signs of spring

On Wednesday, we finally had a day that was warm enough so the boys could go outside and play for a while after school. There was still snow on the ground in the shady areas, but the air temperature was very comfortable. Liam and Max were reunited with their old friend the swingset, and had a blast climbing, sliding, swinging, and searching for pirate treasure with their telescopes. We keep telling them that days like this will become more and more frequent because spring is coming...but can you really blame them for not believing us? Today, it's back to freezing, with high winds and occasional tiny pieces of hail flying down. But at least we had that one mid-week reprieve from the cold.

the winter blues

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression or winter blues, is a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter.

so holli and i have the winter blues. at first i thought we were just in a rut, but then i realized that we've been like this for the past several winters, and the only thing that drives it away is spring. this diagnosis was somewhat hard to accept, as i'm pretty skeptical of "phantom" psychological disorders in general, but the symptoms are impossible to ignore. guess i won't be so dismissive of similar psych issues in the future. look at that, i've just changed my outlook on the world when presented with irrefutable evidence. if only everyone could be so honest with reality...

it's sad, really (no pun intended). i used to love winter, but now i want to move to ecuador. back in the day (seems about a hundred years ago now) i was a big skier and winter-outdoors guy, and i welcomed the snow and cold. just loved it. but i haven't been skiing since that time bz and i went to cascade in wisconsin, and brian gave some kid a forearm in midair and knocked the kid on his ass. ah, i wish i had a video of that, you'd die laughing.

anyway, we haven't been posting with any regularity, which is sad for you, the reader (again, no pun intended). so let me update you with the news from this small patch of mother earth:

as holli mentioned in a previous post, liam took it upon himself to cut his hair. he used safety scissors, but considering how close to his scalp he was able to cut, i don't think "safety" should be used in that title anymore. seriously, he cut it to the skin. the only way it could have been closer is if he used my razor, which is now on the top shelf of my medicine cabinet, although i doubt that will prevent him from getting it if he really wants it. so there was nothing to do but buzz the poor kid's head, and now he looks like caillou, the adorable yet extremely irritating cartoon character from the self-titled show the boys like to watch. i call him telly savalas and cueball, and he doesn't seem to mind.


max just wanted to let you know that he was holding pliers. don't forget it.

max is now three years old, and that vexes liam to no end, as he wishes his birthday was first. of course, it makes no difference when you tell him that he was born first, which i would think would be an endgame kind of fact.

hmm, what else? i'm tired of shoveling snow (stupid lake effect), holli is sick of working night and day, liam and max are in love with the thomas trains they got from their grandma (thanks, mom!), the upstairs bathroom renovation is nearing completion. oh, holli never blogged about the fun part of that!

so we're finally redoing the upstairs bathroom, and since we've never done tile before, we thought it might be a good idea to have some professionals handle the job. so the pros ripped up the old floor, redirected some piping, raised the toilet outflow pipe (in consideration of the higher floor level with the new tile), and other stuff, and in the course of their work, they discovered that a floor joist directly under the toilet had been severed and required a sister joist to make the floor secure and prevent us from falling through to the kitchen directly below. so the floor was partially torn up. during the several days the floorboards in the bathroom were missing, i kept noticing that greta and dora (the cats) had lots of sawdust and plaster chunks on their fur, but i didn't put it together. turns out that they were hanging out in the subfloor; there was plenty of room because the ceiling in the kitchen had been lowered in a renovation years or decades past. unfortunately, i didn't realize the cats' hiding place until about 20 minutes after the contractor closed up all the holes he had made in the floor. so i went up to the bathroom, called the cats' names, and sure enough, there was dora looking up through the cracks in the floor. and where one is, so is the other. so after ripping up the recently replaced floorboards and some coaxing with special food, dora emerged, but greta was nowhere to be found. i got the bright idea to stick a camera into the subfloor, and here is what i saw:


eventually greta came out too, and they spent the rest of the night locked in the basement. stupid cats.

so that's what's going on here these days. we're all ready for spring, working too hard, and playing too much (well, the boys, at least). i'm cooking italian soup tonight, so that should be good. and we're watching the oscars later, even though we haven't seen any of the nominated movies or roles. i have it on good authority that heath ledger will win, although the bad guys never win oscars.

hair cuttery

Yesterday, Max spent the day at home. He and Mike were both looking a little shaggy, so they went off to the barbershop. Their haircuts looked great, and all was fine.

