Category Archives: Motherhood

back on the horse

02 Tuesday Mar 2010

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Well, hello there.

I am back from our trip to Rome.  It was a fascinating trip, full of surprises and lots of fabulous food and one late hiccup in the plan.  We had never been away from the kids for a full week, and to land 5000 miles away pushed me out to the edge of my parental comfort zone.  The edge is a good place to be sometimes.  For all involved.  But that umbilical cord…  now, I’m sure you know that I do not mean the one that connected me to each of them at birth, because we did cut that one.  I mean the unseen cord that stretches from my heart to theirs, and boy oh boy, it stretched until it hurt.

Of course, eating gelato by the Trevi Fountain with people I love did help me get over it for the moment, as did one great meal after another.  I love to experience all the local specialties when I travel, and Rome had some great and memorable ones.

I was put in charge of choosing the restaurants (my pleasure), and communicating with all taxi drivers (mixed results).  I did a crash course of Italian for Travelers before I left, but when put in a pressure situation, it all flew out of my head, except to tell them that “I am learning Italian, but I do not speak much”.  I think I said that to everyone, no matter what they said to me.  May have made them wonder what exactly I was learning in Italian.  The other strategy was to say “Prego” at any time, since it seemed to have 12 innocuous meanings.  In retrospect, I did OK at the communicating part, and we ended up where we were going.  But maybe that is not saying much.

Other than the food, one of my favorite parts was strolling (roaming?) down the narrow back streets and impossibly narrow alleys, looking at the architecture above and the well-worn cobble streets under my feet.  The knowledge that we could be run down by a zooming Smartcar at any moment just added to the excitement.  I actually ran into one moving car (versus the other way around) but neither of us suffered any damage.

International intrigue, jane-style!  I am not a high adrenaline kind of gal.

Unless you count eating  Rigatoni con la Pajata, pasta with a sauce of milk-fed calf’s intestine cooked with tomatoes, salt pork, garlic and spices, and topped with grated Pecorino cheese.  This was seriously one of my very favorite dishes.  Amazing, complex flavor.  Romans are known as “popolo mangereccio” (people who are fond of eating) and this apparently includes a fondness of eating every part of the animal, and I have to agree it is tasty.  (Even better than Pork Belly Tacos from Mexico.)

I leave you today with a sense of relief that a tumultuous February has ended, and for me each month starts with a brand new shiny day called the 1st, which has always felt like a new start to me.  Start by starting.  And remember all the good things along the way.

guest blogger: Cheryl Conway-Nelson

27 Wednesday Jan 2010

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Today’s guest post is from woman-extraordinaire Cheryl Conway-Nelson.  I am not sure how to spell ‘extraordinaire’, and when I looked it up in the dictionary, it was not there:  it should be, sandwiched between extracurricular and extrasensory.  Her picture would be in there too, next to the definition, for balancing five kids, volunteerism, community causes, political activism, sweetness-meters and lots of wet socks.  I don’t know where she manufactures time (I suspect in her basement) but I would sure like to find out.  Since we finally received another dusting of snow here, it is time to share her thoughts on the white stuff.

I met Jane three years ago when I had the good fortune to be redistricted to
a new school.  She and I have a lot in common.  We both have brown hair,
wear glasses and totally rock the motherly figure.  We both jumped into
being first year Lego Robotics coaches.  We both have 6th grade boys with
similar interests.  We’re both northerners, and we share a friendly Bears v.
Packers rivalry.  (Bears Rule!)

We do have our differences too.  Jane is an amazing gardener.  I choose
garden flora designed by God to be unkillable. (not azaleas or hydrangeas
FYI).  She is a Cheesehead and I am a FIB.  And Jane is the nicest, most
sweet person I know.  On the sweetness meter, I’m in the negative numbers.
So when the topic of guest blogging came up while chaperoning on a bus ride
to the Cincinnati Museum Center, I should have known she would follow
through.

(Ed. note: “eventually”.)

