The Joys of Summer....?

Ahhh....the glorious days of summer.

Lazy days lounging in the sun, catching up on my reading, watching the kids dash through the sprinkler, listening to the joyous sounds of their laughter.

ERRR.....(screeching brakes)....REALITY!!

This happens every year--and each year I swear will be different.

We begin the summer with high hopes and boundless energy, with lists of things we will do "for sure" and plans to never waste a moment.

The month of June is always great--it truly is. The weather is warm and sunny, and the nights get cool enough to enjoy sitting outside. We still have the ambition to actually get out and do much of what we want. The 4th of July is always a fun time; this year we even braved sitting on the roof with all three kids, where we had a gorgeous clear shot of the downtown fireworks.

Then, somehow, almost as if on cue, the heat becomes almost intolerable to do anything but stay indoors. Finally, around 7:00, it cools off enough to head outside to once again feel like it's summer...for about a half hour. Because as soon as the sun starts to sink, the mosquitoes rise out from wherever they hide, and attack. If you want to stay out and "enjoy" the evening, copious amounts of gag-inducing bug spray must be applied.

After days indoors, that joyful laughter turns to sibling bickering; whining over who gets what and fighting over who did what, and ultimately crying over who hit what. As for my reading, the only reason I've managed to tackle the books I have is because I've resorted to staying awake until 2 a.m. to ensure that if none of my other summer dreams come true, I at least have made a dent in my bookshelf!

Water Wednesdays

 

 Water Wednesdays have proven to be one of the easiest days to organize. It doesn't take much more than a hose, a sprinkler, or a blow-up pool to keep little ones entertained for hours. Even the hottest days are enjoyable to be outside in when you add water to the mix. I think my little guy's favorite day so far, though, was the day we had a bike wash. The smile on his face above comes from the fact that he learned how to whip his sisters with a wet towel....wow, that starts young!

 

 



 

 

   My daughters' favorite day was when we met their aunt and cousins at the beach. We went early and had the beach almost entirely to ourselves! 



 

   What I find most interesting is how every time the hose is out, the girls like to also bring out their umbrellas. :)

 

 

 

This summer is speeding by so quickly. Here's to slowing it down and making it last as long as possible....enjoy!

ARTISTIC Tuesday # 1 and 2

I had planned to get these up a lot closer to the days we were actually doing these projects, but now is as good a time as ever, I guess! It's amazing how quickly that lazy summer mentality seeps into routine.

Our first Artistic Tuesday was a very simple one. On our pre-summer dollar store shopping trip, the girls found little cross-stitch kits they wanted to try out, so we got one for each of them. They came with a plastic needle and "fabric" and several colors of yarn. I believe the intention was to make the design on the cover, but the plastic fabric had no outline for it and it seemed too complicated so the girls made simple outlines instead to follow. It was a fun way to introduce them to the idea of cross-stitch, and it made them feel grown up to be "sewing," but I wouldn't recommend buying the kit at the dollar store. The yarn is too thick to work with and about halfway through, their needles looked like they came out of the "There was a crooked little man" story. That being said, it was a great $2 spent because it kept them occupied for hours!

Artistic Tuesday # 2 was also a simple project. Once again our materials came from the dollar store. We found five different colored packages of "foam dough," which is basically just sticky little balls of foam that you squish into different shapes. I found this to be just as fun of a material to work with as the kids did. My little guy loved it as well, even though he kept saying, "eeeww" as it stuck to his hands. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of him working with it. :(

So far these cheap materials are proving to be quite the success around here!

MAD SCIENCE Monday # 1

For our very first themed day, I chose something simple, but that I knew would hold their attention at least for a little while. I always loved playing with GOOP as a child, so I knew the kids would too. I've also heard this called oobleck. All that you need are cornstarch, water, and food coloring if you're feeling brave.

To make this seem like more of a science experiment, I gave each of the kids their own plastic bin, a box of cornstarch and filled up a pitcher of water for them to share. This way, they could each attempt to make their own goop, testing out different mixtures to see what made the best goop.

Amazingly, this kept all of their attention (including my not-quite-two-year-old AND my 9 year old!) for at least an hour. This makes such a fun consistency; is it a solid or a liquid? They had fun trying to figure it out between bouts of mad scientist laughter and cries from my 6 year old that she is "going to take over the world!"

