sharp

For the last week, I have been debating on whether I should buy the digital edition of Frozen when it came out this week or hold off another month for the physical DVD. I caved this morning and went for the digital version — the movie is just so cute. Both kids already have the songs memorized, and they will suddenly belt them out in odd places, like the grocery store.

I just set them up in the living room to watch it when I overheard this little exchange.

Lydia: “Look, I see men! They’re cutting us!”

Sam: “Cuttingus.”

Lydia: “No, they’re cutting us.”

Sam: “Look, I see cuttingus.”

i am lost without my Boswell

We are on a cat-filled journey again. Yesterday, we welcomed a long, black kitty into our home, which has been overly devoid of cats lately. Once we all get used to each other, all shall be well again.

Though I had been contemplating the idea of CATS for a while, I didn’t expect it to happen yesterday. This little booger was in the care of a friend of my aunt’s and she had been trying to find it a nice home. Yesterday afternoon, I happened to be over at my aunt and uncle’s house when this lady called, practically in tears, to see if I could take the cat.

Well, there’s just no refusing that.

Steven wasn’t particularly surprised when I finally arrived home yesterday afternoon, towing in a cat along with the two super-excited kids. Just another day, man.

Thankfully, the kids don’t seem to phase him much. At five months old he’s still a kid himself, and he has bounced and sprinted all over the place. I have forgotten how active kittens are!

We pondered and debated names last evening into today. Nothing was really sliding into place like Renton’s (druggy look) and Hermione’s (too damn smart for her own good) did. Finally, Steven sat at his computer and whipped up a randomizer program in the space of 60 seconds and we plugged in our four favorite contenders. I hit ‘ENTER’ and boom — we had a name.

Watson.

May new cat stories be in our future — but we’ll hope this cat isn’t much of a barfer. Or an overshooter of the litterbox. Or a birther of small children.

it wasn’t that bad

Usually I’m a big fan of winter, but I am so completely DONE with this winter. Just a few weeks ago Steven was snowed in at work for two days, and now we’re being threatened again with two different icy snow events this week. If it could hold off until tomorrow at least — Steven has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon that he’d rather not miss. It’s with Dr. Navigator — remember him?

Last summer we finally quit procrastinating and had Dr. Navigator perform the ol’ snip ‘n’ tuck on Steven. No big deal, everything went about as lovely as one can expect for that sort of thing, and this bit of knowledge is important for this story. Trust me.

What? No! No, I’m not pregnant. Oh my god, can you just imagine?!

Anyway . . .

Last week, Steven got himself an appointment after he realized it was becoming painful for him to perform certain . . . deeds. LOOKOUT I’M TALKING ABOUT SEX HOLY CHEESE BISCUITS! This is apparently something that can happen. By Sunday my extreme sexiness overcame Steven’s fear of pain, so we got down to business. Yeah, baby.

As things wrapped up, Steven declared with a sigh of relief, “It wasn’t that bad.”

It. Wasn’t. That. Bad.

titanic-car-scene-not-bad

IT

WASN’T

THAT

BAD

I sure hope there is no sleet, snow, or ice so Steven can go see Dr. Navigator today.

snowpocalypse

It has been horribly cold this winter. I’m afraid some of my fantastic little shrubs in the front yard won’t make it, actually. If the high has been in the 50s this month, we consider it a warm day.

Throughout each cold spell I would complain to Steven: “If it’s going to be so cold, then where’s the snow? How can we have so many days where we don’t even get above freezing and yet not have any snow to show for it?!”

Today was the beginning of yet another cold spell. This time, the snow was lurking about, but not for us. Auburn and Montgomery were the targets today. Flurries for us, but that’s better than what we had been getting.

Steven went off to work this morning after a quick stop at the dentist. The kids did their normal thing in the morning while I kept a weather eye on the horizon for our predicted flurries. By mid-morning the flurries arrived. Lydia, who has seen Frozen twice now, went into hysterics. Soon she had me and Sam out in the flurries. “Let’s build snowmen!” she screeched.

And it snowed.

Lydia ran around like a girl on fire while Sam tentatively played with the snow. Since we live in Alabama, the kids don’t have decent gloves, and Sam was not a fan of his hands being cold. After he accidentally got a snowball to the face, he was DONE, and we went inside soon after.

And it snowed.

By then, I was noticing how easily and quickly the snow was sticking to the roads and sidewalks. Our driveway was covered in 30 minutes. At lunch, the weather quickly deteriorated and we were slapped with a Winter Storm Warning and a Civil Emergency Message. The schools tried to close but it was too late — buses couldn’t get out, parents couldn’t get to their kids, and everyone was getting stuck on the roads. Steven was stuck at work and I knew he would be there overnight.

And it snowed.

