Boys and Their Toys

So, it's almost here: the biggest holiday of the year. And, while here at the library that makes for some super quiet days, I know that Shad's students and Maia and Nate's classrooms are practically steaming from the excess excitement and energy let off by eager smallish people. Santa is visiting the daycare today. Nate was asking me this morning

"What am I supposed to ask for?" even though we had already rehearsed it last night.

"Snow boots and a train set," I replied, knowing that if he asks for these particular items, he won't be disappointed come Christmas morning.

He seemed fine with asking for those two things, thankfully. Although, I will admit that he did mention something about a "boy stroller" and I nixed that because "Santa can't bring everything!"

LOL A Boy Stroller?? What is this all about? He actually has a stroller for his doll that I bought him for his 2nd birthday so that he didn't have to use Sissy's pink doll stroller and babies. He has his own boy doll and a blue and yellow stroller. But I think the stroller got birdpoop on it and is in the garage right now. I think maybe he has forgotten that he has one. Still, we don't need another one. And why is he now calling it a Boy Stroller? Silly kid!

Nate is still fairly pre-occupied with gender identity and roles. Is this normal? I just read a teen book about a transgender boy and that has me freaked out a little. Is it normal for a 3 year old to be constantly asking if someone is a girl or boy? Last night, my brother was over helping me with the kids while Shad was at a Steelers game in St. Louis (sorry, but it's hard to even call it a Rams game this year...) Anyway, Nate was in the shower and Curt was watching him for me for a minute. I came back in to the bathroom and Nate was asking my brother if he could see his penis. WTH?? My brother was explaining that we don't show them to people. Nate wanted to know how he would know if Uncle Turtle was really a boy. *sigh* I'm not sure what my brother thought of this.

He has taken it to new levels lately, too. A few weeks ago, Shad tried to make Nate a grilled cheese sandwich and Nate refused it unless it was a "Boy Cheese Sandwich". Shad was perplexed but acquiesed and said "fine, it's a boy cheese sandwich". It took us a while to figure out that Nate thinks that we are saying "Girl Cheese Sandwich" instead of grilled cheese. Geesh! So, now he will only eat one if it is a special Boy Cheese Sandwich just for Boys. NOT for Girls!

Well, I hope this post finds you all well and ready for the holidays (if we can every truly be ready). I know we still have a lot of fixing and readying to do this weekend (and I work all day Saturday, so that is a bummer). Still, I'm trying not to lose sight of the real joy and meaning: God's love for us and His peace and promise for our future. I will have to really hone in on that by Tuesday evening when I just want to curl up in a ball and pull the covers over my head.

FELIZ NAVIDAD!

Let me know if you have any good recipes...

Shite!! It's been a while since I've posted anything. Starting to feel out of touch a wee bit and that's not good. Two months of holiday preparations is starting to feel like a lot of extra work for this mommy. Not that I don't enjoy most of it, but it's just so much to do, you know? The shopping and the letter writing and mailing and decorating and baking (can't you picture me now in my holiday apron with flour in my hair? LOL) Ok, so maybe I don't go whole hog on all of that, but it's still a lot to juggle. I shop mostly online, although I did make a hefty purchase at the local Bible bookstore because I like to support that type of local business this time of year. We put up the tree in the living room, but it's fake and didn't require a trip to the tree farm or daily waterings. And we didn't decorate outside at all. In fact, there are still pumpkins in the yard, now donning little caps of snow like bereted Frenchmen (is "bereted" even a word?) ;) And, as you'll no doubt notice, I don't technically mail all of my holiday newsletters. First of all, I let the dog write them. What's up with that? And then I email 1/2 of them. How lame!! Oh, my grandma will get one in the snail mail as well as most of my extended family...those not as computer savvy. But you can see how much easier it is to email it, right? And it saves paper. We're saving trees, people!!! It's all about the trees!!!

*sigh*

And on top of all of the usual stuff there is the holidayish stuff to do here at work like Gingerbread Family Reading night next week and Winter Reading Contest for three weeks over Christmas/New Year school break. Not that I don't like doing it, because I do, but it's just busier than usual. Adds another ball to the juggling trick. I've had other jobs where time almost stands still for 2 weeks around Christmas and you aren't expected to do much. Or you might even get 2 weeks OFF...

And then there are all of the kid related things that don't come up until your kids are in preschool and elementary school. Music programs (3 between now and Christmas--2 at church and 1 at school). Holiday parties at schools and church (3). Recipes requested for a pre-school Sunday School cookbook/gift project at church (3). LOL--they want my recipes? Off to the internet I go to search for something enticing! And then, THEN, in Maia's bookbag yesterday, as the sticky icing to the cupcake of holiday craziness, a letter from The Head Room Mother in Maia's class. The Head Room Mother also happens to be one of my daughter's good friend's mom, but she literally will not speak to me when I see her. Why, I have no idea. She is very tall and chooses to just sort of look over me, or at least that's how it seems. Anyway, she sends this letter listing about 7 other moms who have agreed to bring various things to the class holiday party in 2 weeks. Ok. And then she lists all of the other things that they still need for this party and wants to know who can bring them. Let me just say that I feel annoyed and guilty all at the same time.

First of all, who are these 7 other moms that are brining things? (Well, I know who they are, but why them first?) When did they sign up to bring stuff before the rest of us? I'm guessing there's a little clique issue there. And also, you know that they are all thinking that the rest of us are somehow deadbeats for not already being on the classroom holiday planning scene. I noticed that 2 of the moms on the list are school supervisors who are there all day and at least 3 others are stay-at-homers. I don't know all of them, and I'm not trying to say anything bad, but I didn't like the tone of the letter that implied that these particular moms are already doing everything they can and that some other moms better step up and help out. The delivery of the information was poor. (Not to metion, what about DADS helping??)

That is the annoyed part. The guilty part is that there is no way that I can attend the holiday party. I am already rearranging my schedule a week prior to that in order to be at the 1st grade holiday musical. I can send green/red M & M's or napkins or whatever, but I can't be at the party. And I can't be at Nate's party that very same afternoon when Santa visits the preschool. So, my kids will be the poor, lonely kids who don't have a parent there. The kids that the other parents feel sorry for and assume that someone just doesn't care about. And Shad can't leave his own class party to be at Maia or Nate's parties, of course. So we are both looked upon as "deadbeat" when, of course, we are anything but.

I'll admit, I don't attend PTA meetings. I'm not a fan of fundraisers, never have been, and that seems to be a lot of what they focus on. And I'm not really into talking about school EVEN MORE than we already do. I spend over 45 hours a week already away from my children and I don't want to take even an extra hour a month to go sit with women (ok, and a few men) to talk about school on any given evening. And I'm bound to have a much more jaded view of the school district than they are, so pardon me if I'm not the cheery PTA type. I'm sure this labels me in some heinous way with people like Head Room Mother. Clearly, in her mind I'm already not in the top 7 moms to call to ask for holiday party help.

*sigh*

But I digress. Sorry to vent my frustrations, but I just don't need this kind of thing especially at this time of year. Working moms get less respect than working dads and it pisses me off. Is this 1985? I don't think so.

Back to jollier talk, I do want to point out that in my holiday fever of "get it home, get it wrapped, get it made, get it done" I have taken it upon myself to make some of our holiday gifts this year. There must be some part of my brain that is craving an artistic outlet that doesn't require a glue stick and markers because I am making beaded bracelets for some people on my list and fleece throws for others. This is my 3rd year making throws, so that part is easy now, but the bracelets are much harder than I thought they would be. AND, to answer the question that I know you're wanting to ask: NO, I don't have time to do this. In fact, I am about to give up on a few of them and even bought some calendars as back-up gifts for grandmothers this week just in case I don't keep that ball in the air long enough to match enough beads and twist enough memory wire. So much for my next career as an eclectic jeweler. I will have to cancel the lease on the stand at the mall for next year. LOL

One last nugget before you get really tired of my babbling: Maia is 7 and it is getting harder and harder to hide the whole Santa secret from her. I know a few of you have 8 and 9 year olds who still believe and I want to know how you are keeping that up! Last week, we had a package from Target delivered to the house before we got home. They left it on the porch, as per my instructions. No big deal. But Shad got home with the kids before I got home that evening and there it was sitting on the porch. Maia ran right up to it and read "Two-Sided Flip Top Easel!!" on the box. Nate scurried up behind her and exclaimed "A Weasel!!" So, now the "weasel" can't be from Santa. It has to be from mom and dad because she knows they're getting it. AND the same week, Maia got an email from paypal stating that we had paid for American Girl Doll Clothes (purchased on ebay so that I wasn't directly giving money to the evil company, thank you very much---but it was one of the only things she really wanted so I had to find a way to get some). I had forgotten that the paypal stuff was set up to go to her email from her summer business ventures. So, here she is reading her email and she has an email from paypal telling her one of her "Santa" gifts. How can I win in this situation? I cannot. What are the chances that my first grader would read about one of her Santa gifts in an email to her from paypal? And, thus, Santa's sleigh will not be as heavy coming to our house with only a few items this year. :)

Cheers!

Observations and Ponderings from the Couch

For about the 3rd time this fall, I am sick. This time it is the variety that comes with buckets of snot and stuffy ears. I spent Thursday and Friday evenings on the couch. These are some of the things that I observed and thought about while I was resting:


1. Once they realized that I was sick and was not going to get up and tend to their every tiny, little need, my children commenced to play together for about 2 hours on Thursday evening. It was a minor miracle (along the same lines of finding a $20 bill in your old coat pocket... quite rare and pleasantly surprising.) At the end of the playing together, every room of our house was a disaster and there was "cheese-water" on the kitchen table (don't ask).


