um, hibernation over?

I have apparently been in hibernation for the last, oh, five months or so.  Sorry about that.  But, hey! Spring has sprung!  

Here's an unnecessary roundup of our glorious winter:

• I had a birthday.  Another one.  Not that I really wanted another birthday.  But it happened nonetheless.
• Ben turned FORTY - and I successfully pulled off a surprise party (please, pat me on the back.  Thanks!)
• We got a pair of kittens!  And we have yet to, three months later, agree on names.  I call them Orange and Grey.  Orange is a cuddly boy.  Grey has stinky farts, but she's trying to earn her keep by sitting in front of the oven, waiting for mice to emerge.  Good girl.
• Christmas was awesome.
• Then it snowed.  It snowed lots and lots.  And we played in it.  And then we got pretty tired of snow.  (Um, yeah, as you can see, I have been completely relying on Cecily tell the internet about my kids.  Thanks, Cec!)
• Fletcher turned THREE!  (I have video!  I will edit!  And post at some point! I promise!)
• And now, spring has sprung!  Am I getting repetitive?  
• One week from tomorrow, we're heading to see the great mouse himself.  OMG!  Our little monsters might just jump out of their skin with excitement!

So, more soon.  Promise, ok?  Mwah!

Two year olds are utterly insane

Fletcher is particularly insane these days.  I kind of hate to say it, but until very recently Fletcher has been 'the easy one'.  She was always chipper and cheerful and generally good natured.  Gryphon, on the other hand, has been the more 'difficult child', if one had to put a name on it.  But over the last six weeks or so, the roles have completely reversed!  I'm not sure what triggered it, but suffice to say that Gryphon is now pretty responsive, helpful, adorable and happy, while Fletcher screams bloody murder if I choose the wrong shoes for her, throws a screaming fit if I ask that she accompany me from point A to point B and she doesn't particularly want to at that moment, and at completely inopportune moments looks at me over her shoulder with a cheeky grin and sprints away.
So, as I said, she is insane.  And when she's not getting enough attention, she gets certifiable, albeit sometimes in a terribly adorable way.  Tonight, as Gryphon was finishing her dinner, Fletcher was running around being, well, just goofy.  But Gryphon and I were chatting about her day at school, so nobody was paying attention to Fletcher's goofiness.  So of course, she felt the need to ratchet it up a notch.
So she ran full tilt from the living room to the dining room, with her eyes squeezed shut.  Inevitably, she ran full tilt straight into the wall.  
She screamed bloody murder of course.  And it was all I could do not to laugh.  I picked her up and cuddled her, calming her down after about five minutes of hugs and attention.  I explained to Gryphon that this was an object lesson - Do Not Run With Your Eyes Closed.  Period.  She asked "Did Fletcher really run into the wall because her eyes were closed?" 
"Why yes", I said.
Gryphon looked at me a moment, and with a slight grin, said, "Mommy, I saw you smiling."

Parents are stupid

Today was a glorious fall day.  One of those days that you wait all summer for, a day that you dream about in the depth of cold and grey March.  All four of us spent hours at the local farmers' market, parents drinking too much coffee and letting the girls get too dirty.  Follow that with a birthday party for a friend of the girls, the fence getting fixed, and an amazing dinner with our best of grown-up friends, and all in all it was a day that you want to bottle up and put in your pocket and sell for millions of dollars.
But a day like that makes for very tired girls.
After a near total meltdown and a promise that Darling Husband would carry all 45 pounds of Gryphon home, we set off for home at 10pm (BAD MOMMY).  While we were walking, Gryphon inquired about why there was a cat walking down the sidewalk without its family all alone AT NIGHT.  Darling Husband started to explain "cats see really well at night, kind of like people see during the day, so their night is like our day, their day is like our -"
Gryphon interrupts and deadpans "Oh, cats are nocturnal."
Um, yeah.  

Sisters, revealed

The looks on their faces are truly priceless, don't you think?

It's official. . .

Fletcher is taking this whole potty thing very seriously now.  

The one drawback of her wonderful new trick, though, is that whenever I go to the bathroom now, she comes running in, watches me pee, and then proclaims with great gusto, "I'm so PROUD of you!!!!!"

Toes!

I hope that Fletcher doesn't start sucking her big toe as much as Gryphon sucks her thumb.  That would get uncomfortable.

Little bit lonely. . .

So, Darling Husband has been gone for almost seven days now.  While I have missed him every day since his departure, it has been over the last two days that I have been REALLY pining for him.  On Monday afternoon he exited the overly interconnected world [yes, I am aware of the irony of calling this time we live in 'overly interconnected' on a blog] and entered the weird wonderful world of Burning Man  - there is no cell phone, interwebs or gmail on the Playa.  
Well, almost.  Or mostly.  There was a flurry of worry as early arrivals reported some cell service in Black Rock City, but in the end it appears that the arrival of the masses again made direct contact with the outside world nearly impossible.   
This made me think about how technology has so indelibly changed our society.  There are all of these wonderful tools to stay connected with the people around us, but in addition to making it harder to escape our past, it is also as if we have forgotten how to really truly miss people.  Because, well, technically, they are always  in our pocket.  Experiencing a week of no contact what so ever puts old love letters, written during periods of months or even years of absence, after which time a reunion could not be promised, in perspective. . . 

*  *  *  *  *

While awaiting your return (in one piece I hope), my dearest Ben, I am merely a spectator, hanging out above your world in the desert.  Even though you cannot call out to me, I can peek at the happenings on the Playa.  Indeed, when the server is not overloaded with spectators like me, I hope that maybe I will catch a glimpse of you among the great unwashed.  As I write, evening is arriving in Black Rock City.  Enjoy the crazy night, my darling.

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