Grandmother's Wood Burning Stove

I remember my father's mother very well.  She spent lots of time with me as I was growing up and she was that quintessential "granny" that every child loves to have.  I have many memories of her, such as her trying to get me to eat more and feeding me one bite every time I would swing back and forth on the swing, just so I'd get the full meal down. 

I remember he pulling weeds in a back yard that, to me, was pretty much all weeds.  But she seemed to get some enjoyment out of it, and I got to play uninterrupted, so I didn't mind.  But this post is about her stove.

Mostly, my grandmother came to me to visit.  She would stay in our house and she'd take care of me before and after school while my parents were at work.  It was always fun when she was around.  Every so often though, I'd go to her house and spend time with her.  I remember being there and waiting for her to cook dinner.  She would spend long amounts of time making more food than my cousins or I could eat, but boy, was it good food.

What I remember vaguely though, was that in the middle of this house, she had a wood burning stove.  She would pile in wood and when the top got hot, she would cook things on top of it.  It was black and it looked scary to me.  I stayed away, but I definitely ate all the food she made from it.

I spoke with my father about it recently.  He told me she was a hazard using that stove, but she insisted.  She would leave logs hanging out and they'd fall off and nearly burn the floor.   She apparently had a regular electric stove, but she didn't want to use it. 

My memories are so vague and yet clear at the same time of the days I spent with her at her house, eating her cornbread and other food she had learned how to make when she was a young girl. 

The Big Boy Update:  "Here, heart me."  "I'll heart you."  Things my son said to his sister while playing with a stethoscope. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  quaaawwwwkkkk.   She's making this quacking, growling, squawking noise lately as she runs around.  It's odd, but it's so toddler.

Fitness Update:  Eight miles in thirty-degree weather with my neighbor this morning.  We were so cold, and then we got so hot.  We forgot to run into the park because we started running later than normal and we didn't even think about the fact that it was light and we could run in the park, we'd run in the dark so much lately.

I Learned Two Things Today

It's not a good day if you don't learn something.  Most days we learn things, usually trivial or inconsequential, but learning goes on, weather we notice it or not.  That's life.  The two things I learned today were musical in nature. 

There was a brief audio clip I heard in the course of the days events, either on television or radio or somewhere that reminded me of something and it stuck with me.  It was a snippet of the song, Jump in The Line (a song title I had to figure out by playing the song forward in my mind until I got to the chorus part) that reminded me of the movie Beetle Juice.

Tonight, I decided to buy the song in iTunes.  I found it easily and downloaded it to my phone.  Then I began dancing around the house, holding the phone and making everyone else around wonder if I'd drank too much or perhaps just lost it for good.  I was not concerned, I was happy dancing and if they didn't think I was crazy already, a little more emphasis wouldn't hurt.

So  about those two things I learned,  first, I discovered the song was  by Harry Belafonte.  I'd heard the name for as long as I can remember and associated him with music from my parent's age.  Then, after downloading the song, I learned my second thing of the day: Harry Belafonte was black.  

I had no association at all with his music or his ethnicity, only the era his music was from.  Now that I know a wee bit more about him, I like him.  Is it possible as we get older we branch out both forwards and backwards in music appreciation?

The Big Boy Update:  Yesterday and it's friends.  My son thinks anything that happened in the past was, "yesterday".  It took us a while to realize this.  He's not telling a fib, he truly thinks things that happened recently were all, "yesterday".

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   The facial funk.  It's still there.  And I'm not thrilled about putting yeast infection medication on her face, but it appears it's going to take a few more days to get it eradicated. 

And on the Funny Side:  My cousin wrote me a check last night for something I'd gotten for her on Amazon.com and today as I put it in my wallet to deposit I misread the quotation as the check was upside down.  I thought it was great though:  " To God be the glory.  Great savings he hath done."  What a great quote, I thought, that God was supporting us in our bank account savings.  It was then that I realized I'd misread what it really said:  "Great things he hath done." 

That Coffee Pot Thing

We went to Practice Thanksgiving last weekend at our friend's house and they had hot spiced cider to drink.  I love hot spiced cider.  I like making it for holiday parties and I like drinking it in general any time of the year. 

I usually put a big pot on the oven, add in a gallon of apple cider and add mulling spices to it.  When it's hot and ready I put mugs by the stove and people use a ladle to fill up a mug.  And that's worked well, only there's usually a bit of a mess around the area.  My friends had an altogether better solution, they had a big coffee pot thing.

It's one of those things you see at company meetings where you put your mug up to the container, pull the lever down and coffee comes out right into your cup.  They had just used it for making cider.  What a great idea.   They prepared the cider beforehand and when people started arriving, they plugged it in and in a few minutes, they had hot cider ready.

And I wanted one of those coffee pot things.  I asked my father-in-law the next day what they were called.  I was looking on Amazon under "coffee pot" and I was coming up with over seventeen-hundred results.  He wasn't sure, so he asked my mother-in-law.  She immediately called out, "you want a coffee urn." 

And that's what they're called.  I found a very nice one for thirty-eight dollars including shipping.  It arrived yesterday evening.  I was ready with my wassail recipe with apple juice, spices, sliced orange and lemon.  Oh, and the wine and rum.  I filled up the urn and was ready to turn it on for Thanksgiving Dinner.

Today, I turned it on.  I turned it on early.  I drank wassail from four-thirty to nine o'clock.  It's a good thing wassail isn't that strong or I'd be laid out by now.  I am very fond of my new coffee urn.  For Christmas, I'm going to make spiced cider.  

The Big Boy Update:  "The sun is getting wet."  My son was looking outside yesterday at the rain.  He and Mimi talked about how it was landing on the deck and splashing.  He looked at her and said, "the sun is getting wet."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Busted lip.  Two days ago she fell in the garage and split her lip.  She was upset for a short while and it stopped bleeding rather quickly, but the next morning it looked frightful.  It's still swollen today and has a large vertical gray scab.  It doesn't seem to bother her much, but I've been having her put chap stick on it to keep it moist while it heals.

Fatness Update:  At least, that's how I feel after Thanksgiving dinner tonight.  It was a delightful night with family and friends and I'd gladly do it again (but give me a year to recuperate first).

I Have a Second Blog

I do, it's true.  It even has a name.  Only it doesn't really exist.  It's the blog location for all the thing that just don't fit here.

There are things I think about that would make sense to put in a personal diary, but not to share on the internet.  There are things I think about that I know would cause me to lose all three of my readers were I to write posts about them.   Trust me, there are things I think about that you just don't want to know about.  

So when those ideas come up, and believe me they do, I just pretend to write them up while I sit in the tub relaxing after putting the children to bed.  And I smile.  Because usually, those posts make me laugh, even though they'd make everyone else cringe.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is fond of one of his teachers, Kica.  He sometimes tells her her last name is the same as ours, so our running joke with her is that she's a member of our family.  Coming home the other day I asked him as we drove into our driveway, "who lives here?"  He replied, "daddy."  I then asked him if anyone else lived here and he said, "Kica."  So I asked him if he lived here and he said, "no, I live at school."  Kica tells us about my son's days at school and some of the funny things he says and does.  He was having a problem with, "a need to move" and one day he went to the back door, turned to Kica and said, "Kica, I need to run."  So she opened the door, he went out and ran around in circles until he was calm enough to come back into the classroom and focus on his work.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Happy know clap hand hoo ray"  My daughter is picking up new songs more quickly now.  One of the most recent ones is, If You're Happy and You Know it.   She will go on and on after signing it together with us, but the longer she sings, the more words she leaves out and the more verses she combines.  This is true with most of her songs.  By the time we got to the grocery store last night, she was happily and enthusiastically repeating, "happy know clap hands hoo ray!"

Fitness Update:  Headache, possibly a migraine, but I wanted to go to the gym with my neighbor this morning because she had some news she wanted to share with me that was important to her family.  It was a rough workout but I'm glad I went because we did have a chance to talk.

You'll Need a Lot of Spoons (and the move-in meltdown)

I found out I was pregnant the week we signed a contract to start building our house.  My son was born a week before we moved in to that same house, two weeks after our first wedding anniversary.  It was a busy year.

If it weren't for the help of our parents, it would have been far more difficult and much more stressful.  My son was unexpectedly delivered four weeks early and that didn't help with our schedule and planning either. 

But we made it work.  It was an exciting holiday season, what with a new baby, a new house and family all around us.  And it was busy.  We had so much to do house-wise and we had a small child that also needed a lot of our time.  There was so much to be done I had trouble prioritizing sometimes and getting anything done.