Question: Would they always play so nicely if I were "sick" on the couch? Could I test them to find out??


2. Blue's Clues is about the same whether or not it is a Steve episode or a Joe episode. Either way, it's one of the best, most tolerable kid's shows on tv. The reason we are partial to Steve at our house has less to do with the fact that he is the Original Guy and more to do with the fact that I'm certain Nate will grow up to look a LOT like Steve (just hopefully without the shirt):





Question: What should we do with his hair? It grows into a point on his forehead!!



3. The Office is a very funny show. Hilarious, especially having worked in an office. I love that the characters are played by real looking people. Steve Carrell is a comic genius, much the same way the Steve from Blue's Clues was a genius with the Notebook.


Question: If your name is Steve, are you destined to work in television?


4. The dog ate the dirty kleenexes that I put in a plastic bag on the floor next to the couch. She shredded them all over the navy blue rug. It will have to be vaccuumed, but our good vaccuum finally broke and our cheap vaccuum can barely suck hard enough to .... well, ok I'll stop there. But you get the idea.


Question: What is it about my snot in the kleenexes that made the dog want to eat them? For the love of goodnes...


5. On the topic of kleenexes... The kind with lotion are a MUST for anyone with a terribly snotty nose. How did people survive before this invention? I'm rating Puffs Plus at the botttom of My Favorite Inventions list. Other items on the list (in case you are curious) include such items as tampons, contact lenses, vasectomies, pharmaceuticals (but not their corporate entities) and baby formula. Lord only knows how hideous my existence would be without these items.

Question: If I had to give up one of these for the rest of my life, which one would it be? (And baby formula doesn't count since I'm not having any more babies... unless, of course, I pick vasectomies.)


6. I watched Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq, which is a documentary film by HBO and Executive Producer James Gandolfini. It is about soldiers who have lost part of themselves (literally) to the war and how they feel about it. I recommend that in honor of Veteran's Day, everyone watch this film. It is easy for someone like myself who opposes war and has literally NO veterans in my family to talk about how horrible war is... but it is another thing to watch people who have given up life as they knew it to try to protect our country. And whether or not I believe that protecting us from Iraq was a necessary endeavor, these people still showed courage beyond what I am capable of and continue to on a daily basis.

http://www.hbo.com/aliveday/
Question: DOES GEORGE BUSH CARE THAT MORE AMPUTEES ARE COMING OUT OF THIS WAR THAN ANY OTHER WAR SINCE THE CIVIL WAR???

A Fork of a Different Color

Snapshot of our life:

No, he didn't poke himself in the eye with his fork. He is sobbing because he couldn't have the green fork AND the green spoon (dishwasher). It was a major display of stubborn Irish temper that resulted in me offering him every other kind of spoon that we had and him vehemently rejecting all offerings. Could I have gotten the green spoon out of the dirty dishwasher? Yes, I could have. I could have washed it off and given it to him and probably stopped the tantrum right then and there. But Maia and I had both been sick and all silverware really did need to go through the dishwasher in order to be sanitized. Plus, it was the principle of the matter. Is it ok to cry and throw a huge tantrum over the color of your spoon? I think not. At some point, we all have to learn that we cannot have our favorite silverware all of the time. So far, Nate has not learned this. The purple spoon was not ok. The Winnie the Pooh spoon was hideous. The regular Oneida flatware... loathesome!!! And the real kicker about it all? He didn't have a single food on his plate that required a spoon. No applesauce or jello or soup or anything remotely sloshy or liquid.

If I'm remembering it all correctly, he didn't eat much supper that night. He never recovered enough from the meltdown to eat his cold food. I had even brought him my leftover McDonald's frech fries from that day's lunch because he LOVES french fries. But he didn't care. It was all about the spoon that night. And given Nate's propensity for crying at suppertime, it won't be the last time he cries about his spoon. Seriously, the kid cries at 80% of all dinnertimes which is why we let him eat in front of the tv so much. I guess that night we should have found a Diego video and planted him there for supper.

What a horrible Mom!! And to think that in the middle of it all, I took his picture!! ;)

My Research Efforts

In a concerted internet surfing effort to uncover who makes the American Girl dolls, I have located the following:

http://www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=263

AG is owned by Mattel. Mattel is a known human rights violator at its factories in China. Young women working mandatory overtime in unsanitary conditions for unlivable wages of literally pennies per hour... that's what we are supporting by purchasing their toys. If our country continues to purchase their toys, they will continue to treat their workers this way because WE LET THEM. If we were to boycott their toys and let them know why, maybe they would do something. Maybe the future of these workers depends on us caring.

Maybe I will run for president.

Oh yeah. I'm not old enough.

Dern it all. ;)

Also check out: http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/

American Girl----Made in China

Maia turned 7 yesterday. It's hard to believe, but there was no stopping it. She's not much taller than she was at 6 and still has some trouble saying her "r" sounds. Yet, she's quite the dynamo on the computer, has her own MP3 player and sometimes calls people "just to talk". I guess that means she is 7.

One right of passage as a 7 year old this year was receiving a special gift from my mother. Ever since Maia was a toddler, she would pour over the American Girl catalog at my mom's house and make them read her the descriptions of items. Dolls, clothes, accessories, pets, books, shoes,... you name it and they have it in the American Girl catalog. For the dolls AND for you! It all costs at least a pint of blood and your firstborn's first lock of hair. Naturally, my mother was willing to supply these things (I guess she doesn't care much about that 31 year old lock of hair in the plastic baggy in my baby book anymore--even though it took me two years to grow it!). She ordered a Just Like Me doll for Maia, which has medium brown hair and dark brown eyes just like Maia. It comes with a stand and a book and adorable clothes. She loves it and I can totally see why. I would want one for myself if it weren't just utterly ridiculous and greedy for a 31 year old to have her own American Girl doll.

The doll's hair is very silky and shiny, like she's used a dolly flat-iron on it. It can only be brushed with the American Girl doll brush. Other brushes, says the Care and Keeping of Your Doll tag, will make the hair frizzy and messy. Well, Mimi Peggy didn't get a doll brush and this was a concern. BUT never fear!! I enlisted the help of my Faithful Friend in All Things Girly, Hollie, and she miraculously produced a gift set of American Girl doll brush, hair accessories and jewelry making kit. Voila! We can brush the doll's hair without fear of frizziness or breakage. I know I feel better knowing that this investment toy (because anything that costs as much as this doll cost is more like an investment, don't you think?) will have good hair.

Now, for those of you who don't know much about American Girl Dolls and the whole hype that has surrounded them for at least 10 years now (probably longer)... American Girl Dolls are part of a mega-million dollar business that includes historical, American costume dressed dolls from different eras of American history as well as contemporary dolls that you can order with your own hair color, eye color and features. Yes, they have Black dolls and Asian dolls and Red haired dolls with freckles. You can get medium, light or dark skin. Some dolls have wider noses. Here at the library we have three of the dolls on display next to the American Girl books. That's right! They have their own book sets highlighting girls named Felicity, Kirsten, Samantha, Kit, Josephina, Molly, Addy and Kaya as they grow through different periods of American history and learn to be awesome American girls. It all just makes you want to sign up for the draft it's so darned patriotic and adorable. Reading, learning, growing in appreciation for our nation's history and fashion awareness! What could be better??!!

Oh, actually, it does get better... American Girl has expanded quite brilliantly into a magazine for girls ages 8-12 and even short "how-to" books like "The Care and Keeping of You" about your growning, changing pre-pubescent body and books about how to be a good friend and deal with friendship issues (as we know abound during ages 8-12). The magazine features all kinds of "regular" American girls in super-cute clothes showing us how to make applesauce smoothies and talking about how to host your first Hawaiian Luau Slumber Party. The focus seems to be self-esteem and getting along with others, which is commendable. Maia likes to look at the magazine when she comes to the library.

Who could argue with any of this, right? It's all good, clean American fun. And they're learning... they have BOOKS, after all. American Girl History Mysteries even. Truly.

There's just one little thing that bothers us. And Shad was the first to point this out. Maia's American Girl doll, with it's carefully brushed silky brown hair and gleaming dolly eyes that go to sleep when she lays down, was made in CHINA. China. Where they give up their baby girls because they'd rather have boys. Communist China. Where they pay workers pennies on the dollar and let them work in sweatshops. Freaking China!

Just to be fair, I went to the American Girl website to see if there was any info about why/how these "American" dollies are fabricated in China. Wow, there's a lot of info on the website, including info about the "doll hospital" where you send your AG doll to get fixed up properly should anything traumatizing happen to her (as is possible when little brothers are involved). I went straight to the FAQ section of the website but only found many Q's and A's about ordering, shipping, paying, returning, sizing, gift registry and wish list. Right. Nobody else is concerned about the fact that American Girl items are made in China, I guess.

And, really, what can I do about it? I can't send the doll back now can I? No, I cannot. I can't refuse to buy any more items from AG, either, because I have a sneaking suspicion that we will end up with more accessories for Christmas. So, what is the lesson here? That our country has reached our lowest low and our morals are all completely trash? That capitalism is king and the almighty dollar wins yet again? Probably. It's disheartening. I can't look at "Kelly" (the fine American name that Maia has given her doll) without picturing her in a giant crate on a barge crossing the Pacific Ocean.

