Why You Don't Name Fish

In short, DeGlossius left us today. Rob has said all along that he didn't think he was a completely healthy little fish. Even in the beginning he and I both noticed that his gills seemed a little too red. So maybe he was sick when we got him, but the poor little thing really withered over the last few days.

He had been hovering in one corner of the tank most of the time, but this morning, I noticed he was swimming around. Then Caleb went over to look at him and shouted, "Mommy! Why is DeGlossius swimming upside down?"

Actually he wasn't dead, but (to quote Princess Bride) he was "Mostly Dead", so Rob and I had a discussion (my vote was to flush him) and the final decision was to return him to his habitat so his "Mommy could look after him".

Sooooo I left the guys to deal with this and they scooped him into a bag and we went back to the canal he came from. Rob told Caleb he could hold him before they put him back in the water (at that point, he knew he couldn't do much more damage).

BUT while Caleb was holding him, he somehow dropped him and in looking for him, Rob accidentally stepped on him....so he quickly picked him up and tossed him in the water.

Later on, we went to visit with Rob's parents and Caleb volunteered, "Grandma, did you know DeGlossius is dead?" So much for trying to spare him the painful truth!
***
In happier news, our caterpillars are here! So expect butterfly related posts in the near future :)

Birthday All Day Long

To celebrate Rob's birthday today we've had an extremely sugary day! (P.S. I can't believe how much bigger the kids are compared to last year.)

We started off with donuts with candles.
And presents at breakfast.

We went out for lunch and during naptime I decorated the cake, presenting, the SPACE SHUTTLE CAKE!


I copied a Family Fun cake only theirs was white with blue and red M&Ms, but our traditional Rob birthday cake is a yellow cake with chocolate icing, so I changed it up a bit. Caleb and I also made mint chocolate chip ice cream with his ice cream maker.

3...2...1...lift off!

We invited one family to join us for cake - we wanted to have more people to help eat the cake up and they are good friends too. They have 3 kids so just having them over is a big party! Caleb had so much fun, he loves crowds!

Happy Birthday Robbie! I love you!

Another Self Portrait

Look at those looooooooooooooong arms and looooooooooooooooong legs! I love it.

New Product Alert

Caleb and I like to read the Publix flyer together to see what's on sale. This week, in their new products section, we spied a "buy one get one" sale for Batter Blaster Pancake and Waffle Batter and we decided to give it a taste test.

Rob said, "At least it's healthy" pointing to the word "organic" scrawled across the top, to which I said, "Organic doesn't mean it's healthy! It means...er..."

And he said, "Everything's organic!" (The misuse of the word Organic is one of Rob's pet peeves.) Which reminded me that I still don't really know what organic means when it comes to labeling. I assumed it meant pesticide free, but in that case, why not just call it "Pesticide Free" - that would certainly make me more likely to buy it, so maybe it's not pesticide free. I have nothing against organically labeled food (except it's price!), but I have been to a couple of mom-gatherings where the discussion somehow became a bashing of all things non-organic and those who continue to consume them, which annoyed me...but I digress, this post is about pancakes.

First off the name Batter Blaster is just terrific, but hard to say, more than once I called it Bladder Baster. Yum.

Step one - shake well.

Step two - squirt it out!

(Doesn't this picture make it look like I'm hovering in mid air above the skillet?)

Over head shot. Because of the tip, some of the pancakes came out kind of star shaped. Cute, huh?

Step three - consume. They were a little airy, but tasted good and clean up was, basically non-existant. I rinsed off the tip, put on the cap and stuck the thing in the fridge.

Next time we'll try it for waffles.

Do You Think She's Thirsty?

For the record, I LOVE the way little kids hold a sippy cup in the same way they'd hold a stuffed animal!

Deltalina

On our trip to Arkansas we flew Delta. As we settled in to watch their version of Caleb's favorite movie "Safe on a Plane", we were really surprised and impressed by their new video. It is nothing new so far as what topics they address in the video, but it the attendant who narrates it is striking, parts of it are pretty funny, and the style is edgy and catching. My two favorite parts are when the flight attendant tells the passenger "No, you cannot smoke, I'm so sorry!" (I just can't imagine that scenario in real life) and the shots where you see the narrating flight attendant's back, because the roof of the plane seems so big and white.

