Happy 4th! Have a Great Weekend!

I tried to distract the kids from all the amazing and not-to-be-missed programs on Saturday morning TV by taking them to a garage sale around the corner. The T-Bot got a snorkel. The Wictor got a plastic killer whale. But Baby Sister hit the jackpot. For $3 she came away with a whole box of 1980s and 90s Barbie clothes and furniture. One original owner.

Baby Sister is always asking me to tell the True Story of how when I was little I only had one (1) Barbie, which wasn’t even a Barbie, it was a Daisy doll. But since there was only one Barbie model available and my sister also had to have one… Yes, I was that seriously deprived growing up, so it is no surprise that the moment Baby Sister’s back was turned, I couldn’t help myself:

First I spied a Baywatch outfit and I just had to see what it looked like on.

Oh. Nasty flashbacks to every single time I try on swimwear. Although she looks fairly resigned to having ELEPHANTINE THIGHS.

I am all for the campaign for real bodies for Barbie, but it does raise the problem of what do we do with all those tiny 1970s/80s clothes.

In the end I had to turn to circa 1981 Barbie and her spendiferous figure to model for me. She actually managed to pull it on pull it off.

Wow. Doesn’t she look natural?

And then I spent a blissful 15 minutes picking outfits for these girls. Many are Designer Clothing,  by Ken himself, who was obviously a Fashion Ace for a while before he went back to being a Beach Bum.  Mostly dresses because although some of the pantsuits were rad! and hip! they wouldn’t fit over any of the new Barbies knees.

Ken, you have a lot to answer for.

Now, smile for the camera ladies!

Don’t they look lovely?

The worst part is there is still half a box of clothes left.

And the lime green fluro mini skirts and acid-washed denim jackets are calling to me.

So, if you follow me on Twitter you might be aware that this morning I got caught up in a police chase on our street.

(Actually, not a lot of people follow me on Twitter, because I had banned myself until this week. I was getting a sore finger from hitting the refresh button. But now I am back, with Tweetdeck and shake updates enabled, and will try not to get too obsessive so that I don’t have to go cold turkey again. Moving on…)

You have probably gathered by now that we live in a very quiet suburban neighborhood. It’s a nice neighborhood. It has trees and people are always out jogging and walking their dogs. Neighbors know each other but not so well it becomes a nuisance. You know the drill.

And, being as this is suburban Houston, we know not what crime is. The last time I saw a police car on our street was when someone moved into the street and found one of his newly installed path lamps on its side one morning. He was convinced it was vandalism but it was probably someone else’s dog. Or the fact that he paid about 2c to have the lamps installed.

Which is why I was surprised to see a Sheriffs truck parked up on the way home from the supermarket today. I actually briefly contemplated stopping to ask if we should be concerned about the note someone stuck on the community mailbox about thefts happening from surrounding yards.

I didn’t, but only because I didn’t know what to call him. I have never talked to a policeman in the US and I have heard you are supposed to call them “officer” but I suddenly thought what if he was actually The Sheriff or something and he got mad at me addressing him as a lowly officer? Maybe I was supposed to call him Sheriff? I haven’t had this problem anywhere else I have lived. You can be rude to police officers overseas and just call them nothing. Or call them something if you want, something really rude and they can’t do anything about it. Here in Texas I am pretty sure that would land my butt in jail and not a salubrious one at that.

I know, this story is progressing rather slowly isn’t it. This is actually what it is like listening to me in real life. The Daddy  has been caught banging his head on the table and yelling “Get to the Point!” on many an occasion.

So I continue to the intersection with my street. It’s a four way stop. And there, at the stop sign opposite me, is another cop car. He has right of way and he isn’t moving. First, I think “Well, what are the odds? Two police cars in one day!” . Next, I think “Entrapment?”. He still doesn’t move so I decide to look all ways very very carefully so that it will be super evident to him that I am a careful driver who is looking very carefully and I didn’t take his turn because I didn’t see him, but because he was so damn slow.

(Do I sound suspicious? It’s because it has happened to me. An attempt at making me drive too fast by policemen in an unmarked car. In another country. I won’t say which. But one you would assume was civilized. Now please stop banging your head on that table.)

I looked right and down the road was another police car.

It’s lucky I stopped because suddenly we were surrounded by police cars. A  blue car with a desperate looking man at the wheel skidded past me into the intersection and disappeared, trailed by all the sheriffmobiles with lights flashing.

IN OUR STREET.

