awwwwww

Liza has been sick all this week, and she's willingly taken a nap every day (hurray for getting Lazy Mama work done!). And the naps have made it virtually impossible to get her to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so today I tried to keep her awake through her normal naptime.

Um, yeah, that worked well for me.
We almost made it, but the cold (and afghan, and warm lap-cat) was too much for her.

Of course, she woke up coughing and gagging on her own phlegm before I even managed to get the photo downloaded and this post started, so we could be in for another long night.

Short but sweet

http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2008/11/lost-coloring-books-of-mr-t-vol-ii.html

Oh.
My.
God.

Please make me this funny sometime in my life.

Amen.

Also, is there some way to get Crystal Light out of my keyboard? Because this page was too much for me.

Vermont Country Store

Way back when, I used to be on every catalogue mailing list in the Western hemisphere. With all the moves we've made over the past decade, though, I've managed to avoid being re-added to most of them. That's why I was surprised to find a copy of the Vermont Country Store catalog in the mail last month.

I used to enjoy reading the catalog, which specializes in hard-to-find stuff ... which is about the best description I can come up with. Lanz nightgowns, shampoo brands you thought had been discontinued in the 1960s, candy you can't buy in your area of the country, and cheesy yet frightening Christmas decorations ... that gives you a pretty good overview.

So you can imagine my surprise when I was flipping through this latest issue and found a whole page of stuff like this:

"Intimate Solutions for The Next Stage In Your Life."

Apparently Granny now requires "8 levels of rotation and vibration" plus a "soft gel-filled head with a rotating pearl-filled shaft."

Really, don't we all?

Feeling very competent right now

Last night as I was getting ready for bed I heard the ominous seal-like cough coming from Liza's room, indicating that it was time to haul out the vap-o-rub and humidifier. Luckily after we got her to stop screaming and take some drinks of water, she was much better, and she slept through the rest of the night without a peep.

She was still gargly this morning, though, and I had to make the call about whether to send her to school or not. On the one hand, she wasn't particularly snotty or coughing, and she didn't have a fever. On the other hand, she still sounded like she had a shot of Listerine in the back of her throat, and she was a lot less, um, manic than she normally is in the morning. And I really needed some time to finish up a project I'm smack in the middle of for Lazy Mama.

In the end I had pity on the other preschool parents and kept her home. I really don't want to be the mother everyone else silently curses because her kid hacks all over theirs all day at preschool. And I think I did thr right thing, since Liza was remarkable well-behaved at the grocery store (when she doesn't make a grab for the candy in the checkout line, it's a tip-off that something's not right), and when she had a tantrum a few minutes ago I laid down with her on her bed, and she was out like a light about 3 minutes later with no books, no CDs, and no complaints.

Hallelujah!

Let the pattern editing commence! Because I've got some Tummy Time on the Prairie quilt kits that are burning a hole in my craft table, waiting to get out the door, and I've only got a 24-hour window before I come down with whatever Liza's got.

Grace

I read this post last week, and as much as I hate to admit it, I could totally relate. There are days when I am the greatest mother on the planet, and days when I am lucky to get through the day without taking a swig or a swing at anyone.

But you know what helps? Knowing that I'm not alone. Knowing that there are at least 24 other people in the world who read that post and identified with it enough to leave a comment for her.

Know what else helps? Talking with the mothers of my daughter's dance classmates, trading horror stories about what each has been up to (or NOT up to), a one-upsmanship contest you don't really want to win. The ones with slightly older kids give me a preview of the joy and hell that's yet to come, and the ones with slightly younger kids reassure me that every kid in the world becomes evil at approximately the same ages. This is really the first time I've had the chance to do this - after three and a half years I finally have a kid who happily trots through the door to a class and lets me sit outside and knit for 55 minutes straight while yapping with other moms. Let's hear it for commiseration!

******

Last night my Simple Abundance meditation was about "grace." There's a lot tied up in that word, but the way I understood it for me was the ability to make it through the day with the fewest unhappy moments. Not always getting everything I want when I want, and being okay with that. Not exactly compromising, just being willing to be flexible.

