we gave sebastien a set of three whittling knives for christmas this year. can you guess what i am going to write next? tonight he cut his finger.

he came upstairs crying bordering on hysteria, holding his hand out, staring at the blood dripping from the laceration to the floor. he was horrified by the red oozing stuff. i had him cradle the left bleeding hand with the right to keep the floor a bit cleaner and walked him upstairs to the bathroom. i ran it under some cold water, but it was bleeding so much and hurt seb a lot, so i stopped to wrap it and hold it tight to slow the bleeding down. so we sat in the bathroom on the closed toilet for a while discussing our options.

i thought that if the bleeding didn’t slow down much that we should go to urgent care just across the river. seb didn’t want that. he did not want stitches. i said we could just go to get it checked out and that maybe the wound would just need a special bandaid or some skin glue. i reminded him of his hernia surgery when he was six. the docs basically glued him back together. this eased his mind somewhat, though he did keep coming up with plans that would get him out of being sewed up. he really wanted me to use duct tape.

“nah,” i said, “let’s go see what they say over at the urgent care.”

tonight was not an ideal night to have to do this, get in the car and drive somewhere. three inches of snow were on the ground and more was falling. not fast, but falling nonetheless. for some reason, which seb and i discussed for a time, the plows had not been around our area, nor any salt trucks. seb wondered if we could call the snow plow place and have them come and do it. if only it were so simple. the van is cumbersome in the snow. thankfully, there weren’t many other people out, so i did not feel pressure to maintain the speed limit. we eventually made it to the urgent care, and all the lights were off.

closed!? i was in the process of turning around in a parking lot, and seb was murmuring something  behind me that i was ignoring, trying to think of what to do. go to childrens hosptial? go home and have him bleed all night? neither of these seemed like good plans to me. i got my phone out to call brian as i sat in the driveway out of the parking lot where i had turned around when seb’s voice finally got through to me.

“mommy, the med express right there is open.”

“but the lights are off. i guess we can go check though.” i was fixated on the dark urgent care down the road a bit and began to pull the van out of the parking lot to drive there.

“no, mommy. not the urgent care. the med express. it’s right behind us.”

oh.

to make a long story short. i had been sitting in that med express parking lot the whole time, not noticing. i am glad seb had his brain turned on and saw it. so we went inside, and within minutes seb’s finger had been repaired with 3 stitches. he didn’t even whimper. his big hazel eyes blinked out of his pale face, but not a peep escaped his lips. he was very brave. in fact, had he pitched a fit, the doc probably would have stopped at 2 stitches.

“since he is doing so well, we will give him one more.”

okay then!!

on the way home, seb admitted that he was kind of proud that he had stitches and couldn’t wait to tell everyone about them. and i thought to myself, well, who doesn’t like a battle scar and a fun story to share every once in a while? i know i do…

Posted on December 26th, 2012

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, O Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Posted on December 18th, 2012

in the car yesterday… wow, we’ve been in the car a lot lately… seb and oren came up with the avengers “band.”

oren’s is more of an orchestral band:

• iron man on piano (because he doesn’t have any weapons except armor)
• hulk on drums (what else would he play?)
• thor on maracas (they are like little hammers)
• hawkeye on violin (he has bow and arrow and they are kind of like the violin)
• captain america on cymbals (because of his shield)
• loki on guitar (he’s evil)
• black widow on vocals (because she’s a girl)

seb’s is more of a rock band (or perhaps not…) because he said they would be playing rock music:

• hawkeye on electric guitar (he seems like kind of a rock star)
• iron man on piano ( he seems more like a robot)
• loki on bass (bass is creepy and he’s evil)
• hulk on drums (because, duh)
• thor on trumpet (he’s kind of like the herald of asgaard–assgaard? no, no…)
• black widow on vocals and flute (seems fitting)
• captain america on cymbals (shield, duh)

i love the conversations we have in the car!