And then we drove the 300 feet home and I took some photos and video of the TV helicopter hovering over our yard and unloaded the groceries while the children jumped up and down and waved. Our street came alive with more people than is healthy in 95 degree heat. People with cameras, people riding bikes, people casually driving up and down the road pretending to be going somewhere.  There was a rumor that the man had bailed and was running around back yards…

Which made it so so clever of all of us to be out there having a street party. But I joined in the festivities, because I am not above watching Cops once in a while, and my money was on a police stop just up from where I had seen him.

Now we are waiting to see if we make the evening news.

Which is a bit of a bummer because now I will have to actually watch the evening news.

Now, for anyone who is concerned about our shooting last week, I would like to stress that the shooter was a neighbor’s kid, and he was actually aiming not at our house but at his friend’s backside. No harm done! He was just getting in some practice for the Darwin Awards!

Yes I know, it seems improbable. A shooting and a police chase in the same month! In this neck of the woods…

But we don’t feel like we have to pack up and leave just yet

My grandmother was a seamstress. Actually she was Parisian-trained and could cut a pattern freehand.

(At one time she employed ten other women to do the actual sewing of the seams for her. In these times she would be called a “Businesswoman”. But those were the days when men were men and womens’ efforts didn’t really count. So, a seamstress).

We left for the other side of the world when I was six. Before we went, she only had time to teach me how to sew on a button.

My favorite casual shorts. They have been like this for a year.

I wear plenty of long t-shirts, and sometimes band-aids on my fingers.

I know my grandmother would be proud. But not of my efforts in the button fixing department.

Saturday was The Wictor’s birthday. He turned three.

He was not having a party, so I took my current relaxed parenting strategy to extremes.

As in, we did not tell him it was his birthday until I had had time to go out to Wal-Mart (the only place open at 8am apart from Tarjay whose toy department is getting pretty dire) and grab a few toys and refreshments, come home, blow up some balloons, and throw some Spongebob decorations onto the cake.

I have no shame. But I was also counting on him possessing the esthetic appreciation of a just-turned-three year old:

He loved his cake just fine. And his birthday too. In the afternoon we went swimming, just like every other day, and then had M&M-shaped ice creams (did you know they make ice creams in the shape of M&Ms, The Wictor’s favorite candies?) and cupcakes.

He was the happiest boy in the world.

P.S. Oh, and here’s another thing: those hastily chosen Wal-Mart toys? Also a Big Hit. For the record, the hands-down favorite is Handy Manny’s Fix-It Phone. He spent every available moment in the afternoon “‘pairing the co-pooter” and screaming when his brother and sister got too close.

They were like lionesses circling for the kill, so badly did they want to get their hands on the toy. It made for a pretty noisy afternoon.

And then at some point he must have realized he was now three and so very gwown up and let them each have a turn.

And I swear I heard the three of them purring.

When we lived in the UK we were not really happy. I mean, there are a lot of things there which were great and which we enjoyed, but daily life ground us down. The weather and the traffic mostly. We spent most of our years there trying to figure out how to get out with dignity, and that probably led to us being down on some aspects of British life when we didn’t need to be. I’ll tell you, there are things I pine for now. Sorry, Britain.

We lived in an outlying suburb of London. We started off there because The Daddy was working in central London and I was working … not actually in London at all, in fact quite close to Oxford. So we had to find something in the middle. Then I had the T-Bot and stopped working and we could have moved, but by that time we had neglected to buy in our favorite area (obviously the ONLY POSSIBLE area) and house prices (and rents) had doubled.  So we stayed. Oh, and how we grumbled.

The whole point of this post really is that sweet Andrea of Sweet Life tagged me for a meme. It’s the sixth photo in your sixth folder one which I have already done but joy! The Daddy messed up my photos and now the sixth of the sixth is a different one! So here it is, the view from the roof of our apartment building:

Recently I revisited this High Street (FYI the British words for Main Street) courtesy of Google Maps, and after four years away I was still infinitely familiar with every store, every storefront for the whole length of it. Not much has changed there. I used to walk this route twice a day pushing my stroller, sometimes with the T-Bot on my back, all the way up to the library and back. We would stop in at stores we didn’t need to stop at, visit the playground, sometimes sit in the library for a while. The supermarket was across the road and we would go there most days. It was a regular, mind-numbing routine. But it passed the time and it kept the T-Bot occupied and sometimes would even tire him out enough so that he would sleep.

