Interruption

As much as I hate the blog post about how someone has not been posting on their blog, I see no other way to stop the cycle of not posting than to acknowledge it publicly so I can move on. The thing is, I have really no good excuse for avoiding writing lately. In fact, I'd say I have a confession to make:

I have been doing nothing. For days at a time.

Those of you who know me (heck, even those of you who've only read my very last blog post) know that I just don't go through a day without doing something, many somethings, a long list of somethings. I like to keep busy, and can only feel relaxed when all the work is done... and as we've all learned by now, all the work is rarely done.

Now while this whole setup makes me very productive, it makes me very cranky about being interrupted. I don't like it when the kids get up during rest time, interrupting my grading. I don't like writing half a blog post and having to come back to finish it later. I am not the kind of mother who stops in the middle of making dinner for an impromptu game of Old Maid. I sigh heavily when I must stop what I'm doing to tie shoes or clean up spilled milk, so much that my oldest has learned to start requests with an apology, which makes me cringe a little every time I hear it.

My friend Janice wrote a few months ago on her blog about a conversation we had on this very topic. At the time I read it originally I remember feeling that I should probably be convicted about my own crankiness at kid interruptions, but then I got busy and forgot about it.

My husband Kyle, on the other hand, is much better at interruptions than I am. He is able to take breaks from his work, to stop what he's doing to read someone a book, or to spend a Saturday afternoon listening to music or playing video games. Sometimes I catch myself feeling resentful over his relaxing while I run around the house doing chores, even as I recognize that my list of tasks is self-imposed.

But one of the benefits of being in a family where all the parents and children work on an academic calendar is that we get long summer and winter and spring breaks together. With no work obligations, no sports practices for the kids, no sorority advising duties, an amazing thing happens: the "to-do" list actually gets to-done. And so here we've been, at the crossroads where a person who can relax at any time and a person who can only relax when work is done are fighting for a place on the couch. We've been reading books, watching movies and TV shows, and playing games with the kids. We even had a party, and lived off leftover appetizers and snack food for a dinner or two afterward. I must admit, it feels good to be "interruptible" for a while. I have colored and made paper snowflakes, played school and Memory and cards, and read stacks and stacks of picture books.

And so I've been reluctant to get back to real life, where I feel obliged to do anything regularly, like change sheets or go to work or post on my blog. It's as if relaxation has cast its spell on me and now I can't get back to the land of productivity. I'm hoping that admitting I have responsibilities will be the first step in overcoming my denial that the semester is actually starting, and that it's going to be a doozy. If nothing else, I have now interrupted the ignoring of my blog, and maybe it will be difficult to find my place with that again.

A Great Many Things

Recently, a friend of ours asked me what career I'd choose, if not the path I've taken. It was difficult to come up with one solid answer at the time, and it got me thinking, not just about careers, but about the people and places and even hobbies not chosen. It's something, actually, that I think about often in one context or another, as I encounter the limits of my time or situation.

I've realized that my greatest disappointment has been the gradual realization that I cannot do everything I want to do. This may be obvious to some, but for me has been something that I have been denying, struggling against, most of my life. I have always been a person of many interests, who feels that there are just too many interesting and worthwhile things to learn and see and do, too many amazing people to get to know. Maybe this is how everyone feels, and I flatter myself imagining my uniqueness. Maybe I'm only unique in my stubborn refusal to accept this fact and move on.

In high school, I was a cheerleader, and I was also on the debate team. There were no other cheerleaders who wanted to do debate, and none of the forensics crowd wanted to be a cheerleader. This frequently presented a conflict, not only in the sense that I couldn't physically be at a debate tournament and a basketball tournament at the same time, but also socially, in that lots of people in either activity looked down on me for doing the other. Now, it was high school, for goodness sake, so I don't want to make it sound more dramatic and oppressive than it was, but the point is that I could have made things a lot easier for myself by just choosing one activity and going with it. But I didn't. I really put my all into both those activities and a dozen others, because I just wasn't willing to miss out on anything.