So here I sit contemplating a topic when I happened to read Jane’s recent
entry about snow.  Then it hit me. Nowhere does our divergence on the
sweetness meter become more apparent than in looking at snow.  Jane looks at
the beautiful snowflakes and sees a peaceful snow globe.  I look at them and
see 10 wet boots, 10 wet gloves, 10 semi wet gloves, 5 wet hats, whatever
wet clothes their friends leave behind, at least 2 kids crying that they
can’t feel their *insert valuable appendage here* and puddles on parquet and
Pergo.  Oh the puddles.  With five kids, a snow day is a nightmare.  Winter
shock and awe.

For the record, I love snow.  Some day I imagine I will again appreciate the
inherent beauty of a peaceful snowfall like I used to, but not now.  I’ve
got to get back to loading the dryer and mopping the puddles.

Thanks Jane for giving me an opportunity to dust off the English major and
take her for a spin!

Thank you Cheryl, for stopping by with what sure sound like awfully nice words.  It is reassuring to see that the facade of sweetness* I try to keep propped in place is still standing (although with five kids I suspect that you are too busy to notice when it is askew.)

*and for the record, Bears drool.

almost dark

26 Tuesday Jan 2010

Posted by in Motherhood, seasons

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Late one afternoon, two boys came bounding off the school bus, ready to head to the sledding hill.  The snow was perfect, and they wanted to take in every minute of daylight.  Contrary to the number of “snow days” we have here, there is not that much snow;  between the icy-snow, the too-wet-slushy-snow, and the quickly-disappearing-snow, sledding days are few and far between.

I have never seen these two fine young people get dressed for the outdoors so quickly and efficiently.  Usually someone can’t get a boot over his scruppled sock, or can’t do this or something-or-another, but that day it was effortless.

“Have fun!  Just be back before dark,” I called after them as they grabbed the sleds from the garage, already at a full sprint.

The Professor came back at what could arguably be the most exact definition of ‘before dark’, as if he had taken the precise time of sunset, the current moon phase and amount of cloud cover into consideration when determining his entrance.  He came through the door just as darkness appeared to fall on that white snow.

After the typical pleasantries were exchanged, I inquired “Where’s your brother?”

“He didn’t think it was dark yet.”

Now at this point, I was just curious.  When, exactly, would The Little One think it was dark?  If this wasn’t dark, what was???  This sounded like a loophole, and finding loopholes is one of his specialities.

5:45 rolled around, then 6:00, then 6:15.  From my biased view in the warm kitchen (actually cooking dinner), it still looked quite dark outside to me.  Finally at 6:20, he came bursting in the door.  “That was so FUN!  The snow was perfect!  Yada, yada, yada blahblahblah……”  I wasn’t listening.  I had morphed into Mrs. PotatoHead with my angry eyes on.  Not because it was that late, or that I was worried about his safety, because I wasn’t — it was that he had blatantly disobeyed my instructions to be home before, well, you know.

“But, Mom — it wasn’t really dark yet!”  It was his story and he was sticking to it.  Like I could not look out the window with my Mrs. PotatoHead interchangeable accessories and see night for myself.

After a discussion of consequences for his less-than-stellar choice toward darkness-perception, we settled into a fine evening.

A fate would have it, the next evening I found myself outside at 6:15.  Inside, as I bundled up in my coat and gloves, a cursory glance out the window and I knew it was dark.  “I know dark when I see dark, mumble grumble…” I muttered under my breath as I opened the garage door and stepped outside into the crisp night air.  But out there on the driveway under the clear sky?  Umm, I have to say, it wasn’t what I thought.  I saw the last pink ribbons of sunset on the western horizon.  At 6:15.

Now, I love how the Professor is so literal.  His desire to follow the rules lends me a (probably false) sense of security as we coast into these teen years.  Somehow I feel I will have less to worry about with him when he is in high school.  I like knowing what to expect from him, and he feels the same way about me.

But I also love how The Little One is so full of surprises… How to squeeze a little more fun out of the moment.  How he can fly by the seat of his pants, even down the sledding hill.  How when it is almost dark, it isn’t quite dark yet, exactly.

These two boys, the ying and yang, they both remind me every day that no matter how dark it may look at first glance, it is never quite as dark as it seems.  And even if it was, I’d be fine as long as I have them bursting through the door.

snow globe

08 Friday Jan 2010

Posted by in Motherhood, seasons

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It is snowing.  Big, lumpy clumps of snow flakes, the kind that makes it look like the neighborhood was a giant snowglobe tipped upside down at some point last night, then set back down very gently this morning right before the alarm went off.  It is beautiful.  Sure wish I could find the connector cord to my camera so I could show you a photo.  Hmmmph.