When we were there tourists used to tell us how pretty it all was and how quaint and we used to ask ourselves How? Why? All we could think about was the traffic, the drawn faces, the buildings blackened by pollution. The arctic winds whipping down the high street numbing fingers and noses. The crime. The line for the slide at the playground (What? The line for the slide at at the playground can be a major deal. Especially if it is a line 20 children long).

But the fact is, with distance anything can look quaint. And we surprised ourselves when we looked back at this set of pictures, because suddenly it didn’t look so bad after all. Now that time has passed and we no longer have to be there, we can look at this photo and think: “Awwww. Quaint!”.

I am not going to tag anyone for this meme, but if you want to do it, just throw the link in below!

Life has been fairly rollicking along here, with “First!s” coming thick and fast. And yes, most all of them are fairly unimpressive but in our family we are backward and never do the things we are supposed to do in the order we are supposed to do them.

First!: It all kicked off with Baby Sister’s pre-k graduation, which was actually the first in our family. The T-Bot was never in a pre-K class. Because it was very hard to understand much of what he was saying when he was four, we had been advised to place him with children a year younger, who would be closer to his communication level. That totally made sense, and worked out very well. But it did mean no practise at field trips, behavior traffic light charts. … and no pre-K graduation. (It also meant he was subsequently thrown in at the deep end but then hindsight is 20/20).

First!: Not actually a first but the first for such a long time that I had to (ahem) buy a new dress. An actual real to goodness semi-formal party which did not call for the wearing of jeans! And not a costume party, either… I do love the casual style in these parts so I surprised myself with how relieved I was to get a chance to scrub up.

First!: Only a week later, and Baby Sister had her first sleepover. This was a momentous occasion for us, but she took it totally in her stride. Totally. While we were wandering around the quiet house wringing our hands and getting a taste of Empty Nest Syndrome (guess who makes all the noise around here?), she was experiencing something which by all accounts must come close to Disneyland. Her friend’s Mommy was nice and never yelled and also didn’t sit in front of the computer to work all the time! Baby Sister swam! Played with Princesses! Went to the park! Watched a cool movie we don’t have! Requested cereal and ice cream for dinner and they gave it to her! Swam again after dinner!

And was returned to us the next morning, beaming.

First!: That very night we were invited out with childless friends, so it was time for another “First!”. This time? We hired a babysitter who was not a friend or family member. A real babysitter, like in movies! (Although thankfully not like in “When a Stranger Calls“,  which I never saw because just the trailers gave me nightmares).

Actually that’s a lie. Baby Sister hired her. She came home from school one day saying that Miss Angela had agreed to be our babysitter. So it was kind of out of my hands.

Remembering the dismal babysitters of my youth, I had warned the kids that Miss Angela might be one of those people who just sat around making sure they didn’t chop their hands off with the kitchen knife and could reach the door handle if they happened to set the house on fire … but it turned out to be the Disneyland experience all over again. Miss Angela arrived at exactly the appointed time and within two minutes was painting Baby Sister’s nails while giving The Wictor a horsey ride and fixing the T-Bot’s Lego creation. All more or less at the same time. It seems she kept the pace up for four hours straight, and we returned to find her dancing around the house singing just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down reading stories while the kids ate apples. And the house wasn’t a mess. And the children didn’t want her to leave so we had to promise she would come back really soon. So I think that was a success.

First!: While Miss Angela had everything under control, The Daddy and I took his zippy little car to get to the restaurant. No sooner had we sat in it than we realised that in over a year of ownership, we had never been in his car together.  There is no room for three kids in the back, you see. For five glorious minutes we pretended we were young and childless, and then we got to the restaurant and I pulled a muscle in my leg getting out of the car and had to hobble into the restaurant and that was the end of that fantasy.

First!: The T-Bot, encouraged by an older boy, jumped off the diving board at the community pool.

First!: This week was relatively firstless, although you could count not losing any children at the brilliantly redesigned Childrens Museum as a “First!”. Until tonight, when the neighbor’s kid shot our house with a BB gun. Which was the “First!” time we had ever been shot at.

- The day is bright and sunny.

- The children have been watching PBS Kids for an hour and there have been no screams.

- Last night I finally broke the back of my current horror task : Inputting 5 months of business transactions into Quickbooks. (Yes! I am clever! I shift to new software in the middle of the financial year!) I only got 4 hours sleep but it was worth it.

- Yesterday the T-Bot said to me “I like spelling! I didn’t know spelling could be fun!”

(yeah, me neither, but I’ll take it! I’ll take it!)