This little project carried them well into the afternoon as I had the girls spray off the patio (it easily rinses away), which turned into the first water fight of the season. Now it really feels like summer!

Summer Schedule

 

My year serving with AmeriCorps is basically over as I have completed all of my required hours. In order to continue my living stipend for the next month I just have to log 5 hours a week of volunteer time. So that means I am now officially home with my kids again! I took the summer semester off from college courses, so I went from working 40 hours a week and having additional homework, to being able to focus on my beautiful children and (unfortunately) housework.

So now that I am home, after used to being on a go-go-go schedule, I thought it would be a good idea to come up with a plan to keep our summer going smoothly. Past summers have gone by so quickly, much of the time in front of the TV, leaving most of us feeling that we missed out on a lot of opportunities. So, for starters, we decided to extend our screen time rule to the summer with a bit of a change. During the school week, we would allow a half hour of screen time for each child, with weekends essentially being free, within reason. This summer we are allowing one half hour of computer and one half hour of television time, but they may be combined either way. We do this only Mondays through Thursdays and the rest of the weekend is free. What I love is how much time this opens up, and since it is a concrete rule, they don't even try to weasel more time out of me! Amazing....

Our summer schedule, as seemingly opposite as those two words seem to be, consists of very loose "themed" days that basically just the kids get excited about something to look forward to. My girls helped me name them; they are as follows:

Mad Science Mondays.....these started out as Magic of Science Mondays, but after our first experiment of messy goop and crazy kids, we all decided MAD was much more fitting!!

Artistic Tuesdays

Water Wednesdays

Take-a-Trip Thursdays

Free Fridays....which basically means that I just don't want to plan something for every day of the week.....kids need to be bored sometimes, right?

Before school was out for the year, I had the girls help me brainstorm and searched the internet for lots of ideas we could use and categorized them for the different days. I bought most of the materials ahead of time, much at the dollar store, so it would be ready in advance; because after all, I want this to be EASY and enjoyable for ALL of us! Now, on those days, we decide in the morning which project we feel like doing and have at it. We are halfway into our second week, and I'm still going and not even feeling sick of it, so that's a huge success for me!

I will post some of our activities very soon so you can see what we've been up to. In the meantime, here is the link to my Pinterest board that has some of the ideas we'll be getting to soon.
http://pinterest.com/traciedawnlee/this-summer/

Enjoy!

 

Responsibility....

This is a poem I wrote awhile back. I was feeling like we needed a break from the fast pace of everyday life and was longing for relaxed summer months. This doesn't seem as fitting now that we have been enjoying the laid-back schedule of later bedtimes and sleeping in (if 8:30 counts as sleeping in), but it's certainly a reminder of why lazy summers are so important.

Responsibility; like a five-ton bag of bricks

 

 Hits you over the head

 

Sneaking up like mist on a lake on a cool night

 

Slowly adding up

 

Accumulating until you can hardly look out

 

From between the mass of to-do's

 

and the dont's

 

From the must's and the should's

 

From the demands and the needs

 

Until you can hardly breathe

 

Suffocating amidst the rules and the expectations

 

And discover a way to just let us be

 

To love and to laugh

 

and to finally

 

BE FREE!

An Experience of a Lifetime

 My year serving with the Minnesota Reading Corps has provided me with so many benefits that I could not have foreseen before I began this journey:

 I have gained a growing knowledge base in reading strategies from the wealth of information provided daily by my internal coach and reading specialist.

I have learned so many discipline strategies I never would have thought of; practical application is so much different than reading about them in class!

My heart has grown ten times larger! I was able to form wonderful one-on-one relationships with amazing children who have taught me so much.

 I was given the ability to pass on my love of reading; to see the growth these students have made since the beginning of the year is almost incomprehensible. What is even better is that so many have gone on to find books that they enjoy and are going out of their way to share them with me! I of course wanted to help these students get to be better readers, but more importantly, I wanted them to learn to ENJOY reading!

 The ability to meet so many diverse, yet like-minded people has been such an added bonus. I have formed so many friendships through Reading Corps that I know will last a lifetime.