Last night, the cable guy had to come to bring a new remote control. (Liam had managed to kill the old one by dropping it one too many times, and the cable doesn't work without it.) While I was busy dealing with the cable guy, the boys were happily ensconced in the office, coloring and cutting out Valentine hearts for me.

So the cable guy went out to his truck to prepare the paperwork for me to sign, and I walked back to check on the boys. Along the way, I kept seeing these tufts of hair on the floor. There was a tuft on the stairs, a few tufts in the kitchen, and a tuft on one of the ottomans in the office. At first, I just thought, wow, they did a terrible job cleaning up Max's hair at the barbershop. But then I realized that this was definitely too much hair to have been related to that.

When asked, Liam readily admitted that it was his hair. That's right, a home chop job. He said it was too long and that it was bugging him, so he cut it off. He said that he wishes he could get a haircut like Joe's. (Joe's head is shaved bald, in case you were wondering.) We still had Valentines to attend to last night, so Liam didn't get his haircut, but it's looking like we'll have to shave him bald since he's got a giant spot right in front that he managed to cut all the way to the scalp (I'm not sure how he cut it that close with safety scissors, but he managed somehow).

He's got the big bald spot, a bunch of other places chopped really close to his head, and one lonely curl in front that managed to avoid the slaughter. Needless to say, Liam's teachers were all very impressed when he walked into school this morning looking like this:

quick update

Since we last posted, life has been busy.

We celebrated Max's third birthday with a party that was supposed to include some outdoor snowy fun, but didn't because it was 50 degrees that day (not that we were complaining!) and all the snow had melted. Max loved blowing out the candles of his Dora cake, opening his gifts (thanks, everyone!), and playing with his cousins.



We've kind of had a rough week this week. I get all stuffed up every time the weather changes, so sleep has been elusive, a situation that hasn't been helped by the boys' apparent pact to behave as badly as possible all week. On Monday, they "helped" me prime the bathroom walls, which was fun to watch. On Tuesday, our plumbing decided that it would be a good day to back up, causing our basement to be partially flooded with sewage. On the plus side, Mike took an unexpected night off to deal with the crisis, and the four of us went out to dinner because we couldn't bear to eat in the "poop house." Also on the plus side, the problem ended up being relatively minor (just one spot where tree roots grew through the pipe outside and plugged everything up) so it cost only hundreds of dollars, instead of the worst-case scenario they gave us of a few thousand. In the grand scheme of things, no one thing that's happened this week has been terrible, but all of the little things (don't worry, I'm not going to give you a complete list!) have added up to make this one of our more challenging weeks.

how we spent our sunday

icicle

We met at Bethany's house to head out to the candy factory, and Cole was kind enough to help Liam get a giant icicle. Liam is very into learning about icicles lately, and he was awfully impressed to be presented with such an excellent specimen.

candy factory

Saturday was family field trip day around here: Bethany, Janis, and I all decided to take our kids to tour a nearby candy factory. The boys were terribly excited by the chocolate fountain coming from the ceiling, and by watching gummi worms come off the assembly line. The "tour" itself was pretty disappointing; it was just a peek through some windows at the people working in the factory below. But the candy store itself was like heaven for little boys and girls. Bethany, of course, immediately bought the boys 36-inch-long tubes to fill up with flavored sugar (basically, giant pixie sticks), which they did with glee. After that, we all split up to look around. I was clutching a boy in each hand (it was crowded in there!). For their part, the boys took everything in, and begged to take everything home. We ended up with some gummi snakes and rings, some old-fashioned candy (Charleston Chews, Slo-Pokes, Bit o' Honeys) for my dad, and some hard candy for my mom, which was fun for the boys because they got to fill up the bag themselves. Overall, I would say the trip was a great success from the boys' perspective, but maybe not so much from mine. It will be a fun thing to do again when they're older and I don't have to monitor their every move (also, we'll go on a weekday to avoid the crowds).

