Books I read: March

I've been a little slow on the reading these days. I blame Candy Crush, and primetime television, and really everything else for taking over my mind and leaving me little room for digesting the written word. Except blogs. And twitter. I can digest those.

Grave Mercy - Robin LaFevers This was recommended by Jonna and I loved it. When does the next one come out?

Under the Never Sky - Veronica Rossi recommended by Whitney, also wonderful, also can’t wait to read the next one (my library doesn’t have it yet)

A Girl Named Zippy - Haven Kimmel This was … cute, I guess. I read it for book club and it was a lot of little stories about people in the woman’s hometown. It had a very young feeling, and I had a hard time continuing to read after each chapter. I don’t really know how else to explain it. The book was okay.

Tiny Beautiful Things - Cheryl Strayed The first Dear Sugar letter was sad and the answer well written and thought provoking and I thought I would like this. But there’s a reason that advice columns are written 1-2 letters in the grand scheme of a whole newspaper. A whole book of them was just grating, and several pages of an answer to every single question wherein most of the answer was stories about her … I couldn’t do it. No.

Unbearable Lightness - Portia de Rossi I loved this book, until it got to the epilogue, and then I wanted to, well, do something very bad. The idea that she was “saved” by Ellen and that she is fully recovered and life is peachy – well, I know a lot of people with a lot of problems and I don’t think anyone with a problem (eating, drugs, alcohol, anything) would ever say that they were “fully recovered”. It’s a struggle. Own it.

Pretty Little Liars - Sara Shepard The first part of this book was written so young that I couldn’t get into it. I was also having a reading problem and I can’t say I tried very hard though.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? - Maria Semple I thought this was charming, and I never exactly knew where it was going which was refreshing. It was sweet.

Organization of the brain - so not happening

I have this jumbled mess of things that I keep wanting to get down in my blog but I either haven’t had the drive or the inspiration or the time to do it. I’m not sure what my problem has been, but every single time I try it’s all, “bah, later”. And then not later.

So here I am trying to organize my thoughts, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t blogged in so long you aren’t even here anymore and it’s not like the last couple posts were stellar or anything. But This is MY SPACE (right? Isn’t that *they* tell you?) so here I am, throwing it all out there.

We got Disney passes five weekends ago. I can tell you it’s been exactly five weekends because we have gone to Disney EVERY WEEKEND. And now I’m looking through my last few posts and it does appear that I told you this, twice, but I’m typing and I’m not about to backtrack to not tell you again. So Disney. Five weekends. We’ve now hit every park, and Epcot and Hollywood Studios twice. We’ve gotten to the wonderful part of pass ownership where we a) pack all our lunches (I pack, not we) and b) we get there about 11a, and leave by 6p, and eat dinner on the drive back home (90 minutes or so). We’re really having a great time doing this, although every time we pack the kids up to go I wonder if we’re jading them to how magical Disney should be. I went maybe twice when I was growing up. Will they even think it’s special if we’re going so much?

But then as we’re sitting on the tram and Spencer is planning what he wants to do (“we need to get fast passes to Tower of Terror first, mom” (yes, he’s FIVE)) and Henry is grinning like an idiot looking for “the giant hat” and I think, well, at least it’s still special right now.

AND! Since we are in the throes of five-year-old-meltdowns, we can nix a Disney trip specifically because he’s not acting properly and not be out a ton of money and preparation. Not that we’ve done this yet, but we honestly should have done it on Saturday so it’s not out of the realm of possibility for VERY SOON.

Here are some fun pictures:

And then there was Easter, somewhere in the middle there. I should make a separate post for Easter. Are people still posting about Easter? Has my time passed? Screw it, I’m writing an Easter post too. We had a good Easter.

