I'm proud to say that I voted in yesterday's election.
I'm also proud to say that I didn't vote in the 2000 election.
You see, I was a little busy:
It was before everyone had digital cameras, so I had to resort to taking a picture of the scrapbook page
And now, that 6lb 9oz baby girl, the one who became the most determined baby and toddler in the world, the one who grew into the most self-confident little girl I've ever met, that little baby is now a smart, cheerful, funny, beautiful, twelve-year-old young woman.
...who can make a perfect paper airplane!
And I'm not just blessed to be her mother.
I'm privileged to be her friend.
Happy 12th birthday, Vicki! Thanks for making me a mother.
One part of the Girl Scout Law states that Girl Scouts are friendly and helpful. We discussed it at Ellie's troop meeting two weeks ago. As a parent and a Girl Scout leader, it's nice when I get to see something like that being taken to heart.
See, it's long been a source of pride for Ellie to know that she has the longest hair in the family. Lexi once held that title, but she had to relinquish it after suffering a self-inflicted mullet. Ellie has loved her long hair and has been the most willing of all my girls to let me play with it, so I've loved it, too.
Then, about a month ago I was shampooing her and she said to me, completely out of the blue, "Mom, I want to get my hair cut and give it to that place that makes wigs for kids who don't have hair."
And I was blown away.
I don't know where she heard about Locks of Love, but I'm glad she did. On Saturday we went to see my friend Erica and, after wavering a little bit, Ellie decided to go ahead and give the long hair title back to her sister.
Before
During (Thank you, Vicki, for the cell phone picture! Mine didn't turn out.)
After!
She's so excited to mail her ponytail to Locks of Love so another little girl can have beautiful hair. I'm so proud of my girl!
Actually, the more accurate description would be that today my baby girl kicked me out of her classroom.
I didn't cry at the school. I may have cried a little on the way to school, and I may also have sobbed like a baby for a few minutes when I got home. (And now, while I'm writing this post.) But I didn't cry at the school.
Ellie was up at 7am, knocking on my door and announcing, "I'm a kindergartner!" She was dressed before breakfast, and before anyone else in the house, including me.
We walked to school. Well, Lexi and I walked. Ellie ran and skipped the whole way.
As parents, we want our kids to grow up and try new things. I've been excited to have the house to myself for a few hours each day for a very long time. But now I'm feeling lonely. I don't know what to do with myself.
Except, that is, for eating this bucket o' brownies that a friend gave me this morning. She said she knew I'd need them. It's good to have friends.
I miss my baby. I miss all my girls, really. It's awfully quiet here without them.
But I can't deny that Ellie is growing up. She still needs me, but she's ready to be a little more independent, to experience the world for herself.
We've both been looking forward to this day for a very, very long time.
But now, suddenly, it's upon us and I'm not as excited as I thought I would be.
In fact, I'm a little bit weepy.
Ellie and I have been buddies all day, every day, just the two of us for the last four years, since Lexi started kindergarten. I thought about taking her out for ice cream, or some other special treat, but then I realized I was the one who needed to be taken out for ice cream, and she doesn't have the funds for that.
So we just ran errands instead, like any other normal day around here.
And I took pictures.
You know, to remember.
Rushing off to save the day. At Walmart (I know.)
"Look how else I can ride on it!"
"And also like this!"
Eating yogurt treats in the parking lot.
The last time we'll walk to school together to pick up
big sisters. Tomorrow I'll be picking her up.
I'm really going to miss my goofball constant companion.
But I can't wait to hear all about her day tomorrow.
And I may have to indulge in some chocolate when I have the house to myself.
Vicki will be starting middle school in ohmyword five short months.
I'm not ready for this.
She is, though. Ready and bouncing up and down with excitement. The girl who has never cared about clothes in her life is planning her wardrobe for the time when she no longer has to wear a uniform (darn it.)
Last week, all the 5th graders at her school got to go over to the middle school for a tour. And I wanted desperately to go along, but I managed to convince myself that it would be better for all of us if I just stayed home. Moving into the world of middle-schoolers is not something that needs to be done with Mom holding your hand. And, quite possibly, sobbing uncontrollably. Yes, better for everyone.
That evening at dinner she gave us all the scoop. The middle school is BIG, but awesome. Lockers are so cool. If you don't play in the band as a 6th grader, you can't do it as a 7th or 8th grader, so please, please, please can she get a flute? She learned an exciting new word: electives. And she threw it around like she'd been saying it forever. She was suddenly a world ahead of her former lowly elementary-school self.
I miss my baby.
Heaven help us all when she actually starts middle school in the fall.
