Ah, Lucy.  Lucy was very wiggly last night.  She didn’t particularly want to go to sleep, but she laid down with Samantha and me and proceeded to wiggle her self to sleep.  After flopping, flailing kicking, blankets on, blankets off, and repeating it all several times, she curled up in a ball.  Then she pulled her head towards her knees.  And again.  Finally she was backwards in the bed, and she stretched out on her stomach.  I laughed, thinking she would right herself soon.

The next time I woke up, she was not only still backwards, but her feet were the only part showing out from the blankets where her head should have been.

And finally, this morning, there was a rustle under the blanket.  “Help!” weakly from near my feet.  I laughed again, and freed her from her soft prison.  And she went back to sleep, which is why I have time to write for the second day in a row.

Did I mention she still sleeps in our bed quite often?  Sometimes it’s worth the crowding.  I’d hate to have missed that.

Lucy (about the glass coaster on the coffee table): “It’s made out of whack!”

Apparently in reference to my just calling something “wacky”.

By which I mean, “Lucy’s favorite thing to say right now.”  Here it is:

“Stop sneaking me up!”

By which she seems to mean, “You’re getting on my nerves!”

I thought Lucy was still in bed yesterday morning.  And I went to put away come clean paintbrushes, and was surprised to see her standing at the table in the learning room.  I was even more surprised by what I noticed next:

Do you see it?  The little pile there under the scissors.  That’s right, Lucy reached that milestone every little girl reaches at some point in her life: her first self-imposed, clandestine haircut.

I almost cried.

But instead I laughed, and yelled, “Craig, come quick!  Bring the camera!”

(You can see around the hair the remnants of the Christmas card project.)  So today we have an extra little project in Baton Rouge – fixing Lucy’s new bangs.  I tried really, really hard to keep her from having bangs.  I hate bangs, because they’re a nuisance.  I didn’t want to have to keep them up or facilitate growing them out for her.  But it is Lucy’s hair, after all, and her scissors have spoken.  So bangs it is.  For now.

It’s amazing how kids learn.  It’s so totally effortless.  There are always the examples of four-year-olds casually using curse words in polite company, much to their parents’ embarrassment, or course.  Yesterday, on the other hand, Lucy was walking around the house with her Fish do the Strangest Things book, standing on top of things, holding the book in front of her, and proclaiming, “A reading from Saint Paul.  Babies and sisters…”  I stopped in my tracks.  She is clearly paying much closer attention while she wiggles away through Mass than we have been giving her credit for.  (I asked about the “babies”, and she seemed to think that made more sense than “brothers”, which is understandable I guess since she has a severe lack of brothers at the moment.)  Anyway, we are redoubling efforts to have such good influences and Saint Paul and his letters around, so that her osmosis can do its thing.

Lucy: I can’t help pick up.  It really gives me a headache.

That’s right, she skipped a few years, and is now sixteen.  In case you hadn’t heard already.

Here are the first photos from the Great Christmas Card Photo Round-up.  Thanks, Veronica, Tom, and Clark!  If you want to send a cool family picture with your home-made card by Lucy (or if you have not received your card and want to remind me to hurry up!) send me an email.

And here’s the card with their lovely description:

“I think it looks like Winnie the poo walking towards the right while holding a stick with a beehive on it, and bees following him.”

This was one where Lucy got her hands on the glue with out supervision…but at least it is appreciated!  Keep the pics coming!

So I was thinking…we didn’t take any pictures of the Christmas cards that Lucy is making before we sent them out. But it would be really cool if she got to see who they went to, so…if/when you get yours (there are still a lot to go in the mail and if you think I forgot you or don’t have your address, just email me) if you could send a picture of you and your family with the card, I could post them on the blog (if you don’t mind, of course) and that would be really, really cool. Maybe we could put up a map too, and make this a regular geography thing. Anyway, I would enjoy seeing your beautiful faces with Lucy’s beautiful artwork. : )

[evil laugh]  Craig and the girls are out, so I am free to eat ice cream before dinner, sew, and write on my blog!  Sweet freedom!

But ice cream aside, (or inside, as the case may be), I now have the problem of which of the hundred things I’ve thought about writing about in the last few weeks will actually make it on the page.  Well, enough stalling.