On my good days, that's exactly the kind of parent I am. Kid doesn't want to get dressed? Not a problem, stay in your pajamas for an extra five minutes, then race me upstairs and we'll see who can get dressed fastest. Work on the computer only when she's asleep or at school, pay attention when she asks for it as many times as she asks for it, set aside the housework or the bills or the Lazy Mama stuff until she's entertaining herself. Accept every twist and turn of the day with grace and graciousness. Bend over backwards to work around the NO! and the whines and whatever other ugly habits she has this week. Get everyone to go on a hike to look at fall leaves and experience not one minute of whining from anyone of any age.

On the bad days, well, it would really be best if I had a babysitter. Yell at the kid when she won't get dressed (or eat, or brush her teeth, or let me comb her hair, or put on her shoes). Forget cajoling - the groceries aren't going to buy themselves and I am sick of asking her over and over to get out to the car. No, I will not wipe her bottom one more time, she's almost four and can do it perfectly well herself. The cat hair has reached crisis levels, the credit card company is going to get grumpy with us if I don't pay bills soon, and by god I have packages that have to get in the mail TODAY, so by god she'd better just sit there and watch another Sesame Street while I get some stuff done. Fume and complain and moan when things don't go as planned. Develop stress headache and barricade self in sewing room after dinner, hoping funk will be solved by application of fabric sizing fumes from my stash. By her bedtime she's lost all privileges, so no books or computer or songs before bed, thanks to her lack of cooperation and my unwillingness to jolly her along throughout the day.

Luckily, I'm not at the bad end of the spectrum more than one or two days a month, and I've learned how to recognize the symptoms and head off the worst of it before ill-advised things leave my mouth. And Liza has learned that I'm very serious when I tell her that the day is going to go very badly for her if she doesn't start doing what I tell her to do.

Starting today, I'm making a conscious effort to live my life with more grace. I want to be the fun, flexible mom, not the shrill harpy who yells to have everything her way. I have written "GRACE" on my wrist, in the place I've used for a reminder board since I was in elementary school and needed to remember to bring in homework or gym shorts or whatever. Hopefully, seeing it there will help bring me back to the center when I start to get all crabby.

We'll see.





In the meantime, this is what my floating place looks like - peaceful and serene and beautiful and empty.

And there's an old friend there, too.

Oh, and did you know...

... that if you google "aquadoodle" my blog is on the front page? Not the first listing, but I'm like #9. Huzzah!

Also, a disturbing number of people have found my blog recently by googling a variation of "mommy's trombone." Um, is there a euphemism I don't know about? Because I was careful to keep the word "rusty" completely out of that post.

That's a new one

Because I thought the kid might like to be able to spell more than four letters of her own name ...

"Okay, see these words I wrote? They say "Elizabeth Virginia Woods." Now, what is your nickname? What do we normally call you?"

"Elizabeth Virginia Woods!"

"No, I mean, what do I call you when I tell you I love you?"

"Sweet Pootie!"

I would like to go on record that I have never, not once, called her that, and neither has Jason. I've called her lots of other things, both printable and not, but that's not one of them.

Where she gets this stuff, I'll never know.

(and yes, this is an obligatory NaBloPoMo "I have to post even when I have nothing to say" post, probably the first of many this month)

Sisyphean Tasks, part II

So we went away for the night last night, and we came back to this:

Jason took this photo, and what I especially love about it is how he captured our neighbor's yard up in the upper right corner. This guy is REALLY serious about his lawn, and we joke around that he has some sort of laser defense system in place because he NEVER gets leaves in his yard. We actually managed to get our yard less leafy than the neighbor's a few weeks ago, and Jason wanted to take a picture, because it was the first time in almost two years that our yard was more pristine than his. But the neighbor mowed before I could find the camera.

Anyway, the good news is that while our yard looked like the Metroparks had exploded back there, the trees are looking almost done, at least in parts of the yard.

