Charlyn’s Web

“I don’t have anything to wear!”

This is getting to be familiar lament, and not in a good way.

The other pants are in the wash- don’t you have any thing else?

She was wearing a dress but I had told her she could not wear tights outside again because they get dirty and holey.

How about leggings under your dress?

Oh horrors! Not that!

What about those tan pants on your shelf?

Gack!

I bought her a pair of tan slacks and her Gramma bought her a pair of tan pants- kind of jean like. Has she worn them? Of course not. I doubt she ever will. They are not pink. They have no flash to them like her jeans that are embedded with rhinestones (well, not rhinestones but plastic clear and pink flashy things. Is anyone else looping “Rhinestone Cowboy“? Showing my age again.) She wore the tan pants out in the snow ONCE, calling them snow pants because what else are they good for?

In this case, she put on another skirt (can’t wait until she does her own laundry) and went out bare legged- in 47 degree, windy weather. To her credit, she didn’t complain.

So if you are out shopping and you see a pair of tan pants, or any other tan colored clothing item, and you think maybe she will like them, just keep walking and save your money.

When she is 50 and I am ancient beyond all belief and she comes to visit me in the nursing home wearing TAN pants, I will shuffle about with my walker, pointing my bony finger at her, and saying loudly:

“SEE HER!?!?!? She is wearing TAN! TAN I tell you! When she was FIVE she refused to wear TAN! TAN was not PINK! Look at HER!”

She’ll be embarrassed at the fuss and annoyed at me and I will be laughing, laughing I tell you!

I could hear the riotous laughing and giggling as I came down the hall.

Don’t those girls know they are supposed to be getting ready for bed?!?!? What are they doing?

I stalked in to the bathroom, put my hands on my hips…. and then I heard what they were saying.

“P**p!”

Laughter.

“Panties!”

Shrieks of laughter.

Girls! You know we don’t talk like that!

“But Mrs. L said that it’s potty talk and that if we are talking like this we need to go to the bathroom and we’re in the bathroom.”

How can I argue with that?

For the record, I, myself, me, their Mother, have said this also but when The Mother talks it’s all “blah, blah, blah” but
when some one else says these things, well, that carries a whole lot more weight. They might actually hear it when someone else says it.

And what is it that makes those words so funny?

Disclaimer: These photos were taken on the same day as Ditch Day. She is wearing different clothes today! Honest.

Taking turns even!

It’s hard work!

Brother’s turn!

Unfortunately, their combined weight made it too hard to pedal in the gravel. They didn’t get very far. I guess I can’t use the song “He’s Not Heavy, He’s My Brother” and I don’t think there has been a song written titled: “She’s Too heavy, She’s My Sister”. Which is a good thing.

Last week the weather was lovely, for a few days at least. So we walked/rode down to the mailbox and beyond.

Remember last fall and Pixie’s bicycling difficulties? Well, she still uses her feet to stop instead of the bike brakes but that is, perhaps, a good thing as she jams the brakes on so hard that she skids all over the place. She can now get going on her own and can even turn around. All without the continuous whine that used to proceed from her mouth. Here she is actually standing up and pedaling.

The Boy just took off, as usual, zipping around. Here he takes a side trip down into the ditch- and back out again.

Sorry, they look like ants! I was being left in the dust!

Then there is my baby- the one who marches to her own drum.

What interesting characters they all are. Wonder where they get it.

Note: I made these pictures “smaller” in hopes they wouldn’t take too long to load for any dial up readers out there. (Hi KN!) Let me know if they take too long to load still and if they look OK. Thanks!

Pixie came out of her bedroom, after being told way too many times to get dressed, and proclaimed:

“There is NOTHING to wear!”

Well, there’s the tan slacks and jeans.

Oh horrors, no.

There’s the tan skirt.

Eeeek!

See a trend here?

If you had put some of your dirty clothes in the wash then you’d have more choices. Oops, excuse me, I forgot- you’re five. Clothes are to be left on the floor and walked upon.

I found a black jumper dress with a black and white shirt in the dryer and that was acceptable.

