Sterup Pants

Dan the Flying Man

2012-02-01T12:50:00.000-08:00

Two conversation-starters from my week:
"Mom, I really need to figure out how superheroes make their suits, because when I become one, and am in charge of all the armies, they need to be able to recognize me."
and
"Okay. Here is a question I have: How do superheroes fly? I REALLY need to know so I can start practicing."

Our son Daniel is the kind of kid that really gets into things. When he gets on an idea, he really does it all-out, talking about it and drawing about it and writing about it for weeks/months/years. Clearly we are in a superhero phase right now, but the interesting thing about it is that he is able to juggle several different topics of interest simultaneously, sometimes in combination. He also has an amazing ability to create gobs and gobs of themed pictures, crafts, stories, and questions about his subjects of fascination. He is frequently able to drag our whole family, his friends, even all his classmates into it in the process, so that everyone is, say, deciding on a superpower or making a holiday decoration.

He must get this creativity from his father, because honestly there is no way he gets it from me.

So today I want to share with you some of the things we've been into lately, thanks to Daniel:

Superheroes
For a long time, Daniel has enjoyed making up stories about himself as a superhero. Sounds developmentally appropriate, right? Lots of kids imagine themselves saving the day and having amazing powers... Again, though, I'm impressed with his persistence and detail in regards to imagining what exactly he'll wear, how exactly he'll fly, and what kinds of rescue situations he expects he'll need to be prepared for exactly. His teacher has tried to use this as a springboard for some art and creative writing at school. Here is a storyboard for his soon-to-be-famous Dan the Flying Man comic/movie/novel/real-life adventure:

Wolves
We also seem to have a lot of discussions of wolves and (of course) werewolves in our house. We recently read a very informative library book all about wolves, which (of course) included pictures of what werewolves might look like. Here is Daniel's picture of a "half werewolf/half rocket:"

Kyle insists that a 50% werewolf/50% rocket is 100% awesome. It is hard to argue with that.

Dragons
The thing that Daniel has been into the longest is most certainly dragons. It seems like he's been on the dragon thing since he's been able to talk. The movie How to Train Your Dragon only fueled the fire, and the marketing machine behind it has made it convenient for us to collect a wide variety of plastic Viking and dragon action figures. But even before we saw it, Daniel was talking about dragons, reading about dragons, and drawing dragons. Here is the Thanksgiving project he made at his preschool last year:

Note that there is no mention of his family, his comfortable home, or any other stereotypical childhood object of thankfulness. Just dragons.

This year's kindergarten Thanksgiving picture was a bit more flattering:

For those of you who don't read 5-year-old handwriting well, that's "me" on the first finger, "snowmen" on the second finger, "dragons" on the third, and "my mom" on the last. I was just so honored to make the list, even if I am (understandably) behind dragons.

Holiday Decorations
Just before Thanksgiving this year, someone reminded Daniel of the classic handprint-with-legs turkey craft. Before we knew it, he was requiring everyone who visited our house to make a handprint turkey to hang on our dining room wall, which he insisted was drastically underdecorated (truth be told, his original goal was to decorate every wall of our house, but we really tried to focus him on just one room). And so we got this:

He also started a movement to cover the (already REALLY decorated) walls of his classroom at school, and got several classmates in on the action.

And then, of course, at Christmas someone taught him about paper snowflakes and we had this:

We also had some paper Christmas trees, but I didn't get a picture of these before we took the Christmas-specific winter decorations down.

Brevity
A few months ago, Daniel informed us that he would like to start going by Dan instead of Daniel. His reason? It's just way faster to write Dan. So we've indulged him, and he's started going by Dan and Daniel interchangeably now. But this morning we found this in his backpack:

He decided that maybe an even shorter way to write his name would be to shorten our last name, too. Kyle spent a few minutes explaining how we just don't really do that with last names. I'll be spending the next several weeks calling him "the Danster" behind his back.

Back to Dragons
So what is the Danster up to now? It seems they had a lesson at school last week about the Chinese New Year.

Let me just be the first to wish you a prosperous Year of the Dragon, from the entire Ster family.

Interruption

2012-01-16T06:25:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-01T20:50:00.000-07:00

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...

2011-10-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-10-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

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?

Just Call Me Lois Lane

2011-09-11T07:41:00.001-07:00

This weekend is formal recruitment weekend for sororities at the university in our town. For most normal 30-something Kirksville couples with kids, this means nothing. But in our house, the second weekend of September is always chaos. As the Recruitment Advisor for Alpha Gamma Delta sorority, I spend Thursday through Monday galavanting around town with a herd of nervous college women. Most nights I am not home until after midnight, and in the mornings I am usually engaged in some kind of excessive-grooming-while-frantically-texting kind of activity. By lunchtime I'm back out the door in my matching outfit. Yeah, that's right; I said matching outfit.

For Kyle this means he gets to step around boxes of centerpieces, tablecloths, sweaters, and other party planning materials for most of August, then gradually help move those boxes to my car over the course of recruitment weekend. In exchange for getting our guestroom/study back, he is asked to help protect a delivery of 10 dozen flowers from our kids for three days (while they "perk up" in preparation for use on Saturday). He agrees to be a special kind of single parent for five days; the kind who has an anxious, overtired, coffee-swilling debutante breezing through the house from time to time.

Some years, this does not go so well. Like the year Kyle and both the kids got a stomach bug in the middle of our preference party, and I ended up having to explain to the dry cleaner why there were vomit stains on my formal. Or when Kyle put his back out and crying infant Daniel had to hang out in an alley behind a banquet hall with Aunt Madeline.

This year, though, I must admit that things have gone remarkably well. I was able to sleep in until 8:00 this morning (a feat in our house). The house is clean, the laundry is done. Children are well-fed and rested. They went off to church on time and in appropriate clothes this morning. Yesterday, without being asked, Kyle retrieved all the empty food containers and boxes and aprons I'd left in the car when I'd returned home at 3am, washed and put away or disposed of everything. This weekend he has listened to me discuss my frustration with Panhellenic Coucil, my reflections on the decorations and venue for Open party, and a full oral dissertation on whether it would be more tragic to have more people than we can seat and feed at Invite or too few people to set us up to make quota.

One thing I love about the advising position I have is that I get to help in lots of practical ways that people don't always see. I enjoy thinking about little details, and keeping things running behind the scenes so that everything goes smoothly for the people who are in the spotlight. Many of the ladies in the organization have no idea how much work I do, but there are always those who do and who remember to recognize that and say thank you. I never, then, come out feeling unappreciated.

Kyle, though, probably deserves an honorary membership for all he's done over the years to support Alpha Gam recruitment. He has brought babies to me to nurse between parties, has managed mealtimes and bathtimes solo, made coffee and kept children quiet. He has hauled things and solved computer problems and put off going jogging and had some lonely nights at home, all after working a full week of his own. I'm certain that he's never gotten a thank-you note or an advisor appreciation gift. It's also pretty clear to anyone who knows us that things like matching outfits and party planning, cardigan crises and bid signing are about the last things in the universe Kyle would be interested in. But he never makes jokes, never accuses me of being petty, and never questions my priorities as I run off in my matching t-shirt.

And I think to myself, "So THIS is what it's like to be with Superman..."

What Grandma Has Been Waiting For

2011-08-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay already! Here's the first day of school picture:

This is not, by the way, the outfit I picked out for Daniel's first day of school. He decided that he really needed the Batman shirt instead. Eva's eyes look a little sleepy still in the photo, but she perked right up soon after this.

Both kids had good days. Daniel told us that he, "had fun all day" in kindergarten. His teacher this year is my friend Teresa. She is very experienced and someone I'm already in contact with often, so this is great for both Daniel and me. I am very glad there are people in this world who are willing to spend their entire day in a room with 20 kindergarteners.

Eva was excited that she got to pour her own milk during breakfast on the first day of preschool. May the Lord bless those preschool cafeteria workers and their nerves of steel.

And You Can Tell Everybody That This is Your Song

2011-08-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

This morning Eva was using the bathroom (with the door open, as usual), and she was singing a song she'd made up. It went like this:

"I love my mom-meee!
Yes I do, I love her very much!"

At this point, I was thinking how sweet she is.

"I also love poop and pee,
but right now I am only going pee!
Actually I love everything in this whole world!
Except monsters."

At least the part about me was first.

Fickle

2011-08-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

The other day I was running on the treadmill while Eva was in tumbling class at the Y. I was thinking about how it was a pretty passable alternative on days when it's too hot or cold to jog outside. Then I had to laugh at myself, remembering a day this past winter when I ran in the very same spot, cursing the oppressiveness of running indoors facing a cinderblock wall. As I ran I began counting other issues I frequently go back and forth on in my head, and could barely keep track of things from the past week alone. I had to conclude that my internal monologue could be accused of being a worse flip-flopper than anyone who ever ran for political office.

