Almost 9

Robert was teary-eyed at bedtime. He said, "I'm going to miss being 8." I assured him that being 9 will be just as awesome. Tomorrow we'll start his ninth year with a celebratory waffles and ice cream breakfast.

Elizabeth's turn

The setting: Elizabeth is reading in the upper bunk. I'm reading to Colleen who is in the lower bunk. Colleen has a whole pile of books she wants me to read. I'm exhausted and decide that one story is all I can do. She's obviously disappointed. I have a great idea and say, "Maybe Elizabeth can read you some of her book."

The comeback from Elizabeth: "MOM! Are you insane?!? This is the Klingon Dictionary!!"

I'm sure it's pretty easy to imagine the pre-teen inflection associated with the italics and CAPS in that quote.

Capturing Colleen's attention

It's hard, and it's been harder of late, to get our youngest child's attention.

That's why it fascinates me to look at her face when I am reading Colleen a good-night story. She is so incredibly focused, even if it's a book we've read before.

I love those moments.

Tales from the bedtime

While I've been at church the past two nights, Cate has taken more of a hands-off approach with bedtime, leaving Robert and Colleen to their own devices after a short time.

This involves a lot of giggling and shoving. And eventually, sleeping.

Thursday night, Colleen sang songs to Robert to try to get him to go to sleep. Her memory is rather limited, but she sang Mary Had a Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Jingle Bells. But Robert had enough pretty soon, and stopped listening.

"I think Robert loves Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, you go try that."

So Colleen goes back to the bedroom and asks, in her customary outdoor voice: "Robert, do you still love Twinkle Twinkle Little Star? Robert? ROBERT? RO-BERT??"

Colleen came back and reported: "Mom, Robert stopped talking. I can't see his face, there's a pillow over his face."

Yes, Colleen, that's the international sign that he's sleeping.

"He stopped talking!"

Cate replied: "You stop talking! Go to sleep!"

Robert related later that he wasn't really asleep. Robert playing asleep and lying still for any amount of time is a tremendous effort.

Last night I got home before they fell asleep. Robert had been singing for Colleen but was already out of songs, so I finished them off. "I don't sing Up on the Roof or Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Robert told me.

Future diva, that one.

Since she's been gone

Cate has been out of town for a few days helping her mom out, so it's just been the six of us (Nonna and Da, not some new-found offspring). And tomorrow I go out of town for a meeting at Verizon, so there's a span of 24 hours where neither of us is here.

But everything's been fine so far. Emptying the notebook of what you might have missed if you were out of town or otherwise really, really busy this weekend.

• I took Elizabeth and Robert with me to Stevens Point, Wis., for a D-III basketball game. Just 220 miles each way. I sat Elizabeth down beforehand and told her, "Now, Robert is going to annoy you, and he's going to annoy me. That's just the way he is. You and I need to deal with it and not let it stress us out, ok?" Elizabeth didn't get very stressed out. We saw a great game. Well, at least I did. Robert mostly sat on the floor under the media table because I told him he couldn't sit at the table and read Garfield at the same time. He chose the floor. And he's little, so that's great. Elizabeth drew pictures, some of them basketball-related. Afterwards the Wis.-Stevens Point men's basketball team had an autograph session and there were sets of trading cards, which Robert had a great time tracking down and getting signed while I was conducting postgame interviews.
  
• We listened to both of our Beatles compilation CDs. Elizabeth needs to show you her picture of I Am The Walrus. I also introduced them to the joys of listening to the Beatles one speaker at a time. You know, where the vocals are in one speaker and the instruments are in another, or the lead vocal is in one and the background vocals are in the other. Good times.
• After the game we stopped at a Noodles for dinner because Elizabeth had never been and Robert enjoyed his one meal at one. We got there about 10 minutes before a bus pulled up. Good timing.
  
• On the way home, they slept, at least for the last three hours or so. But before they drifted off, we pulled over by the side of the road, turned our lights off, rolled the windows down and looked at the stars. Neither of them had ever seen so many stars before. We've found something Abbotsford, Wis., is good for.
• Friday night we met a high school friend of mine and his family for dinner, Broadway Pizza. Our kids had a great time and his kids warmed up pretty quickly. You'd be surprised how well 3-year-olds can converse with each other over pizza. Robert had chicken fingers, of course. Elizabeth and I split a white pizza. She was the only person at the table between the ages of 7 and 35. And she did just fine.
• I have sitting next to me a worksheet Robert brought home from school, where there are six pictures and you color the needs one color and the wants another color. Well, he does great -- roller skates, a television and a cat are all wants, while fruits and vegetables and places to live are colored with needs. Then there's a shirt. He colored half of it one color and half the other color. Not every shirt is a need, definitely. There's also a second worksheet, asking what you would buy with a hundred dollars. He answers a toy ($20), candy ($10) and a job ($50). He also does the math to show that that's only 80 bucks. Hopefully he's saving the rest.
• Colleen got to stay with Nonna while the kids and I spent all day driving and hooping. They went to Aunt Alicia's birthday party and hung out with Amelia and Mackenzie and the like and reportedly had a grand old time.
  
