One night the Little Green Erin went for a walk under the blue stars. She came to an egg. It was the strangest egg she had ever seen - it wasn't a robin's egg, because it wasn't blue. It wasn't an Easter egg, because it didn't have stripes or fancy colors. It had letters on it. It was an Alphabet Egg.

She picked up the egg to take it home to her brother Alek, because he was very good with letters. Then she realized she could read the letters too - all kinds of different letters, like "A" and "E" and "R" and "Z". As she was carrying the egg home to Alek, she heard a knocking sound. "Knock knock knock." It was coming from the egg!

The knocking was getting louder and louder. She got to her house and called "Alek! Come see my alphabet egg!" Alek came running. Mama and Dada came running, too. And right then, there was a loud knock and a crack in the egg. The crack got bigger and bigger and out popped the whole alphabet!

Erin and Alek brought the baby alphabet up into Alek's room and made all kinds of stories out of it. Then the stories hatched more eggs. Erin and Alek brought all the eggs outside and buried them in the woods for other kids to find.

Copyright HejaFred 2010.

"Jammie Dancing" pictures on MobileMe

Scenes from bedtime last night:

"I'm going be all piggy!" said Erin with a giggle. She crawled around the bedroom on feet and hands with her piggy tail up in the air. "Oink! Oink! Oink! See my pointy piggy toes?"

While Princess Piggy was prancing around on the floor, Space Ranger Alek flew in the door. He landed with a flourish of green wings. "Take a picture of my left wing! Now both! Now my right wing!"

Sometimes when I'm lying in bed with Alek or Erin at night, I tell them their own bedtime stories - just like my dad used to tell me, the one that always started "There was a little girl who lived out in the country...." Except I tell them about the little boy/girl in the brick house with the Mama and the Dada and the sister/brother and the dogs and the cats and the red car and the green truck and the blue minivan. And inevitably Lightning McQueen. Well after I told Alek a story about Lightning McQueen and his star headlights (inspired by Alek's ladybug night sky night-light, which happened to be shining on the front of the big stuffed Lightning McQueen), Alek wanted another story. This is the conversation we had:

Alek: “Can you tell the story of Lightning McQueen and his friends and the moon headlight tattoos and how they went to Carburetor Canyon and then how they went to my house?”

Me: “I think you just told it.”

Alek: “No – that’s just the NAME of it.”

Me: “Well it sounds like a good story – I think you’re off to a good start.”

Alek: “Oh OK. This is the story of how I was out on my driveway waiting with Lightning McQueen, and ‘Mater and Chick Hicks came by, and they all wanted moon headlight tattoos so they went down to Carburetor Canyon and found a guy who had them. And he put them on and they went outside and turned on their headlights – and they saw ALL KIND OF MOONS! And then they came back to my house and they were driving around but they fell in the big hole in our backyard! And they couldn’t get out! And their headlight tattoos fell off! But I had a cold glue gun so I fixed it – they had to sit still for a little while so it could dry.”

"Now can you tell me another one?"

"Santa! Santa! Santa is here!"

The kids are running around the house getting ready for Santa. Yes, it is January. But Santa is coming down our chimney.

Alek: "It's night-time and we're going to bed. I made Santa a play-doh snack. And hot cheerios."

Erin: Giggles

Alek: "Santa! Santa! Go sleep! Santa's here"

Erin: "Santa's here! Santa! Santa! Open the door for Santa!"

Alek: "You know what Erin, Santa comes down the chimney. Santa comes down the chimney, Erin. Erin, go to sleep!"

Erin: "Sleep on the chair!"

Alek: "Santa's magic, Erin. He wants you to be asleep. Santa's already at the bottom of the chimney. Let's go find our presents."

Erin: "OK."

I'm not sure who's living in who's world sometimes with these kids. Sometimes they are clearly in another one. They have no problem shifting back and forth between alternative realities at a moment's notice. But getting them back to THIS world is sometimes a challenge!

It is a fairly chaotic morning at the Frederick house due to an alien invasion. Fruitflies are everywhere, and they are winning. Cries of "I have a fruitfly in my straw!" erupt from both kids. Erin is turning them into imaginary friends and actually pretending to be one. She runs around the house flapping her arms and growling, saying "I'n a fruit fly!" And Alek's best line, in regard to the fruitfly infestation: "We should buy a new house and let someone else live here." Personally, my own observation is that a toasted fruit fly is still a fruit fly.