The Little One collects snowglobes.  I find it an unlikely collection for a rough-and-tumble sort of kid.  Then again, we never know what they are going to turn into next, do we?   At any rate, he is excited about the snowglobiness of the view outside.  We stood next to each other and pretended we were inside the snowglobe, and someone up in the sky was looking in.  Kinda fun for a while.  (A little creepy after the concept sank in.)

It looks like a snow day, but it is not a snow day.  It is a two-hour-bus-delay day.  Which, considering we have had two snow days already this week?  And they have actually gone to school only two days since December 18th?  I think they should go give it a try.

10 days, and the honeymoon? Already?

10 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Motherhood, Writing

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It is Day 10 of my great writing escapade, and I have this news flash to report:

NaNoWriMo Honeymoon.  So.  Over.

I look back at my bright-and-shiny post from a week ago (Really?  Has it been a whole week?  What have I been doing?)

Oh, I remember, yesterday I pruned a bonsai instead of writing.  Because that couldn’t wait another year or two before doing.  Sunday I dredged a small pond instead of writing.  That did need to be done, but still.

Then, two things happened:

1)  I woke throughout the night with my brain suddenly filled with ideas of where the story would go.  For days, those lousy characters had been lounging around my brain, eating cheetos and staring at the TV screen even though it wasn’t on, not talking to each other and frankly not doing anything.  At.  All.

Then suddenly last night the characters started to talk again, talking to me, just like the writing experts said they would.  Wow, I need some sleep.

2)  All that character chatting was well and good, until The Professor shared some advice that got the wheels turning again.  He heard me tell a friend last night that I was floundering at about 7600 words, which was a good 8000 words behind the freakishly ridiculous schedule.  This morning, he came up to me out of the blue and gave me some writing advice — he said if I was stuck, I should just keep writing anyway.  If I was on a roll, I should stop.  He said it would make sense if I just did that, because if I quit while I am on a roll, I’ll be excited to sit down again and restart.  If I keep going when I’m stuck, some words will come out anyway.

I love that kid.

And you know what?  It worked.  I just banged out 5000 words this afternoon, for a new total of 12,460.  I guess that technically means I did not quit while I was on a roll, but it sure felt good.  Now I am a mere 4000 words behind pace, and at the rate I am going, I think the NaNo gurus are right — I can sneeze out that many words if I want to.  The honeymoon may be over, but I’m still planning to stick it out for the long haul.

let’s put the fun back in dysfunctional!

30 Friday Oct 2009

Posted by in Motherhood, something important, I'm sure

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It’s Friday, and time to have a little fun.  I found this video on the website karmatube.org.  It demonstrates a nifty concept from TheFunTheory.com, where they experiment to see if adding fun to mundane tasks can change people’s behavior for the better.  Have a look:

That made me smile, because it worked.

I tested a version of this “fun theory” years ago, after reading one of those helpful articles about How To Have A Happy Household.  In this case, the suggestion was to make chores *fun* so the kids would be, if not begging to do the chores, at least not complaining about the tasks.

I was dubious, but gave it an enthusiastic try.

“Hey kids, let’s play Laundry Fold-A-Thon!  It will be fun!”

{… insert sound of crickets here …}

I read this helpful hint in a parenting magazine, back when I used to subscribe to them.  I am pretty sure this particular article was written by someone who did not have any Actual Children.

Now, this new Fun Theory?  This one has potential.  It’s not just the technology, although boy does that help.  It is the cleverness, the innate sense of exploration and wonder that my Chore Cheerleading act did not provide.  In retrospect, I now know that if I had simply constructed a Rube Goldberg-type machine to hand each boy a piece of laundry?  We could have finished our fold-a-thon in record time*

(*NOTE:  chore completion time does not include 187 hour construction time of said machine)

solving a happy problem

26 Monday Oct 2009

Posted by in get along like cats and dogs, Motherhood, Writing

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I have what I might consider the happiest problem I could dream up.  One of the new kittens, Mia, is very supportive of my writing.  In fact, nearly every time I sit down at the keyboard to write, she jumps up to my lap and tries to reward my writing efforts by purring hysterically from a spot on my chest.  If she is all the way down on my lap, she makes a little meepy squeak and reaches her paw up toward my cheek, brushing it with her velvet paw until I hold her up higher again.  (I know that borders on kitten-porn but I need you to understand the urgency of the situation…)

