Woo-hoo!! Biting our nails here until Tuesday in Texas and Ohio. I just don't trust those Clintons. And they've got help now from the Repub. slime machine b/c everyone's scared of running against Barack. With good reason. I love him.

Sam's Newspaper Debut

2008-01-20T21:13:00.000-08:00

I promise to put up some new pictures soon--honest. But in the meantime, get a load of how Sammy made the paper. You gotta click on the pictures to see him, and he's visible for a brief glimpse in the video, too. We went to Sam's choir concert today and he sounded great :-). He told me that he plans to get famous as a pianist and trumpet player, then move on to Hollywood or Broadway. My very own Harry Connick, Jr.

Unanswered Questions

2008-01-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

When we traveled to Ethiopia to get Molly, we had the chance to meet her birth mother. It was an incredible, emotional experience, and I feel like I did it all wrong. There are so many things I wish I'd said to her, and asked her about Fanaye, but I was too caught up and overwhelmed by the enormity of the whole thing.

Since we've been back, I think about Fanaye's birth mother all the time. I know she must be thinking about her baby, and wondering if she's ok. Our agency, Children's Home Society, has a program that allows us to keep communication with her family in Ethiopia. We can send picture and letters, and hopefully, get letters back. So I spent this morning writing a letter to Fanaye's birth mother. But what do you say?

How can I express my gratitude for the gift that she gave us? As I type this, Molly is asleep on my chest in her mai tai, completely sweaty and sweet, lovely and perfect. How do I convey that to her birth mom? How can I adequately tell her how smart and gorgeous her daughter is? what a funny little person she is? How she makes all of our lives better? And if I try, will that just make her sad? will it just underscore a tragic situation? Will I be making things worse?

I have questions, too, that I forgot to ask, which I think will be important for Molly Fanaye as she grows. I have no idea if they're appropriate, but I'm asking them anyway.

Yikes.

But what about Bill Richardson?

2008-01-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

Political analysis of Hillary Clinton during last night's presidential debates. Commentary supplied by Sammy (age 9) and his cousin, Isabella (age 8).

Sammy: "She kept saying 'When I win.. I'm going to do this.' It really stood out to me. It was like she was saying, 'I'm great and all of you are no good.' I didn't like that."

Isabella: "She seems so confident. I liked that. It's like she was Manifesting."

Sammy: "She's probably not my first choice. In fact, she's pretty much my last choice. But I'd much rather have her win than any Republican."

Words Her Way

2008-01-04T13:56:00.000-08:00

The doctors keep asking whether Molly's saying any words, in light of her fluid-filled, plugged-up ears. But to my mind, her language is exploding. I can only imagine what'll happen when they put the tubes in her ears: SHAKESPEARE!

Here's a list of words Miss Fanaye likes to say (besides the obvious mama and daddy):

1. "Kitty." This is her favorite word. It's used to refer to cats, dogs, and her Grandpa Dennis. Today, we met my friend "Kitty"--oops! I meant "Katie" for lunch. Looking for kitties, she says "kiiiii-ttyyyyy" in a plaintive voice. And when she finds one, it's an excited/delighted "Kitty!" Sort of like "Eureka!"

2. "Nose" and "Eyes" She points to appropriate body parts and almost never pokes your eyes out.

3. "Hi." Kind of a no-brainer, that one.

4. "Yes" and "No."

5. "More." I'm trying to teach her some sign language, but I'm not sure she knows what this means. However, she can say "more" and make the ASL sign for it, too. But she she really wants more, she just reaches across the the table.

6. "Nice." We've been working really hard on not pulling the kitties' fur, so we say "NIIIIIIIIICE" whenever we gently pet the cats.

See? Not bad, huh?

The View from Here

2007-12-28T14:25:00.001-08:00

Madison's West Side--represent.

So it's snowing (again) and the house is messy (again) and I should be cleaning up or doing laundry or trying to figure out my kindergarten class literacy block or something. But everyone I know, up to and including my kids, have blogs now. And not one to jump too early on a trend, I figure it's time I had one, too. Actually, I've been meaning to start one for a while, if only to show off pictures of the kids. But I don't take enough pictures of the kids. And then there was school, and, well, the new TV season, and you get the idea. But it's winter break. And the writer's strike has opened up a hole in our recreational life (can you say "Crowned" anyone?). So I suddenly find myself with all this free time. A blog? What the hell.

Actually, winter break is flying by, surprise surprise. Not that we're doing much of anything. Yesterday Molly went to the ENT. She needs tubes in her ears. I was actually really curious about how they did a hearing test on a one-year-old. Turns out, it involves a microphone, Tigger, and Winnie-the-Pooh. Today, I introduced the kids to the iconic cinematic experience that is Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Mother of the Year right here.

So that's it for now. I gotta go buy a stove. (What's your opinion on ugly black and white speckled stovetops? Will we grow to hate our kitchen?) And since this is really just an excuse to post some pictures of Molly, I'll do that now. Later!

Molly in her new bear hat. Awesome, right?

And marinara sauce makes a lovely hair mask.

Miss Molly's preferred sleeping position. I've tried it, but I just can't get comfortable.
'

All my babies. Aren't they bee-you-ti-ful??