 I was expecting this would be a big year for me; I was not expecting how much of an impact it would truly have in my life. This year has clarified my thoughts on the future. Before, I was sure I wanted to go into education and I was sure that I wanted to work with kids. Now, I am absolutely certain that I want to do this and that I can do this…..and also that I need to do this. There are so many students out there who need someone on their side; someone who can find their individual uniqueness and draw that out of them to help them succeed.

As the end of my year as a literacy tutor is quickly approaching, my students have begun to ask if they will get to read with me next year. With a sad heart, I tell them that no, I will not be back next year, but that another great person will take my place. Someone else who is ready to be the difference in dozens of children’s lives, willing to provide essential reading skills while remaining a bright spot in many of their days. Please take the time to consider a truly rewarding year of service with the Minnesota Reading Corps. You will change so many lives, and in the process, you will forever change your own.

 

Six Months In

Obviously the past six months have been a busy time around here. It has been a strong mixture of exhausting, guilt-ridden, freeing, fulfilling and ultimately rewarding feelings! I have barely kept my head above the water with so many challenges we have faced this year, yet somehow I've managed to extract so much happiness along the way.

I have never felt such a purpose as I have this year helping students become better readers. There have been so many moments that have caused me to pause and think this is what I'm meant to do....this is what it's all about! My goal for myself this year was to not only help kids advance their reading skills, but also to teach them to LOVE reading. There have been so many ah-ha! moments with different students who have made that shift to truly enjoy reading. There is no better feeling!

As for the challenges: I think we're finally coming out of our roughest patch....knock on wood.

Our little boy, who is 18 months old now has suffered from severe asthma; he was hospitalized six times in the past year for respiratory distress, each time for a couple nights. Looking back through his notes, his doctor averaged it out to a hospitalization every six weeks. There is nothing scarier than your precious baby not being able to get enough oxygen. Our world ceased to exist each time the skin around his ribs began to suck in. In fact, he had a partial lung collapse on two separate occasions. We grew fearful of public places and anywhere germs gathered; wiping down shopping carts, never allowing anyone over with the slightest of colds, hardly ever going anywhere. Add in that I have been working full time and along with our daughters, carrying incessant germs home from the cesspool that is school.

My little guy was also officially diagnosed with a milk allergy this year....on a 0 to 5 scale, 5 being severe, his severity rolled in at 4.96. This has led to a total shift in food shopping, food preparation, eating out and expectations. We were steamrolled at how much of our common foods contain some kind of milk ingredients. It has taken time and is still a process, but we have found some good substitutions. There is hope that he may outgrow it by the time he is 6-8 years old; we will have him tested once a year until we have a definitive answer. For now, we always carry his epi-pen and our routine involves a lot of label reading and packing safe foods anytime we go anywhere.

Finally, after his last hospitalization, we were referred to a pulminologist, a lung specialist. After listening to the cutie drinking his coconut milk he began asking a lot of questions about his gurgling sounds after eating and drinking. He felt a test to check for reflux would be a good idea. Turns out he doesn't have reflux, but he has dysphagia, which just means that he has trouble swallowing properly and he was aspirating every time he drank something. So this whole time he had been inhaling liquids into his lungs! No wonder he kept getting respiratory infections. No wonder he cried so much as a baby. No wonder he was so small. 

So now he is on a daily corticosteroid inhaler, a completely milk-free diet, and thickened liquids. After we started using the thickener, the gurgling stopped, he has gained weight, and has even gone through a cold with only nebulizer use at home. We have not visited the hospital since Thanksgiving! It is amazing the sanity that is slowly creeping its way back into our household. We still have a long way to go, but with the end of my 11-month commitment looming ever closer, it seems there is hope for us after all!

This school year has left me feeling drained yet superbly fulfilled, as both a tutor and especially as a mom. I will end this year with a bittersweet concoction of relief and sadness. I am truly going to miss my students and they will always have a special place in my heart. I am so looking forward to being home with my little man next year, and to have the ability to help in my girls' classrooms will be such a blessing! I have come to know so many amazing people over the past year that I would never have had the opportunity to know without my service with the Minnesota Reading Corps. I will forever be grateful.