To make things worse, there is the matter of what I like to think of as my "passionate verbal style." Others might call this being "dramatic" or "prone to exaggeration," but no matter how you characterize it the end result is that I not only seem to change my mind frequently, but to really strongly do so. For the most part I think I keep this to myself, but surely those who know me well have caught on.

For instance, this week I alternately had the following thoughts:
-I love my body. I am healthy and strong. I can easily run 4 miles, and I do a decent Cuban Salsa. Not bad for 33!
-Wow, I should not exercise where there are mirrors, as it highlights the fact that my thighs are both large and pale. I need to shape up immediately or else stop leaving the house in shorts. I look (gasp!) middle aged!

-I can't wait to have more free time this fall when the kids go to school. I can have some time to myself to grade and clean the house. Then I can focus all my attention on the family when they get home, which is really what I love.
-I hope I can pick up some more hours at work this fall. There is no reason to sit around when I could be using those school hours to work back toward a professional career. We'll find time to clean the house on the weekends, and I'll feel so satisfied to be doing what I love.

-We are so blessed. We live in luxury compared to most of the world. How lucky we are to have plenty of delicious food and a beautiful, comfortable home. It's noble to be teachers, and good that I can be at home with the kids. We have plenty of money, and God has always provided for us. We should buy generous gifts for each other and all our friends and family.
-Money is so tight. It's shameful what we pay teachers in this country; we should have been doctors or lawyers. We really need to be saving more, but it's hard enough trying to keep us on budget all the time. We need to STOP spending so much money; I should identify some kind of homemade item to give out as gifts to our friends and family.

-Seriously, what is with all these women who do their hair and makeup to work out or to go to the pool? I have WAY more important things to worry about than how I look during the summer; I'm so glad I can feel free to get dirty at the park or get my hair wet at the pool. When I work out I'm there to exercise, not impress people.
-Wow, those moms in the wading pool look so together with their designer sunglasses and perfectly-styled hair buns. And look at how that substitute Zumba instructor's lip gloss matches her little workout outfit. How cute is she? I look like a disaster; hair flying everywhere and mascara smeared around my eyes... I need to look like I have a little more self-respect.

-Sunscreen for the whole family! No way am I gonna fall for that "tan is healthy" myth of my parents' generation. I'm just gonna pack that SPF 100 in my purse so we can reapply all day, 'cause nobody's getting skin cancer on my watch!
-Vitamin D deficiency is a serious problem in this country. The people of my generation are just suncreening ourselves to death! Outside in the sun, Family, 'cause nobody's getting Alzheimer's/autism/diabetes/depression/rickets/Parkinson's/cancer on my watch!

-I love having a garden. It's so important to me that the kids know where their food comes from, and I love that we're eating chemical-free food right from our backyard. I think I learn something new every year.
-I stink at gardening. I hate watering it, I don't know when or how to harvest anything... I never make time to look up the answers to problems with pests or plant diseases. I think I kill a new variety of vegetable every year.

So, I'm wondering, do other people do this? Is this constant internal struggle normal? Or is it a manifestation of some kind of rampant insecurity? I don't know; I just keep going back and forth.

Why I Love Coffee

2011-08-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, our daughter Eva (3) has figured out that she can get herself out of bed in the morning instead of waiting for us to come get her. She has also figured out that if she stands on the side rail of our bed, she can get her face right over my ear as I sleep on my side.

A sampling of whispered phrases that have abruptly started my day this week:
"Mom... Can you get me some Raisin Bran and juice?"
"Mom... I have pee in my pants."
"Mom... Daniel is up already and he won't share the green crayon."

Of course, this is preferable to her previous strategy, which was to lie in bed, yelling into the monitor, "Mommy and Daddy, I want to get UP now... Mommy and Daddy, I want to get UUUP now..." over and over until one of us lost the game of Parent Chicken and went to go get her.

Of course, when it's 6:11 in the morning, there really isn't a GOOD way to wake up, is there?

Funny Things Are Everywhere (Summer Edition)

2011-08-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

Kirksville Signage
There is a baseball card store in town that, for years, has had a sign in front of their store, right near the road advertising a "Really Big Sale!" Kyle and I like to joke that this is the longest-running sale in the history of baseball cards. Well, last week, they replaced the sign with one that says, "Really Really Big Sale!"
It's like they were lying all those other weeks.
This is almost as good as Kyle's favorite Kirksville sign ever.

Also, the electronic sign in front of our Walgreens scrolls through a number of messages that change every week or two. The other day I noticed this advertisement:
"We now sell hair feathers!!!! Only $4!"
Good thing they put four exclamation points after that, because I don't think three would have accurately captured my excitement over this joyous news.

The Significant Lack of Napping in This House
Daniel is very talented at coming up with excuses to get out of his room during rest time. One day, about 5 minutes after his last trip to the bathroom, he asked if he could get up now. When I pointed out that he'd done more getting up than resting so far, he said he'd been asleep just then, and had just woken up.
"So you mean to tell me that in the last 5 minutes you fell asleep, napped enough to be rested, and just woke up?"
"Yes."
"Daniel, do you think I'm dumb?"
(looking at me like he's not quite sure what to say) "Yes?"

When Eva can't fall asleep, what she usually does is attempt to sneak out of her room, which has the noisiest door ever, and sit on the stairs. When we ask her why she's up, she says, "I just want to sleep a little bit." When we tell her, "Good. Our goals are the same, then. Go get in your bed and sleep a little bit." she gets really upset and cries that she's just not tired. I don't think that phrase means what she thinks it means...

Musical Comedy
Early in the summer, at one of Daniel's t-ball games, Eva stood up from her chair on the sidelines, threw her hands out jazz-style and broke out with, "I love to SING!!" Indeed she does. The private speech she uses to talk to herself is often sung, as well as a good portion of her communication with us. Some notable ditties include:
-(as I sweep the kitchen) "Wow, these floors are DIRTY!... There's lots more dirt over heeere!"
- (in the car one day) "I've got sunglasses and a pony tail... Sunglasses and a pony tail... Sunglasses in the front. Pony tail in the back..."
- (calling from the bathroom) "MOM! I just went POOP! Pooo-oo-ooop! Poo-oop in the POTTY!!... Can you wipe me, please?"

Speaking of Poop
On another poop-wiping occasion, I commented on the enormous dropping that had come out of my tiny daughter, and Eva said, "I know! Holy Smokes, right?!"

Dental Drama
Last week Kyle was brushing Daniel's teeth, and Daniel was crying loudly over Kyle bumping a mouth sore on the inside of one of his cheeks. Kyle asked him how long he'd had that sore spot there, and he exclaimed dramatically, "90 YEARS!"

There is a lot of debate in our house over whether the phrase is, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." or "You get what you get and you don't make a fuss."
One night I was trying to convince Eva to let me have the first turn brushing her teeth (instead of letting her go first), so that I could move on to Daniel.
"You get what you get, and you don't make a rude, Mommy."
Alrighty then.

Heat-Related Humor
Like most of the Midwest, we've been in the middle of a massive heat wave. Our strategy for this has been twofold:
-First, we've abandoned the 30-minute per weekday TV limit, and have been sitting in the dark cave of our house, with the thermal curtains shutting out the cruel sun, watching TV and videos and enjoying the Wii.
-Second, we've been to the pool nearly every day. Twice, oftentimes, when you account for morning swim lessons. Our deck is always full of towels and swimsuits, hung out to dry.
Yesterday, we tried to change it up a bit by washing the cars in the driveway and letting the kids play with the hose. It didn't take long for things to go downhill, and pretty soon Daniel was screaming, "Eva! Eva! Spray my BUTT!" He also followed me around, trying to spray MY butt.
Eva kept coming up to me, spraying me point-blank in the face, then saying, "You better watch out, Mommy!"
Daniel kept begging Kyle to spray him full-on in the face. It's kind of hard to want to spray water right up your kid's nose like that (when they're being good, that is), even when he's asking for it. We were trying to imagine what a neighbor driving by might say...
"Geez, that crazy hermit family turned off their TV and came out of there... Wow, the boy seems to be obsessed with butts... I see they torture their kids, too. Do they own anything other than swimwear?"

I hope everyone else is having a funny summer!

Big

2011-07-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, we went to visit friends in the Chicago area last weekend. While we were there, we went to Ikea in one of the suburbs. For those of you not familiar with this store, it is a three-floor wonderland of practical, inexpensive Swedish housewares. Because I am cheap, married to a man of Swedish descent, and interested in clean lines, I like to think this is really my kind of store.

Usually I try to make the biannual Ikea trip a childless one, because this just makes the whole thing go faster (and those who have shopped for anything with me know that including any form of the word “fast” is laughable to begin with). This year, though, my friend Melanie mentioned that they have a really fantastic play area at this particular branch, and that you can leave your child there with attendants for an hour. Combined with the cheap kids' meals in the in-store cafe, this was enough to convince us to bring Eva and Melanie's kids Aidan and Catie with us.