In college, things just got bigger in terms of the opportunities that presented themselves. I found that the less-structured class schedule allowed me to cram in even more activities, and before I knew it I'd found research and waitressing jobs, a sorority, a handful of honor societies, a peer-education group, the Student Activities Board, intramural sports, and so forth. Oh yeah, and I had a double-major, of course, because I couldn't limit myself to just one field of study. Looking back on my college experience, I'd still rate it as fantastic- I had lots of friends and got to do so many wonderful things, but if I'm honest with myself I know that I was stretched way too thin. I barely slept, my grades were good but not great, and though I held lots of leadership positions I was never able to do any of them as well as I'd initially hoped to.

I used to believe that things would change as an adult, that you pick your spouse and career and then things just play themselves out; you get more focused and your path is clearer. But it's not that way at all. There are more and more opportunities all the time, and I find that I am to the point where I can no longer choose "all of the above." I cannot take every job opportunity that comes my way, develop friendships with all the really neat people I meet, enroll the kids in all the sports or music lessons available to them. Because now the sacrifice is not just a few hours of sleep or some time to read magazines, but my relationships with my kids and my husband. And if I don't actively choose, sometimes the choice is made for me: having a second child means the distancing of a close friendship, teaching another class schedules me right out of a meaningful church activity. I'm being forced into depth of fewer experiences rather than breadth of many, and it is a difficult fit for me. I'm lucky to have a husband with great discernment about when to remind me of my limits and when to just quietly let me go.

I don't mean to imply in any way that I feel regret over any of my choices; I accept full responsibility for everything I take on or let go. I'm very happy with my life, my job, and my family, and I recognize the blessing of opportunities I have and tough decisions I'll never have to make. It's just that I can see the potential for equal happiness in dozens of other careers, cities of residence, and recreational activities. So many cool people I'll never make friends with, books I'll never read, offices I'll never run for... Sometimes I feel a longing for all the many things I won't choose, and am sad.

In the movie adaptation of Little Women I grew up watching, someone says to Jo March, "You should have been a lawyer." She answers, "I should have been a great many things." Another mom I met recently at Daniel's school mentioned this on her blog, about how this strikes her as a statement of all the possibilities this character sees for herself. I agree, and think that it doesn't just represent the recognition of possibilities, but a wistfulness for all the things she's passed up to do just what she's doing. It's something that shows her great passion for who she did choose to be, and I can really relate to that.

As frustrating as it sometimes is, then, to be excited about more things than I can accomplish in one day or week or lifetime, I do enjoy being a passionate person. In fact, I'd say there are few things I value as much as enthusiasm. I care so much about this hypothetical debate resolution that I want to have an elaborate argument with you about it. In my cheerleading uniform. Because right after that I'm going to go out to the football field and yell vehemently, jumping up and down in support of my friends' sporting event. I am going to try to keep a cleaner house than is realistic for me, overfill my weeknights volunteering for one more thing, and seriously consider setting a book-a-week reading goal. I will shoulder my father's longstanding accusation of having "too many irons in the fire," and allow my Gen Psych students to snicker when I open each chapter's lecture with a brief word about why this topic in psychology is truly one of my favorites. Because enthusiasm is what makes me who I am, and because the alternative, being apathetic or lukewarm or bored, is one thing I don't want to be.

Halloween 2011

First we had pumpkins...




Then we had costumes. Here are our little superhero and princess, keeping it nice and gender-stereotyped.





And we had good friends, the Downings, who invited a bunch of us over to trick-or-treat and then have cupcakes and hot chocolate afterward. The kids had a blast running from house to house together.



So then we had candy.

In case anyone has forgotten how very difficult it is to get a group of kids to all look in one place for a picture, we had a reminder:



At some point during the taking of that photo (and about 10 others like it) I heard one parent comment that "with all these cameras, surely someone will get a good one with them all facing forward." Or maybe not. So that was one thing we didn't have.

Still, though, I'm glad we have the camera to prove that Eva is actually a vampire in disguise.



Hope you had a spooky Halloween!