The other good news? While Jason mowed up 14 garbage bags of leaves (no, not kidding ... did I mention that on Thursday I took out two trashcans and four paper garbage bags of leaves, in addition to the seven plastic bags Jason mowed up last weekend? There's a reason we don't mulch ... it would be knee-deep by now) ... ahem, anyway, while Jason mowed, the birthday girl had other plans.

It's been a while since she's fallen asleep on me ...

May 14, 2005

Well, maybe not that long, but I get bonus points for digging up a pre-blog photo, right?

Nubbins

One of the benefits of my husband working downtown? Better florists nearby = I get better birthday flowers.

****

"Holy shit! Liza, come here, quick! You've got to see this! There's a deer in the front yard!" - Jason, about three minutes ago.

Way you can tell I'm a blogger? My first thought as I bolted down the stairs was, "Shit, the camera's hooked up to the computer downloading pictures." It's not real unless I take pictures and blog about it, you know.

For the record, it was a young buck with a small rack - maybe 3 or 4 points on each side? And it definitely should not be wandering around our neighborhood at 1pm, no matter how overcast it is.

Sisyphean Tasks, part I

From approximately 1pm until 4pm this afternoon, I collected the leaves in our yard. I blew them, I raked them, I bagged them, I carried them to the curb before the trash truck came for the week. I was very proud of myself ... until I noticed that at the rate the leaves were falling (about 3 per second ... yes, I counted), I hadn't made much of a dent in it. Here's the "after" photo from about 4pm of a section of yard that was clear around 2:30.

It's not tragic, but it is annoying. Most of the leaves aren't even from "my" trees, but rather have drifted over from my neighbor's heavily forested backyard. She's got 20 mature oak trees in the backyard of a lot that's about 1/4 acre. It's a lot to look after, especially on her own. She does a pretty neat job of it, though.

I love that her yard looks like it was invaded by gigantic mutant moles. And that after hours of raking, you can still barely see her grass.

My one consolation: Liza was incredibly good during most of the raking session, entertaining herself and "helping" occasionally. There was a bit more leaf-throwing than I would have liked, and less useful raking that I had hoped for, but dang, she was cute.

Oh, and despite the fact that my daughter is prone to going outside virtually naked even when there's snow on the ground, today this outfit was weather-appropriate. It was something like 68F when we were raking ... after not much work I was wishing I hadn't packed up all of my shorts for the winter. There's something just fundamentally wrong about raking leaves in a t-shirt and still being too hot.

****

And in case you were wondering, it took me two tries to spell "Sisyphus" correctly when I googled it for the link.

Mobile Dandelion Eradication and Glossolalia Transmitting Unit

Or, my daughter can now ride her Big Wheel all the way around our (huge) block, but only if she stops every two houses to pick weeds, and if she croons nonsensically at the top of her lungs while she pedals at top speed in between weed stops.

We're quite the sight, especially since we haven't removed the annoying clicker from the Big Wheel, so not only does it rumble along, it clicks loudly enough that you can't hold a conversation within 15 feet of her.

Gonna make us the most popular family on the block, that Big Wheel.

*****
Glossolalia = speaking in tongues

Profundity

Today is when I'm supposed to say something inspiring about the election.

Turns out, John has already said it. He used a touch more newborn-in-the-house-sleep-deprivation-induced cursing than I probably would have left in after editing, but the sentiment is the same.

***
Also, election night is the one time every four years when my husband gives his inner political science major (true!) free reign. I can tell it's going to be "knit socks while trying not to look at Wolf Blitzer's eyebrows" night in front of the tv for me. If only I had a book on tape that was something other than Nate the Great, I'd hide in our bedroom until the REAL results were in, not the kind they're giving us now.

"With only 4% of the precincts reporting, we're going to call Virginia for Senator Obama." Say whaaa? Apparently no one in the media has learned from past mistakes.

Dumbing things down

One of the things I enjoy about Liza is that she wants to know everything, in detail, and she's patient enough to sit through the explanations. It's also sort of maddening when I have to tell her for the 14th time in a week why the road sign at Fitch and Cook is laying sideways next to the road, but at least I'm getting good at that one.