When we got there, we waited in line to check in at the (objectively super-cool) play area and talked about all the fun things we could see there would be for her to do. While we stood there I reminded Eva to be sure to tell the lady if she needed to go to the bathroom, since she is occasionally too shy to ask strangers in time. I'm not sure whether it was because she overheard this exchange, or because she is truly a lazy child-hater, but when we got to the front, the exchange with the childcare worker went like this:

“Yeah, she needs to be fully potty-trained to come in here.”
“Yep! No problem.”
“No Pull-ups.”
“Right. We're good.”
“She seems a little short. She needs to be 37 inches to be allowed in. I'd better measure her.”
“Oh, okay. I think she's right about 37 inches, actually.”

The worker and I lined her up next to the ruler, and she was 37 inches on the dot.

“Actually, she's pretty close. I don't think she makes it.”
Pointing at the ruler, and demonstrating her 37-inch height, “No, she clearly does.”
“Actually, that 37 inches is supposed to be without shoes. I think you need to take her shoes off so we can measure her again.”
“Okay, fine.”

Without shoes Eva is still about 37 inches if she tilts her head just right, but if not is about 36 and 7/8 inches.

“Yeah, I'm going to have to call my manager over here to look at this.... Hey, can you come here for a minute? This little girl is too short, and I just want to make sure.”
“Yes, I'm sorry. She is too short to play here.”
“Wait a second. She's right on the line. She's fully potty-trained and is mature and independent. She'd have her two older friends with her. Can't you just let her in?"
"No, Ma'am. There are regulations put forth by our insurance company for her safety. That ball pit, for instance, is really deep."

Let me just stop here to point out that she ACTUALLY used drowning in a ball pit due to a 1/8-inch height shortage as her excuse to exclude my now-teary child from the visibly awesome play area. It was everything I could do to avoid making a very rude comment as we took Eva and walked away. If I thought sarcasm would in any way improve her chances of getting in or be any kind of good example, I would have really gotten on a roll. Instead, I bit my lip and let Eva pick a pity toy from the stuffed animal bin in the kids' furniture section.

The next day we all took the train downtown, where we took our collected four kids to the Chicago Children's Museum. The first activity that we came to was a rope tunnel leading up from the first floor to the second, then across the stairwell to a bridge on the other side. There was a sign that indicated the activity was for children five and up, but that younger kids would be allowed at their caregiver's discretion. Everyone wanted to go, and I hesitated for a second, worrying that it was very high and maybe Eva was just too little. But Kyle said he thought we should let her try, and of course she booked it right up that tunnel, pushing Daniel to move it along a little faster because he was holding her up. I have to admit I cried a little as she pulled herself out the top.

Man, I love that kid.

First-World Problems

2011-07-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we visited our friends Melanie and Andrew near Chicago. We only go every other year, and they visit us here in Kirksville in the off years. Though the exact nature of our plans change somewhat each year, there are some constants to our traditional visits:
1. When in Chicago, we always go to Ikea and we always take the train to the city one day. When in Kirksville we visit (the recently defunct) Washington Street Java Co.
2. We always hire a babysitter and go out on a double date to dinner.
3. We use the visit as an excuse to make special breakfasts, like quiche or souffle or homemade waffles.
4. We usually unintentionally develop some kind of phrase for the weekend; usually some inside joke that is repeated amongst us several times over the course of the few days.

This last part of the tradition is nothing that we plan, but is something I've noticed over the years. One year, during a game of Taboo, Andrew kept insisting that the answer to Melanie's clues about a party thrown by Mexicans was a “festivo.” This is funnier when you know that Melanie is Mexican. The rest of us spent the remainder of the weekend trying to work “festivo” into the conversation as frequently as possible. One year, someone was relaying a story about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger where he had concluded a meandering list with the phrase, “...and things such as this.” Try adding that phrase (in the Arnold voice, of course) to the end of all your lists. We enjoyed that joke into the ground for a full weekend.

This year, there were a number of times where one of us (usually Melanie, actually) punctuated the end of someone's complaint with the conclusion, “Ah, first-world problems...” For instance, any complaints about smartphones freezing up, what someone doesn't like about this Wii game, or old Teva sandals not feeling “squishy enough anymore” was met with this reminder.

The interesting thing about this is that it really resonates with what I've been thinking about myself lately, only with different words. See, recently I've been noticing that the things that make me crabby about my day-to-day life are those middle-aged suburbanite kinds of things that the idealistic, high-school-aged me would be mortified to see the present me complaining about. It's embarrassing, quite frankly. Really, there are people starving, being opressed, dying, and THESE are the issues that consume my thoughts?

On the other hand, though, they seem so VERY IMPORTANT to me in the moment, and have just been adding up until I feel like I want to explode in a petty, spoiled combustion. So, for the sake of avoiding that, please read now my list of first-world problems, so that I can get them off my chest for good:

-The lid on my washer has stopped staying open alone and slams (hard, and loudly) any time I make the mistake of leaving it open without my hand on it. It hurts my ears, and sometimes my arm or fingers, and loading my laundry one-handed while holding the lid makes me seethe and curse my top-loading, non high-efficiency laundry existence.
-I'm pretty sure that the brown in our family-room curtains is a warm brown, while the brown in the rug is a cool brown. Nobody else notices or cares, but it quietly mocks me every time I walk by.
-No matter how many coupons I clip, I just don't think we have the money in the grocery budget to have a glass of wine with dinner every night. There are health benefits to doing that, you know...
-The filters in my vacuum are always clogged. There are three of them, and their constant maintenance prompts me to avoid vacuuming our house, which used to be one of my favorite chores. Also, one of the attachments is broken. Also, I have a favorite chore. I'm quite sure a Dyson would be so much better.
-The kids won't jump off the deck into the pool at swim lessons. For some reason, this is the issue I've decided to enter a power struggle over. It just irks me, because I've seen both of them do it before, when their teachers and I weren't asking them to do it. Seriously, that three-year old is not watching ANY videos until she just JUMPS IN on her OWN when I SAY to!!
-The (non-chemo) treatments for my (not-life-threatening) skin cancer are expensive. Paying those bills is infringing on the back-to-school shopping budget.
-My favorite Zumba class at the YMCA is right when we'd really like to be eating dinner.
-The shelving unit that I wanted to buy at IKEA does not fit into our car with car seats and luggage, so I could not get it. I will have to pay outrageous shipping costs, convince some childless truck-owner to road-trip to Chicago, or forget about it. And it really would have tied the room together.

So that's it for now. Some of you have already opened another window in order to quietly de-friend me on facebook. For those of you who decide to hang on, I promise that this is a regular cycle for me, with a period of adding to this list, then days later feeling grateful and content and subsequently ashamed about it. Maybe rereading Freedom of Simplicity again is in order. Let's all hold our breath and hope I move back into the grateful phase as soon as possible.

What are your first-world problems?

Powerless

2011-06-29T18:09:00.000-07:00

Last night our electricity was restored, after being knocked out in a massive, windy thunderstorm Sunday night. It's funny how attached we are to our electricity, and how many times I forgot and flipped a switch, opened the fridge, or even tried to make coffee these past few days.

It was the same way two years ago, when we were without power for three days after a tornado flattened the next street over and did some moderate damage to our house (see that story on Kyle's blog here). This time, though, it was a little less depressing, since the damage to our house was minimal by comparison, and the weather in the days after the storm wasn't dreary and rainy.

Because of our experience with the tornado, we are not a family that takes bad weather lightly. Sunday night our weather radio was only talking about a thunderstorm warning, but when the rain started blowing in around the cracks in our (closed) windows and doors, we decided to wake the kids and go downstairs anyway. Only after we'd settled into our basement bathroom did the weather radio begin instructing people to take shelter. By that point, we could hear glass breaking somewhere upstairs in our house.

Let me just say what a terrible feeling that is, to think that something is going very wrong and that you are required to just sit there and let it happen, because there is nothing you can do to stop it.

The funny thing is, even though my nerves felt like they were on fire, in the back of my mind I really feel like somehow we cannot be hit by another storm, as if our past experience must have inoculated us against all further inconvenience and homeowners insurance claims. Like we are invincible somehow, since we already had our turn. As we sat there, listening to the storm blow and blow our house and imagining all our belongings getting soaked, all I could think was, "Seriously? Again? No way."

Just as we did after our last basement party, we sent Kyle upstairs to survey the damage. He returned with the happy news that everything was dry, and that it was only a couple of storm windows that had broken. This did NOT help me overcome my denial, as I hardly felt surprised.

