Celebrations

Part of what I want to accomplish in the coming year is the making of memories. I already have on my list (though I have slacked in its execution) to take a family field trip once a month -- nothing fancy, just a family outing that doesn't involve going to the grocery store. It could be a trip to the park, or a drive-in movie, or a museum visit. Just something we do together, for fun.

I want more of that. More adventures. More family time.

Santa brought games to my minions, and I want us to have a family game night. I also want us to eat meals around our new (to us) dining table.

These years are short, and I don't want to miss them. I want to stop and notice my family, appreciate our time together as it passes -- not just in retrospect.

I also want to make a bigger deal out of holidays. Christmas gets a lot of attention, but what about the others? They make bibs and clothes and crap for baby's first everything, but then we seem to lose interest. (And apparently "baby's first" stops around 6 months; I can't find any of that cute stuff to fit Kai anymore. He's still in his first year of life! Not one New Year's onesie for him?) Gretchen Rubin says she does little things to commemorate holidays -- special placemats and such for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc. I think that is a great idea. I want to buy or make seasonal/holiday wreaths for the front door, maybe get placemats, or perhaps t-shirts. We could make cookies (or green milk on St. Pat's!), have a special dinner...something to acknowledge the day, the passing of time.

Sure, I want to do the big things -- family vacations, amusement park visits, that kind of stuff. But the everyday celebrations are equally important, I think.

Which is why I bought my girl a party dress for NYE, though we aren't going out. We will drink ginger ale out of champagne flutes and wear party hats and count down the clock.

Happy New Year's Eve! See ya next year.

What I want (the 2016 edition)

I want to get back in shape. In some ways, I am already in shape -- at the very least, I can lift and carry way more than I ever could. And thanks to the pounds I lost to the stomach flu, I can see that yes, there are still abs in there under the loose skin. But there are refinements to be made, certainly. Also, much of what I need to accomplish is maintenance; if I do not exercise regularly, my old injuries flare up. So I need to make time for yoga, for planks, for walks. If I can get my allergies under control, I may even give running another shot.

I want to get my allergies under control. Resume immunotherapy, keep the house cleaner, buy a dehumidifier. I am tired of my itchy eyes and runny nose, tired of feeling bad so much of the time.

I want to feel better. I want to get enough sleep and eat better food and meditate. I don't like the cranky person I have become of late. I want to be a better me.

Because I want to do more. So much of my daily activity is...mundane. Not the kind of stuff I'm going to lay on my deathbed and think, "My gosh, I am so glad I kept my kitchen floor so clean all those years!" I want to write more. Practice graphic design more -- I've been doing some design for my day job and finding I have really, really missed it. I've also been designing jewelry in my head; I'd like to make at least some of it. 

There are other things on my 2016 list. Things like scaling back my debt. But while it is a high priority and I am especially motivated, it's not an interesting goal. Not to me, anyway. It's about hard work and discipline and curbing thoughtless spending. So don't expect blog entries on it, because while it needs to get done, it doesn't exactly melt my butter.

Now, the things I can do once my debt is under control...that is a different story. But those are off on the horizon. I'm trying to rein myself in on the long-term focus. I don't want to get so caught up in 5 years from now that I miss today.

Focus

It's that time again. I don't necessarily make resolutions anymore -- instead, I determine my focus for the coming year. This year, I think a lot of that focus is going to self-care.

Went to the doctor yesterday. My ear started hurting Christmas night, and by Sunday my throat was so sore I could barely swallow. I don't have an infection (thankfully...finding an antibiotic I can take while breastfeeding is not fun), but I do have fluid buildup and drainage. Rain = mold = allergy overdrive. And it's pretty soggy out there these days.

My eyes are also driving me crazy. They are bloodshot and burn pretty much all of the time now, even though I use allergy eye drops several times a day, and I wake with them matted shut most mornings. I was starting to worry that my contacts may be damaging my eyes, but the eye doctor said my eyes look fine. Just allergies.

"Just." Ha. I like that. I "just" can't open my eyes when I wake up in the middle of the night.

I really need to get back on the shots. It just got to be too much for a while there, financially speaking. And also in terms of scheduling. It was so much easier when we lived in Memphis, and even then it was kind of a pain. But I need to get my allergies under control again. I don't have time to be sick. (Don't have the patience for it anymore, either.)

I have the tendency to put myself last. When R has to get up and go to work in the morning, bedtime is a strict affair. On my work nights, it's more a suggestion. Granted, his job is far more dangerous than mine, so it is extremely important that he be well rested. But my health is no less important.

So on my list of goals for this coming year, I must include taking care of myself. Allergy shots and adequate rest and nutritious food and time for yoga and meditation. And walks; I need to start walking more.

As I proved these past two months, things fall apart when I put myself last. And then nothing gets done.

Update: Cleaning products

This post is an update of my Clean all the things post.

First off, I must admit that I have gone to the bleach side. As I've mentioned before, the fumes from most commercial cleaning products set off my allergies. (I do keep Lysol wipes on hand for poop and pee accidents, because we are going to have those for a while.) After this bout of misery, however, I am willing to spare a little shelf space for some Chlorox spray. Even if it means R has to clean the bathrooms, I think it best that we not leave such things to chance. At least until the kids are past the stomach bug years.

Still, that does not mean that I have given up on my homemade cleaners. I have simply added to my arsenal. I have, however, tweaked a few things in the intervening months, hence the update.

Personal Care
Hand soap
My recipe is the same, but I'm experimenting with making smaller batches; the amount my bottles make starts to smell rancid before we use it up. So I gave the store-bought stuff another try -- no go. I have to water it down so much (the perfumes are so strong!) that I wonder how effective it is, and even then it dries my hands out. Especially after a hand-washing fest like the Great Stomach Plague inspired. Once I perfect my ratios, I will post an updated recipe.

Body wash
I have altered this recipe a bit.

In a small bowl (I use a 4-cup liquid measuring cup, to make it easier to pour into my pump bottle), combine:
3/4 cup filtered water
1 tablespoon glycerin
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
3/4 cup castile soap

Stir. Then stir some more. Stir until your arm gets tingly. This stuff takes a bit to come together. If the last lumps of xanthan gum just refuse to incorporate, you can pour the mixture into your pump bottle, put the lid on, and shake vigorously. But don't worry if you have a few small lumps left over; they will dissolve on their own, with no help from you.

The xanthan gum thickens the mixture nicely, and the extra castile soap helps it be more effective at removing some sunscreens (just not the high SPF ones -- anything over, say SPF 40). Just a little xanthan gum is all you need; do not, as I did the first time out, toss in a rounded tablespoon and think you're going to get that stuff mixed in. Not happening.

The soap is still quite drying, though, so it doesn't work so well for me in the winter months. I'm researching more moisturizing recipes, and in the meantime rejoicing that I finally found a store-bought soap that doesn't kill my sinuses or break me out. (Dove Winter Care, if you're interested. Which says it will be available for a limited time only. Just my luck.)

Household Cleaners
Toilet cleaner
I am sad to concede defeat on the toilet cleaner. If I had time to clean my toilets once a week or more, this stuff would rock. As it stands, though, I am lucky to get to it every other week, and that's just too infrequently for a cleaner this mild. I did find, however, that Lysol makes a nonbleach-based cleaner (using hydrogen peroxide) that doesn't make me wheeze. I can also use Chlorox Green Works. (Though as I mentioned before, for the time being it's gonna be all bleach, all the time. At least until everyone stays well for a month.)

Dishwasher soap
Still using this stuff. I have discovered in the interim that my dishwasher sucks. So the lack of sparkliness is not necessarily the fault of my dishwasher soap. However, I have started doubling up on it, and using 4 T instead of 2 T per load. Still cheaper than store-bought.

Laundry soap
The laundry soap is still working well for us. In fact, I recently broke down and bought some "free and clear" laundry detergent, figuring that my previous reaction to it was probably pregnancy-related and I should give it another shot. Turns out Kai is allergic to it, too. (We find this out after I washed most of his clothes in it, naturally.) So it's back to the homemade stuff.

With winter here, our lack of fabric softener is once again becoming an issue. After doing some research, I tried the simplest solution ever: I line dry the items especially prone to static. (I installed a tension rod above the doorway in my laundry room for this purpose, since I can't very well dry stuff outside. It's extremely handy, and is also tucked away out of sight when not in use.) Some of my most staticky sweaters are still a little shock-inducing after line drying, but nowhere near as much as they'd be if I dried them in the dryer. Plus, line-drying is a sure-fire method to keep soft fleece items as silky as the day you bought them. (See, there are nuggets of wisdom on Pinterest!)

My quest for the perfect homemade household cleaners continues; as I improve my recipes, I will post updates here.

About dropping the ball

Shutterfly just delivered my 2016 photo calendars.

Yes, that is the cover.

