While doing chores this evening, Isaac asked “Mom, am I saving the planet by doing my chores?” Later he asked “Is the planet saved yet?” meaning ‘have I completed this chore to your satisfaction.’
A little later he asked “Mommy, what time will you be big enough to have two babies in you?” I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but I thought it was funny anyway.
I went to Clinton Elementary school from Kindergarten through 6th grade. Of all the elementary schools in our school district, I thought Clinton was the most attractive. It was located in the middle of the country with big white columns in the front. I have a very imperfect memory of things so I’ll do my best to write what I recall.
Here are some recent things the kids said:
“I would sleep so hard that I couldn’t wake up. I’d be stuck asleep and you’d have to kiss me to wake me up. Would you kiss me? And after her birthday I would be stuck sleeping if you don’t kiss me.” Isaac (possibly before Charlotte’s 3rd birthday)
After biting his finger accidentally, Isaac said “My mouth thought my finger was food. My mouth thought it was salad”
“Mom, what time will Tigers eat us?”
“Mom, don’t let tigers eat us until we’re ready to die.” (so, when we’re ready to die we should let Tigers eat us?) “Yeah” –Isaac
“That’s the Tiger’s pretzels? Because of the white spots?” Isaac upon seeing footage of a Tiger eating a deer that had white spots on it’s back
In answer to the question “What are kids made of?” Isaac replied:
“They’re made of everything that skin covers.”
“What happens if a Lion goes into a machine that turns him into food for people, that would be chicken?†–Isaac
After getting a light spank for getting out of bed at bedtime, Charlotte said “I need pajamas that doesn’t have a spank on themâ€
2.10.09 “Before the end of my calendar will dinosaurs be replaced? Heavenly father will make some new dinosaurs?â€
Charlotte: There’s a grey cat on Grandma’s bed
Me: Is that can’s name Zelda?
Charlotte: No, Canguno.
Me: What happened to the name Zelda?
Charlotte: It got broken.
Me: Who broke it?
Charlotte: Me did it.
Me: How did you break it?
**SILENCE**
Me: Did you drop it?
Charlotte: Yeah, I was running in Grandma’s Hall and I dropped it.
The blog publishing software that I usually use is not working, which is annoying because I don’t know javascript well enough to figure out how to get my pictures exactly where and how I like them. So I wondered if I could still insert a slideshow, Here are a series of pictures of Nicole (yes, I know I just inserted one of the pictures from this slideshow below, but I love it, so I’m not changing it).
I just love this picture of Nicole so I had to write a post about her as an excuse to post it.
She is growing up so fast. My little Nicole loves to hear laughter. She can be in the middle of crying and if she hears laughter, she’ll stop crying and smile as big as she can. She has also figured out how to clap, but she’s not great at it yet.
She’s been working on gross motor control the most lately. She still hasn’t quite mastered crawling forward, but she has been pulling herself into a kneeling position against toys and other such things regularly and tonight she pulled herself to a standing position in her crib and got stuck that way since she didn’t know how to lower herself back down into a sitting position.
The piggy is crazy things and tries to try to get people and tries to get paper
and tries to do bad things and make bad decisions and tries to kill monsters and Ghosts and tries to break other paper and tries to break the rules and tries to do racing without it’s mommy and tries to do silly things without it’s mommy and tries to write on the floor and on the walls and tries to do all the tings that are naughty.
The End
Nicole has gotten really good at crawling—backwards. She can’t seem to figure out how to go forwards. I’ll put her down on a blanket with toys while I clean up after lunch and when I come back she’s backed herself in a corner and can’t get out. The worst is when she’s trying to get a toy that’s just out of reach. She starts crawling backwards and crying because she keeps getting farther and farther away. Although she still hasn’t figured out forwards, she’ll step with her arms forward out of sitting position and step each hand forward once before going backwards the rest of the way.
I use Window’s Live Writer to do most of my posts. For some reason unknown to me, I cannot post with it today so I am using the Quick Press option in my admin dashboard, So if my pictures look stretched and oddly placed, I’m sorry–I don’t know how to fix it in here.
