Halloween is coming in about two months, and already I feel in the mood for it. This year my birthday is Friday, October the 13. This is also my golden birthday since I will be turning 13 on the thirteenth.
It is already beginning to get cold in the mornings before school.
–Nicole
Brought home the QuickTake camera from work.
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Mary Claire
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Kelly
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Nicole
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Danny
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Kathy
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Kelly Story
Kathy went out to get the mail. When she came back, she found Kelly sitting on the sofa with the portable phone, chatting away. Kathy said “What are you doing?” Kathy noticed that the phone was on, so just to make sure, she put it to her ear and said, “Hello?”
The woman on the other end said, “Is Betty there?”
“You must have the wrong number,” said Kathy. The woman seemed confused as she hung up.
Kathy asked Kelly, “Did you answer the phone?”
“I was talking to Betty,” Kelly said proudly.
Her first unattended phone conversation. (That we know of.)
Kelly Story
Kelly came walking into the den and told Kathy, “Sumping’s in Charlie’s bed.”
“What is in Charlie’s bed?” asked Kathy.
“Iownknow,” she shrugged. “Sumping!”
Then Kelly walked out and came back in and shrugged, “It’s dirt.”
Kathy thought Kelly was just playing games so she brushed it off. Later, Kathy discovered that Charlie had thrown up in her bed.
Charlie is lucky that the whole thing tickled Kathy when she figured out that Kelly was trying to be a good little reporter with her limited vocabulary. Kathy called me at work to tell me the story.
P.S.
It seems Charlie found herself a nice ham bone with a bunch of ham on it in one of the neighbor’s trash bags. The feast cost her, though.
Danny has it all figured out.
Kathy made some really good pizza for us the other night. Danny told Kathy the next day his plan. I’m not sure how long he has worked on the plan.
He decided that it would be good if Kathy worked at Pizza Hut. That way, he explained, he could go to Pizza Hut and ask the manager: “Can I have a pizza made by Kathy Cashel?”
The manager would ask him, “Who are you?”
“I’m Danny Cashel, her only boy.”
The doubting manager would ask, “What’s your mom’s phone number?”
Danny would quickly say, “985-8090”.
The manager would then ask, “What’s her other kids names?”
“Nicole, Kelly, and Danny and a new baby,” Danny would say.
The manager would ask, “Does she have a dog or a cat or a bird?”
Danny would answer, “A dog.”
“What is the dog’s name?”
“Charlie,” Danny would say with confidence.
“Is it a boy or a girl dog?”
“A girl,” Danny would say, knowing that this is one of the trickiest questions since his dog’s name seems like a boy’s name.
“What’s her middle name?” the manager would finally ask.
“Michele,” Danny would say uneasily because he has a hard time remembering this.
Then the manager would let Danny have one of Kathy’s pizza for free. Danny would pay for the drinks and the games.
Later, I asked Danny why he couldn’t just ask Mom to make a Pizza. Why does he have to go to Pizza Hut?
“Because they have funner games,” Danny explained the obvious.
Sounds like Kathy will have a very protective manager when she works at Pizza Hut. That’s a good thing. You just can’t trust any kid that walks through the door asking for a Kathy Cashel pizza.
Christmas is coming! Mom is supposed to have the baby soon. Toaday I’m baby-sitting for Eric and David. Dad says if I potty-train Kelly, he will give me $25.
Ithink I could do it. I play the clarinet in band. It’s so fun.
–Nicole
Kathy has been giving 2 year old Kelly geometry lessons. She already knew circle, square, and triangle somehow, so Kathy taught her rectangle and just for fun, rhombus. Kelly remembers rhombus better than rectangle.
A Circle and Square | A Toong or Triangle | Rhombus
Over my week of Thanksgiving vacation I accomplished the following:
For Thanksgiving dinner, we went over to Tom and Jeannette’s. On the car ride over, Danny said that he hoped we would have sweet potatoes with toasted marshmallows.