You can bet that I'm going to make time this weekend, however, to help Maia make "Kelly" some beaded bracelets. It will be some good girl-time for us and we are indeed American, so in that way I guess we will embrace the spirit of American Girl and try to take back some of what is being taken away from us as a nation on a daily basis: our future.

To 'N'-finity and Beyond!

Nathanael David has learned how to write an N. He is very proud of this and wanted me to show everyone. (Ok, maybe he didn't really ask me to show you, but I could tell by his fervor for this new task that he would like to show you.) He's been writing them everywhere. We put his art project from church on the refrigerator and it now has Ns all over it.

What does this mean for Nate? Well, I guess it means that now he needs to learn ATE and then he will be able to write his name... or at least his "nickname". I'm not betting that the full NATHANAEL will come any time too soon, especially since he can only say "Nafanel" still. He is starting to learn, though, that he has three names and if you ask him what they are he will say "Nate Huddleston David". That's a start, I guess. :)

I love this stage. Three-year-olds are just hilarious and cute and innocent still, as opposed to their senior preschoolers known as "The Four-Year-Olds" who can become even more manipulative and whiney. Three-year-olds are excited by bugs and the moon and want to know just exacly how did God make people AND dogs. Nate is just latching on to this concept of how God made everything in the world, and it is truly precious to watch him think about it and try to wrap his brain around such a big concept.

Here's a classic three-year-old Nate story from this past weekend that I think appropriately outlines all that is the Three-Year-Old Little Boy:
It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon around 4:00m. Nate and I had gone out to swing on the playset for a bit. He is starting to be able to swing all by himself, but he still enjoys the company of Mommy by his side (read: he is a Momma's Boy and must have Momma stand by him even though he can pump his legs perfectly well.) After a while, I retreated to the grown-up swing and just sat and watched him play. He went in the playhouse and came out bearing "dinner" for me. It was a plastic red ball and a plastic baked chicken in a dirty bowl with some sand mixed in. I thanked him and asked him what it was that he had fixed me. "It's chicken and bonatos!" he proclaimed with delight. Right! How could I not know that. Nate is famous for fixing us "bonatos" which we believe to be a mixture of tomato and potato with a little "nate" thrown in. I "ate" the delicious fixin's and watched Nate take up another game of "hunt the wolf" with a stick and a plastic baseball bat. At one point, he actually put the plastic bat under his chin and held it to his chest and successfully climbed up the side of the playset. (And I wonder how, just a month ago, he had a broken collarbone... ).

Nate seemed pretty engrossed in playing pretend (at least it appeared to be pretend as I didn't notice any actual wolves in the yard), I snuck inside to get Shad so that he could spy on Nate through the window and see how cute he was being. The next thing I know, I'm looking out the window and there is Nate standing in the backyard with his shirt pulled up and the front (only the front) of his pants pulled down. He was just standing there staring at his smallish man parts in a mostly perplexed fashion, and I bounded outside to see what was going on. We don't exactly have a privacy fence, after all.

"Nate, what are you doing? Pull your pants up, Buddy."

"I can't! My wiener's getting bigger!" His tone was that of concern, if not outright fear, and I picked him up and carried him inside.

"SHAD! WE NEED YOUR HELP!"

I took him in the bathroom and said "Maybe you need to pee pee."

Nope. Not so much. It was just a different, not-needing-to-pee kind of growth. Shad sort of glanced at it and declared that, indeed, there was "something going on there".

Nate then proceeded to take off all of his pants. His underwear felt funny and was hurting his wiener, he said. Fair enough. We have other underwear. Superman. Scooby-Doo. Sports boxer-briefs even (SO CUTE!). But no, he didn't want other underwear. And he didn't want pants, either. They would hurt. And as Shad and I were trying not to totally laugh out loud right in front of him, he put only his shoes back on and headed for the back door.

I had to stop him, of course. I think we do have to draw the line at playing with NO pants on in the backyard. This wasn't cool with Nate, who launched into a good, solid 15 minute tantrum about wearing pants. He had to go in time-out sans pants. We finally settled on wearing a pull-up because evidently that wouldn't hurt his wiener. I started to fret that he would have an underwear rebellion and refuse them altogether.

Thankfully, the wiener regressed and underwear was acceptable by the time we readied for Kid's Church that evening. I guess we should just be glad the this incident didn't take place AT Kid's Church. :)

And with that I leave you to ponder the bigger question: how on earth will we deal with this when he is 12??

Go out into the world...

This fall has found us to be busier than ever. Between work, school, daycare, piano lessons, choir practice, doctor appointments, relatives visiting from L.A., and, Oh Yeah, SOCCER, we are barely meeting each other coming and going. Shad got home about 10pm last night from an away game. He left before Nate even woke up this morning. It makes for some long days and weeks, but we are surviving.

The past two weeks we have added another weekly destination to our repetoire: Kids' Church. This is on Sunday nights from 5:30 to 7pm and includes a class for Nate and (new this year) an adult study class, too. Perfect, we thought, because we don't have any other time to fit that in and this will give us an opportunity to meet more people at church. Maia has always loved Kids' Church, and having it Sundays instead of Wednesdays this year we're hoping will mean that we manage to get her there more frequently. As with all learning and school-y type things, she soaks it all up.

Well, last Sunday when I went to the Sanctuary after my study class got over, they were wrapping up her Kids' Church group with some prayer. She appeared to be heavily into it and it looked like she was even crying as they ended the prayer. I asked her about this afterwards, but she wouldn't talk about it. Ok, fine. That is her business, I guess. She did very quickly tell me about the 3 invitations that were passed out to each participant for them to give to friends as an easy way to invite others to Kids' Church. Great! That sounded like an easy way to go about inviting people to church. Not too "in your face" or preachy or anything. We're not exactly evangelicals, we're Methodists. Methodists are pretty open and liberal and easy going. That's not to say we can't be serious about our faith, but we're not pushy.

Right. So, Maia took this church invitation thing very seriously and immediately filled in the names of three people that she wanted to give her invitations to. Having done that, however, she didn't want to stop. She insisted on making several more homemade invitations with all of the pertinent information on them. She spent her "reading" time before bed Sunday night making more of these invites and planning who to give them to. Well, evidently, she's been making more than I thought she was and she's added an RSVP and our phone number to them. Oh, AND, she's neglected to mention that it's for Kids' Church. I found a straggler on the floor on my lunch hour today (which I'm sure is going to cause her no end of distress when she realizes that someone got left out). It said

TO: CATELIN

DATE: 9-30-07

TIME: 5:30 to 7PM

PLACE: FIRST UNITED METHEDIST CHURCH (close on the spelling, eh?)

And then the RSVP stuff.

On the front of the folded over piece of paper it said: SPIDERMAN IS HERE!

This is because the theme of Kids' Church this year is "Don't get caught in the web of sin", and the invites that they passed out were indeed Spiderman. Well, you can see where a kid or a parent might be confused upon receiving this folded, little, penciled-up piece of paper from Maia. And, so, when I received a voice-mail from a parent this afternoon, I wasn't 100% shocked:

"Hi, um, this is Alex's mom. Your daughter gave Alex a homemade invitation to a birthday party today. I'm not sure if you're passing out invitations or what the deal is exactly, so please give me a call."

The tone in Alex's mom's voice was sort of jovial and sort of confused, like she was laughing at either us or Maia or both. Laughing with us? I'm not sure, because I don't know Alex's mom. She does happen to teach at our daughter's school, however, and she also happens to be my parent's down-the-street neighbor. All of that aside, I have never met the lady, and I have no idea what her response might be if I call her back and say "Actually, Maia's invitation is for Kids' Church."

It is at this moment, then, that I am sort of wishing that Maia went to a parochial school. That would alleviate some of the awkwardness here, wouldn't it? On the other hand, this is exactly what Jesus asked us to do as Christians! Our 6 (almost 7) year old, has gone out to the "Gentiles" and is inviting lambs into the fold. How on earth can I tell her that she isn't allowed to do this???? And yet, I can't really allow it to continue, can I? How much longer will it be before we get the call from the teacher (or, even worse, an administrator) telling us that Maia isn't allowed to hand out invitations to church on the playground? What are we supposed to tell her then?? I haven't had enough training for this. I want to go back to telling her to stop chewing on her hair or watching her learn how to walk. That seems SOOO much simpler.

And I'm thinking, I've gotta hand it to this kid, I would never have given out invitations to church on the playground. And while I have invited a few people (namely, SHAD) over the years to church, I likely haven't fulfilled my allottment as a Christian. It is really a hard thing to do, and here my first grader is chomping at the bit to invite kids to church.

Well here's the clincher: While talking to Shad this evening on the phone about this particular quandry, he filled me in on a little secret of Maia's. It turns out that they receive "points" at Kids' Church for every guest that they bring. Those kids with the most points later in the year will receive a backpack. Ahhhhh... so there's the true motivation behind Maia's scramble to invite as many kids as possible to church. As if she needed another bookbag or backpack!!!

Now, God grant me the serenity to talk to all of the parents who are going to be calling our house in confusion over the next few days. ;)

Get out the Baby Book!!

There are a few moments in the life of every parent that stand out as Big, Huge, Great Moments. When your children are born, of course, is right there at the top. First steps are sometimes a huge deal, although by the time that Nate took his at 14 1/2 months, I'm honestly not sure I remember it. First tooth. First word. First birthday. All good things. Stuff you bring the camera out for and call the grandparents about.

