New Year's Letter...Oops...I mean...St. Patrick's Day Letter

We'll...we're ALMOST 3 months behind everyone else who sent out their Christmas and New Year's Letters, but we like to do things a little different around here -- it's just the way we roll on Healey Street...we go where life takes us.

So, without further delay...in case you have been wondering what we've been up to in 2007 (because we NEVER got our letter out), 2008 & a tad bit of 2009 (thrown in for good measure), read on!



Well, hello there, everyone, and welcome to our omnibus 2007-2008-2009 Christmas/Amish Christmas/Chinese New Year/Nowruz/Cambodian New Year letter. Life has seemed a bit overwhelming over the last couple of years, but we are still here to tell the tale. And what a tale it is! A new daughter! With red hair! Kai is big! Emily is a La Leche League leader, and very tired! Because Kit’s back was out for the last six weeks, and then we all got the flu! We’re re-doing our kitchen! Revolution Seeds is dead! Obama is a front man for Wall Street, but at least he’s not an unabashed fascist! Kit’s workplace is being compared to Ceaucescu’s Romania and other proud moments in Communist history! All we do is cook, clean, and attempt to keep the kids occupied and well-behaved! And to think we used to take pictures of our dog! Vive la France! !Vive la revolucion!

So, what else should we say in the way of catching up…hopefully you will get some idea of the kind of people Kai (3½) and Norah (1½) are from the following accounts of their mad hijinks. To us they seem impossibly cute and sweet (and stubborn and bull-headed), and we love watching them grow older and do and say more amazing things every day (although, of course, we miss the little babies who used to accept/resist all attempts to put them to bed—guess who was who—and do other cute baby things, such as nothing. Kit got to sit out in front of the public library for a few minutes tonight all by himself, and now he is all about people doing nothing). Kai loves stories and wrestling and “baseball” and is obsessed with superheroes and supervillains, and it is becoming clear that he is fully capable of negotiating his own presence in the world at school (where he has yet to set foot), music class, the playground, etc., which is a realization both exhilarating and a bit heartbreaking. Norah loves walruses, cake, being outside, reading books, music, dancing, and much more besides. Kit, who grew up in a very boy-heavy household, loves having a little girl. Emily, who feared hers would be boy-heavy as well, loves it too. Kai and Norah also love and infuriate each other very much, often within the span of a few seconds.

And now for a few adult-type notes. The University of Illinois Library is being reorganized, and Kit’s unit, the Slavic Reference Service, is at the eye of the storm. He just tries to work on his “National Bibliography of Georgia” webpage and avoid as many office-politics-gone-wild moments as possible. Emily resigned with great regret from her job as a school librarian in spring 2007, but is, at the same time, very happy to be home every day taking care of the kids with her mom. Kit thinks Emily is awesome because she gave birth to nine-pound seven-ounce Norah once again without drugs, and because she is able to prioritize and complete tasks, and has learned how to bake delicious Old-World-looking loaves of bread for us. Among other things.

So. We miss you all and hope to see you soon! Write to us! Without further ado, then, please enjoy (or attempt to enjoy) Kai and Norah’s greatest hits of ’07/’08/’09.
2007

7 January: To Daddy’s delight, Kai expresses a clear preference for “Carry On, My Wayward Son” over “Piano Man.” 4 February: Kai, who must have been paying more attention to what Mommy and Daddy say than we thought, finds his Claude Monet finger puppet zipped inside a transparent bag which he cannot open and gleefully complains “Monet! Monet! Dammit! Dammit!” 28 March: Kai sees the pinkish gibbous moon as we are driving someplace and says “Get it. Get the moon. Get the moon!”, and reaches out for it… 12 April: Passing by the back door right before bed, Kai demands “Find slimeys now” (i.e., go outside and dig for worms). Daddy replies that it is dark and cold out there right now. Kai replies, “Get flashlight.” May: Kai perfects his own baby “swear words” for appropriately cuss-worthy situations, namely “Dog-a-Bone!” and “Foog-a-Doog!” 24 May: Kai and Gaga (i.e. Emily’s mom) are watching T.V. mid-morning when George W. Bush comes on for another idiotic proto-fascist press conference—Kai says, “Not that dude—Sesame Street.” 27 May: Kai runs into his very cute friend Myra at a barbeque. His first, dreamily-delivered comment, as they size each other up, is “Myra has eyes.” 21 June: Kai, remembering when the entire wait staff of El Toro II suddenly tooted horns and belted out “Happy Birthday” to him a few days before, says: “Birfday is a little bit of scary.” 4 September: Kai flirts with the hostesses at The Ribeye, including the following exchange: KAI: “Are you going to eat dinner?” HOSTESS: “No, I haven’t yet, but I want to.” KAI: “I spit out my meat.” 7 September: Kai discovers his testicles. Later in September: Kai begins floating names for his soon-to-arrive baby sister, including “Bulgy,” “Zero,” “Mia-Tia” and “Wolfman.” 19 September: Kai watches the anime movie “My Neighbor Totoro,” coming away with the mistaken impression that Totoro is a walrus named Bulstrode. 1 October: Kai, happy to be coming off a draconian anti-diarrheal diet, tells Bodhi “This is a chip. It don’t have diarrhea in it.” 4 October: Norah is born! She is awesome. We are all very excited. 4 November: Kai, in an apparent attempt to come to terms with the slightly-creepy two-foot-tall Sasquatch statue that Kit unsuccessfully tried to scare Emily with by hiding it in the undergrowth in the backyard, insists that the Sasquatch “needs a diaper change. He have diarrhea. He have frow-ups.” 23 November: EMILY: “Kai, I have a favorite boy and a favorite girl. You’re my favorite boy.” KAI: “Who’s the girl?” 24 November: Kai, used to hearing us spell the word w-a-l-k around the dog, asks “Daddy, should we go for a W-C-I-3?” 14 December: Kai tells Mama that Norah can’t cry, because he is crying. 19 December: Kai, obsessed with Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear, presses a spot on Norah’s forearm and asks, “Where’s your laser?”

