Egg Dealer

No one can say I don't know how to multi-task. I had to take Amelia back to the eye doctor yesterday (fourth time in 11 days). I swung into the parking lot, saw my favorite egg lady, rushed inside to sign Amelia in and Jo followed me in to deliver my eggs. I bet the receptionist thought I was crazy. But it was the only time I had to pick up my eggs! A mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do!

I sort of feel like this was a slow day.  No therapy today, only one doctor appointment for Mia, one (different doctor) office visit for paperwork, one negotiation with school for speech therapy appointments and only one email sent to to someone higher to fix a problem on a lower level.   Easy!  Just cleaning and kids to round the day out.  Oh, and a dinner guest. :)

Spa Night

Spa Night began as a simple night of me putting finger nail polish on Amelia's nails, and has evolved to a much more elaborate date night with my oldest.  Mostly with her additions.  I love it when she asks me for a spa night, because I also hear in her heart that she's asking to spend some one on one time with Mommy.  I see many of these nights in our future :)

We had a great time last night with it.  These days Spa Night takes hours.  We started at 5pm, with a hot bath, coconut oiled hair, braided hair, massage with scented lotion, and dinner.  After dinner, out to the exchange to smell candles, cologne, perfumes, look at jewelry and toys.  We topped it off by sitting on all the furniture to see how it felt.  She could  have kept on going all night except that the Exchange closed at 9.  We headed home, put on some Shaun the Sheep and sat there snuggled on the couch giggling while I painted her fingernails pink with glitter.  I love my little six  year old!  

Connected

Yesterday Amelia woke at 445 from what she later told me was a bad dream.  She didn't cry or whimper, but she told me that she wanted to turn the lights on and get up.  She wouldn't tell me the dream... actually, she refused.  She said she didn't want to talk about it so the details would not stick in her mind.  So, up at 5am we were.

Off and on all that morning and afternoon, Amelia would mention how she didn't like the lights in the house, the open doors, the curtains not being drawn on the windows, the bedclothes.  She was extremely clingy - literally not letting me out of her sight and most of the time walking a step beside or behind me, holding on to my clothing.  It made it a very difficult day to accomplish much.  She was very, very anxious and fearful in general.  I finally asked her if she would like to talk to Martha, a friend of the family and a retired family therapist who specialized in childhood trauma.  She was obviously relieved and said she would talk to Martha.  We tried calling, but she wasn't there, so we went to bed.

I can not emphasize enough how unusual this behavior was for Amelia, especially in light of how well she has been doing since this move.

Today we were fixing a late breakfast, and she asked me what time it was where Daddy was at.  I told her, and she said he was getting ready to go to bed.  I mentioned that he was probably still at work because he would be working late nights, and she told me again he was going to bed.

5 minutes later, Rafe called.  He told me he was on his way to bed, had gotten about halfway down the hall and decided to turn around and come back.  He mentioned how odd that was for him because he usually doesn't change his course of action to go back and make a phone call; he normally would have just made it the next day.  I asked him when he thought of turning back... it was 5 minutes prior.  We chitchatted about how ironic that was, the day, how the kids were doing, and he talked with everyone.  At the very end, I casually mentioned what happened to Amelia the day before.

Silence.

"Laurie, what time did you say she woke up?"

After doing a bit of logistics, he is silent again.  Then he hits me with this:

"At that time yesterday I was in the heart of an area known for XX strikes.  The recent group just before us was attacked and our vehicle had bullet holes in the windshield.  The night before I left for that place, I audio recorded a message to you and the kids.  Just in case.  I was there the whole time she was uneasy."

Next time Amelia is that anxious and uneasy, I'm stopping everything and praying for his safety.  And I told her that the lights she saw were Angel lights, telling her they were watching over Daddy.

Rafe's girls

Black Bean Soup and Cranberry Scones

2 lbs of black beans, soaked 24 hours

1/3 cup bacon fat

6 sm. to med. onions, diced

1 bunch celery, diced

equal amount of carrots, diced

3 bay leaves

2 tsp chile powder

2 tsp annato, ground

2 tsp ground thyme

1-2 tbsp ground cumin

1/2 lb. diced ham

several swirls of molasses

6 cubes chipotle bouillon 

home made chicken stock

canned chicken stock

juice and fat from breakfast sausage

Cook till tender and mash with a blender in the pot.  Served with cornbread muffins and garnish with cilantro, cheese and greek yogurt.  The amounts are approximate on most items...I didn't really measure.  The soup didn't need salt or pepper because of the salt from the other ingredients. The molasses really mellowed the soup; I blended it in the pot with a hand blender when it was finished.  