In the wake of our first broken bone from last week and first day of First Grade from last month, Nate has added a new first to our list today: that's right.... Ladies and Gentlemen, He Pooped On The Potty. HALLELUJAH AND AMEN!! I got the call as I was checking out a Season One DVD set of Charmed to a patron this evening. Of course, I was sad to not be there for the joyous occassion but also just releaved that it has happened. He has been so uber-resistant and stubborn about this, not wanting to talk about it or try it at all. He'll stand up and go #1 like a Big Boy 10 times a day, but he was totally holding out on #2 for some reason. He has proven the rumor that "boys are harder to train" to be quite true.

Naturally, I am wise enough to realize that we are not out of the woods yet and I know that he will likely not jump on the potty wagon full-time just overnight (although if he wants to, that is Excellent). Still, this hurdle was a big one and having crossed it is a major accomplishment for Jr. I guess he cheered and showed everyone at Shad's Grandma's house (the site he chose to perform this feat) his Superman undies that he kept all clean and dry all day. Shad took pictures with his phone. ;)

Alas, I have missed one of the major milestones in my "baby's" life. After 3 years of wiping his skinny butt! And just yesterday I bought a whole new pack of pull-ups, (which I realize we still may utilize.) Some days he wants to wear underwear and other days he doesn't, but I'm hoping that this new found ability might spur him into full-time underwearage. I could buy him some fall clothes with the savings... or ME some fall clothes! Oh, now I'm just thinkin' crazy-talk!

And finally, I recall that a month after Maia was potty trained, I decided that I needed a baby. This time around, I can honestly say that I don't need a baby (which is good since my spouse is no longer capable of providing me with one). There are three babies coming in the Huddleston extended family later this year, and I will hold all of them a little bit while their mommies eat Thanksgiving dinner standing at the kitchen counter. :)

A Sling for All Seasons

Quick question of the day: Where is your clavicle??

Give up? Your collarbone, that's where. It's the fancy-pants medical name for your collarbone. It is also the bone that little Nater broke in a tumble down my co-worker's basement stairs during a cook-out on Sunday evening.

That's right. It's Nate first broken bone, and our first broken bone as parents, actually. We've done the x-ray thing before, when Maia smashed her toe with a can of Spaghettios in '04. That wasn't fun, but it also wasn't broken. This time, we knew pretty quickly that something was not right (given that he was screaming "IT HURTS IT HURTS" over and over) and we headed off for a fun filled evening at the E.R. Thankfully, Papa and Grammy H. (God bless their souls!) took Maia off of our hands. But by the time we got to the E.R., we weren't sure if there was a broken bone or not. Nate lifted his little arms above his head and out to the side for the nurse in triage with no problems. We looked sideways at each other, smirking at Nate's obvious delight at being the center of attention. Had he just taken a spill, gotten spooked and bruised himself?

No. X-rays showed a broken clavicle. And when he put any weight on his arm it hurt him. He wouldn't let us pick him up under the arms, either. :( Poor Buddy! Other than the occassional "OW THAT HURTS" when he would try to do something with his arm, he was the Best Little Trooper that evening. His main concern was the he would pee his pants when he decided that he didn't like the women's room toilet. Thankfully, Shad took him to the men's and we averted that crisis. (I was just impressed that he cared about peeing his pants while in the ER with an injury.) He let several nurses and the doctor look at him and stood just right for his chest x-rays without an ounce of protest. It was almost bizarre.

So, finally he was "fitted" with a sling (I use the term "fitted" loosely, because I think this sling would fit me), and we were sent on our way. We got home three hours after the initial injury. All in all, not a horrible experience. Nate fell asleep on the way home and, other than waking once in the middle of the night, he slept 12 hours, which he never does (because we have bred a species of non-sleeping children).

The next morning, Nate was not at all keen on wearing the fancy navy blue sling on his left arm. (See picture above!) However, he wore it, and when I let him take it off for a breather later, it hurt his shoulder and he asked to have it put back on. That was good news for Mommy, as I appear to be the one in charge of making sure he gets this sling on and keeps it on. Now, three days later, he is still wearing it and not complaining about it. He has been to Papa and Grammy H's for two days instead of daycare (causing a tremendous jealousy in his sister who threw not one, but two giant tantrums about it), but tomorrow he will be thrown to the wolves at Building Blocks. I worry about how he will play outside and if he will get hurt or not. Alas, life is rough and so he must go back to daycare, sling and all.

Anywho, that is our big news for this week. It wasn't really a restfull Labor Day weekend (and don't get me started on how I still have to work 5 days this week!) but all in all we are alright.

Fish Out of Water

So, you'll recall my mini-tirade about sick days from the last post... I now have bronchitis. It looks like my 1 1/2 sick days will take a hit this afternoon as I'm planning to go home early. I really tried to tough it out and got all ready and showed up here at work and everything. But, once I was out in the world, I knew that I wasn't fit to be up doing much. I actually went to the Dr. yesterday, when I didn't feel too bad yet because I was short of breath and had been on and off for a week. I figured it was something to do with allergies. I've had a cough, but not a super horrible one, not the worst I've ever had. Still, I'd never in my life been short of breath like this, so I figured I better get a visit in to at least the PA. And her diagnosis was bronchitis, which I've never had. I've never had anything wrong with my lungs before, even despite a scandalous stint with smoking as a late teen. LOL ;)

I'm now all super drugged up and feeling that way. Steroids and antibiotics on top of my usual meds (which typically don't play nice with other pills.) My exhaustion from Doing It All has collapsed into a mildly feverish exhaustion, which now that it's here, I can differentiate from the normal every day exhaustion I was feeling on Saturday. I know that the antibiotics are in my system because I woke up this morning with a taste of burnt metal in mouth, like old nickels or something else equally yummy. A bad taste in the mouth is listed as one of the side effects on the sheet I got with my prescription. I guess I'm among the 8% who report that fun side effect. Better than vomitting, however, so I'll take it and call it my own. Hopefully, it will start to be worth it soon and I'll be feeling better.

Ok, I'm done whining about myself, but first here's one last complaint: Who gets bronchitis in August? It's like having a sunburn in January, unnecessary and ridiculous. If this were the Ides of March or something, I wouldn't feel so annoyed with it (and I'd probably have more sick days left). Bronchitis in August is for invalids and the elderly. I'm not impressed and will start taking my vitamins more regularly. *sigh*

Be well.

On My Mind

Here's what's on my mind today:

1) Nate has a fever and I'm hoping that he's not getting sick. (Well, he's obviously a little bit sick, but I'm hoping it doesn't develop into a doctor visit worthy/staying home from work sick.) I'm worried about him mostly because I am not with him. Since I am at work and Shad is at a soccer tournament, he is with my parents. So, I can't really assess his illness and that makes me worry more.

2) I work way too much. This working full-time gig is for the freakin' birds. I'm so tired, and I'm so tired of being so tired. If I could work here 30 hours a week instead of 40, I think we would all feel better at our house. I know I would.

3) My house is messy. I fear that it will always be messy. It doesn't matter how much time I spend picking it up, it will be messy again in less than an hour. And that's just mess... that doesn't even address actual dust and dirt underneath the mess. I've narrowed it down to an issue with three (or four) things: a) laundry, b) mail and school papers, and c) books. These are the things that I see laying around the house that I'm tired of looking at and dealing with. However, given my current state of exhaustion (see 2 and 4), I don't see it being addressed too actively this weekend.

4) My children don't sleep enough. Even when they are tired in the evenings, they fight going to bed. Even if I give them Benadryl for allergies (really!), they still take forever to go to sleep and still often wake up at night (which means I wake up at night). Since Nate has a fever, he was up a LOT last night and finally ended up sleeping on the couch for a few hours before waking up prior to 6am. I feel today as though I have a newborn at our house. But if I had a newborn, I would not be working and would be, in fact, sleeping while the baby slept. I can barely keep my eyes open today.

5) I think I ran over a turtle on my way back from lunch. In my exhausted state, I was either hallucinating and there wasn't really a turtle there, or there was a turtle and I just didn't see the turtle in time--but then, who is looking for a turtle on Western Ave.? And I didn't exactly feel a crunch under the tire or a bump or anything like that, but I am in the Rav today and so I'm not sure if I would feel it run over a little turtle or not. When I looked back in the mirror after maybe running it over, I didn't see a turtle. I might be losing my mind. I like turtles, too, so if I did run over a turtle, then I am very sad about that.

6) I'm starting to remember why I was not a fan of soccer season a few years back when Shad was head varsity coach at Tolono. This time he is just the JV coach. So, he isn't in charge of the entire program and parents and players aren't calling our house constantly. But, he is never home. When he is home, he is either eating, showering or sleeping. We talk about 4 minutes a day and that is usually first thing in the morning while I am in the shower. Today he had to be ON the soccer bus at 6:15am, so I didn't even see him (although the children were already up!) I miss him, and, while I hope he is having fun coaching soccer, I am still not a fan of soccer season.

7) I watched "Scott Baio is 45...And Single" on my lunch hour today on VH1. I don't typically get to watch much VH1. Noggin is channel 298 and Nickelodeon is 299 and that is about as high as our channels ever get to go. But lately I have been very lazy on lunch hours and haven't been doing laundry and dishes and picking up from the mornings like I am supposed to. I have been watching tv while I eat. And so today I decided to scan the channels and I happened upon the Scott Baio show. I mostly just want to know why he gets to have a show about what a loser he's become. And why does he hang out with Wayne from The Wonder Years?

