I'm in!

November is upon us, good people. That means it's time for blogging month with Nablopomo! I decided to go for it. What will you get this November? Probably a lot of lists. I'm a list-maker by nature and it's a swell cop-out when you've got nothing of substance to say. Here's a small primer of the sorts of topics I feel the need to list about:

1. Why I voted for Barack Obama (that will probably show up next Tuesday)

2. Things I loved but accidentally ruined in the washer or dryer (expect that late in the month when I'm really desperate)

3. Best ways to avoid killing your children (#1 - pause for blogging)

4. Things to blurt out during awkward silences at social gatherings in an effort to get people talking again (I'll hold on to this for Thanksgiving.)

5. We'll need a carpetbagger's delight in here, since I've been slacking, so I'm thinking My Favorite Eateries in Atlanta (it's an eating month, after all.)

6. What To Get Me For Christmas (this will probably show up a few times.)

In addition to these outstanding topics, I'd love to hear your ideas. What can I list for you? Would you like some How-to posts? Are you wondering what the best pet names are? How about a list of where (with dates and exact scenes) my parents went so horribly wrong? Tell me! I've got to fill 30 days here and I'm a wee bit nervous. Lately the only thing in my head has been "what's that [weird-looking, oddly-scented, unnaturally colored thing] on my [skin, clothing, furniture...anything the children are able to reach, really]?" And "I'm hungry". I not creative enough to make those thoughts work out into interesting posts so I'm appealing to you, my (largely silent) public. Speak up or you'll end up with Why I Hate Boxwood Bushes (answer: they smell like cat pee).

The Jig is UP

So we're on our way home from daycare today and the neighbors are out en masse hastily adding the finishing touches to their front yard faux spider web master pieces before Go Time. The heightened activity in the `hood led to much slower traffic on the streets. As I paused on Fayettville Road to wait for some nice people to cross Kate bellowed out "MOVE! Come on, move, people, you're makin' my sister sad!" I laughed when she said that and took a peek in the back seat at her. She was sitting, shoes removed, in her pink velveteen, fur-cuffed dress and tiara, one leg stretched out on the back of the seat in front of her and the other hanging free - very un-princesslike.

She glared at me and said, with just the right amount of petulance, "What are you laughin' at?" I laughed again (who could help it?) and said "I'm laughing at you, you're funny!" she glared at me again and said "but you're supposed to laugh with me, not at me!"

So true. I always wondered when she'd figure out that we had her for our own amusement.

Party Prep, in which Kate makes a shocking pronouncement

After insisting on showering with me, and then insisting I put her hair up in a towel like mine, Kate lounges on the bed in the guest room, hemming and hawing about which Halloween-themed shirt she wants to wear to Margaret's birthday party at Leaping Lizards. In this phone-photo, Kate has just said to me "I'm going with the black one. And I want to wear it with pants. I love pants." I was able to find a pair that happened to go with a sassy shirt-no-dress-well-maybe-just-a-shirt thing that Grandma and Grandpa Drueke sent for her birthday this year. She owns 2 other pairs of pants, one of which she has never worn. In other Bizarro news, Sarah has informed us that her favorite color is pink.

Two months, 4 days...

Jeremiah reported the having the following conversation with Kate today en route to gymnastics:

Jeremiah: Kate, mommy's birthday is coming up in the next couple months, you know. What do you think you'd like to get her?

Kate: I want to get her...um...a...biiiiiiig bag of wine!

I can't wait!

Kate & Sarah Plant a Tree with Uncle Steve

Pasta for Dinner - UPDATED

Our camera is not working! I can't tell you how sad this makes me. It's flashing an unfamiliar error symbol and Jeremiah hasn't had time to investigate his owner's manual. So, sadly, we were only able to snap a photo of Kate making homemade pasta with me yesterday on my phone. On a happier note, Jeremiah did tape a portion of it on the video camera and we must now figure out how to use iFilm. Or whatever that Apple product is. We'll get there. Eventually. Sarah did some fantastic work earlier but she's got a real Michigan J. Frog thing going on when asked to perform. So, anyway, until we figure out the video - here's Kate cranking out some cannelloni.

UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES (etc.)