 Amelia and her little friends making cranberry scone dough with me. 

Amelia's first fried egg

Amelia wanted to make her own breakfast yesterday, so we had a lesson on fried eggs.  I like mine 

without the browned edges, but she knew what she wanted and went for it!  She says she likes the face her eggs made.  So proud of my little 6 year old chef!

Imagine my surprise...

to walk into the living room and see this:  

I never thought when I had a girl that I would have a house full of rocks, leaves, dirt, clay, sticks, bugs and lizards, and jeans with holes in them after only a few months.  She found this outside and brought it in.  Just left it laying around.  Niiiiiiiiice.  I love my nature girl, but this will take some getting used to!

Bundle of Energy

I took these videos the night Rafe left for deployment.  We sat around the fire all day escaping from the cold and wet rain outside. Looking at Olivia running around made me think of how much I wished I had seen a video like this when she was born.  I could not have imagined at that time how much she would be able to do.  Not only was she born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, but the additional birth trauma left her so motionless for so long that it was a celebration if she just turned her own head.  Now sometimes I can't catch her if she decides to run around the "loop" of the kitchen/dining room/livingroom/hall of the house!  

Nature Girl

Amelia is definitely my little nature girl.   I have a biologist friend from early in our days at Lejeune when Rafe was still flying Cobras that gifted her as a newborn with her very own fishing rod (which we still have, by the way).  I'm convinced that was secretly a fairy godmother touch, because she loves all things nature.  Someday we'll go visit this lovely woman and her children, because Bianca now lives and works in one of the coolest places in the United States - Yellowstone Park.

My fairy princess daughter regales me with tales of time at the playground playing with worms, and how some of the "mean kids" are not very nice to the worms.  She likes flies because they tickle.  She hunts ladybugs when she can and was seriously disappointed this year at the diminished ladybug population in our back yard.  She wants to be a dragon when she grows up and sometimes I wonder... 

Amelia and one of her little girl friends had an experiment feeding fire ants bread and once they all came out she decided to collect some in a tic-tac box.  Every time this little girl comes over, I give them both my stale bread, nuts, and anything similar and they throw it around outside and try to find what's left of the last stuff they put out.  I've never seen two happier girls, running around and giggling and playing with bugs.

She had a pet roly poly named "Holy Moly Roly Poly".  The name alone still makes me laugh every time I think about it.  I think Rafe tried to convince her to call it Rock and Roly Poly.  

 We have a dead fly in a dish right now because she's not quite done looking at it with a magnifying glass, although I am really ready to have that thing gone. There are cups everywhere in my house with dead bugs that she was certain would live this time with just the right addition of dirt, grass and Spanish moss.  I tried to throw one away today and OH. THE. TEARS.   

She's always outside digging in the dirt and making things out of sticks.  She recently made a stick house in one of my flowerpots, and sometimes takes my plants and decides to help me by planting them in the yard, where they promptly get mowed over by the lawn service.  She's undeterred, however, and is soon back at it.   She gets so tickled by helping me and is so proud of herself that I think a few brutally murdered plants are worth it.  

Amelia  has a Special Treasures box and it's full of  feathers and shells and rocks and even pieces of concrete that she finds fascinating.  We had it in a small box and it's now in a large shoebox.  I convinced her the other day to let me use some of her special rocks in the bottom of some of my pots, but it was hard work at first until she realized they would be more protected that way :)  

Recently we decided to try and have a vacation in Silver Dollar City on our way back from Texas to see one of my nephew graduate.  Gas is so expensive, we were looking to save money by camping out when we got there.  When she heard that we *might* camp, I thought she was going to have a heart attack from excitement.  She's never camped or fished before, but she has asked for both for several years.  Amelia went running down the hallway, hooting and jumping and running in circles.  

She caught a salamander in a jar earlier this week, but we convinced her to take it to school and then let it loose in the garden after showing it to her friends.  Tonight as we left the house for a walk along the water to see the stars and the Super Moon (her reward for helping clean the house today), she made me catch a tiny frog climbing the wall of our house.  Mia thought it was hilarious that the frog "pottied on Mommy!!!" but I'm still traumatized from frog urine in my face.  It's sitting on our front porch right now, waiting to be released back into the wild.  

She loves walks in the dark and looking at the stars.  Tonight with the breezes blowing and the moonlight shining off the water, I realized once again how lucky I am to have her as my daughter and how uniquely she is her own person. She'll take me places I would never go on my own (Frog hunting, for one) and I'm better for it.  