For instance, I would leave the bedroom to go to the kitchen to get one thing done, see something in the living room that I could possibly do on the way, stop to do that, realize I needed to get something else in the bedroom, go back, get confused at where I was going in the first place and walk to the kitchen, look around and realize I'd completely forgotten what thing I was about to do because I'd seen so much else that needed to be done along the distracted way.

And stuff...we had so much stuff out and in our faces.  Usually, most of our stuff is put away and I don't have to think about all the tureens and wine glasses or the paperback books because they're put up.  But when so much of your "stuff" is out and visible, it's mentally distracting.  Okay, well it is to someone who likes a tidy and organized house.  Some people prefer to be in an environment surrounded by lots of things and they find that comfortable.  For me though, it was way too much mental static.

It was about this time that a good friend of ours sent over, via my parents, some random things she thought I might be able to use.  It was stuff that needed to go in different areas of the house, like the craft area or the children's toy area or the kitchen area and it was all piled into one box.  And right about then, I was about to snap from too many things and too many decisions to be made and I didn't want to see a box of random junk I might not even want from someone else.

One of the things in that box was a stack of baby spoons.  Our friend had said, "you're going to need a lot of spoons when he starts eating solids."  And okay, I believed her, but these spoons were random and different and I had a child that was eight-days-old and I didn't have any clue where my utensils were, much less where the baby spoons were going to go.  My husband looked at them and said, "this one's from Dairy Queen.  It's not even a baby spoon."

It was about then that I had my meltdown.  I just couldn't take any more right at that moment.   My mother-in-law was in the room and she said, "give me the spoons" and with a big flourish, she threw them in the trash.   And we laughed.  And I felt better.  It was something little, but it helped a lot.

Today, I think back about that conversation and those spoons.  I think about how we scoffed at the spoon from Dairy Queen and I think how foolish we were to shun the spoon just because it was designed to be disposable.  Today, the spoons my children love the most are the ones we saved from a frozen yogurt store in Florida two years ago.  We saved two then, and we got four more of the same style from another store in another town much later.

Sometimes it takes time to learn something valuable.

The Big Boy Update:  "I made Batman."  My son had a cookie for dessert.  He took one bite out of the left side of the round cookie and then he took a similar-sized bite out of the right side.  He held the remaining cookie up and realized it looked a bit like the batman symbol.  When he showed me, I realized he was completely right.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We walked out from the grocery store tonight in rather heavy rain.  I was pushing my daughter in the cart and I told her we were going to get wet.  She smiled and told me she could feel the rain.  She held out her hand and caught raindrops and then wanted to see if my hand was catching raindrops too.  After we got into the car, she said to me, "Let's do it again."

The Stinky Closet and Other Odoriferous Issues

We have a closet that smells bad.  It didn't start out that way, it developed suddenly, when something died.   More challenging, is how to make the closet stop smelling.  I'm going to have to rewind to explain how we got to this point and how we're not that surprised or upset.

We have an "encapsulated crawl space" under the house, or the half of the house that isn't basement.  By encapsulated, it means the space is relatively sealed in and is factored into the overall envelope of space for heating and cooling purposes.  It doesn't mean you're heating and cooling extra space, it means that space is protected from the outside temperatures so the ambient temperature is closer to the inside of the house.  Ultimately, it should be a cost savings, when implemented correctly.

It's a nice crawl space.  It's lined with thick plastic over the gravel and it's clean because it doesn't get debris from outside blown in from vents we would otherwise have in a regular crawl space.  Recently, we had a semi-annual maintenance service done on our HVAC systems and when we opened the internal door to the crawl space, we noticed a smell.  And this wasn't the smell we now have in our closet.  This was a rodent-like, fecal-ish smell that made us fairly confident there were little critters in our crawl space.  Also, there was scat.

We had someone come and do two things at that point, first they swept out the debris all through the crawl space, much of which had been there since the house was constructed.  There was a question on if the scat was old or new, because it was quite hard and dry, said the main from our insect treatment company.  He also said that keeping out small mice is a very difficult proposition because they can wiggle through extremely small spaces. 

But we wanted to make some sort of an effort to make it more difficult.  As they were sweeping out the debris, they went around with spray foam and sealed up any small holes in the perimeter.  And that went smoothly and we hoped the problem was over. 

The thing is, they may have done a very good job, thus trapping a small animal in the crawl space.  And it died.   It may have died in the wall between the floor and the basement, but wherever it died, we can't see it or get to it.  We can't really hone in on it other than the smell is strongest near the closet under the stairs.  So, other than tearing up walls, we're going to have to wait for it to decompose and dessicate at which point the smell will fade. 

Today is day four of the smelly closet and it is the best and least-stinky day yet.   Hopefully that will be the last of the crawl space critter situation.  We shall see.

The Big Boy Update:  "There's the Christmas man."  My son told daddy this the other night as he saw some Christmas decorations that included a Santa.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Hair spray.  Okay, this hair thing is getting out of control.  Her hair is so thin and fine that we want to keep what we can of it.  She doesn't mind bows, but if they annoy her, she'll pull them out.  Also, she rolls around so much that they sometimes just fall out on their own, taking strands of hair with them.  She doesn't need anything, other than her hair is in her eyes.  So today, I implemented, "operation hair spray".  If we can spray it back for a while, just until it's long enough to get fully into a band, we'll be making progress.  

Fitness Update: Non-stop cardio and core day at the gym.  Our trainer was laughing at us as we were all failing at simple things that, done individually, should have been easy, but when it's the twenty-third thing you've done without stopping, makes you look like a wimp.

One Foot, Two Foot, Sock Foot, Shoe Foot

Do you remember being a child and having one shoe come untied and after a while you just kicked it off?  Maybe you didn't feel like re-tying it or it was just nice to have it off for a while.   And yet your other shoe was on, but that didn't seem to matter.

It was an interesting sensation, having one foot taller with the shoe than the socked foot.  It was a strange feeling to walk around off-set in height.  It was also, in a strange way, fun.   I remember one time walking around for hours with just one shoe on many years ago.

My children don't seem to care if they have both, one or no shoes on.  Last night I took one shoe off to get something out, like a pebble, and I had to go take care of some child thing immediately, so I launched into action with only one shoe.    It took me several minutes to get back to my shoe, but it reminded me of my childhood.

Was it a novel feeling?  No.  Was it interesting enough to not bother putting the other shoe back on.  Definitely not.  I felt awkward and just wanted to get back to the missing shoe so I could get some foot-based sameness back in my life. 

Children are so flexible mentally.  Everything is new and everything is interesting.  Once we get old it's all about what we know is what we like and everything else has got to go.

The Big Boy Update:  "Papa, turn on the dark."  Nana brought flashlights for the children to play with in their tent today.  My son wanted to see what they looked like, but it wasn't even remotely close to being night time.  After a few minutes he turned to Papa and said, "Papa, turn on the dark."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The cutest grocery shopper.  My daughter went to the grocery store with me this morning.  For the first time, she pushed around the little children's cart.  She followed me everywhere through the store with adults smiling and commenting all along the way.  She helped put canned goods into the cart and on the next aisle, she decided to select a bag of sugar and then two bags of coconut to put in her cart that I put back when she wasn't looking.   She presented the cashier with our card at checkout and then she put her cart back in the cart area as we got ready to leave the store.   It was, without a doubt, one of those, "cutest kid ever" moments.

The Freshman Float Failure

As I was driving home today from running errands, I passed two trucks carrying floats behind them.  I couldn't tell what the floats were for because they didn't have a particular school listed on the side for say, a homecoming parade.  Both floats were fairly empty, one having only a small tricycle in the middle.  It was a bit strange, but it brought back memories of high school and my one and only float experience.

I offered to help construct the freshman class float and for several days we met after school at one of our classmates houses to put together this float.  I thought floats were made of flowers, but no, as it turns out, most floats are tissue paper and chicken wire.

I got good at stuffing tissue into the holes of the chicken wire as we built a shape that looked sort of like a very angular football player.   We used our school colors and made him look proud.   When we were done, just before the homecoming parade, the float was delivered to our school by one of the parents and we eagerly awaited for school to be over so we could participate in the parade to the football field.

But there's more to this story, and that's that our high school didn't have our own football field.  This was a strange situation but it was based on the school being located in an urban area with little free land coupled with lack of funds to build a football stadium from the city.   What this meant was that we shared a football field with another school in the city.

So imagine this: you have a home game and the away team happens to be the school you share a stadium with.  Your home game will be on their campus.   This means you get to be on their "home" side and they have to go all the way across the stadium and act like they're from somewhere else for the entire game.   And yeah, they hated us when that happened.