End of the School Year Craziness

                It has been insanely busy around here the past couple of weeks. My oldest daughter is apparently preparing for a lifetime in the spotlight. On the 19^th, she had a performance with the acting class she was in on Saturday mornings. It was her first experience with theatre, and she received about four lines in a sweet and short show, and she rocked every single one of them! (Not biased at all, of course). Then her and her best friend decided to try out for the talent show, in which she played piano and they both sang. Surprise, surprise, they made it! So we went to that last week, and then were back again today for the 2^nd grade music program. Oh yes, and she had her piano recital on Wednesday!

                Ah, but don’t forget my other sweet little girl! She just finished her last week of preschool, and today was the last day, which involved a very special visit to the fire station. She was thrilled because she had been wondering if there were any girl firefighters, and what do you know, the firefighter leading our tour was a girl! I think Mr. Hubby and I enjoyed the tour just as much as she did, and our little guy was completely content looking at all the bright red trucks.

                The past week was also spent winding down our Girl Scout year. Last week, we took them (all 13 of them!) to the local bounce center, as was their request with their cookie earnings. You don’t often think of girls being sweaty creatures, but I was certainly proven otherwise that day. And today was the final meeting of the year. I have really enjoyed this year, and am going to miss them all over the summer. I think I am actually looking forward to next year! Hopefully I can hang on to some of that enthusiasm…

                Oh yeah, and on top of all that, my summer semester classes started up a couple of days ago. I am taking two three-credit courses, condensed into one month. It is a brutal schedule, but it gets me ahead so much faster, and when they’re over I will still have a whole month to truly enjoy the summer. I can’t wait!

PANIC

Okay….so now that I have gotten past the initial thrill of getting this wonderful position, and being accepted not only by the Minnesota Reading Corps, but from the public school staff as well, panic has officially begun to set in. How am I going to handle working full-time, taking classes part-time, be a good mom, take care of the house, keep everyone fed and clothed and fairly clean, but most of all….how am I going to leave my baby?!?!?

When I agreed to this it somehow seemed so far away; next school year. We always refer to it as “next year,” and this school year hasn’t even ended yet. But next year doesn’t seem so far away when you realize that preparation for it begins in less than three months! My little guy is still breastfeeding exclusively (thanks to a formula allergy) and is heavily dependent on Mama….as he should be. I can’t help but have this conflicting feeling of doubt nagging me about whether or not I am doing the right thing.

Yet I know that I not only want to do this, but essentially I need it as well. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s more than I’m making now (nothing), and I could really use a confidence booster. This is something I can feel really proud of and it is certainly worthwhile. I also know that my husband and I cannot do the opposite shift thing again; it’s so hard on our relationship! I just hope that I can come to terms with the guilt before too long. I just need to figure out our daycare situation and have everything set up to the utmost degree of certainty before my start date looms much closer. Hopefully then I will feel prepared.

But even despite all this heavy guilt (and fear), I still feel twinges of excitement when I think of the year to come….wish me luck!

Exciting News

 I am very excited to announce that I will be working, or rather volunteering, as a literacy tutor for the Minnesota Reading Corps this coming school year! This is such an amazing opportunity that I just kind of stumbled upon…apparently that is how I find my best positions. I will be working one-on-one with Kindergarten through third-graders on their reading skills to help get them up to grade level. It is called a volunteer position, but there are so many great benefits; a living stipend to help with bills, tuition reimbursement at the end of the term, which is 11 months, and I also qualify for daycare assistance so I don’t have to worry about that! On top of all these wonderful bonuses, I will be at the same school my daughters are at!  So every day when I go to work, my girls and I will all be going to the same place. I have been very anxious about my little girl starting Kindergarten this year, and knowing I will be in the same building has really helped to alleviate some of that.

I begin in August and will attend a four day training program in St. Paul; they bus me there, pay for a hotel room and all my meals, and then bus me home when it’s over. Then I will begin working at my “site,” which is the school I am assigned to, by getting to know the teachers; I am so grateful they let me choose to be at my daughters’ school because I already have a relationship with several of the teachers already, which should really help. When school is back in session, I will tutor fifteen to twenty kids each day, five days a week until they “graduate” the program. I am really looking forward to this position and all that I am going to learn.

I strongly encourage anyone looking for a rewarding experience working with young children to check out the Minnesota Reading Corps. They need to fill over a thousand positions before August, and there are still many spots open.

