Great news: the kitchen is done, and Christmas has been vanquished. It was touch and go there for a while, with everyone sick, the contents of the kitchen disgorged, and everything covered with dust. But bit by bit we got the house back together. Seems like it's been months… but the last kitchen person was here last Friday, just a week ago. And compressing recovery completely, from a state of total unreadiness for Christmas, we somehow managed to get the house functioning, get the kitchen put together, get a Christmas tree up and hold a perfectly respectable Christmas. I've been sick through the whole thing, especially on Christmas Eve Day and Christmas itself, during which the magnetic pull of all horizontal surfaces was almost impossible to resist. But, with a Santa-obsessed six-year-old in the house, we just had to pull a mind-over-matter and just do it.
It's been interesting to me what a well-known rite of passage kitchen renovation is. All through this process I've talked to people who have "been through it." That's the sort of language they use: "We went through it ten years ago…" and "We went through it one hot summer…" It's like almost a scarring experience, although after it's over you do emerge better for it. It's on a par with being "wedding-ed." Seems like there's fodder for an essay there, but I will have to save that thought, like all the others, for another day.
It's 6:22 a.m. and Elias is climbing on my back while I write this. Elmo is babbling away about his two ears…
Elias is now getting good enough at talking to say some pretty interesting things. Such as the other day when we were in the car and he seemed to say, "Elmo is a two-bit hood." His exact words! I wasn't sure if I heard him right, so I asked him, "Honey, did you just say that Elmo is a two-bit hood?" And he replied, "Yes!" most emphatically, but I remained unsure whether we were really on the same page.
He's made up some interesting verbs– like "to cozy" ("cozy me!") and the reflexive use of "sneeze" ("I sneezed myself!") He struggles with the whole me/you situation, which is understandable, but leads to some sentences that are pretty complicated to punctuate. Like when we stayed with my aunt and uncle in Madison, and ran into a cat who grew quickly weary of Elias's interest. I told him, "The kitty is mad at you." Later, when he wanted to tell about this, he would say, "'The kitty is mad at you!' [ME!]"
For weeks and weeks, one of his main themes of discourse has been this "dark cave" we visited some warm fall day in November. It was in a national park not far from here and really quite a fine cave. Just a deep limestone overhang with a pool of still water under it. I brought the boys there and then struggled with their very different reactions: Isaac loved it and wanted me to climb around in it with him (C'mon Mom!"); Elias was terrified and wanted me to hold him as far away from it as possible ("Back home!"). It was too dark! The only selling point as far as he was concerned was that it had lots of wonderful spotted frogs in it! Anyway, since then, he's been telling everyone about it. Unfortunately this is a line of conversation that most people can't easily follow. His opening salvo is usually simply, "Cave. Dark." And then sometimes he adds the flourish, "Frogs!" I usually try to translate for him, but still, people are mystified. He will happily pick up the phone and say, "Hello. Cave Dark. Bye!" Combined with his rather thick baby accent and the lack of context, this is hard to understand…
Another thing is that he mixes up V's and W's giving him a German accent at times. "Mommy, vait!" he yells. He sings the Wonder Pets song all the time: "Vat's gonna verk? Team verk!" ANd since he is a Montessori child, he has a lot of "verk" to do. He adds a special twist to it by mixing up me/mine or… mein. Apparently this Anthony kid at his school is up in his grill all the time and so, at random intervals, Elias will declare, "Mein verk, Anthony!"
Isaac is of course fluent in English now, but he still can say something pretty odd. Such as when he was quoting Mike Rowe, the host of "Dirty Jobs," without fully understanding what he was saying. He said, "Did you know the great white shark has two penises? That's why it's called a GREAT white shark!"
On that note, I will now post some kitchen pictures.