The Thing About Exercise...

Yes, yes. It's good for our physical health. It's good for our mental health. I know all these things. And don't get me wrong; we've been doing a lot of it lately. But I have a few beefs with exercise, and I think it's best to just get them all out there on the table. So the thing about exercise...

...is that it takes a while to get the hang of it.
I've written in the past about Daniel's foray into organized sports. The first year he was less than enthusiastic about things like running, paying attention, or touching a ball in any way. This year was quite a bit better, in that he did some actual fielding in t-ball and even ran after the ball some in soccer. I wonder, though, how long it will take before he can get through a game without multiple reminders to continue playing.



...is that it does funny things to your body.
Oh, not the good things that you expect to happen, like getting muscles and having more energy. I mean all the crazy pains and conditions and things not otherwise specified, like blisters and sore muscles and joint pain. From running, Kyle has developed hip pain, of all things, and therefore spends lots of time stretching and saying things like, "Ow! My hip!" like we're 75.

For my part, I have on-and-off pain only in the back of my left knee. I have a shin splint only in my right leg, callouses only on my right big toe. In addition, I have experienced a bizarre transformation in body shape. The more I exercise, the thinner my arms get. But nothing else. In fact, it's as if the fat from my arms has run down into my stomach, hips, and thighs, as I suspect they are getting larger. It's as if my body has decided it can give up a couple of limbs, but it's going to really insulate all the vital middle parts, which leaves me trying to propel my ample booty around with just these little chicken arms to balance everything out on top.

Here is me a little over a week ago, managing to look slightly chubby even as I finish a 4-mile race:



...is that you have to keep doing more of it.
This is a complaint that is about to reach the tipping point around our house. This summer Kyle kept increasing and increasing the length of his runs, until he decided that maybe he should just do a half marathon. In training for this he would literally run from one end of town to the other and back some days. Now a 5-mile run, which used to sound like an impressive workout, has become chump change, a "short run." Pretty soon we are going to run out of time for each of us to get in all the running that we want to do in a week without abandoning the kids.

Kyle finished his race this past Saturday, a trail run through the local State Park. Despite the hip thing, he finished right around his goal time. He writes about his race and, uh, training here. I have to admit that I spent the morning pushing aside fears that he'd sprain an ankle or be attacked by some woodland creature, so I was equal parts relieved and proud when he made it to the finish line. Even though he's making all the rest of us look like slackers.



...is that eventually your coach, instructor, or trainer will move or retire.
This was true in the case of Kyle's swim coaches, and it is true of my favorite Zumba instructor Claire, who is graduating and moving away in December. And if you are a sucker like me, you might be tempted to say something to the YMCA staff like, "If you don't find anyone else, I could maybe lead the class." And they might say, "Yeah, okay." And before you know it you're listening to Latin hip-hop during nap time, trying to figure out how you're going to pull this one off.

...is that eventually everyone wants their turn.
Eva just passed the minimum age for tumbling at our YMCA, so we've been taking her to Tumbling Teenies. She really gets a kick out of the class, which is basically a minimally-organized free-for-all with trampolines, springboards, and giant wedge mats. By t-ball season she will be old enough to play anything that Daniel plays, which means we will have double the number of games and practices each season. We've already limited Daniel from doing fall tumbling because the older kids' class time conflicts with my Zumba. Seriously, we're having a hard time fitting dinner into our schedules some nights. I wonder how it will be in a few years when we're all having to advocate to fit in our favorite practices or classes.

...is that it creates one heck of a lot of laundry.
Between the leotards, the soccer uniforms, the Zumba outfits, and all the running duds, I feel like we are doing piles of sweaty, stinky laundry every week. And don't even get me started about all the showering. Gosh, add in all the water we're drinking after exercising and we might be really exceeding our fair share in the utility usage department.

On the other hand... I'm sleeping like the dead every night, Kyle's lost 20 pounds, and they're gonna pay me to do Zumba. So maybe it's not all bad, but I'm keeping my eye on it.

