Run With The Fishes

This morning Greg told me about how Allie woke up staring at her wall. Last week, I hung up a blanket that has the alphabet on it so that she could get more familiar with her abc’s. It’s something we used to have on the wall when Nathan and Zoey were little, but took it down after they got a little older.

So, Allison was staring at her wall. Studying it when Greg went in to see if she was awake yet. They went over their abc’s and then went to have breakfast. Allison asked “Can I eat while I count my abc’s?”

Greg rigged her up a little pointer so that she can reach the letters at the top of the blanket. He says she spent about 45 minutes “counting” her abc’s. After he left to get his breakfast and wasn’t there to answer her questions anymore, she followed him around, “Dad? Dad? Are you my dad? Are you my dad?”

After they went back to the wall, she asked, “Where is it?” wondering where the pointer was. Greg said it was in our room, and that it was a pointer.

“The cointer?”

“No, pointer, P, like point your finger.”
So she spent the other half of the morning, pointing the pointer at her finger.

My mom and her sisters have all been trying to plan a family reunion for them and their many children and grandchildren. Funerals are odd because they accomplish this task but it happens for the wrong reason. The emotions of being terribly sad because your aunt, their sister, mother, grandmother paired with the happiness of seeing family that you haven’t seen in years; aunts, uncles, cousins and their children.

My mom is one of the strongest women I know. Even though saying goodbye to her twin sister was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do, she was able to be there for my cousins and make some tough decisions.

My family is full of really outgoing people.

Zoey’s temporary name for the weekend was “Little Annie”. I guess she looks alot like me or something. My brother may have had it worse though because he got to be called “Bubba”.

There are random memories that pop up – How, when I was very small, she had this oil lamp that had a lady in it and the beads of oil would fall all around her, so that it looked like she was standing in the rain. I thought this was one of the coolest things ever.

Spending the summer with her -teaching me how to make eggrolls, going to the Salvation Army Vacation Bible School, not getting poison ivy when Steve and Marcus did. Going to the “beach” in Kansas. How it felt like she had books, books and more books all in a tiny room.

She was one of the kindest people you would ever meet, but she was also a little spitfire and would tell you her mind.

We weren’t really sure about taking the kids to a funeral. I mean, they know about death. They have even experienced it with their GGP, but have never been to a funeral and they were much younger at the time. They knew of Aunt B and she had seen them when they were babies. They didn’t really know her though. Part of our instincts were telling us that we needed to shelter them from grief and tragedy. How do you know when the time is right for something like this though*? In the end we decided to take them with us. I’m glad that we did. They got to see that even though it is a very sad time, all of the people there came to say how much Aunt B meant to each one of them. Even though she is gone, people can still smile when they think about her.

*The time is never right, but eventually it’s forced.

Allison runs up to me to say, “Mom, I’m the baby bear and Goldilocks is sleeping in MY bed! Come on mama bear! Come on papa bear! We have to get her!”. Then we all run to the living room where Zoey is sitting on the sofa and ROAR at her like we are bears.

The night before last, Allison was telling me a story while we were laying in her bed. “Santa is coming to town, he is going to tell me some jokes then I will help him. We will find some one-eyed tree frogs and they will say ‘help-us, help-us, help-us’.” She says in the rib-bit, rib-bit cadence. “Then we save the one-eyed tree frogs and we all sing.”

Allison loves gummy bears so asked if she could have some for a snack. All three of the kids are really good about looking out for eachother to make sure if one gets a treat the others do too. So, when we go to get the snacks she makes sure we get some for her brother and sister also. While she is handing out the baggies, she laughs her evil laugh and says, “I’m going to take them from you, Nathan. Then I’m going to take Zoey’s. They will be all mine. And then I am going to eat all of them all up! They will be de-dicous! HA, HA, HA!”

Yesterday it was amazing. There were no screens on until just before it was time for dinner. Nathan must have been at a really good spot in his book, because instead of asking to play the gamecube, playstation, or computer, he was reading on his bed when I got home from work, and stayed there until just before dinner. Zoey and Allison were playing in the living room having a blast. Building blanket houses, reading, dressing up, just being silly. When they were playing chase, Allison called out, “Na-nee, Na-nee, boo, boo. I can’t catch you”.

When Nathan and Zoey were little, all you had to do to get them to stop doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing was look at them like you meant business. Tears would well up, and they would (most of the time) behave.

Alllison is another story. If we ask her not to do something, (Okay, sure, most of the time it is really yelling across the room, “ALLISON STOP DOING THAT!!”) she will look at us and very matter of factly say, “Don’t say it. Don’t say ‘Allie stop doing that’”.

Trouble. That’s what this girl is.

Allison no longer says affirmations in yeah, yep, uh-huh, or any other form except for Yes. A very clear, very precise, ‘Yes’. Followed by a grammatically correct sentence.

“Allison would you like some chocolate milk?”
“Yes. I would like chocolate milk, in my cup”

“Allison, are you ready to jump?”
“Yes. I am ready to go outside and jump!”

These sort of things shouldn’t be coming from a 2 year old.

A short story written by Zoey. I’m typing it in exactly the way it was written (spelling, punctuation, and all).

Once my owner put me in a box. I don’t know where she caried me though. But then I found a town named Shoesville. Oh, did I tell you, I used to have a twin. But she gtot Lost and never came back, I think. Hey, there is somebody that looks just like me! I asked her what she wanted to do. She said we could watch a movie. While we were watching the movie we were puting on make-up. We put on lipstick, eye liner, fingernail polish, and blush. We were watching Sharkboy and Lavagirl. We were watching it in 3.D. Something reached out at us! We were so scared that we couldn’t move at all.

That’s where it leaves off.

Upgrade is going along swiftly so far. Can’t you tell? By the end of the week I should have everything back to normal. Hurrah!

This morning while Nathan and Zoey were at the Rice’s house and Greg was fishing, Allie and I went to cash in on the Payless Shoe Source (you could pay more, but why?) gift cards Mom gave the kids for Christmas. They had some really cute light pink and dark pink shoes for little girls. She tried on the light pink shoes and liked them alright, until she saw the Thomas and Spiderman shoes. She was determined to have one or the other and finally settled on the Spidey shoes. In the Car on the way back to Brenda and Leon’s house Allison was having a conversation with the shoes (that walk on walls by the way)
“This one says ‘HUH!’ then that one says ‘HAH!’”

We are in Dallas to visit with Greg’s cousins. Brenda and Leon let us stay at their house. We all know by now that Allison is a night owl and doesn’t like to go to bed when it is time at home, unless she is exhausted. This is magnified by about 1000 when we are at someone else’s house.

When she was getting tired, she started telling me, “Mom, it’s time to go home now. I sleepy. I want my own bed.” Eventually she fell asleep in the living room but, when I tried to carry her up to bed and lay her down, she woke up screaming, “NOOOOOO! I’m not sleepy!!!! I don’t want go to bed!”

“Allison, it’s ok, you were just sleeping, so I know you are sleepy”

“I’m not sleepy, Mom. I tell you ‘I am NOT!”. Immediatly followed by throwing herself on me and falling right to sleep.