The past few days I've been trying to explain to her about the election, what it is and what it means. Trying to reduce national politics to a level a 3-year-old can understand is, um, interesting. Add to that the fact that Liza has been on a kick where she wants us to describe the appearance of every single person we mention in a conversation, and you end up with a pretty interesting explanation. And when you add in this week's tic - "Tell me more!" - and my relative lack of knowledge about the candidates, and it gets downright strange.

"Well, there are two guys who want to be president, and every grown-up in the country gets to help pick which one gets the job. Each of them believes the government should do different things, so we're supposed to vote for the person whose ideas are closest to what we believe. One of the guys is named John McCain, and he's got light skin and white hair, and he looks kind of old. The other guy is named Barack Obama, and he's got dark skin and short dark hair, and he looks kind of young."

"Tell me more!"

"Um .... Oh, and Obama's ears stick out kinda funny, too."

"Which one is going to win?"

"We won't know until after the election. Heck, we may not even know then."

This morning we spent half an hour looking at election stuff online - she wanted to see pictures of the candidates, and then we looked at pictures of their wives ("Michelle has a pretty blue dress!"), and shots from the debates, and way too many pictures of Joe the Plumber. We looked at a chart that showed trends in predicted election results over the past few months, and we talked about how one line was sort of going up and one was sort of going down, and the higher the line was the more likely that person was to win.

How much of this she understands, I don't know. She asks relatively intelligent questions about what we talk about, so I have to think she's getting at least part of it. I think mainly she's just pissed that she has to miss school tomorrow because of the election ... can't let democracy get in the way of Play-Doh and snacktime, you know.

Well, since you asked

Anonymous asks, "Do you prefer to live in Kentucky where it doesn't matter how you vote or Ohio where everyone is telling you how to vote?"

This is, of course, a very timely and important topic here in The Biggest And Most Important Swing State In The History Of Elections, where polls have the main two candidates in a statistical dead heat (or at least they did last time I looked at the front page of the paper).

The advertising blitz is just astounding. I have honestly never seen anything like it, and it's not like this is the first election I've seen in the state. I haven't even gotten the worst of it, since I hardly ever listen to commercial radio or watch anything other than the Discovery Channel. But when Jason's mother was visiting we watched some daytime television and the nightly news, and my god, the volume of advertisements was incredible. Not just for the presidential election, of course - there were probably more ads for and against ballot issues than there were for actual candidates. I swear I can recite the ads against the casino by heart, and that was after only a week of exposure.

Every day there's a whole mess of political ads in the mailbox, and the phone calls and door-to-door visits are getting ludicrously common. I swear, the Obama campaign has so much money to spend on ads that I wouldn't be too surprised to see a stack of 50s in my mailbox tomorrow with a "Vote for Change" sticker on the band. My favorite has to be the poor Democratic canvasser who was going around on Halloween night. By the time she got to our house, it was so dark she had a hard time seeing her clipboard, so I took pity on her and gave her one of the glowsticks from our goodie bags so she could see what she was doing. Shame I couldn't answer her questions about who Jason voted for ... he was so undecided about the presidential race that I think he flipped a coin before sealing the envelope on his absentee ballot.

At this point all of the advertising and signs and mailings and last-minute revelations are falling on deaf ears, anyway, since Jason and I both filed absentee ballots this year. Originally Jason was supposed to be out of town on business on election day, and the thought of standing in line for two hours with a 3-year-old so that I can vote is just too depressing for words, so the absentee ballots were a great option. They went in the mail early last week, so the time for us to be swayed is long past.

Jason is sort of the Model Citizen, using a week of his free time in the evenings researching all the candidates on the ballot, reading their responses to the newspaper's questions, etc. He votes based on how well each candidate agree with his views, which is what you're supposed to do, right? My only quibble is that if a candidate doesn't answer the questions, Jason refuses to vote for them ... even if they are running unopposed and have no real need to persuade voters with their responses. Seems a bit arbitrary after all that other research, but hey - that's his right.

