Tryptophantastic

A compilation of words (and gestures) that Toby finds important enough to learn and say, organized chronologically.

Typed this up for facebook and decided to share with a slightly larger audience.

1. Whenever I have to play the “2 lies 1 truth” get-to-know-you game, I usually write that I helped kids hold tarantulas in my last job.

2. The other truth I put is that I’m a twin. No, she’s fraternal, and yes, she’s older. Supposedly.

3. I don’t have a stock lie that I tell. Any ideas?

4. I’ve never had a retail job. My first job was as a newspaper girl, then a tutor, then a lab rat. Then boring post-college jobs.

5. I play World of Warcraft. Amusingly, half of my Facebook friends might judge me for that, and the other half might judge me for not being a level 80 yet.

6. My first computer was a TI-99. My sister and I had it hooked up to our little tv in the basement and checked books out of the library to get programs for games.

7. Before my senior year of high school I participated in a college chemistry program. I got the highest score on the organic test, so won the special “hat” from a polymer demo. I think my parents threw it away when I went to college.

8. I have several daydreams for the future. One of them is to restore a historic mansion. I’m not exactly good at interior decorating though; I just like old houses.

9. I have a secret addiction to novelty and designer toys. But I rarely buy them.

10. I often compete with my high school self, who was a major nerd and disgustingly good at everything in school. It’s hard living in the shadow of yourself.

11. I’m a better-than-average cook, but I’m also a lazy cook. You don’t want to see my knives.

12. I’m an uneducated chocolate snob. That’s probably the worst of any kind of snob. And I still eat anything.

13. I was pregnant while working at the tarantula job listed above and still feel ick when I smell white vinegar (which we used for cleaning windows).

14. My favorite food ever is tomatoes stuff with sausage, covered with salt, and buried in a mound of dirt and left to ferment.

15. I have a good sense of cute.

16. I threw an eraser in 2nd grade while the teacher was gone. I’m not sure how she noticed it when she got back, but she threatened to make us all stay after unless someone copped to it. I was terrified since I had never stayed after, so admitted it was me, thus shocking my poor teacher. And yes, throwing an eraser is pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever done in school.

17. I’m always too cold, regardless of the actual temperature.

18. I saw my not-yet-husband Mark in a religion class we had together and had a huge crush on him. I was too shy to really followup other than commenting on his TMBG shirt, but months later I happened have a class together with his best friend, and gradually started dating Mark while we campaigned for our friend to be university class president. How cool of a nerd girl romantic plot is that? I could make a movie!

19. While hanging out with Mark and our friends in that impressionable first stage of getting to know each other, I laughed so hard that orange soda came out of my nose. This is both testament to how funny we all were together and also how much Mark must love me to have witnessed that and still stay.

20. Speaking of campaigning, the best thing I have done in several years (other than raise a few wonderful kids) is help with Obama’s campaign. I think I amazed myself with what I could do. The excitement and good feelings have sort of faded, but I still have a memory of how intense that time period felt.

21. I have a green belt in aikido. Only black belts seem to mean anything to people, but that does represent about 3 years of my life. This is the 2nd time I’ve stopped. Maybe someday I’ll have a black belt.

22. On accident, I started collecting friends in other countries. When I’m retired I’ll probably never stop traveling.

23. I do have a dream that my kids will live in another country with me someday, but I don’t think relatives would forgive me. So they can consider this their first warning.

24. I first started surfing the web using Lynx because I didn’t know what Netscape Navigator was. Heck, a lot of you probably don’t either.

25. #14 was a lie I put in to see if you actually read everything I wrote. And to give me two extra statements.

(I believe Katya wrote this from a prompt her teacher gave)

If I were President I will have ice cream every day. If you did something nice you could have some. There would be two different favors every day. You have to bring your own bowl or ice cream cone. I really wish I was President.

