Disaster Averted

On Sunday afternoon as we sat in the sunroom and listened to the thunderstorm outside, Julie suddenly said, "Something's dripping!" And we all looked up to see that the skylight was leaking--of all places, directly onto Sam's newly purchased, two-years-anticipated TV and array of components.

Thankfully, Julie had literally seen the first couple of drops. In a rarely seen move, Sam sprang into action; in a more frequently seen one, he began calling out orders and we all jumped to follow them. He moved the TV out of the way, and I brought a big blanket to put over it in case of splashes from more drops. A bucket was put under the drips, and Sam and Dr. B hurried outside, the rain having paused for a few moments. After their initial reconnaissance, Sam headed up to track the thunderstorms on his big computer, and returned to report that there was a 10-15 minute window before more rain would begin again. It was clear he was in a dilemma, and then Dr. B. suggested putting some plastic up over it. We didn't have a tarp, but I did have an extra shower curtain on hand, so Sam and Jason went up on the ladder to nail the shower curtain to the roof.

While they were outside, I expressed to Julie my hopes that Sam would not fall off the ladder in his eagerness to protect his television. She offered the consolation that at least Dr. B. could offer medical assistance, but then remarked that his speciality is, after all, obstetrics--and it was unlikely that a fall on Sam's part would have resulted in pregnancy. Thankfully, however, all went well. At least until we get the bill from the roofers to replace the skylights . . .

Two Js and an S

The two Js were here for a few days, with Mr. Sinjin in tow. It was our first visit with all six of us together. Julie came out when Allison Clare was born without Dr. B; technically, Mr. Sinjin was present for that visit, but we didn't hear much from him. Then AC and I went up to Connecticut in March to visit JS and Mr. Sinjin, but we left Sam at home (and Dr. B was in Scotland for a conference). Anyway, we all had a great time.

Julie and I had always expected that Sam and Dr. B would get along very well. They both love gadgets, and on this visit, they had Sam's new TV and accoutrements to ooh and aah over. Julie and I could hear snippets of their conversation: "going to hack it to set it up so we can [do something unintelligible]" and ". . . been reading about exactly that unit online!" Hours later, they were still talking about it--not only describing thoroughly what they each owned or planned to own, but in equally tedious detail what they each had considered and ruled out. For Julie and me, the technology-related part of the conversation would have been something like, "Did you get a new TV?" "Yeah."

We had set up the jumper, and Mr. Sinjin spent almost the whole visit joyfully jumping, occasionally so overcome with delight that he would burst forth with a roar. Allison Clare stood in front of the jumper, holding onto it and leaning in to kiss him, or pat him, or (less successfully) honk his nose. Once, during a visit to Barnes and Noble, he cried when she yanked a handful of his curly hair, so different from her own, but mostly, he tolerated her advances and even gave her some of his sunshiny smiles. Julie and I discovered that we have a newfound appreciation for the advantages of arranged marriages and began scheming not only about our offsprings' futures, but also about how stealthy we would have to be with our intentions.

Allison Clare signed "baby" almost as soon as she saw Mr. Sinjin. She also loved the stuffed cow they brought her from Hershey because she has a stuffed puppy, kitty, sheep, duck, and bear, and has been learning the sounds they all make. From a picture in her book, she has also been learning to say "moo" (sounds like "brrrr"), but she did not have an actual stuffed cow. It was an inspired gift. :)

Oral Fixation

Things Recently Taken Out of the Mouth of the Babe (or Stopped from Entering)

1. Murphy's Oil bottle

2. Clump of potting soil

3. Countless wood chips

4. Bar of soap

5. Coffee

6. Dustpan

7. Dust bunny

8. Cat's tail

9. Decision-making dice

10. Toothbrush used for cleaning bathroom fixtures

11. Cell phone

12. Spray bottle

13. Barnes & Noble gift card

14. My red clog

15. Stone

16. Mud*

*Successfully swallowed.

