Team Gray!

Friday was a major/classic snow day. Not only were all the schools closed, but so were the colleges and universities. The whole town screeched to a halt under a foot or so of snow. That’s like routine snow around here; what made the difference is that it fell overnight, before the plows had a chance to come through. Then it snowed all morning, too.

I had planned to spend the whole day inside with the babies. Curtis had planned to take the big kids and friend skiing and snowboarding. I checked my inbox for notes about the homeschool ski day being canceled along with everything else. I found a note saying that the basketball game Yanni had scheduled for Friday night might be canceled, but the ski day was definitely ON.

I learned that snow is very useful for that particular activity. Curtis took the kids, and they had a blast. There was snow everywhere, and the conditions couldn’t have been more perfect for skiing and snowboarding. The temperatures were in the 30s, which put a nice slippery sheen on the snow, and my people were falling constantly.

This was their first time ever going to a ski place; Xay was the only one who’d ever been atop a snowboard, so they didn’t know what to expect. Learning to hold onto the rope, and how to use the lift were challenging. Yanni gave up boarding and tried skiing. A nice girl from the varsity basketball team took her under her wing and showed her what to do. She didn’t give up on Yanni, and Yanni found that skiing was easier for her than boarding. It reminded her of skating.

Curtis talked to Yanni’s basketball coach, who had help organize the day at the slopes. He’s been snowboarding for 10 years, and remembers his first fall well. The coach described the sensation of a face full of snow and sweat vividly. Curtis kind of nodded and took note of it. Then he had his first fall. He felt the snow on the side of his face. He tasted the sweat. It was just like the coach had described.

Meanwhile, Xay and his friend Levi struggled to clip their snowy (rental) boots into the boards. They also kept snowboarding into the woods, and what Xay describes as the back side of the mountain, a part that wasn’t heavily trafficked, and was full of fluffy snow. I laughed at the description of the boys as completely soaked. It reminded me of Xay’s ‘liquid boy’ era, where he would go outside in the summer and return home completely drenched from water gun or hose warfare.

Curtis tells me I would be a total snow bunny if he took me snowboarding. I am less than enthusiastic at my current state, but it sounds like a lot of fun to non-pregnant folks. I can’t wait to get out there with the whole family!

The room across the hall from my office has had many functions since we moved in. For the first half year, it served as storage for moving boxes. Then we had a big black plastic shelf in there full of games, toys and school supplies. This was joined by two desks and a white board attached to the wall. The classroom was the first room people saw when they came over, and it was such a mess!

Kind people would say things like, “I can see that you are child friendly.” Unkind people said nothing and just never returned. We moved all the shelving and desks, but kept calling it the classroom.

Now it is basically a playroom, with a colorful wire shelf for toys and games, a toy box, and a baby basketball hoop. Don’t forget the giant overflowing bookshelf in the center of the large wall.

The most vexing thing about this room for me has been that it had no light. There’s a light switch attached to an outlet, encouraging the use of a lamp. We’ve been through several. I was heartbroken when the brass standing lamp was knocked over one too many times. I have since done a kind of redesigning principle of putting small lamps from other rooms in there, just so it wouldn’t be so dark. The older kids try to keep the chandelier from the adjacent dining room on all the time, and I think that is just plain tacky.

The latest lamp solution was this atmosphere red beaded thing from our bedroom. It was definitely intended to be temporary, and somehow the children managed to avoid breaking it, even as they broke its companion in our bedroom.

I was desperate for a solution. A Trading Spaces fanatic, I knew about sconces. To me, sconces represented the end of all problems. I just had to get some sconces. I asked my brother Zeke, (a contractor/handyman) if he knew how to install sconces. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He mentioned hanging something from the ceiling with a cord for the outlet. He mentioned getting those little lights you tape to the wall and then press them to turn them on. Uh. . . nevermind.

Then I asked my friend Julie’s husband Mark. He has his own business doing such jobs for people, and he came and gave me an estimate. Then I sat on the whole project for another half year at least, until Curtis asked me why I hadn’t moved on it. I jumped up immediately and went online to look for the right sconces. I wanted something that would go with the light fixture Curtis had bought for the kitchen. He helped me find something on homedepot.com that would do the trick.

Mark came over last Friday to start the project, and was back this week to finish it. The little children enjoyed talking his ear off and learning a lot about wiring and drywall. At one point, he had drilled several holes in the wall looking for the proper place to run the wiring. The whole time, he promised he’d fix it all so that we couldn’t tell. I was concerned, but pleased with the work so far, so I knew he’d do what he said he would. Yesterday he came and made the finishing touches on the wall, and you couldn’t tell there’d ever been a hole there. And we have light!

It is enough to make me want to decorate the room, and that’s really saying something.

I saw the midwife yesterday. She gave me what I found disappointing news. Since I don’t have a track record of early births, I can expect to still be pregnant in March. You see, I had my heart set on a leap year baby.

There are so many other things to be concerned about, I know. But I’m tired of being pregnant. And Xay is none too thrilled to share his birth month (and possibly birthday!) with a little sister.

But I decided to look on the bright side. To wit, a checklist of what to expect with each full or post term birth, based on my history.

Baby #1: due: 14th; born: 17th
long hair: check
long fingernails: check
eyebrows: none
eyelashes: none
fingers: 10
toes: 10
muscles: well-formed

Baby #2: due: 20th; born 21st (early)
long hair: check, though not as long as baby #1
long fingernails: check
eyebrows: faint
eyelashes: none
fingers: 10
toes: 10
muscles: buff

Baby #3: due: the 8th; born the 4th
long hair: not so much, and it was thin
long fingernails: check
eyebrows: thick
eyelashes: beautiful
fingers: 10
toes: 10
muscles: well formed

Baby #4: due: the 12th; born: the 21st
long hair: definitely, and very thick, and all over the place
long fingernails: needed a clipping at birth
eyebrows: check
eyelashes: check
fingers: 10
toes: 10
muscles: long and thin and well formed in the thigh

Baby #5: due: the 31st; born: the 3rd (of the next month)
long hair: nothing like #4, but thick and beautiful nonetheless
long fingernails: check
eyebrows: check
eyelashes: beautiful
fingers: 10
toes: 10
muscles: huge–my biggest baby

Baby #6: due: the 6th; born: the 15th
long hair: even longer than #4
long fingernails: where’s my nail clipper, I wondered?
eyebrows: check
eyelashes: check
fingers: 10
toes: 10
muscles: well formed

So, I can expect a muscular, long-haired, long fingernailed full term baby girl in mid-March. I guess she’s worth the wait.