I, on the other hand, am the reason there's an electoral college. I vote based on whether the party to which a candidate belongs agrees with me on the one or two issues I actually care about. I figure that the chances of any of the other issues actually making a difference in my life is so small, I don't really care what the candidates believe about them. For races where the candidates don't have a party affiliation (we've got lots of elected judges around here ... like a whole page of the ballot worth), I vote for the woman. If there isn't a woman in the race, I don't vote on that position at all.

Arbitrary? Heck, yes. Uninformed? Heck, yes. I guess I'm so jaded about the chances of any of the candidates actually making much of a difference that I just don't really care who gets elected. But on the positive side of things, it makes election season soooo much easier when you don't actually have to listen to all the crap the politicians and advertisers hand out and can just get on with watching Time Warp. People who actually care about this stuff have it so much harder than I do. Wheeeee!

It's that time of year again

Time to post every day for a month.

Yippee!

I'm sure I'll think of something to say at some point, but for now, here's the kid and her haul of Halloween candy:

Suffice it to say, we measured it in pounds. After she went to bed the "Candy Fairy" confiscated about 2/3rds of the candy (to "give to kids who couldn't go trick-or-treating", and she replaced it with a Tinkerbelle video Liza will enjoy more than the candy), and she still has enough to last her beyond Christmas. She got good stuff, too - like a dozen fun-size Snickers, half a dozen Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, etc. Jason and I will enjoy the stuff we confiscated :)

I'll update this later when blogger is less wonky.

Happy NaBloPoMo!

Weather update

So after a few too many days of the weather looking like this...

(Yes, that's snow. It always snows before Halloween, at least in Cleveland.)

... the weather broke today and it was in the upper 40s, which meant that our neighbors were raking leaves in their sweatshirts and the kids were running around in shirtsleeves. We're all wackos around here.

Especially me, since my response to the "warm" sunny weather was to ... clean the basement. Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, actually it kinda does, because I was planning to clear as much space as I could so that Liza could have a small indoor playground once the weather turns nasty for good. We've got the little plastic slide, and I think I should be able to locate the rafters in the ceiling of the basement so I can put in anchors for a swing or trapeze. It will be tight, but I think it will work. Heck, by February she'll be so desperate that anything will be acceptable, so my standards aren't high.

Anyway, after a solid hour of trying to clean out the Black Hole Closet Under The Basement Stairs, I was trying to keep Liza entertained and out of trouble. Look, it's Mommy's wedding dress! Let's open the box to make sure the mice didn't get into it! Look, it's Mommy's trombone! Let's open it so you can take a look at it! Heck, let's take a break and play for a while, shall we?

I'm fairly certain that it hasn't been out of it's case since we moved ... to Kentucky ... in 2003. Yes, I know I suck. It was fun to haul it out for a while, though, and Liza was duly impressed.

You can see where this is going, right?

You should have seen the look on her face (and mine, too, probably) when she managed to produce a tone on the first try. It's not like it's hard or anything, but come on, she's 3 1/2 years old. The mouthpiece takes up half of her face, for god's sake!

I'm not claiming she's a prodigy or anything - sort of sounded like a hippo in heat, to be honest with you.

But come on, how cute is that? My little Bone Babe in Training ...

RBBBC

If you go to the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus an hour early, you're allowed to go down onto the floor to check out some of the acts and costumes up close. Last year Liza wanted nothing to do with it, but this year she practically ran down to the floor when we got to the arena.

It wasn't quite so crowded this year - we got there earlier - and she's a lot better in crowds this year than she was last year. She sucked it up, if only to be able to see the "sparkly ladies" up close. She loved being able to see someone on the lyra right in front of her.

In fact, she was so transfixed that she didn't notice when one of the stiltwalkers came over and was watching over her shoulder. The crowd loved it, but Liza had to be poked before she realized he was there. I was prepared for her to lose it and spend the rest of the circus screaming in a corner, but she just sort of burrowed into the top of Jason's head, and the stilt walker went off to pick on some other kid.

One reason I wanted Liza to go down to the pre-show was so she could see the costumes up close, and this year we even managed to get her to try one on (with me) and pose with one of the performers.