After I graduated, we eventually got our own stadium and I was so happy for those students that followed me.   But back to the float and the homecoming parade.  We're at our school and we have a float, but we have to make it to our stadium at that other school and the drive is close to ten miles.  Also, imagine that we don't know what we're doing when it comes to float making.

The cheer leading squad was going to be sitting on the float and we were going to be cheering to all the random people we drove by that had no idea what was going on.  I was one of those cheerleaders and I was on that float.  We were so excited.  We were fired up.   We got on the float and we were ready to parade away.

You know where this is going, right?  Disaster.   We were no more out of the parking lot of the school when our square-ish football player couldn't handle the stress and fell over backwards onto the bed of the truck pulling him.  Uh....Um....Gah.

We didn't know what to do.  We felt embarrassed.  We didn't know what to say.  We laughed to the people we drove by, saying things like, "he's resting before the game."  We knew those people didn't care.  What we cared about right at that point was that we didn't have to ride around the football stadium in a broken float, because we weren't the class president and vice-president.

I don't remember, but I think they propped him up for the stadium parade.  I think it was obvious, but it was better than nothing.

The Big Boy Update:  Cat allergy?  At practice thanksgiving at friends tonight my son had a bad allergic reaction on his face.  He got very red and his eyes were blood-shot.  This occurred just after he put the cat bed on top of his head.   It could be, and most likely is, a cat allergy as both my mother and I have one.  But I also have a dust mite and mold spore allergy and either of those items could have been in the cat bed.  Bendaryl and some Calagel on his face and he didn't seem to care.  He was most interested in playing with his friend, Gavin.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Clingy sad.   We went to practice thanksgiving tonight at a friend's house.  My daughter fell asleep before we left, but that didn't explain her intense clingyness or unhappyness while we were there.  She did eat food and eventually warmed up to the location, but it was a rough go for a while.

The Night Night Fight

Times change and with children, those changes can come quickly.   Or, they can sneak up on you and suddenly you realized you're stuck in a pattern you would have never voluntarily entered into, but now that you're there, you're going to have to figure a way out.   Right now for us, it's sleeping routines.

Way back, our children slept for twelve hours straight, plus a nap.   And we found that nice.  As they got older, they slept a little less and they napped a little less.  Not too long ago, we moved bedtime from 7:30PM to 8:00PM because they were waking up too early.

Most recently, we decided to make an additional change as needed: the removal of naps.  And no, we don't want to do this.  That bit of time in the middle of the day where you, as a parent, get a break, is nice.  Our children aren't old enough to play unattended for stretches of time yet so they need to be watched or supervised and for an adult, that ends up being tiring mentally or physically or possibly both.

Toddlers need to be re-focused and kept on track all the time.  They need reminders of what they can and can't do and they need firm implementation of those expectations.  And that can make an adult weary.

So losing the nap (for most days at least) wasn't our ideal solution.  But we were running into another annoying problem at both bedtime and in the morning.  When they would go to bed they would take longer to get settled.  Sometimes, we'd need to sit in the room as an "enforcer" for a half-hour or longer until they fell asleep.  It wasn't a hard job because they understand they have to stay in their beds while we're in the room.  But it's not a good use of our time when we have lots of other things to do. And it's no fun.

Then, we developed a morning problem.  They'd be going to sleep later, sometimes not falling asleep until nine o'clock even, but they'd be waking up at six o'clock, messing up their pants, possibly trying to clean themselves up and in the process, making an even bigger mess in the bathroom.  Or they'd be awake and noisy and generally kept us from getting that hour of sleep we'd like to have before our morning starts at seven o'clock.  So we made a change.

We thought, "fine, if you're not going to sleep at night, you can forget the nap so you'll be extra tired when it's bed time."  Tonight was a test, and I have to thank my husband for wearing them out all day long.  He is tired, I know he is because I've done that job before.   I had school obligations from drop-off this morning until after six o'clock tonight so I was of little use.   He kept them awake and wore them out all afternoon and evening.

At just before eight o'clock, my daughter got up, came over to me and wanted to be picked up.  The television was on with a show they like so they could watch while I cleaned up.  For her to get up and ask to go to bed when a show is on meant she was very tired.  She went straight to sleep, not a sound, not a complaint, right away.

Then my son went up, just after eight o'clock and while he initially (for the first minute) said he didn't want to go to bed, he truly did.  He lay down, closed his eyes and I walked out of the room.  It's the first time in a long time that I remember where one of us didn't have to sit with them for a period of time.

I wonder if they'll sleep until our expected wake up time in the morning...

The Big Boy Update:  We went to eat sushi the other night.  My son and daughter got a kids meal that was more "tame" than sushi.  But my son, unlike his normal self, wanted to try all sorts of things.  He wanted to try sushi, raw fish, ginger, salad, soup and other things I can't remember.  I was really pleased he wanted to try new things.  I hope the trend continues.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Jump and dance.  She likes to jump on the bed and dance when music is on.  And giggle.  She loves to giggle.

Fitness Update:  Circuit work with up to five of us at once at the gym this morning.  Our trainer was out to get us but because he laughs as he picks on us it makes it all fun, despite the pain.

Phonathon

Is it phone-a-thon or phonathon?  I was told tonight it was the latter.   Now if someone can just explain to me when to use, "fundraising" versus "fund raising" I'd be grateful.

Tonight was our school's annual fund phonathon.  Last year I participated with high levels of anxiety.  I didn't know the parents.  I was new to the school.  I didn't want to ask people for money.  I hoped people didn't answer their phones.  When they did, I stumbled over my words. 

This year was different.  I remember last year people grabbing the parent cards and saying things like, "I want to call them" or, "I can get them to donate, I know it."  But this year I was that person.  I knew lots more families including some of their children from the substituting work I've been doing.   I walked off with a large stack and started making calls.

I didn't get a lot of answers, but I did have some successes with those that did answer.  Tomorrow, I'll follow-up with an email to each of the families I called.  Hopefully we'll see the results in donations to the school in the coming weeks.

The Big Boy Update:   My son makes this quick, deep intake of breath a lot.  He does this as he's suddenly discovering something.  I have no idea how to spell it but imagine this:  we ask him if he can find the puzzle piece with the narwhal on it.  He looks around, sees it, gasps in excitement and says, "there's the narwhal!" 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Angry nose.  She's had a runny nose for over a week now and her nostrils and just under her nose area is raw.  She doesn't want you to touch there, no matter how gently we wipe.  She is very helpful though in putting on chap stick or antibacterial salve to help it heal.  That must make it feel better.

The Distracted Typist

I didn't want to learn to type when I was younger.  I took one of those classes in school where you learned how to place your hands on the keys and type correctly--I was terrible at it.  I was encouraged by my parents to use the computer to write my reports because it would save time and be easier--I preferred to take longer and do it by hand.   I just didn't like to type.  I didn't want to type. 

Years later I started work in the corporate world and my life revolved around a computer.  This made sense, since I was getting a degree in computer science.  I could type, but I felt like I looked at the keys a lot still to verify accuracy. 

One day, I went to the office of my team leader to ask him a question.  After I asked him the question, he looked over at me and told me he'd be right with me in a minute when he finished his thought.  While he talked to me, his hands were typing on the keyboard.  Not only was he not looking at his hands, he wasn't even looking at the screen to see if he was typing without error.  It was errie.

It looked to me almost like a disembodied head turning around and talking to me while the hands carried on at the keyboard.  How did he know if he was typing accurately?  How did he learn this magic trick of typing without looking?  Was typing his super power? 

I knew that wasn't the case--that people typed all the time without watching what their hands were doing, but this was the first time I'd really seen it in action. 

Today, I can do the same thing.  I don't even think about typing any more, I just do it.  Yesterday's magic is today's reality.

The Big Boy Update:  Pinkeye?  We have some hyper-vigilant people at our school.  No one wants pinkeye.  Yesterday, we got a call from school saying that my son's eyes looked red.  We dutifully came and got him and put the drops in his (from what I could tell, not red or weepy) eyes.  We've kept it up for prophylactic purposes and will continue to do so for another day.  His doctor said that's a fine practice and that not to worry too much as conjunctivitis is over-diagnosed to be safe in many cases.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Alligator, alligator, snap snap snap"  My daughter has been singing this over the last few days.  It must be some game or song they sing at school.

A Friend in Need

This isn't what I wanted to write about today.  I had an entirely different topic about something trivial that I planned to type on and on about and bore you all.  But things change--sometimes drastically and quickly.

