31 March 2010

A funny remembrance from this winter: At the dinner table one night, Nut Brown stood up on his chair and said, "May I have your attention please?" When he had our attention, he announced, "I would like to go to the beach."

moving

I have PCS papers. We're moving to Detroit, Michigan, the first week in May. Farewell, Iowa! I guess I'll have to change the name of this blog.

Rents in Michigan are twice what they are here, so Mr. Brown keeps trying to prepare himself and Rose Pink for the idea that we'll be living somewhere less spacious than our townhouse. "We'll probably be in a smaller place," he'll say. Rose Pink, without fail, always counters, "Or bigger! It could be bigger, or smaller, we don't know!"

It started way back in December, when I was offered another job with the command if I would move in March. I accepted, but then changed my mind and decided to stay in my current job and go ahead and move. They put me on the calendar for July, and we were waiting for official papers before announcing anything. Then when I came back from the Leavenworth trip, I had a really bad week with my boss, and Mr. Brown told me that we should just go ahead and move in order to get away from her. (She's retiring and not moving to Detroit.) So I asked for my orders to be moved up to the beginning of May, and that was approved two weeks ago. I got my paperwork yesterday.

I thought it would be good to have a short time before I moved - less time to mope, less time to be uncomfortable around people, less time to answer for the ka-jillionth time the same questions about whether or not we're excited and how much time left. I think it was the right choice. I didn't want to tell anyone at all at church, but Mr. Brown didn't let me make that decision. It's been so hard, this whole upset and the mixed feelings of excitement and loss, that I didn't really want to talk about it with anyone, and I didn't want people looking at it or prodding those feelings.

Mr. Brown told one person the day the May move date was approved, and when we got to church on Sunday it seemed that most of the people we talked to there already knew. Word gets around, I guess. It was such a relief to me not to have to tell anyone, and Mr. Brown cleverly deduced that I didn't want to see the disappointed look on others' faces when we gave them our news. He very thoughtfully made sure to tell everyone that might possibly need to know, so that it wouldn't have to be me breaking it initially. My husband is so kind.

In a lot of ways it seems an appropriate time to move. I was just telling Mr. Brown that it seemed like our group of townhouses is filled with ghosts. He quoted Counting Crows at me, "Memories are just films about ghosts" but it's true, when I look around all I see are the people who used to live here. Either the townhomes are empty now or they have grownups in them with no kids and so we never see them. There's a particular push/riding toy that has been handed around from family to family and has actually been part of this group of townhomes for longer than we've lived here. I wonder if the people who first bought it realized that it would stay here for so long. And at this point, nobody else realizes that it's been around here so long, except maybe the landlords.

We are excited and interested to move to a new city and experience new things, a different ward, a different culture and different learning opportunities. But Davenport is a good place to live and we do like this city and will miss it very, very much. We'll be gone the next two weeks. I have a training class in Detroit, and then Mr. Brown and the kids are coming to join me for a few days to look for a place to live. Sigh. Here we go, another adventure!

26 March 2010

Some specimens of Nut Brown's recent artwork: He's big into color variety.

One of Rose Pink's newest masterpieces:

22 March 2010

We bought this movie the first day it was for sale, and we've watched it twice as a family since then, with popcorn. Nut Brown and Rose Pink quote it incessantly, and Nut Brown carries Ponyo around in a flowerpot. You have to be nice to her or she spits at you. Actually, she spits at me regardless.

20 March 2010

Why every father should have been a Boy Scout: You may at some point be required to tie twenty knots in fishing line.

We now have a glow-in-the-dark solar system hanging from the kids' bedroom ceiling.

14 March 2010

What a Sunday. Mr. Brown had an early meeting at church and Rose Pink was scheduled to be a reverence child, and so we all went to the church an hour early. (Mr. Brown says that when I'm left on my own to get to church with the kids I am always late! Shocking!) It is a good thing that we did, because it meant that we were on time for church since we'd forgotten about daylight savings time. Otherwise Mr. Brown would have been the only one to make it to sacrament meeting.

After we sang the opening hymn and said the opening prayer, Nut Brown bounced off the pew and announced his intention of going to nursery.

My Girl Scout cookie order was delivered at church, and Nut Brown was demanding one as we were leaving the building. I told him he could have one when we got home. Mr. Brown parked our car behind our house and announced, We're home! and Nut Brown said, "Now give me a cookie!"

Nut Brown after hitting his head on the table: The table after Nut Brown hit it with his head.

12 March 2010

Nut Brown has always liked to put things in his mouth. He didn't get to nurse for very long because he chewed on me, and he chews on his boppy and still, even at two and half, explores things with his mouth. The other day we were playing legos on the floor and something started pinching my toe. I looked over and Nut Brown was absentmindedly chewing on my slippered foot, which was in reasonable proximity to his mouth, as he concentrated on his legos.

When we ask him to go put his boppy away, we used to invite him to give it a hug and a kiss before putting it down. But lately, he has very charmingly been asking for "one more chew" before he puts it away.

Sunday Morning

sproing!