This is Amelia three years ago, when she was 2 - the same age Olivia is now. 

Rockin' it!

Amelia:

"Mama!  I need to tell you something.  We're doing weaving at school and I LOVE weaving.  Love, love, LOVE it!!  At first I didn't know how, then Maddy showed me, and now I'm rockin' it!!"

I think Mia just said her first slang.  I loved how she said it.  It was so cute to hear it, yet gave me just a twinge of heartbreak because she sounded so grown up.  I feel very old-fashioned, which will come as quite a shock to anyone who knew me pre-mom.  Especially my own mother!  

Coming back from the commissary today, I turned down the street behind our house on Parris Island to see Rafe and Amelia over by the pull up bars by the BOQ. It's become their "thing" lately to go over there and exercise. Amelia saw me and began running fast and hard across the field. I was overwhelmed with love and joy seeing her run in her bright orange shirt and her long blond hair streaming in the wind behind her racing toward me.

When I finally made it back into the house, she was so excited to tell me about the "catapidders that emerged today". Rafe and I just looked at each other over her head and smiled, both of us making "Can you believe it?" faces at each other for our five year old saying "emerged" instead of "came out".


Which is what we probably would have said.  Our conversational skills are obviously far below the level of our five year old.  :)

Illumination Flares

I love listening to Amelia when she finds a new word, many syllables long, to try out.  She carefully wraps her mouth around the word, speaking slowly and drawing out each syllable with delight.

After bible study tonight, Rafe went outside to look at the stars, something he does quite often at night. Our back yard is a huge soccer and baseball field, no lights.  Beyond that are just a few buildings and then the massive oak trees, marsh and ocean inlet.  The breezes are gorgeous coming off the water and you can smell oysters in the air.  There are few lights this side of the island and no traffic this time of night.  Or any time, really, except on the breakfast, lunch and dinner times of Marines going to work, coming home for lunch or coming home from work in the evening.  And even then, it's about 4-6 families this side of the island.

The stars are visible; although not as visible when we first moved here and they hadn't put up street lights yet.  I had forgotten until then how many stars were actually still visible when not polluted by the lights of the city.

Amelia went out with him tonight, and later when I went out with Olivia to meet them, she was snug in Rafe's arms as they were exploring the heavens together and he teaching her about the stars.  It sounds romantic, but I personally think he's teaching her star navigation in preparation for the zombie apocalypse and our run off the grid.

As I came toward them, Amelia turned to me and excitedly said, "Mommy, I've been watching the ee loom in a shun flares!  They look like stars with smoke and then snow and, and, and..."  She was going on and on about the flares.  She was learning to pinpoint their location on the island while the Marines played with fire somewhere off in the distance.  She actually was better at tracking the flares then I was, but that's probably because I'm old and decrepit and she's not.  :)  

I wonder what she'll remember when she grows up, and if she'll remember this magical time on Parris Island... walking in the dark by the water and the trees at night, listening to the wind and smelling the salty marsh air and looking at the stars.  And the illumination flares.

Saturday Laundry

Start 'em early...

I like to pretend to myself that teaching my children to do housework early will lead them to think it's natural
and they do it with joy.   Olivia is so excited to vacuum!  She loves it.

But you can see how well that worked by looking at the girl on the left :)
 She's full of joy....watching her little sister vacuum.

Princess Amelia

Beans and Cornbread

Yesterday I decided to take a more proactive approach to family dinner and get back to meal planning again.  Rafe will eat just about anything, but the main reason I wanted to do it was for Amelia.  She isn't a big fan of not knowing what is for dinner.  I think she feels frustrated overall because it's her perception we never have anything she likes to eat, although she tells everyone that "Mama is a good cooker!".

I took out Rachel Ray's cookbook for kids, the Double Delicious cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld, and one of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food mags for them to look through and point out the pictures of food they wanted to try.  First off, RR didn't have pics and a lot of the food didn't seem that appetizing to me, so there were few takers on that one.  They found a lot in the other two they liked, including quinoa for breakfast (YEAH!).  But somewhere in the family planning session talking about favorite meals, Rafe told me what he'd really like to eat would be beans. Specifically, his dad's beans and cornbread.  His other favorite meal would be tbone steak, creamed corn, mashed potatoes and gravy and raw sliced onion.

Beans.

If I'd known this 10 years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of rushing around on busy nights making dinner!  Although once he told me he liked to eat raw onions with it as well, I was sort of glad when I thought about that combination coming back to haunt us later.