- Miraculously, I am having a good hair day. In summer. Of course I haven’t been outside yet, but it’s a start.

- My cat is proving to be a good roacher. Is that TMI?

- The T-Bot could hardly swim three months ago and now he can do all the strokes. He can now also jump off the diving board. That one may be more relief than celebration.

- We are in the week between school groups and camp groups. At least I hope none of the schools are going on field trips in the last week of school. Because today I am taking my three children to the Childrens’ Museum, where I haven’t dared set foot since I lost the T-Bot there three times in an hour in 2007. I expect it to be quiet. I am celebrating in advance on this one. Positive thinking and all that.

- After weeks of failure I managed to post a comment to Jessica Bern’s blog. Her blog does not like my comments. Today it even said something mean about my data, but I tricked it. Ha! I was on the verge of emailing her last week to ask if she was blocking me except I was too scared because what if she emailed back “Yes! It’s because I don’t like you!” ? Now that I don’t have to read those words from her, I can celebrate.

What are you celebrating today?

In two weeks he will turn three. He seems to be, out of all of my children (and I count The Daddy and the cat here too), the most normal.  He does normal pre-schooler things. He reacts as an almost-three-year-old should to new challenges, routines, stimulus. He sits when he is asked to sit. He fingerpaints when he is asked to fingerpaint. He takes pride in going potty. Sometimes he refuses to do these things and throws himself on the floor wailing and thrashing in a Terrible Threes tantrum. But only at home. Nobody looks at The Wictor and passes judgement. He is a normal little boy, doing normal little boy things.

And yet, he is scarily switched on. “Mommy,” he told me one day, in that matter of fact way of his, “ice is like water”. He notices supermarket signs on the horizon, tiny caterpillars on leaves. He is observant. More than other children his age? I don’t know.  But he certainly can articulate what he sees.

Last week, he passed another Normal Little Boy milestone. I was out with Baby Sister running some errands, when there was a knock on the front door. The Daddy answered it and found the neighbor standing there. She and the Daddy had a very short conversation and then she pointed to our youngest son. The Daddy stepped out into the front yard and squinted at The Wictor. He looked something like this:

;

I didn’t forget to insert a photo. That is, in fact, how The Wictor looked to The Daddy from his vantage point on the front doorstep.

So The Daddy took himself off down the street to where The Wictor stood in someone’s front yard. When he reached him, he asked him sternly what he was doing and told him he wasn’t supposed to be out on the road.

“But, Daddy”, said The Wictor calmly, ” I am looking for Mommy”.

Which was The Daddy’s cue to launch into a lecture on safety. In our neighborhood there are no sidewalks.

(We are too tough for sidewalks, out here in the Houston suburbs, where The Car is King The Truck is King).

“But Daddy”, said The Wictor patiently, “I walked on the lawns”.

Later it all came out, the details of our youngest’s daring escape.

“The two boys playing Kick the Ball!”

“The Big Boy said “Go back! Go back inside your house!” ”

Thank goodness for the neighbors.

We get a lot of Lost Dog signs up in our neighborhood. People are very careless with their canine friends and the children get very excited when they see another fluffy face posted with a phone number and sometimes even a reward. They run through the possibilities quickly, concisely:  finding the dog, calling the owner, getting the reward, spending the reward, getting the dog home in time for his much needed medication…

Later that night The Daddy solemnly told the assembled family that if it wasn’t for the neighbor we would have had to put a sign up for The Wictor. Lost Wictor. The T-Bot and Baby Sister were excited. They very expertly planned losing The Wictor again, making the signs, putting his little snub nosed face on the paper. Sticking it around the environs. Someone would find the Wictor and bring him home and all would be OK with the world. We would eat ice cream.

Myself? I am putting my faith in a better lock for the back gate.

If I had a dollar for every time I have been asked “Why Texas?” I would be on a white sand beach in the Carribean being waited on by bronzed hunky waiters instead of …

…ok…

… you’re right. But I would have a few extra dollars jingling and jangling around in my pocket. Which is why I have been thinking of blogging our reasons for a while.

Today was the perfect day to start. Because today was the day the UK’s Daily Telegraph came up with this:

I shouldn’t really need to say more but just in case some of you are a little slow (or, much more likely, have been drinking), I should point out that today in my neighborhood the temperature reached 95 degrees (35 for you celcius folk) and school isn’t even out yet for summer.

Hold that next thought. We have air conditioning.  And when the sun streams in the windows? It’s nice.