In the past few days, I've been thinking that I need to get past this feeling. I know that sometimes more than one bad thing happens to a person or a family or a neighborhood. I need to remember that there are people in the world who endure one hardship after another after another, and many of them don't even get a nice house like mine to be concerned about. How spoiled am I that I complain about having to drive up the street to McDonald's to use the internet? Really, it could hardly be said that I've experienced my share of hardship in this life.

I am grateful that, this time, we are back to normal barely 48 hours after the storm. No chainsaws or insurance adjusters or contractors were required. All the meat from our deep freeze got a trip across town to our friends Madeline and John's house (seriously, they should start charging us for our bi-annual invasion of their freezer space). The kids were overjoyed that we broke our fast food ban in order to use the internet Monday morning (really, with all the downed power lines in the roads, the internet was the best way we could think of to check whether our classes were canceled). We really don't deserve much sympathy for this storm.

It is nice, though, to recognize how much power we take for granted in our everyday life.

10 Years

2011-06-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

So today is Kyle's and my tenth wedding anniversary (it's traditionally the Tin Anniversary; try to make a good gift out of THAT). In some ways it's hard to believe it's been that long (I guess time really does fly when you're having fun). In other ways, though, I think we've come a long way since early in our marriage (It feels like I should put something in parentheses here).

To celebrate, this past weekend we dropped the kids off with my parents and spent the weekend in St. Louis. We did things that childless people do, like shop and sit in bookstores, stroll leisurely through the art museum, and eat dinner after 8:30pm.

We went back to the hotel where we stayed on our wedding night, the Millenium Hotel near the Arch. While I don't feel that the hotel itself is anything super-special, the Sunday brunch in the revolving restaurant at the top of the building is really fantastic, and we've always cherished fond memories of gorging ourselves there our first morning as man and wife.

When we attempted to check in this weekend, however, we learned that the cleaning staff wasn't keeping up with the number of guests checking in and out. So, being one of the few couples not wanting to get to the Cardinals game on time, we agreed to wait for a bit. Turns out that "a bit" was actually two and a half hours. During that time we had some drinks and free appetizers in the lobby, and entertained ourselves by talking about how we think each other has changed or stayed the same in the past ten years. Really, though, I think the most telling example of how we've changed is made by comparing this anniversary evening to one we had nine years ago, celebrating the end of our first year of marriage.

That year, we were in downtown Chicago. I had just finished the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day, a 60-mile walk to raise money for cancer research. My feet were blistered and my legs sore, so we decided to eat at the restaurant in the hotel where we were staying. After being seated, we realized the following:
-We were the youngest, least well-dressed people there (and we were wearing our nicest clothes).
-There was not a wine on the wine list that we could afford.
-We couldn't comprehend anything about the menu. At all. I don't even know what language it was in.
Did we leave? No. Did we tell our Fancy Waiter that we were clueless and needed help? No. We were so young and self-conscious, and so in denial that we just tried as hard as we could to look like we belonged there.

We stalled for as long as we could, then each took a stab at ordering something we thought sounded like something we could eat. I'd identified a word that I thought suggested a kind of pasta, so I ordered that. Kyle ordered something that he thought included a word for beef, only to receive a condescending look from Fancy Waiter. "Are you sure, Sir? That is an appetizer." We fumbled a bit, and told the waiter that he would get that to start, and then Kyle pointed to something else on the menu that turned out to be a main course. Fancy Waiter then asked me if I'd like an appetizer, and then barely hid his sneer when I said we'd just share the one. Looking back, I'm pretty sure he was thinking, "This isn't Applebee's, Lady. We don't share here," as there was no stack of little plates on the table. We tried to play the wine off kind of cool, by asking Fancy Waiter to suggest something that paired well with our meals. He asked us what kind of wine we usually drink, like did we like dry or sweet, or something with "a nice oaky flavor?". What I was thinking at the time was, "Earnest & Julio Gallo, Buddy. Five bucks."

In the end I don't remember how we played off the wine question, but I don't think we fooled him into thinking we were connoisseurs. He ended up choosing one that "just happened" to be already opened but mostly full, that he could give to us at a special, lower price. We muddled through that expensive, uncomfortable dinner of tiny, fancy food as quickly as we could and then debated over whether we should attempt to locate a nearby Burger King or hope that we could find some filling desserts on the menu. We stuck it out to the finish and did have some decent desserts, if I remember correctly. What I will never forget, though, is how timid and embarrassed and out-of-place we felt, but we were too young and proud to admit that we'd wandered into a situation that was over our heads.

Fast forward to the present time. At our hotel this weekend we agreed to wait for our room not because we were too timid to refuse, but out of genuine sympathy for the clearly harried staff we'd seen being yelled at by other guests. We asked for a restaurant suggestion from the hotel Concierge, but decided the menu and decor in the brochure wasn't really our style. So we went against her warning and took our chances reservationless on a Saturday night. We walked into and back out of a restaurant that we thought looked too stiff and fancy and empty for us. We ended up going for a nice but VERY long walk from our hotel to get to a place my brother had shown me online called Copia Urban Winery.

And it was perfect. The decor was nice, but comfortable; our waitress was great; our meals fantastic. We looked at the 12-page wine list for a few minutes, but still asked for a suggestion. This time, we were able to say, "We like dry, spicy, reds, nothing over fifty dollars," and then reasonably discuss different varietals until we arrived at something we thought sounded good. I nursed a couple of terrible blisters I'd formed walking to the restaurant in my strappy shoes, and decided to just walk barefoot back to the hotel. The next morning, when we were told that the Sunday brunch was full and that we needed reservations, Kyle talked the host into letting us have a table anyway. Once again, we indulged in the fabulousness of mimosas, made-to-order omelettes, and a full table of dessert options (That's champagne AND cheesecake! For BREAKFAST!).

Reflecting on this weekend, I think the moral of the story is that now, ten years after being married, I finally feel like we're grownups. We are not embarrassed to admit we aren't familiar with any of these wines or too proud to let all of downtown St. Louis know that my feet hurt. We don't care as much what other people think of us. I think that getting married so young has caused us to be adults that really just GO together. We like the same things, and we know what those things are. We are both happy to have ended up with someone who does not get bent out of shape over a little hotel mismanagement (which turns out to be very useful in getting a fancy suite, comped by the apologetic front-desk manager). We're satisfied with an overnight getaway instead of a fancy cruise, with living in a small town, with our dogs and our kids and our house.

It's been a great ten years.

Maybe in another ten years we'll be better at picking hotels, and hopefully by then I'll have learned to wear more sensible shoes.

May Days

2011-05-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

May is always a busy month for us. Some of this comes from the final push at the end of the school year, when we are as tired and burned-out as our students, and when Daniel's school holds extra end-of-year festivities. Jogging that can be reasonably avoided in below-freezing weather now has no good excuse for being put off. Activities like t-ball and library reading programs are gearing up, the garden needs some early tweaking, there's always some spring landscaping or home improvement that needs completed; these are normal things that inevitably come with warmer weather and longer days.

Some of it, though, we brought on ourselves. When we were trying to plan (as much as one plans these things) the kids' births, we aimed for the end of the school year, thinking the beginning of a 3-month vacation from work would be a great time to have new babies in the house. Though that indeed worked out well at the time, I neglected to think about those babies becoming kids who would one day become old enough to walk (to the mailbox, to intercept the Oriental Trading Company party supply catalog), and talk (about the kind of cake and decorations and parties they would like to have for their birthday), and even write (an extensive guest list of everyone they'd like to invite to said party). Both of our kids get very excited about their birthdays, and so now for our family May also includes lots of planning of birthday festivities and special visits from extended family.

Last year we did throw Daniel a full-on party for his birthday, but not being pony-hiring, bouncy house-renting kind of people, we wanted to send the message this year that not every birthday will include a bash bigger than the year before. So we decided on a casual weekday get-together in the park for each child, with cake and lunch for a few friends. As usual, the kids had very specific cake requests, but thankfully nothing as gravity-defying as Daniel's cake from last year.

Eva had a butterfly cake, and was thrilled about having a few friends to share it with. Grandma Jan came for her birthday, and we had a nice day. So far being three involves significantly less napping than being two, and a bit more of a sassy attitude, but is still pretty fun.

For his birthday, Daniel got a visit from Grammy, a tiger cake, and a good time running around the park with friends as well. It seems that for him, being five is a little more moody than being four. Some of this seems legitimate (like coming to the realization that several of his favorite friends will not be attending the same school as he will for kindergarten), and some seems a little less so (like pouting about not being able to invite everyone he knows to his party). Let's all keep our fingers crossed that some extra attention this summer will help smooth this over.

Also in May, we found out that Kyle was granted tenure and was chosen to teach a month of summer school (yay extra paycheck!). Our friend Madeline got an exciting new job, and of course there was the successful yard sale and purchase of the Wii. We decided to celebrate all of this by holding a happy hour at our house, complete with appetizer food for dinner, mudslides for the grownups, and a whole lot of Mario Kart and Guitar Hero.