And finally,
8) Why do moms get the same number of sick days as other people...single people and people without children? I could go on for hours about how our country devalues working parents, but this one paticular topic is just wearing on my nerves lately. I started 2007 with 8 sick days instead of 10 because I went over my allotment in 2006. In both instances, the majority of my sick days have been taken to stay home with sick children. This year, for instance, I have taken 6 1/2 sick days. 2 1/2 of those days were for my own illness. The other 4 days were for my children. Now, because I am a mom, and have been for nearly 7 years now, I know that this grand total is actually pretty darn good. What I mean to say is, lots of people have probably had to stay home more than 4 days with their kids so far this year. Am I right??? We've actually been pretty healthy. Nobody had a 5 day flu. Nobody had surgery or was in the hospital. Overall, I think I have probably missed less days of work than millions of other American parents. So, why is it that I have to now, with over 1/3 of the year left on the calendar, fret over how I will manage with my 1 1/2 days left of sick time? Where is the justice in that? If Nate is sick on Monday, for instance, that will eat up my 1 day and then I'll be mostly S.O.L. if I get sick or have to stay home with a kid again before January. I've been told that I cannot borrow against next year again. I will have to go without pay.

What do I propose, then? Extra sick days for parents. I would propose an additional 3 days per year per child. That would give me an extra 6 days a year on top of the 10 that I get. I mean, COME ON, some of my other colleagues who DON'T have little kids have almost used up their own days because we work with the public and the public SNEEZES and COUGHS on us. We get sick from this job. And I am the one who works with the little kids here at the library. Last year a little kid sneezed so heavily on me that I had to wipe myself off. And still, I get the same amount of sick days as the lady who processes books in the basement and lives alone with her cat.

*sigh*

Just a few things that I have on my mind today. There's more, of course, but I'll stop burdening you with it now and move on to something productive here at work like making construction paper monkeys for next week's storytime. ;)

The Early Bird Gets Worms in Their Toaster Strudel

5:54am

That's what the clock said when I woke up this morning. Shad wasn't in the bed. The dog was. There were footsteps in the hallway and a light on in the bathroom. I felt a groan well up in my throat. The pressure in my bladder was significant, as I had apparently slept all night without getting up to pee. This rarley happens...like maybe once a month or less. Despite all of this, I rolled over and feebly attempted to keep sleeping. The dog lifted her head to look at me but didn't attempt to snuggle, a sure sign that she wasn't ready to get up, either.

Maybe one minute later I heard voices. Shad and Maia both appeared to be up. My groggy brain was busy trying to supress the need to pee and the light and voices all at once and it was just a bit too much to handle. Why were people talking? Why were lights on? Why, o why, o why, o why were they TALKING?

I knew exactly where this was going. The need to pee forced me out of bed. I stuck my head into Maia's room first. "What are you doing?" I questioned in my best Mommy Who Is Tired and Confused voice. She was standing at her dresser with no pants on. Had she peed the bed? This only happens a couple times a year any more, but still it happens. And I had given her Benadryl for allergies (really!!) before bed, so maybe she had slept so soundly that she didn't wake up?

"I'm getting shorts," she whined in the voice that I know to belong only to the Maia who isn't really ready to get up.

Shad appeared in the hallway. He had to use the bathroom and could I please just lay down with her so that she would go back to sleep?

Fine. My alarm was set for 6:40am so that I could get ready for work. I could sleep for another little while and I didn't care where. I got my pillow and laid down with her. She flopped and pulled on the covers and tried to get comfortable for a minute. And just as we were mostly settled, I heard "MOMMY" from Nate's room.

I stopped using manners at this point. I'm not proud of it, but it's the truth.

"Congratulations Everyone! We're all awake and it's only 6am on SATURDAY!" I bellowed. All week we had been dragging Nate out of bed to get ready for school. All week he had been groggy and grouchy and a total pain in the butt about getting up in the mornings. I went to his room this morning to find him smirking up at me from his bed. He knew it was too early to get up and he didn't care. It was hilarious to him.

And we were up. All of us. We were all awake and we were all grouchy except for Nate (who would prove to be plenty grouchy in a little bit). My sarcastic nature surfaced more fiercely than I'd like to admit and I actually clapped and pronounced "BRAVO HUDDLESTONS!" as everyone marched out to the living room. I'm sure that didn't help anyone, but at that moment I didn't care. I rocked with Nate for about 20 minutes while Shad took a shower. Maia got on the computer (shocker). All was calm for a while. Nate commented every few minutes on how the sun was coming up as if trying to convince me that it was morning and it would be ok to turn on the television. He was still tired enough to lay on my lap, however, so I resisted for a while. Eventually, we watched the end of the Wiggles (Anthony was lookin' pretty good this morning), and when Shad got out of the shower, I tried to get up and go take my turn. I had to get ready for work, after all.

Oh my goodness... you would have thought that I told him that he had to go get a series of vaccinations or something. Nate threw a huge big ol' tantrum. He did NOT want me to get out of the chair. He did NOT want milky. He did NOT want to eat breakfast. He did NOT want to sit with Daddy instead. He wanted MOMMY. We both tried to offer him alternatives, but he denied interest in anything we offered and chose to scream his head off for 20 solid minutes while I showered. Shad put him in his room where he laid on the floor and kicked the door while he screamed. When Shad let him out of his room, he laid on the floor in the hallway and kicked the bathroom door (which I had locked) and screamed. And screamed and screamed. And screamed and screamed. I kept thinking that Shad would come drag him back to his room, but no. I finally got out of the shower, and when I opened the door for him he had snot all over his face and reached up to me like a little orphan child who had found his long lost mother.

Am I not allowed to shower now? Part of me felt badly because here I was preparing to leave him for the majority of the day and he needed me (for whatever reason). I hate that I couldn't sit in the chair and rock with him for an hour instead of half an hour, but I just couldn't. Was I supposed to NOT take a shower today and be grimy all day because he was throwing a tantrum? I don't think so.

And, thus, started our first Saturday of the school year. Shad had soccer practice at 9am, and I had to be at work at 8am. His grandma is watching the kids until I get home for lunch at 11:30. Since Maia picked up with the crying and whining where Nate left off after my shower, I'm scared to even call and see how it is going. It is pretty quiet so far here at the library. I almost feel guilty for being here, sitting peacefully, writing about the chaos of the early morning. But, someone has to be out here earning a living to pay for the toaster strudels (NOT the cream cheese kind which Maia doesn't like) and the plastic sippy cups (which are almost daily destroyed by the dog when left on the floor) and the new school shoes (size 2 because Maia has enormous feet) and preschool supplies (washable crayons, which cost $2.90 more per box than the regular ones) and the soccer shorts (which are now only in style if they come almost past your knee, making the shorts from our last coaching stint too short and, thus, unwearable.)

Someday they will move out and we will miss them. Until then, I am going to try screaming at Nate all through his bathtime and letting Maia make her own breakfast. ;)

Rock-a-bye Baby

Here it is, the last week before school starts. In fact, tomorrow is our first morning of getting everyone up and out of the house before 8am. Shad has soccer practice at 8 and I have to be at work at 8. I'm not sure who will have a harder time getting up, us or the kids. They haven't had to be awakened much this summer, if at all, and neither one is a real cracker-jack (as my mother would say) at getting out of bed before they're ready.

Maia may be excited about school next week, which should help in getting her up early for a little while. Nate will just be going to daycare earlier than ever, so he isn't likely to see much excitement in that. I am hoping, however, that by getting up earlier, they will be ready to go to bed earlier. Nate is already on "the list" in his classroom as The Kid Who Can't Have More Than an Hour Nap. The white board on the wall in his classroom alerts all of the teachers to his "situation". When he naps longer than an hour, he won't go to bed before 10:30. And since I'm ready for bed at 9:30, staying up with Nate until after 10pm is not something that I want to do.

Since we moved to the Big Boy Bed, he has had his ups and downs. Some nights he lets me read a few stories and then tell a few stories (Curious George, Mickey Mouse, Cookie Monster and Spiderman--aka Peter Parker--ALL of which end with the characters going "night-night") and then he will go to sleep fine in his bed when I leave his room. Other nights, he wants me to rock him. And in order to curtail crying and screaming that could wake up Sissy, I go ahead and rock him. Rocking the 3 year old to sleep is, also, not something that I want to do. However, if he goes to sleep quickly and without a fuss, I will do it. Usually, he will whisper to himself (which my brother used to do and it drove me insane!) until he is tired enough to sleep. He will do whisper-versions of Itsy Bitsy Spider and 5 Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree. If I join in out of habit he makes me stop. I guess it's his own special Nate Whispering and can't be tainted by Mommy. He has also started stroking my hair and pulling and twirling it while we sit and rock. I try to stop him (it hurts!) and he says "No, Mommy! I trying to make it pretty!" I haven't told Shad about this, as I'm afraid it could be interpretted as him having an internal desire to one day be a hair stylist. ;)

When he finally falls asleep with me in the rocking chair, atop his Spiderman pillow, 2 blue blankies and at least one stuffed animal--be it bear, monkey or Shrek baby--, I cannot BELIEVE how freaking big the kid is! Watching your baby grow, knowing it is your last little baby, is so weird. And here he is three years old and all stretched out across me on the chair with size 11 feet and almost too heavy for me to carry to bed asleep. As I was looking at him a few nights ago, I couldn't help but think about how his growing little body actually formed and grew inside mine out of nothing more than 2 cells. Bizarro! It is such a freakish thing, such a miracle really. I thought about his labor and delivery, which I remember much more lucidly than Maia's, how very, very much it hurt and how I made a sound like a wounded ninja. And, maybe because we just had communion at church on Sunday, I thought about Jesus' act at the last supper of saying "My body broken for you" and "My blood spilled for you". I had never really equated this with the act of birthing a child before, but really, when you think about it, there is nothing much closer to Jesus' sacrifice of his earthly life than being a mother, starting with the "breaking" of your body and...let's face it.... the bleeding.