I got a message from a friend this morning.  She asked if I was available for a talk because she had gotten some upsetting news.  It was the kind of news that takes time to process, like being suddenly laid off from your job, or hearing someone you know died unexpectedly or even like the tragedy of 9/11. 

We can't completely experience an emotional or psychological situation until it happens to us.  Our minds protect us from truly tragic or intense emotions if it can.  When something does happen, we're flooded with feelings of grief or shock or anger and those emotions can be overwhelming.  It can take time time to process a life-changing situation and accept it into our reality.

So my friend needed to talk.  And to cry.  And if you know me, no one cries alone when I'm around.  I would make the most useless psychologist and an even worse doctor because I would be crying with everyone all the time.  

We talked.  We discussed unknowns and alternatives.  We accomplished very little other than talking about things we didn't know the answer to, what with our total lack of any sort of future-telling device on hand.  We fretted.  And of course we cried.  But we laughed too.  We laughed as we were able to see something little, something meaningless, something silly in the grander scheme of the unknown that seemed so dismal at this moment in time.

We didn't solve anything because there was nothing to solve right here, right now, this day.   Grief is one of the slower emotions we work through in our lives.   But we made a start.

The Big Boy Update:  "Rick Ball"  There is something know as a Spoonerism.  When I was little I said, "pill dickle" instead of, "dill pickle."  My son is carrying on the tradition of spoonerisms in our family when he called the brick wall a, "rick ball" the other day. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Coloring on the table.  After school I got a large sheet of brown paper and completely covered the breakfast table.  Both children liked coloring all over the table top.  My daughter wanted me to draw around her hand again and again.   We left the paper on for dinner so we'll have to draw more after we eat this evening.

The Hand and Mouth Wiping Effect

I was at the gym doing one of the exercises our trainer has us do and I noticed I was doing an unnecessary step between each repetition.  The exercise in question was something called, "burpees" in which you go from a standing position into a pushup position, do a pushup, stand back up and jump straight up.  You repeat this process until your trainer says you've done enough or until you fall down and pass out; hopefully the former.

The gym we work out in is nice, but it's still a floor people walk on with their outdoor shoes on and we're doing a lot of putting our hands down on that floor while we exercise.  My hands aren't accustomed in general of behaving like a second set of feet, except when I'm doing some form of exercise (or playing with my children).  My hands expect to be clean and free of debris.

It's not something we consciously think about, more that we react to it.  You sit down on the grass and when you get up, you brush off your hands.  You picked up something from the floor of the garage and you wipe your hands on the back of your jeans afterwards.  It just happens without thinking about it.

So I notice that commonly when I'm doing burpees or other exercises in which I put my hands on the floor in rotation, that between every rep I brush them off.  I get up, jump in the air, brush my hands off and am back on the floor four seconds after I stood up...and yet I still wipe my hands.

I do the same thing while eating.  I get food on my mouth and I wipe it immediately, even though I'm about to put another forkful of food in my mouth mere seconds later.

The Big Boy Update:  My mother wanted to sing "Twinkle Star" tonight as we were Skyping with her.  She started into the song, got one line in and my son yelled out, "No...sing twinkle twinkle traffic light!"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She couldn't make it through three pages of a book until very recently.  She would let you read two pages or so, want to flip all around in the book and then decide it was bed time.  She has now decided books are fun and she likes to have them read to her.  She is still a bit impatient in that she wants to turn to the next page before you've finished reading the current page.

Fitness Update:  We're back at the gym and Don took no mercy on us this morning.  He upped everything all around, so much so that he told us we were done ten minutes early.  And while that may sound like he went easy on us, it means just the opposite, throwing all kinds of tough things at you from the start.  Only two workouts back and I'm so glad we're going again.  I do love to run, but the workouts at the gym are so much fun...afterwards...when you can breathe again.

Peer Pressure of the Silly Sort

I am not immune to peer pressure, much as I loath it.  And I wish I never cared what other people think, but alas, I fall prey to that weakness too.  I don't want to be the person other people think I should be, I want to be exactly who I am.  But some peer pressure things seem so silly to me and I don't understand why people get sucked in to them.  Facebook is rife with examples.

I got chain letters when I was young.  The first time I got one I dutifully responded to the however number of people I was suppose to send it to.  I didn't want to "break the chain" and let the letter fail, thus letting down all the people before me--people I didn't even know.

The second chain mail letter I got I think I might have sat on for a few weeks or maybe months.  I may have sent it on but I'm not sure.  After that time, I never responded to them again.  It wasn't fun or exciting to me, it was a waste of time I'd rather spend doing something in my tree house or at the creek.

Today, Facebook gives us countless ways to spend our time finding out, "which Star Wars character you are," or "what vegetable most matches your personality."  There are, "pay it forward" or, "pass it on" or, "tag, you're next" type things where you reveal something about you and then you ask your friends to participate.  It might be to reveal what color underwear you're wearing today (and yes, that was an actual one I saw) or it could be serious like what you remember the most about a deceased grandparent. 

I'm not running them down and saying they're a waste of time.  Small talk is an important component of our lives as social people.  It's just that I don't want to be obligated to, "tell five things about yourself that no one knows" and share it with all the people I'm friends with on Facebook.  If that's what you like to do, then you go for it.  I've learned some very interesting things from people at our school that have friended me as a result.

I am outgoing.  I'll talk about almost anything because I'm not shy and I'm fairly self-confident.  But I prefer to do it in person, not online to a collection of acquaintances and most definitely not because someone tagged me and said I should take the test and see what brand of car matches my driving habits just because everyone else is doing it.

The Big Boy Update:  A tough day.  He had one of those days where he got yelled at a lot.  This morning he was playing in the tub and having a great time.  He was playing in the tub with toys for long enough that the water should have been getting cool when daddy went in to see what he was doing.  That's when I heard yelling.  He is almost three and yet he pooped in the tub.  And it was not pleasant.  There was lots of showering and sanitizing after that.  Later this afternoon he went upstairs and slammed the door shut on his sister in the bonus room.  I went up to see what was going on, only to find he'd cleared the shelves in the closet of boxes and had dumped several of the games all over the floor.  He got sent to bed for a nap I was so mad.  When I talked to him, I found out he just wanted to play Candy Land and he was trying to get to it and get it set up.  I felt bad for overreacting, but I told him next time, he needed to ask for help. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She likes to call my parents.  All the time.  My mother has figured out if the call is coming from our house and she answers but doesn't hear anything immediately, that it's my daughter.  She'll tell her hello and them my daughter starts to talk to her.  At first we thought she needed to be talked back to on the other end of the line.  Then, recently, my daughter called and the answering machine picked up.  After the beep she started talking to the machine and didn't stop until the beep cut her off. 

There's a Lot of Talking Going On These Days

My children are getting much more chatty as they get older.  They're chatting with us.  They're chatting with strangers.  And they're chatting with each other.  Today's post is mostly going to be about some of the funny things they've said lately because my list is getting longer and they're not stopping saying cute things.

The Big Boy Update:

This morning at breakfast:  "Golly, my drink almost fell down."

"Do you like Kinect Party, Uncle Jonathan?"  I think this was my son asking if Uncle Jonathan would please put on this game and play with him..  Kinect Party is a full-body interactive group video game my son likes to play:     We like this game because it involves a lot of running around in the basement burning energy before bed.

"Daddy, can you build me a hot dog house?"  He was very insistent that daddy build him a "hot dog house" with the blocks tonight.  It wasn't until later when he told me more that I realized his hot dog house was restaurant that, "served hot dogs...and french fries...and ketchup...to the people" as my son phrased it.  It is reasonable to mention at this point that we went to a small outdoor restaurant for dinner in which we watched them cook through the glass walls and then ate at the tables outside.  Guess what we ate...hot dogs, french fries and ketchup.

"Mommy, when you get done with your Elmo, can you help me?"  I had pulled out my phone and was responding to an email when my son asked me this.  I told him that yes, when I was done with my "email" (not Elmo) I would definitely help him.

"Get some light on, " I was told when I was putting my son to bed.  I told him we didn't need any lights on and that he could go to bed in the dark.  Then he said, "get some light on your phone, mommy in the chair" and I realized what he meant.  Every night after we put them to bed, one of us sits in the chair in their room, doing things on our cell phones, until the children fall asleep.  They can see the light of the phone screen from their beds. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:

"Hey Greyson, it's a..."  My daughter likes to involve her brother in things.  Tonight she told him about the moon, yesterday she told him about the cement mixer she saw as we drove down the road.  She lets him know about things all the time that she thinks he'd be interested in.