After scrounging up two mismatching mittens of Lydia’s for Sam’s poor hands, we attempted to make the best of things and enjoy the snow. With his rocking pink gloves, Sam enjoyed the snow more this time around. We made a feeble attempt at a snowman, but the snow was just too powdery — it reminded me of Winter Storm ’93.

By the time the snow stopped, we had not quite two inches, with every bit of that sticking to the roads, driveways, sidewalks, rooftops — just everywhere. Though Steven was safely at work the whole time, I know of many other friends and relatives that got stuck on the roads for a while.

So here I sit. The kids are finally in bed and I am sans Steven. It will be a lonely night tonight. What a nutty day. The temperature is 20 degrees and falling outside, there’s two inches of snow all around me, and Steven is stuck in Homewood.

linguistics class

I have come to the conclusion that childhood phonics curricula and Southern accents do not mesh well. Over the course of the past year, Lydia and I have run into multiple anomalies with sounding out words versus the word as we know it.

Already we have run across the pin/pen merger, feel vs. fill, and the good ol’ fashioned Drawl.

Earlier today we were working with words that end in ‘ch.’ I wrote out a word for Lydia on the board:

branch

Lydia sounds it out. “Buh. Buh-rrr. Buh-rrr-ah-nch. Buhrrahnch.” The sound of this still makes no sense to her, so she throws in a little ‘y.’ “Buhrrayy-nch. Buhraynch.” She finally gets it. “Branch!”

Earlier this week she was writing some thank-you notes for Christmas, signing the letters “Lydia and Sam.”

“Mommy,” Lydia asks, “Why do I hear a ‘y’ when I say ‘Sam’ but there’s no ‘y’ in it? Listen: Sayy-um.”

Well, in reality,” I explain, “It’s supposed to be ‘Sahm. Sahm. Just one syllable. We’re just Southern so it comes out with a ‘y’ in it, because we talk lazy. Sayy-um.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it; you won’t be able to shake it.”

goo goo jason’s little tax exemption

Last Wednesday was a perfectly ordinary day. It was Steven’s last day of work until the new year and the kids and I did our usual stuff. A bit of school with Lydia, a bit of outside time, an ordinary day all around. That evening Sam went to bed without much fuss, and as Steven tucked in Lydia the phone rang.

“Auburn Univ, I bet,” I surmised as I went to check the phone. One of the few calls we get on the house phone are from Auburn University, panhandling for money. For once I was wrong — it was Jason. Hmm.

When I picked up the phone, Jason calmly but quickly said, “Cathy’s water broke — can you come get Elizabeth?”

Let me pause here to point out how completely unexpected this was. Cathy wasn’t due to be popping out any babies until January, somewhere around the 10th. She had already scheduled her c-section for the 6th — coincidentally the day of the National Championship game — and I had already booked a hotel room. In fact, I booked it on this same ordinary Wednesday we are now discussing. Nobody had thought up any contingency plans.

After a few ‘OH MY GOD’s’ I was off the phone and throwing clothes into an overnight bag. Two boring hours on 280 later I got to the hospital where Cathy and Jason were just chilling. Not much else to do, really. They were going to wait until the next morning for the baby fetching. I got Elizabeth back to her house and eventually she got to sleep, well after her usual bedtime.

At some point in the middle of the night I woke up to a text — the baby is here! Little Jonathan wasn’t going to wait until morning. At 3:00 am I was texting back and forth between Cathy, Dad, and Steven. Baby, baby, baby! Man, we should all have been asleep.

So, here is Cathy and Jason’s early, very surprising Christmas present: Jonathan Andrew Summers, arriving at 1:56 a.m. on the 19th of December, 2013, weighing in at 6 pounds 3 ounces and measuring at 19 inches long. This probably won’t be the last time he surprises his parents, either.

christmas eve update

It’s finally Christmas Eve and the day is winding down a bit. I just made a metric butt-ton of cookies and my feet are quite tired. Hope Santa’s hungry.

christmas cookies

The last few days have been nuts, what with Steven off work until the new year, surprise babies, surprise chance for a National Championship, and multiple wedding anniversaries.

surprise baby

And now for tonight’s update:

Presents children have found: 0 (woohoo!)
Ornaments children have broken: 0
Ornaments Mommy and Daddy have broken: 2
Presents children have opened: 0
Cookies Mommy has made: 50+

the tree, 2013

Friends, Alabamians, countrymen;
Lend me your eyes!
I come to decorate the tree, not to praise it.
The evil that cats do live after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Renton (and Hermione).

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish felines,
And men have lost their pets. Bear with me;
My heart is in the little boxes there with Renton (and Hermione),
And I must pause till it come back to me.

photo (1)

Lights on the tree: 2750, a new record!
Presents children have found: 0
Ornaments children have broken: 0
Ornaments Mommy has broken: 1
Presents children have opened: 0