Now that we're through all that, I'm looking forward to relaxing into our summer routine. We've had our first visit to the city pool for the season, and summer classes start Monday. Tonight Kyle and I began giving some attention to our summer movie Netflix queue. Not to jinx anything, but hopefully the beginning of June marks the start of a nice, restful few months.

Crazy For Sale

2011-05-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I joined forces with a group of friends for our annual yard sale (because nothing draws a crowd like a "multi-family sale"). The yard sale is always one of my favorite events, not only because I'm earning money for ridding my house of stuff we don't need, but also because of the total lunacy that usually surrounds any yard sale. And this year did not disappoint.

For some background, I should share that we held the sale at the home of my friends Mat and Marbree, who last year bought their house with the previous owner's contents in an estate sale. Last summer, their yard sale was the most unbelievable one ever, because nearly the entire house was open to the public, and nearly everything was for sale. Though this was not the situation again this year, I think their house still carries a reputation among some in our town for being the place to be for this sort of event.

We had some rain, we had some huffy customers, and we had somewhat of a challenge displaying and keeping track of eight different families' things, but in the end I'd say fun was had by all (plus we made a boatload of money). Here are some of my favorite stories about this year's event:

-Fending off the early birds
We planned to have the sale Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, so Marbree ran an ad in the paper and posted signs around the neighborhood on Thursday. Friday morning we all got together to finish setting up, and already there were cars lurking around the house, driving back and forth and around the block. We made a giant sign (easily 3x4-foot) that said:

NOT OPEN!
Yard Sale is 4-7 Friday
8-2 Saturday
Early birds pay double
Exact change required

The text on this sign was bordered with florescent pink spray paint, and the thing was taped to a trash can blocking the end of the driveway. Despite this fact, most of the people from the steady stream of foot traffic seemed very surprised to hear that we were not yet open. Somebody criticized us for not having everything organized and clearly labeled. And over and over I heard people say, "Oh, I saw the sign back there; I just didn't read it." Wow. All I can say is "wow."

By the time we did actually open for business, there was a sizable crowd of people waiting on the driveway to get in. Mat stood guard outside while Marbree passed out money aprons, notepads, and change to the rest of us. I could hear Mat saying things like, "I will talk to you about the price of that item at 4:00." Really, it was enough to make me wish I could be outside looking in just for the comedic value of poor Mat's situation.

-Squabbles
So apparently the ad in the paper was very... effective, because at the opening there were a number of people interested in some of the large items that had been individually listed. In particular, one of the first women through the door started negotiating with me right away regarding the price of a stroller I was selling out on the driveway. We agreed on a price, and I started working my way out of the garage to set it aside for her while she continued to look.

When I arrived outside, the stroller was being clutched by another woman who wanted to know the price. When I told her that it was already sold, she demanded, "Did they already give you the money? Because if you don't have the money in your hand it isn't a sale!" I tried explaining to her that I had already negotiated a price and made a verbal agreement with this other person, and she cut me off to say that she would give me full price right there if I would just give it to her. Meanwhile, this woman's father(?) started moving toward me, waving money and hollering about how if I had any business sense I would know that you sell it to the person with the money, and that if I knew anything about having a sale I would give it to them right now.

I agreed to go back into the garage to see if the original buyer would be interested in giving it up. When I found her, I told her that there was another buyer who really wanted the stroller, and was willing to pay full price for it. She looked up and loudly yelled,"But YOU TOLD ME I could have it for $25! That's the price, and I'M getting it!" Ooohh-kay.

So, back to the driveway to tell buyer #2 that it's definitely been sold, where she and her father continued yelling things like, "But we're giving you full-price!" and "But you still don't have her money!" Hilariously, my friend Jennifer took this opportunity to stick her head in and joke that I might break my word with the original buyer for an additional $5 over the original asking price. Dirty looks from everyone involved...

In the end I had to use my Mommy voice, make direct eye contact, and say, "I'm sorry. It's been sold." And with only one more admonishment from the father they turned on their heels and left. After that start I was worried about the rest of the weekend, but really that was the worst part, and I got it over with right away. Most other people barely negotiated at all.

-The things people will buy
In packing up for the sale, I realized that Daniel owned 30 pairs of underwear. Judging this to be ridiculous for a family that usually does laundry once a week, I slipped 15 or so of them into a bag for bulk sale. Thursday night, as I priced things while watching television, Kyle noticed the bag-o-underwear and expressed his skepticism that anyone would buy USED underwear. Oh, but I knew they would sell. And what a satisfied smile I had on my face Saturday morning, as I collected that dollar, because after all being right is worth a little extra.

Really, though, I have never seen anyone who can sell junk like our friend Mat. Last year when they sold the unwanted contents of that estate purchase it was like watching a thing of beauty. Half-empty can of WD-40? Fifty cents. Old coffee can full of rusty screws? Seventy five cents. This year I collected payment from a man with a repurposed peanut butter jar full of nails marked $1.25. "He said he'd take $1 for that!" the buyer informed me. I'll bet he will. I saw another man buy a roll of flashing left over from some project Mat or someone in his extended family had done. "I don't even have anything to use this for," the man said as he dug into his pocket, "but it's a good price, and you never know when it might come in handy." Yep, like when you'd like to make some money in a yard sale.

Funny stories aside, though, I think we all came out pretty well. I was glad to see Marbree and Mat sold the most, because I'm pretty sure it took lots of time on their part to get their garage ready, organize the stuff, and keep track of all the money. For me, it was definitely worth my time. We made enough for everyone to pick out a prize, and let's just say that because of Kyle's pick Wii have all been playing Mario Kart this weekend (he does not endorse this pun, by the way).

Until next year!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2011-05-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

We Sterups have had quite a week. I was having a hard time deciding how to write about it until this title occurred to me, and now it fits so well I can't believe it took me so long to think of it.

The Good...
-Mother's Day weekend was nice. Eva's birthday cake turned out well, my mom visited, and Kyle and I got to have a date. The weather was beautiful, so I got the last of my garden put in for the spring. The kids made me nice gifts and Kyle got me Tina Fey's new book in audiobook format (because it's always funnier to hear the author read their own words). Wonderful!
-The Day Planner smiled on me this week. My friend Madeline and I found time to have lunch together on Wednesday, and the kids even let us have a conversation. I was sweating all week, trying to find a babysitter for Thursday, until our preacher's wife and daughter called and just volunteered to take care of it for me. Daniel and Eva finally got a long-awaited play date with their friends Dalton and Evangeline on Friday, which meant I got a talk date with their mom Janice.
-The kids and I went with our friends Lena, Gus, and Jennifer to LaPlata (the next little town over) for a picnic lunch on Thursday. LaPlata has a train station with quite a bit of rail traffic, so they've built a little lookout house with a deck right near the tracks. You can sit and watch the trains go by, which is a total plus if you are a five year-old boy or someone who loves one.
-Some of Kyle's students were in a play at the school Friday night, so we took the kids. It was called something like: Cinderella-the Untold Story, and contained people dressed as Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel, which is a total plus if you are a three year-old girl or someone who loves one. We went out for ice cream afterward, and ran into several families of friends from church.
-Saturday we went to Daniel's soccer game, the library, and to friends' house for dinner. Our church divides everyone up into groups of four or five families, and we eat with our group once a month for a year. We had good food, the adults had good conversation, and the kids had fun playing together.
-Sunday afternoon we went to the circus. Much to our delight Gus and Lena were there, too, and so we all sat together. Eva kept saying "Wow!" throughout the lion act, and Daniel laughed quite a bit at the performing dogs and at the clown whose act relied on fart jokes. As circuses go, this one is a little lame and cheesy, and as Jennifer pointed out, it kind of "gives you a PETA feeling" for the animals. Still, I'd say fun was had by all, which made it a worthwhile event.

The Bad...
-Eva burned her hand on our toaster oven Tuesday night, and not just a little tiny spot on her knuckle or something. She got the whole back of her (dominant) left hand, and it blistered and broke the top layer of skin away. She screamed a lot, and I have to admit I didn't blame her one bit. I spent the rest of the night feeling a little sick about the whole business. Luckily we'd already had the kids' school physicals scheduled for the next day, so we were able to have a doctor assure us that it should heal up okay with minimal scarring.
-I found out recently that I have skin cancer on my face. And though I am told that this is "the kind of cancer you want to have" (in case any of you out there are wanting to have cancer, go with basal cell carcinoma), it still requires treatment in the form of removal. And so treat it we did this week. The drill is that the dermatologist takes off a layer of skin, analyzes it there in the office, and if they determine they've gotten down to healthy cells they sew you up and you leave. If not, they take and analyze additional layers until they're sure they've gotten everything. The office I go to schedules everyone who is having this procedure for the same day, so the reception area is full of people with bandages and paper drapes, waiting for their results. People, as it turns out, who are all 60-80 year-old men. Except me.
-I heard a lot of other people's bad news this week. A close friend's grandmother died. My favorite (very young) professor from college has breast cancer. I feel a little heavier for all of them.