2008

4 January: Mary Beth is telling a visitor how much Bodhi is like a cat in some ways—Kai comes up to her and stage whispers: “BOBO’S A DOG.” 22 January: Norah suddenly becomes interested in Bobo, launching a love of dogs (a.k.a. “bah-bahs”) that has yet to let up. At all. 24 January: Norah spends at least five minutes trying to grab the stripes off her Daddy’s blue shirt. 9 March: Kai, who loves Kit to tell him stories about anything and everything, is apparently remembering when Kit chased a llama for kicks at the Pumpkin Patch a few months ago and says “Tell the story when we went to the pumpkin patch and we went outside and there was a scary cow.” In other news, Norah discovers that she has feet. Later in March: Kai, with inspiration from Gaga, composes his own lullaby for Norah, more or less to the tune of that “As I Went Down To The River To Pray” song from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, as follows: “Oh, Norah, calm on down/Calm on down/Calm on down/Oh, Norah, calm on down/Like a big flat clown.” 1 April: Kai, a little unnerved by his first locker-room experiences, sees a building that reminds him of the one where he takes swimming lessons and says: “That’s the naked building? I was naked in a building. Because I was all wet.” 12 April: Kai graduates from his crib to a big-boy bed. (And there was much rejoicing.) 12 May: Kai peers into the little space behind the fridge and asks what’s back there—“I can’t get back there,” he says, then muses “If I took my head off, I could get back there…” 14 May: Norah says “Ma-ma.” 5 July: Norah learns how to blow kisses. Late July: Norah starts to “read” books moreso than eat them. 31 August: Kit tells Kai that his crying sister needs “boochie milk” (i.e., breast milk) from Mama—Kai is immediately on the case as he goes downstairs, announcing “I’m lookin’ for womans for boochies. […] I can’t find any! [...Mama appears…] There’s one!” Late August: Norah settles on scooting as her preferred mode of self-transportation and says “Ga-ga,” “Ka(i)-Ka(i)” and “Na-na.” Mid-September: Norah busts out “book,” “ball,” “duck,” “Pa-pa,” etc. 11 October: Norah begins what appears to be a lifelong love affair with hummus. 14 October: Norah climbs up and perches herself on top of Kai’s one-foot-tall stool all by herself. 23 October: Daddy, trying to spark Kai’s interest in reading, shows him an alphabet building block with an octopus, an otter, an olive and an ostrich on it, and says “Kai-Kai, look, all of these things start with O. Look. What are these things?” “Octopus, squirrel, bean, flamingo,” answers Kai. 4 December: Before anyone else can say anything, Norah introduces herself to Downtown Nick Brown as he comes in our front door by saying “Nowah!” 28 December: Kit is doing some mid-winter leaf-pile removal when Kai becomes concerned at the curvature of the tines on Kit’s pitchfork and says, “That chopstick is getting bented.”

2009

Early January: Norah perfects the squirreling-away of various objects (little cards, favorite books, toy vegetables, etc.) under the living room rug, although she finds it impossible to hide herself under there. 15 January: Norah takes her first step! 16 January: Norah takes her first step toward a lifetime of verbally annoying her brother by standing against the couch at his feet and insisting that “Kai-Kai poo-poo,” notwithstanding Kai’s intense protestations to the contrary. 30 January: Kai accosts two young passers-by walking home from school on the sidewalk in front of our house, tugging his stocking cap down over his eyes and, without any warning, advancing to paw at their legs, saying, “GET READY TO MEET MR. ANGRY EYES!”, a reference to his favorite Mr.-Potato-Head/Don Rickles scene from Toy Story 2. 31 January: To our surprise, Norah reveals that she is somehow partial to certain letters of the alphabet already, namely “H,” “O,” “P,” and “C.” She also applies her recently-acquired ability to tell the dog to get “OFF!” her high chair to her personal-space-invading brother, who (with admirable forthrightness) shortly thereafter confesses that “All I want to do is bug Norah!”


HAPPY NOWRUZ, YA’LL!

Love,
Kit, Emily, Kai, Norah and Bodhi