I remember Maia's first Christmas and, saving you the story of how exhausting it was because we had to take her to the ER on Christmas Eve, I recall having a new connection, a new appreciation for Jesus' mother. She clearly went through multiple trials in her life all due to her son. At church that Christmas, I remember being more touched by the way this woman bore her son and then watched him suffer than I ever had before. So, I have experienced this spiritual motherly connection with Jesus before, but moreso through what Mary endured as his mother. I have also experienced the way that God regards us as His children and loves us the same way (or moreso!) than we love our own children. But, I had never thought about how the sacrifice that Jesus himself made for us can be likened to our own acts as parents.

Sacrifice is one of those words that makes you bristle a little, isn't it. If someone came up to you and said "Are you willing to make a sacrifice?" you would immediately want to know what for. "Why?" Sacrifice implies that you will be giving up something and that there will likely not be much, if anything in it for you. It often goes against our human nature to sacrifice. And yet, especially as we grow up and then become parents, we start to see that sacrifice is necessary and inevitable in life. Maybe it is just sacrificing a day off at work because someone else is sick and the staff is shorthanded (NOT one of my favorite ways to practice sacrificing...let me tell you!) Maybe it is giving some of your hard earned money to your church or to some other worthy cause. And we've all heard stories about someone sacrificing a kidney for a loved one who needs a transplant, or bone marrow, or liters of blood. Truly, there is within us the capacity to sacrifice on behalf on our fellow human beings, even though it may not always be on our list of fun things to do.

As a parent, there is a lot of sacrifice, beginning with giving your entire earthly body over to the growth and development of another human being. Your skin is stretched to unbelievable lengths, everything hurts, you can hardly walk, fingers and feet swell, your face breaks out and you're mostly miserable. (If you aren't/weren't, then I don't want to hear about it.) And then just when you think you can't take one more day, your uterus begins to contract violently in an effort to expel it's contents. The opening, although it was actually designed to accomplish this feat, just isn't exactly big enough to get the job done without a significant amount of pain. There are often stitches required afterwards. And then all throughout the process (and for weeks thereafter) there's a great deal of blood involved. "My body broken for you." "My blood spilled for you." Isn't it true, then, that part of the miracle of birth is the way that it mirrors Christ's suffering for us?

Wow, this got heavy all of a sudden. I started out of the gate rattling on about having to wake up earlier tomorrow morning and I landed behind a pulpit. I guess I just couldn't keep all of this to myself for some reason. In the moments after Nate fell asleep the other night and before I lugged him to bed (you should see me trying to do this), I glimpsed something ethereal. It helped me to reallign my attitudes about the sacrifices that I make for my children. I won't be rocking Nate to sleep forever, so I shouldn't worry so much about it being a bad habit. I should cherish the moments and just deal with a little bit less sleep more gracefully. My sacrifice is, after all, only a miniature version of the ultimate one that Christ made for all of us.

(Remind me of all of this tomorrow morning when I'm out of coffee...)

Six Going On Thirteen

Even as I see it happening, I am powerless to stop it. (At least I feel powerless to stop it. Maybe I'm just too tired.) My daughter is 6 1/2 years old, will turn 7 in October, and yet she is--in some ways--treading dangerously close to 13, which I do not really appreciate.

The day after we returned from Jamaica, back in June, Maia asked me how old she would have to be to have a credit card, a cell phone and a camera. I told her that we could think about getting one of those kid cameras for Christmas but that a cell phone was several years away and a credit card was more than 10 years away. "Hmmmph" was her reply to my answer. I guess she was hoping that a credit card was in her near future. As if. I explained that to have a credit card, you have to first have a J-O-B. She wanted to know how old she would have to be to get a job. I told her she could babysit when she was 12 or 13 but to have a real job she'd have to be closer to 16 and that all depended on a lot of other things. I didn't see the need to explain that she'd have to keep her grades up and not be too busy with other activities and, oh yeah, be done getting mommy out of bed to sleep with her every night.

So, it wasn't too many more days before Maia's quest to make money began. What could she do to make money besides chores? Sometimes we give her a dime or a quarter for helping with chores around the house. It isn't really an allowance but will sometimes encourage her to help out when we mostly need her to do something independent and don't mind parting with a few coins. Keep in mind, it's more about getting her to go and do something without our attention for a little while than it is to get her to help with cleaning or straightening because whatever she "cleans" or "straightens" or helps with usually will have to be re-done by an adult anyway. And, really, the chores only go so far. There are only so many things that a 6 year old can do around the house without help. Sweeping, picking up, folding towels, etc.... stuff that doesn't involve chemical cleaners or standing on chairs.

Right. So, somewhere along the way during that week after we got back from our trip, Maia and Shad together deduced that she could try to list things on ebay in order to make a little money this summer. They began doing this without consulting me and the business model was conceived, birthed and fed all before I got home from work one day. I'm guessing now, looking back, that I rolled my eyes at them and said something like "Whatever, just don't expect me to start shipping all of this stuff on my lunch hour". Oh no, no of course not. They would be doing everything on their own. Fine. They clearly needed a hobby and something to fill some of their free summer hours with. Swimming lessons, tee ball, and tennis lessons had not been enough, so by all means starting an ebay business was the next logical step.

They started with DVDs which are compact and easy to ship, can often be purchased cheaply and for some reason sell fairly well on ebay. Shad has a friend who has made a full-time job out of this gig, so it must work somehow. And they would only be doing a few at a time, so it was no big deal. Most of the profit comes from charging more for shipping than you spend on shipping, but there are also some titles that sell for more than you have bought them for, and thus there is extra profit.

Well, within a week Maia was able to list an entire item on ebay all by herself, including locating the picture of the DVD, and copying any necessary information into the description and title. If these people knew that they were buying ebay items from a 6 year old, I think they might be a little shocked. When an items doesn't sell, she promptly relists it. When an item does sell, she gets the shipping information, waits for the paypal payment to clear and she and Daddy take it to the post office and ship it. She records her financial stats in a notebook that has three columns: Item Price + Shipping Price, Shipping Cost, Profit. The Profit is then recorded again on another page in the notebook and divided into: Savings, Business Costs, Cash. She puts a percentage of each sale into savings, another percentage back into the business to buy more items for listing, and what's leftover she keeps for spending money, which is mostly spent at Dollar Tree on useless items like hair ties and beaded necklace kits.

Shad took her to the bank to open a savings account. She got to open it with a small amount of money because it is a special minor's account. She got a free, pink, plastic piggy bank with a cool twist off nose to get your money out. And she was pretty excited about the piggy bank. Just because she is a young businesswoman does not mean that she isn't enthralled with something pink and plastic and free in the shape of a pig. They even went back a few weeks later and opened an account for Nate with his birthday money. He got a blue piggy and yesterday I found them both standing on a chair in the kitchen raiding our change cup in the corner cabinet to put coins in their piggies and make them shake louder. We had to have a talk about how the change cup is not for their entertainment... it is for emergencies like when Mommy runs out of instant coffee and must have a gas station cappuccino before work.

Mostly, the ebay experiment has gone well, I think. With summer coming to a close here pretty soon, I truly hope that we will find our need for listing ebay items to be diminished. I don't honestly know how we would keep up with it during the school year. Overall it has been a good experience for Maia, learning about earning, saving and spending money. There is one minor issue that I have with the whole thing. Evidently, while Daddy was teaching Maia to save money he was also promising her that she could spend the saved money on something once she had enough saved. This idea is mostly foreign to me, as I was taught as a child to simply save the money and rarely spend it. (Not sure why I haven't been able to carry this practice into adulthood, but I digress....) Shad, on the other hand, saved several hundred dollars as a 9 year old lad and bought himself a video-cassette recorder (you'll remember this as a VCR). It came complete with a wired remote and everything and he got to put it in his bedroom and watch VHS tapes on it. So, remembering this as a fulfilling experience of saving and spending, he told Maia that she could get something with her money once she had saved up enough.

What did she want to get? An MP3 player. And indeed she had mentioned to me a week or so ago that she was wondering about getting an MP3 player, to which I responded "No". She is too young and will lose/break/have stolen the MP3 player. Her brother will want it and they will fight about it. She is too young to listen to music on headphones, as it will impair her precious hearing. I will end up having to keep track of it and deal with the crying and freaking out when it is lost/stolen/broken. There are lots of reason why she is too young for her own MP3 player. But, alas, even though I had this conversation with her, I did not know that I also needed to have this conversation with her Daddy.

Daddy ordered her an MP3 player online last week. He didn't tell me that he was getting ready to or that he had. No. Maia told me right before she went to sleep, as I was laying next to her. She whispered with a truly mischievous tone "Daddy ordered my MP3 player." To which I replied "What?" And she repeated "Daddy ordered my MP3 player." I was too tired to care at that point in the evening and just muttered to her to go to sleep. And we are now awaiting the arrival of the MP3 player via UPS or Fed Ex anytime this week. I mentioned to my Beloved that I didn't think that an MP3 player for Maia was a good idea. And I mentioned all of the reasons that I didn't think it was a good idea. But it was too late by then, so we decided that stuff like this will need to be discussed ahead of time from now on and that she will have to learn to not play us like that in the future.