I guess she just doesn’t have enough acceptable (i.e. non-tan) clothes to fill out her wardrobe. I don’t look forward to her teenage years. I don’t like to clothes shop and am very fashion challenged. I can see her dragging me around stores while I proclaim loudly “But it’s UGLY!”. Even when it’s not- payback time!

I know! Twice a year I will ship her off to visit Dear Friend Boo-Boo, who understands clothes and fashion, and they can have a grand time together! How in the world we will be able to afford that will be a mystery as we will be spending all our money on trying to keep her brother fed.

Since we went to the Gym today, I told her she could wear her nice black Mary Janes to town but must wear her “strap on shoes” (tennis shoes) while in the gym. That was ok with her and she changed when we got there. However, when it came time to leave she didn’t want to carry them out. She insisted that I do it. I refused and continued talking to the other Mothers. As we walked out someone asked if those were our shoes on the bleachers. Sure, enough there her shoes sat.

Now her favorite pink sparkly shoes were taken away from her because she took them off at the table and left them there- something that is becoming a habit. So they are in our closet until the time her Papa decides to give them back. Now there is a black pair beside them. I told her she would have to wear her strap on shoes to church and oh, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth!

Such hardships that child has to go through.

There was snow again yesterday (and more today) which is pretty unusual for this early in the season. But we take what we can get! The Col., who loves driving in this kind of weather, drove the van to work to see how it would handle in two inches of snow. At our dinner of turkey burritos, he told us that it didn’t do as well as he had hoped. He told us of turning into the road that leads to his work and sliding until his front wheels hit the curb. He drove on down to the parking lot and when he tried to make that turn he went into another slide which he couldn’t get out of until the front wheels were in the grass. He thinks it might be the tires.

Also, at dinner The Col. told me how he had not done well that day in sticking with his diet. It seems some of his office mates ordered in pizza. He was determined to behave and ate his salad (with turkey- notice the recurring eating theme here?) before the smells of pizza filled the office. He was strong until mid afternoon when he saw pieces lying around and he succumbed to their siren song. He commented how he had done so well over Thanksgiving but fell off the wagon today. This innocent piece of information put him in the frying pan.

“Yes, Thanksgiving, the meal I slaved over? The one you hardly ate any of?”

“Um yeah.”

“You couldn’t find it in your heart to succumb to the glories of that meal but you fell to a cold slab of greasy Dominoes pizza?!?!?!?”

“It wasn’t Dominoes, it was Pizza Hut.”

“Oh, like that makes it better.”

To appease me he tried the candy I had made; it’s an Aplets type candy with apples and nuts. He said it was good but I am beginning to doubt his palette.

About this time a little voice popped up from the other side of the table.

“Papa, if you had gone slower you wouldn’t have slid.” Said KJ seriously. She had been thinking the whole thing through.

“Yes,” said her Papa sarcastically, “I shouldn’t go 60 miles an hour through there.”

She seriously nodded her head and said; “You should drive slow on that road like Mama does.”

She looks at me and I nod, trying to hide my smirk.

She proceeded to lecture her father, the man who has a CDL, who drove over the road trucks for awhile, who can drive anything out there, who has driven on more snowy, icy roads than she has ever been on in her whole life, the one person I want to be riding with in bad weather, on how to drive.

This morning he wondered if he should drive the van or dig the 4 wheel drive Suburban out of the shop. I told him that now that he has been told how to drive in the snow, he could probably take the van. KJ heard this and continued on with her lecture about driving slow while we shared a laugh.

You gotta be careful what you say around these here women folk, you never know what will land you in a whole heap of trouble and a lecture or two.

I awoke to hear footsteps coming down the hall. It wasn’t terrible early but it’s a day when The Col. leaves early and I like to lounge in bed for a bit. It wasn’t the usual footsteps that I hear early in the morning. The Otter had already been up surveying the situation and had quietly gone back to bed. These footsteps were bigger, louder so I knew it was The Boy. He paused inside the door. I contemplated not opening my eyes but he lingered long enough I thought I’d take a peek. He saw the eyes.

“Moooooommmm!”

Sigh. What?

“K dropped gum in my bed and it’s all over me! And the bed!”