"There's the moon."  Tonight at dinner my daughter was looking across the parking lot.  She knew the moon was up because she'd seen it earlier (it gets dark mighty early these days.)  She pointed to the street lamp and said, "there's the moon."  Then, she looked to another area of the parking lot and saw a second street lamp, pointed to it and said, "there's the other moon."

Fitness Update:  First run since the marathon.  Five-ish miles in nice early morning weather.  Nice short run.  Did I also predict I'd be sore from going to the trainer yesterday?  My prediction came true, although only upper body sore as my legs are just fine doing lots of exercising at this point.

Tiny Topics Du Jour

Sometimes blog post topics back up.  Sometimes they're too small to really merit their own post.  And sometimes I just want to get things off my blog topic list.  So here are a few little things for the day...

Wardrobe Rearrangement
It's been cold enough for long enough that the shorts and summer wear won't be needed again for a while.  Yesterday I rearranged the closed to give me faster access to the sweatshirts, sweaters and sweatpants that were up on higher shelves.  It feels a little like getting a new wardrobe again when you suddenly have all these different things to wear.

It's Eggnog Weather (the children agree)
I got some eggnog last night at the store and gave some to my children for the first time.  It's like ooey, gooey, luscious, sweet spicy melted ice cream.  They both loved it.  I diluted what they didn't finish with milk and they had the rest for breakfast.

I don't think that's my order, sir.
But it was.  I went through McDonald's drive-through to get a biscuit and discovered they have pumpkin spiced lattes.  I'd been getting them at Starbucks for some time now.  When I got to the drive-through window the man gave me the total for my two items.  I told him it was the wrong order, but no, it was my biscuit and latte--and it was cheaper than a single latte at Starbucks.  It was delicious too.

The Big Boy Update:  Allergic reaction reduction.   He seems to be handling his food allergies better.  What with all the runny noses and maladies he's had over his almost three years of life, I'm hoping his immune system is becoming more mature and he can handle some of the various food intolerances he's had.  We're having to give him Benadryl much less and we're using the steroid creams very little now.  And he's much less itchy.  We still have incidences, but they're not as frequent.  Here's hoping that trend continues. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "This one is yucky.  This one is yucky too."  My daughter likes her pacifiers to be washed off before she goes to sleep at night.  We're not sure what makes one taste yucky, but it's so cute when she asks and she's so easily made happy by a simple running of water over it, who can refuse her?

Fitness Update:  Back to Don.  I haven't seen our trainer in several months as we trained for the marathon but this morning I went back to see him.  He's doing well and I was so touched at all the people in the gym that congratulated us and told us they'd missed us while we were away.  I bet I'm going to be sore tomorrow though.  And to think we thought we were in shape just because we could run for five hours.  This morning Don disabused us of that idea pretty fast.

When Does Fun become Self-conscious?

We listen to children's songs on the way to school every day.  My children like lots of the songs and are even starting to sing along to some of them now.  There are a few songs that have things you can do along with the song while you sing, such as in the song, If You're Happy and You Know It.  We're driving down the road and I'm clapping my hands and stomping my feet and trying to hold on to the steering wheel while doing both at the same time.

Did I look the fool?  Of course I did.  Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and all sorts adults will make themselves look silly in the name of making a child laugh and dance.    I didn't think anything about it though.

Then, the Hokey Pokey came on.  This song is much harder to do successfully in the car and I decided we'd have a go later in the living room to give the kids a full demonstration.  But it brought back memories for me while the song was on.  Roller skating rink memories.  The hokey pokey was always the highlight of the day.  We'd all go to the middle and stick our legs in and try not to fall down.  They would have the lights off and the disco ball on and it was the height of fabulous fun at that age.  And I wasn't self-conscious about it.  Not one bit.

So when does it happen that you get nervous about how cool (or uncool) you look around your peers?  I remember being mortified to dance at the junior-high dance because I didn't know how to dance (and who did really).  I remember thinking I was the one with no rhythm doing the Macerena and I know for a fact I looked like a complete dolt as I tried and failed to remember the steps in the Electric Slide.

But now, as an adult with children, I think I've regressed into that child-like, I don't care if I look stupid, no wait, I'm not even thinking about how I look because I'm too busy having fun mode.  I think I like it this way a lot more.

The Big Boy Update:  More on the best friend front.  Not only does my son have many best friends; he doesn't even know some of their names.  At a playground yesterday he made a new friend.  He didn't know this little boy's name, but he was having a great time playing with him.  He very happily told the little guy (who's name turned out to be Wilson) that he was his best friend. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Where did my friend go?"  We were at a playground over lunch and my daughter had made a friend and they were having a great time when I called her to the table for lunch.  After she got done eating, she looked around for her new friend.  She turned to us and said, "where did my friend go?"

The Colorful Walls

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  It was only a matter of time.  This evening, after our friend had stopped in before heading to a concert, my children were running around upstairs having a very good time.  Daddy went up to check on them after a while and then I heard him yelling out something I don't like to hear: "No!  Never!  Never ever!"

It turns out my children were having a great time coloring the walls of the hall with crayons.  They had hit several spots, but fortunately they're not that proficient or thorough at coloring so it was mostly marks here and there and those marks were made in passing and weren't ground in colors.

Up I went with a scalding hot wet cloth in the hopes the crayon would melt onto the cloth and come off the wall.  I wasn't sure how it would go with our flat paint, but it was fairly easy to get off.  The Magic Eraser I had in reserve I never even used. 

I'd say we got off lucky this time. 

The Big Boy Update:  The black toe.  In July we went to visit family in New Jersey.  During that trip, my son dropped a piece of wood on his big toe and bruised it under the nail.  Ever since then he's had a purple toe that's been slowly growing out.  He named it his black toe.  Two days ago he was messing with it because apparently it was bothering him and the black part tore off.  Now both of his toes are pink again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She's suddenly started chewing on her hand when she's in distress or stressed out.   I'm not sure why she's decided this is a good way to deal with a stressful situation, but she's bitten down hard enough to leave a mark twice now.

The Dryer That Got Louder

We've had some appliance issues.  They haven't been big issues, they're more the niggling, annoying type.  We have a refrigerator door that needs an extra hard swing to shut and an ice machine with buttons that don't reliably work.  There was a digit that stopped displaying on the dryer and our oven door had a stability issue, but only every now and then.  And then the dryer went wonky.

And by wonky I mean that it had this grating sound that would appear and disappear.  Then, it started appearing all the time and it sounded like the dryer was having a very bad day.  So I made a call. 

Several calls, in fact, because first I had to talk to the manufacturer and from there, I had to schedule an appointment with someone who did warranty service for that brand.  And I ran into a snag.  No one wanted to work on our dryer,  I made lots of calls and widened my distance criteria and eventually got connected with one of the nicest repair people I've ever met. 

He has now been to our hour three times and he still has to come back a fourth time, which is not his fault and is another, longer story.  But he is solving all our appliance problems.  He listened to us and he didn't think we were simply complainers because we couldn't get the ice machine into clean mode.  He agreed that the refrigerator door should close without excessive force, and he thought the oven door shouldn't be unstable, even if was only every so often. 

He got us replacement parts for several things, but most notably the dryer that was grumbly.  He had to come back to replace the dryer display when the part came in, but before he left last time he turned on the dryer and it sounded so wonderful without the grating noise.

Then, a little over a week later, I said to my husband, "I don't remember the dryer sounding that loud, do you?"  We agreed it wasn't loud like that before, even though it didn't sound like anything was wrong.  It was loud enough that we had to shut the door to the laundry room and even so, I could hear it on the other side of the house in the bedroom at night.  I could even hear the rumbly sound two floors up in the attic.  So I called back.

Timing worked out that he got another display and came out today.  I hoped that like before, he believed us that the dryer was louder and that we weren't just complaining for no reason.  As soon as he turned it on, he said, "oh, no, it's not suppose to be that loud.  It was probably something I did."  He laughed and we laughed too.  But I was so impressed.  Weather there was a faulty part or something he had or hadn't done, he was taking ownership of the problem and he was going to fix it or order a part to fix it.

He worked on it for a while, put it back together and it was still loud--or so I thought--and I was afraid he would leave and tell us that's how it was going to be with the new part.  I heard him talk to himself around the corner and say, "well, that's not right.  It looks like I'm going to have to take it completely apart again and see what's up."  And he did just that.  And I crossed my fingers and held my breath.

Twenty minutes later while I was preparing lunch for the children in the kitchen, I heard him turn it on and I immediately shouted out, "that's it!  You fixed it!"  It was so quiet I could scarcely believe it was on, but that was the sound I remembered from before that I couldn't quite describe.

