what a small gentleman does

This little man is bolting for toddlerdom.  He's got teeth popping out all over the place, a perma-drooly-grin, and a penchant for trying to stand on his own.  Stairs are finally mastered both up and down (usually) and he loved his first taste of garlic recently when I caved and let him try the cauliflower soup I'd made for dinner (it was a pureed soup, no choking hazards, just a whole lot more flavor than he usually gets).



He is so defiantly happy.  Sometimes he overwhelms me with his loveliness.  It is hard to stay hurt or frustrated or forlorn when he looks at your unhappy face and giggles like mad.  I ought to be loaning him out for this benefit.



I find that between Mr Renn and myself we have inexcusable penchants for taking ourselves too seriously.  I thank God quite regularly for sending us the perfect children to remind us to have fun and be kinder to ourselves. There are thousands of opportunities to laugh and romp and squish little faces every day.  I waste most of them, but I catch enough to remind my heart that I'm part of a great work in this little borrowed house of ours.  Something so marvelous that my brain doesn't even try to comprehend it, and gets silly and forgets half the time.  But I can sometimes be grateful if not wise.

a certain scent of failure

On Friday I ventured to my first estate sale.  I think I've always waited for someone who was comfortable in the realm of buying other people's stuff to invite me along with them.  The interpersonal aspect of it gives me knots in the pit of my stomach.  "Hi stranger, how much do you want for this here posession?"  I guess because I'm sentimental I assume other people have sentimental value attached to their belongings as well.

This was a bad first estate sale.  But I didn't know that in advance.  I just saw this gorgeous quarter-sawn oak dresser listed online for pennies, and since our gentleman's clothes are still living in boxes on the floor of his closet, I had to give it a try.  I begged for our favorite neighbor to listen for my kids on the monitor and took off insanely early.

I got there 10 minutes early, but I may as well have been an hour late. There were people crawling everywhere. It was impossible to tell who was running the show.  I finally spotted someone asking a lady a question and approached her to inquire about the lovely dresser.  It was still in the house, in the basement.  For a tiny moment my heart leapt.  But then a tall, middle aged, confident lady behind me piped up with, "Oh, I was looking for it too!".  I was sunk.  I could tell she was a pro.  But she didn't want to exert all of her powers of thrifting over such an obvious novice as I, so she kept giving me opportunities to bow out gracefully.  I tried to be stubborn.  I certainly needed the dresser more than she did, but she kept laying out, her "craftsman home" that she was trying to fill with "period pieces" as though it was the reason the dresser already rightfully belonged to her.  I had more money on me than her, but she waved her magic cell-wand and her daughter showed up with several hundred dollar bills and I had no reason to hope.

In the end I lost the dresser in a game of "choose a number between 1 and 10", the confident lady let her granddaughter pick the number.  2, "but I always choose 3, it's my lucky number."  Which, having said that I could choose neither 2 nor 3, because hadn't she just essentially chosen them both?  I went with 5, thinking the odds were decent for me, but the number had been 3.  Of course.  So I helped load the dresser into the confident lady's truck with a leaden heart.

What made this experience all the more painful for me was that the estate sale was clearing out the possessions of a lady who was very much alive.  and present.  and sobbing.  She was, of necessity, moving in with a daughter, and the stuff had to go.  But oh, how she sobbed on the porch.

And so, after losing and feeling that I'd begged a babysitter, driven miles, and forfeited my dignity in vain, I found it difficult to stay and peruse anything else at the sale.  But leaving straight away tasted too much like being a sore loser to me.  Even if I am a sore loser, I'm still opposed to acting like one.  So I bought a small bookshelf and a ladder.  There was another dresser in the house, I probably ought to have bought it and called it good.  But the other dresser was so very very ordinary compared to the magnificent images my mind had created of restoring the remarkable one.  I didn't have the spirit to draw that much attention to myself. I couldn't move a dresser without help.  I needed to hurry home and nurse my wounded pride and anxiety.  Just as soon as I'd made an acceptable show of good sportsmanship.

The problem is, that the whole experience has festered for me all weekend.  I'm so frustrated at the condescension of the confident lady.  I'm exasperated with her lucky guess.  I'm haunted by the woman sobbing on the porch.  I wish I could just make it all go away.  But, unable to do that, I can at least vow to never go to an estate sale alone again.  So unless you invite me, you will not run into me there.

the pleasantest thing ever a boy could do

Our Captain has an obsession.
Big time.



This boy loves to swing.
And after I failed to talk Mr Renn into jumping all over a free swingset on craigslist (it was free on the condition that you disassemble and relocate it yourself, and he was not up for that hulabaloo) I went for the next best thing and bought a swing at Ikea and rigged it in our largest backyard tree.