Right. I have a feeling that this is only the beginning of her playing us... and when you have a 6 year old who has started her own ebay business, what else can you expect??

Preparing for Back to You-Know-What

I can't believe I'm even writing about this in July. It seems almost sacreligious and rude, but the truth is that school starts here in Mattoon in THREE weeks. I'm not allowed to talk about it at home, but it's only three weeks away. This means that teachers (including my husband) are gearing up both emotionally and physically for the start of school. Shad can't get into his classroom until August 1st, but that is only next week and then he will have a measly 8 weekdays to prepare his room before he must start attending some insane-o three day Staff Extravaganza of meetings (aka The Hope Conference that is being hosted at his school for other districts). Ick.

So, here it is staring us in the face: Fall. Because school starting really is synonomous with fall, isn't it? Well, it used to be. It is only July and yet we are faced with preparing for a season that doesn't technically start for 2 more months. Who decided that school should start in the middle of August around here? I'm pretty sure that there are entire states where school starts after Labor Day, aren't there? At least that is September and maybe a month closer to jeans-wearing weather. Who can think about wearing back-to-school jeans in August? And what fun is back to school shopping without buying jeans?

And tennis shoes. And crayons. And a new backpack and/or lunchbox (for those that partake in sack lunch). Truly, what is more fun about back-to-school than shopping for going back to school? I overheard some moms talking about buying new backpacks the other day here at the library and complaining about how their kids think they have to have a new backpack every year. What? OF COURSE THEY HAVE TO HAVE A NEW BACKPACK EVERY YEAR! You can't start a new year of school with last year's backpack!!! That's like starting a new job and wearing the same old clothes. (OH, ok maybe I've had to do that... ). Well, it's like buying a new house and putting all old furniture in it. (OH, fine, we've all done that, too...). But you get the idea, right? You can't start 1st grade with a Kindergarten backpack. What would that do to your little 1st grade morale?

Really, the only great part about going back to school is buying all of the stuff that you take with you on the first day: the crayons and glue and scissors and paper and maybe even markers or paints. And you have to take them in a new backpack or school bag (I do realize that the messenger bag is about to trump the backpack as the bag of choice among the youth...I'm not that out of touch, thank you very much). And for about a week, it's really fun to open your desk at school and use your new crayons and pencils and notebooks. It's like a balm on the wound that is the death of summer vacation. As it scabs over, you delicately medicate it with the smell of new Crayolas and really sharp pencil lead. Your handwriting even looks better in that first week, too, you'll recall. Then the newness wears off and the crayons are dulled and the notebook becomes a symbol of mathematics (ie. disgust) and you're right back in the swing of school as if you'd never had a summer in the first place.

So, maybe the sooner the better... let's get it over with and move on with real life. The days of the year where I get up at 6am instead of leisurely sleeping until 6:40. Eating breakfast standing up in the bathroom. Trying to put on make-up without getting make-up in the cereal. Fighting with children about getting ready in time. These are not things that I relish, but they are real life so Bring It On.

And in the meantime, I think I will stock up on my very own personal box of crayons. The big box with the sharpener in the back. I'll use thistle and vermillion and silver to make a picture for myself and tape it to the wall in my office next to the kids' artwork. After all, why should grown-ups miss all of the fun of going back to school??

The Numbers Game

Guess who's gonna be 3 on Monday??

Yep, Nathanael David. He couldn't be acting more like a classic Terrible Two Year Old lately, but here comes age 3 and there's no stoppin' it. And this year he totally knows that he's having a birthday and that we will have cake and ice cream, he will get presents (though he hasn't yet learned to ask for anything in particular, which is refreshing), and he will then be 3. He's been wondering about his birthday since about February when we celebrated mine. Satisfied mostly with the answer that it will be his birthday "Someday", he has requested a Spiderman cake and seems to be ready to be the Big 3 in all but one way...

That's right, Mr. Nate, who will soon be 3, will not attempt #2 on the potty. #1 has been going alright, especially at daycare where peer pressure and teachers with rules send you to the potty about 17 times a day. He is able to stay dry there most days. And Daddy even taught him how to stand up and go #1, which is awesome fun and only marginally more messy than using the little potty sitting down. It seems that in the area of #1, we are just a few days in underwear shy of being trained.

However, given his preference to make #2 in his pants, wearing underwear isn't always the most successful of activities lately. It makes for some wicked nasty laundry, which is typically my area of expertise. And if I were home all of the time, even for a week, I would jump on the underwear wagon and hope for the best. The fact is, of course, I'm not home all of the time and Shad doesn't seem ready to offer his services as Potty Trainer in Residence. So, what to do?

Talking to Nate about the task at hand (as I frequently do), he replied to my suggestion of making poo poo on the potty with this very succint statement: "No, I not gonna do that. That's too hard." This leads me to believe that his resistance in this area is rooted in a lack of confidence, but how on earth do we boost his confidence if he won't even try?? For months now, we've read books, watched videos, played the Elmo Potty game online, all to no avail. I decided to try (again) to bargain with him.

"Nate, if you make poo poo on the potty, I will take you to the store to pick out new underwear."

He thought about this. He thought that sounded like fun. OK!!! Off he went to try sitting on the potty to make poo poo. He sat for a minute and whaddya know, no poo poo. Shocker.

"Now let's go get new underwear!!" he exclaimed.

Right. He totally doesn't get the concept of bribery. His end of the deal is rarely fulfilled when I offer a "reward" (aka bribe). Yet he is just pretty sure that he should still get the reward.

Alas, we are a little stuck with the #2 level of potty training. I don't remember this being an issue for Maia. She had ONE accident after she was in underwear. I remember it well because it was just the ONE time (and we were out to eat with my parents...). That was it. She was a few weeks from turning 3 and after that one accident, we were done potty training.

This boy thing is very different. The degree of stubbornness and refusal is much stronger and the determination to accomplish the task is lacking. I guess that adds up to him just not being quite ready. *sigh* Mind you, he's still obsessed with talking about poop, and this kid is in time-out almost daily for calling one of us Poopyhead. He even told me that he's going to poop and pee on his birthday cake. I thought that was a fitting threat from an almost 3 year-old who refuses to do #2 on the potty. You could say that he's stuck in a very anal stage right now. :) And I guess we don't want to rush that lest he miss something in this critical stage of development.

Still, if anyone has been through this stage with a young man and would like to give me any advice, advise away. I'm open to any and all suggestions, realizing that it is likely not going to happen on my time table (which would have been 6 months ago) no matter what we do.

And, despite this frustration, my Baby Boy is turning 3!!! I guess we will focus on that excitement for these next few days and pick up potty stuff where we left off later in the week. ;)

Well, it's taken me a while, but, as promised, I will disclose my thoughts on grandparents and how, even though they spoil our children, they are a fabulous group of people. (Take, for instance, Papa and Grammy Huddleston who stood in the rain with the kids for the 4th of July parade on Wednesday.)

Those of you in my family will know that I grew up with one set of grandparents close by and one set of grandparents in Florida. We saw my mom's parents every week or so throughout most of my childhood. They lived on the farm until I was 7, and I can remember lots of farmy stuff from my early childhood, which is cool. That said, my grandparents had 12 other grandchildren and I was just one of them (stuck exactly in the middle, actually), AND they were the kind of grandparents from the bygone era of not spoiling grandchildren. My grandma would make cookies before we came and put them in the brown ceramic cookie jar for us, and often there would be ice cream bars in the deep freeze. Sometime Grandpa would send us home with 50 cents each "for the ice cream truck". That was about as far as the "spoiling" went. And that was ok. I didn't feel slighted. Once I got a Strawberry Shortcake doll for Christmas. Once some earmuffs. I'm sure there were other gifts, but not many, and that was alright.

My dad's parents moved to Florida before I was born. We saw them once a year which involved a laborious 2 to 3 day drive in the family station wagon (or, later, the mini-van--oh yeah!!) followed by a week of sleeping on couches or blow-up air mattresses in a musty, smokey double-wide trailer. But we got to go to the beach, eat out a lot (Grandma R. didn't really "do cooking"), take a side trip to Bush Gardens or, if we were lucky, Disney World. And the last night before we went home, my grandma would let me pick a piece of costume jewelry from the leftovers of her famous faux collection. Again, that was as far as the spoiling went and I didn't feel slighted. OH, and once they sent me a nightgown for Christmas. I'm not sure what precipitated that because it was just the one time. And I remember thinking that it was kind of weird, but it was alright because I hadn't been expecting anything in the first place.

Enter Shad.

Here is a boy who was utterly surrounded by grandparents. Short of actually living with or being raised by a grandparent, he was about as involved with his grandparents as a kid can be. And he had scores of them! Four of them in Mattoon alone! He was the first/oldest on one side and the ONLY on the other side. Since his parents separated when he was 1, his Grandma and Grandpa Huddleston housed him frequently on the weekends during his time with his dad. And his mom's mom and step-dad were just up the street with a POOL in the backyard. I don't know what actual hours were clocked with his grandparents, but they had to be almost as many waking hours as he was at home, maybe more. Was he spoiled? Probably. He would say no and remind me that he saved uphis own money at age 9 to buy his own VCR (complete with wired remote control). Still, his experience with grandparents growing up was vastly different from mine. For sheer amount of time spent with grandparents, he wins hands down.

