So much fun with Uncle Perry!

Uncle Perry came to visit and the kids had a great time. Cal loved the attention and was so upset when we had to say good-bye.

Uncle Perry and the kids:


Amazing picture by Perry of Lissi's ice cream face:

10 years since graduation

Absolutely amazing. Ten years have already passed since graduating from college (sniff). What a fantastic and wonderful time in my life. I loved studying. I loved the freedom of being independent, but not fully independent. I loved the people I met and the friends that I made. I loved going out for coffee, eating at a cafeteria (no cooking!), and having very little to clean. I loved college.

Alas, that period of my life was fleeting. Wink has tried to relive it by returning to school (on and on and on....) but it isn't the same because of the high level of responsibility that we now have.

I miss my friends and wish I had been able to keep up with all of them. I have, however, kept up with several. All the friends pictured below are now married and the parents of 2 kiddos! How things have changed.... I miss those years!



Moving out of the dorms forever. Wink is busy loading up our "new" car.

Training Day 2

Lissi is doing so well. I took the kids to church this morning and had no problems at all. Our difficulty came at lunch when Lissi kept saying she needed to use the bathroom and then say she was "all done" within seconds of getting her on the toliet. It became obvious that she was holding her poop in because she was afraid it would hurt. When she could finally hold it no longer, we weren't fast enough and almost missed the toliet. Then minutes later she went again, but this time it was all in her underwear and was huge (about the size of a baseball!!!!!). She was inconsolable after that. Although she woke up from her nap dry (but in a diaper for nap time), she screached at the idea of using the toliet. We thought that it was all over for now. She'd been traumatized. But 15 minutes later she initiated using the toliet and all seemed back to normal again. :)

Tag. We're it.

Driving away today, I realized that our fence had been tagged. What a bummer. Wink went out today to buy replacement boards for the fence (to be installed tomorrow I hope). It makes me so angry the way that some people feel the need to "mark" their territory like animals.

Potty training. HE'S driving me crazy!

Today was Lissi's first day trying out her new underwear. She's done great! Three accidents, but not very big. With each of them she had not emptied her bladder and was able to "finish the job" on the toliet. We're trying to get her to drink so that she has more opportunities to practice. But she is hardly drinking anything today. We've tried water, 2 kinds of juice, and milk. She's only finished one cup of liquid all day.

Cal, on the other hand, had a major accident standing in front of the toliet after running inside. He was only wearing his underwear and t-shirt (wanted to look like his sister) and yet couldn't get it off fast enough. The puddle he made was HUGE. Then during nap time he woke himself up and went to the bathroom but couldn't get his jammies off fast enough (yes, he often wears jammies at nap time) and again made a puddle as deep as Crater Lake. He was bawling hysterically throughout this and the whole time I had him trying to wipe up his mess.

In the evening, we had a long drive to a barbeque/fund raiser. I thought about staying home so that we wouldn't have to worry about Lissi's bladder and because I thought taking this fun activity for Cal might be a logical consequence. But Wink convinced me that we'd be in better spirits there with the kids running around and not confined to the house with them. I had to make about 4 running trips to the bathroom with Lissi, but she did very well, even away from home.

Lissi weighs in at 19 lbs wet on our bathroom scale. I had to order underwear for her because Target only carries size 2T and up. Even then the underwear are huge on our little thing!

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered
Forgive them anyway

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives
Be kind anyway

If you are successful, you will win friends, some false and some true
Succeed anyway

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you
Be honest and frank anyway

What you spend your life building, someone destroys overnight
Build anyway

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous
Be happy anyway

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow
Do good anyway

Give the world your best anyway

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God
It was never between you and them anyway



This version, often called “Do Good” or “Do Good Anyway”, is found on the wall in the home for children that Mother Teresa established in Calcutta. The Original Version called “The Paradoxical Commandments,” was written by Dr. Kent M. Keith as part of a piece for student leaders.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain

Clothing rules in our home

thanks to Cal's unique sense of style, the following have become his "may" and "may not" clothing rules:
1. You may not wear dresses outside of the house
2. You may wear tights under pants
3. You may not wear tights over pants
4. You may wear mismatched socks
5. You may not wear your sister's mismatched socks
6. You may wear Robeez in the house
7. You may not wear muddy rain-boots in the house
8. You may test out new shoes in the house
9. You may not test out girl's shoes 3 sizes too small for you in the house (or anywhere for that matter)
10. You may change into pajamas at naptime (2pm)
11. You may not change into a NEW pair of pajamas again at bedtime
12. You may wear your clothes backwards
13. You may wear your shoes on the wrong feet
14. You may go out in the freezing cold in a t-shirt and shorts or the heat with a long sleeved shirt, but don't complain
15. You may wear your blanket as a toga dress
16. You may not wear hair bows outside of the house
17. You may wear crowns, tiaras, queues, buckets, shorts, tie-dye baby caps, swim caps, and boxes as hats
18. You may not wear mommy's nice clothes. Ever.
19. Super hero capes are always in style ;)

The baby is potty-training?!

Didn't I just go through this last spring, around the time of starting this blog?