I think this boy would sit on that swing all day long if he could find someone to push him that long.
But, since nobody's that available around these parts, we compromise.  It looks like this:

Progress Report

Mr Renn has been steadily working on restoring the antique table and chairs we inherited from his grandparents.  They only had 4 chairs to give us, so I hunted for more, and we stumbled upon an almost identical set up in Logan.  Okay, maybe not identical, but very similar and just as old, therefore nearly as awesome.



The chairs are slow going, mostly because buying new leather for them is going to cost so much, but  Mr Renn has nearly declared the table complete.  We had to essentially build the apron on the leaves (leafs?) only one of which was a surviving original to the table.  But it's a neat piece of history to have in our house, as we know of at least 2 progenitors who were born on that table.  I know; gross but somehow also really cool.

a veritable smorgasbord

We are not known for our spontaneity around these parts, but I did talk Mr Renn into spending his day off at the State Fair last week.  My dad was working in the emergency preparedness booths (he basically IS the UEARC), and had free tickets for us.  We managed a pretty frugal outing at the fair.  Two $1 hot dogs, one batch of tickets on the giant slide (that came out of my wallet, I just couldn't handle the sensation that I was torturing my children with all this "you can watch, but you can't do...") and one $3 round inside the all-you-can-eat ice cream tent.  I'm pretty sure each of those involved a potty emergency.  Somehow kids can just sense when there's no convenient way to take them to the restroom, they wait for these moments and then they strike.





Luckily there are actually things to see and do that don't cost more than the price of admission.  We checked out most of the livestock, the produce, the honey bees, the photography, the floriculture, the paintings, sculptures, the "home arts" (free popcorn demonstration!), and the perennial favorite, the kid's farm exhibit.





 By the end our kids were so over-tired and over-sugared that there was naught to do but collapse in the car and head home.  There was fall-out from both the staying up late and the "essentially having ice cream for dinner."  I'm glad we don't do this more than once a year.  But I have to tell you, they had Aggie ice cream AND BYU Creamery ice cream.  And all that awesome in one melting pile in front of you almost brings you to tears.  (and a sugar coma)

everybody needs one

It has been an interesting phenomenon; for the first time ever Sir O has a legitimate best friend.



It's a tale of utter serendipity, and it makes me all smiley inside and out.  This little man belongs to some dear friends of mine that I met in college, who happen to live right across the street.  I didn't know this until the day we moved in, and it felt like God was giving me a gentle pat and assuring me that He's very much participating in this crazy little life of mine.  These delightful people have been the best neighbors of all time.  We adore them, and our kids adore their kids.  But most of all, Sir O adores his best friend, or at least he adores having a best friend.  It's as though he needs his daily ration of time with him or he starts to suffocate.  And both he and the Captain fight over who gets to "be" or play with or talk about this Mr Sunshine.  Pretty much all day long.



This is a problem I'm happy to have.  Bring on the problems that come with having lovely friends!  I'll take them, I'll take them!

finished unfinished

Due to the part where I had a wedding to service only 2 days after moving in, the room/unfinished area that serves as my craft room/studio kind of got steamrolled into a manic disaster.  Boxes and "stuff" shoved everywhere.  It was bad. And since it's an area where I can close the door and play "out of sight, out of mind" it was taking me a while to do anything about it.



But then, enter the magic shelves. They are magical because they were free. Free is pretty prodigious. I saw them all lined up on the front porch of a house near my parents' that I knew was scheduled for demolition. (Which is sad, it was a darling old house.) I called and pestered until the busy people who owned the shelves finally got back with us and said they were happy to find a home for the shelves (and anything else salvageable from the house before it came down). So the shelves lived in my parent's yard for a while until we were able to get them back to our house.

 

And now, other than a bit more sorting of individual bins and boxes and piles, this unfinished area is as finished as it's getting under our watch. For the first time EVER I have all of my crafting/sewing/floral/wrapping supplies at my fingertips. It's an awfully empowering sensation. And it's a relief to know that my floral container collection isn't quite as out of control as I'd feared.  The paintings in this room were all done my Mr Renn as a boy. I hope to move them to more visible spots around the house if I can make them work in any of our spaces.

fish n' chips n' pickles

Mr Renn, as I have mentioned many a time, is a ginormous fan of Alton Brown.   Truly, it's huge.
And Alton Brown can convince Mr Renn to eat and cook and bake things that I cannot.  He just pulls more influence in that realm than I do.  Sometimes that seems ridiculous and unfair, but when Alton provokes Mr Renn into a frenzy of battered-frying, I do not complain.



Enter: Fish and chips and deep-fried battered pickles.  The goodness knows no bounds.

a first word

This is kind of a big deal for me....