In the midst of all this fun-having, we all got terribly sick. The weekend of Easter Henry had liquid butt (yep, we were at Disney one of the days! Imagine that!) but everything was handle-able. He felt fine otherwise, and we just kept changing him and his pants. But the Monday after Easter Spencer woke up with a fever. I usually discount his whining about not feeling good – just preparing myself for test avoidance when he’s older, but one look at him and I called out to stay home with him. It was a good thing I did too, because an hour in there was VOMIT! VOMIT! EVERYWHERE! He walked from his room, past his own bathroom, into my room where he promptly puked on my computer cord, rug and everything between my bed and the toilet that I got him to. I do not handle puke well, so I’m gagging and trying to open a window while still acting calm for my boy (gag, heave, “it’s okay sweetheart, it’s okay. Get it out” gag, heave, ‘why the hell isn’t this window opening faster’) I was texting C, who was in the office for meetings and he was NOT TEXTING BACK and I was trying to rein in my freak out.

I went for the gold star in parenting and stripped my bed except the sheets and set S up there with a leftover Easter basket  as a puke bucket managed to clean up everything. I ran laundry and washed every sheet and towel and the regular dirty clothes in the house. And then I was felled, around 1pm, by fever and napped the rest of the afternoon. C came home and decided to wash the sheets that we had been laying on all day and washed my phone with it.

For those of you playing at home, here was my week in bullets:

liquid butt Thing 2

fever/vomit Thing 1

fever/weakness me

phone through the wash –no more phone

we missed kindergarten tour and opening baseball game due to MORE VOMIT on Tuesday

extreme drama with family (if you follow on Twitter, you know this but I’m not rehashing)

five year old MELTDOWNS daily

one of the hamsters died ON EASTER and I had to replace him before the boys noticed

But moving on! Yesterday I laid on the back deck and read while the kids played in the sprinkler, and then fed them popcorn and fruit for dinner (after a late lunch, and, well, it pleases everyone) while watching a movie. Laid back evenings ahoy!

And now it’s Monday, and a whole new week of crazy awaits (ps - I did get a new phone). 

Picture (not) perfect

This is one thing I feel bad about: Henry is now 31 month old and I don’t have a single picture up of him in the house. I take tons of them, and there are a bunch on my wall at work but I’ve never ordered prints of anything to frame and put up.

Oh wait, I take that back. We have one canvas print of all of us (Henry was about 7 months), and C’s cousin gave us a framed photo of all of us at their wedding in September. So … two.

Spencer has photos up. Before I had Henry I got the idea that I was going to make two of those giant collage frames full of their first years of life. So I did Spencer’s and it sat around for when I did Henry’s. Then C put it up because hey, framed photos just sitting around, and so now a collage of 24 photos of Spencer plus two 8x10 of Spencer are up. Henry, none.

So I guess what I’m saying is, does anyone have some good coupons? Because apparently I need to be a better parent, and that means I need to start printing some of these photos.

Do you have a problem with not putting photos up? Especially of subsequent children?

What I did on my weekend vacation.

After Thursday’s debacle in parenting/calamity of child-ing, the weekend couldn’t come fast enough. And what do you do when you feel like you can’t get your shit together around your own children? Add two more to the mix!

We sat for our neighbors’ girls while they went to a church function and then out with friends. I was pretty confident about it, but I’m often more confident about my child-watching skills than I am about my child-rearing skills. I took off early from work and stopped for milk and extras before heading home. The kids all had a marvelous time together, and I made veggie burgers and tater tots for dinner (the girls live in a mostly meat-free environment). After dinner was Wreck-it Ralph and popcorn and cookies. The parents came to pick them up about midnight – I was asleep, I can’t possibly stay awake that long. Our ONE issue was when the baby was going down for bed she was hysterical because she still nurses to sleep, but somehow snuggling with her sister calmed her down like pie.

Saturday was the baby’s birthday so we went over for a party and the kids spent hours playing with yet more children. They have one of those big trampolines and there were much bigger children playing roughly so I was helicopter mom for the afternoon, but it was fun and they had fun. One of the children there was so obviously a bully and I struggled about saying something about it, but with little side conversations I realized that everyone was aware of the problem with the girl. So that was good, I guess. I just kept my children off the trampoline when she was there and sidestepped the parent issue.