SHEESH. Didn't forget anything big, did I?

But I fixed it.

Photo paper and tape = cover.

I think I need to take a short break from blogging. See you after the holiday weekend. If you celebrate it, I hope you have a merry Christmas! And if you don't celebrate it, I hope you have a pleasant weekend nonetheless.

Be the water

So this past week has had me thinking a lot about the coming year. I'm finding that I need to make some changes in order to "be the water," so to speak. Some of it sounds very Serenity Prayer, but there's a lot of wisdom in those lines.

I need to accept that certain people are going to treat me a certain way. Always have, always will. It may not be fair, but there is no changing it. Nor I cannot cut them out of my life, so I need to adapt how I react to the treatment instead of stewing over it and then getting all bent out of shape over little things. Some days it feels like everyone is against me. This is not so. (At the very least, Baby Kai always has my back.)

I need to accept that my family's priorities are not necessarily my priorities, and do what I can to compromise rather than becoming Crazy Germaphobe Harpy Mommy. This may mean I do more work than they do. But it really is a priority to me to keep the kitchen clean, for instance, so I will just need to make time for it.

(They do need to pick up after themselves a little better, though. I found a string cheese wrapper under the bed, for Pete's sake. And an empty soda bottle behind the recliner. Like I said...compromise.)

I need to accept that my personality is a large part of what makes me so stressed out, and work with that energy rather than against it. I spent so many years wallowing in apathy that it's nice to have so many interests now. But if I let my frustration at my lack of free time rule me, I will go bonkers before the kids start school. I must resist the feeling that I am running out of time. My time is finite, yes, but odds are I have many good years left in me.

I need to take more responsibility for my own calm. Because I'm on the merry-go-round now, and it won't stop for a couple of decades at least. What's going to happen when the kids start school? Driving? Dating? College? How will I handle moving? Getting a new job? I cannot control the stresses that enter my life, but I can control how I handle them. I need to make yoga and meditation a higher priority in the coming year.

I was doing really well spinning my plates, but then I came apart emotionally when they fell due to circumstances beyond my control. I tend to assume that if I want something bad enough, I can just make it so. Sheer grit and determination, while useful, do not guarantee a win. Sometimes my bullheadedness works for me, sometimes not. I need to work on dealing with disappointment when my best efforts fail, and give myself credit for doing all I can regardless of the outcome.

So that's all nice and vague, huh? Thus far, my 2016 credo consists of "All life is precious" and "Be the water." I basically want to be Morgan from TWD, sans all those zombies and personal tragedies. It's a nice goal, but I have no idea how to translate that into a resolution list of any sort. I still have a little time for that, I guess.

Shoulda coulda woulda

After spending much of last week trying to pull off several last-minute Christmas tasks, I finally stopped and asked myself why I was making myself nuts. Would the people I was killing myself to please even care if what I was doing did not get done? The answer, I think, is no. Would the absence be noticed? Again, likely not. And if it were noticed, it would at least be understood. So...why? Why am I doing this?

Because I felt I should.

Not that I need to, or even want to, but because I am afraid of what people might think if I don't.

Much of the pressure I put upon myself is self-inflicted. I have always held myself to crazy high standards, and I have not improved with age. I'm getting worse, actually.

So...I'm dropping the ball this year. As an experiment. To see if the world keeps turning -- and, when it does, if I can live with that.

At least my house is clean now

Once again, this year is proving that I should not make plans. Even my scaled-back schedule has been demolished. This time by a stomach bug.

Last Sunday (not the one that just passed), Anya vomited much of the day. We thought it was an isolated thing; her doctor even chalked it up to an upper respiratory infection. Nobody else got sick, so we thought the matter was finished.

Thursday night, Kai threw up several times. Friday morning, it was R's turn. I spent Friday cleaning up vomit and diarrhea, and Saturday cleaning the house. Sunday was going to be my second shot at my to-do list, but I woke with stomach cramps at 4 a.m. and spent the day learning what used veggie egg rolls taste like. (Not the worst thing I've ever puked up, but yergh.)

No Zoo Lights. No Build-A-Bear. No mall activities (train, carousel, play area, cookie the size of Anya's head). No shopping. No photo books for presents, because I didn't have time to order them; calendars will have to do for this year. And the Memphis Union Mission gifts are still sitting on my counter, and my recycling bin overflows. I desperately need to dig through the gift pile and find Anya's remaining Advent gifts.

Some of that stuff may happen still. If everyone can get well, I might be able to pull off a few activities between now and Christmas. But some of it just won't come to pass. And I am sad, because I have really been looking forward to the activities this holiday season.

But my house is clean. (Except the bathrooms; they need cleaning again. :/) Really clean -- not just tidy. So there is that.

Why Santa is bringing my son a doll for Christmas

Having kids has made me super sensitive to the things people say and do. The word "retarded," for example, grates my nerves worse than ever now. I know Anya's apraxia isn't exactly a huge developmental delay, and her speech is getting better all the time, but the fact is I've spent the past few years getting funny looks from strangers because my daughter is big for her age yet has the speech capabilities of a younger child. I want to slap people who use "retarded" to describe a long line or an irritating coworker or a new sitcom. Words can hurt.

I'm not innocent of the casual slurs, either. I tend to cast aspersions on the size of a man's genitalia based on the speed with which he departs from an intersection, and I have said "because he's a man" in response to questions about why my partner/my father/some random male acts against a woman's wishes. I'm trying hard to clean up my language.*

And yes, there are differences between men and women. Duh. But there is a difference between noting these differences and male bashing. Just as I am even more of a feminist since I gave birth to a daughter, I am ever sensitive to negative male stereotypes since I gave birth to a son.

I am not one for strict gender stereotypes, obviously. I am the breadwinner and the major decision maker in my household. My partner has long hair, and his favorite article of clothing is a skirt -- a manly skirt, but a skirt. So, you know, we're not all he-man/girly girl around here.

But I'm not sure how he (or the rest of the males in our family) will like the fact that I bought his son a doll for Christmas.

Look, the boy loves dolls. And his sister is not sharing hers. Most of her dolls are for ages 2+, anyway. So when he found a doll for babies while we were shopping for his sister, I bought it. It's cute -- a soft-bodied doll with a rattle in it. It's even kind of unisex -- instead of being dressed in pink, it's "wearing" an orange sleeper. And when he saw it, his little face lit up. So Santa got it for him, and anyone who can't deal with that can just take it up with Mama Bear here.

I am not planning on wearing a different parenting hat for my son than I do for my daughter. My goal is to raise children who are kind, honest, responsible people who are proud of who they are and who never feel ashamed to come to me about anything. That's a pretty universal message, I think -- no need for color coding. I do not believe that "boys will be boys" is a viable excuse for obnoxious, immoral, or dangerous behavior. The only thing I think not having a penis truly prevents my daughter from doing is writing her name in the snow without messing up her shoes. Sexual consent is not a lesson that only my daughter needs to learn; I don't want either of my children to rape or be raped.

And there's more. Always more. A million little assumptions and stereotypes and prejudices that make up our everyday experience. Each day I uncover another one.

I expect my son to do more around the house than earn a paycheck and do yard work. And if he provides me with grandchildren, I fully expect him to do his fair share of child care. Dolls allow children to pretend to care for a baby. So why shouldn't my son play with one?

If I don't teach my children to buy in to the sexist rhetoric I grew up with, perhaps they will have the chance to overcome it.

At the very least, if I can deal gracefully with the blowback from making unpopular decisions, I will be providing them an example of how to be true to themselves in the face of adversity.

*I am, in fact, far more concerned about slips like this than I am the occasional (or not so occasional) f-bomb. If the worst thing to come out of my child's mouth is the word "fuck," well, I'll take that as a sign that I win as a mother.

Twisted

So I just read this article, and finally have a label for the problem at hand. I cannot unwind. Ever.

The list of things that has me wound so tight is never ending. The house is disgusting, and because we are always here, I cannot even make a dent in the gross. There are ants all over the kitchen sink and hairs all over the living room floor and piles of clean and dirty laundry everyfreakingwhere. I could spend a three-day weekend just putting things where they belong -- and then the house would still be dirty. I ate a peanut butter sandwich for dinner last night because the minions ate dinner without me while I worked. This happens more often than not. Even though work should be winding down because of the holidays, it is not, and I finish each work day with knotted shoulders and a stiff neck. The baby is teething and also learning to eat solids, and as such is alternately adorable and irritating and my breasts are covered in scratches. I'm currently not speaking to my father and things are tense with my mother, and I don't really ever get to see anyone else.

That doesn't even get in to my frustration with my leaky, moldy car, or my leaky, moldy house, or my leaky, moldy bank account.

