Tag Archives: the kid

Sep4

Back in the Day …

Posted on by
Back in the Day …

A couple of weeks ago, much to my chagrin, Chang and Angel stumbled upon a DVD on our shelf and made us watch it.  I’m not even sure what this particular DVD was doing on our shelf in the first place.  I think it technically belongs to the Parents, but at some point which I do not remember, we must have borrowed it from them. Why, I do not know, as I do not tend to enjoy subjecting myself to the kind of torture that is watching that DVD.

You see, it is a home video from the year of 1995. You know, the year of big hair, leotards, and stirrup pants.  It was also the year I turned thirteen and suffered from all of the above.  That was the year all of us kids got together with our childhood friends, Nicki and Dustin, and produced a play based on Adventures in Odyssey’s episode “The Vow.”  For years, it had been our favorite radio drama, but this was the year we were going to turn it into our very own production.  I, however, was entering the teen years, and it wasn’t necessarily “cool” to listen to radio drama anymore.  My younger siblings hadn’t caught up with the trends yet and were still obsessed, so they spent months writing the scripts (and trying to understand what terms like “fade-away jumper” and “documentaries” were), building the sets, and rehearsing parts.  Nicki and I were roped into playing the parts of Donna and Jesse and grudgingly went along with it.  In the end, we invited our parents, grandparents, and a lonely neighbor down the street to our live performance.

In the moment of putting stuff like that together, you have no idea how humiliating it will be years down the road. The movie is probably not as embarrassing to The Brother, as he rocked in his Lakers Jersey, or to The Kid, who was five and Just. Plain. Adorable in his walk-on role.  But for me, it’s one of those movies that makes me cover my face and watch through my fingertips due to my bad hair and oldschool fashions.

However, it is good for one thing, and that is comic relief.  So, despite the fact that I said I never wanted anyone else to see this again, I gotta admit it is Highly Amusing and may be worth the humiliation I may suffer in order to share it with the rest of you.  It won’t be winning any awards, but it always gives my family a lot of laughs every time we watch and reminisce.

Kids, don’t try this at home. Unless you want to be subject to blackmail at some later point in your life.

Jun4

Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

Posted on by
Why can’t we just launch rockets like normal people???

We’ve been in the Iowa for something like a week now.  Last night and tonight, we launched rockets.

Last night, I wore my bermuda khakis, a shirt from LOFT and some of the barn boots (a pair which was only slightly too big) to haul about a half mile out into the recently planted soybean field (uh, sorry Randy) with The Kid and The Brother on Launch Recovery Team.

They’d have been a lot more efficient if I didn’t go along.  But I insisted.

At the point where we retrieved the rocket, I realized the barn boots had rubbed my ankles and heels raw, and I now had to walk all the way back up to the house with bleeding feet in boots that’s sanitary qualities were more than questionable.

I was even slower going back up to the house.

(Incidentally, I just looked at my heels and noticed they’re oozing and about to drip on the carpet.  That is just a delightful sight, I tell you.  Appetizing, even.  Somebody pass the cupcakes.)

So tonight, I wasn’t going to repeat the same horrible experience.  I dug up Joey’s athletic shorts, a t-shirt with a hole in it, some of Pops’ socks calf-length socks, and Mom’s gardening shoes.

Y’all.  I looked smokin’.

But I was much more comfortable and that’s what counts.

When The Kid saw me, he said something to the effect of “Lady, you look like a complete idiot”.  And he took a picture.

We loaded the rocket with bigger engines today than we used yesterday.  There seemed to be barely any wind, so we thought we were golden; the Launch Recovery Team (LRT) expected an easy recovery in the middle of the soybean field.  Unfortunately, when the rocket went up (WAAAAAAY UP) we realized immediately that we were way off.  The rocket blew south, right into our old neighborhood and a bunch of trees.