Other than his given name, this is Sir O's first attempt at writing a word on his own.
When he showed it to me I was ecstatic.
Nevermind that what he meant to write was "CLOSED" and that "KOST" isn't close enough to that for me to guess it.  He still did it of his own volition.  It was in reference to his "art creation station" where he'd been churning out drawings of tractor-trailers all afternoon.  He had to close it for a dinner break, and ever since he proclaimed that "art-ing" was his job around here, he takes his art production very seriously.  (If you'll remember, his job is "art-ing", Mr Renn's job is to be a dentist, and my job is to keep the babies safe.) (I don't think he yet comprehends the scope of my job..... neither do I.)

ETA

Here is Sir O on his first real day of school (last post's photos were from the preschool openhouse the week before.)



It's good to know that his anxiety is still alive and kicking.  So far every day I drop him off a very reluctant and clingly little man, and by the time I pick him up again he's all smiles and delight.  He's also decided he's old enough to dress himself.  The only control I have over his wardrobe from here on out is with my purchasing power.  Once it's in his closet, he's in control.  (Kind of scary, AND makes me feel old.)

here we go again

Sir O is starting preschool again, which means a return to rigid structure and routine around these parts.  I hope that proves to be a good thing for all of us.  We all need more sleep.  And I could use a few moments each week with fewer than 3 children on my hands.  Knowing that this year will be a curricular review for him, I'm hoping that he can master more social skills, manners, and his bladder.  Boys, I tell you, can be hard that way.





In the meantime, I get to dig into the kindergarten and elementary school research fog.  I'm really tempted to try to get Sir O into a Spanish immersion program at the nearest Elementary school.  But I need to find out what the school's boundaries are, and what the implications for trying to keeping him in the program would  be if we ever moved outside of those boundaries.  Sound fun?

Well, if that isn't fun, then at least this will be:





Preschool Ahoy!

On the Town

 Last week I tried my hardest to be a spontaneous and fun wife. Entropy, of course, kicked me in the teeth for it and sucked 45% of the fun out of it. BUT I still give myself points for effort.



I surprised Mr Renn with tickets to a matinee of Mary Poppins, secured last second and at a steep discount. That was the fun and spontaneous part. Finding someone to take our kids on such short notice - proved akin to gouging my own eyeballs out.  Next time I shall be smarter and not be quite so very spontaneous with my spontaneity.  But those who did take our kids and allow us our first date in 3 months, you are on our official shortlist of people we gush over at our house.



And, Mr Renn seemed perfectly impressed by his first professional musical experience. His favorite part was the set/stage and the incredibly speedy set changes. The mechanics and craftmanship of it all had him a little starry eyed. I guess anything can happen if you let it......

I kind of wanted to stay afterward to get our photo with Mary Poppins and post it to their facebook page. But we were responsible and bolted the moment the curtain fell to relieve our lovely babysitters. Times and Seasons, I tell myself.

Mr Everywhere

Our gentleman has eased into mobility with disconcerting ease.  None of us can keep up with him.  The house has become a maze of makeshift baby gates, none of which succeed at their intended purpose. The implied neglect that comes for a boy with Sir O and the Captain for brothers makes for a tiny man who finds everything (except short tumbles down stairs) delightful.

 "Look mom!  I have the plug to the vacuum in my mouth, aren't I clever!"
"Wow, check out these library books Sir O left within my reach!  The paper makes this awesome crinkling sound when I smush it!"
"Oooh, the Gentleman left the front door ajar again, think I can squeeze through it before mom catches me?"

Never a dull moment.  Good think he's so squishable.  Or I might realize how tired he makes me.  I have lots of late night moments when I almost want to go wake him up so we can cuddle.  I don't do it, because that would be ludicrous and self-defeating, but I want to.  I have such a hard time carving out moments when I can soak in his little baby-man-ness before it's gone.  But there are lots and lots of moments around here when each of my boys just about kill me with cuteness and I wish I could freeze them just as they are.  But I can't, and I ought not to anyway.  Whatever comes next will be wonderful too.  And my greatest hope for this life is to see these tiny men grow into charitable, intelligent, entertaining adults.  Actually, that may be one of my greatest hopes for far beyond just this life.

 

like a thief in the night

Some dental school friends made the briefest of appearances in Utah last week, and invited any and all of us to join them at a park/splashpad for some reminiscing and catching up.



It made me all nostalgic and weepy.  On the inside.  On the outside I was just trying like mad to keep tabs on all my crazy children.  But watching other people's children grow up is so distinctly different from watching your own.  Mostly because when you only see them here and there it seems like they are barreling toward adulthood at breakneck speed.  And it makes you feel old in a jiffy.  And you're stomach gets caught in your throat as you realize for the millionth time how powerless you are in the face of time passing. All these babies I knew in their first days are busy walking around being full-blown people.





Powerless, in a good way.  Sort of.  As good a way as weepy nostalgic powerlessness comes.