Showing posts with label everyday life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label everyday life. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Four and a Half






















Our sweet sweet babes turn 4 1/2 today. Yikes. The downhill slide to the big five. Thank goodness they are not starting kindergarten. We missed the cut-off by five days. My sister is registering our precious Cousin Avery for kindergarten and it hurts my heart. It can't be true.

I think we are doing what all 4 1/2 year old do: whine, dance, sing, build, color, whine, change clothes, read, whine, build puzzles. The girls both love art and their baby dolls. Elliott loves his little lego sets and is getting quite good at them. He also loves puzzles. Mazie says she wants to be a collector. She loves arranging all her little trinkets.

In our four and a half years, we've had several trips to the emergency room. Busted chins and cut thumbs. Elliott grabbed a knife and thought he'd cut him a slice of cheese. He cut his thumb instead. We got it glued shut. His sweet NanaLin mailed him a cheese slicer so he never finds himself in that predicament again. Lucia had to go to the emergency for a busted chin. She is a serious dancer and one evening she met the floor with too much force. The sweet nurse, who Lucia still talks about, taped it together and it has healed nicely. Mazie busted her chin open. H was driving her to the hospital when she saw the paramedics outside the drug store working on a Christmas parade float. She pulled in and they butterflied it.

Here are some of the things they've said over the past few months that H and I have loved.

One of our favorites is something Elliott has said several times in various forms. He loves to eat the tuna packets as a snack. He was at the table one night before bed eating tuna out of a bowl. Lucia asked him what he was eating. He told her, "It is chicken but some people call it petunia."

All three of them will say things like--Does C start with car? and H starts with house.

After I talked to Elliott about not pouring his milk down the drain he said, "I promise I'll do that not again."

Mazie calls her pigtails Pinktails. And Lucia calls freckles nickels. Elliott sometimes calls freckles ankles.

Lucia said she wanted to get a haircut. I asked her when she wanted to go. She said, "March 13th the sepril of April."

Elliott said one day when we lost a helium balloon, "I can't even see a wink of that balloon."

When we were cleaning up, Lucia said, "Only the left thing is I've got to throw these in the mistook."

One thing Elliott loves to do is get a hammer and bam stumps. He also loves to blow out candles. One day he hit his finger with the hammer.  I got a batman band-aid for him, kissed it, and put the band-aid on his hurt finger. I told him "I love Batman but he doesn't hold a candle to you." He said "No, Batman doesn't blow out candles."

Lucia also talk me one day that we need to take Aunt Tiff and Garrett his zippy cup so that we could "business" with them.

When we went to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D, Mazie said, "The glassess make the movie come out."

After Elliott hurt his toe, he said, "I didn't want it to happen to that toe."

Afraid we might have swept a missing puzzle piece up, Elliott said, "We might have swope it up."

Lucia told me one evening when Mazie was being mean to her, "Mazie is being tramatic ugly." I think she meant dramatic but it was also traumatic for Lucia.

We have one pair of little high heeled dress up shoes that the girls play with some times. Lucia was telling me she wanted to wear them and couldn't find them. I was having a brain freeze and couldn't think of what she was talking about. She said, "You know. My uphill shoes."

I have heard Lucia say the following, but I've also heard the other two say similar things. Maybe I should say I've evenly heard the others say it : "He helped her evenly" for He even helped her. Lucia loves to find deer prints when we walk in the woods. To say that she'd found another one, she said, "I found one evenly."

Elliott cracks us up when he says strangerous. It means strange to him. He has used his word on many occasion. He told Grandpa, "Lucia doesn't like butter. Isn't that strangerous?"

One night we were eating shrimp and Lucia turned to me and said, "Mama, thanks for not putting any bones in it."

We ate more tangerines this winter than you could shake a stick at. All three of the children called them Tamberines.

You know you have two daughters when you hear one tell the other, "Yours is sparkly and mine is glittery."

When Lucia found her doll naked, she brought her to me and said, "She has her bottom on." All three of them will still ask us if they can wear their feet when they want to go barefooted.

