Trick or Treat!

We had a long debate about Halloween costumes this year. We wandered through Target with the girls and Danny and I were just appalled at the choices and styles, first of all. Everything, no matter what the subject, is sexualized. Short skirts, low cuts, tight fits, etc. Yuck. Second, everything cost $30+ and the quality of the materials was just awful. Clearly the costume would be destroyed after a night of trick-or-treating with our kids.

So, we took to the catalogues and websites and ended up giving the girls a few choices. They changed their minds back and forth and finally decided that they wanted to be matching cowgirls. The cost of the costumes was definitely more than we would have paid at Target but it is clear that they will be able to add these to the dress up bucket and get more than one wear out of them! Plus, they look like a 5 and 3 year old!

Our cowgirls!

Trick-or-Treating with our friend, Henry. 

The only pic we got all night. Look at how cute they are.  

We just went around on campus. It is a great way to hit a ton of doors without a lot of walking. And usually it is a nice way to avoid snow and cold temperatures even though this wasn't a problem this year. 

Daddy gets into figuring out a coordinating outfit to the girls. This year: Rodeo Clown.

Daddy Blog (10/31/11)

Laughing As We Plunge

By: Danny Thomas

I’ve been wanting to write about these thoughts I’ve been having about presence.

About being present in my relationships
About loving kindness
Actively being kind and loving
Looking at people as connected to me
Rather than other or apart…
And how that relates to family…
Parenting in particular…
When I start to look at my children as my
Responsibilities
And their responsibilityhood starts to overshadow their human beinghood

I also have been thinking I should write about
My new job
About making the transition from
Full-time homemaker to
Working parent…
How I have missed my kids more than I imagined,
That I knew I’d miss them, but the time apart
Is a new and strange kind of heartache
But how that is counterbalanced by
A vitality and gratification I experience having a working life
That, oddly, had been taken for granted in jobs I had prior to full-time homemaker.
I hope to not lose sight of that again.

But these musings are pushed out of my mind
by something else
Altogether…
By a problem more pervasive, more distressing,
More immediate.
A real-world mystery that needs solving, but may, in actuality, be without a solution.

The unrelenting question is this:
How can we be using 6 rolls of toilet paper a week?

Look, I know I’m probably sharing too much
If the topic makes you uncomfortable I apologize.
I don’t always have great boundaries with regard to bathroom matters…
In fact, I once carried on a conversation with Jen and a few of her classmates
For the better part of an afternoon
Regarding from which angle one approaches wiping…

As uncomfortable as these topics may be, we can always learn from sharing, right?
Anyway,
I can’t figure out how to reason with a three-year-old about
Toilet paper usage.
We didn’t come across this particular challenge the first time around.
Tho, the five-year-old has recently discovered how fun it is to watch the roll spin
When you get it going fast, the paper really shoots off of there…

We have the older one counting sheets now…
Seems to help.
Look I want them to be thorough,
but this is a very old house, with very old plumbing…

I have cast out to friends and family
Virtually and in person
Seeking advice on these matters
And several friends have come up with great advice
Most of it coming down to
Figuring out how to have a somewhat philosophical approach…
And I guess that’s what we have to do…
To keep our sense of humor
So we can continue
Laughing as we plunge…

Hair!!!

Maya has been talking about getting bangs for quite a while. I have been able to put her off and put her off. But she continued and when we asked her why she wanted bangs she explained that she thought it would be an easier way to deal with her hair, she would like the way it looked, etc. Clearly it is something that is more than a whim for her. So...we did it.


I think she was a bit apprehensive.

And then once it was done she was pretty surprised at how different she looked. Frankly, so was I!

But then she decided that she LOVED it!

Since we were here we decided that we would treat Fin to her very first haircut at almost 3.5 years old.

She mostly got the ends trimmed and everything looks and feels a lot more healthy. She loved it!

Daddy Blog (10/10/11)

Until Time Changes That Too

By: Danny Thomas

Dear Maya,

Today I walked to the end of the street,
to your bus stop
5 minutes early,
then walked home.
Yesterday you wanted to walk home alone.

I don’t know what to do today.
We didn’t talk about it this morning.
It’s hard.
Watching you grow, letting it happen (as if I had a choice…),
Making it happen.
You are growing, brave and independent
I am so proud of that, so proud of you.
Still it’s hard to take the risk,
To let you take the risk.

I think one of the dichotomies of being a parent is that,
While you get to re-experience the joys of childhood
You also have to relive
Just how hard it is to be a child
When all this change,
this transience, is new.

I feel like, even at thirty-eight years old,
I am bewildered by this experience of growing up, growing old…
And how tough it is to try to make peace with the inexorable advance of time,
the ceaseless changes time puts us through…
And I have had nearly four decades to wrap my head around it.
Even while I see that experience refracted, at least, two more times, through my parents,
and through you, my dear Maya.

And so,
we’ll keep waiting for the bus together in the morning…
And I’ll keep finding some reason to be at the end of the driveway watching for you when you
get home…
Until time changes that too…

Whew

After a long, long hiatus we may be back up and running. Our laptop hard-drive borked while we were in Seattle for vacation. Thankfully we had done a full back-up before leaving on our trip but it took a long time to manage to get the system restore to fully load. Thus....the break.

Anyhow. We are getting the pictures loaded onto the computer and hopefully we will work on getting caught up a bit. So don't forget to check in the July/August/September folders in the next few weeks.