Posted on December 18th, 2012

this morning we pile into the car to go to seb’s orthodontist appointment. it’s super sunny but cold. i have to scrape frost from all the windows of the van before i get to pile in. as we’re driving i say,

well oren, the day you were born it was snowy and icy and freezing cold. i don’t think there has been so snowy a birthday for you since then.

and oren said, because he’s younger and remembers better than me,

remember on my fourth birthday there was snow? there was a bunch, and it came up to here on me.

he gestures to his waist.

whatever, i think, there was no snow.

there was snow that year? that was the year you were in the hospital. i don’t think there was snow that year,

i say.

yes there was and it was this high.

oren gestures to his waist again.

when i got home from the hospital we played in it.

oh yeah, there was snow that year, i think…

oh yeah, there was snow that year. i think we have a picture of you playing in it.

oren has a really good memory, maybe because of that head injury all those years ago (well, three. and i wonder if there will ever be a time when we quit referring to that year, that benchmark year). he asks,

what time was i born?

i reply,

you were born at 9:10 in the morning.

he asks,

did i just pop out?

i think for a minute, a flashback of the pushing and screaming mayhem that was his birth that started at 8:50 am (after a few hours of labor, of course) and lasted 20 minutes, the longest 20 minutes of my entire life (sorry those of you who had to push for like 3 hours or something).

yeah, you pretty much just popped out.

Posted on December 12th, 2012

so at dinner tonight, as usual, we’re trying to get seb to just eat cause he needs to go to a piano lesson and i remembered that at the last minute and brian got dinner together with just enough time to eat and go. it happens practically every night. not us forgetting to make dinner and then rushing, but the part about getting seb to just eat. anyway, this is the climate.

and then he says something like this,

if i were a woman married to a fat man, i wouldn’t leave the house right after i made dinner because he would eat it all.

if you can imagine, the cajoling stopped for a moment, time enough for us to say,

Huh?… What?

Posted on October 18th, 2012

he came up with a new term.

heartbreaking thunder.

it’s when there is a really loud thunder and then you have your mouth open and it goes down your throat to your heart and your heart goes, “squish.”

(he didn’t say squish exactly. he made a sound like your heart going “squish” though.)

Posted on August 10th, 2012

seb: i’m going on the front porch.

oren: let’s go on the backporch. it’s BETTER! (pretty sure that oren jumps up here with his fist in the air in some sort of gung-ho-type move)

seb: i’m going on the front porch.

oren: oh, oKAY! (fist gesture downwards)

Posted on August 10th, 2012

brian stole everything i wanted to write about, so i have to improvise.

we’re home, sitting at the dining room table with our laptops open. the kids are upstairs probably reacquainting themselves with their bionicles. oh how they missed their toys! it is a scene much like the night and morning before we left on this road trip, has it already been 22 days ago? at the end of each trip, and i probably harp on this when i come home and write something about it, i fall into a post-trip despondency: did it even actually happen? it’s all just memory now. some pictures will give me a jog. but did we really go? how annoying it is, being tied to time. the present is where all the action is, but it’s over in a split-second, relegated to the past what was once so much anticipation of the future.

i was ready to come home this year. roughing made us into whimps i told brian earlier today, or was it last night when as we lay down in a motel-room bed for the second night in a row.  we did really well with the roughing it for ten days, then we made the mistake of motel-ing it and showering, and then we could barely make it through another three days of climbing before we succumbed to it again. our friends paul and april put us to shame, they with their five-week-old baby. they camped the whole time! granted, we were at maple longer than them, but still. had they been there to witness our weakness, i’m sure they would have cajoled and mocked us and probably withheld an evening shot of tequila.