earache my eye

As I may have mentioned, we've all been sick. Last week, we took Max to the doctor for suspected pinkeye. It turned out he had an adenovirus. And then it turned out that we all got it. We were all achy, coughing, feeling miserable. So a few days ago, when Liam told us his ear hurt, we didn't think much of it. ALL of us had earaches. But Liam's earache didn't go away, and yesterday morning, I finally got a flashlight and looked in there. Yes, I do know that you can't see an ear infection that way; I mostly just wanted to make Liam feel like I was doing something in the time we had before the doctor's office opened. So imagine my surprise when I looked, and found that his ear was swollen shut. Yikes! We took him right to the doctor, who had to numb his ear to even get him to let her look at it without screaming. He has the normal eardrum infection, but this time he had the added bonus of having an infection in his ear canal, most likely caused by something getting jammed in there, whether intentionally (a charge Liam denies vehemently) or unintentionally. So he's got two different types of antibiotics for the two infections, and he's feeling much better.

Which brings us to tonight. At dinner, I caught Max sticking a grape in his ear. With probably more anxiety/sharpness in my voice than I should have had, I said, "Max! We do NOT put grapes in our ears!" So my little angel smiled at me, dropped the grape ... and reached around his head to pluck out the grape he had already hidden in his OTHER ear. Oh, dear.

buh-bye

Here at circus forticus, we've started off the year with the unfortunate combination of rampant illness and extremely tight work deadlines. It hasn't left much time for eating/sleeping, let alone doing anything exciting enough to blog about and then finding the time to blog about it.

But today marks what I'm hoping is a turnaround. The boys are back at school, and Mike and I are still feeling crappy, but it's a manageable sort of crappy. But the most exciting part is that the on/off/oft-stalled bathroom renovations upstairs are underway! We finally got wise to our limitations and called in the expert (my aunt Laura's husband, Jim, who owns a construction business). We're only two hours into it, but already the yucky toilet and tacky vanity are gone. And I just wanted to share, because I looked out the window and saw the toilet by the side of the road, looking for all the world like it's trying to hitch a ride to someplace warmer...

in case you thought your 2009 started off badly

on the way home from chicagoland and the winter classic this morning (actually, now that i look at the clock, yesterday morning), i was greeted by this tragic scene:


a house two blocks from ours caught fire and was gutted (preliminary reports: a malfunctioning furnace/boiler). the entire neighborhood was fogged by the smoke.


the fire reportedly started around 11:15 a.m., and these pics were taken an hour and a half later, so you can imagine how long the fire was going and how bad it was to still be putting out this amount of smoke. note the yellow fire truck (plymouth's are red), so they apparently had to call in reinforcements to battle the blaze.


this is terrible, and please don't think i'm making light of the situation. no one was hurt (as far as we know), thankfully, but let's all hold these residents in our thoughts and prayers.

the winter classic, or why mike was up at 5 a.m. on new year's day

why was i up at 5 in the morning on new year's day? because it was time to head to chicago for the nhl winter classic, of course. duh. in an annual event dripping with tradition and nostalgia cultivated over its extensive history (the first was held last year, hahaha) [UPDATE: actually, there was a regular-season outdoor game in 2003 called the heritage classic, and it was held in edmonton between the oilers and the canadiens. however, this is the second official "winter classic"], the nhl stages an outdoor game on nyd, allowing thousands of local season-ticket holders, nhl bigwigs and their handpicked friends, and a few lowly average fans (like me!) to watch a game while simultaneously freezing to death. last year, the game was sabres-penguins and held at buffalo's ralph wilson stadium (where the bills play football), and this year's hawks-red wings game took place at wrigley field (which is home to no professional team of consequence). thanks to holli's fine online-ticket-purchasing skills, i was able to get my hands on a pair of late-release tickets. excelsior!

so anyway, after dragging my carcass up before a lot of people even went to bed, i hit the road and drove the empty highways and byways to my friend brian's house in the northwest burb of buffalo grove (all that's changed since i lived in that town, as brian pointed out, was that there was a new fence over there and that car-wash place next to dunkin donuts got a new coat of paint). here's what we look like. cute, huh? actually, we're not that big, as we both have 79 layers on:


brian's totally amazing awesome wife melissa (shout-out, you owe me five bucks) drove us to the purple-line stop in wilmette (motto: here we jog in the middle of the street, and damn the traffic). brian and i rode into the city to wrigley field. let the madness begin!