It does capture your attention because it is so different from what you expect, but I wonder if it will end up being like those neon green crossing signs that you notice at first, but grow numb to after a while.



The red headed gal has been nicknamed Deltalina online, but her real name is Katherine and is a real flight attendant!

DeGlossius

Our aquarium is now re-set up and after scouting out the pet store, we decided to catch local fish instead of buying little creatures that may not live through the weekend. Rob and Caleb's first fishing trip (using bait traps) yielded only one fish - Caleb couldn't have been more excited about his one little fish and he named him DeGlossius.

Here is DeGlossius himself. Rob says he is a Least Killifish and, actually, I think DeGlossius is a girl. She doesn't have, ah well, a gonopodium.

Caleb's asked several times to hold DeGlossius, cupping his hands to show me how careful he would be. All these requests have been denied.

Look who else is fascinated :)

Feeding time - even Mako was really curious about this!

DeGlossius's first meal at home.

A Few Words and Old Pictures

My Nanny died last week and we spent the weekend in Arkansas with my family. I really struggle to find words to sum up exactly how I feel about all of it. While she certainly had a long full life and was suffering horribly at the end, it still seems like all this came up suddenly. She evidentally gave all her efforts to being able to join the family for Christmas, which we all treasured.

Of all my grandparents (who are now all dead), Nanny was the only one I ever really talked to regularly and at length, called on the phone, or was called by, and the only one who took care of me as a child. So naturally I'd feel closest to her. And with that I think I'll quote Forrest Gump and say, "That's all I have to say about that."

After the funeral, my aunt told me and my cousin to go through a huge pile of old pictures and take whatever we wanted. It was a nice time to spend with her (my cousin), as most of the time we spend together anymore involves cutting meat into bite sized pieces for our children. We found a lot of old pictures of ourselves and our dads, as well as several pictures of Nanny as a child and even ancestors from further back. I took photos of some of them to post and they turned out much better than I expected:

This is Nanny and her siblings as children. She is the oldest and was born in 1921, so if I knew when Uncle Bob (the youngest) was born, I could probably guess pretty closely at the date this was taken. But I think she looks around 10 or 11, so let's say 1932ish. Something I find really interesting about this picture (actually several of these) is that they aren't looking solemn like really old pictures, but they are all smiling without showing their teeth...I wonder why...

This is the siblings (in age order) all grown up. This picture was taken in 1984. The last "all 5" portrait was taken in 2006. Uncle Johnny, 4th in this picture, died since then. The other 3 are still living.

The sisters, again in age order. There was no date on this picture either, but I'm sure Nanny had to be 17 or so. Aren't they beautiful!

Nanny as "football queen", which we called "homecoming queen" when I was in high school. She went to the same high school that I went to, only I wasn't even close to being the "football queen"!

This is her and my grandpa. She was 18 when they got married and I think this is either their wedding photo or one taken not long after. My grandpa died the year before I was born and Nanny remarried a couple of years later and I always considered Grandpa Raymond my grandpa. I don't even remember when I found out he wasn't actually related to me.

My grand-parents and my grandpa's sister and her husband ran an general store in Holly Springs when my dad was a kid. It was a very full service place - a gas station on the outside and they sold just about everything on the inside. It's hard to tell without looking long and hard at the picture, but you can see that they sold all sorts of canned and dry goods, jeans, shoes, dog collars, bullets, hats, onions, potatoes, bleach, seeds, and who knows what else! Part of the picture got cut off, so you can't see that they had boxes of Kellogs Cornflakes that were virtually identical to the ones they still sell! Also the boxes of Nabisco premium crackers and can of Clabber Girl baking powder look basically the same as they do in my local Publix. Nanny's pictured here with Aunt Net, who was my grandpa's sister and who I did some light housework for when I was a teenager.