Oh, and the school supply she's convinced she needs more than anything else?
Part of the job involved going through unlabeled CDs, trying to figure out whether there was anything on them worth keeping. Most of them were either blank but really scratched, or copies of music we already had stored on the computer. But I came across two discs of random pictures from several years ago that made me really grateful I hadn't just trashed everything without checking them first.
And now, to the future humiliation of my children, I'm going to share some of these priceless gems with you.
First, some of my favorites of Ellie:
Diva child
I like to call this one "trailer trash Ellie"
This was when I learned that naptime
wasn't going to be so easy anymore
And now, Lexi:
In true dad fashion, Chris thought it
would be hilarious to dress her up like
Dobby from Harry Potter.
She said, "Take a picture of me with an
angry face." This was the angry face.
Self-inflicted mullett
Vicki's aren't quite as embarrassing, but I work with what I have:
Not sure what the face was about.
Also, I'd forgotten our kitchen floor used
to look like that!
Back when she couldn't smile normally
to save her life, and she had a gap-tooth
grin for a year and a half.
Do you think Vicki looks like me?
me
Vicki
Then there was one of me before I got my hair cut. Wow.
I like it better short.
Also, Chris and I used to look really young.
2005
It's scary to think that by the time this picture was taken, we'd been together for 10 years, married for 6, and had two children with one on the way. And we look like such babies.
Among the pictures was also a fabulous shot of my already-big belly at 13 weeks pregnant with Ellie (which I will NOT be sharing with you, thankyouverymuch), pictures of the water damage to our house when we returned home to find a pipe had been dripping steadily for the entire 11 days we were in Utah, pictures of my entire family at the Oregon coast (watch out guys, I'll use those one day!), and a whole bunch of others I'm glad we didn't lose.
So, the moral of the story is: always label your discs.
And also, it's never too early to provide future humiliation for your children.
About three weeks ago, while on our way to Lexi's dance class, we somehow got to talking about twins. It was just Lexi and Ellie in the car with me, and they wanted to know the difference between identical and fraternal twins. We're trying not to sugar-coat anything in our family, so I explained that a sperm comes from the dad and the egg comes from the mom, and when they meet, sometimes the egg splits into two. When that happens, you have identical twins. But sometimes there will be two eggs, and if they each are met by a sperm, you'll have fraternal twins.
By this point, we were at the dance studio, so I thought the conversation was finished, but as we got out of the car, Lexi said, "Mom, I was wondering. If the egg comes from the mom and the sperm comes from the dad, and the baby grows inside the mom, how does the sperm get to the egg?"
Oh, boy.
Considering the fact that we were about three steps from the door of the dance studio, there wasn't time to go into any sort of detail. Besides, I'm pretty sure the parents of any of the other girls in the class (who range in age from 6-8 years old) wouldn't have appreciated me going into that sort of detail, anyway. So I told her that that was a really good question, but there wasn't time for me to answer it right now, and could she remind me later when there was more time?
Of course, she didn't.
But we knew it was time anyway.
Time for The Talk.
Such fun.
We had The Talk with Vicki when she was about Lexi's age, and it went fairly well, all things considered. After sitting in serious silence through the majority of the discussion, her only real reaction was, "Ew."
Lexi's turn, yesterday evening, also went well, but it was more fun.
We couldn't get her to say any of the names for private body parts (which I am purposely not naming here, since I can only imagine the Google searches that would end up here if I did) - she preferred to keep her face buried in her hands during that part of the discussion, even though we teased her by saying things like, "nostrils", "elbows", and "armpits" to try and make her understand that we were just talking about body parts. Didn't work. At one point, while we were talking about how boys have a [certain body part], she said, "This is just disturbing."
But she was really interested in the location of ovaries, and how that whole process works. I got to stand up and do a lot of pointing through my jeans. And she was somewhat relieved, it appeared, to understand that the eggs inside of moms weren't the size of chicken eggs.
It will probably be about three years before we'll have to have The Talk again, but I think it will be even more fun with Ellie, since she's already shown us that she has absolutely no problem with saying the names of boy or girl parts. She announced to us at the dinner table one night, much to her sisters' horror, that her friend Timmy* has a [boy part]! And she's seen it! While they were going potty! Isn't that cool!?!
Being a parent is fun.
*name has been changed to protect the innocent. Although I'm fairly certain the innocent's mother will read this and know exactly who I'm talking about.
Ten years ago today, Vicki was born and I became a mother.
While the rest of the nation was trying to figure out who would be the next President, Chris and I were instead trying to figure out how on earth we were supposed to be responsible for this tiny, helpless little creature that was suddenly a part of our family.