Sunday we took the kids to Animal Kingdom. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had very low expectations. I remember when it was built in 2005-ish and I thought, ‘but we have a zoo and Busch Gardens – what do we need another?’ But you know, we have these passes, we may as well go.

It was fantastic! It was so much lower key than the other parks. We unfortunately started with It’s Tough to be a Bug which scared the crap out of my OLDER child and he pouted until we got on the train and I handed him my camera. There was a fantastic safari ride (which was bumpy and crazy and I think Henry liked that better than the animals, which he kept pointing out and yelling “Lion King!!” I took Spencer on the river rapids which he loved AND loved that he was tall enough to ride, and we let the kids run wild in the dino digging area and on the slides. There were only two rides Spencer was too short for, and one he’s only got an inch so we should be able to ride it before our passes are up (Everest, and he loves roller coasters so we’ll be checking his height often). The places closes at 7pm so we were forced to leave at a reasonable time (which helped since we all had work/daycare/school today) but before we left we were able to get in Nemo: The Musical and the Lion King experience as well as a meet up with Mickey.

Spencer’s favorite thing? The rapids. “The ride where I got all wet”

Henry’s favorite thing? Mickey. He was singing M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E all day

So all in all, a successful busy weekend and yet still refreshed for the week.

And there’s corned beef and cabbage in the Crock pot for a belated St. Patty’s day dinner.

Sobs

I had a meltdown yesterday. If I write down all the little things that brought me to that breaking point they don’t seem like much. Apparently too much for me though.

Let’s start with the headache. I’ve had a lot of sinus headaches lately so I started out assuming this was one of those when it crept up around 2pm. By the time I left work it was so bad my teeth hurt, but I didn’t have anything to drink to take meds so I would endure until home.

Then there was traffic. I left work 15 minutes late, and that is the difference between free flying over the bridge and sitting in mind numbing (if it wasn’t for the headache) traffic ON the bridge.

Then I pick up the kids excited about signing Spencer up for swim lessons. He LOVES the water but doesn’t want to take the next step to floogle-free swimming. He’s very social – he would love lessons, right? RIGHT?

I don’t want to! (Cue whining) After a while I told him just to shut it, and we went to the Y to check out the pool. 10 minutes walking around the pool he conceded that he would do lessons, but then when I went to sign him up, they don’t take non-members unless you get this $60 “program pass” and then plus pay full price for lessons. So. No.

By the time we left there I had fully decided I was not cooking (headache still blasting, no meds in sight) and announced that we were going to the pizza place for dinner. All kids love pizza for dinner, right? RIGHT????

I DON’T WANT TO GO FOR PIZZA. Cue more whining. Cue me pulling off the road into a parking lot to sob. And sob, and cry some more. Spencer is in the back saying sorry over and over like he broke me (he did) and Henry doesn’t know what to think. I just couldn’t stop. Finally I got myself together enough to get back on the road to get home, we pull into the garage and now it’s Spencer’s turn to sulk for NO REASON when I tell him to get out of the car.

Finally all out of the car, Henry picks up a lone croton leaf. “A feather!” he says. And then Spencer walks by and crumbles Henry’s poor leaf. GET IN YOUR BED!

I talk to my husband, start sobbing again. I go talk to Spencer and tell him to apologize to his brother.

“Okay. Then can we watch a movie?” No.

Cue sobs over there.

DONE.

C had to deal with it all after that. I holed up in the room and he somehow talked Spencer out of his brat-from-hell routine, we all went for pizza and it was lovely. I just had to be broken first.