To top it all off, I don't even have a vice to indulge myself in. I gave up all of my vices but sugar already, and gorging myself on candy only tends to make me feel worse. I don't smoke and I can't stand the taste of alcohol and I no longer have the energy to stay up til 2 a.m. binge-watching television; I fall asleep somewhere between 9 and 10 most nights listening to Alton Brown describing in detail how to cook foods I don't eat. My vices are going for walks by myself and showering by myself. I don't get to do either often enough.

Driving used to be a way for me to unwind, but driving is different when you have kids. The other day, I left early for the doctor -- 45 minutes early. I was having the kind of day in which I had cried my eyeliner off by 10 a.m. and needed with every fiber of my being for the kids to nap for 20 minutes. So I put on the sleepy Spotify playlist and took the longest way there, and of course the little buggers didn't nod off until 5 minutes before we arrived. Which means my drive consisted of my daughter questioning every single thing in existence, three times over, while I tried to lower my blood pressure with belly breathing and at the same time worked to keep the baby from eating the various tiny toys his sister's filled the back seat with. I've had worse drives, but that one did nothing to soothe my nerves.

R occasionally tries to give me shoulder rubs. I appreciate the gesture, but I have at least one kid attached to me almost 24/7; if I have the opportunity to not be in physical contact with another human being, you can be damn sure I am taking it.

I no longer know how to unwind. And even if I did, I don't have time to unwind. There is always, always something I have to do. Something that is more important than me.

So...yeah. I'm wound kind of tight, too.

You call this wonderful?

Don't get me wrong; I love Christmas. Everything about it -- food, presents, lights, music, silly shirts, jingly jewelry, overdecorated everything. I love the cold weather and snow that we never get here. (Still not crazy about the cold, foggy drizzle that usually takes its place.) Peace on Earth, goodwill...bring it. I am down.

But I am noticing that I get really frickin' grumpy right before Christmas.

I'm not sure why. Am I stretching myself too thin? Perhaps. Is it because we all seem to spend the holidays sick? Could be. But it also seems that everyone around me gets really damn critical of me around the holidays, as well. And I don't deal well with that when I feel like crap, my kids are sick, and I am stretched too thin.

I had hopes for this year, but it looks like things won't be any different. Damn it.

Know what I want for Christmas? For everyone to get off my back already. I am doing the best I can here.

Ups and downs

The weekend started well. A great breastfeeding photo session, with a photographer I really clicked with. Anya had a great time at her friend's birthday party. We had dinner with Mimi and shopped a little.

Early Sunday morning, Anya started vomiting. Poor girl was sick all day, and puked hard enough to develop petechiae. Today I took her to the doctor just to make sure her lingering cough wasn't somehow to blame. Just a bug, it turns out.

Kai has been crabby and clingy; teething is my guess. Anya is alternately crabby and lovey. And select other family members have been grating on my nerves. I am in no mood to deal with outbursts and criticisms. The longer it goes on, the more irritable I become.

I'm past pissy, and nigh on to bitchy.

But this evening, I did finally complete my Christmas shopping. My girl can keep some food down. My baby is asleep on my breast. So there is some light in my evening.

Somewhere to belong

One recent Sunday morning found me in my car, running errands. Usually I do not make it out of the house before noon, but on this particular morning, Anya was at her grandparents' and Kai and I had been up since dawn. He needed a nap, but wasn't going down without a fight. I needed to get something -- anything -- done. So we ventured out around 8:30 a.m. to deposit a check, do a little shopping, and (most importantly) drive long enough so he could snooze for a bit.

It was a beautiful morning. Cool, sunny, with downpours of amber leaves. It was neat seeing all of the people in their Sunday best walking into churches. I hadn't realized before just how many churches there are around here. And I felt a pang, just for a moment, that I didn't have a church to go to.

I am not religious. I don't even have much of a spiritual streak, though there are a few threads taking hold as I get older. My beliefs are blunt and matter-of-fact and tend to offend, however inadvertently, the religious people I have discussed them with, so let's just call me an atheist and leave it at that. There isn't a church for people like me, at least not one I'm aware of. There is no group I can join on a Sunday morning and talk about life and philosophy and love. No meet-and-greet afterwards. No brunch.

And until now, I never missed it. I'm not a joiner. In fact, I am your textbook introvert; send me to a party, and you'll find me in a corner reading and checking the time. (And how convenient is it that I can now do both on the same device?) Back in my single days, it was a pretty common occurrence for me to go all day without using my voice at all. And I was cool with that.

But now, I'm a little lonely. I participate in groups on the internet, and stay in touch with my friends (and "internet friends") on social media. I just don't have any face-to-face friends I see more than once a year (or three). And part of me misses that.

How nice it would be to have a place to go in which the other people there believed the same things I do. My kids would have people their own age to play with. We could make friends, and talk about things that matter, and find support from people who care about us.

We could belong.

A baby's tears

I am not the cry-it-out type. I won't say I never let Kai cry; there are instances in which that happens. When we're driving somewhere and either close to our destination or on a schedule. When I'm almost finished with a task and he starts fussing. When I just need a minute to collect myself. But mostly, I respond to his cries.

Before they can talk, babies cry. It's how they get our attention, let us know that something is wrong. The more urgent the issue, the more urgent the cry. Humans are hard-wired to respond to that cry, too -- even Anya can tell if Kai is hungry or tired or scared or just crabby, all from the sound of his cry. To ignore that cry is to ignore the baby's distress signal. Which creates more distress, escalating the problem instead of resolving it. So I try to make sure that when I do have to let him cry, it's for a damn good reason.

We went to get Santa pictures the other day. I knew from our dry run a few weeks back that Kai would probably not be down for it, but I brought a Christmasy sweater for him and gave it a shot. His little face crumpled the moment his tush hit Santa's knee. I gave him a moment to adjust, then immediately took him back when he continued to cry.

The crew at Santa's chair were stunned. They fully expected me to insist that we take the photo anyway. (They were trying to make Kai smile first, of course. But they didn't seem to see tears as a deal breaker.) But I don't see the point in that.

Mind you, I pushed the issue with Anya; her first Santa picture includes me, and she still looks miserable. But Anya was two. She had some concept of who Ho Ho was.

Kai hasn't even experienced a Christmas yet. Why the hell would I force him to sit on a stranger's lap and take a photo? What message does that send to him?

My social media lately is filled with photos of crying babies on Santa's lap. We laugh, we awww. And we continue to insist upon such photos, despite the blatant distress of our children. I am not innocent here; I've done it, too.

But no more. I am Kai's mother. It is my job to love and protect him. He trusts me to do that. And I try not to damage that trust any more than absolutely necessary. Vaccinations? Necessary. A Santa photo op for the holiday card? Not so much.

So I have a Santa photo with just Anya. It's gorgeous, of course. And next year, we will try again with Kai.

Why is dinner so hard?

I have a goal to eat dinner as a family. But getting my family to wait until dinnertime is only part of the problem. The other part is what the hell to fix.

My children and I are vegetarians. (Not that this is a huge issue with Kai at the moment.) So our boxed-crap options are pretty slim. And I'm sick of them all. I love pasta, but am burned out on store-bought sauce. And that's pretty much the food industry's answer to prepackaged vegetarian food, at least at my grocery store. (Oh, Schnucks, I miss you.)

My daughter thinks macaroni and cheese is a food group.

My partner thinks ramen and freezer burritos are acceptable meal options.

I have a collection of recipes that I am working to expand, but right now it's pretty small. And when I ask "What do you want for dinner?" the answers never come from my recipe box.

I tried making a menu planning board. I put the names of recipes we all like on cards and put the board in the kitchen. All we have to do is select and post a handful of recipe names each week. We did that once. The same dishes have been up there since around June.

I created a similar list on my phone. The names and recipes for all our standby meals are all there -- I just have to pick a few, then go to the store and buy what we need. But apparently even that is too much work.

When I lived alone, I made a pile of new recipes and planned menus around them. I shopped every two weeks, and tried out 4 or so recipes between shopping trips. I planned the menus to reduce food waste but still afford myself a little variety. I ate healthy food, dropped a few extra pounds, and felt great.

Suggesting we try a new recipe to this crowd is about as popular as suggesting we play a fun new game called Russian roulette. Even when I promise we can go to Sonic if it sucks.

I am not completely innocent here. I hate going to the grocery store so very much that usually I buy whatever we used the week before, toss in some healthyish junk food for Anya to nosh on, and call it done. So my pantry remains full of pasta and tomato sauce that I don't want to eat.

I need to get a handle on this before Kai is old enough to grab snacks on his own, or it'll be anarchy around here.

Love and money

Couples often fight about money. It's been an issue in past relationships for me, so I understand. For instance, that was the main reason offered up to me by my wasband when we had a pregnancy scare and he asked me to consider abortion. He didn't want the child cutting into his spending money. (I wasn't pregnant, so it turned out to be a nonissue. And a year later, I wasn't married anymore, either.)