Groan. Al l right I’ll be there in a minute.

As I got up and dressed I heard him jumping around in his room. I finally figured out it was to try and stay warm. I was actually feeling a wee bit sorry for him.

I headed back and first tried rubbing it off with my fingers. The Boy doesn’t have a high tolerance for pain and he is not quiet about expressing himself. After a few shrieks in my ear I decided that wasn’t working and we went to the bathroom to use a washcloth. I tried a warm washcloth because the poor skinny thing was pretty cold but that tended to soften it and cause it to get gummy again so it was taking quite a bit of rubbing. I’d work on one area, the inside of his leg, and then another, one of his arms, so that one area wouldn’t get too tender. All the while listening to the shrieks coming from his poor tortured mouth. I was hoping to get his leg cleaned off so he could get pants on to help him warm up. I was cursing K and contemplating a gum ban for her and possibly the world when she wandered in.

The Boy yelled at her that it was all her fault. She confessed that it had fallen out of her mouth when they were wrestling and that they had looked for it but couldn’t find it.

Wait a minute! THEY looked for it? Did H know it was there? Why yes, the (I really want to put “idiot” here but we don’t allow name calling in our house) precious child did know it was there. They looked for it in their childish way, exactly where they thought it landed and couldn’t see it so they promptly stopped looking. Nor did they tell a Parental Unit about said lost gum.

I promptly stopped feeling even the teeniest amount of sympathy and rubbed to my hearts content.

The gum is off The Boy but is still on the sheets. I’ll have to figure out how to get it off of there next.

What a way to start the day.

“It’s a girl!”

What am I going to do with a girl?

After five years, I still wonder that.

She was beautiful.

She still is.

She had large almost black eyes. They are chocolate brown now with long lashes

Her hair was kinky at first. I thought What genetic throw back is this? But it washed out and she had curly hair for awhile. It still has body and curls easy.

She is girl to the core. Pink and lace and frills. But she will also wrestle with her brother, sister and father.

She has always known what she wants. No waffling for this girl. It’s another genetic throw back.

I remember being huge and exhausted while pregnant with T, so K was less than 18 months old and I was  saying something along the lines of “I suppose I should change your diaper.” Not really meaning it because then I would have to get up. Quite a daunting thought. She would head down the hall and if I didn’t follow fast enough come back looking for me, wondering what was taking me so long. We have learned to really mean it when we say something.

She is helpful, kind, energetic, decisive, funny. She is my middle child, my first girl, joy of my heart.

Happy Birthday KJ!

KJ style.

How to stop a bike:

Pedal. Don’t coast. Pedal. Don’t gently apply brakes. Pedal. When you see that you need to stop throw both feet off of pedals so you couldn’t apply brakes even if you wanted. Take a hand off of the handle bars, so you can’t steer, and put it out straight. Crash. Cry about your skinned knee and hand. Refuse to listen to instructions.

How to eat:

If it is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich: take off top and lick off the jelly. Slowly eat what is left.

If it is a meat sandwich: take off top, eat cheese and meat. Complain about having to eat the bread.

If it is toast with jelly or honey on it: lick off sweet stuff first.

If it is a salad: pick out with your fingers the things that you like, croûtons, olives and sunflower seeds leaving the yucky stuff to choke down on it’s own. Chew a lot but don’t swallow. Take 40 years to finish.

How to Dress:

Always wear a dress. The more frills and froo froo the better. Pink is best. Purple will do. A skirt will suffice in a pinch. Don’t worry about the weather. Complain loudly that there is “nothing to wear” when no dresses are clean. If someone else should try to tell you what to wear- fight for your dignity.

How to annoy your Mother:

Whine. Don’t EVER use words if a good whine will suffice. Throw back your head, arch your back and let it loose. Use your throat. Use your nasal passages. If you don’t like what is going on keep up a constant whine. Make use of the ‘ka, ka, ka’ sound in your throat. Point but don’t actually say what you want. If you must use words make them as nasally and high pitched as you can.

The rest of the time? Be sweet and helpful.

“What word starts open?”

Asked in the van, late at night, out of the blue- not in context with anything else being said.