I had an interesting talk today with a colleague about pediatric anesthesia. He admitted that if he had gone into this specialty, he’d have had to drink a lot more beer - this coming from a Scotsman who I happen to know could drink me under the table and out the door. I wondered if perhaps my chosen career and living in such close proximity to a beer fridge - magically replenished with my husband’s homebrew on a regular basis - were not in fact the coincidence I always assumed they were? Along those lines, I had a beer and wrote this poem:

Ode to Oatmeal Stout

A cool drink to chase bad memories away,
You go well with jeans and slippers
And love-starved yellow dogs sitting near my chair.

Fend off the Grim Reaper Himself,
Or his shadow lying over
My patients,
And their parents,
Or even in my worst dreams
My children
Or me.

No, your gift is not as good as friendship.

But your comfort is like food,
Sustaining and warm,
Spreading like magic from the glass,
Now almost empty
And still
Cold.

My Dad's office is full of memories that span over 30 years, starting with my earliest trips to get teeth cleaned at age 4, working there in the summer when I was 14, and now bringing my own kids there to get their teeth cleaned. The best thing about the office is that it actually, literally, has not changed. It has gone past "dated", is well into "retro", and is probably on its way to "antique" (in a good way, Dad, I promise!). The slideshow commemorates Erin's first cleaning. The music is "When the Dentist Dreams" by Brooks Williams, picked solely because it was the only song in either of our iTunes collections that had the word "dentist" in the title.

Despite, or maybe because of, the old equipment, I have always loved my Dad's office. I am one of the only people I know who has really happy memories of the dentist's office. This is definitely DESPITE the summer I spent there filing charts, filling out the schedule, and calling patients to remind them of their appointments. I loved working for my dad - everyone who works there seems to - I was just mildly dyslexic when it came to alphabetizing charts and I was slightly phone-phobic. I was also 14, of course. But otherwise, only happy memories. Oh, besides the 2+ years of orthodontic visits too. Really, other than that - happiness only.

(By the way, "Dad's Dental Service" comes from the only definition of "DDS" I knew for the first 10 years of my life. Thanks, Dad.)

One of the problems about being a Northerner in the South is that summer is over too quickly. This sounds backwards, but it's true - in my internal calendar, summer is kind of just beginning sometime around July, when the window for snow has officially closed for good. In North Carolina, kids are starting to talk about going back to school now that it's August. I actually just started a class again last Thursday. The summer is over.

Well, for what it's worth, we managed to have something resembling a summer vacation, even if it is too abruptly coming to an end. It was at least a change of pace from the usual reality. I had a break from classes that allowed me time to actually start contradancing again, and Erik had a lull in the work-hole that allowed him to yet again complete the legendary Off Road Assault on Mount Mitchell, a 65-mile mountain bike race that he was the only one of all his friends to actually follow through on. The kids have fully become creatures of the sun and water. We spent lots of days at the river, in the pool, or playing with the hose in the driveway. Most days they are out of their clothes and soaking wet by the time we've finished cooking dinner. It's been a great way to meet the neighbors - there's nothing like a naked, 2-year-old red-head coming up your driveway to break the ice.

Why does summer still feel like vacation anyway? There's no good reason - the kids aren't even in school yet. Maybe it's the temporary reprieve from having to wear protective outerwear - and I count socks in that category. Maybe it's the bounty of fresh food that we have in the garden or showing up from our CSA. Or maybe we're all happier in the summer because of latent childhood memories of running around naked and wet in the sun. Whatever the reason, it's been a great summer so far, and I'm going to try to make it last as long as possible, despite the resumption of classes and work and other adult-type stuff. My Northern confusion will be helping me in September, when I instinctively get out the winter coats again, and then get to wear flip-flops for another month.

The past month has held some surprises. Erin has accomplished in two weeks what it took us two years to do with our first child: completely potty-trained, wiping herself, no diaper for nap or bed, and waking up to pee at night. I don't want to spend too much time on the finer aspects of potty training, but I did want to update the impression I left with the last blog entry; that is to say, that she was only "pee-potty-trained". It's a big accomplishment for a little girl, and it deserves to be recognized. Since I don't have a baby book for her, the Internet will suffice.

Meanwhile, as many who follow my erratic Facebook status updates have noticed, we're dealing with an excess of vegetables thanks to our first "CSA" (Community Supported Agriculture) experience, plus a wildly overgrown garden and an edibly-landscaped backyard. This has forced some changes in our eating habits and the allocation of yet another corner of our garden for a compost pile. I made "Scrambled eggs with greens" for dinner tonight (CSA ingredients: eggs, chard, mustard and turnip greens; secret ingredients: cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and half-and-half) and actually watched both Alek and Erin ingest something green. Finally, my strategy of smothering nutritious food in fat and salt has succeeded! Sadly, Erik wouldn't touch it, due to the eggs, but I think he ate some of the greens I kept aside for him.

