Our Bold Adventure Continues

Funnydad phones from work to say he's bored. It's Friday afternoon and he'd rather be home with us. Bored bored bored. O ponders this for a moment and says, "I don't want daddy to be bored." I tell her not to worry, he'll be un-bored soon. M asks, "How did he get bored?" O explains, "Maybe a magic witch came and made him bored." M says, "Yeah, a person with a wand waved and he was bored." O adds, "Magic people can turn you into lots of things. They can make daddy bored." I ask the girls if they know what bored means. They say, "Yeah! Yeah, yeah it's ... um, um. No." And go back to their play-doh.

M is deathly afraid of the wind. She'll throw herself on the ground in terror, huddle in a little ball, scream and cry until we carry her to shelter. And, if you've never been to Colorado, I'm here to tell you we have some wicked wind in this state, which doesn't help. Wind whips around along the entire Front Range -- something about being on the leeward side of the Rocky Mountains and cool air coming down from higher elevations. This time of year is the worst. We've tried everything we can think of, stories about how the wind is our friend, discussions of nature and rain and sun and fluffy bunnies and how they all like wind. We've read books about wind, we've tried ignoring M and her fears, we've tried cowtowing to her. O, for her part, plays the good twin, never complaining, and occassionally proclaiming her love of wind. After a couple months of this, we're tired. Our new approach is balance. Sympathy tempered with tough love, understanding mixed ...

March may go in like a lion, but our lion has a split personality. It was in the 50s today, though there was a dusting of snow on the ground early this morning. After work Funnydad brought the girls to a playground in the bike chariot, taking immediate advantage of the extended daylight and our quixotic weather. Last week we built a snowman. Two weekends ago it was warm enough to wear short sleeves while doing yard work. The weather here, in the shoulder seasons at least, is wacky. My friends in Minnesota are still dealing with snow and temperatures below freezing, and this is the time of year I'm gleeful to have left the upper Midwest behind. We always want the best of everything, so I'm sure summer will have me wishing for one of those 10,000 lakes and a cabin. But for now give me my quirky Colorado March weather. At any rate, it's time to get started on my garden. Go Time. No time to putz around, there's a lot to do. Time to get excited, dirty, eager, and almost cert...

A friend here is a photographer trying to make inroads with the Boulder-based Crocs company. She planned to shoot some spring images for their internet department on spec and needed models. She was oh so flattering about M+O's cuteness, they'd be darling, would I let her shoot them? Though there was a very good chance the photos would amount to nothing, they could keep the shoes. I would have agreed even if she hadn't buttered me up and been so nice, but add her kindness to the mix and the whole thing was a no-brainer. We were off to promote Boulder's success story shoes, of which I might add we owned exactly zero pairs for the four of us. She wanted them dressed twin-y. Alike or similar. Sounds good except as I examined their nearly-end-of-the-season wardrobe I found nothing unstained and coordinating, certainly nothing matching for them to wear. I could only conclude that I let my children wear rags and that I must be the laughingstock of their preschool for letting ...

I've been flying solo here for eight days now while Funnydad flies around Asia on business. After more than a week of single parenthood, I've hit a bit of a wall. The tag team of fatigue and loneliness visits every time he travels, and this time it tracked me down a little later than it has in the past -- a delay that lulled me into a false belief that perhaps I was getting better at managing this travel thing, or maybe having a job tempers the stress. Yeah, not so much. While cooking dinner this evening, the laughter of baby cows and penguins (their game tonight, don't ask, I don't understand it either) turned to silence. Every parent knows silence is bad news, and after a couple of minutes when I peered out from the kitchen I found them playing with the paper towels I'd bought today (but had foolishly not yet put away). Instead of yelling which a) was my first instinct and b) would have made all three of us upset, I had them help me collect the un-rolled rolls and...

The next day M wrote her name, too, perhaps motivated by the fanfare we made of O's efforts. She insists on starting in the middle of the page and then adding to the beginning when she runs out of room making the whole thing kind of incomprehensible, but it's there. She's low key about pretty much everything, including, apparently, the proper order of letters. Anyway, we have a fence around our house. I think it was put up when the place was built twenty some-odd years ago. It's the same fence many of our neighbors have, a wooden picket fence about four or five feet tall, and it's in decent shape. Needs a little TLC and seriously needs a paint job, but it's a good fence (see the above picture taken at the end of last summer). I figure if I'm going to do anything I should do it before my garden goes gangbusters on it, which means as soon as the weather is consistently above 50 or so (I think). Also, that way, we get to enjoy the freshly-painted fence for the ...

Of all the cool things that happened today, the coolest is that O WROTE HER NAME, in its entirety ALL BY HERSELF, twice! I don't know where this came from since we haven't been practicing it at home, though she could certainly spell it out loud when prompted. I thought the only letter in her name that she knew how to write was the O, but, no, there she goes spelling the whole thing in little preschooler block letters. It's unbelievable how proud an adult can be of their child, it's as if my heart wants to burst! Another cool thing about today was that Funnydad and I attended the Colorado caucuses. I'm not sure where to begin -- it was a little like a cross between a high school class election and a Woody Allen movie. We'd never caucused before and weren't sure what to expect, but really it was the most inane system you've ever seen. I don't think there was anything improper going on, but everyone just kept whispering to their neighbor, "really? ...