So for dinner that night he got the T-bone dinner (seasoned with smoked paprika, kosher salt, steak seasoning with fennel and garlic) with all the trimmings.

But today, apparently, was the bomb.  I made beans, sausage and cornbread.   Using nothing from scratch and it was the hands down favorite.  Good to know!

1 28oz can maple baked beans
1 15oz can pinto beans
1 slice leftover overcooked bacon, crumbled up to get rid of it in the beans
1 lb all beef smoked sausage, cut in half moon slices
Heat to simmering.

1 package of Betty Crocker cornbread mix
(which isn't that good by the way unless you eat it immediately, and very crumbly... I like my recipe better0
I subbed bacon grease and some leftover garlic butter for the butter in the cornbread recipe because I didn't feel like melting my good butter for the cornbread.
Cooked in cast iron skillet

1 sweet onion, diced and served on the side raw
 Mix in your beans right before eating.


Now we're all smelling fabulous and Rafe is taking Amelia to a blues concert.  Easy Sunday :)

My beloved Amelia - Fall 2011

We had so many gorgeous school pictures to choose from, but this one really captures an elusive part of her personality.   They took these pictures outside in the Montessori school common grounds.  I love this picture and it also makes me sad at the same time... she really looks so grown up in this picture.

The Tree as Art Form

Originally we were going to fully decorate for Christmas this year on Thanksgiving weekend.  We (and by we I mean the royal We as I simply watched as Rafe and Amelia did all the work) got as far as putting up the tree with the lights on before deciding it was too risky to put ornaments on the tree or decorations up with Destructor  Olivia running around the house.  

Somehow over the next few days, decorations still mysteriously appeared on the tree.  Every day I'd walk by, only to discover something new on the tree.  My photos are terrible, but you get the idea.  Toilet paper and paper towel tubes, musical instruments, windmills, necklaces, artwork and toys.  This is only the start... as the days went by it increased!  She even went so far as to make a Nativity scene at the bottom of the tree using mostly her imagination and just a few items.  Apparently I really fell down on the job this year.  At least one of us has the decorating gene!  She certainly didn't get it from me.  Must be Rafe's side of the family.  

This one touched me the most... her nativity scene.  The nest of branches is the manger, the piece of paper lying on the toilet paper tube is a drawing of baby Jesus and the tube is his crib, and there are drawings of the three wise men, some animals and something else.  The big tube is the star in the sky and of course the lovely parents to the left.  I think she's got a future in modern art.  

These are place settings she made... we all had one at our places at the table.

This was my only contribution to holiday decorations! :)

Amelia and her art

A few months ago, Mia's art teacher told me in an aside that while she wasn't supposed to have favorites, she really had a soft spot in her heart for Amelia in her class.  She told me that she actually had to work on not calling on Amelia first because she was always so eager to do exactly what the teacher asked and with much enthusiasm, and that she was actually an excellent artist.  In our house, we have a corner of our kitchen set up as her "craft table" - parts of which have since expanded to shelving elsewhere to hold her supplies.  She's always creating something out of the materials around her, constantly surprising us.   

Recently, in an order to begin to tame the art monster that threatens to overtake our available storage, I decided to start photographing her art and keeping it that way (takes up SO much less space).  In the process of photographing this (and your eyes aren't deceiving you - she created everything backwards): 

I discovered THIS:

I'm not sure what it means.  And I'm even less sure I want to ask.  

On the other hand, I was quite impressed with her cleverness.  Until I took the photo and looked

 on camera, there was no way to tell that there was a figure in the clay/playdough.

Probably screaming to get out.  :)

Marine kids think differently

It's interesting to me the ways that a personal family culture influences language and thoughts.  I see it happen all the time in our family but don't pay too much attention to how funny it is most of the time.

Today Amelia had to do some chores before breakfast (empty silverware from the dishwasher and gather all the towels for washing).  She can't reach some of the towels, so a while ago she devised a way to get them off the shower curtains and tall places by using a step stool and a pair of my really long grilling tongs (2 feet) from back in the day when I was still working as a Chef.  She pulls them down and sticks them in a big tub and then scoots the tub out to the laundry room to be washed.

About half an hour after the towels were started, she all of a sudden exclaims, "MOMMY!  That brown towel is camouflaged!  It's on the brown chair and I didn't see it!"  She starts giggling to herself and talking about how funny it is that a towel is camouflaged and I am thinking how funny it is that she didn't just say "hidden".