Enter Maia and Nate.

When Maia was born we lived in Champaign. And we liked living in Champaign. We still saw our parents every few weeks, be it us visitng Mattoon or them visitng us. But holidays were difficult, with everyone expecting us to be in Mattoon and our own nuclear family getting lost in the shuffle. Maia would come to spend the night without us sometimes, but it required at least one trip down and sometimes two. When I was about 5 months pregnant with Nate, it dawned on us that we were an hour away from our most reliable babysitters: our parents. Not only that, but Shad's grandparents weren't getting any younger and he really wanted for the kids to know them better, to spend more time with them. Those factors, along with about 7 others, prompted us to move back to Mattoon. This was not a decision that we took lightly, either, knowing that employment here would be more difficult to find and would pay less. Our priorities were mainly family, though, so being nearer to them made sense.

And so far, three years later, I can say that it has been worth every minute of not having a Target or a Red Lobster nearby. We have occassionally lamented having to live here, being forced to face people from high school that we thought we'd left behind or being left with only 4 restaurant choices for a night on the "town". Overall, though, we have not looked back with regret. This is largely because we see how fortunate our children are to be living near their grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa Huddleston feed Shad and the kids every single Wednesday night while I am at work until 8pm. Saturdays typically find them back in the same spot for at least part of the day while I am working. My mom helps me with picking up kids and covers us when daycare issues or early school closings arise. And, of course, they all helped to watch the kids while we went to Jamaica.

Do they spoil the kids? Uh huh. I've never seen anything like the amount of gifts they get at Christmas. It turns my stomach, to be honest, having not grown up that way. Maia has more clothes than she knows what to do with most seasons. During our vacation she was treated to a spending spree with Shad's mom and came home with new flip flops, socks, dress, wallet and hair accessories...all of which were clearly not necessary items. And there appears to be a new dollar store find every trip we make to a great-grandparents' house. Do they let the kids eat WAY too much junk? You betcha they do. My mom is famous for having new baked goods every visit. Shad's grandparents seem to have an endless freezerfull of ice cream. Do they let them get away with not using manners and being a little bratty? At times. Not always, but probably more frequently than we would allow it. After all, who wants to discipline a grandchild? That's what moms and dads are for, and the grandparents have already dealt with years and years of being in that unsavory role.

Indeed, Maia spent the night with Shad's grandparents last night for the first time. Her cousin was there, as well, and the report back this morning was that the darling six-year-olds didn't go to sleep until 11pm. Yeah... like I couldn't have predicted that would happen...LOL The best (worst) part is that they got up at 3am. And stayed up. They slept 4 hours. Upon hearing this I had a few reactions:

1) Poor Grandma and Grandpa!!

2) Shit!! Now they won't let her come back to spend the night!

3) Poor Shad will have to deal with tired Maia all day

4) Wonder how much junk and sugar they ate all evening before "bedtime"?

I've learned that worrying about all of the above things does nothing but wrinkle my forehead and give me a stomachache. None of it really matters. What really matters is that my kids have a relationship with their grandparents. Planting flowers with my mom, watching the tomatoes grow with Papa H, seeing a play with Grammy, going to the fair with Shad's mom and grandma... That stuff can't be replaced and will last them their whole lives. Long after the Dollar Tree "Barbie" hits the molecular level in the landfill, they will remember the love and attention that their grandparents gave them. The inner child in me is jealous, and the mommy in me is delighted.

Topic 2--The Incident

This is how I know that I'm a writer at heart: I want to write about our vacation moreso than I want to talk about it. :)

So, in keeping with Topic 2, I shall now detail for you what has come to be known as "the incident" that occurred on Friday of our vacation.

First of all, I should tell you that we stayed at Sandals Dunn's River Villagio near Ocho Rios, Jamaica. It is an Italian Renaissance themed Sandals and is one of the newer resorts in Jamaica. Everything about it was sparkling clean and beautiful. I have no complaints whatsoever about the resort that we stayed in. The rooms were beautiful, the pools were glorious, the staff was delightful. We didn't have any problems at our resort.

We did, however, have a problem at the neighboring Sandals resort. The Sandals Ocho Rios resort is older, but bigger, than the Dunn's River Villagio resort. They have something like 13 restaurants there in comparison to 5 at Dunn's River. This intrigued us and we had met a woman the night before who was staying there and told us how beautiful is was. The two resorts are only about 15 minutes apart by bus and they run buses in between several times a day so that you can go back and forth and try out the other resort. Clever marketing, I suppose, and very little skin off their back to run some busses every day.

So, on Friday we decided to go check out the Ocho Rios resort. We got there around 11:30 and pretty quickly ascertained that it was an older resort and maybe not quite as well kept as ours. We made our way down to the beach and decided to go ahead and try the hobie cat sailing thing with a guide. Shad had been wanting to do this all week and it was our last chance. So, on went our lifevests and out we went onto what proved to be a very choppy sea. The guide was chanting "It's a tsunami" half of the time and told us how easily we could be blown over "like paper". In between trying not to swallow the entire Caribbean, attempting to keep my sunglasses from blowing away and trying to keep the salt water out of my eyes (burning), it was a great time. We went out WAY further than I had anticipated that we would go, but we didn't die, so I guess it was worth it. ;)

Coming down off of that high, we tried a pool and found it to be seriously lacking for atmosphere, towels or drinks (seriously, they didn't have any of the ingredients for the 2 drinks we ordered off the pool bar menu...whatever!) We meandered around for a while just to find a bathroom (note to self and others: a bigger resort isn't always a better resort) and ended up by the beach where we ate a decent lunch at a seaside grille place.

Directly after lunch we decided to hang out and read our books for a while in the hamocs. The only situation being that Shad had neglected to bring a book with him. We headed to the gift shop to find a book. There we were on the main path of the resort just strolling along with nary a care in the world (the BLISS of it, I tell you!) and there it was:

A rat.

An honest to goodness, scampering, scurrying RAT. Not a large mouse. A freaking rat.

Now, maybe some of you have heard about my phobia. I only have one phobia. My phobia is rodents. Specifically mice and rats. I hear that squirrels are actually rodents, and I say "hush yo mouth" cause they ain't the kind o' rodents that be scarin' me. They're cute with fluffy tails. FLUFFY tails! Not slithery, pink tails. Not a creepy pointy nosed rodent.

It is these pointy nosed, slithery tailed rodents of which I can barely write without pulling my feet up off of the floor and struggling for breath.

Honestly, we had a mouse situation when Maia was a month old and I MOVED OUT OF OUR HOUSE and in with my in-laws for a WEEK. It was a terrifying occurrence for me that required Hollie's mother to intervene and help me out of the house with the baby. And that was a tiny mouse (ok there were actually 2.... OMG... I can hardly stand to think about it still).

*deep breaths*

So, to set the mood again, we were wandering on the resort path, the ocean breeze caressing our skin, flip flops in tandem and BOOM my vacation bubble was pierced with the sight of this rat. It ran into the bushes and who knows where after that because I sure as hell wasn't sticking around to find out. My hand over my mouth in shock, I turned back on the path but stalled in a daze feeling the hyperventilation begin. I was aware only of the fact that I was still outside with the rat and that I could NOT stay outside if there was a rat there. Shad proposed going towards the hamocs, but how on earth could I get up in a hamoc and relax knowing that a rat could scamper underneath me at any moment. No, that was not going happen. I looked from side to side in a panic trying to figure out which direction to go and how to be safe from this hideous creature. My ponytail flipped across my shoulder, startling me, and I screamed out as if the rat had attacked me. Shad mentioned then that perhaps in order to not have to be taken to the nurse's station, we should reign in the crazy and find shelter somewhere. Truly, you could have put a cave of bats in the path or 10 rattlesnakes and I couldn't have been more terrified.

Somehow I made it back towards the game room/lounge/lobby area and I sat there with my feet on the coffee table for quite a while. Shad left me to chill and went to check out the books in the gift shop. I tried to read my book and wouldn't you know that 2 pages into the next chapter, there was a description of the main character's mother killing a rat? WTF I closed my book and waited for Shad. There was a National Geographic show on the big screen, something about warthogs. (Where was this Ocho Rios place and how did I get deposited there from the Sandals bus??)

Finally, Shad came back. He offered to piggyback me over the area of "the incident" (as I insisted that it be referred to from this point forward), as this was the only path out of the resort. I buried my head in his shoulder, and he barely made it without dropping me. (Honestly, he's been benching 200 lbs, how is it that carrying me piggyback was so difficult? I'm still perplexed about this, but whatever.) We made it to the main entrance to wait for the bus and, wouldn't you know, I found the absolute cutest cropped Jamaica sweatpants in there. I hadn't planned on buying anything for myself on the trip, the trip itself being expensive enough, but after the incident I felt that some cropped sweatpants were definitely in order. I'm sure you will all agree that shopping is possibly the only cure for a phobia like this. ;)

And there you have it, "the incident" that nearly unravelled the entire afternoon. If this had occurred at our own resort, you would have found me in the manager's office. I realize that rats live everywhere and that at a resort there is probably a lot of food thrown away, etc. etc. But there is no excuse in my book for an actual live rat to be visible in the middle of the freaking day at a place that people pay thousands of dollars to visit. That can only indicate a serious breach of sanitary measures. Keep the rats ouside the gates of the resort, please.

Topic 3 will have to be addressed tomorrow.... stay tuned. :)