I am going to miss being at home with my little boy, but I am at the point right now where I feel like I need to do something outside the home for awhile. I have essentially been a stay-at-home mom for about eight years now, and I think a change of pace will help me be a better mom right now. It's also a huge bonus that this will greatly help me in my ambitions towards becoming a teacher. Eleven months seems like the perfect amount of time; it's long enough that I will feel like I am out in the world, but not so long that I feel I can't handle it. I like to I know that I will be home again after that time.

Thanks for sharing in my excitement J

Cookies........to......Veggies!

Cookie season is finally over and passed, and between the kids and my husband, our cookie tally ended up at $70….that’s TWENTY boxes of cookies!! (I will not take too much blame here, except for the simple fact of storing them in my house…bad idea!) Albeit, that is $70 of delicious, only once-a-year goodness, but I think we’ve had our fill of sweets for the remainder of the year.

Thankfully, it seems that everyone’s sweet tooth is wearing out; perhaps I’ve discovered the secret to cutting back on junk….let them eat all of it until they get sick of it. (!)


Despite this great observation, I have noticed an increasing trend of junk food around our house and it is driving me CRAZY. I have made a conscious effort to not buy as much junky snacks because if it’s in the house, that is all, and I mean ALL that my four year old can think about. Last time we were at the store together, I even went out of my way to tell her that we wouldn’t be having chips and fruit snacks in the house so often and I wouldn’t be buying them this time. Of course, later that evening when my husband made a quick run to the store for a missing dinner ingredient and she tagged along, he bought her a bag of chips and a box of fruit snacks at her request…….ARRGH!

 I am extremely thrilled that we signed up for a CSA share this year! CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and you pay up front for a growing season’s worth of vegetables. Once a week for twenty weeks starting in June, we will receive a big “mystery box” of veggies; that’s how we’ve been selling it to the girls anyway and so far they are very excited about what might be in there and all the new ones we’ll get to try. A great thing about the farm we chose is the strawberry social, where CSA members can come and check out the farm, see where their food comes from, and pick their own strawberries. It should be good for the kids to see that our food doesn’t just magically appear at the grocery store for us to put into our carts and then our cupboards. Living in a townhome in a city hasn’t given them too much exposure to gardening in general, so I am ecstatic about this experience. Especially since we’ll have so many vegetables we’ll HAVE to start eating better. I suppose we could really start now, but it looks like we’re waiting until June.

A REAL, LIVE, GROWN-UP DATE!

Believe it or not, my husband and I were able to enjoy a wonderful night out on Saturday! We got to dress up, drink wine, eat good food, and support a great cause all at the same time, while our little ones were in the loving hands of Grandma.

After many months of near destitution, we were saved by the graces of Uncle Sam’s lovely little tax return; able to catch up on bills, pay off some debt, and treat ourselves to a date. You know you badly need some time alone together when your four year old daughter furrows her brow, sweetly looks into your eyes and tells you, “Mom….you and Daddy need to go on a date!” Well, okay, sweetie, we certainly will!

We recently performed some calculations, and after careful considerations, discovered we average a date every six months. When your numbers are this desperate, you need to make good use of that date night time frame, squeezing in as much relationship-building, couple bonding as you can; as if that doesn’t put the pressure on. So this time we wanted to do something really fun and indulge ourselves a bit. Several years ago, my mom had given us tickets to a wine-tasting fundraiser event for a local organization that houses adults with disabilities. It was so much fun, that we decided we would go again this year, except this time we bought tickets for the formal reserve wines night.

Though of course that formal word caused a little bit of outfit panic on my part; I became determined to find the perfect dress to wear, resulting in many late-night online searches that only left me knowing what I did NOT want to wear. The date finally loomed very near (that night!), and I found myself desperately scouring the clothing section at Target on the family run to the store for odds and ends. I ended up buying a dress and a little black sweater to wear over it.