The Ugly...
-The kids had to get their shots updated this week so that they can register for school in the fall. Eva only had to get one, but Daniel had to get FOUR separate shots. He did the best he could with that, but his cry with each additional shot just sounded more incredulous and appalled.
-The spring spider onslaught has begun. I killed one in the shower this morning and three this afternoon while cleaning downstairs. Yecchh!
-The semester ends this next week at the community college where I work. I've been grading papers this weekend, and while some of them are really great work it is just so discouraging to sludge through the ones where the students clearly didn't put in much effort. Or papers from students who were getting good grades, but didn't follow the directions on this last assignment, and are now not getting such good grades. It's really just painful to enter the points sometimes.
-Finally, there's my face. In order to remove the damaged section of skin on my forehead, they had to use some local anesthetic. Only apparently I am nearly immune to this anesthetic, and they had to continue giving me more and more to get me numb enough for the procedure. At the time, the doctor pointed out that I was getting quite a goose egg from all the medicine, but said gravity would drain it down out of my head over the next few days. He stitched me up and covered the lump and the stitches with an attractive giant white gauze pad. Great. Until the next morning, when I took the gauze off and looked in the mirror. What I had going on was a nice row of black stitches right across one side of my forehead, while the center of my forehead and eyebrows were puffed out about a quarter of an inch. Seriously, I looked pretty much like Frankenstein. Today on the way home from church Kyle pointed out that it now seems to have drained down into the space between my eyes, right at the top of my nose. It is making the bridge of my nose and my eyelids swollen, resulting in something that looks like a cross between a lizard-woman and textbook renderings of a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. I can't wait to see where that will end up tomorrow.

So that's our week. To sum up, that was three lunch dates (plus one dinner), three doctor's visits, two family outings, and two nasty skin injuries, each with their own prescription cream. I'm hoping this next week is a little less exciting.

My Favorite Child

2011-05-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I saw someone write on their blog regarding their favorite things about their children. Maybe because we just celebrated Mother's Day, or maybe because I am only one stack of papers and two finals away from a summer of abundant family together-time, I have been thinking a lot about that post and about my own kids. I realize that I often write about them here, mostly in ways that will surely embarrass them once they are adolescents. It has occurred to me that they might like something flattering to read one day, that day in the future when blogs are completely out of fashion and they access mine in order to provide further proof of my total unhip-ness.

So here it is, Daniel and/or Eva of the future (whoever stumbles onto the blog archives first):

Daniel, you have been my Buddy since day one. I'm continually amazed by your complete and total sweetness. The way you lavish me and everyone around you with affection is almost overwhelming sometimes; I don't think I could possibly be hugged or snuggled more by any one person ever. I'm so excited by your creativity, your ability to make up outrageous stories or to go through reams of paper just drawing, drawing, drawing... You aren't even five yet, and already I think you are a better artist than I am. I love that you see beauty everywhere you look. I love that you save the best thing on your plate for last, so that you can look forward to it. I love that you stand in the middle of the soccer field like Ferdinand the Bull, picking me a bouquet of dandelions while the game goes on around you. I love that you invent games where plastic dragons savagely destroy your dinosaurs, but also cry because you think the Grinch is too mean to his poor doggie. I am so glad that, no matter what I'm cooking or baking, you always want to help me. I like you and love you so much; you are definitely my favorite child.

Eva, you have always been My Girl. I'm continually amazed by your tenacity and independence; even as a small baby you rejected being rocked, and just wanted us to leave you alone so you could sleep. The way you jump right in to whatever you're doing is almost frightening to watch sometimes; it's no wonder that by three you've broken your leg, contracted pneumonia, and burned your hand. I'm so excited by your enthusiasm; it seems there's no end to what you believe you can do. You know your home address, the first three verses of Genesis, and all the words to several of your books, all without me teaching them to you. I love the way you lend or share your things so freely, but hold on so tightly to our family. I love that you sing Happy Birthday to each of the 46 cakes in our Birthday Cakes for Kids book. I love the way you say, "Mom, I love ya'" instead of the more formal "you." I'm so amused that you will eat the breakfast of three adult men, but turn down dessert rather than eat your meat at dinner most nights. I like you and love you so much; you are definitely my favorite child.

So there you have it, kids. And just in case you're checking, like the blogger I stole this idea from, I used exactly the same number of words for each of you.

The Clash

2011-04-29T12:27:00.001-07:00

Guess who got herself dressed this morning?

I did turn her shirt around and change her into some jeans and tennis shoes before taking her to the library and the park. At the library, though, they heard a story about Pecos Bill and made "spurs" out of foil stars and pipe cleaners. I forgot to take those off her before taking her into Jimmy Johns with me. I noticed several people pointing at her and smiling, and thought they must just be saying how cute she is. Then in the parking lot I noticed the spurs.

Seriously, I should have just left her in the flowered leggings.

Threat Level Midnight

2011-04-28T13:51:00.001-07:00

Recently, our children have gotten into the habit of using threats in an attempt to get their way. The problem (for them) is that many of their threats are, well... not threatening at all. For instance:

-"That's it! I will NEVER be your grandfather!" from Eva, upon being denied candy before dinner. She has also threatened to not be Daniel's father anymore.

-"Fine. If you make me leave now, I will NOT wear my coat outside!" from Daniel, upon being told that it was time to go to school. He was unmoved by Kyle pointing out that this does not make anyone else cold on a 40-degree morning.

-"I am going to walk out of this room right now, and you won't have ANYONE to fight with!" said Daniel to Eva when she wouldn't give him a toy this afternoon. Wouldn't that be a shame?

Sometimes, though, the threats are annoying, childish, and repeated so many times that I think I might lose my mind:

-"I will not be your friend ANY MORE!" said in response to any perceived injustice.

-"If you don't stop that I'm going to flush you down the toilet!" is a new favorite, a special gem introduced to us this week by Daniel's buddy Gus.

Occasionally, the threats get dangerous, abusive, or just totally out of hand, like when Daniel threatens to jump out of the moving car and actually pulls on the (thankfully child-safety-locked) door in the backseat during any of he and Eva's auto altercations. I've also recently overheard:

-"You aren't allowed to come play at our house anymore!" to their friend Peter, after an argument over a toy.

-"You are getting kicked out of this family."

-"If you don't we will rip your arm off," said Daniel to Eva (on the way home from church, no less), in support of Kyle politely asking Eva to remember to keep her hand in her lap instead of pulling on her hair in the car.

Really, it's these last ones that get me. Did they hear them from some tyrant child somewhere, or are they exercising their creativity in a seriously misguided way? Even considering my less-than-perfect parenting, the kinds of threats we make around here are, "Do you need a time out?" and "Should we move your behavior clip to yellow?" Certainly we don't use violent limb removal as a deterrent, and I'm fairly sure Eva's grandfathers have never mentioned disowning her...

Does Daniel threaten kids like this at school? If so, are we on some DFS watch list?

As funny as it can sometimes be, I hope this is a phase that passes quickly. I feel like the threat of threats is constant around here, and like I am a drip of water, trying to wear away a stone of unpleasant behavior. I've tried explaining, imploring, reminding how these words make people feel, suggesting alternate ways of solving disagreements, praising their kind words, repeating myself, complaining about the issue. I have downright forbidden talk of stunt-jumps from our moving vehicle. I am officially open for reader suggestions.

Seriously, though, if they don't stop it soon, I might NOT let them come play at our house again.

Funny Things Are Everywhere (Photo Edition)

2011-04-21T11:15:00.001-07:00

This is my family making the letter Q. Now you all know what we do around here in our spare time. One of the kids actually called me in to see this, saying, "Take a picture of THIS, Mom!"

++++++++++++++++++++

Eva is very good at playing by herself right now, and in the mornings while I am cleaning up breakfast or taking a shower she often gets herself so engrossed in some sort of made-up game that it is difficult to talk her into getting dressed and leaving the house. The other morning she started playing in the bathroom while I was fixing my hair, and then continued playing there long after I'd left to do some housework. When it was time to go pick up Daniel from school, I stopped to use the restroom before we left, and found this waiting for me:

Good thing I am used to having little people follow me into the bathroom. This kind of crowd could downright give a person performance anxiety. Of course she chose the toys from the movie where all the toys actually have feelings and watch everything their owners are doing...

