HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

"What Kind of a Mom Am I?"

Today I got a call from the nurse at Abby's school. She said that Abby had been in to the office several times complaining of a stomach ache. The nurse had seen her at lunch time and took her temperature but she did not have a fever so she sent her back to class. She now had come back to the nurse once again (it was ten minutes to three o'clock - school gets out at 3:35pm). The nurse asked what I wanted to do. I told her I would leave immediately and come pick her up. I scooped up the baby and got her and Sammy in the car. We drove over to the school and walked in to the office announcing that I was there to pick up Abby. A girl came out rather hesitantly and looked at me. I told the secretary that the girl was not my child. She looked a bit confused and looked for another child. The nurse came out and wondered what the problem was. Why was this little sick girl being rejected. We all realized that I had been called by mistake. The nurse had called me thinking I was the girl's mother. The girl's name was also Abby but somehow they called me instead of the girl's mother. No big deal. However, since I had just made the trip to the school I asked if I could just take MY Abby out a little early and take her home. Of course was the reply after many apologies. They called Abby out of class and we sat waiting in the office for her.

While we were waiting, Alexandra kept crawling into the Principal's office where he seemed to be on an important phone call. So I picked her up and held her in my arms, just then the Librarian entered the office. She took one look at Alex and said,"is that Abby F.'s sister?" Wow! I couldn't believe this Librarian who sees hundreds of school kids a day, connected this random baby to Abby in less than a minute. (I guess they really do look alike.)

Anyway, after a few minutes Abby appeared. I told her how there was a mistake and we thought she was sick. She immediately replied that she wasn't coughing very much. She felt fine. "I know," I said. "We are just going to take you home since we are here." She could not believe it. How could I come and pull her out of school. She was in music class and they weren't done! She protested that she liked school and wanted to finish the day. I tried to explain to her that there was only twenty minutes left of the day anyway. We walked out of the building and there in the parking lot the tears came along with a tantrum! How could I do such a thing! She wanted to finish school. She liked school, she cried. She refused to get in the car and started walking back to the school. I couldn't possibly let her go back in now. I would have to move my car because I could not park there after 3:15pm. I would basically have to drive home and then WALK all the way back to get her. It was also quite a cold day. That seemed a bit insane. So I bribed her! I told her I would give her hot cocoa and Halloween candy if she would come home with me right then. What kind of a mom am I, I thought to myself. Here I am, not only taking my child out of school early against her will but BRIBING her to do it! Poor Abby. She finally got in the car but she cried all the way home and was so upset for quite a while. I guess I am grateful that she loves school so much and that we don't have the opposite problem. I am still in a bit of shock though that she wouldn't be thrilled to death to ditch school early and get called out of class. I would have killed for my mom to do that but it NEVER happened to me! That's my Abby!

The World's Best Kept Secret...

This past Saturday was rainy so we stayed inside and watched the musical, Oliver. Afterwards, we decided to have some hot cocoa and watch the rain. As Sammy sat stirring her cocoa she noticed that when she didn't stir it, the color was light brown. But when she did stir it, it was dark brown. She proudly announced her discovery and then exclaimed, "it must be the world's best kept secret!" Oh, to be a kid again...

Randomness

I have been painting like crazy around our house. I have done a lot but still have A LOT more to do. I was very happy though how my chairs turned out. They went from boring old wood...

To an awesome jalapeno green - Thanks Pottery Barn! I just painted the table brown as well but I have no pictures of that. I love painting while listening to books on tape. I could go all night!

This is just some random picture that Sammy wanted me to take of her and Alex.


Alex loves to sit in her toy basket with her diaper basket on her head playing "peek-a-boo."

OH so cuddly and sweet....

Alex gets so excited in the bath tub. It is probably because everytime she takes a bath she is basically on-stage. Abby and Sammy never miss bath time for Alex. They have to watch and help and Alex loves it. I must say, it gets a little crowded and difficult to move with all three of us hunched over the bathtub.

Sammy sleeping on the bottom shelf of the book case! Crazy girl...
At least she is out of the way.

Abby was "Star of the Day" in her first grade class not long ago and boy was she excited. She loves all the attention. She meticulously colored the whole poster so it would look extra nice.

Alex LOVES our horse. We have renamed him "Bob." (He is named after a horse that pulled the cart we rode in an Amish village - I will post pictures soon.) Abby always picks her up and puts her on Bob for a ride. She can't get enough. Now when you walk in the room with her, she kicks her legs and gestures to Bob for a ride.