Flash forward to later that evening; I’m getting ready, curling my hair, trying to occupy the kids, when I realize my new dress is not only not formal enough, but it doesn’t even look good on me! So I pull out a dress from a summer wedding a couple of years ago and put my new sweater over it, and surprise-surprise, it looks pretty dang good. Except…..for shoes. I have a gorgeous pair of peep-toe shoes for summer, but it is February, and I have to wear nylons with my winter-white skin and the cold air outside. So I try cutting out the toes on one pair of nylons, but the stark contrast between my nylon-clad “tan” legs and my un-pedicured, uber-white toes makes for a bad combination. My churchy closed-toed shoes are hardly the answer to my outfit, so we have to hurry out the door when my mom shows up so I can run to the shoe store and find something appropriate to wear.

We walk into Famous Footwear, where the saleslady looks down at my terribly mismatched flats, and points us in the direction of the dress-shoes. Amazingly, my husband picks out the perfect pair, and they even have my size. We pay for them (29.99 on SALE…what luck!) and are back on our way when I realize I didn’t print off the tickets for the event! We retrace our route back home, print the tickets, and finally make our way to the wine tasting. It is moments like these when I remember why we only go out twice a year…..it is exhausting!

Despite the rocky preparations for the evening, we had such a great time. I’m pretty sure we were one of the youngest couples in the room, and certainly the poorest, as we were surrounded by doctors and other various moneybags, but I dare say that we enjoyed ourselves more than anyone else there that night. My very own Mr. Romantic was on a mission to taste as much of the food, and try as many of the wines as possible, so our evening involved a lot of beelines to the buffet tables, and weaving in and out between the sampling stations. Good food, great wine, and lots of laughter….it was an incredible night!

COOKIES!!

I am one of the leaders of my second grader's Girl Scout troop, and by default I am once again the "cookie mom" this year; a title given much prominence in the scouting world in an attempt to cover up the less glamorous side of the position. They even make cookie mom badges for the daughters to proudly display on their vests for everyone to see; but surely it is the moms buying these for their daughters, and not the daughters begging to have one.

So this afternoon we (I dragged my husband into this mess with me) contemplated on whether to take the van or his truck to pick up the cookies; you need two adults for this duty, one to drive and one to count the cases as they're loaded in. We had 50 cases to pack in (in case you're wondering, that's 600 boxes total!) and five of us, so with lack of a babysitter we chose to crowd into the truck, leaving the back open for the cookies. Of course this meant we needed to clean all the crap out of the truck first.

An hour later, we were finally on our way to the warehouse. We pulled into this truck lot where we gave them our troop number and verified how many cases we were picking up; we were then told to follow the cones which led to eight different loading stations, one for each type of cookie. At each station we had to approve that we had the right amount of cases, they’d load them in, and we’d drive on to the next one. In a matter of minutes we had all our cookies, and after verifying once again, and signing over my life to claim responsibility for said cookies, we were on our way back home.

            Upon arriving, we decided the cookies would be safe in the locked topper until I could get them distributed to all the girls during the week. But after careful consideration; realizing how popular those cookies are and that they just might melt on this unusually warm February day, I decided we probably better bring them in the house. So, all the able bodies of the family (everyone except the baby) spent about fifteen minutes marching in and out, stacking all the boxes along the kitchen wall.
            So here I sit, gazing at the atrocity across the room, dreading the work I got myself into. I have two months of this yet to go, and it’s only just begun.

Fine Art

Stretch marks - shallow grooves upon my flesh;
body image - different version of myself;
strong, capable, complete.

Balancing worlds - lives dependent;
obscure art form - moulding, shaping, soothing, caressing;
all lies at my feet.

Not mere duties to fulfill- uplifted to privileges
that I get to meet.

Dreams, wishes, hopes - every day realized.

Bathroom Habits

            I’m so used to wearing maternity pants that when I went to the bathroom and tried to pull them down, I forgot that real jeans have a button and a zipper that must first be undone. I’m glad I didn’t have to go any more than I did or there would have been a puddle on the floor.

            Amazingly, this incident didn’t occur until about 2 in the afternoon; nearly six hours after I put those (non-maternity!) jeans on, and it was the first moment I had a chance to “go”. Crazy how I can be home all day, in such close proximity to a toilet, yet somehow I can’t find the time to get in there until it becomes an absolute necessity (emergency?).

            Due to the demands of my three beautiful children and household crap to finish, my toileting habits have begun to resemble those of a potty-training toddler; waiting and waiting until the urge becomes so intense that everything must be dropped immediately in order to make it just in time.