++++++++++++++++++++

Daniel is very sweet, and one way he has been displaying that lately is by picking me handful after handful of dandelion bouquets. He is very disappointed to find out that the dandelions have usually died by the next morning. The other day he sighed, put a determined look on his face, and said, "I guess I'll just have to pick you new flowers every day."
Lucky for him, our yard looks like this:

++++++++++++++++++++

Finally, I was dusting a few weeks ago, and noticed this little still-life on one end of our dresser:

I call it "Nerd Love." Kyle, of course, was the one reading The Brothers Karamazov. One night about the time this picture was taken, I was reading Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew before bed while he read The Brothers next to me. "My book is quoting your book!!" I excitedly exclaimed. Yep. Cue everyone pushing up their glasses and doing a little snorty-laugh together.

++++++++++++++++++++

Not really funny, but something I should post while I'm loading pictures, are Daniel's latest triumphs. He has gotten very good at writing:

He did that while he was supposed to be "resting" one afternoon. Hard to be mad that he didn't stay in his bed for that.

He also read his first book the other day; one of my favorites, Hop on Pop, by Dr. Seuss. Here's a link to the video, (which I will warn is VERY long).

Hope everyone out there is having a funny week!

Scary Mommies

2011-04-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

I read a lot of parenting books. A lot. And I spend a lot of time thinking about what I feed my children, how I talk to them, discipline them, what kinds of things I let them watch on TV, etc. I love them so much, and want to be the best possible mother I can be for them. I want very badly to be that whole-food-feeding, every-day-full-of-teachable-moments-believing, full-attention-giving, attachment-parenting, good-emotional-example-being, earnest Mother of the Year that I swear I see at the library every-other week.

In reality, though, I'm not sure I am.

The thing is that, as hard as I try, I think I'm more of a chicken-nugget-buying, Disney-movie-playing, sarcastic-comment-making, "Just a minute!"-saying, sometimes-yelling, paint-mess-avoiding, nap-enforcing, introvert good-enough parenting mother that you swear you've seen bribing her kid to be quiet while she just makes these 25 copies really quickly at your no-children-allowed workplace.

Last night I came late to a Mom's Night Out dinner organized by some of my friends, and when I got there I was informed that the unofficial topic for the night had been, "Venting. A lot of Venting. About (teeth clenched) Our Children." As the topic moved from how not to laugh when your child says something totally inappropriate (but hilarious) in the middle of being disciplined to whether it's really that insensitive to send your (annoyingly, and probably poutily) crying child to finish that outburst in their room, I felt myself relaxing. THESE are my people. That's right, the one who just said her kids had cupcakes for breakfast because that was the only breakfast food she could find, and who reasoned that an unfrosted cupcake cannot really be any worse than a doughnut. My ladies.

At Bible study yesterday someone commented that the Holy Spirit's continual work in us gives rest to the perfectionist, who can then relax in the process instead of fretting over not being a finished work yet. I wonder sometimes if I spend so much time stressing over whether I'm doing the "right" things with my kids to really enjoy the relationship I have with them. I think that reading about, hearing about, and talking to other mothers who are okay with not being politically, socially, or psychologically correct all the time allows me to relax a little bit and have a good laugh at the beautifully awkward situations our family finds itself in.

Here are some good reads for that purpose:

First, the blog Scary Mommy.

Next, a link sent by my friend Melanie, to a blog post that printed an essay by Tina Fey.

Finally, an article my husband shared this week, which says that research suggests good parenting isn't so much about the parenting style you use, but the appreciation your kids feel for the relationship you have with them.

Funny Things Are Everywhere

2011-04-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some funny things from our week:

-Eva throwing herself from the moving merry-go-round just seconds after I said to another mom, "She's pretty tough. I'm sure she'll let us know if it's too fast and she wants to get off." She hit the ground rolling and just got up and kept playing.

-Ballots for this year's Name of the Year competition came out today. This year, I'm torn between Ebenezer Noonoo and Yolanda Supersad, while Kyle is leaning toward Monsterville Horton IV. Check it out for yourself.

-Things I never pictured myself saying in such a serious tone, like:
(In response to Eva telling her toy elephant he can't have imaginary cake until he's finished his plastic breakfast) "I think that's wise. You don't want him to fill up on junk before he's eaten some healthy food."
(To Daniel's friend Gus, who complained about always being left to wear the chicken costume to Daniel's dragon when they play their dress-up/animal face-off play-fighting game) "Actually, boys, chickens can be fierce fighters if they're bred and raised in certain ways. That beak could do some damage."
Sorry in advance to Jennifer for teaching her kid about cock fighting...

-Me, after yesterday's windstorm blew the lid to our recycling container open. Slipper-clad, hair blowing, frantically collecting and clutching to my chest half a bin's-worth of milk jugs and cardboard boxes... Trying desperately not to let Eva see how many of she and Daniel's art projects were being recycled...

Hope everyone else's week is as fun as ours!

A Quiet Weekend at Home

2011-04-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

This past week has been my spring break, so of course I got sick. I started feeling run-down on Tuesday afternoon, lost my voice on Wednesday, and by Friday morning I was asking Kyle to use our Maglite flashlight to check out whether I had sores in my throat (one of the few things that, for me, justifies paying for a doctor's visit).

Upon confirming that I did, indeed, have a nasty-looking throat, Kyle went straight to work and found a sub so that I could rest while he took care of the kids (Seriously, I hope all you ladies out there are jealous of what a fantastic husband I have). I lucked out and got into our doctor on a Friday, and I was just sure I'd be diagnosed with strep throat and given some magical antibiotics to take care of that right away.

"So your strep screen?" said the Intern at our doctor's office, "Is NEGATIVE! I know, I thought SURE that's what you had, too." While I kicked myself for shelling out the money for the visit, she explained that I just had a bad cold, swollen tonsils, something about post-nasal drip, we're prescribing some steroids... And then she said:

"You have serious laryngitis and should really rest your voice. Try not to talk for a day or two. Just use sign language or point to communicate for a while."

I almost laughed out loud at this twenty-something student-physician. CLEARLY she does not know what it's like to live in a house with two very attached small children. When I got home I told Kyle about this ridiculous suggestion, and he said he thought we should actually try it. And in that second it occurred to me that perhaps I AM a little arrogant to assume that I am SO important that I couldn't just shut up for a day or two and let him handle things. So I just agreed.

And so Kyle announced to the kids that Mommy will not be talking this weekend, and that all questions should be addressed to him. He agreed to do all the book-reading and phone-answering, and suggested some gestures that the kids might look for me to use to replace important phrases (like "I love you"). The kids thought the signs and enforcing a "no talking" rule for Mommy was great fun, and I did spend the rest of the evening mostly silent.

The irony, of course, is that where before I had somewhat of a cough with my cold and sore throat, now I have a cough (literally) on steroids. So while I spent our evening being quiet, I spent the ENTIRE night coughing my brains out. Around 1:30 in the morning I moved to the couch to avoid keeping Kyle up, and couldn't get back to sleep. I read Counselling for Eating Disorders, Second Edition for a while (because if I'm not sleeping I might as well work on some CEU's), hoping that would bore me to sleep, but no dice.

So this morning, Kyle again came to the rescue and got up with the kids, getting them fed and dressed and taking them to Daniel's soccer game while I went back to bed to continue hacking. I have not talked today, other than a few sentences of goodbye as everyone went out the door. I have to admit, I find the whole idea of laryngitis funny, mostly because I have a continual mental image of Carol Brady in one of the (seriously there were at least two) episodes where she can't talk.

Like this one.

Yep, it's kinda like that around here.

Closure

2011-03-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

I love spring. I love putting up the coats and humidifiers, I love watching little plants poking up through the mulch around our house, and I love appreciating the sunshine in a way I no longer will in August.

I also love getting our tax return.

Who DOESN'T love getting a big hunk of money, really? For me, though, there is something much more satisfying about making a number of home improvements or large purchases all at once instead of spacing them out throughout the year. As I go through the fall and winter I contemplate, "What will it be this year?!"

For 2011 we decided to make a couple of very satisfying improvements, like replacing our garage door. When we moved into the house 8 years ago, the thing was falling apart. It's always had a chunk out of the bottom, and when you stand in our garage on a windy day you can feel the breeze coming through the many cracks. Our new one is so heavily insulated that it should deflect gale-force winds, and it has fancy features like an actual sweep at the bottom that seals it up tight. Considering our family room sits above our garage, I'm hoping this will significantly decrease the cold-floor problem in our house next winter.

The other wonderful thing was that we finally found someone to identify and fix the weird brake noise in our SUV. It started about 2 1/2 years ago, only a few months after we bought it, and seriously, it sounded like something was winding down every time we stopped in the thing. The first few weeks Faisal lived with us he expressed concern that we might all die in a fiery car wreck due to brake failure. By that point, though, I was so used to it I didn't even hear it anymore. My dad had examined it, to no avail, and the (brake specialty) shop in town told us they couldn't find any reason for the sound and that it was probably fine. So we've been turning up the radio and living with it.

