I awoke to rain and a toddler who refused to go to school. I knew the latter was crucial since said toddler would not be getting out of the house due to the former, so I started the long process of getting a writhing child out the door in a timely fashion. He’s usually very excited to go to school, so this was a little weird to me. He was adamant that he was not down with school today, not cool with walking to the car, and generally just “vewy angwy!”

And you know me - I started to wonder what awful thing had happened at school that made him so upset about going. Had a classmate been mean to him and the teacher didn’t help? Had he gotten into trouble and no one told me? Had he gotten hurt?

So as we drove there I continued to ask him why he didn’t want to go. I started talking about how they would get to go to the “big room” to play instruments since it was raining outside, and then he yelled, “No! I NOT want to pway Duckduckgoose!”

“Oh, did you play Duck-Duck-Goose at school?”

“Yes. It raining and I NOT want to pway.” Aha, so on rainy days they not only go to the big room for instruments, but also for games. That was a relief.

But then, about four seconds later, I started up again - Wait, why does he hate Duck-Duck-Goose so much? Does nobody pick him as the goose? Is he always the first one “out”? Do they put him in “the pot?” Oh God, they shame him and make him sit in the pot so that all the other kids can sit around him in the circle and stare at him because he was out first. He’s already having sport-related school anxiety! He’s going to hate gym. He’s going to have stomach aches on Field Day. He’s going to be like my brother and run himself into a wall to break his arm so that he can get out of P.E. because a shattered ulna feels better than the shame of being a non-athlete . . .

“You put your hands on the heads and I NOT want them to touch my head.”

“What?”

“I NOT WANT THEM TO TOUCH MY HEAD!”

“You mean you don’t like Duck-Duck-Goose because they touch your head? It’s not because of the part where you have to run around the circle and get chased and sit in the pot if you are out?”

“No, that a wittle fun. Running part is fun. I just not want them to touch my head.”

” . . . Ohhhhhh.”

When I picked him up two hours later I looked in the window to see Sam happily sitting in a circle with his hand stuck out so that the kid who was the ducker could walk by and tap him high five style - “Gooooooose!” - and Sam running and laughing around and around the whole room as the teachers tried to direct the two boys to at least head in the general direction of the circle, which had really spread out into something more like a line. There was no “out,” no “pot,” and absolutely no shame.

Labels: Learn More Every Day, Tales, Talking, The Big One

You know what is amazing?  When Sam wakes up in the night and is afraid or confused, he says, “Mommy.”  I am the first thing that comes to his mind.  “Mommy, I need you.”  When he gets hurt, “I need Mommy to kiss it.”  When he doesn’t feel well, “I need Mommy to chill me out.”

And what amazes me about this is that I am the mommy.  Me.  Someone (two people, actually) needs me so much that when they awake in the dark I am the person that can make it all better.  I’m the mommy.

I’ve submitted the above photo to the 5 Minutes For Mom photo contest.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Mommyhood, Pictures

Sam and I have been playing a lot of Candyland lately.  He caught on remarkably fast, seeing as it’s his very first board game and all.  But after a while I started to notice something a little…odd.

Here are some examples of some of the cards I was allowed to draw during our recent game.

You can assume they pretty much all looked like this.

Here are some of the cards Sam “happened” to draw.

Again, you can assume they pretty much all looked like this.

In case you can’t tell, this is a stack of all of the “special cards,” all of which were “his.”

And here’s the “pile” we were drawing from, where he directed each of us as to which card we could pick up.

And here is the face Sam makes when he knows he’s being “naughty.”

Labels: Pictures, The Big One, Toys

The other day, in a moment of awesome maturity, I called my husband and held up the phone so that he could hear the sound of both children screaming for several minutes. They were sort of trying to outdo each other…well, Sam was trying to outdo Robby, and Robby didn’t like it. Anyway, I’d been listening to both of them scream and cry with absolutely nothing I could do about for about ten minutes. Finally I just started laughing at the ridiculousness of it and called him, you know, just cuz. We couldn’t even hear each other.

Sam has been sick this past week (again!), and it makes him very clingy(understandably so). When he gets like this he sometimes just wants me to hold him and let him sit on my lap. Somehow, this act has acquired its own name because he asks to do it when he’s upset and needs to calm down. Now, when he wants me to pick him up and put him in my lap he walks around saying, “I need Mommy to chill me out.”

Chillin’

Labels: Mommyhood, Pictures, Talking, The Big One

When I was in college, a friend and I decided to drive from Ohio to Boston for an audition, and then on to Florida for our spring break. There was much overnight driving, but one of the nights we decided around 3:00am that we needed to sleep in a bed, so we pulled over to the first motel we saw. When we got inside and turned down the sheets of our lovely beds we found several dead bug carcasses. And the “pillows” were simply pillowcases stuffed with shredded newspaper. Hey, at least they were recycling. Gross.

I look forward to doing a lot of reading today and getting some good ideas for our family to keep on truckin’ with our green endeavor. Here’s are some of the things we’ve incorporated over the past year.

No more paper napkins - only cloth. Got them on sale. Love ‘em.

Have switched to only eco-friendly, non-toxic household cleaners, detergents, and bath products.