I was so miserable during my first week at Ft. Leavenworth that Mr. Brown braved the troublesome miles and brought the family to stay with me for the second week. It was pretty boring for them, I have to say, although they did get to go to the zoo. Leavenworth is really too far from Kansas City to be a good place to launch sightseeing from. But I was awfully happy to have them.

Highlights of the trip:

-Mr. Brown passed a gigantic kidney stone, almost bigger than a pencil eraser. It went 'clink' in the toilet. He saved it and is taking it to the doctor for evaluation.

-Rose Pink told the guard as he was checking our vehicle for the umpteenth time to get back on post that we didn't have any bombs.

-We pulled over for a fire engine to pass us, and as it raced by we watched the hose uncoil from the back and lay itself down the middle of the road.

-We ate at a dinosaur themed restaurant - T.Rex Cafe - and the premium we paid for the food was worth the total engagement of our children in their surroundings.

****************

Returning, we found the snow had almost entirely melted and to my intense delight, the bulbs I planted last fall are starting to come up. Little green shoots never looked so good. Kids and parents have been ecstatic to be outside again. I think spring is actually going to come this year!

16 February 2010

The kids were excited about Valentine's Day, so we made valentines to send to special people, and made sure there was Valentine's chocolate on the table for them on Sunday morning.

Rose Pink and I went to the library to attend a Valentine's craft spectacular, where she made a Valentine's crown and scepter, and we both made Valentine cards. She carefully wrote "I LOVE YOU" in them and labeled each one "AB" before giving them to me. The next day, doing some workbook pages, when directed to draw a picture of herself participating in her community, she drew a picture of making valentines at the library. This is one of the things that I love about Davenport.

This morning as I was leaving, Nut Brown shouted, "See you later, Miss Alligator Mommy!"

paper dolls

Rose Pink and I made paper dolls, and she thought they would look great on our living room walls.

what we did with our new snow this week

12 February 2010

So we survived January. Barely. And I mean, barely. But things are looking up for the rest of February and March.

I know that everyone thinks that all that snow on the East Coast is a freak of nature, but it's actually proof that someone up above loves me very much. Let me explain.

I spent the entire sunless month of January working overtime on a huge sticky project at work. It's a stunningly large project to begin with, and was complicated by the fact that I have a hard-to-please boss, and also by the fact that the people at headquarters and higher headquarters kept issuing contradicting guidance.

Every other time this biannual project has been done, my command spends two days briefing the results to the Department of the Army, going over every single weapon system supported by the command, in detail. However, a new person was put in charge of this at DA right before the whole thing started. He didn't really have a clue what was going on or what was important, which resulted in the mixed messages about what they wanted from us. But he was really, really nice about it all. I like him.

He did know for sure, however, that he had no interest in sitting through two days of briefings about weapon systems from TACOM. He was very firm about that from the beginning. I liked him even more for that. Instead he asked for a briefing that reported on the five funding program.s which cover all the weapon systems.

He finally explained what he wanted one week before the briefing was supposed to happen, on January 29. So my team and I killed ourselves the next week trying to get the briefing together, and completely dreading the 10 am brief time on Friday morning.

Friday morning dawns, and the briefing is done but is an extremely poor representation of the genre. I am thoroughly ashamed of it, and ashamed to be the one giving it, but I am busy consoling myself with the fact that AT LEAST THIS WILL ALL BE OVER in another couple hours. Then we get an email from the DA guy saying that everyone in the Pentagon has been advised to go home, so our briefing is canceled.

So I have all of Friday to work on it! And then the government is closed on Monday! And then it snows some more on Tuesday! And on Thursday! It's now one week after I was supposed to give the dreaded briefing, and I have not heard a single thing from DA. Happiness. Bliss. Needless to say, I am much happier with what I have to present when I do hear from him.

I'm telling you, it may have seemed incredible, but really, somebody up above loves me.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday this week at home sick, which was nice. I was back at work today, and now I have Sat/Sun/Mon off, more joy. Four days of work next week, and then I'm off to Ft. Leavenworth for a class. Mr. Brown and our little monkeys are tagging along and planning to hang out in Kansas City while I'm in class. I'm very excited for the further break from work. I'll be in Kansas for two weeks, and then back at work for three weeks, and then I am traveling to Detroit for another class for a week. Mr. Brown is tagging along on this trip as well, mostly to scope out the area.

Your tax dollars at work. But I'm so looking forward to doing something besides work late every night.

8 February 2010

We have been singing "Tomorrow" from Annie at the top of our lungs for the past month. We went three weeks in January with no sunshine- it was a really, really hard month for us. But we discovered the optimism in "Tomorrow"- tomorrow is always a day away, so you can always hope for sunshine tomorrow. There was lots of singing at the top of our lungs to try and encourage ourselves. And now, when we get to the last line: "...it's only a daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay aaaaaaaaaaa-WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!" Rose Pink and Nut Brown shout it as loud as they can ("I was louder than you," said Rose Pink to Nut Brown this morning) and that cheers me up almost as much as the philosophy does.

Birthday Balloons

Rose Pink felt that she didn't have enough balloons for her birthday, so Mr. Brown bought several packages a couple days later. Balloons are even more fun in the winter because static electricity is even more readily available. And here's a shot of the birthday girl with her cake. We had pink ice cream to go with the pink cake.