The LRT burst forth with shouts of “I THINK I’VE GOT IT!” and “IT’S IN THE TREES!” and suchlike.  The Kid, The Brother, Jess and I took off running down the front yard and across the street (which is further than it sounds to you city people) and were puzzling our next steps when we noticed Pops whizzing up the street in the van, packed with Laura and Joey.  Pops was all, GET IN!  GET IN! and we drove down the street we thought it had landed on, yelling out the windows to people in their yards, asking if they’d seen our rocket.

Everyone just looked at us super weird.

I’ll fast forward to the part where we did find the rocket, about 8 inches from our neighbor’s house.  The same neighbor who made us get rid of our dog growing up.  (Not that it was any skin off our nose, we didn’t like the dog.  But the point is: they don’t like things messing with their house.)  Joey’s hypothesis was that the rocket had hit their roof and bounced off into the grass.

Good thing we were in and out like assassins, our neighbors never saw us (actually it was Joey) coming or going.  Unless if they randomly read this blog.  Then, hi unnamed neighbors: I just ‘fessed.

After our first launch, and its questionable success, we re-aimed the launch pad and tried again.

There was a serious delay between the pushing of the button and the ignition of the engines, because just as Pops was about to go inspect the problem, the rocket went WOOOOOOSH! and took off into the sky.  It scared us all half to death because it had been so long since the launch button was pushed that we all thought this attempt was a scrub.

We were wrong.  The thing went up in the sky and pretty much everyone screamed and/or jumped a mile.  Good thing Pops didn’t get his face blown off.  That’s why it’s important to practice launch safety techniques.

The rocket went up, up, up and was looking PERFECT…until the wind stopped blowing.  Pops, Joey, The Brother and I all ran pell-mell across our side yard down to the barn (which, again, is further away than it sounds to you city folk), across the street, and into Pops’ uncut alfalfa field.  Joey was a few dozen yards ahead of us and suddenly we heard, “I GOT IT!”

Normally we yell I GOT IT if we actually hold the rocket in our hands.  Joey yelled that because he saw the rocket.  In the tree.  ”Four feet” off the ground.

May I just say it was many more than four feet off the ground.

I saw that rocket in the tree and I immediately flashed back to the events of the last month: a tennis ball to Joey’s eye, a volleyball to his left cheek, a water bottle to his mouth.  The rocket in the tree is immediately flashing DANGER! DANGER! in my wife brain.

The next thing I know, Joey has climbed up into the tree as Pops, The Brother and I look on.  The tree looked like a mulberry tree, so it has spindly, thin branches that sprawl out over a large area.  The rocket was at the edge of the tree’s plumage, so Joey had quite a ways to go before he could actually reach it.  Within no time at all he was as high as the rocket, and inching out on the tiny little tree branch.

“PLEASE think carefully about what you are going to do!” I yelled.  What I meant was: please, please don’t do anything stupid.

The tree branches rustled.  Dollar signs flashed before my eyes.  They rustled some more.

“Uhhhhhh, I think this branch isn’t sturdy enough to support my weight,” Joey said.  ”So I’m going to try the Lemur Approach.”

I wasn’t sure what the Lemur Approach was, but I was positive I wouldn’t like it.  Suddenly, Joey swung down from the branch and hung from it by his hands.  The leaves rustled and bent toward the ground, Pops and The Brother scrambled to get the rocket as Joey bounced gently on the branch.

Then, I heard wood splitting.

“HONEY!” I screamed.  The dollar signs in front of my eyes grew much, much larger.

“I’m OK,” he yelled.  ”Another tree branch caught me.”

As if that was reassuring.

Fortunately I couldn’t see what was going on, but I did hear a few more smaller branches break and then Joey emerged from the woods, sticks stuck to his hair and leaves on his shirt.  But he was alive, intact, and it didn’t even look like he’d torn or stained any clothes.

The dollar signs I had been seeing disappeared.

All’s well that ends well, because as soon as we got to the house Pops and The Brother started stuffing toilet paper in the rocket again so they could relaunch it.  (What.  Don’t you stuff toilet paper in your rockets before you launch them?)

And now I realize I should go work on my feet.  They’re still oozing.

