Picture by Elizabeth: Bear and CD | The first big snow at Little House, 02/2002

We woke up late, both of us sick now. Outside it is cold and windy and dark. He burrowed in his covers and asked, just to be certain, "Today Daddy comes home on a plane?" And I answered, "Yes, Bear." Assured, he peeked out a little bit and looked out his window. After a while he asked "And then will it snow?"

Isn't it amazing, the magic of snow? It's drizzling here, but it's cold. We're ready for our magic. Bring it on, let it snow....

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For those of you keeping score at home, we are now at 48 hours until my birthday.

So what have I been up to in preparation of this important galactic holiday?

On the one hand, my crazy job is just busting out all with good news.

Yeah, I'm lying.

Actually, I am surrounded by bad crazy people. I'm stressing so bad that my mentor called me tonight and cautioned me that it's not a good idea to do my One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest impression while leaving status updates on his voice mail. He is after all, a vice president. Try and have some decorum, for heaven's sake.

But Muffins on a stick, how many ways exactly can a vendor's product break? I mean REALLY. I'm from the boonies of New England. So I get all wobbly thinking 9 or 10 zeroes look like real money. And I start expecting things like .. uhh... a working product for that kind of dough.

And definitely not excuses like "the dog ate my code". Or my personal favorite; "whoops?". Definitely. Not.

I do not WANT any more service restoration team meetings, root cause analysis reports, change requests, tiger teams, red teams, rapid response plans, or executive summits. No I do NOT, Sam-I-Am.

On the other hand, oh lookie there - CD is leaving on Sunday for 10 days on a sudden business trip to Texas. Which means that from here to Thanksgiving week I get to juggle the futtlemuch Vendors (see above) and the full-time responsibility of da'Bear. Which, you know, is cool. Because I'm a Superhero.

But wait.

All is not lost.

Because here in on this last hand, which is looking pretty puffy because I'm retaining enough water to source Niagra Falls... there is my husband - who just ran to a library 45 minutes away to check out their FarScape DVD collection so I'd have something to watch on those cold lonely nights without him.

AND in the yellow bedroom with a slide-a-bed and the Rescue Hero collection? There is my Bear sleeping with his face in the pillow and his rumpus up in the air. For you non-parents, this is also known in Yoga as child's pose. Oh. My. Stars. Scrumptious, this is. Adorable.

And absolutely guaranteed to get you humming "I like Big Butts and I cannot lie..." Even if, like me, that's the ONLY lyric you know to the song. Just wiggle a little and hum until it comes around again on the refrain...

You know what I want for my birthday? For real?

A nap.

Posted by: Elizabeth at 05:01 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Just like so many before us, CD and I huddled before Bear was born and made him so many promises. Last night, I began to think about how we were doing....
(Hummed, where available in Blog-o-sonic, to the tune of 'Forever Young' by Bob Dylan.)

1. We promise that you will always be loved, that you will know love as an action we choose every day;

2. We promise that you will always know that you are part of the family (even if we embaress you into disavowing us from ages 11-1

3. We promise that in our family, we will give, teach, and demand: respect, kindness, cooperation and sharing

4. We promise to laugh. We promise that you will hear laughter in you home as long as we live. We promise to inspire your laughter, share your laughter, and laugh at you every time you let us dress you for Halloween

5. We promise that you will always have the necessities of life

6. We promise that you will know hardship; that we will do everything we can to prepare you for it; that we will model to you the power that comes from doing what is hard and what is right

7. We promise that we will always have your back, that you will always know that there are at least two people in this world who believe in you - even when you're wrong, even when you're afraid, even when you pretend not to care

8. We promise that we will do everything we can to teach you how and when to fight for yourself - physically, vocally, emotionally, intelligently

9. We promise that we will make a path in your life to God, and that you will know there is something greater than yourself to which you are responsible

10. We promise that our goal is to grow you right out of our house. That we will be preparing you for that every moment we are lucky enough to be parenting you:

That we will teach you how to take care of your body; how to wipe; how to groom; how to tweeze; the importance of protective equipment; the addictive rush of physical exertion; the thrill of competition; the bonding that comes from of team sports; how to be a friend; how to see past the differences to the samenesses;

the value of a dollar; how to balance a checkbook; how to cook for yourself and anyone else who may come along;

how to avoid making anyone else come along until you are ready; what "ready" means;

how to buy a condom; how to buy a car; how to buy a house; how to buy a melon; how to how to budget sensibly; how to save for long-away dreams;

how bear an injustice; how not to;

how to drive a car; how to take care of your things;

how to change a fuse; how to write a research paper in a single night; how to patch drywall; how to make a paper airplane;

how to travel; how to pack lightly;

how to make a good first impression; how to get back up when you fall down; how to dress for the occcasion; how to waltz; how to iron a dress shirt;

how to have a conversation; how to forgive; how to be grateful; how to be still.

11. We promise to honor your dreams more than the ones we will have for you

12. We promise you our honesty. We promise that we will squirm and blush, but we will not hide from answering the questions you may have

13. We promise you that there will be rules; and we won't back down from our expectations that you follow them

14. We promise to read you a story

15. We promise to proudly pull out those baby pictures of you - especially the ones in the bathtub - with the least amount of provocation and whenever possible

And because RP asked: We give ourselves a B-.

We both find it harder to stay "present" to Bear that we'd thought. Sometimes we find ourselves "unplugging" from him much more than we ever thought. Oh, the guilt, the GUILT! Using the TV or letting him slip into his own world in his room or at the playground.

And we TOTALLY dropped off the list all the things we thought we'd do SOOOO well - like NOT having TV, or making all his food (From scratch! Organic!) and never letting him see the inside of a McDonalds (Yeah, right - he can tell you what kind of toy he wants in his Happy Meal *groan*) or things like crafts (Tie-Dying his clothes! With vegetable dyes we make ourselves! From things gathered on our nature walks! That we take in protest of strip mining!).

This was inspired by someone, can't remember who.... Tell me and I will credit you

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