two thousand what now?

It's winter now all of a sudden and so I think it's time for a round up of the year. Here, read some stuff about somebody else's kids.

Stellina and Space Monkey
Stellina's in school three days a week, and looooves it. Loves wearing the shirt that has the name of her nursery school on it, and would probably wear it every day if her mom let her. So smart, loves her brother, very particular about ... everything. Eats a turkey sandwich for lunch every day, with dill havarti.

Baby Space Monkey, 9 months already! Crawling, drooling, says "mama" but is that just a thing that kids do without knowing?, has four teeth - bottom two central incisors and two top lateral incisors... he looks like he got in a fight. Would love to stand and walk, not quite there. His hair sticks straight up on top because he's got two cowlicks on the back of his head.

I went on a 5-day trip to Florida with these kids a few weeks ago, and it was much less work than I expected. Stellina loves the iPad so that made her portion of the flight really easy, and Mr. McDrool slept on the first flight, and kept the screaming to a minimum on the way back.


Big and Tiny
Tiny is about 14 months, walking, eating everything in sight, signing and talking also, still has barely any hair, and her mom wrote in their Christmas update that Tiny is sunshine in human form, which is all the way accurate. Not so tiny anymore, because of all the eating.

Big is still big and everything. I don't really see him very often because he goes to school.


Baby Bieber Bear
Turned two at the end of October, and talks all the time and is intelligible about 65% of the time. Has gotten to love playschool, and all he wants to do ever is "play cars and trucks and trains" which means sorting through his giant box of vehicles, and sometimes building tracks, sometimes just lining all the vehicles up on the table. We like to go to the library and also to Union Station to watch the MARC trains.


Three Horsechildren of the Apocalpyse
They moved to Alabama a few months ago, which makes me sad but I guess they are doing okay there. I saw them last week at their cousins' house so the parents could go out for dinner, which was hilarious and exhausting, but so nice to see them.

Zannah is 9, and is as string-beany as ever. Loves talking back and doing other delightful pre-teen things.

Prince Philip is 6, reads (!), wrote me a beautiful Christmas card that says he wants me to come visit them in Alabama. My heart grew three sizes that day. He's lost both top two front teeth, so he looks like an older bigger version of Baby Space Monkey, which is hilarious, because they share the same name in real life.

Captain Bananio is insane. He's 3 and a half, is only intelligible 50% of the time, and the rest of the time lives in his own little Bananilicious world. He stomps around and spits and jumps and yells and laughs maniacally and sometimes you just have to shake your head and walk away.

It's been three whole years now since I started watching those kids. Surprisingly, the one who I miss the most is Prince Philip. When Captain Bananio was a baby, he was sweet and docile and calm and all smiles, and Prince Philip was pouty, threw terrible tantrums, whined, and was just kind of a crappy 3 year old. Three years later I see that those tantrums were nothing, when compared to the havoc that Captain Bananio now wreaks on a daily basis. 6-year-old Prince Philip is happy, sweet, loving, and just wants to do things that he can be proud of, like reading and writing. He's still the silly little boy who loves to fight with pretend swords, and man, you should hear that kid recite the plot of Star Wars. I think I'll always have a special attachment to Captain Bananio because he was the first baby I ever watched, and I'll never be able to get over the wonder of watching kids grow up, but Prince Philip has surprised me the most by turning into not just someone I like to take care of, but a person I really like.


The Newest Charge
Now I watch a new baby, who I will call Small Fry, and I love her and she is so cute. She is three months old and what a three months it has been. Her parents are first-timers so they ask advice from me sometimes, which is pretty crazy to think about, that anyone would ask advice from me about anything, much less the rearing of a small infant. She's a good baby, very calm, very observant, very peaceful in the way she watches things. I hope I get to know her for a long time, because I think she will grow up well.

And now what I know about 2012 is that these kids will all get older and bigger, and new babies will come and they also will get older and bigger. For that is what the little ones do best.

November 22!

Whoops, forgot about yesterday. It was a good day, though.

This is my walk home from my new choir which I love love love.


The choir, that is, not my walk home. Though, it is not a bad walk, seeing as how it is a walk, not a 10 mile, 90 minute public transit journey / 30 minute drive, like my old choir was. New choir is SO MUCH BETTER.

November 20!

Another cheating day! I got out my camera to take pictures of some reimbursement forms for my health insurance company, because I don't have a scanner or a copier anymore. so, that's classy. Anyway, I found pictures that I took when I was in Oregon in May and never uploaded because I'm lazy. This is a picture of a girl who was at the Peter Iredale, which is by far my favorite shipwreck.

November 19!

I had to go get my TB test read, so while I waited for the nice CVS Minute Clinic nurse practitioner, I played with filters on my phone camera.

November 18!