 

May1

An Evil Pair of Evilness

Posted on by
An Evil Pair of Evilness

The Kid and his Lady (who is soon to become wife and THEN WHAT WILL I CALL HER?) are jerkfaces.

It is not a secret that I cry, like, all the time.  At super stupid things like rockets launching, Chrysler commercials, David Crowder music videos, and every single blessed time I hear the Olympic fanfare.  Because I love the Olympics about eleventy billion times more than you do.  And I’m already concerned about what will happen to the television coverage after the 2012 games when NBC’s contract expires.  I AM STRESSING, INTERNET.

It wouldn’t be the same without Bob Costas.

Anyway, the latest greivance I have against The Kid and his Lady is that they posted a video on my Facebook page all slyly and were all, Jenna, watch this. I knew it would be something that would make me cry.  I could feel it in my tear ducts.  Sure enough, it did.  I clicked over to Youtube and as soon as I saw the stupid video title I burst into tears.  I so wish I could say I was faking.  And Joey just stood behind me and laughed the entire time.

Conspiracy.

Apr22

This is how we roll

Posted on by
This is how we roll

Sister and her little munchkin came to visit for a few days this week, and yesterday we drove up to Carmel to visit them at my grandparents’ house.  Jeshuah was feeling active and excited in the late afternoon, so they went outside for a walk around the sidewalks while I fed Analie.  Once she was full, dry, and cozied up in her panda sweater, I stuffed her in the sling and we went outside to play with the “big kids”. (Also known as Jeshuah.)

We found him attempting to drive his walking toy up the neighbor’s driveway and into their garage.  The garage door was open and the neighbor lady was out doing something to her tree; she was trying to be subtle and yet still obviously watching Jeshuah take a running start to try to get himself up the hill to the house, then just as he was starting to make some progress Sister would grab him and turn him back around and drive him back down the driveway.   He tried this three times with no success.  Sister always busted him.

Poor guy.  It’s rough being a kid.

I gotta say, that child is pretty fast, even heading up hill.  Especially considering he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

We walked through the yard and arrived at the site of the chaos, Analie happily wadded up in her sling and head peeping up over the side, clearly impressed by Jeshuah’s mobility skills.

The Kid and Sister glanced up to see us coming, and then they burst out into laugher.  Because I guess Analie looked hilarious?  Judge for yourself:

Please note that I was unaware I was in the picture when it was being taken.

This is how we go on walks.  It’s much easier than finagling with a buggy, and Analie likes it better because she can see what’s coming, not what is going.  I don’t blame her either.

We crashed Jeshuah’s party, because Sister drove him back to the Grandparents garage where she strapped him into his buggy, and off we all went on a walk around the neighborhood.  (I think the neighbor was disappointed to see Jeshuah leave.)

Perhaps someday you’ll find us walking on the Monon this way, and then you too can laugh at us.  It’s the thing to do.

Apr12

Just when I said nothing ever happens to me anymore…

Posted on by
Just when I said nothing ever happens to me anymore…

This morning was cool and bright and beautiful, just the kind of morning I like to take Analie out for some of her doctor ordered 10 minutes of sunlight every day.  I was holding her and talking to The Kid on the phone (get ready, Indianapolis, he is coming next weekend) while Henry ran around behind the house, so we followed him.

That was when I noticed we had forgotten to take in the grill and grill tools after using them last night.

Analie is almost sturdy enough to sit on my hip, so I hoisted her to the side and began picking up a few things at a time, making about four trips inside and then one around to the garage to open the back door so I could put the charcoal chimney where it belonged.  Then, I went back for the grill.

It seemed easy enough to wheel it under the eaves, out of the rain (if we were to get some), so I shoved the phone between my ear and shoulder, shifted Analie to that same side, and used my free arm to grab the handle of the grill.  I lifted and began to pull it toward the house; slowly, because it something didn’t feel quite right.

That’s when the leg fell off the grill.

“THE GRILL BROKE!” I hollered to The Kid, as if that would make him come a week and a half early so he could take the grill off my hands.

