Ducklings

Today when I was trying to take a nap while sharing my bed with two insomniatic preschoolers, I was reminded of a quote that I read last week, "Raising children is like being pecked to death by ducks."

Just as I was trying to remember if the quote was about ducks or ducklings I felt two feet poke me in the rear and a little voice rang out, "Squishy bum!"

Peck, peck, peck.

Calling all chefs

Does anyone have a recipe for a nice aromatic dinner entree? Something with a strong aroma that could, hypothetically speaking, cover up the smell of an unauthorized, un-New-Years-Resolution-ish batch of afternoon chocolate chip cookies?

And if anyone asks, it was the baby that made me do it. Hypothetically speaking, that is.

And, also, I was just trying to rotate my food storage. I don't know if you know, but the shelf life on chocolate chips is surprisingly short. Especially around here.

Valentines Day

Oh, Valentines Day, how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

1. Mark’s dark chocolate pie (2 slices)
2. Sugar cookies, straight from South Bend
3. Mom’s Reese’s cookies
4. More of Mom’s Reese’s cookies at 10:45pm
5. ….What is this, a Weight Watcher’s confessional?
   
6. Mark's love note to me where he called me his BFF.
   
7. The heart sign (complete with arrow!!!) that Mark and the girls made for me

Five days before Valentines Day, Sage and Eliza spent a very happy afternoon making Valentine boxes with Grandma and Aunt Becca. I had the grand idea to help Sage make some amazing box to wow all the kindergartners, but Sage was very clear about wanting to be able to put stickers on and color hers. And color she did. For several blissful hours. And I was glad that I stayed out of the designing process. Because she doesn't need to have the BEST box to impress all her friends until at least first grade, right?

Becca had the honor of putting the first Valentine in each of Sage's and Eliza's boxes. And that untouchable Valentine drove Eliza crazy. She asked me every day if it was "Valen-steins" day. And then she moaned when I said no, and begged to be able to open her Valen-stein from Becca. Even though I'm 100% sure she had already peeked at it a few times.

Sage and Eliza worked as hard as elves at making their Valentines for friends. They got upset when I tried to print their Valentines out on colored paper, sparing them the need to color each and every one by hand. [I obviously have so much to learn still about butting in on elementary school preparations.]

I guess my kids come by their holiday OCD honestly because my own Valentines Day preparations for my kids resembled Christmas preparations more than they probably should have. I even pulled out the old Halloween 2009 candy that I had frozen for future holidays, but the amount was excessive even for our Christmas needs. (Maybe that’s because Lily ate more Cheetos than I thought was humanely possible for a one year old.)

Some creative spirit possessed me at 10:30pm the night before Chocolate Day…I mean Valentines Day, and I made treasure hunts with clues for Sage and Eliza, eventually leading them to find the Gerber daisies Mark hid in the oven—one for each girl. (Lily yanked three petals off hers in the first five seconds, so hers reverted to me for safekeeping.)

Sage was so thrilled with the “pink cow” that came to our fridge on Vday that she is already talking about the green cow that will come on Mar 17, and speculating as to the color of our Easter milk (which she might find a little disappointing). This morning Sage generously regifted one of her Valentines to me. She crept into my room while I was still sleeping and pressed the folded paper into my hand and said, “This is one of my Valentines that I didn’t like, and Eliza didn’t like it, so I gave it to you. I erased Melanie’s name and put mine in the 'from' spot.” (Note: the candy from Melanie had been removed.)

And, like most other holidays involving gratuitous candy, Valentines was over all too soon.

Lily was disappointed to wake up today and not find an unattended pile of dum dums waiting to be stuck into flowers, or mouths, as the case may be. (She has spent the last few weeks happily growling at all the huge stuffed bears she sees in every store. Thankfully she never figured out what was in all those red heart boxes they were holding or we might have been in trouble.)

Eliza was the quickest to recover from post holiday blues by looking to the future. Today in her blessing on the breakfast she made sure to “Bless clovers day.” I, personally, was praying for sanity to get through this post-holiday sugar detox phase. And to be able to spend a lot of time on the treadmill. Or with my BFF.

Feeling the love

I think Cupid may have loosed an arrow in the general vicinity of Eliza lately. She is full of love.

On Thursday when I warned Eliza that she had an appointment with her pediatrician, she asked me if she had to get shots. When I told her no, she smiled dreamily and said, “I think they just want to love me.”

She created her own Valentine for me on our kitchen table a few days ago. And I literally mean ON the table.

(I thought about gifting her a heart-shaped piece of a Magic Eraser in return.)