And now, even though it doesn't feel possible that it's been that long, she's not so tiny or helpless, and she's ten years old.
A whole decade.
Amazing.
You've come a long way, baby! (We didn't get a digital camera until 2003, and our scanner broke about 4 years ago, so it was slim pickings for the first couple of years, but I made do with what I had. Besides, she's cute no matter what.)
Blessing day, Dec. 31, 2000
In the comfy chair, 2001
Hiking in Snow Canyon, St. George, Utah, 2002
2 years old, 2003
Camping with Dad (and Dizzy Bear!) 2004
Indian Beach, Oregon, 2005
She did her own hair, and was so proud to show it off at school! 2006
Gap-tooth grin, 2007
Hiking in Forest Park, Downtown Portland, 2008
True Vicki style, 2009
Birthday girl! 2010 (She would like me to note that the crown was not her idea. Ellie insisted.)
Vicki's natural cheerfulness and self-assuredness make her such a joy to be around. I'm so proud to be her mother, and I can't wait to see what the next 10 years brings for this amazing girl!
We’ve gone through a few cars in our 11 years of marriage. Our first was a 1989 fire-engine red Audi 5000. It was an old boxy grandma car (truly, it was. We bought it from Chris’s great-aunt and -uncle, who bought it from his grandparents) and we loved it. We drove it until the day it died, quietly and without fanfare, on a stretch of 7th East in downtown Salt Lake City.
After that we got a Toyota Corolla. It was small, simple, and reliable, although as basic as you could possibly get. No automatic locks, no cruise control (which, let me tell you, would have come in really handy on our move to Oregon), but still a great car for a family of four. Once Ellie was on the way, though, we realized the little Corolla just wasn’t going to cut it for a family of five.
So we upgraded to a Subaru Outback. And it was awesome. Three carseats fit in the back, no problem. It carried us to Utah and back 10 times in the course of five years. The cargo space was unparalleled, and, apart from the slightly ghetto driver’s side window, we never had a single problem with it. But it had a lot of miles on it and was beginning to show signs of its age.
Plus, the kids just kept getting bigger. And the car didn’t.
So, after squirreling away our pennies for three years (three very looooong years), doing lots of online research, and spending two days driving around to a variety of dealerships (from the slightly scary to the overly imposing), we are now the proud owners of a Toyota Sienna minivan! Yay us!
Our new ride.
The girls came along to help out. They were very discerning.
Test drive!
They approved of the bucket seats and “magic doors”, but were disappointed by the lack of drop-from-the-ceiling screen in the first car we test drove. And also the missing mirror from the driver’s side visor.
We did not buy this car.
But they liked the play area and free popcorn at one dealer and the free candy at another.
Vicki, who definitely has the most Ebert genes of any of our daughters, made a chart so she could keep track of the cars we looked at.
The second car we test drove (which did happen to have a drop-down screen – bonus!) ended up being “the one”. It had a few more miles than we were hoping for, but the price was good, and, most importantly, they made us an offer we couldn’t refuse for a trade-in on the Outback.
So we bid a fond farewell to the car we’ve occasionally referred to as “Kermit” (I’m pretty sure Uncle Scotty named it)
Goodbye, old friend.
and drove home in what has been dubbed “Kermit II”. I didn’t actually want another green car, but you take what you can get, and it’s already growing on me.
And we managed to strike gold and landed ourselves the luxury edition, which means leather seats (heated!) and an excellent surround sound system. It also means we get to enjoy my personal favorite part:
That's right. Our new car has a VCR. Not a DVD player, but a VCR. How many other people do you know with a VCR in their car?
It's surprising how hard a time I've been having with this fact. She's been talking about her birthday for ages. She has greeted me every morning for the past week with a countdown of how many more days to go (Monday it was one day and two nights, yesterday was no days and one night.) I've been totally fine with the idea, even excited about it. But for some reason all I wanted to do this morning was cry.
My baby is five years old today.
Five years ago today, this is how she looked:
Oct. 6, 2005 - Chubby McChubs
It's scary how fast they grow.
1 year old, rockin' the fountain hair
Age 2. Potty training 101: Potty chair...not a hat.
3-year-old cutie pie.
4 years old.
Oct. 6, 2010 - 5 years old.
You've come a long way, baby.
I'll miss the preschool years, but she's turning into such a fun kid. I'm glad we get to hang out for one more year before she starts kindergarten, even if she's chomping at the bit. She did give me permission to still call her my baby, but only when no one else is around. Because, apparently, it would be embarrassing if I did.
So Happy Birthday to Miss Ellie Magoo, my no-longer-a-baby, fun and feisty and full of life big girl!