Lissi is about 12 months ahead of where Cal was in terms of potty training. The girl tells us when she is going to have a BM and then does it on the toliet! If we put her on the toliet before bath, she now goes "peep" 100% of the time. I can't even believe it since this is not something we had every hoped for in our wildest dreams! She's only 20 months old!

That said, when she initiates, it's a big production to quickly whip off her clothes and her diaper (I can never got those tabs off fast enough) to stick her on the toliet. But we don't have to do that too often since she rarely excretes anything.

I've heard that girls were easier, but this seems a little too easy. What am I missing here????

Aqua sib power... activate!

This is the line I think of when I see these two looking so silly together. Sort of my take on "wonder twin power...active" back from the Super Heroes cartoon.

Cal's Rose Garden

Cal told Wink this morning that he was going to draw the Rose Garden. Here is what he came up with:

Mother's Day

Someone scheduled Wink's master's end of the year party for Mother's Day afternoon. Since the event was to run from 1-7 and include dinner, we decided that we would attend for the last few hours. I was excited for Cal since this was occuring at a small theme park and I knew he would enjoy some of the rides, including the train, merry-go-round, etc. We were told that tickets for rides would be covered by the school.

Lissi took a very long nap that afternoon and so we didn't get to the party until 4:45. Almost perfect timing, we decided, since we could eat and then go on a few rides. Unfortunetly, moments before we showed up the powers that be had returned all the unused tickets!! The office to give the tickets back apparently closes at 5pm, so we didn't get to take advantage of the free rides :( If only there had been some note about this in the flier, we would have woken Lissi up earlier and arrived with plenty of time to spare. Someone did locate one armband (indicating free rides for the day) so Cal got that. Then we bought 2 additional ride tickets and each parent got to go on one ride with Cal. So it wasn't a total bust, but I was still bummed. Wink (being much more optimistic than myself) said, "Look at it this way: We paid $4.50 and got 4 meals including steak, burgers, and hot dogs, as well as 2 rides."

Cal demonstrates his new tree climbing skills.


Cal decided to imitate a sloth.

Mommy and her babies :)

Learning to use a walking stick

While Cal and I went on the Merry-Go-Round, Lissi decided she was old enough to use daddy's walking stick. Here is her learning progression:

Hmmm... how does this thing work?

Wait, does it go close to my feet?

Now I start to walk with it, right?

I've got it! I turn it upside down!

Yahoo! I can even run with this thing!

What Cal does when he is supposed to be napping

He told me his was "spreading" out the clothes. I thought he meant that he was practicing folding them. I was trying to clean the house and listening to my book-on-tape so I basically told him to carry on quietly. I was quite surprised that instead of finding his clothes folded "Cal style"... he had redecorated his room! Aargh! I had him clean up, but his version of cleaning up was to shove everyone's clothes into one drawer!?

Adorable girls

Aren't they too cute!

This is how I feel today

Jeff Foxworthy's take on school teachers
YOU might be a school employee if....

...you believe the playground should be equipped with Ritalin salt lick

...you want to slap the next person who says, "Must be nice to work 8 to 3:30 and have summers off

...it is difficult to name your own child because there's no name you can come up with that doesn't bring high blood pressure as it is uttered

...you can tell it's a full moon or if it going to rain, snow, hail....anything!!! Without ever looking outside

...you believe, "shallow gene pool" should have its own box on a report card

...you believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says, "Boy, the kids sure are mellow today."

...when out in public, you feel the urge to snap your fingers at children you do not know and correct their behavior

...you have no social life between August and June

...you think people should have a government permit before being allowed to reproduce

...you wonder how some parents MANAGED to reproduce

...you laugh uncontrollably when people refer to the staff room as the "lounge."

...you encourage an obnoxious parent to check into charter schools or home schooling and are willing to donate the UHAUL boxes should they decided to move out of district

...you think caffeine should be available in intravenous form

...you can't imaging how the ACLU could think that covering your students chair with Velcro and then requiring uniforms made out of the corresponding Velcro could ever be misunderstood by the public

...meeting a child's parent instantly answers the question, "Why is this kid like this?"

...you would choose a mammogram over a parent conference

...you think someone should invent antibacterial pencils and crayons...and desks and chairs for that matter!!!

...the words "I have college debt for this?" has ever come out of your mouth

I could be wrong but...

These works of art seem extremely detailed for a 3 year old:


Cal did the coloring (sorry, can't line draw Spiderman yet!)



an entire city scene complete with roads, cars, airport, airplane, mountains, river, sky, and sun



an airplane with a hang-glider waiting below to catch jumping/falling passengers(!!!??!)

I find it especially amusing that a child so in-tune with details is drawing the airplane wheels on the top of the plane ;) I guess that is why the hang-glider is needed!

Spring Gardening

The kids played while I planted some corn, tomatoes, and zucchini. Cal helped by shaking "pepper" (actually dirt) over the entire garden.

All ready for swimming

This what the kids thought of the new goggles I bought them at the Dollar Store:

They both took the goggles to bed as their "special toy" this evening.

Special Olympics

After some initial HAIL and downpour, the sun emerged and we had some good races. We were literally scrunched together and huddled under a tarp trying to keep from being completely drenched. Later, the big puddles were particularly attractive for the Olympians and my kids alike! :)