A few days ago when I told Eliza “I love it when you share,” she responded happily, “I love it when you make me food.” As if both of our actions were equally elective. (Do Cupid's arrow pricks leave visible marks?)

I remember Sage saying some funny things about love, and when I checked my blog archives, I found it was exactly two years ago today that Sage monologued about love.

If boys are made of snips (whatever those are) and snails and puppy dog tails, my girls are made of sugar and spice (or maybe just more sugar) and all things pink and glittery. So it should come as no surprise that they love Valentines Day.

But it never surprises me when Sage and Eliza decide to decorate something. I found this scene on their bedroom wall.

(Note the decorative square of the toilet paper, as well as the carefully labeled "ball" of toilet paper.) Eliza explained that they were "making the wall prettier."

And before we leave the subject of what little boys are made of, I must mention that during the entire hour of Cub Scouts this last week (which happened to be about knives and whittling) I wondered if I actually have a class full of aliens wearing 9-year-old boy masks. I, who have never used a pocketknife before, didn’t know what to say to the boys who had cleaned fish or cut into raw elk with their knives. Following that enlightening discussion I sent the boys out back for a nice vigorous whittling session on a block of soap, while I called the bishop and asked to be released.

Actually I only daydreamed about being released. In reality, I just kept wondering what snips were and don’t these boys know that they might get hurt if they jump off my playground?

That’s love, too, right? Protecting 9-year-old alien-boys from imminent death? Maybe Sage and Eliza can help me make Valentines this week for all my scouts, with the rules of knife and swingset safety inscribed in pink glitter glue on the front.

Joining the pack

Tonight was my first Pack Meeting ever. If you are like me (or rather, like I was three weeks ago), you wouldn’t know a pack meeting from a pep rally. (Having six sisters and three daughters might do that to you.) But watch out, world of Scouting--Here I am—Assistant Den Mother Extraordinaire. Ghastly pale yellow shirt and all.

I am in charge of the Bears, which I now understand to mean extremely energetic nine- and ten-year-old boys who should never be allowed to take off their shoes during any scout gathering. After my bishop gave me this assignment, and after I had picked my jaw up off the floor, Mark’s first words to me (raised eyebrows don’t technically count) were “I’m so jealous.” YEAH RIGHT!!! They were actually “Don’t you dare wear the ugly yellow shirt.” If he had known better he would have said, “Don’t you dare buy that ugly yellow shirt for $40 even though that’s the cheapest you can find one for.”

I wish the BSA would at least give us a complimentary box of girl scout cookies for the purchase of our mandatory yellow shirts. Or maybe I can sell GS cookies to pay for my uniform. And while we’re talking about moolah, I learned tonight that I am allotted twenty-five cents per boy per week for our lesson and treats. According to my calculations, each boy will get 1/3 of one girl scout cookie each week on this budget. It’s gonna be slim pickings, children.

But I digress. It’s just so easy to get carried away in this strange world of BSA. Tonight at the Pack Meeting… (am I using my articles right? Do I need to say ‘the’ in front of Pack Meeting? Do I need to capitalize Pack or Meeting or Denmother/Den Mother?)…the Scoutmaster introduced a series of "Olympic games" for the kids. And tonight the “pack” included my own excited little Sage. She looked like a little waif out there with all those blue-shirt-and-crazy-bandana-clad scouts. But last week when Scouts was at our house, Sage was totally fascinated with them. She sat on the sidelines and piped up whenever she felt brave enough.

The first Olympic game was a physical fitness relay. I admit I couldn’t focus on my bears since I was worried about Sage. She made it through the bear walk just fine, and faked some seriously tragic pushups (involving bum action only), but the crab walk across the entire gymnasium proved too much for her little underexercised legs. She ran to me, with tears running down her face, and through her sobs I could hear “That was not fun. That was too hard.”

I tried to calm Sage down and was eventually able to shoo her back into the line of kids waiting to shoot a Nerf gun at a target. At that moment I was having all kinds of misgivings about my parenting, and about my calling to the scouting program. And suddenly I noticed that one of the older scouts had made his way over to Sage and was talking to her kindly. Then a short scout reached out and patted Sage on the back. And a few minutes later she was talking animatedly about the target made out of a vacuum box with her neighbor.

And then I realized that I need Scouting. I don’t need the pale yellow shirt, but I’m willing to accept it, along with all the lessons my family and I have to learn from this BSA adventure.

Until next time...Be prepared. Or whatever.

Also, I cannot resist slipping this in.

Mark, 1990

Sometimes I'm mean

Sometimes I'm mean, and I go for the camera before the solution.