She just likes to be tucked close under my chin.  Admittedly, I have a shelf-of-sorts, although it slopes gently southeast more with each passing year, so for now I try to hold her with my left hand and type with my right.  This is my dream problem, but it is a problem, as shown here in exhibit A:

i am nowtyping this witgh one hand whcih reaaly slashes the wordcount  productviity rate.  would be a goood idea to sollve this before say novmeber 1???

OK, back to two hands for a minute.  Maybe I should follow my own advice to my kids — think about the real problem and find solutions?  (They are sooooo tired of the word “solutions”…)

  1. Kitten purring enhances productivity if/when I have use of approximately ten fingers.
  2. Lap is not close enough to chin; although chin(s) keep migrating south also, there is thankfully still a large gap.
  3. Moving shelf back to the north and increasing its level weight-bearing strength/buoyancy/perkiness would require costly surgery.

Here’s one thought:  the BabyBjorn was popular when my kids were babies, but I gave mine away years ago.  Even though the kittens are tripling in size every 48 hours, I still think Mia would be lost in a baby carrier.  Besides, she needs more of an under-chin sling, something shaped like a feedbag-of-sorts that can rest on the shelf-of-sorts, and keep her purring away in her ideal spot, hands-free .  The purring is as mesmerizing a writing aid as the cuckoo clock has always been;  I can just keep typing to the methodical beat of the clock and the kitten.

And perhaps the most poignant aspect of this situation?  Like The Ode To Joy, one never knows when the wonderful problem will stop as suddenly as it appeared, so one must enjoy the problem while it lasts.  The Ode ended as it inevitably had to do, and the Purring could easily find a more comfortable spot, leaving me in the silence I always wished for when the kids were small, and now dread.

So. There is how the idea for the new invention, The KittenKjorn, is born.

Admittedly, there is too small a target market (1? 2?) for this to be a viable business venture.  Plus the useful life of the product is short, unless you happen to also own a guinea pig or other furry mammal who also longs to snuggle under your chin (umm, yuck).  Here’s what makes the idea a winner for me though — when the kitten grows too large, which should be shortly after NaNoWriMo at the current feline growth rate, the KittenKjorn could be repurposed, maybe with snacks?  Say, Chex Party Mix?  Or cookies?  There will be a lot of editing starting December 1, and I do need to keep that productivity up…

So sweet, it’s (almost) spooky

21 Wednesday Oct 2009

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I’m not a huge Halloween fan.  Lots of people around here decOraTe for Halloween, indoors and out, with extravagance beyond what I do for Christmas.  I just can’t want to do that.  I also don’t like spooky stuff, which puts a damper on the pranks, which I don’t like either. And, I don’t like scary movies, and I don’t read scary books, even if someone calls me a scaredy-pants.  So, Halloween? Just a day about candy for me.  Not that I eat my kids’ candy the first week of November while they are in school.  I resemble resent that implication, no matter how true.

If I am forced to go to a Halloween haunted house, I’ll pick this one (or I’ll stay home).

spookily delicious

squids and kids and life’s small miracles

20 Tuesday Oct 2009

Posted by in Foodies, Motherhood

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My kid ate squid.

While on vacation, we broke the long-standing, elusive Picky Eater Taste Barrier and the list of new-things-tried grew by the day.  I cannot tell you how happy this made me, the Frustrated Foodie who for many years could not cook interesting dishes or dine out at adventurous restaurants with her whole family.  It felt like nothing short of a small miracle that those kids flew right by “no ingredients touching” to frutti del mar and cioppino.

Hallelujah.