so anyway, i was ready to come home, but then we had to get home. and as brian said, it seemed to take forever. and by the time we got close to denver, it wasn’t any fun anymore. there was traffic. then it rained a lot and we almost got blown off the road. then it was….. well, kansas. i think the problem with kansas is that there are no cities to break the state up into doable chunks. you get topeka 3/4 of the way through (if you’re coming from the west), which doesn’t amount to any really exciting city-driving, and then kansas city, right at the border. yawn. it was particularly hard to get through this year. and i usually like driving through kansas, as i was raised in a town in western kansas. whenever someone talks about how they hate driving through kansas, i pipe in with, “i grew up in kansas,” which usually spices up the conversation. anyway, this year, i couldn’t agree more with those people. i don’t know what the difference between our other road trips and this year. i usually don’t want to come home at all, and that makes for a hard ride home too. but i still liked to be out on the road, looking around, driving, etc. i’m probably just getting old.

so my last thoughts on our maple canyon trip really do mirror brian’s. what fun it was to climb there! i could get on just about any 5.12, and do it. quickly. no projecting, just sending. giant hand holds every where, giant foot holds everywhere, and pulling on them hard. i don’t know if we’ll go back, maybe someday, because i also agree with brian’s opinion that bouldering trips are way more exciting. i wonder what we’ll do next year…

Posted on June 17th, 2012

day 16:
i just took a shower. you may think, what’s the big deal, but it’s serious. this is the first shower i have had since may 31. that’s 10 days people. i could count the shower i took in the woods of our campsite 5 days ago, in the shade with the wind blowing all around me, but i’m not going to. i could maybe count the three times i have washed my hair sitting in the morning sun next to our picnic table. no. i won’t count them. because the shower i just took was 20 minutes long, hot, and my feet didn’t get muddy. i doubt my feet and fingernails will ever be clean again though, but the rest of me is. and after that work, i just stood there, in the shower, thinking… about the shower i’m going to take in the morning, and then i’m going to shaaaaave…..ahhhhhh.

Posted on June 11th, 2012

after day five of our trip, the third of lounging at chez hindman in the denver area, we headed farther west to utah. the main attration of our road trip this year is rock climbing in maple canyon, about an hour and a half south of salt lake city. we arrived in the little town of ephraim, ut on thurs night, may 31, where we spent the night at a motel, the last civilized place we’d sleep for fourteen days. four. teen. days.

early afternoon on friday, june 1, we drove past a big turkey farm and up freedom road into maole canyon where cliffs made of a strange conglomerate concoction awaited us. we had seen pictures of maple canyon before, rock faces made up of cobblestones of all shapes and sizes held together by what looked like cement. but nothing really prepared us for the real thing. maple canyon is very strange, and even a little frightening. would the cliffs give way before our eyes? would 5-10 pound cobbles fall out of the glorified mud that held them together and onto our heads as we belayed? would they fall on our kids’ heads? the guidebook for the climbing area told us we would feel this way, that it would seem impossible that we could climb on this stuff, that we would be afraid. it said that we would be fine, that the climbing was perfetly safe, but that we should wear helmets just in case. and keep the kiddos from the base of the routes.

well, after four days of climbing, i’m happy to report that there have been no cobble stone related injury. the rock is surprisingly beautiful, and lends itself to some of the most fun and intense climbing we have ever done. i hope some of the pictures we take will do the place justice.

the camping has also exceeded our expectations. it’s rustic, with no electricity or running water. indeed, not even a stream to be had. the only thing they actually do have, that nature has not provided, are pit toilets and fire pits. mmmmmm, pit toilets. they can be scary, and quite stinky. when we told the boys about it i could see a flash of terror in their eyes and that they were thinking of whether they could hold it for two weeks. but these past few days have proven that even something so antiquated, something, the essence of which is disgusting in nature anyway, can turn out to be tolerable if not relatively nice. (yes, i do mean that the pit toilets are actually nice!) and some days, we use them more than once.

so we are having a grand old time here in utah. the boys have been climbing a lot. sebastien climbed 100 feet up on his first route of the trip! today we take a rest day in salt lake city to do some shopping and laundry and eat thai food. after that we’ll head back to maple and climb some more and then some more. i hope to post again, and we will definitely get some pictures uplaoded, so until then…..

Posted on June 5th, 2012