Funny Things are Everywhere (Fall Edition)

Recently there have been all manner of funny things going on around here:

Eva Sees Dead People
A week or so ago the kids and I were driving to the YMCA, past the Catholic cemetery in town. Eva looked over and very matter-of-factly said, "I see a ghoost."
"What?" said Daniel and I, looking out the window.
"A ghoost. Over there (pointing). Between those big stone things."
"I don't see anything," said Daniel.
"Ghost? Are you saying ghost?" I asked, a little creeped-out, craning my neck to look among the gravestones while driving.
"A ghoost. He looks all lonely."
"Well, we must have missed it, whatever it was," I said, trying to dismiss the subject.

But in my head, I was thinking this:


On the way home, Eva looked over at the cemetery and said, "The ghoost is gone. Maybe it wanted to be a mommy ghoost, so it laid an egg and when it hatched it had a friend and was NOT LONELY anymore!"

So really, what I should have been thinking is more like this:


...and the Silver Spoon...
When Eva goes to bed at night, she likes to sleep with a lot of "friends." Her usual crew is a water cup, a stuffed elephant, three stuffed monkeys, a pillow-pet unicorn, and one or more baby dolls. Oh, and Eva squeezes in there. A few weeks ago she won a beanie-baby cat from the prize box at her school, and this joined bedtime gang. The problem with small toys, though, is that they tend to get lost in the night or fall through the bars of the back of the crib, and 2am finds Kyle or I pawing around in the dark under the toddler bed. This usually leads Kyle to some sort of proclamation about the small toy and where it should "keep watch" while Eva is sleeping. After a few days, then, Kyle pronounced that the cat should sleep in the doll cradle next to Eva's bed. Stifling my instinct to keep a cat out of a baby's cradle, I got on board with the new location for the cat.

One night, soon after the ghoost incident, I was putting Eva to bed and having an argument about where the cat would sleep. Eva was proposing putting it in various locations around her bed, and I was getting increasingly frustrated. Finally, I just said, "Eva, the cat's in the cradle!" and then immediately burst out laughing at myself. I came upstairs shaking my head, and Kyle said,
"Did you just yell 'The cat's in the cradle?' You know what that made me think of?"

I know, it makes you think of this.

Just in Time for Hunting Season
Over the weekend I was in Walmart, which is generally a bad idea, but especially so on Saturday or Sunday. I was kind of in a hurry, but as I booked it across the store I saw something that just made me stop dead in my tracks.

Camouflage lingerie.

At the time, I thought to myself that maybe this would be a good way to get the attention of a hunting-obsessed spouse. Or maybe some women want to look really sexy while hunting.

But then I had the mental image of some man looking frantically for his wife, unable to find her anywhere because she's blended right in to the background.
"Honey?... Honey!!" he'd call.
But she wouldn't hear him, because she'd have drifted right off to sleep, totally unnoticed. Which makes this the perfect backfiring, sex-avoidance lingerie.

I am Cornholio!
Today Eva got up in the middle of lunch to use the restroom. After a minute or so, she called out my least favorite phrase of parenting, "Mom! I'm ready to wipe!"
When I went into the bathroom, I found her sitting on the toilet with her longish shirt pulled over her head like this:


"What are you doing?" I asked her.
"I'm trying to keep my shirt from getting poop on it."
"Okay, I guess that's one way to do it."
"Will you please wipe me now?"

And all I could think was, "So what you're saying is you need TP for your bunghole?"
Huh-huh. Huh-hu-huh.

I hope everyone out there is having a funny week!

From there to here and here to there, funny things are everywhere. - Dr. Seuss

The Dairy Queen Abdicates Her Throne

My daughter Eva is a fairly adventurous eater. She has always been willing to try things like salmon, edamame, gyros, and curry, usually with a shrug and a pronouncement like, "Yummy!" This is convenient for me, but I suppose not unheard-of amongst preschoolers.