I've never been in a relationship in which my partner and I saw eye-to-eye about money. But with one brief exception, I've always had my own money, so it's not been as big an issue for me as it is for some. And in my current relationship, I have what may be the perfect scenario: I make the lion's share of the money, and my partner is more frugal than I am. (In most ways, anyway.) That means I get to make most of the big financial decisions, and don't have to rein him in much. We have had some silly arguments, mostly about how long leftovers are still good (I would never, ever bring home fries from a restaurant to eat later, for instance, and consider most refrigerated leftovers contaminated after three days). But for the most part, he trusts my judgement and doesn't blow my budget.

Now if we just had a little more money, we'd be in good shape. But who doesn't think that?

I won't say we don't fight. We do. Just not about money. It's...nice.

A long December

So it's December. Where my life usually veers wildly out of control. A poorly balanced diet and erratic bedtimes and extra freelancing and holiday-related craziness. This is the month that I send the rent check late and oversleep and totally forget important appointments. It's only the beginning of the month, and I am already dragging.

Our bootcamp theme this month is "Wrapping up 2015 with Great Balance and Poise." I've not done yoga once this month. Haven't meditated in weeks. Other than the walk I took on Thanksgiving, the only exercise I've gotten recently has been shopping. And shopping with my daughter is not the greatest example of my poise. (Especially when she runs off and hides in the clothes racks.)

In a way, I am glad for the disintegration of my routine. It usually means I slide into January head first, begging for some structure to my life. I hit the ground running January 2, and uphold my resolutions faithfully...oh, until March or so. But some of them do stick, so it's not a completely wasted effort.

For this month's bootcamp goals, I'm knocking out a lot of holiday-related tasks, but also looking ahead to those resolutions. My big three (exercise more, sleep more, eat better) will of course be on there. And working on my debt -- that's a biggie. But more and more, I'm beginning to realize that I need to rein in my gaze. Instead of always looking out ahead of me, I need to look at the ground I'm standing on. Make more time to do special things with the kids, even if it's just a walk to the local playground. Put a little more effort into making the house look nice; Anya can't stop talking about "Anya's beautiful house" since we've put up the Christmas decorations. Find a way to add a little more peace to my days.

It's so easy to hop on the work treadmill and fix my gaze on the horizon -- buying a house, getting a larger vehicle, getting married (yes, that is on my radar, though not an immediate goal). Plow through the days and weeks and months with little thought beyond my long-term goals. But the process of achieving those goals will be far more pleasant if I spend a little effort on the here and now. I just need to figure out how I want to go about doing that.

Flattery

The other night, after our shower, Anya was watching me brush her hair.

"No, like you," she said, indicating I should part her hair on the side, like mine. So I did.

"I should trim your bangs," I said. "Get them out of your eyes."

"No!" she cried. "No cut hair." And started flapping at me to drive me and my implements of hair wrangling back.

"Okay, okay," I conceded. "I'll leave you be."

As I put away my brush, I watched her carefully pick up a chunk of her bangs and position it so that it fell in her eyes. Just like mine is always doing, because I tend to put off trimming my bangs for at least a month longer than I should.

This child is such a little fashionista. I buy her outfits, and she mixes and matches the pieces to come up with even better outfits. I buy her shoes, and she pairs them with her outfits in surprisingly sophisticated ways. I don't often allow her to play in my makeup, but at 4 she is every bit as good with lipstick as I am. (Which, admittedly, is not saying much. But it almost always stays on her lips these days.) She shops for jewelry and handbags like other kids shop for toys. The fact that she wants her hair to look like my overgrown mop speaks more to her opinion of me than any words or gestures ever could.

Makes me think perhaps I should give her a slightly more attractive role model.

The lying game

I've caught my daughter in a lie. Not our usual scenario -- she is hurt or sick and doesn't want me to know, so she says she feels fine. No, this is an irrefutable lie: She got into the Advent present bin and opened presents. (All of them. At least the bin was small enough that she only had access to a few.)

I've suspected as much for days. She offered her brother a toy I was certain I'd not given him yet (before she figured out the wrapping paper was color coded). Also, I was seeing more Shopkins baskets than I believed she'd received. Before that, she was getting into the Advent tree and filching candy. I put the tree up out of her reach until December 1...but I guess I didn't address the sneaking part strongly enough.

Today I caught her playing with a toy I knew she had not received yet. Checked her room, and sure enough, there was the Advent container, the wrapping paper, and the toy packaging. No denying it now.

Man. I was not ready for this conversation.

Today, of all days, too -- today I am swamped. So I gave it a quick "lying isn't nice/Santa is watching you" and went back to work. But I know I need to do better than that. I just...don't know how.

I remember being caught in my first lie. I climbed a tree that was too small for such treatment and broke a limb off. At my babysitter's house, no less. She was really good about how she handled it, but I still felt ashamed. (Still feel ashamed, as ridiculous as that sounds. Nearly 40 years later.) I'm trying to follow her example, and handle this firmly but gently. I don't want to ruin the Advent tradition for Anya. As I suspect I have ruined her enjoyment of that Elsa doll.

Much as I hate to do it, I know I need to not replace those Advent gifts. If she still gets a present every day, she's going to think that this behavior is ultimately okay. And it is not okay.

This opens the door for a bunch of crap I really don't want to deal with. Not with this child. I was timid and people-pleasing and constantly worried about doing what was right. All you had to do to make me fall in line was be disappointed in me. My kid doesn't have a timid bone in her body, and is too headstrong to consider what others expect of her when she wants something. No, I need to nip the lying in the bud.

But how to do it with love...that's the issue.

My little mirror

My daughter is speaking more, and more clearly, than ever. To my delight and horror, depending upon what comes out of her mouth. Because it's almost all me. Oh, there's some Daddy in there, and Mimi and Poppy, and a fair sprinkling of Hobby Kids. But most of it is me. And I'm not always pretty.

But sometimes she moves me to tears, man.

Like last night. Mimi and I were going shopping after work, and it was for Anya, so of course Anya could not go. But I couldn't tell her that, because Santa/childhood magic things. So I was upfront, but vague: "Mommy has to go somewhere with Mimi and run errands. I'll be back soon. You need to stay here, because reasons."

She was cool at first -- one lone tear, which is downright stoic for my living anime character. But then she called me into the bedroom. Patted the bed and told me to sit.

"Listen. Listen, Mom."

I smiled. "I'm listening."

"Remember that time when you went [somewhere...I didn't catch that part]? Remember? When you were gone?"

"Yes, baby. Mommy hates to leave you, but every so often, Mommy has to. I'll bring you a treat when I come back, though."

She put her hands on my cheeks and looked deep into my eyes. "I missed you, Mom. Really missed you. Don't go. Stay here and play with me."

No tears, no yelling, no lashing out. Just simple, quiet, rational discourse. From my 4-year-old. About how she can't bear to be away from me -- even with the promise of a treat.

Note that she wasn't begging to go. She wasn't objecting to being left behind; she was objecting to being away from me. Nothing like a coating of Mommy Guilt to make an outing complete.

And she did it not by using my worst behavior against me, but my best. The mommy I wish I always were: Calm, gentle, thoughtful.

Oh, Santa was good to her last night. Yes, indeedy.

Hoarding redemption: Oatmeal boxes

(Sorry for the missed post; Monday turned out to be extraordinarily hectic, and it just slipped my mind!)

Ordinarily, I am not a hoarder -- in fact, I am the trash-happy member of this household. ("What did you do with my whatever?" "Oh, did you want to keep that? I pitched it. Sorry!") But every now and then, something takes hold of me and I hoard. The strangest things, too -- butter tubs, hangers, cardboard toilet paper tubes. This goes on until R teases me, at which point I realize the extent of my foolishness and stop. Usually. (When we moved into this house, with us came a large moving box full of nothing but empty hangers. Seriously.)

 

Lately, it's oatmeal boxes. I eat oatmeal like crazy now -- I go through about a carton a week. And I have been keeping those cartons, because they look cool. I'd thought I would make flower arrangements in them, since my salt box arrangement turned out so well. Which was fine for one or two boxes, but my collection was a bit bigger than that. The problem is that once I save one box, I have a hard time justifying throwing away subsequent boxes. If I needed that one, why don't I need these five?

Yes, I have issues.

I started scheming about a collection of seasonal arrangements. However, the arrangement wasn't quite tall enough for the carton, so I moved it to a vase and repurposed the covered oatmeal box to an advent present container.

Which left the rest of the stack. Thankfully, inspiration struck: I could use them to pack gift boxes for the homeless at the Memphis Union Mission. They ask that you put toiletries, gloves, and little treats in a wrapped shoe box, but I don't have any shoe boxes. However, the oatmeal container is about the same size as a shoe box, and can be wrapped in such a way that the paper need not be ripped off.

Cover the bottoms and tops.

