MREEEEER!

One of Madeleine's latest obsessions is the tv show "Stranger Things."  As someone who needs to say "MREEEER!" anytime she hears a word that she considers a "swear"*, Madeleine finds herself "mreeeering" constantly throughout each episode. 


*"Swears" in Madeleine's view include actual swear words, as well as words like "stupid," "shut up," and even the more benign "fool."


Madeleine recently used her own money to order Stranger Things computer stickers with which to decorate her laptop.  She used all but one sticker, because the one sticker had inappropriate language on it.

JULIA: (admiring Madeleine's decorated laptop) Madeleine, I like how you made it look like Eleven is saying, "Friends Don't Lie."
MADELEINE: Yeah!  I did that on purpose!
JULIA: (examining the stickers further) Hey, look, it's Punk Eleven!
MADELEINE: Yeah.  And I had another Punk Eleven one, but it said, "Mreeeeering," so I didn't use that one.
ME: It said Bitchin'.
MADELEINE: (harshly) MREEEEEER!

So I was busted.  I just thought I should clear things up a little bit for Julia.  We all know that "Mreeeeering" could mean a whole myriad of things, so I simply cut to the chase.  And I got "mreeeeered" at, so I learned MY lesson, that's for sure.

Districts Swim Meet

This weekend the girls had the District Championships for swimming, and both had great races and a lot of fun!

Julia swam yesterday, so Madeleine, Ethan and I watched from the stands.  The meets always start by playing not the National Anthem, but the Village People's "YMCA," of course!  The swimmers on deck all dance along to it, and in this case, one swimmer sibling in the bleachers danced along to it too.  Today was Madeleine's turn to be on the pool deck and she gave the song her full energy. Since the swimmers all look alike in their team gear, Madeleine is the one furthest to the viewer's right, beside one of her coaches:




Julia was a spectator today, except she took things to the next level.  I had volunteered as a timer, and the officials were short on timers, so I recruited Julia.  She was not too happy with me.

JULIA: Timing is even more STRESSFUL than swimming!
ME: Honey, it's really easy.
JULIA: I'm NERVOUS.  This is STRESSFUL.

Thankfully, she proved quite adept at pushing the start and stop buttons on her watch, and proved herself up to the task. 

Here she is, looking very official:

Way to go, Tsunami swimmers (and dancers...and timer!)

MLK Jr. Service

This morning we went to a service commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr., put together by our town's Diversity Initiative, and the best part of all was seeing Madeleine and her fellow school chorus members perform!:




And Julia proved herself to be a fountain of wisdom, during the Diversity Initiative President's speech about Mr. Rogers:

JULIA: Mr. Rogers was a real PERSON?!?
ME: (looking at her in mild horror) Yes...you didn't know that?
JULIA: I thought he was just played by an actor.

I mean, maybe in the new Mr. Rogers movie starring Tom Hanks, but the show was pretty much just Mr. Rogers being Mr. Rogers.  Maybe I gotta go old school and make Julia watch some episodes of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" so she can get cleared up on this.

Hope you are all enjoying the three-day weekend in whatever way you are spending it!

Back to School

Julia was finally able to go back to school today, although she's still stuffy.  Over the past few days, I've been trying to wash or Purell my hands after contacting anything she might have coughed on or touched with germy hands, and I've been encouraging Madeleine to do the same.  In an ideal world, that would keep us from getting Julia's cold, but in reality, that's probably a tall order. 

Today, when Madeleine found out Julia was returning to school, she was hopeful.

MADELEINE: Wait, Julia, you're going to school?
JULIA: Yeah.
MADELEINE: Okay.  I can't wait until the bathroom gets vaccinated, so that I don't have to Purell my hands after I touch anything in there anymore.


Anyone know of a good bathroom vaccine?  I don't have any over here...

Julia the Stuffy

Julia has been sick with a wretched cold/virus and has been out of school and swim much of this week.  About the only fun part about any of this is that it has led to a few memorable slang terms.

JULIA: (coming out of her bedroom after trying and failing to sleep in this morning) I can't fall back asleepy McTweepy.


MADELEINE: (upon hearing Julia laboring to breathe through her clogged up nose) That poor sniffer.


ETHAN: (later in the evening, upon discussing Julia's "sniffer" condition) She's more of a Stuffalupagus.



All I can say is that I hope my poor Stuffalupagus Sniffer gets some good sleepy McTweepy and feels much better soon.

Star Wars Theme

Madeleine, after playing through the sheet music of the theme from "Star Wars" on her flute:

MADELEINE: Mommy! Even though I don't like "Star Wars," well, except for the little cute robot, I forget its name...
JULIA: R2D2?
ME: BB8?
MADELEINE: I dunno.  The little rolly thing-
ME: That's BB8.
MADELEINE: Yeah.  He was cute.  I liked him.  But even though I don't like "Star Wars," after playing through "Star Wars," I feel PROUD!
ME: You should.
MADELEINE: It feels like the dawn of a new ERA.
ME: Good.
MADELEINE: Like you said on your blog.  Yes, I read your blog.  I'm SO a-dult-y

She sure is.