They all call the remote the commode or the cammote. It is funny to hear Mazie say, "No Elliott, I have the commode."

When Lucia stuck her pants in the wrong pant leg she said, "I was the matter with it."

Elliott has told us that God lives at Disneyland. He has also suggested that we "ask God if this is fingerpaint or brush paint."

Our son will also ask us "How do you think?" when showing us a painting he just did.

They all say "lose" for "use." But sometimes they say use for lose.

One night at supper I served Jello with fruit in it. Some thing the children had never seen before. Mazie looked at it and said, "Oh gahhhwd, What in the world tarnation?"

Instead of Dadgummit. They all three will say, "Awh dummick."

Lucia has said, "I wanted some candy and I was thoughting I wanted bubblegum."

Lucia was excited that she hit a balloon all the way up to the ceiling. She said, "Elliott, I have certain news to tell you."

After Halloween time, Elliott was wearing a plastic pumpkin ring. I asked him if he was wearing a ring, he said, "I asked it is it candy. He said no it's fruit."

Lucia, "If it was 89 100% to go past bedtime that would be right now."

Lucia told me one evening, "Bee is gonna come home in a few whiles."

Lucia also likes to exclaim thanksgiving in her own way. She has said, "Goodness sake we got the toys in before the big bad rain comes." Also, "Goodness we got to the icee house before the closed."

Mazie says, "It's no matter," instead of It doesn't matter.

Lucia told Elliott, "You better stop be roughing."

Here is a conversation H had with Mazie:
Mazie: "Did you know I used to be a dentist?"
H: "No, were you a dentist when you were three?"
Mazie: "No, I was a dentist when I was Lordy, Lordy, Mazie's 40."

Our cats have to stay outside at night. Lucia said to me one night, "When the dark isn't up we can go get the kitty."

Elliott and Lucia do not like butter. At breakfast one morning he asked me, "Is there just bread in my biscuit?"

We often here them say things like what Mazie told us when we told her it was about time to get out of the bathtub, "I want to stay in here a few whiles."

Lucia came to me crying, saying, "She was aggravating with us and we were being so mad."

One morning, we were painting rocks that we'd collected on a walk. Elliott asked me if I had anymore rocks for him to paint. I didn't. He said, "You are grossing me out." I ignored him, thinking he was talking to one of the rocks or to himself. He said it again. "You are grossing me out." I asked him if he was talking to me. He said, "Yes." I asked why he was saying that. He said, "Because you don't have anymore rocks for me to paint."

They all say things like "watch an eye out for it."

Elliott: "I asked her twice times."

Mazie, talking about bagels: "We didn't have these last morning the other day. So can we have then later ofter?"

Elliott told me: "Good for not losing the lid, Mama."

After spilling water out of the tub, Elliott said to his sisters, "Let's do eennie meenie miney mo to see who did it."

When Brandi Carlile's song "Dreams" came on, Lucia said to me, "Mama, this one rocks out."

Mazie realized "headache is kinda like you don't need a loud voice."

Mazie will also say, "Look, they are taller than each other."

Lucia says "goodness" instead of "thank goodness." As in, "Goodness we didn't lose your bracelet, Mazie."

Elliott has recently had a phase of not wanting his hair washed because he doesn't want the shampoo to burn his eyes. Who knows why, we've always used Johnson and Johnson. When I went to put shampoo in his hair one evening, he freaked out. "Does it say yes tears?" he asked me, instead of No More tears.

One night at the supper table, Lucia burped and I got onto her. She replied with, "Our bodies just don't think they're at the table and they burp it out."

We went to Christmas Eve service with my dad. Cousin Avery got to carry the Baby Jesus up to the front during the service. It was a plain wooden doll. The next day, Avery, Lucia, and Mazie were talking. One of my girls said, "Don't say a bad word or baby Jesus will spank you. Avery said, "Baby Jesus won't spank you because she's wooden."

Elliott's favorite number is fifty-eighty. He usually has fifty-eighty of something and whatever is about to happen usually happens in fifty-eighty minutes.