Wrap the sides, leaving a small
overhang at the bottom.

Curl paper over the bottom edge.

Fill!

So I made a bunch of packages, which we will drop off sometime in the next week or so. And have depleted my hoard, which is also nice. 

But I'm almost through with this week's box of oatmeal, so the pressure is mounting.

Remembering

It was on a bright day of midwinter, in New York. The little girl who eventually became me, but as yet was neither me nor anybody else in particular, but merely a soft anonymous morsel of humanity --this little girl, who bore my name, was going for a walk with her father. The episode is literally the first thing I can remember about her, and therefore I date the birth of her identity from that day.

-Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

While I do agree that we are what we eat in the physical sense, in terms of personality I think we are what we remember. I love the above quote because it reminds me of my first memories. A thousand little slices that made up my earliest days.

I have memories of injuries that extend up to, but do not include, the moment of injury itself. My memories then pick up a while later. (My memory of sticking a paper clip in a light switch, for example, ends with "a real bright light," to quote the homeless guy from Terminator. It picks up with me on the couch seeing colored halos around everything.) My brain has thoughtfully edited out the pain, while leaving enough to let me know that it freaking hurt and to never do that again.

My favorite early memory, though, is of a sunny morning when I was around 3. I'd snuck outside early, while the sun was low enough to shine directly in my face, to play on my swingset. As I pumped my legs, I discovered that squinting my eyes created a halo of circular rainbows around my vision. I can remember it all so vividly, even now: The warmth of the sun on my eyelids, the cool air rushing past my scabbed knees, and the rainbows in my eyes.

Age and knowledge have since revealed those rainbows to be merely the sun striking my eyelashes. But I prefer to think I carry tiny rainbows with me wherever I go, and if I squint my eyes right, they will return even on the gray, rainy days.

Fluidity

A fellow Clogger recommended this article, and it's given me some things to think about:

http://themindunleashed.org/2015/11/the-art-of-fighting-without-fighting.html

Love this article. It's good advice to keep in mind when my daughter is pushing my buttons. My favorite quotes:

It is useless to fight against people’s rigid ways, or to argue against their irrational concepts. You will only waste time and make yourself rigid in the process. The best strategy is to simply accept rigidity in others, outwardly displaying deference to their need for order. On your own, however, you must work to maintain your open spirit, letting go of bad habits and deliberately cultivating new ideas. –Robert Greene, emphasis mine

My daughter is very rigid. And I deal with it badly because her rigidity directly affects me. It's important to me to not fight with her, though, so I need to start working on my own fluidity.

Years ago, I dated a guy who loaned me some books on the Tao Te Ching. The part that stuck with me was how being soft is more powerful than being hard; the water will, over time, wear away the rock.

I have been working on my softness, but it's easier said than done. Particularly when I am already stretched thin and my child digs in her heels over stupid things. Because we are both bull-headed control freaks, apparently.

In these moments, I need to learn to flow. Make her laugh. Indulge the whims I can. Or just get over myself. In the immortal words of Bob Seger,*

As you step out in the night, take a lesson from the trees
Watch the way they learn to bend with each breeze.

My second favorite quote from this article is this:

Like E.E. Cummings said, "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

This feeds nicely into my Be Awesome goal. And it's an example I would very much like to set for my children.

In the coming year, I want to focus on these concepts. Maybe I'll have more luck with them than I have been with getting up before dawn.

*"Little Victories." Because everything goes back to either Road House or a Seger song in my mind.

Gratitude

I thought I understood the concept of gratitude. I completed the "List 5 things for which I am grateful" goal -- on both 43 Things and PopClogs. I can pull gratitude out of the worst days, and can find the silver lining in just about any situation. I thought that this meant I had gratitude down.

I do not.

This week has just not gone according to plan. This week was supposed to be cleaning and wrapping Advent gifts and putting together care packages for the Memphis Union Mission and cooking Thanksgiving dinner. We were going to go to Zoo Lights and Starry Nights, have dinner with our families, and I was going to go shopping a couple more times before Freaky...er, Black Friday. I was going to knock out a little freelancing and clean my office and prepare my list for Cyber Monday. I was going to send my daughter to her grandparents for a sleepover so I could go through her toys before Santa dumps another load of them on our house. I was going to get. stuff. done.

And then everybody got sick.

We saw the doctor yesterday; the kids and R have colds, and Kai also has impetigo. Which, given Mom's precarious immune state, means we are on our own for Turkey Day, and pretty much housebound besides until everyone gets to feeling better.

I feel okay. A little scratchy throat, a barely there headache. Probably more allergies than illness, as I have been dusting that which has not been dusted since I got pregnant with Kai. But I am seriously bummed that my big, beautiful week isn't shaping up as I'd hoped. I've been planning this crap for over a month. I took time off from work. Of course it all fell apart.

That's fine. Disappointment is fine. The trick is to be grateful anyway.

I may not get everything done, but I can get most of it done. The rest can be rescheduled.

The important part -- the family togetherness -- will happen regardless of whether or not we check off every box on my list. It just may be more hot cocoa and jammies and Netflix than lights and music and outings.

And isn't that what my list is really about -- spending time with my family? Doing fun things with them?

So I will suck up this internal pouty lip and get over myself. Be grateful for the time I have with my loved ones, even though our activities may not measure up to my highest hopes. And I will enjoy Thanksgiving no matter how we end up spending it.

I hope you, too, are having a pleasant Thanksgiving.

The people in my neighborhood

One of the unsung benefits of working from home is that it gives you insight into a world you miss while you're at the office: Your own neighborhood. All the people that keep things rolling while you're away. I'm coming to appreciate these people in a way I never did before.

My mail carrier has a smile and wave for everyone. When my daughter was a toddler, she used to love waiting in the driveway around mail delivery time, and our mail carrier never disappointed her. When I worked in an office, I couldn't have picked my mail carrier out of a lineup.

One day recently, we didn't get the mail out soon enough and missed pickup. On her way back past (we live on a dead-end street), she noticed our flag up and did a U turn to collect our outgoing mail.

I've heard bad things about our trash collection company, but aside from the fact that we never get pickup on holiday weeks (even though our collection day is Thursday, which is almost never a holiday...sure, that makes sense), I have no complaints. Once, R didn't get the can to the curb in time, so the truck passed us. R ran out to set the can out, and one of the collection guys got out to help him manually empty it into the truck. Another morning, some trash fell out while our can was being emptied. The collector (same guy) hopped out to pick up the trash and pop it back in our can before moving on.

These are little things, sure. But they're things that keep my household going. Small acts of consideration. Evidence that people in often thankless jobs do, indeed, give a crap.

With all the negativity we are bombarded with on a daily basis, I need moments like that. And if I worked in an office, I'd miss them.

I'm thankful for the big things, sure. Job, home, family. But you can't overlook the power of little acts of kindness.

On transparency

This is stupid, but travel discount websites annoy me. Deep down, I think there should be one price for things. I don't have issues with standard discounts, like AARP, but otherwise I think things like room rates and airfare should be the same no matter where you pay for them.

See, I told you it was stupid. "No, I don't want to save money! Please charge me more!" But I don't understand why you pay one rate for a hotel room on their own site and another on a different site. It's the same room. What does it cost for me to stay in it for a night? If I can't afford that, I will stay somewhere else.

I feel the same way, incidentally, about haggling. I can't even be in the room with someone when they are haggling. It makes me queasy.

Store sales and coupons make me feel manipulated, but at least I don't have to go to a third party to take advantage of them. That part makes zero sense to me.

Secret menus also bug me, though not as much. I just kind of feel like all available options should be on the menu.

Yes, I realize I have issues.

Eat days

This year marks a momentous occasion: I am taking over part of the Thanksgiving preparations.

Not just kicking in a casserole or lending the use of my oven. In addition to baking my homemade mac and cheese, I am making the dressing and the pumpkin pie.

The pumpkin pie, especially, feels sacred. Like it's an honor to be allowed to prepare such a dish. I feel like a kid who gets to sit at the grown-ups table at last.

Part of this new order is just shifting our thinking. Though I am not just an adult but a mommy (and middle aged, for pete's sake), my parents still think of me as a kid. (And always will...I have no illusions about that.) So I have to remind them occasionally that I've been feeding and housing myself, paying taxes and keeping the lights on, for 20 years now. And occasionally, I have to say things like, "I'm making part of Thanksgiving dinner this year." Because they're not going to ask me to do that...I'm just a kid.

Mom's RA is better this week, but she has her ups and downs. She's in a bad flare lately, and winding down on her latest prednisone pack. Which means she never knows from one day to the next if she will be able to dress herself. I figure asking her to cube a loaf of bread and roll out a pie crust is a bit much, considering.