This list probably makes me sound like a terrible mother, like we set our toddler down in the middle of cleaning supplies and let her have at the buffet. But it's more like whenever I'm working, I have her on my back or playing with toys in the same room, and she tries to grab whatever I'm using to wedge it into her mouth. She's pretty good about stopping when told no, but she will keep testing--putting down the wood chip I've just forbidden, picking up another one and looking at me inquisitively, waiting to be told no. After this happened about two dozen times, she would just hold the wood chip up to her lips without even opening her mouth, and grin at me. Saucy.

Pomp and Circumstance

When I finished up with grad school, I had spent so many years and so many tens of thousands of dollars on the education itself that the expense of the graduation robes seemed to my defeated mind like just one more of the mysterious fees that materialized and multiplied on my tuition bill every year. But now when I look back on it, I really do think that the robes are mindbogglingly expensive (for those not so unfortunate as to have been met with the price tag personally: $921.00, after a 10% discount. And that was back in 2005.).

I could have gotten away for about $200 less, if I had gone with the plain black robes and the flat mortarboard hat. But I really, really despise the mortarboard. Never flattering, it looks especially terrible on me: surrounded by the big square hat, my big flat Asian face looks like a charger on a placemat. So I figured that if I was going to have to spend $750 on the robes, I might as well get the slightly less dorky ones.

And so I got the official Carolina regalia package, a sky-blue robe with dark blue velvet panels with the school's crest embroidered, and the round velvet tam for a cap. I'm glad that I got them because they really are lovely, and somehow I like that they so visibly honor the place I earned my degree. But the light color means that I also spend a good part of each graduation day weighing the inconvenience of taking them to the dry cleaner against the possibility that I will sweat onto them, and also hoping desperately that no small children will spill punch on me.

This year, after suffering through a miserably humid ceremony, the odds were definitely in favor of dry cleaning, so I went to drop them off but was disconcerted to find that the sign denoting the family business of the gentle elderly couple had been replaced by a sign for Mark's Shoe Repair. Since there were racks of clothing visible in the window, I stopped in, and a big, burly man with tattoos (Mark?) took my robes off my hands, after first eying them suspiciously and asking, "So what do we have here?"

Upon leaving, I was, predictably, plagued with anxiety, as I had just handed over a thousand-dollar garment to a man who really didn't seem to be a dry cleaner at all. Sigh.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch . . .

The past couple of weeks have been busy, though nothing very interesting was happening for most of the time--classes finished, then there were exams, and now we can say that we have survived our first year of working and taking care of Allison Clare. We considered celebrating with wine but instead just went to bed early.

Last weekend, Sam took Allison Clare out shopping for Mother's Day, and it dawned on me that it was the first time she had ever gone out without me--and therefore also the first time I had been alone at home since the day she was born. She looked totally confused when Sam carried her out the door and I stayed behind, waving goodbye; in fact, she looked like she was waiting for the punch line, about to laugh but mystified that we seemed to be serious. After they left, I spent the first 10 minutes thinking about what I should do with the house all to myself, and then decided on a three-pronged approach: Skittles, Grey's Anatomy, and a DIY manicure.

I had only gotten through half the episode when they came back, but the odd part was how ordinary it seemed--I felt neither thrilled to be at home alone (even though fifteen months ago I could hardly have imagined how I could psychologically bear never being at home alone), nor overwhelmed by their absence. For a whole 40 minutes. ;)

Then from Monday until this morning (the one newsworthy event), we had a visitor--the beautiful and gracious Clare, who came up from Florida to meet her namesake for the first time. It was really fun to see them together, each as funny and silly as the other. Allison Clare has gotten really into saying "Hi" lately. She says it over and over again. She loves when others say it back, but she is undeterred if they completely ignore her, or if their interest in the back-and-forth flags after twenty or thirty exchanges. She gets really excited when she's out in public and hears others saying hi, and she turns around to see who could be talking to her--it's like when you're in a foreign country, and you hear English spoken and look about for the other Americans. She sometimes sits looking very serious and then bursts into a big smile and launches into her "Hi" routine. As if she had been trying, trying, wracking her brain to think of something meaningful to say, and it finally occurred to her: the same thing she had said forty or fifty times three minutes before. Clare had infinite patience for this game, along with its occasional halftime program of mutual head-shaking and grins. We will all miss her.

Hi.