***

And in case I didn’t learn my lesson, my neighbors needed a last-minute babysitter tonight so I will have an extra 6-year old and 1-year old girl in my house for 7-ish hours tonight. They are good kids, although the older one is more hyper than my two boys combined so it promises to be a very loud night. A good night though, I swear it. I’m making veggie burgers and tater tots and popcorn, and they can run wild and watch movies. And I’ll hang with baby Lucy, who’s not so much of a baby now.

Happy Friday!

Excuses

I haven’t been running. I keep saying that once you stop it’s hard to start back up again, and it’s so true and hard to explain. I loved how I felt when I was running. I loved my time alone or with my running partner. I even grew to love running. 2011 was the year of the Run.

2012 I got way off track. I don’t know particularly why I stopped running, but there were all these reasons. Not even excuses – there was the holidays and then my Grandmother died in January, and the early darkness in the evening meant I had no time with the kids if I went for a run. I ran sporatically the first half of the year, did a 5-mile race in May and that was it.

On the con-side of no running, I could point out that I gained 15 pounds. This was NOT all about running but also about my lack of commitment on my eating, but running was a big part of it. I don’t really work out otherwise, so without runs my exercise beyond ADLs was non-existent.

This year I keep recommitting myself to working out. I ran once in February and then no more. I’ve lost a few pounds, but that’s more about my food intake than my movement. Finally I decided that with the time change I would start running again. I made a plan to start Tuesday, which is my afternoon that I have a little time to myself because the kids get home later.

Tuesday came and with it came rain. And cold. As I sat at my desk and watched the dreary day, I made more excuses. I certainly wouldn’t run in that. Maybe I could do yoga? In front of the tv? When I got out of work the rain was gone and it was chilly but sunny. I still felt like I didn’t WANT to run. I had already altered my plan – no running. I stopped at Target for some goodies for a friend. I dawdled.

But then I went home, strapped on my running shoes and got myself out of the house. I did two miles, and I wish I could tell you it was a good run but it wasn’t. The cold burned my chest, and while I ran most of it I was tired and out of shape the whole time. I usually go four miles but I cut it in half so I could still have a little “me” time (my Tuesdays are important to my well-being). What was good is that in spite of my excuses, I went. I ran.

Maybe the key for me is not making a plan and sticking to it. Maybe the key for me is to see my excuses for what they are, and go anyhow.

Time will tell.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Time after time

Time! It’s passing me by on this little corner of the internet! I keep thinking up things to blog about, but getting them out of my head and onto virtual paper is getting more and more difficult. And! And then if I do get them out there, my writing seems of ineloquent these days … so many people writing so much better than I, not that I begrudge them that, but how do I follow up such wonderful posts?

With lists, that’s how I do it.

We bit the bullet this weekend and bought annual passes to Disney. We’ve been talking about it for months, but this weekend we didn’t know what we wanted to do so we bought passes and went to Epcot. I forgot the memory card to my camera so this is my sole photo from Epcot:  

 

And now I’m looking through the photos on my phone – I never photo dump, so I have these from September 2011. Spencer really hasn’t changed that much from 3 to 5 except in height, but look at Henry! Good gracious!  

  

Epcot was … not so much for little kids. They had a decent time but I’m glad that it was included in our passes because they didn’t really get a lot out of it. I think next weekend we might hit Animal Kingdom. We need to go at least 6 times in the year to get our money’s worth but it looks like we’re going to try to do that in the first six weeks – so yay, Disney!

 

I found my childhood best friend on Facebook. So it’s apparently good for something.

The time-change. Well, I’m exhausted but I don’t know that it’s DST’s fault. Henry keeps getting up in the middle of the night (4am) and then subsequent 15 minutes until I finally just get up. This morning it was 6am and he had peed through, so I think he’s fully acclimated to the time change. He just started several weeks early.

 

We have a sushi date with old friends tonight, and I’m so excited! Sometimes I really feel like I don’t see my friends enough, but also I don’t feel like it’s all my fault! For a couple w two kids, we are immensely flexible. Things just don’t always work out.

Happy Monday!