Slightly more unusual, though, is her outstanding attachment to cheese. It's often one of the first things I hear her tell people about herself, and even one way she categorizes people ("Daddy and Daniel DON'T like cheese, but Mommy and Eva DO like cheese"). She has the uncanny ability to sense when I'm about to grate some cheese, and before I've even closed the deli drawer I can hear her running from the other end of the house to see what she can mooch from among the dinner ingredients. She's willing to eat feta straight from the brick, and when I built our container garden the summer before last, she insisted that she wanted to use one of the plots to grow cheese. It's not surprising, then, that she also enjoys sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, ice cream, and just plain old milk by the glass.

A few weeks ago, we took Eva to the allergist. There were a lot of reasons we finally went, including congestion that coincided with ragweed season, her history of breaking out in spots after taking penicillin, and her daily complaints of stomachaches (and okay, let's be real here, mostly it's that we've already met our deductible this year). They tested her for dozens of things, and when it was all over I saw the doctor make only 2 marks on his paper. Some kind of outdoor mold, and... cow's milk. I gasped a little when he said it, and looked quickly at Eva to gauge her reaction, as if at 3 she could really grasp the ramifications of such a pronouncement.

The doctor explained that this meant no milk, cheese, yogurt, or any processed food containing cow's milk of any kind for one month, at which time we could check in with her symptoms and consider gradually adding back limited exposure to some cooked milk products. Eva continued playing in the exam room, but seemed to be slightly more interested in our conversation now. I started kicking myself for promising to get her ice cream if she did a good job at the allergist. As we walked to the car, I explained that we'd have to find some other treat, and Eva was pouting and yelling as she stomped, "I. Am. Not. All. er. gic. To. MILK!"

We went to the store to buy some soy milk and to look for a treat, only to find out that there is pretty much milk in EVERYTHING. I was a little overwhelmed when our first half-dozen label reads turned up milk in the allergy warning section. I also felt like THAT MOM the next day at her school, asking that my child be given special treatment in the breakfast menu department. Eva seemed a little bummed out that first day, but the idea of having her own special milk in a pretty container perked her up a little.

The thing about this whole story, though, is the way Eva adjusted in a heartbeat. She pouted in the parking lot, let out a disappointed groan in the grocery store when she learned chocolate is now out, and then woke up the next day a new kid. Bam! No more asking for cheese, no hard feelings when other people get ice cream, no trying to sneak things or push limits. Nothing. Now, before eating any food she asks in a deadpan voice, "Does this have any milk, dairy, mold, or cheese in it?" despite my reassurance that milk, dairy, and cheese all mean the same thing and that mold is not really a food allergy. This morning she corrected me when I sleepily poured cow's milk on her cereal. She is becoming a connoisseur of milk alternatives, and claims that soy milk tastes like marshmallows while some brands of almond milk taste "like icky."

This is not the first time Eva has reacted this way. She practically emerged from the womb sucking her thumb, and as soon as she had hair she began using her other hand to engage in the simultaneous hair-twirl/thumb suck maneuver. When her hair started falling out Kyle and I launched a full-out intervention, with lectures, restrictive hairstyles, continuous daytime parental nagging, and nighttime mitten-wearing. We didn't even attempt to address the thumb-sucking, we just wanted her to stop pulling out her hair. And it was a terrible, losing battle that left all three of us frustrated.

Until this summer, when we went to the dentist. He took one look at her mouth and said, "I see we have a thumb-sucker here." That dentist explained ONE time that she needed to stop doing that, because it would keep her teeth from working properly and make her look less pretty in the long run. That night I found her digging through her sock drawer, looking for something to put over her thumb to stop her from sucking it at night. She wore the socks on her hands for about a month, but I honestly never saw her suck her thumb again after the first day or two. It was Kyle and I who suggested she stop wearing the socks at night, so thoroughly did she stop both the thumb sucking and the hair-twirling that day. Completely cold turkey.

And this is one of the most amazing things about my daughter; that she is able to use her stubborn will of steel to just let things go at the drop of a hat, even when that thing is something that is such a part of her that it's practically a defining characteristic. More than anyone I know, when she decides she's going to do something she just does it. I am both awed and scared to death by this quality, and what she may be capable of in ten years.