Also, I've come to realize that Mom doesn't really like to cook. She likes traditions, and food is one of those. But the actual act of cooking is not one of her favorites. I, on the other hand, love to cook. (It's washing the dishes I'm not crazy about.) So it just makes sense that I take some of the load.

When Anya was younger, she told Mimi that holidays are "eat days." Nobody goes to work; everyone goes to Mimi's house to eat. Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the eating season. Hopefully I (and my oven!) are up to the task.

Boredom

Looking back, I think much of the angst I experienced when I was younger was a product of boredom. Not that busywork cures boredom -- more like the more you try to accomplish, the more you want to accomplish, and before you know it, you're too focused on what you want to achieve next to be bored.

Or maybe that's just me.

And of course nothing fills your days like being a parent. I set out immediately after work the other day to do a little early Christmas shopping for Thing One, because I can't very well shop when she's with me (and she is always with me). So I snarfed down a bowl of cereal at 3 to tide me over, dashed into Cordova, shopped Michael's and Target, then zipped home ahead of the storm. Hugged my babies, fed Kai, showed off the non-gift purchases I made, ate a little dinner, showered, and went to bed.

Today will likely be more of the same, only with added guilt because Mimi and Kai will be going with me.

So between the must-do list and the want-to-do list, I am rarely bored. And I am still not doing everything on the want-to-do list. Currently falling through the cracks are my daily yoga and meditation sessions. I've been too tired to get up and do yoga, and haven't had time to sit still long enough to meditate.

The funny part is that after I returned home last night, my daughter complained "Where'd you go, Mommy? I missed you. I was so bored."

I'm actually kind of jealous of her boredom.

Childhood is weird

I've been thinking a lot about the things we do to kids lately. Like Santa. I almost didn't do Santa (for reasons I have discussed before), but I'm glad I changed my mind. Santa is a lot of fun. For me, anyway. Well, the Christmas morning part. The rest...hm.

We took the kids to see Santa (aka HoHo) at the mall this past weekend. Didn't get pics taken, because I want the kids in their Christmas outfits for that. But Anya wanted to say hi. They're friends, you see.

Anya walked right up, sat on his lap, and they had a little chat. HoHo was in a walking cast, so of course she had to check on him.

Kai has watched all of this from the safety of my arms. At one point, HoHo looked up at him, and Kai reached for him. So I placed Kai on HoHo's knee.

Kai reached up and gently brushed HoHo's beard. HoHo looked down at him and smiled.

"Well, hello there," HoHo said.

Kai's face crumpled, and he began to cry. I immediately rescued him. Too soon. I figured as much. I didn't take Anya to see HoHo until she was 2, and even then she cried the whole time.

Then HoHo asked Anya what she would like for Christmas. She shrugged.

"A loaf of bread?"

 She nodded, a small, unsure smile on her face.

"No," HoHo said. "You don't want bread! You want a toy, right? Maybe a doll?"

A more enthusiastic smile this time, and vigorous nodding. But no elaboration -- which is unusual for my gregarious girl. She was starstruck.

They chatted for a few more minutes, then he gave her a candy cane and they said goodbye.

All the while, I pondered how odd the whole scenario is. Each year, we take our kids to stand in line so they can, for a few brief moments, sit on the lap of a costumed stranger and tell him what goodies they would like to receive. The kids are supposed to be totally cool with this, even though in any other context the costumed stranger would be accused of pedophilia. We then have the opportunity to pay a ridiculous (really, it's highway robbery) sum of money for a photograph of the occasion. How does this make sense again?

Life is weird, I guess. At least HoHo is good weird.

Old and improved

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but my daughter has varying yet specific uses for the terms "old" and "new."

a) The usual: "Mommy, this car is old. You need to buy a new one." (Because it has a leak we can't fix. And to her, it is an old car; when I bought it, she was in utero. But she says this about everything. Why fix something when you can buy new? How very American of her.)

b) New equals young: "Mommy, you old. Anya is new." (Anyone older than, say, 10 is old.)

c) Old equals sick. "Mimi is new! I can stay at her house!" (She loves sleepovers with my mother.)

I get a kick out of her telling me I am new, but of course that is only in the context of illness. In all other contexts, I am so very old.

I would like to say I shrug this off, but when actresses younger than I am are hawking old lady cream, it gets to me. Especially since I am starting to see some signs of aging. Probably not so many as I think, but this face is not my face, and I can't blame it all on the breastfeeding baggage. That merely erased my cheekbones. No, this face has more underchin than my face. It is developing undereye bags at an alarming rate. (And I already had dark circles to deal with.) My eyes themselves are red most of the time -- not sure if that's age or allergies, but it doesn't help. And then there's the lingering melasma and fine lines, which I had almost made peace with, dammit. Add my crazy hair, and half the time I'm not sure who the heck is looking back at me in the mirror.

I have total mom bod. I will have mom bod until I finish breastfeeding, which as far as I am concerned is nowhere in the near future. (No periods vs an extra 15 lbs...gee, I wonder which one I should choose?) I have postpartum hair, which looks extra weird to me because I colored it. (I like the color...it's just still a shock to have hair this dark. Even with no gray, my hair wasn't quite this dark. Or maybe it was just shinier?) In short, I look in the mirror and am mildly disgusted by what I see.

I guess it's not necessarily bad, any of it. I just don't look like me.

I don't feel as old as I look in the mirror, though. Which makes it that much worse.

I know I just need to adapt. Find some decent concealer, maybe pick a new hairdo, get some clothes that are a little more flattering to my new figure. Stop wishing I looked like I used to and start working with what I now have.

But man, I miss me.

Nobody said anything about four

I'd been warned about the Terrible Twos. And how they become the Trying Threes. Nobody prepared me for when the Twos started around 18 months, though. And no one bothered to mention that the Threes would last til 5, but that looks like the card I drew. Welcome to the Feisty Fours.

Initially, I blamed this behavior on the new world order. This year has been eventful -- new baby, Mimi's illnesses, Daddy going back to work -- and it's understandable that she'd act up. But she seems to have adapted to (and even embraced) her baby brother. Mimi's rheumatoid arthritis, and her weakened immune system due to the treatment, take a bit more getting used to...but she's doing okay with that. Her nightmares have slowed, at any rate. And she's even adjusted to Daddy "popping out of bed" (believe me, the man does not pop) at 4 a.m.

But she is still ornery as hell. Independent and bull-headed and bossy and aggravating. Some days, she is my sweet, loving, helpful daughter. Others, I truly worry that her teens will be the death of me. They warn you about the teens. Nobody says anything about 4.

I really hope 5 is better. I could use a little breather before Kai turns 2.

Fall mornings

Some of my favorite mornings are those in which the house is chilly because we forgot to switch the AC to heat the night before. This only happens in the fall, and that's why I like it -- because it's a fall thing. If I were to wake up in December to a house that was 67 degrees, I would whine. But in October or November, I'm happy to wake up with a cold nose.

No, I don't really understand it, either.

One theory is that I love fall so much because I hate summer. I'm happy to wake up cold because for far too many months, cold was a distant memory. But I also remember feeling this way as a child, when I lived someplace with more evenly balanced seasons and thus did not have such strong feelings about summer. I even kind of liked summer. Probably because triple-digit days were a rare occurrence.

Thinking back on those childhood fall mornings brings up a wave of memories. Nothing specific -- no people or events, no particular outfit,* just a feeling of what it felt like to be me as a child. The dusty smell when the heat kicked on. The crisp smell of the air outside, tinged with the smoke of burning leaves. The chill in my chest and nose when I breathed in. The warmth of the sunshine through the chill. Soft flannel and warm sweaters, cold ears and fingertips. I loved them then, and I love them now.

It occurs to me, looking back, just how many fall mornings I have experienced. And, if I am indeed at or near my halfway point in this life, how very many fall mornings I have yet to look forward to. 

Yet somehow, it doesn't feel like enough. It will never be enough.

*Family joke. When I was a child, I had a near-perfect memory of pretty much everything that had ever happened to me, down to what I was wearing at the time. When I started to lose details in these memories, I lost the outfits first. So I would describe an event or a memory to my parents, then ask them what I had been wearing. They found this extremely amusing. I didn't truly see the humor in it until I became a parent myself.

Be awesome

One of my goals on PopClogs is "Be awesome." My adding it to my goal list was completely tongue-in-cheek, but I find it a good tool for focusing my intentions.

What does it mean to me to be awesome? First of all, it is to be genuinely myself. Which means to take others' feelings into consideration. To refrain from saying or doing something that would intentionally or unintentionally hurt someone else. It is important to me to treat others as I would be treated, and this is a huge first step. I sleep much better in my own skin when I do this.

I could take that one step further, though. Go out of my way to say and do things to make people feel good. That's less passive, though. It sets me up for being rebuffed. Takes me out of my comfort zone. But it would mean so much more than merely doing no harm.

