Wile E. Coyote

Ooh, ooh, ooh! Today my big girl is putting on her dancing shoes! You know Wile E. Coyote? The clever critter that attempts to outsmart the Road Runner? That is LP.

I am working from home. The girls are at school. Doing work from my kitchen, drinking tea from my own mug, enjoying the quiet and being quite productive.

The phone rings.

"Hi, this is the school nurse. There is no emergency." LOVE when they start off this way. This is someone that is clearly experienced in school nursing and parents. "Just want to let you know that LP has been to see my three times today. She says her head hurts. She doesn't say headache, and she doesn't have a fever, and she is eating fine, and playing outside fine and doing her work fine."

"Thanks for calling. What would you recommend I do?" In writing this sounds insincere, but I was 100% sincere. Really.

"You don't have to pick her up and I wouldn't even recommend it, I just wanted to see if you thought there was something else?"

"Well, she has been congested. I wonder if she has sinus pressure? I am working from home today...{I hear the bells going off over the nurses head at this point}, so I guess she could take the bus instead of going to the after school program."

"Now it makes perfect sense. I tend to see kids a lot when their parents is working from home. They don't tell me the parent is working from home until the second or third visit, but it is common! I bet she will have a big smile on her face when she finds out."

Oh, little girl, you may think you outsmarted me...but Road Runner has been at this game a lot longer than you!

Rounding it Up

For the past six weeks you all have been putting up with my posts about the Nokia Lumia 710. My goal with reviews is to make sure that they integrate seamlessly into the content of the blog - how they work with my life,  - as opposed to being a hard sell. I think the PR folks that invite me to participate in various reviews prefer this approach as well.

BUT since the "white phone" does offer an opportunity for me to do a more comprehensive critique, I wanted to make sure to share some of the cool things and some of the quirks. I promise this will be my last post directly about the phone, although I have no intention of stopping using it. 

• Fun, Fun, Fun! The girls LOVE the phone. We have downloaded quite a few apps - from the previously mentioned Angry Birds to a talking dog to some game where you teach animal cubs to jump rope. When one of the girls has to used the BBerry for games as a consolation prize they keep complaining it doesn't work because they try to touch the screen. The downside of the easy touch screen is that 1. I never get to use my own dang phone and 2. LP inadvertently ordered the full version of Fruit Ninja because she clicked on something she shouldn't have.
• Voice Quality. Like my BBerry, I can plug the Lumia into the auxiliary jack in my car and hear the phone through the speakers (no, I do not have Bluetooth, I am not that cool). Now that my mom has learned the random 406 phone number assigned to the phone so she answers my calls, she tells me she prefers the voice quality from the new phone and there is an obvious difference. 
• Ease of Calling. Complexity of Hanging Up. The phone has a "people" function, where you can "pin" someone to your home page as their photo. The girls love to call the Hoos at work by clicking on his picture. Unfortunately, I have a hard time ending a call. The screen goes to black to save battery after a minute and you have to reinvigorate it in order to hit the end call button. Or at least I think you do. If there is an easier way, I haven't figured it out.   
• Cool Tools. The integrated GPS is cool, because you don't actually have to know the address of where you are going. You can search for the place by name (like "Westin Providence"), click on it and hit "get directions from my location" and voila! It tells you what to do. 
• Windows. The phone is on a Windows operating system. I can edit and create Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoints directly from the phone. It also works nicely with my Hotmail account and really simplifies functions like mass deleting. It syncs with my Hotmail and current work Gmail account way better than the Berry. Let's be honest, the fact that I can actually view any of these in format, as well as PDFs, makes it way more useful for me to work while not in front of a computer - which is pretty typical in my life as a working mom.
• Camera and Video. The camera and video quality are pretty good. All of the beach photos from my spring post were taken with it. We also use the phone to Skype with my parents and the girls love it.  The downside is that the camera is on the back, so they can't see themselves and my parents at the same time. The sound quality is good and the speaker does project very well.
  
• Battery Life and Charging. As is typical of a smartphone, battery life isn't great. It probably needs to be charged more often than my Blackberry, but I think that is because the kids use it more. It also really bugs me that you can not totally power the phone down when charging it. I thought that I was doing something wrong when the phone kept buzzing back on when I would plug it in. I even called T-Mobile! They reassured me that this was normal. I don't think it is normal that the thing can't really ever get fully-charged because it is on all the time. But maybe that is just me.
• It's a MAC MAC MAC and Droid World. The Windows App store and Zune application for managing the phone are easy to use and pretty comprehensive. Unfortunately, not a lot of developers are making Windows apps. I am sure this will change, but don't count on picking up that game of Words with Friends you have going on in FB from your phone. At least not yet.