Used this website to find out where we could recycle paper goods because they aren’t picked up in our area, only plastics, metals and glass. Now we have a paper recycling bin and we go drop all of it off every month or so. We create so much less waste now because we even break down food boxes to be included. It’s amazing how much of our trash was recycleable if we just went that extra little step.

When I pack snacks and picnics I use containers instead of plastic baggies. We also don’t use juice boxes or bottled water and, instead, refill our own bottles and cups.

Canvas bags for all shopping. And I love them. They hold so much and make it so much easier to carry everything! Imagine, being able to carry a grocery bag on your shoulder because it has straps. Aaaaahhhh.

No fast food. No, no, no.

We started using the library instead of buying books. Books do not have to be trophies to be displayed. No, they’re not, Hubby! When we do need to buy a book we buy it used online.

Dish cloths instead of paper towels. This is one of my weaknesses. I’m not 100% on it yet, unfortunately.

Switched over to CFL bulbs as our light bulbs died.

We buy organic whenever we can. Our grocery store actually has a relatively new store brand organic line that includes tons of products that are typically priced close to regular brand items. And it’s all great quality stuff, so that’s how we do our milk, ketchup, eggs, and anything that is comparable in price to its non-organic counterpart. I also use a list like this because we can’t afford to buy all of our produce organic.

We don’t throw out anything that could be donated or put up on freecycle.

Unplug all appliances when not in use.

Happy Earth Day, all. Looking forward to sharing and learning more.

And Seattle Mom Blogs is doing some great giveaways (even for those of us not in Seattle), so head on over.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Learn More Every Day

We went to the playground today, the four of us, and tried to get in some play time before the HUGE freaking rain cloud overtook us. Both the boys were on the swings, and then Sam went off with his daddy to climb and slide. I was left alone with Robby, just the two of us. Once I looked away from Sam walking away toward the big curvy ladder, and once I’d warned my husband to help him because Sam wasn’t wearing good playground shoes and might slip, I looked back at Robby. And looked. It was just us, and the feeling was so foreign. And all of a sudden I had all these flashbacks of when Sam was very little, how we did absolutely everything together, just the two of us. That’s how things were for the first 27 months of his life. And I told him telepathically, I’m sorry. I’m sorry this is the first time I have pushed you on the swing without being distracted. I’m sorry I can’t tell you when this will happen again. You will never know what it is like to share me with no one else. It is something you will never comprehend. And I’m just really, really sorry. He just continued to smile at me.

Do you ever just feel like you’re not very . . . present? Lately I have just been completely overwhelmed. It’s constant. I’m listing things to do, and we are spending every free moment trying to take care of something, some project, some packing, some phone call, some something. I know a lot of it is due to the upcoming move, but a lot of it also is just the difference in having more than one child. I never feel calm or in the moment. If a time comes when both children are content I feel I can’t just be there with them. I need to go make lunch, go return a phone call, go pee. Because if I don’t take advantage of that moment, then I may be making lunch while being screamed at by a baby to pick him up, talking on the phone while being pestered by an almost three year old to get him some scissors, holding the door shut while, well, you know.

There’s just never a moment to just be with them, especially not one on one. Sam is tough right now. Most things are negotiations, warnings, battles. It feels like that’s what we’ve been doing now for about six months. The other night he was running down the hall laughing and singing a song he’d made up himself. I was behind him, watching, and I just thought, that’s right: Sam is fun and sweet and happy. Why does it feel like he is never happy anymore? But he is, it’s just happening when I’m not paying attention because that period of calm for him makes me feel like I can move on to something else. He and I don’t get much time together for just us anymore either. Lately I have felt like I hardly know him. He has all of a sudden turned into a boy who can talk to me and tell me what he wants, yet I feel I understand him less than when it was just the two of us, and he couldn’t speak a word.

The past six months . . . I don’t know where they’ve gone. I don’t know what we’ve done with our time together, or where I’ve been. I haven’t really been here. I’ve just been moving, trying to function, trying to get things done. I hope tomorrow I can stay with them when that moment of contentment comes and tell them, telepathically, you guys are it. You are the center of my everything. I am here with you both. I am going nowhere else, but staying still.

Labels: Learn More Every Day, Mommyhood, The Big One, The Little One

My essay is up over at Sekund. I chickened out and didn’t use that photo though. Instead, we chose a lovely image that had to be altered by my husband using his lame Paint program to blot out the huge crease on the front of my PAJAMA shirt, the MULTIPLE ketchup stains on Sam’s shirt, and oh, the fact that we are sitting in front of a bunch of CINDER blocks on our patio (have I mentioned I can’t wait until we move?). Poor man sat there and drew over the lines of those blocks for like an hour and a half - must be love.

Click on over there though. Some of it may sound a little familiar to a few of you because it did start out as a blog post. But there are other very cool essays, and it’s a free online magazine . . . and you should go check it out.

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I also wanted to follow up and thank all of you who expressed interest in doing the Total Mom Bookclub. I think we could get a great group going over here, and I’m very excited about it. To be realistic though, I’m not going to start until after we move next month. Nothing lamer than hosting a book club when you haven’t done the reading. We’re piled in boxes and packing paper, so I just don’t think now is the time for me to get it going. A month from now though, I’m in. Details to follow.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Books, Writing