“I’m not sure what you want me to do about it,” The Kid said.

I wasn’t either.

Except maybe come a week and a half early so he could take the grill off my hands.

“Maybe you should hang up the phone,” suggested The Kid.

So I hung up the phone. Which wound up being not as easy as I thought it would be, since one hand was holding the broken grill and the other hand was holding the baby.  I shifted down to kneel on the ground, supporting the grill on my leg and trying to decide if it was safe to put Analie on the concrete sidewalk so I could deal with the grill.  Which would be catastrophic if it fell.  Almost as catastrophic as if I dropped my baby.

Wait, that would be so much worse.

While I was kneeling on the ground, weighing my options, I realized that if I propped the grill up on the step it might (just might!) stay  in one place long enough for me to let go, run inside and put Analie in her swing, and run back outside before it slid to the ground and spilled ash and charcoal everywhere.

So I did just that.

Surprisingly, it worked perfectly.  NOTHING EVER WORKS PERFECTLY!  Except for that.

Once everything was safe and back where it belonged, I called Joey to inform him that there had been an epic failure of the grill leg.  His response?

“Yeah, one of the grill legs is a little shaky.”

A little?!

A LOT.

 

Apr5

I Blame The Kid

Posted on by
I Blame The Kid

My daughter is a lefty.  We are nearly convinced.

When I lay the little squirt down for her nap and she happily rips out her binky, throws it across the crib, and jams her left thumb in her mouth.  It’s always the left.  Granted, she still tries to shove her right fist in her mouth a few times a day, but if we’re talking about thumb sucking, don’t mess with the left side.

The Kid is a lefty.  It’s always been so inconvenient, too, because he has to sit in special places at the table or he whacks people with his elbow while we’re all trying to eat.  It’s a veritable bloodbath.  I sure hope Jess knows what she’s getting into.  Anyway, ever since we noticed about two months ago that Analie was favoring her left side, we’ve been trying to reprogram her by putting her most interesting and exciting toys on her right side.

The reprograming?  Totally doesn’t work.

She’ll roll on her side and reach at the toy with her left hand. Not every single time, but enough that I can definitely see my feeble attempts at righty-izing her are not going to work.

And when I’m trying to feed her that delicious cereal?  Her little left hand is flailing happily under her bib creating this wave of plastic monkey-bib madness, making it super difficult to get anything on the spoon actually into her mouth.

When it’s time for her to learn to tie her shoes in like five years, The Kid is going to have to come for like a week so he can teach her.  I have no idea how to learn to do it backwards.  Or maybe she’s just destined to a life of Robeez and velcro shoes.  That way we never have to worry about it.

She's thinking, "Take that, mom."

Of course, we really don’t care which hand Analie winds up preferring.  That doesn’t mean we won’t cast blame on The Kid at any opportunity we can find, though.

Feb19

Resemblance Much?

Posted on by
Resemblance Much?

Analie and I arrived in The Iowa yesterday afternoon about 3;00.  It was a long, arduous journey that began way too early en la mañana for my preference.  But since I was the one who chose to leave at that time of day, I had no one but myself to blame as I whizzed across eastern Illinois before the sun was even up.

Then when I arrived, my evil Brother giggled his sinister giggle and said, ” I have to show you something.”

First of all, The Kid is getting married.  I guess he’s old enough.  Anyway, after his marriage to his Lady (also known as Jess) in Ohio in May, they will be moving to Iowa.  My parents are having a reception for them here, complete with more cake so I am totally on board.  Well, as long as it’s good cake.

Actually, I just realized that I never confirmed there would be cake.

MOM. WILL THERE BE CAKE??  THIS IS IMPORTANT.  PLEASE ADVISE.

I feel better now that that’s off my chest.  Anyway, The Brother showed up with a large stack of old family pictures and said, while grinning his Cheshier Cat grin and gigling his sinister giggle, “I have to find it, hold on.”

flip, flip, flip, flip

mumble, mumble, mumble…no this one’s not it, it should be right after this one…mumble, mumble, mumble

AHA!