• I took Robert and Elizabeth to church this morning. Since I sing in the choir, I go over a half-hour early for warm-ups and practicing, and Cate usually follows with the three kids at 9. But Colleen stayed home and I took the other two in. Robert sat very nicely during rehearsal and then he and Elizabeth sat in the congregation, very close to the choir's space, and behaved very appropriately. I was proud.
• On Friday night, Colleen did not crawl into bed with me. Robert reported that she crawled into his bed instead, and he pushed her off, "because she was literally all over me, Dad!"
• Nonna took Robert and Colleen over to visit Pa this afternoon. Robert impressed him with his reading ability and Colleen sang Skip to My Lou. Yeah, Colleen. The one who buries her head and won't look at her nearly-96-year-old great-grandfather.
• Elizabeth was off playing with a friend of hers from school. They went sledding. She didn't bring back any physical or emotional scars.
  
• Tonight we had lamb. Yum!
• We didn't have one tough bedtime the whole time I was here and Cate was gone.
  
• Stuff is all getting done, just maybe not at the same time that it would have otherwise. Robert's lunch box got cleaned out ... on Sunday night. Elizabeth has been practicing her clarinet, but mostly before school.
  

Light up the Night

With Elizabeth on a special trip with Daddy to Iowa, I decided Robert and Colleen would get a special treat too: ice cream for dessert, as many bedtime stories as they could stand and a double sleepover with Mom. My throat is paying for the bedtime stories promised but we had a great time. We had just been to the library so we went to bed loaded with 12 new books (one of which was a 4 book treasury). We stayed up to 9 p.m. - 2 hours past bedtime. It was great fun and we all were very ready for sleep. But the sparks came after lights out.

In my family we always got new pajamas on Christmas Eve so we'd wake up in brand new PJs on Christmas morning. We've continued that tradition with our 3. This year (and the 2 previous years at least) the kids got coordinating fleece PJs from The Children's Place.

Someone kicked me in the face around 1:30 a.m. and I woke up. That someone was Robert sleeping upside down so his feet were on the pillow. When I looked down he rolled over again and he sort of sparkled. That looked weird so I put on my eyeglasses. And I saw Colleen shift and sparkle too! It was static electricity from their fleece pajamas.

I admit that I poked them a few times just to see it again.

Bedtime for bozos

I've been dusting off my repertoire of late. With Cate out of town I'm in charge of the bedtimes again, which is something that usually only happens when Cate works nights.

If Cate's in the house, Colleen and Robert (Colleen, mostly) just aren't willing to be put to bed by me. We'll give it another try when Cate comes home. But so far, somehow, the three nights Cate has been gone have all been nice and peaceful.

It reminds me of how the whole children bedtime routine got started, of course, with Elizabeth. We had a devil of a time getting her to sleep when she was little. (Actually, up until about the age of seven, but who's counting?) It always involved singing, some swaying, turning around in a circle, anything to calm her down and get her to sleep.

Since it was Christmastime, of course, Christmas carols were top of the mind, and one of them has stayed in the rotation for a decade: Silent Night. (If you have kid sleeping troubles, give it a try. Great song!) Elizabeth's other two songs were Up on the Roof and You Are My Sunshine.

When Robert came along, he was content to listen to Elizabeth's songs for a while, but eventually expressed a desire for his own. So he got I've Been Working on the Railroad.

And of course, Cate has her own set of songs. She tends to sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and An Irish Lullaby. Neither of us knows the other's songs. And the kids seem to understand that just fine.

Bed check

It's 7:45 p.m. (Central) Do you know where your kids are?

Elizabeth is sewing a Civil war cap so she can better put herself in the role of Confederate spy for a creative writing assignment. Unfortunately the hat was put away by the time I got the camera out.

Robert is obviously not ready to settle down yet. He was coming down the stairs because he saw two stars that were "awesome" and wanted to share.

Colleen is asleep. She had a long day playing with Amelia, shopping/walking with Nonna, making pie crust, and sliding down hills. There's not enough stain remover in the world for that particular hobby.