Some days I wonder how my oldest two can be so opposite. The other morning Isaac was using the potty and Charlotte claimed she needed to go. She insisted she could only use the potty that Isaac was using, no other potty would do. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be interrupted to change to another potty so she just had to wait. As soon as he was done I told her she could use it and instead of being glad it was her turn, she started to insist that her brother use the potty again. She finally gave up trying to force Isaac to go potty and sat down for breakfast. Meanwhile, Isaac earned a chore square and filled up his chart. He choose a small bag of cookies (100 calorie pack) for his reward. He opened the bag and immediately started giving Charlotte cookies as “rewards” for silly things like taking a bite or being happy. He didn’t care that she had been a pill to him all morning, he gave almost his entire bag of cookies to his sister.
Barbara Elisabeth Orman Bird was my grandmother’s name. 
When mom had her first child, Grandma suggested she name her Barbara. Mom was not thrilled about the idea because the name sounded like an old woman name to her, but mom thought that grandma would be unhappy if she didn’t take her suggestion and so my oldest sister was named Barbara. I knew my grandmother favored my older sister, but I honestly didn’t mind. I’m always sad to admit it, but I never felt really close to my grandma Bird. I remember sometimes my parents would leave Barbara to stay with my grandma while the rest of us went home. I think Barb and I both stayed once.
I don’t know if today is just more interesting than other days or if I’m just closer to a computer. Here’s my second post of the day:
Isaac cut his finger today and it bled. 
We washed it off and bandaged with a little antibiotic ointment and as I cared for his injury he asked me questions about his finger and what would happen. He soon became very excited about the prospect of getting a scab. When I told him we’d take the bandage off when it has a scab, he eagerly asked if everyone would be able to see his scab. Within 10 minutes he started wanting to see if the scab was there yet. He had to call his grandma Bunny to tell her about the impending scab and asked me if I would take pictures of it to send to her. He also suggested that I send pictures of his scab to his Great-grandma in Seattle. I told him that it might take a day for his scab to come. He said that he thought he should rest until the scab appeared. I’m a little worried now that he won’t get the scab that he’s hoping for.
It’s days like these I think how glad I am that I have a boy.
As we were watching a pre-recorded episode of Sesame Street today an Amber Alert came on. I explained to Isaac that a girl was missing . 
Isaac ran to the window to look for her. When he didn’t see her he asked if this was happening in ‘our world.’ I told him that it was and saw an opportunity for a teaching moment. I explained to him that the girl had gone outside without her mom or dad so now she was lost. As the show progressed I left the room and soon the alert was repeated. Isaac ran to me saying “mom, mom! The words are back on!” He was concerned that she hadn’t been found yet. When Zach came into the room shortly afterwards Isaac said “Dad! A girl went outside without her mom and dad and now she’s lost!” Isaac asked if a police car would find her and tell her to go home. After not seeing her out the window again, he instructed the cat ,who was sitting at the window, to ‘meow’ if he sees the missing girl so that we can call to police to take her home.
**I should start with a disclaimer. I know that Grandma’s office was on Lincoln Ave. in Bellevue. I browsed Google Earth and the pictures I’ve included look somewhat like the places I remembered. Although my grandmother’s house looks the same that it did 20 years ago, downtown has changed some. I do remember seeing a red white and blue barbershop thing close to her office. I also faintly remember walking by a car dealership that was close to her house which I saw a few blocks down on Google Earth and I recognized a big stone bank that used to be Mellon Bank close by**
Grandma owned her own real estate office (Bird Reality) in downtown Bellevue. Her 
office was close enough to her home that we walked there regularly when we were visiting. I remember that her business motto was “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” She had a little office with brown paneling on the walls. In the back room she had a kitchen with a fridge. I imagine a picture of an owl cross-stitch on the wall, but it may be misplaced in my memory. I think maybe she used an owl in her company logo or something because I think of brown and orange owls when I think of her office. Grandma must have been excellent at managing money because somehow she saved up enough to give us a generous college fund. She started putting money away for our college fund when we were born, or shortly thereafter, but wasn’t able to establish one for each of my siblings before she died (when I was about 11). I remember my mom telling me once that she was a little frustrated that they had so many kids because she couldn’t keep up.
We loved to play outside at Grandma’s house. 