What we were thinking: Me: God, this thing weighs like 10 pounds. Liza: Who the hell is that guy and why is he smiling like a maniac?

My favorite moment with Liza was during intermission when she and I were heading out of the seating area in search of a bathroom. I asked her how she was liking the circus, and she said it was good, but it was too short. "But we're just at intermission, sweetie, when the performers can take a break and we can go to the bathroom. There's more circus coming once we get back to our seats." The look of wonder and dawning realization and excitement on her face when she learned there was more! circus! more circus! was priceless.

I have to say that the tour that came through town this year (Over the Top) wasn't nearly as good as the one from last year (Bellobration). It's much smaller - one ring instead of three - but that's not it. For one thing, the whole theme of the show this year was the ringmaster and one of the clowns fighting over who got to wear the ringmaster hat and be in charge, and it just wasn't funny after the first, oh, two minutes. There were some acts that weren't hitting quite right during the performance we saw (the dogs missed more frisbees than they caught, the tiny horses spent half of their show just sort of milling around), and the segment about the Queen of the Clouds just flat-out sucked.

But ... the "motorcycles in a metal sphere" act was sooooo much better than any other one I've seen (seven guys? how is that even possible?), and there was this cool Chinese acrobatic act that had them swinging around on poles and jumping from pole to pole (reminded me of the old Pitfall! game), which was really cool and not like anything I'd seen before. Plus the elephants were awesome ... they were doing tricks I've never seen elephants do before (one elephant climbing over another prone elephant before sitting upright on the prone one, walking in a sort of 15-foot-tall conga line on their back legs). And holy crap, those guys on the bouncy innertube things - can we get one of those to use in our backyard? No?

So I know if I had a choice to go see Bellobration vs Over the Top, I'd take Bello any day. But if it was Over the Top vs nothing, I guess the good outweighed the bad.

We didn't get the DVD, though.

Special Event Overload

First, there was the birthday party, which Liza absolutely loved but which left her wired for about, oh, three days.

Next came Boo at the Zoo, where Liza's favorite activity was watching the ladies dressed up like ghosts playing cellos.

Then there was observation day at her dance class.

And today we're going to the circus.

Somebody hand me a Tylenol and a caffeinated beverage, please - this parenting stuff is hard work.

awwww

10:30am

My daughter is sitting downstairs by the front door, wrapped birthday present in hand, waiting to go to her first-ever birthday party that's just for the kids. She's so excited she's vibrating.

Only problem?

The party doesn't start until 12:15.

If anyone hears some screaming from NE Ohio around 2:30, that'll be the sugar rush letdown from the party. It's gonna be an ugly, ugly afternoon.

floro-anthropomorphology?

Okay, we all know my daughter is a little, um, unique. She comes up with the oddest ways to use toys ... like using her Duplo blocks to make flat designs rather than buildings or people or cars or whatever. And using her paints to make formless blobs because she likes the feeling of the painting and doesn't care what it looks like when she's done.

But the latest craze is flowers. Everything is a flower. Train tracks, tinker toys, lego creations, pop-ons, random pipe cleaners, the spinning wheels from her marble run, popsicle sticks, plastic buttons, knitting needles, pieces of soap ... if it's laying around the house, chances are, she's decided it's a flower.

And not only a flower, a talking flower with a backstory and dialogue. I can't use the spinners when I build her marble run, for example, because "the rest of the flower family would be really sad if the mommy flower had to go away, even if she came back later on." She won't play with dolls, doesn't give stuffed animals a second glance, and only wants to use her dollhouse so she can move around the furniture, but the pretend shrubbery she's got in the dining room are living full, rich lives.

Add to that her new fascination for making up her own words, and I end up having to clutch sweaty "bouquets" of plastic-button "pisswiss" flowers until she tells me I'm allowed to put them down ... because heaven help you if you fail to appreciate the wonder that is her floral creation.

And don't get me started on how earlier this summer her imaginary "friends" wouldn't let her play with them because she wasn't wearing the right color of dress. Nothing like being jilted by people you made up in your head to show your strong sense of self-esteem.