party of five

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, our little nephew Noah has come to live with us for a while. I believe it took his parents a great deal of courage and faith in us to ask us to take him into our care, and we consider him as much a part of our family as Lu and Arthur whether he's living with us or someplace else. He is a wonderful boy with a smile that could melt any heart and a light, gentle but robust sense of humor. Going from three to five in six months has been a challenge, but we have always loved a noisy and happy home. Noah has some challenges of his own to face--he is showing symptoms similar to those of Reactive Attachment Disorder, although there could be any number of diagnoses, and his official assessment is still two weeks away. He needs extra special and constant attention, a very tightly structured schedule, and disciplinary methods which might at first seem counter-intuitive (e.g. "time-ins" as opposed to "time outs"--sitting near him and using calming techniques to get him to talk and open up; meditative techniques [closes eyes, imagines an ocean and counts to five]; remaining emotionally neutral in reaction to an outburst). But this family is like the Marines: we leave no man behind. We're all in this together. His parents and family friends are helping us build a support network for him, and I am amazed at how well he's doing.

(Isn't he the sweetest?)

I plan to blog more about cousin's condition and diagnosis in the future to help other caregivers.

One really cool thing about being a party of five is that game nights and movie nights are way more fun. I love being a mom, always have, but as much as I love the sweet baby snuggles and indiscernible ravings of toddlers, I have always looked forward to the excuse-for-a-second-childhood stage of my children's lives. You know, the part where they can play games and enjoy watching all the shows you grew up on and they're brand new to them!!! The part where their toys are so freaking cool that playing with them is a blast, and you totally want to cut work to hang out with your home skillets. Anyway, we've made it through the first of the Lord of the Rings (Arthur has a Frodo costume) and one Star Trek series (Frodo can name two captains), played some serious dress up, had some messy art parties, and played some awesome new puzzles and games (I am SO hooked on University Games!):

Paul Frank bingo. Easy picture bingo for little kids. We played the heck out of this at El Guapo's the other night!

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. AWESOME!!!

And Eric Carle's ABC game (We love the Wii ABC game by the way).

Everything is at once a bigger hassle and a bigger blast. I was really quite proud of myself when I mastered getting three kids organized and out the door by myself for the first time for Philbrook's Festival of Trees. Turns out the more you practice, the easier it becomes.

Super Simple Revising Cheat Printable

This idea isn't a completely novel one; I've seen similar ideas on the web and in other teaching materials. However, I created this one to specifically suit the needs of my writing students. Feel free to download and enjoy. Click on the image for the Google Docs download, and enjoy!

the flip side of oklahoma weather

It's no secret that Oklahoma's weather is extreme. I don't really know what people from across the country think of when they think of Oklahoma, but I can pretty much guess that just as I involuntarily think of unshaven men in fishing pants when I picture Alaska and my mind's image of Florida is sprinkled with "elderly couples in mint Cadillac" confetti, I can probably assume the universal stereotypes of Oklahoma include some vague concept of a Southern Baptist theocracy in a Devil-went-down-to-Georgia battle with the ubiquitous Indian casinos and thousands of rubbernecking rednecks standing on their porches tornado watching.

And they would be kinda right on both counts.

I've lived in the city my whole life, and I'm indoctrinated to its ways. As I jaywalk to my car every evening, taking in the sounds of cars and trains and the electric buzzing of downtown, the comforting art deco giants looking down protectively, I find the thought of living in the midst of rural quiet a bit unsettling...a bit Deliverance. I'm not going to lie and pretend like I know much of anything about Oklahomans outside of the city. To my shame, when people begin listing off their tribally-named hometowns (Okemah, Coweta, Talladega), I realize my familiarity with most of them comes from watching the storm warnings roll across the bottom of the local news as I watch for Tulsa and pray the storm doesn't interrupt the broadcast of Community.

Most native Tulsans have the similar paradoxically warm childhood recollections of tornado warnings: being rushed into the bathroom, hallway, or (in our case) the "cubby hole" under the stairs, where we'd wait for hours sometimes, eating culinary abominations like canned cheese and chicken-n-a-biscuit crackers (a concept that defies the laws of God and man) while playing Monopoly or Clue by candlelight to the sound of sirens through wind until the storm passed. Honestly, storms are kind of fun to us.

Thunderstorms are kind of fun. Winter storms straight up suck. Case in point, last year's blizzard, when our central heat conveniently went on the fritz while we were snowed in for a week straight and our bath tub froze, literally a week after this sunny day picnic, and the devastating ice storm of 2007 (oddly and unfortunately, I was very pregnant for both of these events).

But even winter storms I can cope with. It's the Iraqi desert heat waves that make this place unbearable. This summer, for example, temperatures lingered over 100 hellish degrees from late June until the end of August in a record-breaking heat wave. On top of all the floods, droughts, microbursts like the one that flipped our neighbors' 18 foot trampoline onto their shed last year, ominous squall lines, golf-ball-sized hail, and other such miseries, the recent rash of earthquakes has prompted an even more menacing threat--a dramatic increase in talk of the "end times" inevitable in this part of the country (shudder).

But the truth is, anyone in 7th grade science can tell you that we live in the middle of the continent--in scientific terminology, the middle middle--near some pretty flat geography, where extreme weather is a fact of life. While it can be a drag, we do get surprised occasionally with unseasonably awesome days, as was the case last week. With three kiddos in the house now that Arthur's cousin Noah is going to be staying with us for a while, I took the hint, grabbing the stroller and a couple of bags for nature hunting.

It was an amazing day. Enjoy our pics.

Recent Kiddos

Happy 70th bday to my father-in-law John Owen!

"70"

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Little Jay Kay

Here are a few shots of Art-e rocking a look inspired by Jay Kay in one of my favorite videos of all time.

a good night

Flaming Lips at the Brady with my sweet boyfriend. Awesome excuse to wear my March of 1000 Flaming Skeletons outfit, which earned me huge props and of which I do not have an image to post.