Mostly though, I'm just impressed. The other night she and I were driving back from a road trip to Columbia, and I was listening to an old Sarah McLaughlin live album. Before it even came on I realized that this will be my song to her. She is already learning the words.

Things Unlikely to Happen at My House (That Have Nonetheless Happened Recently)

Either we are evolving as a family, or there is a whole lot of crazy going on around here. A sampling of some unusual occurrences at our house this fall:

1. Allergy medicine for dogs
We love our dogs. They are surely a part of our family, and we take seriously our promise to love them and feed them and generally keep them healthy and happy. We even took them to doggie school back when they were young and we had no children. However... we are not the kind of pet owners who buy our dogs Halloween costumes (or clothing of any kind, for that matter). We do not make our own dog food or bake them cakes for their birthday or take them in for fancy grooming. We have lots of friends who do these things, and we fully support their right to do so, but we are just no-frills dog owners. Until recently, when poor Barney's fall allergies became so bad that we noticed him spending most of his days sneezing, scratching himself, biting his toes, and losing hair in big clumps.

And so we did some online research about the relative benefits/risks of giving dogs Claritin and Benadryl, talked to our vet, and eventually settled on Benadryl. I knew we'd gone over the edge when my grocery list included, "Kyle and Barney's Benadryl." Unfortunately for Barney, the benefit seems minimal, at best.

2. Regular free time
This fall Eva went off to half-day Preschool and Daniel to full-day kindergarten. I put in a request to teach an extra class, and entertained a potential part-time therapy job, but neither of those things worked out. So now I have two mornings per week to be at home, by myself, cleaning or grocery shopping or exercising in quiet. I am able to have coffee with Madeline, or to get through Walmart in under an hour. It truly is an introvert's dream. It also gives me time for the not-so-unlikely inevitability of volunteering for the PTA (or PTC, as it's called here) at Daniel's school.

3. Daniel kicking the soccer ball. A lot.
I love Daniel dearly, but he's not exactly a focused, competitive athlete. He spent most of last year's soccer game-time standing in one place on the field, looking at the clouds or the grass. Sometimes he would saunter around the field behind the pack of kids, bobbing his head around as he moved. At one point, we tried to motivate him by offering him a piece of candy for every time he touched the ball. This backfired, though, when he kicked the ball once and then immediately turned around to run over and claim his prize.

So imagine our surprise when, this year, he's suddenly willing to run all over the place, actually trying to kick the ball. I'd estimate that he's made contact with the ball dozens of times within the first two games of the season. He's still shy about kicking toward the goal, and still should probably be the last choice for goalie, but I'll happily spend 6 of my Saturday mornings watching this. It sure beats paying $15 for him to pick clover all season.

4. Running for relaxation
About 18 months ago, I started running for exercise. This is unlikely in itself, but Kyle (whose running during college swim practices made him the object of jokes) started running too, and just to top off the unbelievability, we're both still doing it. Now the problem in our house tends to be that we're each trying to run in the afternoons, after school and before dinner. That's a narrow window, and as we're both able to run farther and longer it's just hard to find time for both of us.

This week I identified a perfect hour-long gap (during the aforementioned free mornings) between volunteering at Daniel's school and Eva's pick-up time. There's a nice bike path around the public schools, and I've been using it to run. Yesterday, as I put on my headphones and started trotting along, there was a perfect cool breeze and one nice puffy cloud in an otherwise blue sky. I ran past kids at recess who waved at me, two moms who cheered for me, and a senior citizen loudly singing to the music on her headphones as she walked. I found myself smiling, beaming even, as I jogged. If someone had told me two years ago that I'd be running around town, grinning like a weirdo about it, I'd have never believed it.

5. Kyle singing
Last year I sang in our church's Christmas Cantata. Practices for this year's performance started last night, and on the way to church I chided Kyle about joining in this time around. He shook his head when I brought it up, but then after the meal really did make his way upstairs for practice.

Who knows what will happen next around here?