“Look, who does this remind you of?” He said, shoving the photo in my face.

And I just burst out laughing.

It’s The Kid as a rather obnoxious looking baby sitting in his high chair probably begging for more food….but his expression looks just like Analie, and it cracks me up every single time.

Dec3

Denver & the Mile High Orchestra

Posted on by
Denver & the Mile High Orchestra

When we were at the pediatrician’s office taking Analie back in for a weight check (she’s only 1 ounce shy of birth weight and the pediatrician said “good job!”) I received a text message from The Kid.

Lady.  Have you ever heard of Denver and the Mile High Orchestra.  First reaction: What do you think it is?

I mean, I just had a baby 10 days ago.  My reactions are…slow these days.  Therefore, I’m not even telling you what my first reaction was.  Instead, I’m making this poll so that we can collaboratively make my first reaction and thus I can report back to The Kid and his Lady what my first reaction originally was.

If this does not make sense to you, roll with it.  It probably doesn’t make sense to me either.  Analie was extra hungry last night and so I am extra sleepy today.

Example: I keep taking a bit of my carrot, and then eating the other half, forgetting that I ate it, and then digging around in the container looking for a half eaten carrot so I can finish it off.  It’s really confusing.

I’ve now done this three times.

Therefore, you can see how I need help.

Oh.  No Googling this prior to making your First Reaction.  Not only is that cheating and lame, but I just don’t want you to.  Also, The Kid said it’s not allowed.  So…there.

Nov16

Another Baby Name Poll

Posted on by
Another Baby Name Poll

This week, we decided to reveal The Middle Name.  Actually, The Middle Name has never been a secret, which was part of our master plan to annoy the heck out of my brother, whom we refer to as The Brother.  I believe it has been working.

Well.

Our daughter’s middle name will be…..

Alexa!!!

I’m going to get in about 3 different kinds of trouble with The Kid, because explaining the baby’s middle name involves revealing HIS name, which is Alex.

Alex…Alexa…very similar names, yes?

Well, she’s middle-named after The Kid.  (And we didn’t think The Kid made a very nice middle name.)  Whycomes she is named after The Kid?  Uh, because…I was super mean to him for most of his formative years.  Yep, true confessions right here.

I don’t even know why I was so mean to him.  I just was.  He was kind of an easy target because he was young and small and I was old and larger than him.  Also meaner.  I remember really being nasty to him on two separate Boundary Waters trips (the first much more so than the second) and feeling super guilty the whole time because he wasn’t doing anything wrong, just being younger and smaller.

I do maintain that I do not feel guilty for referring to The Kid as “Pukeface”, “Puker”, “Barfbucket” and a bunch of other vomit-related nicknames on the BW trip where he got dehydrated and threw up all the time for a couple of days straight.  (Sorry, man.  I just can’t feel bad about that.  You were throwing up everywhere.)

Poor Dad kept getting real mad at me for calling him all that stuff, too.

Now that The Kid is all grown up and engaged (YOU HEARD IT HERE!) and almost graduated from college, it’s uncanny how similar we are in personality and brains. (Although, not in anything having to do with computers, math, or science.)(  Maybe that’s why I picked on him growing up.  I knew he was going to grow up and take over the family with his coolness.

Anyway, we’ve buried the hatchet and now I’m much nicer to him.  But I still feel real bad about it if I think about it for too long.  Poor little The Kid.  He probably would have had a better childhood if not for me.

Therefore, this week’s poll involves which name(s) that are left on the list that you think go best with Alexa!  Vote well.

Oct16

Unconditional

Posted on by
Unconditional

First of all, The Kid is here this weekend.  He called on Wednesday or something like that all, my Fall Break plans fell through, CAN I COME OVER?  I guess he was going to go to Florida or something.

Anyway, we said he could come.  So he showed up on Friday evening and it has been a party ever since.  Actually, less a party and more just we’re all tired so we’re dragging ourselves around trying to find the motivation to brush our teeth.  (True story: The Kid and I realized at about 12:30 while on the way to lunch that neither one of us had brushed our teeth yet today.  I’m not sure what our problem is.)

