in a week

I haven't blogged in a while.  Last weekend was warm and this weekend was just different.

Last weekend we went to Merrie Acres.  We spent an afternoon there one day last year so I suppose it has become a family tradition even though we came home without a pumpkin.  Really, the kids just want to play in that corn box and I don't blame them.  It's ingenious.  Merrie Acres is closed for the season but please keep them in mind for next year.  Gabe and I sit on rocking chairs and the kids run around and play for hours.

But that was last weekend.  What else has happened in a week:

Tulip asked me to teach her how to write her name in "cursidge" and I held her hand in mine while she held a pen and our fingers swirled around in loops on paper.

Tulip also asked me if I've ever heard of a boy named Justice Bieber.  Sigh.

Luna has the sniffles and is constantly looking for her "hanker-wiper" and I'm so grateful that she wipes her nose on something other than her sleeve.

Wolfie learned the phrase "cut the cheese" and I admit I giggled like crazy the first time he said it.  So you can imagine what an event that phrase has become.  Oh, and both his sisters say it just about as often as he does.  But he did refer to Tulip as a "beautiful girl" so he's totally off the hook for, like, forever.

After Hours

It's waaaay past Luna's bedtime but she finds me.  She wears an incredible grin and does this seductive toddler sashay with her shoulders as she makes her way towards me.

"You cannot resist my cuteness," say her eyes.  "Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle," says her pull-up.

Even if I wanted to scowl, or frown, or somehow express that I am not happy with her choice to wander around this late at night, I can't because...because...because I'm so incredibly happy to see her.

Besides, she has a peace offering.

"Here Mama, you can snuggle Foxy."  Oh, she is so pleased with herself.  So pleased.

Big Girls

Luna has been trying to convince us all that she is older than Tulip.  And Wolfie.  She wails, "But I'm the oldest!" and I just figured that this was one of her cute and quirky methods of coping with the fact that both her brother and sister now go to school all day.

This morning she tried to convince us that she should get one more gummy vitamin than her brother because she is older than him.  Then she totally appropriately used the phrase, "I realize..." in a sentence so I guess there's no slowing down that vocabulary.  Then Tulip ate a serving of scrambled eggs, two English muffins with apricot jam, a bowl of cereal and then said she was still hungry.

Oh, and this happened.  My girls are getting so big.

The Lego Monster

We have in-the-middle-of-the-night lore in our children's lives, don't we?  There's the Tooth Fairy.  There's Santa Claus.  Or maybe St. Niklaus.

We have the Lego Monster at our house.

Wolfie likes to follow the instructions and build his complicated Lego spaceships and put them on display on top of his dresser and bookcase.  He also likes to invent things with the other gazillion pieces from his smaller sets which have all been dumped into one giant tub.  But there are a few sets from a few prime collections (Star Wars, Alien Conquest, Atlantis to name a few) that he likes to keep in designated bins.  And like I said, there are a few prime spaceships that he likes to keep on display.

That is...until the Lego Monster gets them.

The Lego Monster visits Wolfie's room in the middle of the night and methodically disassembles one of his spaceships but then conveniently puts all of the pieces in a big zippered baggie.

To Wolfie's delight, he must build his favorite spaceship again.

The Lego Monster doesn't visit that often. I mean, it's not a nightly thing. But when he, I mean it, strikes, it's pretty special.

the orchard (and other things I didn't do as a kid during fall)

Okay, maybe I don't really want this to be a post about things I didn't get to do as a kid.  But that is a sentiment that struck me as I chaperoned Tulip's kindergarten class trip to County Line Orchard.  I picked apples off of trees only once in my life prior to having children.  Once.  It was a field trip and somewhere in my mother's house is a picture of me and my 5th grade class standing in front of the sign for the orchard.

We have several pictures of our own children at various orchards.  Is this something that just wasn't done in the 70's?