Like when Lily got a ring pop base jammed in her mouth. [Don't worry--I made sure she was breathing, and it definitely wasn't going down the chute.  It was just wedged in there.]

Nobody ever died from ingesting dandelion, right?

 

Or dafodill?

Or toe jam?

 

 

I hope my posterity will thank me for it someday.  Maybe when all their therapy bills are paid off. 

"Put down that camera and help me!"

The Blues

Just call me the Grinch. Or Scrooge. Or meanie (if you're 5 or under and live at my house).

It all started with me taking down the Christmas lights in the girls' bedroom.

And then continued with me breaking up the rousing game of ornament-golf when I found Sage and Eliza teeing off down the stairs (and calling it baseball).

And the last straw was me making zucchini casserole for dinner. I tell you, I practically had mutiny on my hands tonight when Mark got home.

If the truth be known, I'm a little grumpy, too. I hate taking down Christmas decorations. And delightful art projects. I hate life going back to "normal" after the holidays. I love Christmas lights and music and my snowflake luminaries and olive wood. I love not needing a good excuse to drop off treats to neighbors whose names I can't remember.

(And I love caramels and fudge. And I don't love treadmills, but I am going to learn to love mine this month with Discipline 501.)

Sage just came in and threw up zucchini casserole. I guess the joke's on me. It's settled--the tree is staying up until Three Kings Day. Because if I have to be up during the night to do laundry, I definitely deserve to walk by a beautiful tree.

Goals galore

‘Tis the season for making goals. Back in early December, before plates of delicious goodies began appearing at our doorstep, Mark and I decided to set some general goals to keep treats to a minimum. We were feeling confident in our ability to resist overcooked gingerbread cookies and divinity and cherry chocolates, so we set the goal to “be moderate” in our treat eating. A few weeks later, after neighbor treats started pouring in and cranking up my blood sugar levels, we had to opt for a more specific goal: “Do not get a Costco membership in order to buy butter and sugar in bulk.” But once we succumbed and bought our first candy thermometer, it all went downhill from there.

Interestingly enough, we were asked to speak in church on goals. Mark and I have a super long history with making goals. In 2007 there was Comprehensive Health Reform. In 2008 there was Pregnancy for me, which meant that if anyone tried to tell me to eat veggies they would get locked out of the house. This last year Mark outdid himself with new spreadsheets every couple of weeks which were entitled “Discipline 101” (then 102, 201, 202, all the way until 401/402: The Senior Year, after which, apparently, we were supposed to graduate, but unfortunately I still never went to bed at 10:30, so I think I flunked out).

Naturally, Mark and I love New Year’s Resolutions. In case you are a New Year’s Scrooge/Grinch (aka Goal Hater), think about this quote, which sums up my perspective. "Goals lend purpose and direction to our living. They excite imagination and stir interest, and they generate a strength of anticipation which can rally all the powers of one's soul." (source)

And speaking of exciting the imagination, I don’t think I have ever heard of more imaginative goals than those of my youngest sister, Heather. Her goals are legendary in our family.

When Hez was in 2^nd grade, her class made headbands out of yarn for their Thanksgiving presentation. Following the program for which the headbands were intended, Heather decided she would make a goal to never take off her bright purple headband. And she didn’t. The days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into a few months. Our family was shocked at the resolve of this 8-year-old, and a little uncomfortable with the state of the purple headband, which didn’t come off, even in the shower! Finally some months later, we were able to convince her to swap her headband for a necklace. (And when I say we, I mean “I,” but when Heather and I were talking about this last week she told me that I represented Satan in this example. That’s why I said “we”—so I could share the blame a little...And since she called me Satan, click here to see a picture of her loom.)

With the abandonment of her purple headband goal, Heather decided to fill the void with a new goal: no eating cheese. Just so you know, in addition to buying sugar and butter in bulk, my family always buys cheese in bulk. This goal lasted just a weekend (thankfully).

When my dad brought us all home little prayer rugs from Turkey, Heather made a goal to pray on it every night. And with a very few exceptions, she kept this goal for THIRTEEN years and is still going. (I think her prayer rug should have a passport for all the places it has been.) It was certainly not surprising to me to find that three years ago Heather made a goal to read her scriptures every day and she’s still going strong.

So what I’m trying to say is, I think goal-making runs in my blood. Goals excite and inspire me. And maybe, someday, I will get to bed by 10:30 at least two times in a row. And that might be the day I change my blog name to Nine o’clock Musings and knit myself a purple headband (with Heather’s help, of course), and perhaps even celebrate with some treats. Unless that’s against Discipline 501. In which case I will probably have to eat two veggies before eating the treat.