If anyone out there is interested in hearing more about my experience or has any questions, please feel free to ask. The Hoos and I are eligible for an upgrade at the end of June, so we would also really appreciate insight from Droid and iPhone users about the pros and cons there. I would  really like to know if some of the cons I experienced are the Lumia or just par for the course with a touchscreen smartphone.

Some Spring in Our Step

And, a silly story as reported by the Hoos.
LP, "Dad? Who made the first person?"
Hoos, "That is a good question, LP. Some people say that G-d did. But I don't really know."
LP, "When my kids ask me where the first person came from, I will tell them I don't know because my dad didn't tell me."

So, we are many, many years away from being grandparents, but already we are having a negative influence. Nice.

Things I Never Want to Forget: Early 2012 Edition

SLOW DOWN, TIME!

• The way the girls calls the remote control the "comote"
• LP frequently telling us, "You are the best mom I ever had. Even if you are the only mom I will ever have."
• How AK would be the first one up, get herself dressed, go to the bathroom, make her bed, and go downstairs and get a bowl of fruit loops "with no milk!" and watch TV on the couch by herself on weekend mornings.
•  AK hugging her "big sista" and both of them agreeing, "I love my sister very much!"
• The huge grin on LP's face when she gets off the bus in the afternoon and sees me.
• AK's joy and huge running jump hug when I pick her up from day care.
• Listening to LP sing prayers and songs she learned in Hebrew school.
• Watching AK crawl into bed with the Hoos on weekday mornings and curl up against him.
• Swimming with my babies on Tuesday afternoons and watching them get more comfortable in the water.
• The outfits that AK and LP pick out for themselves and how LP does the "is this too kooky?" test.
• Hearing LP talk about her 96-year old Auntie Anne and her G.G. and poppy (my grandparents) and watching her spontaneously decide to write them letters, "Thank you for the money. It was wonderful. I love you and miss you."
• Seeing AK learn to write and how she writes "Mom." "[LP]," "[AK], and the Hoos' first name, telling me "dad" is spelled "A. A. R. O. N."  
• Arbitrating between the girls when LP wants to watch her favorite shows on NatGeoWild, like "Dog Whisperer" and AK wants to watch Nick Jr. 
• Looking out into the yard and seeing the Hoos and the girls and their cousins laughing and having a good time as they pull sunnies out of the creek.

I am only scratching the surface; and, despite the fact that the whole point of this blog was to write stuff down so I didn't forget, I still find myself starting to forget the little things that aren't so blogable. 

What are some things you want to write down so you don't forget?

The Ramifications of Lighter Later

For most, springing the clock ahead for daylight savings time is celebrated. Yay! The sun will stay out later in the evening!

We focus on this to get us through the horrific morning wake-ups in the days immediately following the physical moving of the clock hands (or pressing of the button on the digital clock). And, if we are honest, we acknowledge that it is not just our kids that want that extra hour of sleep. We do to. Or at least I do, because I have been dragging my pale, saggy tush out of bed verrrry slowly these past few days.

However, my family has been encountering the downside of the sun staying in the sky. Namely, we eat dinner later. There are a few contributing factors>

1. The Hoos comes home later, because he is used to using the sun as a guide for when to leave work - or at least glance at his office clock.
2. The girls wants to stay outside and play later. 
3. I want to stay outside and play later.
4. The weather is fantastic. It was a pleasant coincidence that the time change was accompanied by gorgeous spring weather, but this does not help.

Last night the Hoos got home close to 7. I had not done ANYTHING to prepare for dinner, save noting that I had some hamburgers in the meat drawer of the fridge.  We put away the toys scattered across the driveway (this is after we had already spent an hour or so at the playground) and rushed inside. The Hoos lit the grill, I put some tater tots in the over and then we ran around like crazy people.

Well, at least the Hoos and I did. The girls went into the family room while LP tried to teach AK to read, "Now we need to practice. What does this say?"

When we finished eating at 7:45, the Hoos still had his work clothes on (although he had removed his tie), there was ketchup smeared across AK's face and it was time for the girls to head upstairs for their shower.

AND THIS WAS ONLY DAY TWO OF DST.

It will just stay lighter even later in the coming weeks and months!

Oh, great Internet, please give me the answers for making it all come together at a reasonable time.