Cold Spaghetti

I’ve been thinking about it all day, trying to keep busy, trying to not be so grouchy, and trying to just not think about it. Then, tonight, after putting the kids to bed and finishing some laundry, I go to the front room to continue my busy cleaning… and the TV has been left on, and is playing something silently. And I swear, out of the corner of my eye, I see Paul. Not my Paul, her Paul.

I stop, realizing what I’m seeing. It’s one of Helen’s movies in a documentary honoring her, recording on TiVo. I consider sitting for a moment and watching, letting it all come, all that stuff I don’t want to think about. Instead, I keep moving. Picking up done, I go to the computer… there’s this thing I started and want to finish. Ironically, that thing I’m wanting to finish is a movie animating still photography.

And then I read this wonderful post by Emmy. As always, Emmy finds the beauty within the worst of things. It was exactly what I needed, Emmy, thanks.

What the pictures can’t capture is Kate screaming “WHEEEEEEEE!” while spinning and throwing cups of water on her face.

Say, “Kate, smile!” and this is the result:
See that dreamy look on Will’s face? He is talking about the hamburger he had for lunch. (Treat at Ruby Tuesday’s after running morning errands with PapPap.)
The Professor.

Big french door in the back. Big picture window in the porch area, with smaller window on the side. Small window to the left (study side) with little itty-bitty window on that side.
Interior glass door from laundry to porch — a little more towards the center than the old door.
Use your imagination….

On the 22nd, Paul built the floorboards. He did it by himself… with some management:
Paul on why Will is good management: “He doesn’t have a clue what is going on, but he has an opinion about everything.”

On the 23rd, Paul and Dad finished the subfloor.






This is how Paul is making tool clean-up easy — he rolls tools in and out of the outbuilding.

Will wrote a letter to Santa this year: his first. It started off like this:

I especially like how he added the “L” to the end of “DEAR”. I also like that he decided SANTA should replace the “N” with an “L”. I thought this meant that he would be writing “DEAR SALTA” (“salta” the Spanish word for “Jump,” which is a word Will knows very well, so I was amused at this particular choice). But when I suggested he add the last “A” to the end (for he had just written out “SALT” at that point), he said he wanted to put both letter “As” together. So be it. “DEARL SAALT” is how Will’s first letter to Santa begins.

I took the rest on dictation:

Because he didn’t know how to write words for things (he is still learning his letters, as demonstrated above), I suggested he cut out some pictures. This worked out well, as I had collected fliers from the paper and could encourage him towards things (i.e.: things we knew he was getting). Paul and I got him the Black-n-Decker tool bench (below) and my parents got him a talking Lightening McQueen car (hence the picture of Lightening McQueen). He signed his and Kate’s name to end the letter. (“K” is a hard one to write and he did a really, really good job!)
Then, today, our mailbox had a letter back from Santa! It worked out well — I happened to be coming from the backyard when our mailman (Chris) was on the porch dropping off our mail and picking up the gift we’d left for him there. I told him about the letter from Santa and ran in to get it out of the freezer. Chris said he’d make a huge deal about how COLD it was next time he saw Will. So Chris dropped in the letter with all the rest of the mail and Will found the letter a minute later — freezing cold from the North Pole! Once we opened the package and unrolled the parchment, this is what the letter looked like:
Merry Christmas 2007! Ho Ho Ho!

I took these pictures at the start of the month to document the kids’ head-wounds. Kate was pushed down and run over by big kids at the park while I photographed Valerie & family (Paul was there and ran the appropriate parenting past said kids):
And this is Will, about a week post-op from his short attempt at flight. Neither one got it in the center of their foreheads, so I can only think that they are trying for a Drew Bree’s look?