Thankful

 Thankful…….

For the wind through the trees

Feet crunching through the leaves

For crisp nights and bright days

Brilliant autumn stars and porch lights

For morning frost and cold cheeks

Fuzzy scarves and flannel sheets

For candles’ flicker and long shadows

Scents of soup and family’s laughter

Thankful for these basic things

All the joys that life can bring

Cravings

I love food. I love it to the extent that every time Matt and I decide we are going to cut back on eating out to save on costs, I start to crave any and all food that is prepared in any other kitchen but my own. At times I wish I could go back before we went down the road to discovering food. Back before countless episodes of Iron Chef America and Top Chef, back before the experimentation in our kitchen with new ingredients and new flavors, back before our date nights at far-too expensive restaurants with food that should have remained out of our reach. All these things have only accomplished in turning the two of us into what I can only dub as food snobs. Although I am still happy eating the usual home fare, I would much rather be dining on gourmet cheese plates, risotto, and steak au poivre.

But at this time, on our constricted budget, I will have to make do with the occasional late night snack of bread and cheese (read: baguette, garlic-infused olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and parmesan cheese), and dream of the day when I can sit down to an exciting dinner that will satiate the food nerd waiting within.

An Unhealthy Adoration of a Product

My original intention was to sing the praises of dry shampoo; an amazing product that must have been developed with new mothers in mind. It sure cuts down on the bad “mom ponytails” I’m so often guilty of sporting. I can take my dirty head of hair, spray in some dry shampoo, and look put-together in mere minutes without the hassle of getting baby into a deep sleep or getting older children distracted enough so they let said baby sleep.

Dry shampoo really is a remarkable life-saver I only wish I would have discovered when my other two munchkins were babies. However, with time, a downfall has surfaced alongside its many wonders. It works great on day-old hair. I’ve even had success with days two and three; yet, after this it seems that dry shampoo can no longer disguise the fact that my head nor the rest of my body has felt a shower of anything besides bodily fluids for an extended period of time. In fact, I think dry shampoo, along with my already fatigued memory, is causing me to lose track of just how long I’ve actually gone without a shower.

It’s hard enough to find time to bathe, let alone find the energy to do so. The last thing I want to do when time suddenly opens up is exert the effort it takes to wash myself; I’d much rather crawl into bed and dream about the day when showering will be easy again, then wake up, spray down my hair and be on my way.

Because of this, dear dry shampoo; it is with sadness that I must put you away. You have been a wonderful help, but it seems that you have become an enabler. I must set you aside now because you are only helping me deceive myself. It is time for me to shed my denial and go back to proper hair-washing techniques. Someday when I can exert more self-control, I will take you out again; but until then, I need to step out from under this fog of powder and once again embrace real shampoo.

Long Day

                What a long, unproductive day. I’ve given up. There is no way I am going to get anything done. Madison has contracted the ever-traumatic pinkeye infection. What started in one eye has now spread to both, with fierce itching, watering, and crusting over at night that only viral conjunctivitis can cause. With no hope from the help of antibiotics, all we can do is wait it out.

                Madison cried hysterically yesterday morning when I made the all-important decision to keep her at home to prevent the wrath of the entire second grade population’s parents. I somehow felt that I would be providing a major disservice to everyone if I gave into her pleas that “no one will notice.” Sorry dear, but there is no way to hide the obscenity of pinkeye, unless of course we somehow fit it into the theme of a Halloween “costume”, but considering we don’t celebrate anyways, I hardly think that is appropriate either.

                Not only is she being held captive against her will, she is also banned from contact with her little brother. The poor thing; you’d think I was the evil stepmother locking the princess in a tower for all of eternity.

                Add to all that some boredom and an irritating little sister and it’s made for some heated moments around here. I’ve done really well at not yelling too much lately, but today I threw in the towel and bellowed about the ridiculousness of their actions. After I got that off my chest and the girls commiserated together about how crazy their mother is, a sort of peace followed for quite some time.

                So for the rest of the day, I am allowing myself the freedom to stop worrying about the dishes in the sink and the unfolded laundry and the toys on the floor….ugh, I better stop talking about it or the battle in my head is going to start all over again.