We arrived back home, and inevitably the children found the old food routines easier to stomach.  I was disappointed but started to cook more interesting dishes anyway.  Slowly, both of them have shown more and more willingness to at least try new things.  “Hey, that actually smells good”, they would announce with equal parts surprise and confusion.  Indeed, my jaw dropped this week when The Professor ate jambalaya with shrimp and spicy sausage.  Two helpings.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know people talk about jaw dropping — it is a familiar idiom — but I actually felt the drop of my jawbone and it’s companion reaction, mouth hanging agape.  “I almost fell out of my chair” and “knock me over with a feather” also  felt like actual possibilities.  He just looked at me with a tween eyebrow lift and said “What’s the big deal, Mom?”,  shoveling in this (admittedly delicious) concoction of innumerable ingredients as if he had been trying new foods I made, and finding them incredibly delicious, for all of his days.

I am happy to pretend along with him, and his brother, that they were not picky for the last decade.

Another case in point:  until recently, I quite possibly had the only two children on the planet who did not like sandwiches.  How can someone not like sandwiches?  It’s bread, meat and maybe cheese.  Jeez.  But while on a weekend trip, my cousin made sandwiches for a picnic lunch, and low and behold The Little One shoveled them in.  When we returned home, he asked if I could possibly make delicious sandwiches like that here at our home.  Hhmmm, I think I can duplicate the recipe:  let’s see, one slice of whole wheat bread, one slice of turkey, one slice of cheddar, another slice of bread.  Press down and wrap in make-shift materials because the rental house does not have any kitchen supplies.  My son was amazed.  “Wow, I didn’t know you could make this!”  Suddenly I was a star, the purveyor of deliciousness heretofore never seen in this house.

I guess I’ll also pretend that I did not serve turkey sandwiches 187 times in the last ten years.

All in all, a small price to pay for my new stardom.  I’ll take small miracles wherever I can find them.

a tale of two kitties

07 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by in get along like cats and dogs, Motherhood

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How does the story go?  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times?  At risk of Dickensian metaphorical hyperbole, the last couple weeks have had some ups and downs.  There was the loss of a beloved pet, but the adoption of two new ones.  There were the three trips to the vet when the cute little new pets became very sick, but nothing multiple medications given via syringe and squirted into the eyes twice a day couldn’t remedy.  There were the emails and calls about possible sightings of our lost pet, which raised our hopes but all of which turned out to be the wrong cat.  There was the shocking revelation that after ten weeks of hard, sweat-dripping, muscle-aching, don’t-fear-the-burn exercising at the gym with my nazi personal trainer, I officially lost one pound (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?) and my thighs are one inch bigger.  *THEN* there was the family health scare, thankfully with a happy ending, that put all the other problems into perspective.  (Because, finally, we find something that actually is one of the big problems in life.)

I’m still mad about the thighs thing though.

Gym drama aside, I am happy to share some good pet news for a change:   we have two new little kittens at our house.  They do not fill the hole in our hearts, but there is nothing like kitten silliness to cheer the soul.  They are, frankly, ridiculous.

This is Mia.

Mia

She is not the kitten I specifically went in to the humane society to find, but she turned out to be The One.  After 17 hours in the kitten room at the shelter, when the volunteer carries in The One, you just know.  She is very sweet and quiet and a bit shy.  She likes to curl up under my chin to go to sleep.  It makes housework difficult to complete.

This is Cowboy.

howdy cowboy

He is not the brightest star in the dark prairie sky, but he purrs like a hemi engine (very impressive to the automotive experts around here) and is an extremely playful and affectionate little guy.  I went to the humane society five times in two weeks to find just the right kitten; he is SO not what I went in specifically to find either, but he told me he wanted to come live with us, so what could I do?  Plus, those clever marketing geniuses at the shelter offered me two-kittens-for-the-price-of-one, so he was the bonus, BOGO kitten.  (Turns out, two kittens come with twice the diseases and parasites that they can quickly share!  What a deal!)

So, things are looking up.

1.  The kittens are rounding the corner towards good health, which means they are getting into more and more mischief every day.  (They were so well behaved when they were just laying there…)

2.  The outpouring of help and concern and kind words from the community in the search for our cat has warmed my heart.

3.  The scale at the gym clearly has something wrong with it.  The decades-long pain in my back is much better, my lungs can take deeper breaths, my clothes fit better and I have more stamina when I walk the dog.

4.  The biggest health problem my family now has to face is how sick we feel when watching Brett Favre on the Vikings.

Packer fans

And the extra inch on each thigh?  It just means I can hold both kittens on my lap at once instead of doing the dishes.