When we got there, Danny reviewed the fixings. The sweet potato casserole had not been cooked. Danny went over to Kathy and whispered that the sweet potatoes had eggs on top. The yet toasted large marshmallows tricked him.
Charlie spent most of her time out on the deck watching us, very nervous about Chris, Tom Jr., and Tom Sr. Jeannette managed to feed her.
Dad’s 60th birthday. We gave him two concrete statues: Harry the Bulldog and St. Michael the Dragon Slayer. Eric and Kelly fought over hugging Harry.
Yesterday was Kelly’s first birthday. She was sick and Kathy was melancholy.
Kelly’s fever had gotten up to 102 on Friday. Kathy took her to the doctor who said she had a virus and gave her some medicine. She managed to have fun on her birthday, despite her illness. She just took longer naps.
I had not gotten home from work until 1 a.m., so I slept in until about 8:30. I missed Danny being the first to sing happy birthday to her. Kelly often wakes up before Danny and talks to him from her crib until he wakes up. Then they both start talking to each other louder and louder until one of the parents gets up.
Patsy sent Kelly a big box that arrived on Friday. Kelly enjoyed climbing all over the box on Friday. When we were all up Saturday morning, we let Kelly open her birthday box.
It took her a long time to get the box open because she kept looking at us. She couldn’t believe we were letting her get into that box, and I think she was mistaking our laughter with being yelled at.
When she got three flaps open she was surprised to see little stuffed animals in plastic bags. There were about six or seven little stuffed animals. Most were dogs, but one seemed to be a pink mouse. She gave the pink mouse a hug, getting a big awww from Kathy.
There was also a brightly colored box at the bottom of the box. Again, Kelly seemed apprehensive about ripping it open. She would give it a little rip and then look around. She was surprised we were letting her ruin the nicely wrapped box.
Inside was her own place setting with a spoon, bowl, plate, cup and place mat. Later she used her plate to eat hamburger, corn, and sweet potatoes (her favorite for some reason.)
I had to go into the office, so I took Danny and Nicole with me. Then we went over to Mom & Dad’s where we joined them for peach ice cream and ginger snaps. After dessert, the three of us had hamburgers that Dad cooked for us.
Because Kelly was sick, we canceled the family birthday party. Tom and Jeannette came over though that evening with more presents. The first one Kelly opened was a baby doll. Kathy says she will never forget the look of wonder and surprise on Kelly’s face when she unwrapped the present and saw a baby in the box. “Baba” she started saying over and over impatiently reaching for the baby as Kathy got it out of the box.
She could not have put on a better show for her Grandpa.
She also opened up presents from us that included a couple of outfits and new shoes. Here favorite things seemed to be her pink mouse, her baby doll, and her new shoes.
She used her new bowl and spoon from Patsy to eat a piece of her cake. She was much neater than Danny who rubbed chocolate icing all over his head on his first birthday. Kelly insisted on using her spoon. Everyone started talking about how she might be left handed. I don’t know why. She was using the spoon with her right hand to chop up her cake. That’s what she did. Instead of eating her cake, she chopped it up in her bowl. Eventually she put the spoon in her mouth and tasted the icing. It didn’t take her long to start pushing cake into her mouth with her hands. When she was done, she threw the last piece of cake on the floor, then she threw her spoon, and finally her bowl. She was having a fun birthday, despite being sick.
Kathy and I watched “Passenger 57” after the kids went to bed. Kelly woke up, though, so I brought her down to lay on the floor with us. At one point, I looked to see where she was playing. She was trying to put one of her high-top sneakers on. Kelly watched with great interest as I slipped on the shoes and tied the laces. Kathy laughed as I stood Kelly up to let her try them out. (She had taken 12 steps before Tom and Jeannette had come over.)
The problem with standing up was that Kelly couldn’t see down to her new shoes very well. So Kelly stood on her head to get a better look at her shoes.
Kelly added the words “shoes” and “thank you” to her vocabulary. We had counted twelve words the other day, including: juice, mama, dada, doggie, cookie, uh oh, banana, bottle, bye bye, birdie, night night, and no no.
Kathy already is missing her baby.