so after looking at some of the pregame sights, which included lots of people wearing hockey jerseys, angry cabbies laying on their horns, a news van from every possible tv and radio station (and network) imaginable, and a large area featuring kids activities, bad music, and really lame karaoke starring even more people wearing nhl jerseys, brian and i decided to find a bar.

yes, it was only 9:30 in the morning, but it was new year's day, the winter classic won't be held in chicago again for a long time (if ever), and it was happy hour somewhere...so why not have a few bass ales? to be honest, i can't remember the name of the bar, but it had friendly and prompt service and two empty bar stools.


around 11, we decided to head for the gates. here's a pic of wrigley from the corner of clark and waveland. unfortunately, this picture does little justice to the insane scene (and no, that honda is actually stopped and is not about to mow over all those people):


i doubt i could properly describe the incredible environment and palpable energy inside wrigley, so i'll just give you some pics. the second is our view of the ice (that pic is during the national anthem, and if you've never been a part of a national anthem during a hawks game, you've never been a part of a national anthem), and while there is a column in the way, it didn't distract a bit from the game. because we could lean.



at about this point (except for a few short warmed-up moments later, as you'll see), my camera crapped out, so i don't have in-game pics. thankfully, brian's camera had better batteries, and when he e-mails his pics to me, i'll post them too.

the fans around us were great, including the very hockey-knowledgeable couple to my left, the drunk psychos to brian's right, the very friendly man and his young son in front of us who had to endure the epically foul mouths of the two psychos, and the drunk guys behind us, one of whom insisted on slapping my hands and pounding my back every time the hawks scored, had a good hit, or apparently took a breath:


but the highlight was the 74-year-old woman (chaperoned by her daughter) sitting in front of brian. this rabid red wings' fan was very vocal and full of favorable (for the wings) statistics, and she was talking TRASH! her daughter told us that the cops had been called to her mom's house in the past because the neighbors thought the old lady and her husband were fighting, but it turned out that they were just yelling during red wing games. this classical bird got into it with the psychos (and us, to a certain extent), and i won't repeat some of the things that were said back and forth, as this is a family blog. believe me, she gave as good as she got. let this pic tell the story, when she tried to grab my camera when i aimed it at her:


interesting moment: from our seats, we had a clear view of the catwalk that leads to all the skyboxes. the box door over our heads just to our right bore the sign "the wirtz family" (if you don't know, the wirtzes own the hawks), and at one point, i looked up to see a bunch of people emerging from the box. i tapped the hockey genius next to me and said, "isn't that balding guy gary bettman?" as in nhl commissioner gary bettman. hockey genius said, "yeah, and that tall dude next to him is rocky." as in hawks' owner rocky wirtz, the guy who finally put hawks' home games on tv and has led the current blackhawks renaissance. we all began to loudly praise rocky, and he then showered us with a rain of hundred-dollar bills. actually, he just smiled and waved, but it was still a cool moment.


of course, even after a blistering first period, the hawks lost, which sucked. but the final outcome didn't diminish the truly amazing day, which ended with us riding the red line to the loop and catching a metra train back to the northwest suburbs. i took this quick pic as we were walking from the monroe street stop to union station, just for kicks. i love this city.

close to perfect

I have not had a good last few weeks. Work has been frustrating, the boys have been frustrating, and there just hasn't been time to do most of the things I really want to do. So it is with pure, sweet joy that I report that I had the best birthday of my adult life. It wasn't all about me, and we didn't do anything terribly special (although Mike did take me out for dinner), but I got to spend my day happily doing things with the people I love the most.

The morning started out as most mornings do, with Liam waking me up. Only this time, he woke me up with cries of "Mama, it's your birthday! Happy birthday!" We got up and set about making a big, Sunday-morning-style breakfast, with eggs, sausage, hash browns, and cinnamon rolls. We decorated some sugar cookies.



Thus fortified with a hot and hearty breakfast, we all went outside and explored the yard, which was still encased from the ice storm. I took a bunch of pictures, and we played until all our cheeks turned red and our fingers got a little numb. Back inside, we put the sugar cookies in the oven and the kettle on the stove, and the boys enjoyed hot chocolate and fresh, warm cookies.