Monday, February 27, 2012

Rolling in the Ditch


Lucia singing one of everyone's favorite songs. Elliott taking a bath.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Mr. Foxy

We have fox squirrels where we live. We love watching them run and play and jump from tree to tree. We had a good rain yesterday and this little guy came out to play after the clouds passed.
A fox squirrel has a fluffy reddish tail and face markings that look like a bandit mask.
We call every fox squirrel we see "Mr. Foxy" and we always stop to watch them scamper and climb.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Books Read



I think it started on one of my trips to the Biltmore. One of the Mr. Vanderbilts kept some sort of record of all the books he read. Since 1998 I have used a postcard as a bookmark. Usually one of those black and white photographs of someone famous that they sell on the rack in Barnes & Noble or a reproduction of a painting. When I finish a book I write the title, author, and date finished on the back. I have a different card for every year from 1998 until now. Some years I read as few as three books, other years as many as 21.

Here are the books I read last year:
Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt
Letter from Point Clear by Dennis McFarland
Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See
As I Lay Dying by Wm. Faulkner
Write Away by Elizabeth George
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Highwater by Lynn Hightower
The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
Bellocq's Ophelia by Natasha Threthewey
Drifting into Darien by Janisse Ray
Georgia Bottoms--Mark Childress
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter--Tom Franklin

All the books I read last year were worth reading. I loved the Tom Franklin and Dennis McFarland books. The Optimist's Daughter was really really good. I'll be back for more Welty soon. Bellocq's Ophelia is narrative poetry and I loved it. Last year I heard Tom Franklin, Janisse Ray, and Natasha Trethewey speak, and I met Mark Childress. I have such conflicting feelings about As I Lay Dying. The way I describe it is that so much of reading it was like walking in chest-high water but then you'd come across a piece so beautiful it was like flying. And I loved the last page of The Sun Also Rises:
“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Thank you, Ernest. "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Fantastic line.



I looked back at my postcards from the past twelve years. These are the books that stayed with me the most.

1998
All Over but the Shouting by Rick Bragg *
The Color Purple by Alice Walker *
I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

1999
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Patton

2000
The Legacy of Luna by Julia Hill

2001
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant *
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

2002
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray *
Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford
The Alchemist by Apulo Coelho *

2003
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris
Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden
Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Faye Greene
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger *
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

2004
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
On Writing by Stephen King
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Huston

2005
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
This One and Magic Life by Anne George Carroll
Good Poems by Garrison Keillor

2006
Nora Jane: A Life in Stories by Ellen Gilchrist
Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

2007
New & Selected Poems Vol I by Mary Oliver *
Memories of My Melancholy Whores by G. G. Marquez
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

2008
Atchafalaya Houseboat by Gwen Roland
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

2009
The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips *
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers *
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee *
If you Want to Write by Brenda Ueland *
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith *

2010
What the world will look like when all the water leaves us by Laura van den Berg
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison *
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson *
Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

Born in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925, Flannery O'Connor began her education at the

Well, 2009 was definitely a fantastic year. If I could only go back to one year's books, it would be an easy decision. Also, I couldn't find Out Stealing Horses on a list but I know I read it recently and it was fantastic--"Because we do decide for ourselves when it hurts." I feel like I must be missing a recent piece of my list.

I put an asterisk by books I feel are, at least for me, necessary.

Some books I have on my radar for 2012 are The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, some Shakespeare, The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, some plays by Chekhov, A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White, The Last Girls by Lee Smith, Saving CeeCee Honycutt by Beth Hoffman, more poetry by Billy Collins and Natasha Trethewey, Entre Nous by Debra Ollivier, Modern Vintage Style by Emily Chalmers, One Bite at a Time by Tsh Oxenreider, and Nataline Chanin's new book that comes out next month.

I also hope this year to beginning reading chapter books to Lucia, Elliott, and Mazie. I am sure Charlotte's Web will be the first. I also want to try reading some Grimms' Fairy Tales to them.