As a parent, my goal is to be the kind of mom who steers her children with love and gentle humor. I am not this kind of mom right now. I am more the bribe-and-bark sort of mom, with the occasional guilt trip and threat thrown in. I have a very headstrong daughter, and barking orders is efficient. But it makes me feel like a heel. So I am working on this.

I'd like to do more than that, though. I want to be the mom who helps her kids fly, not just the mom who keeps her kids safe. I could stick them in a hole for 18 years, and they would be perfectly safe. But what kind of life would that be? What kind of life would it prepare them for?

As a citizen, I want to take a more active role in my town, in my community, in the world. Recycle. Reuse. Repurpose. Give. Get involved. I don't know how I am going to go about this when I can barely stay on top of the laundry, but I'm giving it thought. If I want to live in a good place, I need to do my part to make it a good place.

It's a tall order, being awesome. An open-ended prompt. I could never possibly finish being awesome.

I like goals like that, though. It's satisfying to create a to-do list and check it off, but you don't grow that way. You grow by setting a bar that you can never stop raising.

Anya's new friends

In case it hasn't come across loud and clear here, I am a total helicopter mom. I was an overprotected child, but compared to my childhood, my kids are wrapped in (sanitized) bubble wrap and locked away in Rapunzel's tower. I may not be the most protective mom in the world, but I'm certainly an also-ran.

And I make my daughter crazy.

There's an awesome park near our house with a 2-story slide. I say awesome not because I play on the equipment (I'm too afraid of heights for that nonsense, though as a kid I'd have lobbied to live there), but because my child adores it. And I don't really mind it; it's got that nice foam rubber stuff on the ground, shaded picnic tables, a mister for miserably hot summer days, and decent cell reception. As far as parks go, it's pretty swanky. Just don't ask me to go down the big slide. Or even climb up on the walkway. I'm getting wimpier as I get older.

My hesitation is that the play area is marked for ages 5-12, and my child is not. She's 4. Big for her age, but clutzy like her mom. Also, big kids don't really tend to take as much care with my little miracle as I'd like. They think she is a stupid baby, and even those that don't physically play rough with her end up hurting her through their indifference. I think mean thoughts at these kids who blow off my beautiful, sweet, friendly daughter, but otherwise what can I do?

Burn. I sit there and burn. For Anya, and for all the kids who were ever snotty to me. Which was kind of a lot...I wasn't the most socially adept child.

So when we pulled up to the park the other day and it was full of middle school kids, can you blame me for insisting we go to a different park?

I made it up to her, though. We returned to Awesome Park the next day. There were still older kids there, but they were not as old.

Anya sees these kids and shouts, "Look -- it's Anya's new friends!"

Oh, my heart.

Of course, that is not how it worked out at all. The kids thought she was a stupid baby and wouldn't play with her.

But all was not lost; some of her true friends showed up, and a good time was had by all. Because while I am often right, I am not always right.

And that's a good thing. I like her view of the world better. I'd probably be happier if I thought of strangers as new friends.

5:30 a.m. sounds so much better at bedtime

When I go to bed, a 5:30 wake-up sounds utterly doable. I'm going to bed at a very reasonable hour these days (9-9:30). I just haven't been getting much sleep. Kai is in power nurse mode, and has also been incredibly gassy. I'm thinking the culprit may be all the dairy he's eating. (Which would just figure; I bought him a bunch of yogurt at the store last night.) When my alarm goes off, I mentally give it the finger and snooze until time for work/Anya wakes me.

Kai is never the first one up. He is nothing like his sister in that area.

But even when nobody is kicking me in my Cesarean scar (Kai) or attempting to stick their little toes up my nose (Anya), I don't get up. Because my kids tend to make a cozy Mumma sammich while they sleep, and that feels pretty darn nice. I know that it won't be too long before they no longer want to snuggle with me, so I'm soaking it up while I can. Me time can wait.

That's all well and good, but I need to squeeze the yoga in somewhere. I'm working on it.

Or I will be, once I get a little more sleep.

So...yesterday was Monday

And there was no blog post. Oops. This weekend was...ugh. Anya has been in Purple Minion mode, which means I was tearing my hair out by Sunday night. I totally forgot about the blog until just now.

Don't feel bad. I also forgot my flu shot. For which I'd even made an appointment. Things fall through the cracks when the Purple Minion comes to visit.

But my garage is cleaner now. I can park my car in it. We even bought a garage door remote that doesn't require reassembly to use. (The old one got dropped a couple times. It did not take kindly to being dropped.) So while the car is still leaking and moldy, at least it won't get more moldy while we figure out where the leak is. That's a load off.

Now I just need to figure out why Kai is nursing half the night, so I can get some sleep and get back to my 5:30 wake-ups.

And hope that the Purple Minion's stay is a short one. I miss my sweet girl.

November 2015: Never say die! (And be grateful, bitch.)

The above is the title of the November 2015 PopClogs Bootcamp. If you're not on PopClogs, the Bootcamps are basically a set of monthly goals we set for ourselves. Largely fitness related, but not entirely. Each month has a theme. I'm particularly fond of this one, because it captures perfectly my current mindset.

I had big plans for October. Through no fault of my own, I did not accomplish everything I set out to do (or even most of it), but I am not giving up. I have refined my list and added to it (probably too much, to be honest), and am approaching November with a Goonies "give-'em-hell" grin.

Despite my big list, which I will refrain  from sharing so you can't laugh at me a few weeks from now, my main focus is to get my mornings in order. I've found that when my mornings go well, my whole day goes well. So it is my goal to achieve the following each morning:

• Get up at 5:30.
• Practice yoga.
• Meditate. (Even 2 minutes would be nice.)
• Write a blog entry.
• Write a paragraph on my book.

I have a weekend cleaning routine going, finally. The house does not get 100% clean every week, but I get the big chunks. The laundry gets done -- sometimes it even gets put away! Each Saturday morning I get up, practice yoga, and clean the house before we do anything else. Sundays are free days, or I repeat the Saturday process if there is still cleaning left to do. I've been doing this for a few months now, and it's finally become routine; even Anya is into the "clean on Saturday morning" groove. So now I just need to get my weekdays in order, in order to accomplish the things I want to before the work day starts.

This is my focus for November. Everything else is just gravy.

Speaking of gravy, some of my subgoals this month are to work on teaching Anya about gratitude and taking over some of the Turkey Day preparations. I'll talk more about both later. Should be interesting.

Everyday photos

Going through the memory card on my camera is always an adventure. Ever since my daughter learned how to use the camera, she's become obsessed with taking pictures. And she learned how to use the camera before she turned 2. Yay point and shoot.

At first, what I ended up with after one of her photo sprees was 200 blurry photos of kneecaps and far-away faces. I still need to clear a lot of those out. I can probably free up a gig or so on my hard drive that way.

Now she's taking better pictures, but her subject matter is still...interesting. I just discovered that while I was making those mini pumpkin pies, she took 12 nearly identical photos of my mug tree.

There are also 20 or so photos of my rear end, taken while I was searching for the leaf cookie cutters. Which I will not be sharing, thank you. (Though I must say, it doesn't look as large from her angle as I thought it would.)

But then there's this adorable selfie.

And this slice of everyday: Her brother letting me know he wants out of the high chair.

Pictures like these are why I let her use the camera. It gives me a taste of life from her level.

I delete the blurry pics, and the duplicate pics, but leave the rest. The mundane images: The kitchen cabinets. The couch. The floor. These images are of her childhood home, and someday she may want to remember it just as it was.

Some of my favorite pictures are those that show what my world looked like when I was small. My mother's yellow kitchen curtains. My parents' cars, parked on the gravel driveway I dug through looking for rocks with fossils in them. The tree outside my bedroom window. I don't have photos of some of the things I wish I did: Mom's daffodils, for instance. And the sandbox my grandfather built for me. Those exist only in my mind now. But there are other photos. Little scraps of the girl I was, that someday I will share with my own kids.

Everyday things matter. Which is why I let my kid take photos of them.

Well-behaved kids

At first glance, this post on FB made me smile.

Even though there should be a hyphen after "Well."

Then I reconsidered. My kids occasionally have bad days -- in outsider-speak, they "misbehave." I have bad days, too. And good ones. Do I get a discount when I am having a good day? No. So why do I get one when my kids are?

If you said "Because you are being blamed for their undesirable behavior," you get a gold star.

My kids are normally very gracious. The big one says "please" and "thank you," and keeps tantrums/messes to a minimum. She says "hi" to everyone she meets, and has since she could talk. She'll charm the pants off you if you talk to her for five minutes. The little one is so chill, he once fell asleep in Pump It Up. And he, too, is a little charmer. He loves to make people laugh, as well.

But they have days. Days when the big one throws a hissy fit because it's Wednesday. Days when the little one will not be appeased no matter what we do -- walk, sit, rock, nurse, play with toys, nothing helps.