An email from Mr. Brown this morning about Rose Pink: We worked with the Preprimer words and managed to get her to stop rolling her eyes by not expecting her to sound out and just to ask what the word is. Then we took the words she didn't know (only 10 out of the 40) and made sentences out of them to make a bit of a story.

Can you help me find my little blue kitten?

I do not know where she is

She ran away

She is playing a funny game

Here she is

Italics added to show HF words worked on.

It was satisfying.

Busted!

My aunt Martha's youngest daughter is only a few months older than Rose Pink, so happily for us, she has generously sent our way boxes and boxes of girls' clothes. We are very grateful.

Recently my cousin Brittany (b. 1985) moved to Davenport, and when she was visiting us one evening she looked at Rose Pink and said, I think I recognize that skirt. I think that used to be mine.

Could it be? Could my daughter be wearing a 3rd generation hand-me-down? That's practically an heirloom!

And now we have proof. Here is Rose Pink wearing a dress that came in the last box we received from Aunt Martha. She calls it her "play dress" or her "pioneer dress". I looked at it and said, I think that dress looks familiar! I dug around in my box of random family pictures and found this:

Brittany at age 3. (Sorry about the poor scan.)

Here's Rose Pink again:

It's the same dress! Aunt Martha, you are busted!

29 January 2009

Some random Rose Pink treasures:

She colored on the back of a letter from Grandpa that he wrote on the back of some of his class notes, and cheerfully noted to us that Grandpa had sent her a coloring page.

This Christmas we phantomed a family in our ward. One of the gift bags was a small little thing that said "Merry Christmas" in a pattern of text all over it. Rose Pink completely loved the bag and carried it around for a couple days. When it came time to give it away, she wanted to draw a picture of it to remember it by, and produced this sketch. You'll see the bag towards the top

left, with lots of letters written on it.

26 January 2009

One of the games Mr. Brown has played with Rose Pink- rolling a pair of dice and finding the sum, then checking it off on a "Math-Go" card.

In church on Sunday, Rose Pink's lesson was about choosing to follow the Savior.

Mom: What is this?

Rose Pink: Oh, we had to draw a picture of doing what Jesus would do.

Mom: And what is this picture of?

Rose Pink: This is you and me feeding the ducks!

22 Jan 2010

The past several nights Mr. Brown has been telling a continuing story to Rose Pink & Nut Brown as part of bedtime. It's a story in the style of D&D, which features swordplay, bows & arrows, ogres, underground caverns and giant spider ants. Mr. Brown finished the first night by saying: "The adventurers paused outside the entrance to the cavern, and listened to the noises coming from within....(growling noises)...and we'll see what happens tomorrow when they go inside!" Nut Brown immediately said, "Too 'cary for me. Too 'cary." Mr. Brown has worked to modify his story-telling style in order to keep things okay for Nut Brown. (No more cliffhangers!)

Mr. Brown asked what our characters' names are. Rose Pink's is named Rosella. Mine is named Mia, and Nut Brown's is named Doors. Nut Brown doesn't always remember that's what his name is, and will run over to the door sometimes when the storyteller is addressing him.

It's an interactive story. At one point, we had to cross a chasm, and when Mr. Brown asked how we were going to do it, Rose Pink said, "We're going to strap on gliders and fly across. With rocket fuel to make sure we get there." So we did. On the way back we had to cross the chasm again, and this time a giant fire snake came out of it and was trying to catch us on our rocket-fuelled gliders. Mr. Brown meant for us to dodge and get away (and Rose Pink and I were dodging all over the bedroom - this is also an active participation event) but Nut Brown attacked the snake with his sword. Bye-bye fire snake!

Nut Brown's general approach is to attack things with his sword. Anything. Everything. When we were sitting in a tavern and a tall person in a dark cloak walked up and sat down at our table, Nut Brown attacked.

The tall person in the dark cloak died, but we found mud on his boots that suggested we should look in the sewers for our next adventure. Before we climbed down into the sewers, Rose Pink suggested that we all put on sewer suits to keep our clothes clean. Good idea.

We're tracking someone through the sewers. We come upon a big patch of mud, and Mr. Brown says, "You see footprints in the mud. How big are they? People-sized? Or BIGGER?" Rose Pink says, "Actually, they're tiny! Like mouse-sized!" Mr. Brown takes it and runs with it- "Mouse-sized? Like a killer mouse that eats people? Oh, look, there it goes!" and Nut Brown attacks with his sword.

The king is giving us gifts to reward us for saving his daughter. (Rose Pink had an extra sewer suit available for the princess when we found her in the sewers.) He gives Rose Pink a bow, which he says shoots flaming arrows so that she can signal for help when she needs it. She puts it on her head. Interesting. And then Mr. Brown realizes that the king has given her a hairbow.

The kids anticipate the story telling all day, and scramble into pajamas to get ready for it. It is so much fun to see their brains working and their imaginations going full tilt. Mr. Brown loves it, too. I hope this tradition lasts a long, long time.