10/21/2004 07:45:47 PM|||Amy|||Now, that I’ve lodged a complaint on a personal lack of inspiration, I will write about the kids.

The popcorn sales are going okay. I’ve managed to sell $164 worth of the pricey (overpriced) artery clogging candy varieties to my co-workers and wonderful sister. My sister has saved my ass more times than anyone can count and I owe her big. Really big. So big, in fact, that I’m thinking of joining the witness relocation program just so I can disappear and not have to ever repay the debt.* The only problem with this idea is that I will probably just contact her after I’ve settled into my new life as Mario, the Unobtrusive Pizza Man on the Corner with the Mustache and Large Breasts to ask her if she wants to take another vacation (this time with me) to North Carolina.

I don’t know when I will let Bear take responsibility for selling his own damn popcorn. Right now it seems a little too much to ask of a 6 year old.

This morning when I was looking around for a scarf to wrap around my neck to keep the 6 inches of make-up I wear to cover the hideous rash which adorns the area between my forehead and my clavicles from rubbing off on the collar of the white blouse I’m wearing today, I found where I stashed the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books I’ve been saving to read to Bear. This is such a relief. I love the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. I have always loved the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books, and now I have something new to read to Bear and for Bear to read to me. (As part of his homework, he reads at least 15 minutes each night – or someone can read to him. The big thing is that there is Reading and a Book and at least Fifteen Minutes involved somehow.)

Monkey is still very clingy. It’s been at least a week since she last fell asleep on the bathroom floor while I was in the shower, and she is not screaming for me to not go to “stupid work” as much anymore – but she has taken to making me do everything for her. John isn’t allowed. It must always be me. Oh, Monkey. When you are grown and thinking (hopefully not, but I’m not waging any bets that this won’t happen) that I was an absentee mother who withheld whatever I withheld, please read this and know that I LOVE YOU more than I can express. But, I have so many faults that I make the Grand Canyon look like somebody else’s bad day in an otherwise Disney Princess (after she’s married the prince) life. I’m doing my best.

Winston has taken two faltering steps in a row. She gets nervous and then drops to the floor and crawls to wherever she wants to be. I’ve been watching how she curls her toes in the carpet to, I guess, find balance and maybe, just have something, anything on which to hold, even if it's only her toes doing the holding. She’ll reach her hands out to the closest person or object for stability. I’m waiting for her to stretch out her arms to the nearest person or thing and then let her feet follow – thus initiating an unconscious, unrealized string of steps. But, this hasn’t happened yet. There is also the problem that while I want her to walk, I also don’t want her to have the increased mobility. Try as I might, I can’t keep the house clean and it scares the bejeezus out of me that she might get hurt in that cesspool.

Speaking of my home, the cesspool, we decorated for Halloween last weekend. I bought a large plastic sheet cover for the front door which is made to look like the rickety door of a very old house with a great big ol’ Condemned! Keep Out! Sign nailed across it. I laughed myself silly as I was taping the cover to the top of the door. Then, I hung a couple of strings of Christmas lights with little ghosts covering the bulbs, and draped black spider web from the railing around the top of the porch. The kids liked it, but Monkey can see a skull on the door cover through one of the panes of glass which are set into the door and she hates it because it unnerves her a little. Bear on the other hand points out that the skull is simply the framework which houses the brain. He’s so smart, but we discovered today from his report card that he isn’t doing so well in science. He doesn’t fall far from the tree, that one.

I did take Monkey to a butterfly festival over the weekend. Monkey has a special place in her heart for butterflies. A friend of mine and I took her and Winston to a park once where our every move was closely monitored by a big moth. Monkey went to a little area on the playground which was designed to look like a little play house and gathered leaves and rocks to make the moth some dinner. (I may have already told this story here.) Dinner is what you make for people you love, so naturally the moth deserved some food.

At the butterfly festival (called Butterfly Flutterbye, isn’t that charming?) children were given little paper envelopes which each contained one Monarch butterfly. They were instructed to open their envelopes and let the butterfly go when indicated. Monkey loved watching the butterflies scatter through the trees and fly away. She also loved the older woman who sat on the porch of a transplanted log cabin (this town was one of those old Texas towns that capitalizes on its heritage with a log cabin “museum”, Main Street lined with antique and junk shops and sweet little festivals to encourage the migration of Monarchs) and played a lap harp while she sang a bawdy song about Grandma's adventures in the outhouse. A lady took a picture of the slightly scary grandmotherly type teaching Monkey how to play the harp.

Monkey looked super cute that day. She was wearing a pair of pink overalls sent to her by her loving aunt, and her hair was clean - an event that doesn't exactly fall into the category of the usual. She was sweating the pretty in pink sweetness of the uber innocent from every pore.

Wow. For someone who has just declared that they need to take a break from blog writing, I sure have put a lot into this post. Maybe what I need is a break from the pressure I put on myself. Huh. Now, there’s a concept.

*Not that the Witness Relocation Program takes people who owe their sisters big, but my debt to my beautiful sister is kind of overwhelming and I’m hoping that the WRP might take a little pity on my sorry ass.

|||109840597022047964|||An Update on the Babies