School Vacation

Yes it really has taken me a full week to recover from vacation. Okay, that's not quite true. I'm not sure any of us has completely recovered .

Friday, at the end of my endurance, I loaded the kids into the car and said "Here's your camera, here's the map, we're going on an adventure." The only rule was, we weren't allowed to go anywhere we had been before. Easier said than done.

Violet was very excited about documenting our adventure for about 5 minutes. It always amuses me to see what she thinks are the important parts. The map. She took no less than 30 pictures of the map.

Stella, asleep. This is Stella's general state in the car.
Boots. Boots on the seat. Muddy boots on the seat.
Mommy on the phone talking to Auntie Karen. Auntie Karen said "Why don't you go see the big boot at L.L. Bean?So we did. I had actually seen the boot before, as had Violet when she was too young to remember, but Stella had never been there.
And it had been so long since I had been there, they had time to build a cool trout stream that you can pop your head into via a dome.And they have a cool big fake rock for trying out hiking boots. But all we found there were other quasi-hippie mamas and kids.
And because it was vacation week, there were some extra perks - face painting and L.L. Bear, who was actually one of the least creepy human-size-puppets I have ever seen. Good job, L.L. Bean.
The real adventure in all this was that when I saw the shrimp truck, I said "Hey Violet! You've never had shrimp, that will be an adventure." I bought 5 pounds of shrimp at the truck for $5. FIVE POUNDS! For FIVE DOLLARS! Then I opened the bag and found out why. They were whole. Not just whole so I have to break their little heads and beady eyes off. Whole as in also filled with eggs. Whole as in legs and antennae sticking out every which way. Of course Violet had to have one. How pensive is she with this shrimp?

I tried to clean them, I really did. But I just couldn't. Then I tried to give them away on Freecycle. Here is my ad:

One pound of whole shrimp I just bought off the truck in Yarmouth .
These are WHOLE shrimp, not peel and eat. I have tried, but I'm just
not up to cleaning them with the wee ones crawling around on the
floor, climbing on the counters and playing "shrimp family" with them.
No, you canNOT take them in the bathtub with you! Please, if you can't
come get them for dinner tonight or have never faced a whole, real,
veined and headed shrimp before, don't ask for them. First come first
serve.

Can you believe there were no takers for the shrimp? Notice I mistakenly said I had one pound rather than 5. I did get several nice e-mails, though. One woman told me to just cook them with the heads on and it would be fine. Well, it was not fine. Not really.

The same woman also convinced me to let them go in the bathtub with Violet. Violet enjoyed having them for company, but they weren't allowed in the tub to swim. She just wanted them to sit beside her. When she got out of the tub she asked me for 4 towels. One big towel for her, and three small towels for her pals.

In the end, I peeled a couple shrimp and she ate one and I ate one, but they were just awful. So on the last day of vacation we had cupcakes for dinner instead. Pink cupcakes. Pinkaliscious.
I suppose as far as lessons go it was a cheap one, but it made me so sad to see all those shrimp dead for no reason at all.

Happy Valentine's Day

From Superflier and Baby Superflier.



We play a lot of Superflier around here.



Did I mention Superflier is quite partial to pictures of herself?



She's also quite terrifying.

Caucusing

Violet and Stella had a very political weekend. Saturday we went to see Hillary Clinton speak in Lewiston. We tried to explain to Violet who we were going to see, but I think it was lost on her. She insisted there should be a parade on the way there, so we had a very small parade. Violet was wearing the rainbow beads she got at a pride parade, which I think added to her confusion. She also thought there was going to be a bouncy house, which was (gulp) my fault.

Here comes the parade

There goes the parade

We hiked to the armory and waited in line for 45 minutes before they told us that Jason wasn't allowed to bring his Leatherman in. They did kindly don thick blue nitrile gloves and offer to dispose of it, and absolutely forbade Jason to hide it outside in the 2 feet of snow, because some would-be assassin might have forgotten his or her weapon at home and find it and try to sneak it in. So there was a bit more waiting while Jason went a block away, shoved his Leatherman down in the snow and finagled his way back through security. Inside the armory, Violet immediately donned stickers and found all the really funnest stuff.


Seriously? It was insanely boring for her. After all that walking and waiting, Hillary was fashionably late and so we waited some more. When she finally did appear? The microphones went on the blink. But in the end - there she was. And me? I only listened with half an ear, because I was fascinated with her Secret Service agents. The one closest to me had for-real-and-true 'darting black eyes'. Like he had just stepped out of a Nancy Drew mystery.


Sunday we went to the caucus in town which just about pushed Violet over the edge. At one point I told her she could count the people and she got herself lost in her enthusiasm. Not very lost, but lost enough to get scared. When I found her, I said quite sternly "You scared the living daylights out of your Mama." and she cried. Later, Jason asked her what her favorite part of the caucus was. She replied "The counting. But I didn't like the yelling." Bad, bad Mama.

This morning on the way to school, I asked Violet if she knew who Hillary Clinton was. Her answer? Yes. She is the lady that broke the microphone.

Stella walks!

There's not much to say about it, but it's darn cute. She took one step on her birthday and not another one until last night when she went zoom zoom and was gone. Well, maybe not quite like that. Here's a little video of her.

Hello, there!

Haven't seen you around in a while. I know, I know. We're all busy. So in the name of trying to get my act together, I have created this blog. You'll know that I have managed to get my act together (chortles heartily) if you see actual words here. You know, words describing the pictures I will post. Because isn't that why you have been invited to this blog? To see pictures of our two adorable urchins?

What, you say? The parents? Yeah, they exist, too. But as everyone's here for a little smackeral of cuteness let's just get on with it.

One last thing: the package I said I was sending? Or meant to send? Or have thought about sending every day for a month as it eyeballs me in the car? I'll get it in the mail right away. Promise. Really.