Here's the video. It's over 6 minutes long, and for those of you to whom these children do not belong, that's 6 excruciating minutes...but trying to figure out iMovie (that's what it's called!) in the few minutes I had between thinking it sounded fun and completely losing patience was just too difficult, so you're getting the whole thing instead of the one-minute version I thought more appropriate for the blogging public. So, if Kate & Sarah are your nieces or grandchildren or if you're at work and just trying to get fired, this is a movie for you! Also, I should warn you, since I agreed to the terms and conditions set forth by Blogger - there is nudity in this film. It's artsy, though, so I think it's alright.

A few more Katisms

The other night we checked on Kate before we went to bed only to find she'd had an accident. We managed to clean her up, change her clothes and put her in a different bed without waking her. Just to be on the safe side, we put her in a pull-up. The next morning when she got up Jeremiah mentioned that she needed to change into underwear because she had a pull-up on. She insisted she was not wearing a pull-up, even when I promised it was true. Later, she used the potty while I was brushing my teeth. As I stood at the sink I heard her exclaim from within the WC - "I am wearing a pull-up! You were actually right!"

Kate told Joy that everyone has an aunt. Joy asked if everyone had an Aunt Jo Jo and Kate laughed. "Noooo, that would be crazy!"

The fun job of helping Kate tidy herself up after a messy bathroom visit fell to Jeremiah. "Don't forget my bagina!" she said. He handed her a wipe and instructed her to deal with her own "bagina". "I think my bagina is just about to get hairy, don't you?" she asked.

We just finished tuck-in (although, I can hear Kate reciting the months of the year, her alphabet and numerous other things in her normal speaking voice.) As Jeremiah was giving her a hug and a kiss she said "You always ask if you can give me a kiss and I say 'no', " Jeremiah concurred, she does do that. "But then I wish I'd said yes because I always want a kiss from you."

Sarah hasn't really gotten to the stage where she's saying stuff we must write down. However, she's awfully amusing. Today we walked to brunch and I gave each of the girls a little snack container with granola in it for their ride. They'd finished them up well before we arrived at the restaurant. Just as we were coming to the restaurant the girls both decided they wanted to get out and walk. They clamored out of the stroller and began to run like recently released birds (I mean, obviously, flightless birds). I lost sight of Sarah for a second, but when I stopped and looked behind me I saw she'd paused for a moment to eat some granola she'd discovered in the creases of her sweater. She gave me an impish, self-satisfied grin as she licked the inside of her elbow then she ran to catch up to her sister.

Story Time

Kate loves to "read" aloud every chance she gets. I'm often surprised at the accuracy with which she can recall a story she's either only heard a couple times or hasn't heard in weeks. Here she is boring Sarah right to sleep with her rendition of Seymour Slug Starts School.

Another photo in need of a caption

Pumpkin Patch Kids

Pick me! Pick me!

Yesterday we went to the Oakhurst Arts Festival. Jeremiah put his foot down on bringing the camera, stating he just wanted to do one thing that didn't involve toting the camera around. I concurred. We were there for 5 hours, we had a great time and when we got home Jeremiah said he wished we had pictures. So today, when we went up to North Georgia, to Burt's Farm, the camera came along. We got so many great pictures that I should really just link you to a Flickr page, but I've forgotten my Flickr account info so I'll post a few right here.

We were joined at the farm by Kate & Sarah's good friends Catherine and Margaret and later more good friends, Ella and Henry. There were pumpkins of all sizes and shapes, apple cider and hay rides. We thought surely the kids would sleep all the way home but instead they sang at the tops of their lungs when they weren't screaming at each other to be quiet.

At first, it seemed, the girls had confused the selection of pumpkins for Halloween with an Easter egg hunt. They ran among the pumpkins picking up every single one they could lift and insisting we put it in the wheel barrow. The daddies hurriedly removed the pumpkins as the children collected them. High comedy.
Once the novelty of collecting the pumpkins wore off they took to climbing them. We told them if they could get those giant pumpkins to the cars they could take them home. That declaration was followed by some entertaining Sisyphus action.