These days, Lucy is busy making Christmas cards.  Watch your mailbox, they are scheduled to arrive sometime before Epiphany.  In two days, I think we’ve completed about eight.  And I’m a slug about digging out addresses, so I can’t blame it all on Lucy, or on the fact that we can only work when Samantha is asleep.  She prefers scattering the stamps, glitter, etc. all around the room rather than putting them on the cards.  Maybe next year she will be more helpful.  If we attempt this again next year.

And to those of you who get the glitter cards, I apologize in advance about the mess.  You may want to display this artwork outside.

Craig has been busy saving the world.  He had his first official youth function last Wednesday (did I mention that he’s now a youth minister at a parish 1 1/2 hours away from us?  Well he is, at St. Jean, the parish he attended in high school, and where we ran confirmation retreats while we were at Tulane.  This means lots more time with the BR grandparents.)  It was a walloping success – I made 76 or so cupcakes, we ordered 6 extra-large pizzas (I didn’t know they made extra-large!) and had four youth and four adults show up.  That’s counting Craig and me.  We are still eating cupcakes.  But don’t be dismayed by the small numbers, they were a lively and interested group which is more than we usually expect from high schoolers, and way more than we should be allowed to expect, considering that there have been no non-mandatory youth events at this parish in two years.  At any rate, the eight of us are off to a good start.

Craig also had to speak at all five masses this weekend, which went well except for the exhaustion.  He’s feeling extra holy this week (between that and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), so he volunteered himself and several of the boys he teaches to help an elderly woman who was being evicted move out yesterday.  He got home at 10 pm.  Which is actually better than I was expecting.  They moved her whole house in under six hours, and the new place was about half an hour’s drive away, and they made two trips.  I think they did quite well.

And here’s the moral delimma:  if she was evicted because the house is condemned, and the house is condemned because the landlord refuses to make the repairs necessary to keep it in livable condition, shouldn’t the landlord at least have to pay for the moving truck?

Ah, well, that’s why we didn’t buy the piano the guys standing outside Guitar Center were trying to sell the other night.

But if you know of a free or nearly-free piano in our general area, let us know.  Craig has taken up violin (on my grandfather’s violin, which we brought home from Texas after Thanksgiving), and it’d be nice to be able to accompany him.

Oh yeah, and Lucy turned three last Thursday, so we had a party for both the girls in BR on Sunday.  (Which was amazing, since the annual family Christmas party had been at Craig’s parents the night before, and that involved weeks and weeks of planning, test cooking, decorating, cooking…our party involved one run to Party City and leftover cupcakes.)  But that was fun and the girls enjoyed it, and the new toys and clothes.  And I’ve added those thank you notes to the pile of Christmas cards and other things I need to get in the mail…sigh.  I guess I should get busy with some of that.

So when I say we’ve been busy, well, I guess we actually have.  If I’m forgetting something, Mom, or somebody, feel free to add it in the comments.  Hopefully, things will be settling down soon.  But I feel like I say that often.  At least we don’t spend much time being bored.

The CD player in our Honda has been out of order for a while now.  It will take a CD, but just make a disturbing flapping sound and sit there.  Which is a problem, because, especially on eight-to-ten-hour drives, being able to put on some appropriate mood music for the girlies can come in very handy.  So, yesterday, we took matters into our own hands.

There are instructions on the internet for disassembling your car.  With photos.  So Craig removed the top dashboard piece, the one with the air vents in it.  And the case around the gearshift, and the “not an ashtray”, and the pop-lid storage thingy, and finally, (finally!) the control console.

As we removed the the CD player, we heard the problem.  Rattle.  Rattle.  Jingle.  Hmmm.

Craig was able to get the two nickels out before leaving the car.  But one stubborn quarter wouldn’t fit through the hole it was able to reach.  So the CD player was transfered to the operating room (the kitchen table).

At which place Craig disassembled it further (we had quite a pile of screws by now) and finally got to that pesky quarter.  (Craig objects to the use of the plural subjective pronoun, but I did remove one of the screws, as well as fetch the various screwdrivers.)  After an hour of researching and an hour of tinkering, Craig started putting things back together.  And lo and behold, it worked!  I was very, very excited, which left Craig a little confused.  After all, it is just a CD player, right?

Oh no, it is my sanity.  Restored.

We had a talk with Lucy.  She was saving the thirty-five cents for later.