Love Those Nanas and Grandpas

It's so nice to have Nana come visit!

The kids love to read to her and play games; Nana never says no to "Will you play with me?" She never has something else on her plate like Mom might. And, she's come just for them, so she is always ready to help them dress or brush teeth (those things that Mom always says "you know how to get dressed yourself!"), get breakfast, watch the little one on the cold, snowy morning while the other 2 are ushered to school. And best of all, she's there to "I'll do the laundry, just give me your basket," or "I'll read to Evelyn, you go take a nap," and especially the "Let's just go out for dinner."

What a treasure. Thanks, Nana. Do you want to move in?
Oh, I didn't think so.
That's okay, the visit was great. (She even cleaned my toaster!)

The day after the grandparents flew home to North Carolina, they unpacked, repacked and drove down to the beach to spend a week. Sleeping late, eating out, reading books and napping. Oh, how nice. Is this to say that they need a complete vacation after visiting my house??! Probably.

How Much is Really in that Brain of Theirs?

So, Evelyn can read. I mean really, she can read. I know that she's 3 (3 1/2) but she-can-read!

Right now you're saying to yourself that I must have sat down with her multiple times a day since she was 18 months old quizzing her on all the little words in her little bedtime books until she could finally spout out what I wanted her to read (say). That's not how it happened.

In fact, Ric and I didn't even know she could read. Apparently Alex, her 5-year old brother taught her. One night about a month ago she comes out at bedtime with the Dick and Jane book that both of her older brothers learned to read on. She tells Ric that she can read it, so he plays along. She opens the book and PROCEEDS TO READ. Granted it was all "Oh oh. Oh, Dick. See Dick. Oh Dick." so we were surprised but not really bowled over by the whole thing. I mean, it's completely reasonable that, if taught, she could recognize the 3 words on the page and be able to point to and repeat them.

Well, it's been about a month and I swear now that she's reading these words, and many more. She's not sounding out phonetically, if you're wondering, but she's momorized and recognizing a lot of the words in this book and can get through about 5 of the first chapters of Dick and Jane. My mother (Nana) and Grandpa Clark arrived this evening and the kids read to them before bed. Even I couldn't believe that she's learned even more words in this book and can actually remember them. (Right now you're saying to yourself that she's just memorized the stories.) Well, it's not that. I can tell by the way that she points to each word as she's saying it, sometimes messes up, but stays on that word and then moves on. She's going word by word, not saying the story.

This is crazy. She's 3. Not even close to being 4.

Although I'll say that this parlor trick is nothing compared to my nephew, Robby, who can recall - to the digit- the populations, square mileage, and capitals of ALL the 50 states (and many countries). Oh, and he could do this at age 4. My boys didn't even know how to say a number in the hundreds, let alone the millions and hundred-thousands.

Sometimes our normal, regular kids are just amazing, just as they are. Makes me wonder what is in that brain of theirs. It's strange only knowing what they're capable of based on what comes out of their mouth, or how they perform in school, or how they get along with others. It's a weird feeling to realize that they are SO MUCH MORE THAN ALL THAT. And they are old enough that their little brain has grown beyond the baby stuff that as moms we have a total handle on.

I guess that means they're not babies any longer.

Daddy the Army Guy

So Ethan comes home from school with this little project he'd done where he had to make up his own flag. It has 19 stripes across it ("Because 19 is my favorite number."), five people on it ("for the five people in my family"), and a giant red heart with Ric in the middle, dressed in green and holding a machine gun. (Greeeaaaat.)

After I praised Ethan on what a good job he did on his flag (it was really detailed and well-done), and how I loved that it showed clearly how much he loves Ric, I then leaned in with the lecture about how he REALLY shouldn't draw pictures of guns on school projects.

I also informed him that dispite what he may think, Daddy really doesn't even carry a gun- he wields a stethoscope, a pen, and a Blackberry. "Oh," Ethan said.

Were we This Bad in our Youth?

So we go skiing this past weekend to celebrate our friends' son's 8th birthday (Happy Birthday, Conor!) and we're up in Keystone during the "36 Hours of Keystone" annual event. Basically the lifts are open for 36 hours straight where teams of skiers/boarders are encouraged to go for all 36 hours for some kind of prize. So you can imagine the person who is interested in skiing in the middle of the night.

Got it- not anyone over 24. Nor anyone sober.

It was quite a weekend. 3am awakenings of the kids coming off the slopes- "Whoo-hoo! Yea! That was AWESOME!"- yelled as loudly as possible outside of our window. And this had already gone on since the evening- when I tucked the kids in about 9:00pm, Ethan asked me to close the windows (they weren't open).

Ten years ago I'm sure I would have found this all a real hoot, not so much at the ripe OLD age of 36 (ouch!).

Well, the good thing about all of this was that these youngsters who had caught big air all night were too hung over to ski/board in the morning. So the rest of us had a great time with no crowds and no lift lines until about 11:00am. This is about when I noticed the fashion statement:

Ski pants below your butt.

What is this?! I barely understand why it's vogue to wear your jeans down to your knees, but SKI PANTS?? It's cold. Really, really cold. Normal people are wearing 18 layers of long underwear, turtle necks, balaclavas, double layered jackets, hats pulled down to meet our goggles which meet the gators around our necks, and these guys have their pants down to their knees. Maybe there's a thing for this type of fashion- like super-wicking, warm thermal, double layered underwear to go underneath. What do I know?

And that's just the guys. At -2 wind chill, the girls choose looking good over staying warm ALL the time. A long underwear shirt under a really cool, tight-fitting bubble vest with fuzzy hood, goggles but no hat, giant pants. I swear, this is totally what they look like. And it's -2. At about 18 degrees they switch to short sleeves but still have gloves.

Meanwhile at lunch when we doff our heavy clothes, I have my gay, ribbed turtleneck with the too-short sleeves tucked into my billowy ski pants and I take off my hat, even though I have TOTAL hat head and NO makeup whatsoever. Nobody would EVER try to pick ME up with the way I look on a ski day. And, I don't even care.

I think I've officially become an old fuddy-duddy.