Coopville

We spent the morning moving the chickens from the winter home to their spring/summer home, meaning, out of my garden, where they've been conditioning the soil, to their smaller pen, where they can condition the, uh, moss.

Look at the size of that cock!

As you can see from these photos, two of my children and their father love animals and don't mind getting covered in dirt and poop. Since I hold the important position of family chronicler, and I can't risk getting poop on the camera, I stay way back. Henry shoots at things with his slingshot, trying to look too busy to help. He also makes several long trips into the house to "use the bathroom". Grace flutters about, pretending to help, but being careful not to get anything on her beautiful green and pink dress with red leggings, purple coat, and blue ruffled and sequined shirt.

Hope

My daylilies are straining through the muck and mud of winter. The cold and dreary weather we've had of late has made everyone a little grumpy, but the bright little sprouts are going a long way to cheer me up. The other afternoon I was shushing Olivia while I watched President Obama on CNN. She's not used to the attention I've been paying to politics lately.

"What's the big deal about Barack Obama? Don't we always have a president? When he's done, it'll be someone else's turn," she said.

I love that my kids don't think it's any big deal that a guy who's father was a black immigrant is the President. They will grow up and really believe that any American citizen can be president, or anything they want to be, for that matter.


In unrelated news, we have finished the art room. The walls are clean, but within a month or two I suspect they will be covered with tape and paintings and recycled bits of trash beautiful artifacts. And really, we never were the formal dining room type of family.
Everyone had a hand in the transformation. And yes, we paint in our underwear. It eliminates the need for special painting clothes, duh. Who wrote that word on the wall? Tsk. Tsk.

Tidbits

I haven't had a computer for the past week while we're doing a little house project, so I'm reduced to short evenings with Mitch's laptop while surfing the tv for glimpses of my new bf, Barack. Also, there's not a lot to report here. The kids stayed home from school on Tuesday to watch their babydaddy take the oath of office (haha, just kidding, Mitch!).

Grace thought the only thing that could have made Aretha Franklin's inauguration hat more beautiful was if it had been purple.

Jack broke his last pair of glasses because he was fiddling with them out of boredom in math class. Not because he really wants contacts, he assured me.

Henry came home from school and had written "Tony Stark" (Ironman for you non-geeks) on his math papers instead of his own name. When questioned, he said, "Aw mom, math is boring. This makes it more fun."

Olivia seems to be following in my math footsteps, however. Today she wrote all her numbers backwards and began at the right hand corner. Also, she told me was going to move away because we don't treat her right in this family.

Absence makes the heart appreciate thy brother

Grace: Hey Mommy, are you and Daddy going out again tonight?

Poor Grace, I think to myself. We've spent too much time going out lately, and now she's feeling it.

Me: No, Grace, we're going to stay home and spend the evening with you kids tonight.

Grace: (disappointment in her voice) Oh. Well, maybe you should go out on a date with Daddy!

Me: I'm surprised! Why do you want us to go out again?

Grace: Well, Jack is a really good babysitter when you're gone, and he makes us popcorn and let's us play Animal Crossing on the Wii. Also, we get to stay up late.

Me: Are you saying you would prefer to have Jack take care of you instead of Dad and me?

Grace: Wellllll, I would say that, but it wouldn't be very nice, so I've decided I won't say it.

The tooth is out there

Last week, Olivia came shrieking into the room. "I HAVE TO GO TO THE DENTIST! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY TOOTH!" Sob, sob, cry, boogers, sob.

Turns out she had her first loose tooth. What kind of a freak show has never heard of a loose tooth, you ask? Well, in our family, with our, um, retentive personalities, no one wiggles their teeth, so the orthodontist orders them to be yanked by the dentist, which is what dear little Olivia was afraid of. Olivia is cut of a different cloth than the rest of us, though, so we have our first naturally lost tooth. Behold!:

Fairies eating strawberry shortcake

One of the things I love about having girls is that the simple act of walking through a room can bring all sorts of cuteness. Like these fairies, sitting at the art table, having some dessert. Or dolls wrapped in socks, and tucked into my slippers. Or teeny tiny hearts cut out of construction paper and taped all over the kitchen cabinets. These things are way cuter than what I would find, say, walking through a twelve year-old boy's room. I'm just sayin'.

A Poem. By Henry.

My mom is funny
My mom is nice
My mom is loving
My mom is caring

She has good jokes
She is a good gardener
She cleans a lot
She makes the best mac & cheese and mashed potatoes
She brought me soup in a thermos at school when I had my tooth pulled

I love her a lot
---------------------------------------------

Somebody's getting mac & cheese with a side of potatoes for dinner tonight.

Some of what he said is true enough. The part about bringing him soup in a Thermos, anyway. A more brutally realistic poem would read:

My mom is funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny strange.
My mom is nice after a few glasses of wine
My mom is loving, unless you've tracked chicken/dog shit into the house
My mom is caring. She really cares about bedtimes and chicken/dog shit in the house

She is the worst joke-teller in the world
She is a mediocre gardener at best (if it wasn't for all the bugs and dirt, she could be good)
She makes good mac & cheese and mashed potatoes (but not as good as Aunt Kimmy's)

She brought me soup in a thermos because she didn't want me whining about how hungry I was all day.

I love her a lot (that's my favorite part, and it's way true)

Karma, probably

My family members will love this. My lovely, blonde daughter Grace has been begging for purple hair for the past month or so. I know! I had purple hair once, and it stained and took forever to grow out. Also, bright red, orange, and pink. But no black, that was too trendy for me. Also, I was an angst-ridden teen then, and she's a kindergartener. Anywho, I got her this little fake hair extension kit with pink and purple hair extensions for Christmas. She wasn't too impressed, but has been dutifully wearing the purple hair pieces around the house. I'd be all for her getting a streak of purple in her hair, but I have no idea where to get something like that done. I suppose we'll have to head accross the water to the big city or something. She just informed me that she wants to take her Christmas money from Grandpa and Grandma to pay for it. Thanks, Dad!

Resolutions 2009

I always like going back and reading what our New Year's Resolutions were the year before, to see if anyone kept them. We never do, of course. However, I was thrilled to see that I did keep last year's resolution (to plant and maintain a garden). Yay for me! I'm not going to mess with success, so I'm going to keep the same resolution this year. Oh, and I'm also going to start dusting my treadmill more often. You should see how filthy it is. Also, I will continue to cuss like a sailor.

Mitch: Keep in better touch with friends and family (I made him join Facebook yesterday).

Jack: Learn to play guitar even better.

Henry: Spend more time reading (I swear I didn't feed that one to him).

Olivia: Ride my new bike without training wheels. Start first grade with a different teacher than Grace.

Grace: Put training wheels on my new bike, and learn to be a good reader. Stay in the same class as Olivia in first grade.

Winter break is ending, and it's a good thing, too, because my ass can barely fit in my jeans and we've been moving happy hour up a half hour every day, so now we're practically tossing 'em back after breakfast. 2009 is looking good. We'll have a new presidentthankyoujesus, all the kids will be going to school full time in the fallthankyoujesus, and I finally have floorsthankyoumitch. I hope the coming year brings you peace, health, happiness, and awesome shoes.