I wish I knew people to recommend this company and gentleman to.  I am utterly impressed with his service as well as him personally.

The Big Boy Update:  "I am a monster truck man."  He said this this morning on the way to the bathroom.  I don't know where he found out about monster trucks, but he is apparently into them now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Packing sheet bubble popper.  We got a package with bubble wrap inside.  My daughter spent lots of time stepping on it and popping bits with her fingers.  It was almost as good a distraction as television for a while.

Number Two is Two

My second child turned two-years-old today.  That means my first child is almost three.  Oh time, how quickly you travel.

We celebrated my daughter's birthday at a local farm that has lots of fun activities for children.  I'm sure there are farm-type things there like zucchini, collards or goats, but we were there for their other things like the log flume, the huge jumping pillow, the paint wall and the crooked house.  There was a hay fort (with tunnel) and you could do archery (which my three-year-old loved) and many other things we didn't get around to doing during the short duration that a toddler party can last without major meltdowns.  

It was fun though.  Everyone had a good time.  I had a great time talking with the other parents and their children.  We had some snacks and then for those who were still with us (the toddler attrition at that point was rather severe) we roasted marshmallows at their fire pit and had s'mores. 

The weather was outstanding.  Low 60's in early November with a cloudless sky.  Everyone had a great time.  My daughter liked her "Super Reese" cake that daddy made and she wore her matching shirt for the day, even though it was night-night shirt. 

The Big Boy Update:   Best friends.  My son has a best friend.  Or so he tells us.  He tells us that a particular child is his "best friend" and then he tells us a different child is his best friend a few days later.  It's great that he likes so many children enough to want them to be his good friends.  I've met the children he's talking about and they're cute and nice and they like him too.  I don't know that they really get what the phrase, "best friend" means yet though. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Two years old today.  We didn't tell her her birthday was today because she celebrated three days ago at school, two days ago with family and yesterday with her friends at her party.  Four birthday days for a two-year-old is a little much we thought.

The End of Acne

I had acne when I was in high school.  I had acne when I was in college.  I had acne during my first job and I still had acne as I advanced in my career in my thirties.  I didn't have a lot of acne at once, but it was something I seemed to have at least a little of, all the time.  I didn't know if it would ever end.

My mother told me she had acne until she got pregnant with me and then the prenatal vitamins (and most likely the vitamin A component) cleared up her skin.  After she had me she continued to take vitamin A and her acne never came back.  I tried vitamin A and got no results.  Then, I got pregnant at thirty-nine. 

By that time I had completely forgotten about my acne, mostly because it had mostly gone away.  It was not unlike a headache in that you can think of nothing other than your pounding head but when it goes away, there's this realization moment of, "hey, I don't have a headache anymore."  My acne was like that, it just sort of drifted off and left me blemish-free.

I hope I didn't give my acne-longevity genetics to my children.  I guess we'll find out in a decade or so.

The Big Boy Update:  We were at his sister's birthday party today and I realized I didn't even need to worry about him.  He was having fun at the outdoor farm doing all the activities with his friends.  At one point, my friend texted me that he was with her and her two children.  When I read the text I realized I didn't even know he was gone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   "I like clothes."  Last night my daughter was opening some birthday presents and she was going through her second bag of clothes.  I didn't expect her to be excited about them but she said, "I like clothes" in her little girl voice as she looked over the design on one of the shirts from Mimi and Gramps.

Are We Getting Something Right?

Children will push you.  They will shove you and scream at you and yell and, I hear, even bite you to get their way.  They're born selfish and they have to learn that everything in the world isn't all about them.    And that lesson is a long one--or at least for the adults it can seem like it.

My son was big on the word, "no" for a long time.  We dealt with tantrums for seemingly silly things.  We fought battles that went on for more than thirty minutes, just to get him to do something simple like put the ten pair of underpants back in the basket that he'd dumped out for no apparent reason.  We had been told all the hard work would pay off--if we were consistent--in about six months.  We waited.  We hoped.  We tried not to get discouraged. 

We tried not to lose our tempers too much (I was the worst offender) and we hoped we were being consistent.  We continually evaluated our strategy and tweaked our "parental plan" often.  We found out what worked, like sometimes saying nothing to a tantruming child gets the best results.  We discovered many things that didn't work, like offering too many options in a situation where there should have been no choice at all.   And ultimately, we wondered if it was personality and not parenting.   

We kept at it.  We got better as we refined our routine.  And get this, as we figured out how to handle the children more successfully, everyone became less stressed.  Tantrums shortened in length or disappeared altogether because children learn if you expect them to do something (or not do something) and you always follow-through, they learn it's not worth their time to fight you.  My husband and I started seeing positive benefits and we were happier parents too. 

I'd like to tell you where we hope to be in the future.  I'll use two examples I've seen personally that fit my vision of parenting success:

The first example happened while I was substitute teaching.   A child about five-years-old didn't want to share the blocks, so he threw them down on the floor and they scattered.  The teacher walked over calmly and said, "we don't throw blocks.  You may pick them up and put them away.  The block are not available to you any more today" and with that she turned and walked away.  The child looked a bit upset, but he cleaned up the blocks without another word.  There were a lot of blocks and this process took him more than five minutes.  When he was done, he put the blocks away and selected something else to do.  I saw this type of scenario again and again while I was substituting.  That wasn't an exception with one child, it was what happened each and every day with all the children. 

The second story is one that I've seen happen regularly, even before I had our children.  But before I was a parent, I didn't have the same understanding as I do now.  Our friends come to movie night most Friday's at our house. They bring their three children who at first were three, six and nine.  At the end of every night she would say, "it's time to go, pack your things up."  Even if they were in the middle of a movie or busy doing some other activity, they began to prepare to leave, all without a single complaint. 

Setting and keeping expectations is starting to pay off.  We're going to keep at it.  I'm looking forward to seeing more benefits in the future.

The Big Boy Update:  Tantrum reduction.  Something has clicked in his mind.  It's not necessarily parenting, I think it's age and maturity.  He's stopped melting down before meals for mostly unknown reasons.  It's been making breakfast and lunch such a nice of late.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Stool monster.  This is not about the potty.  This is about the stool my daughter loves to push around the house to use for standing on so she can see what the adults are doing at the various counters.  If you take it away, she starts pushing chairs around and those don't all have soft fuzzy feet like I put on the stool.  She's interested in anything and everything we're doing at all times.

Fitness Update:  An hour in the gym this morning.  It was cold out!  Okay, we were wimps.  Maybe we'll run tomorrow morning.

Walmart Down, Target Up

I need new underpants.  The ones I have are oldish and worn and the elastic has done it's job holding them up on my waist and keeping them from giving me wedgies (which I hate) but they're tired and they want to retire.  Or so I thought I heard them tell me the other day. 

There has been an exhaustive searching for new underpants.  It involved going to Walmart and going to the underpants aisle and putting some in the basket and checking out.  My usual "every couple of years underpants restocking" trips.  I got home, tried on a new pair and was immediately greeted with comfort and colorful style in the boring cotton underpants I'd selected.  I didn't open the other packets because I was waiting to see how the first package fared on me.

Later in the day my husband said he could see the underpants visible from the back of my jeans.  This wasn't a goal I had, nor was it a feature I wanted in my new underpants.  So I had to do a return trip to Walmart and come up with an alternative style or brand.  Speaking of brand, I can't remember if it's Haynes or Fruit of the Loom that I usually get and the options are so similar that I honestly don't know.  By the time I get to the re-purchasing phase, the little stamped-in labels are all but illegible. 

So back to the store and I decided to just do a return and try Target just down the road to see if there were any other options.  When I got to Target I was not overly surprised to see mostly the exact same options, including the patterns.  But, what was interesting was how the row was organized.  

At Walmart, the largest size is on the top row.  Below the top size is the same style and brand in the next size smaller down, continuing in this trend until the smallest size, which is on the bottom row.  Target, however does the exact opposite.  The smallest size is at the top and the largest size is at the bottom. 

What does this mean?  Does Target have more tall, thin customers than Walmart or does Walmart have more short, heavier customers?  Huge chains rarely do something without research behind it.  The top two rows are more in line with eye-level.  Is it to differentiate themselves or is it based on market research about their customer base and some esoteric factor that gleans them more underpants sales?  

At any rate, I found some more underpants and I went home wondering about product placement.  My brother-in-law is an expert at this, perhaps he'll know why.

The Big Boy Update:  No, it's my birthday.  While my daughter still doesn't fully get that it's her birthday, my son thinks all birthdays are his.  He expects it in fact.    