Here is a picture of a relatively new baby (7wks), whose name I cannot decide upon yet. She is sleeping in this photo, and she had my finger grasped really hard, so I could leave until she finally relaxed enough to let me go, which happened eventually. It was a difficult nap day that day, so it was good for her to sleep, and less desirable to accidentally wake her up. So, I took pictures of her and waited for her to let my finger go.

November 17!

Today I went to get a police background check and this is what I learned :


woooo!! They can't find any records of my copious arrests! or... something.

Background check and TB test are required for volunteering thing that's coming up.

Took some cute pictures of a cute baby today who doesn't have a blogname yet. I'm still thinking.

November 16!

Baby Space Monkey is getting very big. His first tooth is about halfway in his mouth! well, it's always been there... it's just visible now, or, whatever. He's getting really good at crawling and he really wants to stand and also really likes wiggling back and forth while he's sitting, as if he is learning how to dance. It is excellent. Anyway, these are his hands.

Oh also interesting story. I took that picture of my cat hiding on the stove because it was a new thing, he'd never been on the stove before (to my knowledge), and I thought it was very funny. I probably should have just shoved him off the stove instead of pausing to laugh and take a picture. Today I was cooking ramen and he jumped on the stove and, well, now he's missing a portion of some of his whiskers, and my downstairs smells strongly of singed cat. Funny, also sad, also funny.

November 15!

Here there are irises blooming because we are still having crazy things like 60+ degree days in the middle of November.

November 14!

Believe it or not, this is my cat thinking that he's hiding from the vacuum cleaner.

November 13!

Surprise! Today we have a video of Bear learning how to count diapers.




Two! Six! He has all the animal sounds and all the colors (including silver and gold) down pat, so apparently next we'll work on counting.

November 12!

today I am going to cheat a little bit. I think technically I am supposed to post a photo that I took today, but it's 6pm and I'm still in bed, so really there are no photos to take or post or anything. and, this is a photo I've been meaning to post for a while.

During the weeks of the equinoxes/equinoces?, DC turns into a henge, because we were designed to have streets that line up directly east-west. So if you go stand in the middle of one of the letter streets at sundown on either the vernal or autumnal equinox, the sun sets right down the middle of the street. It is pretty close for the few days before and after, too.

Anyway, here is my photo from the autumnal equinox this year (Sept 23), from L Street, SE:

Also I post this because I miss the long days. Winter Solstice, come quickly!

November 11!

Apparently I am only interested in taking photos every other day!

This was my snack:


Animal crackers and apple juice. So tasty!

November 9!

This is the best egg I poached today! I know it's not flipped over on itself like it's supposed to be, but it's nice and roundish! And then it jumped off of the spoon on to the floor, and it was so hot when I picked it up (duh) that it jumped from my hand into the garbage disposal as I tried to rinse it.

Jerk egg.

Pretty, though, right?

November 8!

Ok, so I missed yesterday. Sue me! No, don't, because it would be a waste of your time and money.

This is what I did today!

The weather was lovely and I think it will be one of the last days to be so lovely until spring, so Bear and I went to the zoo! We saw this alpaca, which Baby Bear would have stared at all afternoon, but we had a very important meeting at nap o'clock, so I had to tear him away to get him home in time. We also saw lions, elephants, a hungry growling tiger, a napping tiger, a sloth bear (very close to the glass! so cool), and the sad sad emu that paces in its habitat next to the zebras.

I love the zoo.

November 6!

Today it gets dark early, and also the trees are very bright. this photo obviously does no justice.

I learned a really excellent Ysaye Barnwell song yesterday and I will try to find a good link to it.

November 5!

Happy Guy Fawkes day!!!

So, let me explain my photo. It's NaDruWriNi, and I wrote a great poem about broccoli and then drew a picture to illustrate and then I took a picture and this is what happened:


more margarita!

November 4!

November 4 was a long day. A pretty good one, though!

It's rice, in the photo. A clever mother has improvised to make up for her lack of a sand table. It vacuums! Apparently you can put food coloring and make rainbow rice! I plan on stashing this one in the idea vault for FutureSpawn.

November 3!

Baby Space Monkey went to the doctor today so I went to Whole Foods, and he has RSV and bronchiolitis and I have some Tillamook cheese and likely a cold coming my way.

November 2!

Today started off not as much rough as ... well, it was as though I was being rubbed on a cheese grater.

But now I've almost finished cleaning up the havoc I wreaked this morning, and soon I won't remember that part, but the part I will remember is this:


Baby Space Monkey! He's 18 pounds and cut his first tooth yesterday. Which probably explains part of my morning. Also, he's crawling, and wishes that he could eat sammiches.

November Surprise! November 1 Picture!

Here it is, November again, and I almost forgot to do my post. I am trying to do Picture Month, because that is not one I have done yet!

here is what I did today:



Also, Bieber Bear finally has started saying my name! It sounds remarkably like "Wookoo" which I think is pretty good. His mom said "did he just call you Wookie?" and I said that I'd take it. His words are crazy out of control exploding.