And I had to add some newer pictures of Nanny with my kids, which - especially for Annalise - is the only way they will remember her. Caleb talks about her some, we painted pictures for her these last few weeks, but I guess time will tell what he tucked away in his long term memory.

I made sure to take a picture of my kids with each of their grandparent and living great grandparents. With Caleb I was so blinded with love for my baby, the pictures are more about him and less about them, but I realized with Annalise that I take plenty of pictures of her and she will probably be curious about what they looked like when she was a baby, so you can see Nanny better in this one.

I'm finding that having children of my own, it is really different to look at people you know as old people in pictures of them as children. It really hammers at the fact that children don't stay children for long!

Wordless Wednesday

My Man has Skillz

Because Annalise has been a pretty notorious hair puller, I had been just letting my hair grow and pulling it back all the time. I figured that if it were shorter, I couldn't pull it back and I'd be at her mercy constantly! Eventually even if my hair was pulled back, if I was holding her, she'd reach back and grab the knot or braid and just hold on, I guess, because it was comforting to her.

But she is not so bad at pulling hair these days and I was getting kind of tired of my long tresses, so I decided I wanted it cut. I can't really say my motivation for doing this, but I told Rob last week that I wanted him to cut my hair and I wanted him to do it as soon as we got home from church on Sunday so I would have the longest stretch in my week before seeing someone I know.

He asked if I wanted him to use the trimmer(!) that I use on him and Caleb or if the "Suck n Cut" of Wayne's World fame would work better! I assured him that scissors would suffice!

So we decided about how long it should be and he cut a little longer so that if we had to trim more (we did) it would not end up a lot shorter than I intended. It was a little off and one side was definitely longer than the other, but I snipped a little on it after he was done and a little more last night and a little more this morning and I am reasonably content. I am pretty unskilled when it comes to fixing hair and the interesting thing is that last hair cut I got cost almost $60 and once I had to fix it myself, it didn't look all that different from the haircut Rob gave me yesterday afternoon.

But before you ask, "What were you thinking!" asking Rob to cut my hair, which is pretty much what he asked me, I told him that of all the amateurs I would consider, I would definitely pick him because he has such a good reputation of doing difficult jobs well, particularly jobs he has no experience in. Mostly this is because he is slow and careful. So I got a free haircut and he got something new to add to his resume.

For My Dad

I told my dad about how Caleb and Annalise play this game together and he said he'd like to see it, so here it is :)



BTW, Caleb thinks this is the absolute funniest thing he's ever seen, however as soon as I turn off the lights, he begins worrying that she's still peeking at him and declares that he is "afraid of the baby!".

From the Mouths of Babes

Yesterday at playgroup we were laughing at how one little girl kept saying, “There we go!” as she was playing with her friends. It is pretty funny to hear your own words come out of a child’s mouth.

Similarly, Caleb often speaks to his toys or rocks or whatever he happens to be playing with. Today I heard him instructing a collection of palm seeds to sit quietly and then he said sternly, “Do you hear me?”, which is something I find myself saying to him, and I guess I ought to make an effort to stop…because evidently, he does!

Transforming the Fifth Beatle

A few pictures from Caleb's most recent and much needed haircut.

BEFORE:











AFTER:

Another Proverb

I'm still plodding through Proverbs, one verse at a time, and I'm noticing some interesting verses that I'm sure I've just glossed over before without ever thinking about them. Like:

29:13 The poor man and the oppressor have this in common: The Lord gives sight to the eyes of both.

Some other translations use the word creditor instead of oppressor. I think it's a pretty fair trade ;) I guess this verse could be speaking generally about life instead of specifically about sight. Like Matthew 5:45 - He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. That is the concept that sometimes good things happen to bad people and sometimes bad things happen to good people. So this is put bluntly with no explanation - no answer as to why this is so.

But something I consider from time to time is that in order to identify with another person, you must empathize with them and experience what they are going through. Kind of like a group of new moms groaning about babies up all night. Suddenly there is a connection that wasn't there before - and wouldn't have been there if it hadn't happened. It gives suffering meaning, as opposed to being senseless.