Wishing you Happy Reading in 2012.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Mazie, Photographer

A different perspective. Through the eyes of a child. Mazie gives these gifts to us often. She is our photographer. She is always hijacking one of our phones to take pictures. She started out preferring her own face but she has learned how to look outward and capture people and sights around her.
The three always want to see the picture after it has been taken.













Monday, December 12, 2011

This is Us

One of my favorite love songs is "This is Us" by Mark Knopfler and EmmyLou Harris. A couple is looking back through the photo album of their life, reminiscing all the fun, crazy, wonderful times they had. Here are some of my favorite photos from the past months.

We have a bald eagle hanging out at our pond. He is beautiful and majestic. We are all so happy when we get to see him. He loves to sit in trees, and he is a very good fisher. We hope he stays for a while.
Grancy came for a visit and we had a lovely time with her.

Like you, we have been busy and enjoying life. As our small town life affords us, we've had several fun parades. We were most excited about the Christmas parade as we get to glimpse the big man in the flesh.

Lu was all about riding in the fire truck with her Bee. We tried to get her to march with the baton girls but she thought the rescue truck would be more fun.
We picked out our Christmas tree at our favorite farm over Thanksgiving weekend.

The three love taking scissors to just about anything. The netting on the tree was lots of fun. We had a gift left on our fireplace the morning after Thanksgiving. An elf we've named Tucker. Our favorite thing about Tucker is finding him in the morning.
Lu went to a dance camp one Saturday morning and had a great time.


We went to a lovely fall farm wedding. Everything about it was wonderful, especially playing on the round bales.

Halloween was fun. We were mermaids and a diver. Everyone did a good job manipulating their costumes.


We have acquired quite a few cats. The children love them to pieces.
My sweet girl Mazie loves fairies and mermaids.
The girls love drawing and all things art. Below Mazie has drawn a picture of "Lucia when she's older."

We went camping for the first time to help a good friend celebrate a big birthday.

We played soccer for the first time this fall. Mazie wasn't sure she wanted to play. She sat out the first practice but then decided she wanted to play with her brother and sister. I loved seeing their personalities. Mazie, who I often think is quite shy, was very much into the performance aspect of the game. Every time she touched the soccer ball, or even got near it, she would run over to us to make sure we saw or turn and wave to us.
Elliott would at times get into the game but he could easily be distracted by an ant hill or an orange cone or the moon coming up over the trees.
Lucia got the game the most. She really seemed to see the big picture of what was supposed to happen. She was intent of doing well but also had fun.
H and I really enjoyed watching them improve during the season. I think we will play spring soccer also.
My sister and her family came for a visit. Isn't this little Landon adorable? He is just as happy as he is cute. He has a lot of my dad and my dad's brothers to his look. We loved getting to spend time with him and getting to know his personality.


If I was to look for a silver lining in the dark cloud that is living so far from my sister, I'd say it would be getting to share novel aspects of our lives. When we visit Avery, we get to experience pieces of her life in Southern California that we don't have. When Avery visits us, we try to give her the Gulf and country experience. Avery really got into collecting cicada shells this visit. She also enjoyed feeding the goats and horses. We planted acorns in hopes that they would grow into big trees. We tried to lure the fox squirrel with a variety of nuts. We can't wait until we get to show Avery and Landon more of our world.

Below is the first photo of the now five grandchildren. Come back and see us soon, Tia Karen, Uncle Jon, Cousin Avery, and Baby Landon. We miss you every day.

Lucia loves to change clothes. She changes multiple times a day. Often she will wake up in different pajamas than she first went to bed in.
We were going to go to New Orleans to celebrate the three's fourth birthday but a storm decided to come through. So, we stayed home and celebrated on our own.


Below: My girls on their first day back at dance. The three with their new kittens--strays H found in town. One-Eyed Jack came first and then H found his sister in the same spot a few weeks later. Her name is Jill. My Mazie, caught under her bed with my make-up, trying to look like one of the most beautiful women the world has ever known. And, lastly, my sweet Bubby man, bringing me a bouquet of gardenias.




Sorry the pictures are a bit out of order and jumbled. I am, apparently, out of practice with uploading photos onto the blog.