I’m in the middle of trying to get rid of some of the things that cost money that I don’t use to their fullest, such as paid hosting. Along with that I lost the domain name I had through yahoo, so heidihoopes.com will no longer work (though at the moment it still does). tryptophantastic.com still does, and shortly I’ll have an alternate address as well for those of you who can’t remember that. In the very least, you should add it to your bookmarks or feeds and make it easy for yourselves! Thanks for bearing with me.

1. Bilder
2. Crayon Macker
3. Painter
4. Bookmacker
5. Carpitenter

(A list I discovered of what she wants to be when she’s older)

There’s been a renaissance of instant messaging in our house. After I sent Katya a variety of smileys, including a very mad one, we had the following exchange:

(12:34:15 PM) K: do you need to go in a time out
(12:34:26 PM) tiertreu: yes!
(12:35:34 PM) K: key now go in your bedroom
(12:36:04 PM) ***tiertreu stomps to her bedroom
(12:36:12 PM) tiertreu: (many more mad faces)
(12:36:16 PM) tiertreu: WAAAAH
(12:40:07 PM) K: you may come out when you learn not to get mad
(12:40:20 PM) tiertreu: but I’m not mad!
(12:40:27 PM) tiertreu: I’m silly?
(12:40:52 PM) K: your coco
(12:41:09 PM) tiertreu: I know =))

Just was amused. They never have timeouts!

We’ll test whether workplaces block vimeo, along with youtube!

Toby has started scooting, and in true Hoopes kid fashion, does it, well, a bit oddly. This was videotaped a few weeks ago, so he’s since become more streamlined, but the technique is the same.

Toby yells, plays, scoots from Meer on Vimeo.

Emma offered the insight in the car today (and I can’t remember why) that Toby’s lungs hurt him because he had no teeth.

After we giggled, I started trying to explain what they really did. “…and then your heart…”

“…pumps your blood around your body,” says Katya.

“Why yes! Good job!”

“And you need blood to make your owwies,” finished Emma.

One of the justifications we used for moving so far away from everyone was that it would put us closer to different relatives. Finally we were able to make good on that implicit promise a little bit more, and took a few days to visit Mark’s cousin in New York City and my grandmother and aunts in Connecticut. Having fond memories of NYC as a kid, both on family vacation and school field trips, I was especially excited for this trip.

Having only a day and a half in the city meant that we ran from one major site to another, as fast as you can run with three kids, and hoped we imparted the essence of such a large urban area to the kids. So on the first day we visited Bronx Zoo with Mark’s cousin Jeremy, his wife Sarah, and their son Jasper, who’s just a little older than Toby. Frankly, the zoo was fabulous and probably the favorite of both Katya and Emma.

The afternoon was a slight disaster, at least as far as transportation goes. We had driven our car to the zoo, so we tried to find a tube station that we could park at. Due to some misreading of the map, we ended up at a train station at the end of the line, so we had to pay train fare all the way to Grand Central, transfer to Times Square, then continue on to the very southern tip to board the Staten Island Ferry. Then in repeating the process backwards we missed a train just barely (late already at 8:40), so we weren’t done riding all our transportation until at least 11 that night. But on the positive side, we had a fun boat ride, ate at an unusual McDonald’s in Times Square, visited a store Mommy was curious about, and rode 3 different kinds of transportation, always a plus in Katya’s and Emma’s book.

We also were able to realize the great accessibility of ethnic food anywhere in the city (so jealous) and eat overpriced ice cream in Central Park before continuing on to Connecticut. While this phase of our trip was definitely more lowkey, it was nice to relax (fewer than five people sleeping in a room, yay!) and visit with my side of the family. We also visited the beach, which just got everyone excited for real beach season. My aunt is a terrific cook and her hospitality was amazing, given how little notice we gave her! And of course my grandma spoiled the kids, in the good way.

When asked how my trip went by a friend, I summed it up as extremely fun and extremely stressful, to which the response was that perhaps that summed up New York itself. In the very least, it whetted my appetite to be able to take the kids on road trips more…once Toby hits that magical age where car trips are fun.

(the photo set for our trip)