The line for the hayride was obscene. At first we thought it would be too unbearable, but then we decided it would be pretty awful to drag the kids an hour and a half out of town and not let them take the hayride. So we got our tickets (there's a long line for that, too) and decided if the wait became too terrible we'd scalp them for our spot in line. The wait wasn't all that bad, though, and by the time we were getting in line we'd found Ella and Henry, so we could be sure that the coup de grace would be shared by all.

Parlay Voo Frahn Sayes?

As you can probably tell from the superfluous, silent consonants in the name, Provost is French. In fact my parents are both of French descent so subsequently I am too. French...Canadian. There is almost nothing from my childhood that I can mark as having been an homage to my heritage, I'm an all-American girl, save one thing. Crepes. I grew up in a household where we ate crepes for dinner from time to time. Slathered in molasses or maple syrup. I know, right? Whatever, we're all pretty healthy now. My dad would man the stovetop, dispensing my grandmother's (and maybe even her grandmother's, I don't know) crepe mix into multiple hot pans to keep us 5 kids steadily supplied with the eggy, floury goodness. I love crepes and one of my favorite things about my visit to France was ordering them hot off the giant griddle from the crepe street vendors in Lyon. Yum.


Recently I introduced Kate & Sarah to the thrill of crepes, though they get them for breakfast because I cannot quite make myself serve them for dinner.


I hold my dad's esteemed position at the stove over my beloved 12" cast iron skillet* (Jeremiah's a mutt with everything but French in him, he may not handle crepes. No sir.) The girls like their crepes with a dollop of Nutella, folded into a square and then sliced into slivers.

They devour them. It fills me with delight. So sometimes, on the mornings when it's my turn to take them to daycare, I make crepes. I tell them no, they can't have more than 2, but am secretly thrilled when they cry and beg for more and openly thrilled when they request them randomly when it's been days since we've had them and there are no signs of crepes in sight. Kate calls them "grapes", but don't try offering her grapes. Kate don't play that, yo.

*Kevin and Jude gave us this wonderful new-fangle fancypants pan for rapid-fire crepe making. I cannot get the hang of it and always end up returning to my wonderfully seasoned skillet. The special pan holds a spot in our cabinets for the next time I get the guts to make a change.

The Cat in the Lap

An actual "S" day

When we awoke on Sunday we realized to our delight that nearly all the normal household tasks had been completed prior to the party: laundry, cleaning, errands. This meant that we did not have to squeeze fun into a brief period between the numerous other un-fun things that always have to be accomplished on Sunday. We could simply hang out. Kate, whose first questions each morning usually pertain to what day it is and what that means for our schedule, knows that on days that begin with "S", we hang out. For us, that merely means no daycare and Pre-K, the day is often more exhausting than a normal workday; to actually get to hang out is a marvelous treat.

Jeremiah selected music (usually jazz on Sunday mornings, today was no exception) and made coffee while I bathed the kids because Kate had had an accident and smelled horrible and Sarah never met a tub of bubbles and water she could resist. He attempted to sell the girls on a trip to brunch but Kate was insistent that Daddy make pancakes. I got out of making breakfast either way so I declined to vote. So, Jeremiah-the-big-sucker made his way to the kitchen where he was later joined by our intrepid Kitchen Assistant. Here, Jeremiah explains the finer points of making pancakes to our attentive young Grasshopper. Her pancake flipping is good, but not good enough!

Meanwhile, Kate wanted to watch the episode of the Muppets with Leo Sayer, who makes her feel like dancing. She requested him by telling me she wanted the Muppets that sound like Sarah. It was a solid 5 minutes before we determined "Leo Sayer" sounds like "Little Sarah" to Kate.And then, because the weather was perfect in every way, we went to the zoo. At the zoo I learned something very important. Jeremiah needs a telephoto lens. Despite this major handicap, we saw all the animals we could manage before become incapacitated by hunger (pancakes don't really go far, you know?). We rode the carousel (Sarah did. Kate refused. Once the thing started moving, Sarah yelped in terror and leaped into my arms where she clung to me tightly until the spinning stopped) and we rode the train. Much like Amtrak in the northeast corridor, the zoo train really doesn't go through the best spots, but Kate, who initially thought it might be scary, loved it and Sarah, who reacted to its movement much like she had the carousel, reports loving the train as well.