Also, I raked leaves when I got home to make the leaf jumping pile huger.  And then it hit me - I didn't jump in leaves as a kid either.  We had two massive, and I mean massive, pine trees in my front lawn growing up.  I don't know what variety of pine tree they were except that they shed needles that hurt your feet when you stepped on them and they dropped pine cones.  Not soft, slender, corncob shaped pine cones.  Very hard triangle shaped pine cones.  The type of pine cones that are perfect for spray paint and dipping in glitter.

Anyway, there was no raking of leaves and jumping into leaf piles when I was a kid.

But enough about me.

As parents, we prefer Garwood's.  It's a bit rough around the edges and I suppose that's why we like it. County Line Orchard is a well-oiled field trip hosting machine, let me tell you.  Here's the thing that is so brilliant about County Line Orchard (in terms of hosting field trips, that is): the gutters.

Yes.  Gutters.

When the trailer brought the class to the apple picking row of trees, we were told that all the trees were bare.  And this was true.  Then our tour guide told us that last night while we were sleeping, it rained at County Line Orchard.  It rained apples!  (Clever, right?)  And to catch all those apples falling out of the sky, they had to install gutters in the apple trees.

Yes.  Gutters!  The children were able to easily pick apples out of the gutters.  Well, not that easy.  It still had to be a bit of a challenge.  An event.

It was interesting to chit-chat with the other chaperone moms (there were dads there too, of course) and to hear them mention their favorite orchard or pumpkin patch.  Places where they have started family traditions or have been carrying on old traditions.

What's yours?

When it's too much

I have an all boys class this year.  Uh huh, all boys.  Many of them are really into football and yesterday I said, "If you were on teams, the team winning points for listening and following directions would be these guys" as I gestured to a few that were listening to me amongst the rowdiest of, well, an all boys class.  So then they got all excited about forming teams so today we did.  Three captains were randomly selected and they picked their teams.  Then each team was instructed to create a team name, a team mascot, and brainstorm a list of rules, activities, and behaviors that would earn them points or deductions.  It was all about the boys.  I was giving them tons of freedom and tons of choice (within structure, of course).

And?

And they started to whine.  I realized that an all boys class would never imagine being given this much freedom and choice.  Many of these particular boys were probably never given this much freedom and choice.  It was just too much to take in.  Maybe they were a little unsure.  Maybe even a little scared to trust themselves.  Maybe they were not used to this type of learning environment and their whining was really their way of asking me to just do it all for them.


Then there are my own young children.  Tonight as we read books before bed, Tulip began to flop around the way she does when she's tired.  When she was a toddler, I used to say that she gets clumsy when she's sleepy.  Tonight I watched the way she was so fidgety and restless and floppy and wild and realized, um, it's the Friday night after a whole week of going to school all day.  The girl was exhausted.  And here I was reading her a book and expecting her to be cognizant of the story and our routine.  It was just too much.  She was begging me for permission to just let her shut down.  Her wild floppiness is her way of communicating to me, "Mama, just send me to bed.  I can't do any more."


Myself?  Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about having someone else's job.  Someone at the store. A cashier or something.  Some job where I show up, my boss tells me exactly what to do, and I do that one task for a few hours.  I get to talk to some people and then they are on their merry way and I get to perform the same task again.  Safety.  Sometimes I even think about a job where I am supposed to only work with objects, not people.  Which is so unlike me so I must be really really exhausted and stressed with my work when I have this fantasy.  But sometimes the thought of taking objects from the place where they do not belong and arranging them attractively in a new place where they do belong is a very appealing job description.

I've Done...

The phone rang and as soon as I heard my husband say "Hi" on the other end, I began walking, briskly, to the calendar.  I had just sent him to take Tulip (and the other kids) to soccer practice and I was sure that he was calling because there was no soccer practice.  I had to double check.

It was all good.

I have been known to, on more than one occasion, take my family or a friend to an event that was not there.  Wrong day.  Wrong time.

I've done other things too.

Please enjoy my piece in the May 2012 Listen To Your Mother Show.  The video was released today and it has been such a treat for me to "see" my friends on stage again.  And, it's a hoot to watch myself and think, "Oh my, I said that?"  At least I didn't sing Jingle Farts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqxMUEfbtT0&feature=BFa&list=PL811649A236BEEF00