I think we got ourselves a rock n' roll star. Her rock n' roll hair goes well with her electric guitar! We need to work on the outfit though. Let's rock n' roll Girlfriend...

Book Recommendation

The Book: Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb.

This is my latest obsession! I can't put this book down even though it has a well-known ending. I think about it day and night. I am always scheming ways to blow everyone off to be alone with my book and read. I am transported into another world when I read it. All of a sudden, I am the Nazi hunter and all I want is Eichmann! He must answer and pay for the genocide he helped create. It is absolutely fascinating. If you want a thriller and a great detective story that will grip and intrigue you AND teach you some history, go no further. The following is a short summary of the book. I highly recommend it, if you can't tell...

Adolf Eichmann is known as the mastermind or architect of the Holocaust. The man behind the "Final Solution" (concentration camps and extermination for Jews). Eichmann shed his SS uniform and vanished as the Allies stormed Berlin in the last days of the Third Reich. The pursuit and capture of Eichmann required a harrowing fifteen-year chase stretching from war-ravaged Europe to the shores of Argentina.

Alternating from a criminal on the run to his pursuers closing in on his trail, Hunting Eichmann follows the Nazi as he escapes two American POW camps, hides in the mountains, slips out of Europe, and builds an anonymous life in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, a persistent search for Eichmann gradually evolves into an international manhunt that includes a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle. Presented in a pulse-pounding, hour-by-hour account, the capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina and fly him to Israel to stand trial bring the narrative to a stunning conclusion.

Update

It has been quite a while since I last posted an update on us. The summer flew by and now the school year is upon us again. I am grateful for the school year because it makes me feel like I have a new start as well even though I am not going to school. My "new year" resolutions are to workout at least three times a week (which I have been doing faithfully thus far), finish the book (called Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam) that I have been reading ALL SUMMER because I was too busy entertaining kids and lastly, continue my painting projects around the house.

Alex is getting so big. She will be one year at the end of September. She is still just rolling but occasionally gets up on all fours as if she will crawl but then decides against it. She is not putting any weight on her little legs yet. I am not worried at all and am in no hurry for her to progress. She is perfectly welcome to do it completely at her own pace. But don't think for a minute that she doesn't get into things. She can roll faster than you'd think. She loves to get into the cupboards where our CDs and DVDs are stored and pull up all the heat vents.

Sammy is now reading simple books. She is learning Phonics Part II with the double consonants and is always amazed at how many more words she can sound out because of it. I love to hear her slowly sound out each word and then get excited when she cracks the code and figures out the word. She is trying so hard to be just like Abby.

We had the pleasure of hosting our friends who lived in England with us a few weeks ago. Abby and their oldest daughter were born a week or two apart. The girls had a great time dancing and having a "pajama party."

We took our friends to the truck and safety show. The girls had fun climbing all over the various trucks.

PAJAMA PARTY!! Strike a pose and then dance your heart out (and never go to sleep)!

Sammy and a neighbor friend

Abby's first day of school. Here she is in line with her class going into the building.

She knew EXACTLY what she was going to wear on her first day and EXACTLY how her hair would be. This hairstyle is called "nifty knots."

I love the squinty eyes!

Extreme baby close-up

We went swimming a lot this summer. The girls could not get enough of the pool. Here is a shot of Sammy and her flippers.

Smiley baby at the park

Helping Sammy with her shoe at the park. The girls played so much over the summer together that Sammy has been somewhat lost without her sister since Abby started school.

I can't get over how old they are looking... We went out of town over Labor Day and left the girls with some friends. When we got back, Charles and I couldn't stop talking about how old they both seem and look.

messy face

We babysat some gerbils in August and one of them actually died! FYI, don't leave your pets with us if you are going out of town....

I Can't Resist...

Sorry, I can't resist publishing the following articles from The Onion and The Guardian. They are hilarious but sadly so true...


Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims
AUGUST 30, 2010 ISSUE 46•35


SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.
Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.
"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"
"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."
"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.
When told that the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, "I know all I'm going to let myself know."
Gentries explained that it "didn't take long" to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.
"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."
"If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp. That's right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps."
Over the past decade, Gentries said he has taken pains to avoid personal interactions or media that might have the potential to compromise his point of view. He told reporters that the closest he had come to confronting a contrary standpoint was tuning in to the first few seconds of an interview with a moderate Muslim cleric before hastily turning off the television.
"I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn't want to hear," Gentries said. "But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities."
Added Gentries, "That really put things back into perspective."