I have to say, I've come to understand the appeal of "greens". Until this year, I don't think I had ever eaten them. Then Erik planted collards, with his usual magic green thumb. Collards became the secret ingredient in everything I made for a few months: sweet potato and black bean enchiladas, vegetarian meatballs (other secret ingredient: meat), even hummus. I still don't know how to make them in a truly southern way, since I understand that requires something called "fat back", or at the very least, lots of bacon, but they have become a staple.

Now, turnips and radishes are another issue altogether. I am trying to learn how to deal with them. I learned that I can bury sliced radishes in a salad with enough dressing to make them palatable, and I actually brought a turnip for snack today. Yes, I had a turnip as a snack. It actually wasn't too bad, dipped in salad dressing - again, the fat and salt strategy is pretty reliable. Maybe I've lived a sheltered life, but I had never eaten a turnip until today. I'm not entirely sure I will eat one again, though I will bring one for lunch tomorrow and see how it goes.

We have had salad every night with dinner for about the past two weeks and we still have an excess of lettuce - part of the problem is the 12 plants of romaine growing in the garden, not that that is a huge problem or worse than any of the other problems that some of our friends are dealing with this summer, just that it grew so well that we can't possibly eat it all. I've given three whole plants away, but the darn stuff keeps growing. Greens are easy - a whole laundry basket can be cooked down to 4 ziploc bags. Yes, we know this from experience. But lettuce is rather bulky and time-consuming to eat, in terms of the calories obtained. I can now see why it is considered a "diet" food. Completely unintentionally, I've lost two pounds, and I think it's mostly from the energy that goes into chewing all that salad.

Did I mention the garlic? We planted 75 cloves earlier this year. They looked so small and innocent. Then each turned into a head of garlic. What am I supposed to do with 75 heads of garlic???

I could go on, but you get the point. Last year's investment in "Bountiful Backyards" has paid off and then some. I thought once I had conquered kohlrabi that the rest would be easy . . .

We had simultaneous 2- and 4-year pediatrician visits today, and the kids are - no surprise here - doing fine. We had so much fun catching up with Dr. Martha that it took a little bit to get around to the actual doctor stuff. Alek had to have his blood pressure checked, so Erin insisted on it as well. Erin opened up wide for the doctor, which was what it took (along with threatening to take away Gordon) to get Alek to open his mouth. Dr. Martha found Smudger in there, and James was in the left ear (Gordon was in the right, safe and sound). Erin couldn't WAIT to show off her belly button while Dr. Martha was looking at Alek's. For some reason, Erin didn't feel the need to get any shots even though Alek got four (and was pretty darn brave about it too - he cried, but held still even after the first one). I had the embarrassment of bribing my children with chocolate in front of the doctor, and she didn't seem to mind. For those who are interested, here are the vital statistics:

• Erin is 35.4 inches (82%) and 29.5 lbs (80%) and on track for being 5'8" (double your height at age 2 = approximate adult height).


• Alek is 38.8 inches (18%) and 32 lbs (15%) and on track for being ... 5'8" (plus or minus 2 inches, although I bet it will be plus).

Erin is almost pee-potty-trained, which is following in the footsteps of her brother. This is a new concept I've invented (or that I've been too lazy to look up to see if it exists elsewhere), wherein I am able to keep my child out of diapers for everything except pooping. No hurry on either account - except I'm willing to embrace the idea this time. Pooping in the diaper is a lot better than pooping somewhere else that isn't the potty.

Along cognitive lines, Erin demonstrated some advanced concepts just in time to impress the heck out of her doctor. I was trying to get her to say her name. She obliged ("Ein-in" . . . although ironically the word for underwear comes out "Erin"), then she pointed at Alek and said "Ahl-eh - boy!" Dr. Martha looked appropriately impressed and asked if she was a boy, and she giggled and said "Noooooooooo . . . ". When Dr. Martha asked her what she was, Erin pointed to her belly and said, clearer than any word I've ever heard her say, "Girl!" OK, it wasn't just the doctor who was impressed - Mama was pretty proud, too. As you can tell! Of course, this just may be a by-product of being a working mom - for all I know, their nanny has been working on this concept for weeks and Erin chose this moment to share it.