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Birthday celebration at school.  She chewed her hand, which is unusual, due to the surprise of being the center of attention in her class for a birthday celebration today.  Daddy and I came in and everyone enjoyed blueberry mini-muffins my daughter made during class.  We showed three pictures of her and her family members from when she was young and then everyone sang the birthday song.  She was much happier once the "celebration" portion of the morning was over and she could show us the playground and what she does there.

Honey Crisp

It's easy to get stuck getting or doing the same thing that you've done for years.  I might love a restaurant for their food, but I invariably always order the same one dish, never trying the other items on their menu.  I get the same brand of pretzels, just because I've been getting that brand for years.  But then sometimes, something can happen to break the cycle.   This happened to me recently with apples.

I've been a granny smith apple variety fan for years.  I like the crispness of the apples and the tartness of the flavor.  I've had other apples from time to time at other people's houses or as part of a meal somewhere else, but when I go to buy apples, I always get granny smith.  I've bought other apples for different things, like pies, but they just aren't as good to me unless they're cooked.   But now I have a new favorite apple.

My children eat apples but recently they were eating slices of an apple my neighbor was cutting up for them and they were loving eating them.  My husband found out it was a honey crisp variety and the next time he went to the grocery store, he got some.  It wasn't a fluke--that one apple wasn't an anomaly, the honey crisp is a really good variety.  It's crisp (like the name) and it has a nice tartness but it's also sweet to.

I've been keeping honey crisp apples around the house regularly.  As much as I liked granny smith apples, I can say that variety has taken second place to my new favorite, the honey crisp.

The Big Boy Update:  Moot mar.  Nutrigrain bars are a common breakfast item in our house and my son likes them a lot.  But he calls them "moot mars".

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She is getting very good at going to the potty from a clothing perspective.  She pulls her shirt up and holds it up with her chin on her chest while she pulls her pants down.  She can pull her pants up by herself too.  She's not fast at the whole procedure, but she's doing it all by herself.

Oh, It's You Again

That doesn't sound like a compliment, but I assure you, it was. 

I've been substituting for a teacher at school who wanted to go be with her daughter for the delivery of her second grandchild.  I was glad to be able to help and I looked forward to seeing some of the students I'd met before at my children's school.

The first day when I came in, one of the students I knew from before came into the room and said, "oh, it's you again!"  He didn't remember my name, but he remembered me and apparently he liked me as a substitute teacher.  He made me smile.

I've learned a lot about how the flow of the day goes at our school.  I substituted through three "phases" of the day starting at 11:30AM and ending at 5:30PM over the last three days.  The first phase, "After School" is for children under the age of five who are staying beyond normal dismissal.  They are between the ages of fourteen months and almost five years. 

These children walk into the classroom, put their bags up, change into their inside shoes, go to the bathroom, wash their hands, get their lunch box, select a seat, get their place mat and napkin, get a plate and utensils, fill a glass with water to take to their seat and then sit down so they can eat their meal.  They do all this without the teachers doing more than helping them remember what to do when they're off task, and most of them don't need any help at all.

When they're done eating, they put everything away, go to the bathroom again if needed, select up to three books and then they are expected to lie quietly on their sleeping mats until rest time is over.  Most of the children fall asleep, especially the younger ones.  The older ones look at books until it's time to clean up and go outside to play or do work that's been made available to them at the various tables after rest time.

At ten to three, most of the children prepare to be picked up.  Some children remain for a time called "carpool care".  This is a short thirty minute period specifically for people with older siblings who aren't dismissed until three-thirty.  There are specific items the children can work on during this time.  These specific things, such as paper and pencils, puzzles, eating their snack, blocks and tower-building components can be pulled out and used in groups during this short period.  At the end of this time, more of the students go home.

Next, the period called "After After School" begins and lasts from 3:30PM until 5:30PM.  This is for children who's parents aren't able to pick them up earlier due to work schedules.  We start with group time for fifteen minutes, either sharing something or reading a book.  The ages in this group range from three to eleven.  Once group time is over, we head out to the front playground for the remainder of the day. 

In the playground many things can happen.  You can work on projects or art items at the picnic tables, many like to play soccer, some of the younger students play games that involve a lot of running around, giggling and imagination and some of the older students sit and read.  Today, we got out rakes and raked leaves into big piles.  We had so many leaves we filled three big bags full and then sat on them like seats.  Some of the children were very interested in helping rake and bag the leaves.  

I learned so much substituting.  It's helped me understand what happens at school for my children and it's given me a good idea of what I can hope to see our children turning into as they get older.  It was a fun three days.

The Big Boy Update:  Unphased at my presence.  My daughter is inclined to become upset if she sees me at school.  Mostly this is because she sees me in her classroom just before noon dismissal and she's both tired and hungry.  My son has seen me enough there that he says hello and continues on his way.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "Where's my mokey?"  She meant "monkey" but she was so cute in her mispronunciation of it that I had to keep asking her what she was saying.

Toddler Phrases

I've been collecting phrases to use with my children.  We seem to be stuck in a land of, "NO!" a lot with toddlers because they are forever doing things we don't want them to do.  It's a challenge to try and look at a situation and determine if it's really something the child shouldn't be doing (something unsafe) or something you wouldn't personally do, but might not be a big deal (like putting the cups into the drawer with the bowls.)   Ultimately, we're working to, "find the 'yes'" wherever possible.

Have you ever wondered why small children go through the "no" phase early on?  It's probably because it's one of the words your child hears from you on a regular basis.  Coming up with ways to say, "you can do this" instead of, "no, you can't do that" is a challenge.  For instance, you can tell a child that just threw their napkin on the floor, "you can throw your napkin in the trash can."  And then you can wait for them to do so.  If they don't, you could say, "I see you're having a difficult time putting the napkin in the trash, do you need some help?"  Children like to be independent, so this does the trick a good portion of the time.  If that doesn't get action, you can say, "I'm going to help you" and then you can physically take the child and escort them through the procedure.  And they really don't like that.  Keep that level of expectation firm and unwavering, and you'll start to see the rebellion diminish--and all without negative phrasing.

"No yelling inside!" versus, "we use our quiet voices inside"  "We sit in our chairs" versus, "no standing on your chair!"   "No hitting!" versus, "we use our gentle hands.  Please go check on your friend to see if she is okay."   It's been a big learning curve, but phrases like these come naturally now and we're really starting to see the benefit.    Oh, and our favorite phrase of all: "<XXX> is not available."  Many, many, many things aren't available to a child: knives, the stove, a chainsaw, your cellphone, the drivers seat of the car, but instead of saying "no," you let the child know it's not available.  It might not be available right now, or until they've cleaned up their plate from lunch, or maybe even until their seventeen.  "Not available" works wonders and it's not "no."

My latest, favorite phrase is, "that's not a safe choice."  Children are forever doing things that make you cringe.  They're going to leap off the back of the sofa or they want to swing a stick around when there are other people near.  It might not be a safe choice to climb up the slide when your friend is about to slide down and knock your teeth out.   I like this phrase.  I'm working on integrating it into my "child management vernacular."

I'm keeping a list of these phrases as I happen upon them.  When I started the list, each and every phrase was unique and something to work on.  It's a good sign now that when I read back over them, they all look like things of course you'd say.  It wouldn't make sense to say anything else.  I guess that means I'm making progress as a mom.

The Big Boy Update:  "Let me show you Mickey Mouse Clubhouse."  Okay, this was hilarious.  This morning my son was playing with an app on the iPad that you could talk to and it would talk back to you.  It was a snowball.  You could interact with it in several ways and it seemed, I suppose to my son, like it was alive.  After a few minutes he took the iPad, walked the talking snowball into the living room and said to it, "let me show you Mickey Mouse Clubhouse."  It's a pity he has no idea how to turn on the television.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  No ice cream for dessert.  She had a lesson tonight.  She wanted ice cream for dessert.  Her brother and I were enjoying ours because we had finished our chicken.  She dawdled, she got a warning that her food was going to be put up shortly because when she starts to play with her food, that tells me she's done eating (another good parental phrase we like to use).  She heard me but continued to bide her time, so her food got taken away and she got no ice cream.  It was a glorious tantrum that yielded no ice cream for her.  I used another one of our phrases and said, "next time, maybe you'll remember to finish your chicken so you can enjoy ice cream for dessert."

Fitness Update:  Nothing still!  I'm taking a few days off--it was a long run on Sunday.

On the John at the Gun...

...and other marathon memories.

Yes, that's right, I was on the potty when the race start gun was fired.  And this wasn't the first year.  Last year I was sitting on a port-a-john as well.  Only last year I was worried I was going to miss the race.  This year, I was more sophisticated.