Similarly, the main difficulty I have always had with the Bible is its' insistence that I identify with Christ, which I find I cannot do - I can identify with many of the disciples and other characters, but how could I identify with someone who could raise the dead and really cared about annoying people? But in the end, Christ suffered - as all men do. Unless I am mistaken, I don't think the Bible ever says that his physical pain was the worst possible pain ever (although I have often seen people try to argue that point).

I'm not saying that suffering should make you happy, but it should give you a starting point for seeing through someone else's eyes. And oddly enough, sometimes that makes you happy. And secondly, since we know that sometimes good thing happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, we can't let that erode our desire for justice. We just have to realize that not everything that seems unfair is something that can be forcefully changed. Sometimes it just needs to be identified with.

Wordless Wednesday

Christmas in Arkansas

Tomorrow is Three Kings Day or Epiphany, which I have never paid much attention to, and still don't really, but it is a big day in the Little Havana part of Miami and the 12th day after Christmas, which shows how behind I am in posting these...and is a verbal picture of how completely disorganized my house appears to be at this moment!

But you can only sift through Christmas decorations and half empty packages so long, so here are some pictures of our holiday!

My Nanny is very sick these days and Christmas this year was so much about her and spending time with her.

She has 5 great grands and 3 of them are babies as you can see.

This was the 3rd gift exchanging day for us and Caleb is just now coming down off of his present-opening high! He asked several times in the last week and a half if he was getting more presents!

Christmas Dinner at my parents' house.

Caleb and my mom made pinecone birdfeeders which we hung in a tree outside her kitchen window. A few days later we watched some cardinals try to eat from them, but a fat blue jay kept dive-bombing them and saving the seeds for himself!

The weather was really nice while we were there. Caleb and I traced each other's outlines in chalk. I thought he did a great job, my wrists are a bit thin though!

Oh the siren song of the piano! Both kids were mesmer-ized!

Caleb introducing Annalise to the Fontenini nativity set.

My dad with Annalise

This bell is from a game called Pit. It's a card game based on the stock market and my parents played it with some family on the day after Christmas in 1976. How do I know that? I was born the very next day and my mom has always credited this bell's dinging for inducing her labor(I wasn't due for another 2 weeks or so). She says I was probably curious as to all the noise!

My brother has a "real job", but he really is in a band on the side. Here's him and Caleb having a duet.

On the way back we stopped in Mobile to visit some of my relatives. My dad's cousin Karen has always been in a wheelchair and Caleb is so incredibly outspoken right now that I figured he would be very curious about it and pepper her with questions. But he did not! Instead he acted as it he didn't even notice it...until she offered to give him a ride!

The ride back...what a long long way. It's not as fun as the ride there, with a dirty van and old snacks and everyone impatient to be home it seems twice as long!

On the ride up I had a very "bad mom" episode. We stayed at a hotel on the way and it had a breakfast room, so the kids and I went there while Rob took care of Mako. There was no high chair, and Annalise is relatively steady, so I sat her in a regular chair and put chairs all around it to keep her from falling out. We did fine until Rob got there and we were all sitting for breakfast and the barrier chairs were need for sitting, so of course she fell out! THEN we all went back to the room and I took Caleb to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and I thought Rob had Annalise, he thought she was with me. Well she was in the room, but the door didn't shut all the way and with both our backs turned, she opened it up and walked into the hallway. A stranger (who had witnessed the chair episode as well) knocked on the door and I heard him tell Rob, "Your daughter's in the hallway" and I thought, he must be mistaken! There must be some other girl wandering the hallway...but it was her! Fortnuately, a very nice cleaning lady was also in the hallway watching everything. At least then I felt like she wouldn't have done something extremely dangerous!

I sort of redeemed myself on the ride back - or Caleb made me pay for it, however you want to look at it. The child was not sick, unless he was homesick, but for whatever reason he threw up in his carseat. I had moved him to the back row and I was sitting in the 2nd row next to Annalise helping them with a meal and my first instinct was to catch it in my hand! Which was no where near big enough and it got all over his carseat and clothes. We pulled over and I cleaned him and it with baby wipes and he rode home in mismatched laundry in a coverless carseat.