I can take credit for neither of these things. I do what I can to elicit publicly acceptable behavior, but the big one is just now grown up enough to comprehend that there is such a thing. The little one answers to himself and himself alone. As most 7-month-olds do.

And my kids are neurotypical. I cannot imagine how posts like this sting for parents whose kids are not.

At the risk of flagellating a deceased equine, children are people. Not pets. I have not trained mine to do anything. If you want to award gold stars for parenting, reward me. For not losing my temper when my daughter empties 5 packets of Splenda into the salsa bowl...again. For gracefully dealing with a jackkniving son whose antics are flashing my nipples to everyone in a three-table radius. For cheerfully accepting that I might have to eat standing up while nursing a baby and entertaining a preschooler, which means I don't really get to eat at all. Reward me for dealing with all this with a smile instead of vague threats and sharp words.

After all, unlike them, I am old enough to know how to behave in public.

Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?

When I told my daughter that Poppy was going to be 68 today, her reaction was comical.

"Ew! Yucky!"

Yucky?

"I no like 68! Yuck!"

"But that's how old he is."

"No! No 68!"

"Okay, how old should he be?"

No hesitation. "Four!"

I'll give her that. Four was an awesome age. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"But so many good things happen when you get older. If I'd stayed four, I wouldn't have you. If Poppy had stayed four, he wouldn't have either of us."

"Sixty-eight is yucky!"

I personally can't speak for 68; I have a few years before I get there. But the ages I wouldn't repeat are far behind me, and the ages I'm becoming keep getting better and better. So I have high hopes for 68. I hope it's half as good for Poppy as my 40s have been for me.

Happy birthday, Dad.

Kids need a better publicist

Now that I have kids, I see kids differently. Before, my only experience with kids was being one and babysitting for other people's. Neither of those experiences really gives you insight like giving birth to kids does.

Since having my own kids, I'm growing ever sensitive to how we talk about them. And it's kind of horrifying. Basically, we act like children are little shits, deliberately setting out to make our lives difficult.

Before having kids, I bought into this view of kids, even though I knew better. (I certainly never set out to give my parents a hard time.) Worse, I supported it, without thinking. Found humor in it, even.

I'm not saying I am innocent even now. I poke fun at my kids' idiosyncrasies. I act like they are trying to make me crazy. I post photos they will kill me for later. I talk about them like they are not there. I bought my kid this shirt.

Granted, it's true. But it's not her fault.

I feel bad about it all now. I get that sometimes you have to laugh so you don't cry, but at what cost? So I'm working on improving my mindset, and trying to take into consideration how it makes my kids feel when I say things like "You are making me crazy."

But the rest of the world says stuff like this, too, and worse. Unapologetically. And it's starting to piss me off.

Like the carpet commercial from Home Depot. Look, kids are messy. You don't have to tell me that. I wish I could shampoo my carpet, because after 4 years of my daughter and 7 months of my son, it is beyond nasty. (I can't shampoo it because it's all bunchy, which is another rant entirely.) My living room alone bears several red blotches (not blood...red Kool-Aid and juice), some gray grime, and too many spit-up spots to count. It, quite frankly, smells. And it's mostly the kids' fault. But the commercial calling the kid a professional carpet stainer, the one that implies this kid lives to stain the carpet, really irritates me. If we say, even in jest, that kids do this stuff on purpose, don't we -- and others -- end up treating them that way? Don't they start to think of themselves that way? What the hell kind of start in life is that?

You want to know why kids act the way they do? Imagine talking to your friends, your coworkers, your boss, your parents the way you talk to and about your kids. Imagine if everyone spoke to you that way. There's part of your answer right there.

Kids are not small adults. They are people in progress -- emphasis on in progress. Sometimes they say and do things that create more work for us, irritate us, even destroy property. It's not intentional most of the time. (And if it is intentional, you have bigger issues to deal with than a muddy carpet, my friend.) But they do have feelings, understand more than you give them credit for, and are listening to your every word.

Use those words carefully.

Letting go

There is a dried yellow rose on my dashboard. It is from my grandmother's casket. On the drive home, it perfumed my car, while the sun dried it to perfection. I need to get a box to keep it in, because it's time to put it away.

Time to let go.

I did not have the best relationship with my grandmother. She could say things, unthinking or not, that cut to the bone. And did, often. At least to me, and to my mother. I've heard anecdotal evidence that we were not the only victims of her sharp tongue. On multiple occasions in his life, I heard my grandfather tell her to shut up -- necessarily so.

Yet so many people have good memories of her. She was kind to them. Generous with her time and her money. And, honestly, she was kind to me. She never doted on me the way my kids' grandparents dote on them, no. But she never missed my birthday, or Christmas. Her efforts to give me gifts as a child were often misguided, but she did try. She also gave my children generous gifts. One of her last acts was to send my mother a birthday card.

I want to hang on to the good things she did. Holding a grudge against her for the things she said to me makes my stomach hurt. I do not want my last memories of her to be bad ones. So I have deleted the last email she sent. Soon, I will put away the last card she sent, and this beautiful flower that does nothing but remind me of seeing her body in that coffin.

I did not respond to either the email or the card. For that, I am sorry. She was so lonely. But I could not for the life of me come up with a nice way to respond to the harsh messages they contained. So I put it off. Too long.

I did not want to respond in kind. Because I suspect we were more alike than she ever dreamed. I see a resemblance in her personality, my father's, and mine. A tendency to say things that aren't intended to be hurtful, but sometimes come out that way. A blunt, duty-oriented approach to life. A preoccupation with things being fair that leads to incessant comparison (I have since abandoned the concept of fair, but I used to share this obsession, so I get it). We may not have been peas in a pod, but we were certainly cut from the same bolt of cloth.

I know that my words and actions are sometimes misconstrued to be hurtful when I intended nothing of the sort. I know my father loves me and wants what is best for me, even if that doesn't always come across in his words and actions. Is it so far-fetched that my grandmother may have felt the same?

It's what I choose to believe, anyway. I like us both better this way.

So I am letting go. Of the hurt. Of the resentment. Of the guilt. Of the might-have-beens. Of her.

Goodbye, Gran. I love you. Rest in peace.

Rebuilding my supply

My milk supply really took a hit while we were in IL. My normal galactagogue schedule looks like this:

• 5ish cups of Mother's Milk tea throughout the day
• Morning oatmeal (2 servings) with 1 T of flax seed meal and 1 T of nutritional yeast
• Cheerios or oat bread for lunch
• Almonds for snacks
• 5 fenugreek capsules at breakfast, lunch, and bedtime
• 2 T brewer's yeast if needed

Our local store was out of fenugreek before we left, so while I was gone, my routine dwindled to

• 3ish cups of Mother's Milk tea throughout the day
• Morning oatmeal (1-1.5 servings) with sliced almonds on top

I came home making dribbles where I used to make spurts. I have never had an oversupply, but I can (with help) make enough to fill Kai's belly. After a few nights of nonstop nursing, though, I realized I needed to step up my game. So brewer's yeast is back on the menu for a while.

Man, I hate this stuff. Tastes godawful, and gives me a hangover to boot. (All of the headache, queasiness, and gas of drinking beer, without the buzz! What's not to love?) I see now why women put it in sugary cookies. But I am slowly (slowly) losing weight, and don't want to mess that up by adding insanely caloric cookies to my daily ritual.

So I will deal. And hope that my boobs get back to normal soon.

Do all the things!

Though my projects this month haven't necessarily been creative, and I have had damn good reasons for not accomplishing all I set out to do, I still feel like this right now:

I haven't been able to keep up with my webcomics, but I still heart Toothpaste for Dinner.

That green bit? That's this week. I have probably doomed us to fail with my overplanning, in fact. But sometimes, things go right. So here is the agenda:

• Tuesday: Hair cuts (though no color...I will just have to be sparkly rooted in our family pics) for Anya and I, also a quick shopping trip 
• Wednesday: Corn maze if it's not too muddy; pumpkin carving if it is
• Thursday: Flu vacs for the kids; family pics
• Friday: Corn maze if Wednesday was too muddy and the kids don't feel yucky; pumpkin carving otherwise
• Saturday: Cleaning; shopping for Poppy's birthday present; trick or treat; Halloween festival

Also, somewhere in there I will put in a few hours of editing for one of my clients. In addition, I will be starting my day job an hour early and taking short lunches to make up time for Monday's visit with Kai (I thought he might have an ear infection, but was just being paranoid :) and Thursday's shots.

So yoga might not be happening this week, either. I will have to work on that in November.

And the meditation. I only managed to squeeze in a couple of sessions all month.

I have kept the house relatively clean, though. And kept up with the blogging. I also may very well meet my (modest) step goal. Not all of the plates hit the floor. Just...most of them.

So this week will be crazy. And for what I do not accomplish, there is always next month.