Maya
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Crapicola
That’s what I’m thinking. Crapicola. Sounds like a weird deli meat, but it’s one of our ways of swearing around here. Why would I be swearing, you might well ask? Because at Maya’s orthodontist appointment the other day, we discovered that she’s going to need a second round of braces. Can we all say it together this time? “CRAPICOLA!!” 1st, $4,000 is a lot of money. I mean, we paid it the first time, and now to have to pay it AGAIN blows. 2nd, I had braces, and it hurt like hell (personally, I think it’s worse than childbirth, because with childbirth, you don’t have to go back every few…
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Birth Order & IQ
A study came out a few weeks ago, claiming that firstborn children are smarter than their younger siblings, by an average of 2 to 3 IQ points. One factor, the study’s authors concluded, was that firstborn children (and only children) tend to receive more of their parents’ attention. When siblings come into the equation, the amount of time and attention that is available is divided, and therefore, the less attention each individual child receives. So an eldest child that is an only for awhile has more of an advantage than an eldest child whose younger sibling follows closely. And an only child has the benefit of never having to share…
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Wordless Wednesday II
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Sad tales of ears…
(See the tasteful little earrings on her ears? Not the ones in question today…) Anybody remember how Maya got her ears pierced back in August? How I struggled with the decision, because I wasn’t allowed to pierce my ears until I was 16, and here she was, 10, and I had to decide whether this was one of those things where things had changed since I was that age, or not? How we decided to pierce the ears, but only little studs, no hoops or danglies to make her look older than she is? OK, so now you’re up to date. Well, since then, her ears got infected once, so…
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A Birthday Meme for my Birthday Girl!
Last year, I wrote a post about Maya for her 10th birthday. Ted no longer has the mac account, so you can’t go view the slideshow…but the rest of it remains as true today as it was then. (And it turns out, he’s made a new slideshow…be patient, it takes a minute to load) I can’t believe it’s a year already since I wrote that post, and 11 years since she was born. That was an amazing time for us, and we feel blessed to this day. Maya is the child every parent wishes for when they’re wishing for kids, except she’s even better than that. She’s smart and funny…
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Thirteen Reasons my Daughter is Cute…
 I keep a little journal for Maya, and in it, I’ve been writing off and on since she was little…memories of times we have together, updates, cute things, etc. I looked at it the other night and I realized it’s been a LONG time since I wrote in it. Like maybe a couple of years, except without the maybe.  I was looking back, and I found some very cute things that Maya said or did when she was very small…she still says and does very cute things, but since she’s older now, she might not appreciate me sharing them now. 🙂 So, 13 cute things Maya said or did when she…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Wordless Wednesday
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Of Curry and Singing…
Growing up, we at one point lived in a house in ‘downtown Fairbanks’, Alaska. I put that in quotes, because it was such a small town, I don’t know if it would be legal to call it a downtown. Anyway, we had several roommates during our time in that house, one of whom was a chef named Jerry. One of Jerry’s specialties was a chicken curry, which became a Christmas dinner tradition in our household for many years. My mom loved making the curry, and our good friend Linda and she would put it together every year. I think it was more of a Jamacian curry than an Indian one,…
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Giving Money…
I remember several years ago, reading an article about kids and money. The author suggested giving your child money, and dividing it three ways. One part goes to spending on whatever they want, one part goes to saving for bigger items or college or whatever your particular values are in that area, and one part goes to charity. Ted and I liked this idea, so when she was old enough, we started giving her an allowance of $5 a week….$3 she can spend on whatever she wants, $1 she saves (right now for Christmas gifts), $1 is for charity. Sometimes her ‘giving money’, as we call it, goes to organizations…
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Pickney Sick
Ted and I have been fighting a cold for over a week now…Ted started getting it the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and almost lost his voice. I started getting it on Thanksgiving day, and it was mostly in my head (meaning sinus and runny nose, not that I had imagined it), but now it’s turned into a yucky cough that tortures me. Never is it the kind of cold that lays you out and keeps you home, just enough to annoy you and make you feel kind of tired and wish you weren’t sick. Until now. Yesterday, it finally caught up with Maya. She woke up feeling queasy, and didn’t want…
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Why?
Why did my beautiful daughter have to inherit my mouth, so that she had to go through the pain and torture of braces? Ted has PERFECT teeth, not a cavity, straight and pretty and perfect (except for the few he knocked out in a motorcycle accident). And why did she have to inherit my eyes, so that she now needs to have glasses? Ted has pretty darned good eyes, no glasses until his mid 20s. Still way better than mine in the prescription department. Me? Full on braces, headgear, whole shebang. I swear, they were (ALMOST) worse than childbirth, because I had to keep going back and having pain again…
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Wordless Wednesday
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My Wise Child
I’m sad, because I lost one of my favorite earrings the other day. They were little gold hoops, but with a delicate pattern etched into the gold. My bestest friend, Rosemary, gave them to me a few years ago. I’ve worn them pretty much every day. They had a little click attachment on the back. Well, on Sunday, I was wearing them, and I lay down to take a nap. I forgot to take off my earring when I did so. When I woke up, we went to the shops to get a few tops for our growing girl. We walked all over Old Navy and the mall. I came…
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Jupterian*
Did you know that Maya was born on Jupiter? Perhaps that would explain why she’s so darned smart and beautiful and yummy as well. I love this picture. She’s just so pretty. 🙂 When she was a baby, she had a birthmark on the back of her head. It was a large red hemangioma (sometimes called a ‘strawberry‘), which looked remarkably like the big red spot on Jupiter. So we decided that she was FROM Jupiter, and thus, a Jupterian. When she was little, and asked where babies came from, we gave her a couple of answers. We sometimes told her the truth, and we sometimes told her that she…