First of all, there are so many people in the race that you can't get through the start line until well after the gun fires.  Second of all, your personal time doesn't start until you step on the timing pad at the starting point.  So we were good no matter what.  Potty break included, we still had to move backwards to get in line and we still had to wait to get started.  But two years in a row on the port-a-potty for race start had me laughing.

I wanted to run "un-enhanced" as I told my neighbor.  She talked me down and I decided to take advil and I'm sure it was a good idea.  The race was hard.  The race was harder than I expected it to be from the very start, which was mostly because I wasn't fully recovered from the virus I had earlier in the week.  But I would have been disappointed in myself if I had taken more than anti-inflammatories for the run.

Foot cramping!  That sentence deserves more than a single exclamation mark because it was the plague of my run.  I normally run on trails and the irregular surfaces and rocks work out the cramps in my feet.  This run was all on asphalt and I had to stop and stretch several times, which held up my friends.  My feet finally stopped cramping after four hours of running.  It was misery in part and annoyance, but I made it through. 

A side-effect of the foot cramps is numbness in the toes and balls of the feet.  I was in enough discomfort that I told my friends I was going to walk through the water stops, which occurred every two miles.  That slowed us down, but I needed that time to get some of the kinks out so I could continue.  The numbness in my toes continues even now, after the run.  This isn't uncommon.  Numbness isn't pain, but I'm sure it isn't ideal either.

I had planned on eating one of the Gu packets every four miles, but I was having such a tough time that I think I ate seven of them instead of my intended six.  I also drank Accelerade at every stop in the hopes that more calories would help the perpetual "bonk" I was feeling.

I know I wasn't feeling up to my normal, healthy self, because I thought of quitting every single mile.  There was something in me that kept me going though.  And if you're thinking that's normal, I would agree...but only after a good number of miles.  I was thinking about quitting after mile two, and that just doesn't make sense.  But I made it.  I have to give a lot of thanks to Uncle Jonathan and my neighbor because they gave me that encouragement I needed when I needed it (which was often.)

From a course perspective, there was this hill I knew about from personal experience.  I'd reviewed it on the map and I knew it happened at about mile twenty-four.  It was long, it was steep and it was windy.  I feared it.  I instilled fear for this hill into my neighbor as well.  We ran down it early on and I warned them we'd be doing this, "killer hill" close to the end.  We fretted.  We decided if we needed to, we could walk up the hill.  And when we got there, everyone was walking up the hill.  But without saying anything, we three just ran up it.  It was as if we were beyond complaining, beyond pain, beyond argument...we just wanted to get this race finished.  I'm proud of that one point: that we ran up that hill.

Super support.  We had the support of our families on the run.  We were met by my husband, the children and our neighbor's family (three generations) with signs to cheer us on.  It was very motivating.  My neighbor's husband even met us at the finish line with flowers and a balloon.  It was so exciting.  If I wasn't so tired, I would have cried. 

What about my number, sixty-nine, you ask?  As it turns out, when your number is on your front, people don't see it that much.  When we were running past people later, I got comments, maybe six total.  Some were funny and one was comiseratory.  Mostly, the comments made me laugh.

When we finished the race and stopped running I suddenly wasn't so tired.  I'd been running for five hours and I had had thoughts of quitting many, many times.   But three minutes of not-running and I was totally okay.  It's strange how the body adapts and adjuts.  Perhaps it was mental.  Maybe it was the thought of the Krispy Kreme donuts I planned on eating (but that my stomach couldn't quite manage when I got there) that made me feel so much better.

I'm not sure I'll ever run a marathon again, but it was quite an experience.

The Big Boy Update:  "Miss Daddy"  That's right, he thinks daddy is a girl.  Actually, he calls the teachers at school "miss" and then their first name and as there are no male teachers at school, this is a reasonable leap.  Still, it was funny to hear him say it.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Mumbler.  She called Mimi tonight.  She picked up the phone, asked me to call Mimi and then waited for her to answer.  And when she did, five minutes of completely unintelligible conversation ensued.  It was mostly one-sided with my daughter telling Mimi about things we couldn't understand.  She seemed to be happy about the whole thing though.

Fitness Update:  Not a damn thing.  Rest.  Relaxation.  Okay, I went in to substitute for six hours today, but other than that, I was a total bum.

Marathon

Today was the marathon.  It was a fun day; it was a tiring day.  But we made it.  I have lots of things to say about the marathon, only my brain is not performing at it's normal state and I can't remember them, so I'm going to have to defer until tomorrow and I'll try and get a more complete post in at that point.

There were some fun things though, like daddy and the children meeting us at one point of the race with banners.  My neighbor's husband had a great idea to draw up some banners with the children, so early in the morning they got together with our two children and their four children and made up some nice signs wishing us good luck in the remainder of the run.  It was a nice surprise and great encouragement as I was tired and my feet were sore. 

It's almost bedtime and I can bet I'm the one most excited about that in the house.   It was a very happy day.

The Big Boy Update:  He was less than impressed that Uncle Jonathan, my neighbor and I were running a marathon.  He was more interested in eating his Pirate's Booty (puffed corn snack) on our first pass and engrossed in the iPad on our second pass.   But he was there and it made me proud.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She wasn't sure what was going on when we all showed up and ran past her morning, but she was at least happy to see us. 

Marathon Update:  Marathon!  26.2 with thousands of other people.  Great day.  Tiring day.  Fun day.

Going to Sleep

It's been a long day. I had busy children and then a baby shower to attend and then we hosted a social for the families of our children's classes. But the day is over and the marathon is hours away and I'm going to sleep.

I hope I'm recovered from the virus. I suppose I'll fond out in the morning. 

The Big Boy Update:  he went to a baby shower today and spent time in the kids room with some new friends. At the end of the shower he declared that,"Evan is my best friend."  Evan seemed like a nice boy. He knew all the ABC's in a row, which is a good skill to have

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Works well. I was told today by one of my son's teachers that my daughter works well and focuses on task all day during school. My son does 't have that level of concentration yet. Although, he doesn't like to wash his hands for hours on end at the sink like my daughter does.

Number Sixty-Nine

If you're old enough to be even a teen, you probably have some sort of connotation with the number sixty-nine other than it's the number that comes just before seventy.  It's the number that makes people giggle or offer rude comments or pretend they know far more about what that number signifies than they actually do when they're younger.

Even today, numbers like seven and thirteen, which don't have any particular significance to me personally, invoke thoughts of luck or dislike.  I've written about connotation before and how it has a powerful force over the actual denotation of a word (or in this case a number.)   And I am not immune either.

So when I got an email last night in the middle of the night about the upcoming marathon and how this year they were sending out our bib numbers in advance to make packet pickup easier, I was happy--happy because last year we had to do this bulletin board dance to determine what our bib numbers were so that we could then determine what line to stand in just to get our packets.  This was nice.  This was a good improvement.

So I scrolled down and it said my bib number was 69.  And I almost laughed out loud in bed in the middle of the night.  I thought someone had hacked their system and it had told everyone that they had a funny bib number.  I sent an email off to Uncle Jonathan and my neighbor asking for them to send me their numbers so I'd have them for packet pick-up, but what I really wanted to know was if they were a number other than 69.

I thought about it further, and decided it could be possible.  The bibs for the marathon last year started at one for the lowest last name alphabetically and my last name is rather early in the alphabet.  Maybe this was the real thing.

And it turns out it is.  And I'm not sure what to think about it.  There are people last year who were running in crazy outfits.  I saw more men and women in tutus than I would have ever imagined possible in a big race.  I saw people with strange things on their bodies to make a statement as they ran.    I am a boring wife and mother.  I don't feel like I can do this "racy" number justice.

Are people going to call out to me and yell, "go sixty nine!"   I going to have to let you know.

The Big Boy Update:  He has a thing for Ariel, the mermaid from The Little Mermaid.  He sees her face on the pink pullup underwear and he wants to wear them.  He's done this enough times now that I think he has a crush on her.  He went through a stack of pullups before bed tonight just so he could find her.  He is so over Lightning McQueen and Mater on the blue pullups. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: She was playing with a bottle and lid the other day and wanted help to screw it on and off.  First, she asked me to, "turn it."  Then she asked me to, "spin it".  I realized she used two synonymous statements for the same action.  She'll be two in two weeks.  Childhood language development is astounding.

Fitness Update:  Two miles before Halloween's evening events late yesterday afternoon.  It wasn't hard, but it wasn't easy either.  Some bothersome action in my chest area that had damn well better be cleared up before Sunday morning's run. (You hear that body?)