....AND here is one more (I can't resist posting) - gotta love the sense of humour of the English!



'Ground Zero mosque'? The reality is less provocative
Millions of Americans are furious about the 'Ground Zero mosque'. But it doesn't exist

Charlie Brooker The Guardian, Monday 23 August 2010 Article history

Things seem awfully heated in America right now; so heated you could probably toast a marshmallow by jabbing it on a stick and holding it toward the Atlantic. Millions are hopping mad over the news that a bunch of triumphalist Muslim extremists are about to build a "victory mosque" slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.

The planned "ultra-mosque" will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin's call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for "victory" is.

I'm exaggerating. But I'm only exaggerating a tad more than some of the professional exaggerators who initially raised objections to the "Ground Zero mosque". They keep calling it the "Ground Zero mosque", incidentally, because it's a catchy title that paints a powerful image – specifically, the image of a mosque at Ground Zero.

When I heard about it – in passing, in a soundbite – I figured it was a US example of the sort of inanely confrontational fantasy scheme Anjem Choudary might issue a press release about if he fancied winding up the tabloids for the 900th time this year. I was wrong. The "Ground Zero mosque" is a genuine proposal, but it's slightly less provocative than its critics' nickname makes it sound. For one thing, it's not at Ground Zero. Also, it isn't a mosque.

Wait, it gets duller. It's not being built by extremists either. Cordoba House, as it's known, is a proposed Islamic cultural centre, which, in addition to a prayer room, will include a basketball court, restaurant, and swimming pool. Its aim is to improve inter-faith relations. It'll probably also have comfy chairs and people who smile at you when you walk in, the monsters.

To get to the Cordoba Centre from Ground Zero, you'd have to walk in the opposite direction for two blocks, before turning a corner and walking a bit more. The journey should take roughly two minutes, or possibly slightly longer if you're heading an angry mob who can't hear your directions over the sound of their own enraged bellowing.

Perhaps spatial reality functions differently on the other side of the Atlantic, but here in London, something that is "two minutes' walk and round a corner" from something else isn't actually "in" the same place at all. I once had a poo in a pub about two minutes' walk from Buckingham Palace. I was not subsequently arrested and charged with crapping directly onto the Queen's pillow. That's how "distance" works in Britain. It's also how distance works in America, of course, but some people are currently pretending it doesn't, for daft political ends.

New York being a densely populated city, there are lots of other buildings and businesses within two blocks of Ground Zero, including a McDonald's and a Burger King, neither of which has yet been accused of serving milkshakes and fries on hallowed ground. Regardless, for the opponents of Cordoba House, two blocks is too close, period. Frustratingly, they haven't produced a map pinpointing precisely how close is OK.

That's literally all I'd ask them in an interview. I'd stand there pointing at a map of the city. Would it be offensive here? What about here? Or how about way over there? And when they finally picked a suitable spot, I'd ask them to draw it on the map, sketching out roughly how big it should be, and how many windows it's allowed to have. Then I'd hand them a colour swatch and ask them to decide on a colour for the lobby carpet. And the conversation would continue in this vein until everyone in the room was in tears. Myself included.

That hasn't happened. Instead, 70% of Americans are opposed to the "Ground Zero mosque", doubtless in many cases because they've been led to believe it literally is a mosque at Ground Zero. And if not . . . well, it must be something significant. Otherwise why would all these pundits be so angry about it? And why would anyone in the media listen to them with a straight face?

According to a recent poll, one in five Americans believes Barack Obama is a Muslim, even though he isn't. A quarter of those who believe he's a Muslim also claimed he talks about his faith too much. Americans aren't dumb. Clearly these particular Americans have either gone insane or been seriously misled. Where are they getting their information?

Sixty per cent said they learned it from the media. Which means it's time for the media to give up.

Seriously, broadcasters, journalists: just give up now. Because either you're making things worse, or no one's paying attention anyway. May as well knock back a few Jagermeisters, unplug the autocue, and just sit there dumbly repeating whichever reality-warping meme the far right wants to go viral this week. What's that? Obama is Gargamel and he's killing all the Smurfs? Sod it. Whatever. Roll titles.