In front of her house just under the windows was a flowering tree that had these leaves that would turn brown and curl up in the fall. We used to pretend they were tacos and fill them with dirt (beef). Grandma also had these plants in the back yard at the far end that had really big leaves. We’d either pretend they were salad or put the tacos on top of a leaf (thus using the leaf as a garnish). I remember the ivy that was climbing up the yard and the big tree in front of the house. I think Lee put one of Barbara’s bras up in that tree from the upstairs apartment once and I remember having a hard time figuring out how we could retrieve the bra. There were steps leading up to the building and the steps had brick and concrete platforms next to them that we regularly used as a bench or a table.
We visited my Grandma Bird in Pennsylvania whenever we could. 
We always called her Pittsburgh Grandma, although she lived just outside of Pittsburgh in Bellevue. I thought the drive took about 5 hours, but Google maps thinks we could get there in 3 1/2. We took toll roads most of the way. This meant that for most of the drive, there wasn’t much along the road except the occasional rest stop. Some of the rest stops had eating establishments. It seems like the most familiar rest stop had both a Popeye’s Chicken and a Dunkin Donuts. Usually we didn’t buy food. We’d go in to use the bathroom and eat the snacks my parents packed in the car. Sometimes my dad would buy a side of red beans and rice at Popeye’s. As we got closer, we’d each try to pick out landmarks that told us that we were getting close. The most distinctive one I can remember was a big hill where you could see a trail of red lights climbing up one side and white lights coming down the other. We all tried to find one that was far enough away that we knew we were almost there first.
Barbara liked to teach me things. My dad says she 
potty trained me, but I should probably ask my mom to confirm that story. I do remember the time she brought me into her bedroom where she had gently laid a pair of underwear on her bed. She told me that she thought she had her period. She continued by telling me it wasn’t like the period at the end of a sentence. She then pointed to the underwear. There on the top of her panties was a little red fuzz ball. You could barely see it. Later she told me that she discovered that she hadn’t had her period because the fuzz ball had moved.
Another time she brought me into the bathroom and demonstrated how to shave my legs. I gave it a try after she left by shaving one line along the front of my leg. I decided that I wasn’t interested in shaving and put the razor away without shaving the rest of my leg. A short while later we were in 
Tennessee and Barbara noticed a short patch of hair on my leg. She teased me mercilessly, but promised she’d stop if I’d just admit that I had tried to shave. I refused to admit it and eventually she gave up.
The summer before I was to enter Jr. High my sister approached me about my handwriting. She told me that if I was to be “popular,” I’d need to work on my handwriting. She gave me a paper with a list of samples of “popular†handwriting and advised me to learn one of them. I don’t know how long I spent practicing, but I do remember working on one or two of them.
The last lesson I can remember is when I was taking my first French class in high school. We both had Mrs. Hamp as our French teacher. She told us that we could get extra credit by learning a sentence in French and then telling her. Barbara taught me two sentences which supposedly meant “I am Kathleen. I am smart†what they really meant was “I am Kathleen, I am silly.†Mrs. Hamp laughed when I told her I was silly and taught me how to call Barbara a “pighead†in French.
When I was very little I shared a room with my older sister 
Barbara. We used to share a double bed. I remember we’d have this imaginary line down the middle of the bed delineating my side from hers. We had this rule that any part of your body that crossed the line was fair game, meaning that the other person could do whatever they wanted to it. She loved to torment me by putting a foot or an arm on my side. I would do my best karate chops to the offending appendage, but she’d just continue. I think I even tried to give her an “Indian burn†but nothing worked. I remember being frustrated and annoyed and I suspect she thought that was funny because she continued to cross the line each night.
The point of this blog is mostly to post the pictures I didn’t have when I initially blogged about my childhood home.
When my parents bought our house it was the mustard color you can see in the picture below:
My parents painted the house “Shadow Grey” and added black shutters which I always thought improved the look significantly. The also built a porch on the North side of the house. Prior to the porch we had a door to nowhere. The door was on the second story and opened up to a two story drop straight down.
My mother sent me some pictures from my childhood and a few of our house. Some of these pictures will be used in upcoming blog posts, but for now, I thought I’d post a little preview. Most of these pictures are from when I was very young, but some of them were taken during that awkward middle stage where it looks like I should be old enough to know better than to look so dorky. My mother claims that when I first got glasses that they didn’t make many glasses for kids and that’s why my glasses were so dreadful. Enjoy:
Also, feel free to comment on the pics, particularly if you can provide a memory or some additional info about the picture or the day it was taken. If you can’t tell, I’m generally the girl with very short hair.