Coffee, Interrupted

My morning, so far:

Madeleine shouts to me from her bedroom that she needs help picking out a shirt. Because apparently that job is suddenly too hard for a 10-year-old.*

Madeleine needs help slicing her bagel and informs me by standing in the entryway to the kitchen and making karate chop motions while demanding: "Mommy? Hiii-YAH!"

Julia somehow finds herself irrevocably incapable of slicing her bagel halfway through the slicing process, and needs me to do it for her.

The girls get into a brief squabble about who gets to use the rest of the cinnamon sugar, with Julia accusing Madeleine of always dumping way too much of it when she uses it.

Madeleine shouts from the kitchen: "Mommy? Can you make some more cinnamon sugar?" Because apparently mixing sugar and cinnamon together is suddenly too hard for a 10-year-old.

*Whenever I do pre-emptively pick out an outfit for Madeleine, she puts it back in her dresser and picks something different.

MIT Meet

This past weekend was full of swimming for Julia.  She and a friend from her swim team signed up for a big USA meet that was held at MIT.  There were hundreds of swimmers in each event, which meant hours of spectating for Madeleine and I.

Ethan came on the first day of the 2-day meet, but since he had to sing in church choir on Sunday, it was just Madeleine and I.  On Saturday, we arrived earlier than expected, but that didn't stop Ethan and Julia from taking an extremely brisk walking pace from the parking lot towards the Aquatics building.

The sidewalk we were walking along looked like this:

ME: (watching Ethan and Julia get increasingly further ahead of us) Uh...Ethan?  Guys?  Madeleine is only stepping on the BROWN ones, so we're falling pretty far behind you...

On Sunday, however, it was FREEZING as we walked towards the pool building, and Madeleine had under-dressed, due to being overheated in the pool bleachers on Saturday.  Because of those two factors, we were all practically spring-walking along the sidewalk, desperate to get indoors.

MADELEINE: Mommy?  This time I'm NOT stepping only on the BROWN ones, because that would take too long!

Julia had a later warm-up time on Sunday than she'd had on Saturday, so we spectators weren't there as early as we had been the day before.  Consequently, we would up stuck in a long line snaking through the lobby up a winding flight of stairs, waiting to pay our admission fee and get into the bleachers.  The staircase was made up of mini-flights of steps with a landing in between each mini-flight, and at one point, Madeleine and I were standing about two steps below the next landing.

MADELEINE: (pointing at a picture down in the lobby of an NCAA player) Mommy?  Who's THAT?
ME: I'm guessing it's a basketball player who plays college basketball.
MADELEINE: Yeah, he looks TALL.  And in P.E. Mr. B was telling us that one time, he met a real basketball player, and Mr. B was like, "To all of you, I probably look pretty tall.  But next to the basketball player, I was really short."
ME: Yeah, basketball players are often like seven feet tall.
MADELEINE: He was like, (raising her arm up) THIS high.  Mommy.  He was like, (jumping into the air with her arm extended upwards) THIS high.  He was like (jumping again with arm extended) THIS high.  Like, (jumping again with arm extended) THIS high.  Mommy.  Like, THIS-

Suddenly, as Madeleine jumped upwards with her arm extended, she lost her balance and next thing I knew, I was watching her completely startled expression as she tumbled down the mini-flight of stairs, bumping along each step until she was on the lower landing.  The soundtrack to her tumble was the voices of multiple adults exclaiming, "Oh oh oh!"

The literal second she hit the landing, Madeleine leaped upwards and scrambled up the stairs to me, proclaiming, "I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay!"

Oh my God Madeleine. 

Luckily, Julia proved more graceful than her sister and did not fall off the starting blocks or hit her head during a flip turn, as she had done a few meets prior.  Over the course of the two day meet, she swam six events, and although she didn't swim the times she was hoping for, she had some great races.  She was most proud of her 100 butterfly; she had the slowest seed time in her heat of ten swimmers, and she wound up coming in 5th and swimming her second fastest time ever.  Overall, she came in 47th in the event, despite being seeded 50th, and for girls of her age group, she was 23rd, as many of the swimmers ahead of her were 15 or older. 

Julia's sixth and final event was the 200IM, and EVERY swimmer was dead tired by then.  It's actually pretty amusing to look at the event results, because nearly everyone's meet time was significantly slower than their seed time.  The results app shows how many seconds were gained or dropped from the seed time, with gains in red and losses in green, and the 200IM results are a sea of red.  Not only that, but the gains were huge, anywhere from four to fifteen seconds, so it's clear that the swimmers were exhausted.  Julia herself swam eight seconds slower, but again had a great race in that she beat out swimmers who were seeded faster than she was, and pushed through her fatigue to a strong finish. 

So, to sum things up, whether they were fighting through muscle exhaustion or tumbling down a set of stairs, both girls gave their bodies a little tough love this weekend!