Joey had to go to the office today because he’s preaching tomorrow and his sermon was mostly (but not quite) finished.  This left The Kid and I to mess around the house and try to do projects.  Here’s what we have accomplished so far:

  • Tried to hook up the Interwebs catcher from AT&T…but we had Some Difficulty with wiring due to the fact that someone (cough) cut all the phone jacks out of the walls.  The Kid and I made a trip to Lowe’s, where the sales guy told us to buy the wrong kind of wire, but we still bought it even though we were sure it was wrong.  I’m not sure if that makes it our fault or not.  Anyway, no webs.
  • Tried to run the leaf blower.  No gas.
  • Tried to run the riding lawn mower and mulcher.  Once again, no gas.  Also, it was dirty and The Kid said “I’m not riding that until we spray it off with a hose.  You do have a hose, don’t you?”  Yes, of course we have a hose.  We have like 18 of them because Gramps offloaded a portion of his hose stash when they moved a couple weeks ago.
  • Tried to rake.  I got about…ten minutes into it and then got hungry and quit.
  • Successfully picked up the litter in the front ditch.
  • Moved the trash can back to the back of the house where it belongs.
  • Got flipped off by a guy who wanted $2.00 for gas and we wouldn’t give it to him.  He didn’t seem legit to me in the first place and, after he did that, he really didn’t win any points with either The Kid or me.

So basically, we’ve failed at everything we’ve tried to do except for like two things..  And to top it all off, we haven’t brushed our teeth.  (Not even Joey did, I just asked him.)

The plan was to meet for lunch at 12:30 at Boogie Burger.  So about 12:10, The Kid, Henry and I got in the RAV-4 and drove down to Broad Ripple where we found Joey.  Coincidentally, we parked in the same parking lot even though we were coming from two different places.  It was magical.

We ordered our food (rather, they ordered while I stood outside with Henry) and then sat down at a table in the sun to drink our drinks and eat our eats.  About ten minutes into the meal, Joey shot out of his chair like it had just lit his pants on fire and said, “I need more root beer!”

Immediately after Joey left, a man came up to the table and started talking to Henry.  It was kind of weird, but we are used to people stopping by to see Henry because he’s furry and slightly cute.  Most people are suckers for things that are furry, even if they’re only slightly cute.

“Nice dog,” said the man.

“Thanks,” I replied, and then I started to say something else…..but the dude totally turned around and walked away from me as I was talking to him.  It was super weird.  The Kid and I just raised our eyebrows at each other and went back to eating our fries.  Joey shortly returned with his root beer, and all was right in the world.

Until.

Just as we were finishing up, the man came back.  And he brought his friend.  We had been noticing him this whole time running around in the street, stopping people to ask them if they were here for “the auditions”, and giving people directions to places they hadn’t asked for directions to.  He seemed like he may be a little….off.

Anyway, he was back.

He walked right up to our table and looked down at Henry and said, “Oh….Oh….you guys are BLESSED.  I mean, you have a NATURAL CREATURE who loves you unconditionally.”  He paused and watched Henry sniff around on the ground for a second.  Then, “I mean, have you ever loved anyone unconditionally?”

Joey, The Kid and I all stopped chewing.  An awkward silence fell over the table as each of us tried to decide how we wanted to answer the question.  We were all trying to figure out if this guy was trying to share the gospel with us, or if he was just kind of awkward.  I mean, we had been watching him run around in the street for the last 15 minutes causing confusion.  After what seemed like a super long amount of time but probably was only about 3 seconds, The Kid mumbled, “well, I’ve tried…”

And the weird thing?  The guy had already started walking away the minute he asked us if we had ever loved anyone unconditionally.  I don’t even think he heard our answer.

So, probably not trying to share the gospel.

Five minutes later, he drove by in a truck and waved at us.  That’s when we decided it was time to leave.