After lunch, while Max napped, Mike and Liam went on a series of secret errands while I got to watch some recorded TV shows (definitely a rare pleasure). Once Max woke up, we got all bundled up again and took the boys outside to go sledding. We have a tiny hill (not even a bunny slope) in our backyard, but the ice helped the sleds really go fast. I took some videos (below) and mostly just soaked up the boys' excited cries and laughter.





After that, it was time for cake (DQ ice cream cake!) and gifts (a tripod!). My very patient boys posed for me while I messed around with camera and tripod. Just look how handsome:


I had a couple of calls from faraway friends, and my family called to sing to me (they do it every year; Max begged them for an encore, but they refused on the grounds that once is bad enough per year). Loni came to watch the boys, and Mike took me out for seafood, just like he did on my birthday the year we started dating. The only dim spot on the day was that Liam pulled a heavy (unlit) candle down on his head and immediately got a huge goose egg (just as we were about to leave for dinner), but today the swelling is gone and he's barely got a bruise, so all's well that ends well.


I may have ended up right back at work this morning (yes, on a Sunday!), but yesterday was a damned fine day, just about as good as it gets.

sledding videos

We took the boys sledding today. After the ice storm, even the small hill in our backyard was a superfast sledder's dream. Unfortunately for us, the hill leads down to a line of pine trees and our neighbor's house on one side, and our fenced-in area on the other, so Mike had to stand guard at the bottom to guide the sleds around the obstacles. But still, as you can see, the boys really whooped it up.

birthday horoscope roundup

From horoscope.com:
For those of us born on December 20
Happy Birthday! The year ahead could start with some unrealistic dreams about far away places and notions of travel. However, these dreams could become a reality if you’re prepared to be pragmatic. Watch for potential cash flow problems, especially around May, when unexpected expenses could crop up. Avoid taking out any credit in this month and don’t rely on extra work or overtime to boost your income. The planets will take a positive turn in the summer, which will see you being flirty and adventurous. October could see you being hesitant in key areas of your life, but this will be short lived, because towards the end of the year you will start having lots of fun again!

Jeraldine Saunders (Silicon Valley Mercury News):
IF DECEMBER 20 IS YOUR BIRTHDAY: Your long-term goals and ambitions can become a reality if you wait until late January or February to put your ideas and plans into motion. That's a prime time to be astute when dealing with business matters or to be filled with inspiration that will help you succeed. New friends might help you climb the ladder of success in April, but consider joining an organization or group that suits your interests. You will find that the friends you make will stand by you all summer long. In October be responsible about paying bills and avoid starting anything new such as buying a house or starting a new job. Rest assured that you will have great help from the universe on many levels near the end of the year.

Sally Brompton (NY Post):
December 20, 2008
You will have some good ideas - no, wait, make that great ideas - over the next six months or so, and during the six-month period following on from that you will get the opportunity to do something with them. And this time you must not chicken out.

dailyhoroscopes.com:
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Modern thinking comes naturally to you. Use that inventive and innovative thinking of yours to create answers and therefore, you find many followers; perhaps you write or lead in some community organization. You can dispense with all that is unsound or superficial at this time and consider a new personal project. Your earning power is in an upward motion and you will find an opportunity to fund a special project soon--perhaps community oriented. Check this out and make a decision before the end of this month. This could be a positive move on your part and will increase your standing in the community. Spending quality time with loved ones takes priority all day. Converse about goals and dreams together--HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Linda Black (Tribune):
This year, watch out for friends who throw their money around. Take care, or you’ll end up deeper in debt than you were before. Learn to resist temptation.

tree trimming

It seems like we haven't had time for much of anything this year, and the Christmas decorating was no different. Instead of heading out to the tree farm to cut one down, we dragged our old artificial tree up from the basement and put it together. The rest of the house is decidedly undecorated (and at this point will probably remain that way), but the boys had a really good time helping us with the tree. It was a very pleasant change from last year, when they started having meltdowns before the lights were even on the tree, so we had to put them down for naps and do most of it ourselves.

And in case you were wondering, yes, Liam wears fleece footed pajamas all day long whenever he can. He loves them!