Last week, though, our express oil change place found a minor repair that needed done, and we took the car to a dealership in order to have the repair and the brakes checked. I wasn't expecting a solution, but apparently they easily identified and fixed the problem. Driving home felt so strange and quiet, I almost couldn't believe it. I read an article recently about how minor irritations all add up to increase our stress, and I have to admit that FINALLY having that fixed feels really good.

Just as I was feeling satisfied over resolving all these things, Faisal told us at dinner Tuesday night that he was planning to move out. In half an hour. Apparently he had rented an apartment, purchased furniture, and arranged people to help him move his things out, all without telling us. I wouldn't have thought it would be possible for him to leave us more abruptly than he came to us, but that he did. We barely got the kids through their baths in time to say goodbye before he left.

Kyle is not taking this personally at all. He says that it's been 7 months, and we've had enough misunderstandings between us in that time that Faisal probably just felt ready to leave. He'd been spending most of his free time with his friends, his cousin, or his cousin's host family lately. His English is better, and he knows his way around town now. He's always been a little impulsive with this kind of thing, and he tends to seriously avoid confrontation, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised.

I can't help feeling a little rejected, though. I'm sad that he didn't let us know about his plans, even if he didn't want to share his reasons for going. He had his cousin's host family look at apartments with him, move him out, and is staying with them for a few days until his place is ready. All of which makes me think, "Are we so horrible to live with that he couldn't stand a few more nights?" I think not getting to be a part of the process makes me feel like he doesn't see us as people who can even be counted on for help, like we ended all these months on a sour note with no chance to make it better.

To complicate things, there is another Saudi student in the same language program that desperately wants a host family right away for only 1 or 2 months. They've asked us to consider taking him on, and I feel torn. On the one hand, our budget and our family's plans included hosting a student for the next few months. We know now what kinds of things we'd need to hash out in the beginning of our relationship, and there's the potential to have a more satisfying ending to this whole experience in the near future. Kyle feels up to it. On the other hand, I'm not sure we need the stress of adjusting to another stranger in our home, especially at the end of the semester when I'm sick and burned out from work and feeling rejected.

Either way, we need to make a decision in the next day or two. The session has started and this student needs to move from a hotel to a house or apartment ASAP. What will we decide? Promise we won't leave you hanging...

Funny Things Are Everywhere

2011-03-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

From there to here and here to there,
Funny things are everywhere.
-One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

My friend Karen has a recurring post on her blog called "10 Bits of Magic," wherein she makes an easy, quick list of beautiful or positive things that are going on in her house that day. I think I'd like to copy her idea, only I am not nearly as talented at being brief in my writing, and really spend more of my time thinking about funny things that happen during my days that I feel like noting on my blog. And I'm not sure I want to be constrained by the number 10... Okay, so this is really nothing like Karen's recurring list, but she was still definitely the inspiration.

So, in honor of Dr. Seuss (a big favorite in this house), I'm going to try starting a recurring "Funny Things Are Everywhere" post of my own. Here are some things from the last couple of days around here:

-Eva insists on dressing herself these days, but tries to pull her shirt on by putting her face through the neck hole first, pulling the shirt over her head and under her chin instead of straight down over the crown. This works okay for shirts with loose neck holes, but does NOT work for tighter-fitting crewnecks. Tonight, as I reset her shirt for her four times, only to have her get stuck a fifth time, I stopped to notice that she looked like a tiny jester, with just her face sticking out and the arms of her pajamas like the long points on the sides of the headpiece.

-This evening Daniel recounted a long, rambling story he claims his teacher at Wednesday night children's church told him about courage. I'll spare you the details, but lets just say it involved a dog who avoided a snakebite by just offering that snake a bite of his sandwich.

-Monday on the carpool ride home from preschool, Daniel learned that his friend Gus's father doesn't like chocolate. He immediately said, "Wait! I'm sending your dad a message... Dear Gus's Dad, Welcome! I am very sorry you don't like chocolate. It is very good. Thank you, Daniel." Like he has some kind of dictating telepathic email system.

-A student just sent me a detailed (unsigned) email explaining why they will be missing my class tomorrow, and how they hope I have a great spring break next week and think I'm just a super teacher, not knowing that the email system at the college doesn't tell me the sender's name, just a 7-digit ID number.
All that sucking up- wasted!

-Monday I roasted a whole chicken for dinner, and Daniel (per usual) wanted to help me with dinner preparations. I allowed him to brush the olive oil onto the chicken, and as he did so, he had a jaunty little conversation with the bird.
"How does that feel, Chicky?"
"Oh, let's get a little more oil back here. That looks nice."
"Chicken!! Heh, heh, I'm putting oil on your BUTT now!"

-Also, I spent most of my run yesterday chuckling at the signs for someone running for school board (city council?) named Judy Duden. I'm sure she's a fine candidate, but I just keep alternating back and forth between a mental picture of The Dude from the Big Lebowski, and a soundtrack of myself thinking, "Heh heh. DUDE-en." What am I, 12 years old?

Okay, okay, so we'll see if I actually keep this up in any way. I'll work on my material for next time (and maybe will work on getting better prepared for the upcoming local election).

Home Alone

2011-03-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

This past week, the public schools around here have been on spring break, which meant that my teacher husband was able to take the kids for a long weekend to visit his mother in Nebraska. The school where I work, however, doesn't have break for a few more weeks, so I couldn't go along. Which meant, of course, that...

I was alone in my house for four days with no children.

And it was glorious.

It turns out that miraculous things happen when I am home alone. Things that I cleaned on Saturday were still clean on Tuesday. I read a whole novel. I ate entire meals without getting up to get anyone more milk, different salad dressing, or a towel to wipe up that now-spilled milk. In fact, I ate most of my meals on the coffee table in the family room, in front of some girl-movie, with a beer, because there was nobody to be a good example for. Instead of running through the store like a maniac, trying to finish shopping before Eva pees her pants or I'm late for Daniel's preschool pickup, I strolled leisurely through the aisles, browsing. Browsing!

The other interesting thing is that I was able to devote several uninterrupted hours to grading, reviewing this week's lectures, and revising a midterm exam for one of my classes. In order to do this, I did not have to ignore anyone, stay up late, or otherwise stress myself out. This, then, was the real value of the week: having no obligation to my family, I had time to do all the things that need done for our house and my job without sacrificing my own mental health.

See, in the past few years I have developed a theory that goes something like this:
-I have three main jobs.
1. giving attention and care to my husband and our kids
2. overseeing the cooking, cleaning, and budget for our household
3. teaching psychology
-At any time I am only reasonably able to juggle two of those jobs well. The third one must be neglected. I can try to alternate which of the three is the neglected area, so as to make it look like I am actually attending to three things at once, but the truth is that I am always either ignoring my kids, ignoring the laundry, or trying not to think about all the grading I need to do.
-If, at any time, I attempt to sneak in something crazy like exercise, having friendships, volunteering, or just taking a break, the number of areas being neglected that day will probably jump from one to two.

When I quit counseling full-time in order to stay home with the kids, I thought part-time teaching would be the perfect mommy-job. The number of hours spent away from home is small compared to the time spent preparing and grading, and I thought being able to do the majority of my work from home would be the perfect solution. The thing is, though, that working from home is not what it's cracked up to be. A friend recently introduced me to the blog Rage Against the Minivan, where there is a post that perfectly sums up the way I feel about the whole thing:

Working from home means that I am constantly distracted. My job requires focus and attention (as most jobs do), and just when I start getting into my groove, a fight needs breaking up or a sippy cup needs refilling. I feel grumpy and irritated with my kids when I have work to do. I feel resentful towards my husband because he gets to go to an office and do his job in peace, without four small children at his feet. I feel overwhelmed by my deadlines, because I never know when I will be able to catch a quiet and uninterrupted moment to write. Every day I assume I will be able to complete a few tasks, and every day life with four children takes precedence. I end up doing the bulk of my work at night after the kids have gone to sleep, which means I have no “downtime” for myself, and also means I stay up way too late.
In all honesty, I often think my kids would be better off at a daycare setting than at home with a mom who is sitting at the computer, distracted and annoyed by their needs. I think I would be a better mom if I was free to do my job uninterrupted, and then pick them up and have meaningful time with them. In the struggle for quality over quantity, being a work-at-home mom has meant a lot of time with my kids, but very little quality time. It has also meant that my job is done in small, distracted bursts, and I live with the constant feeling that I am letting everyone around me down. In this scenario, my work suffers and my kids suffer.

Additionally, I think there is this sense where I (and maybe other people as well?) expect myself to be able to accomplish all the things that stay-at-home-moms do AND all the things that working mothers do as well. But the fact is that teaching conflicts with both of the women's Bible studies I'd like to attend, the 2-year-old story time at the library for Eva, and some prime morning slots that would be great for playdates or trips to the park. On the mornings I'm not working Eva and I do housework and grocery shopping. At work, I am not able to attend faculty development workshops or to spend any time before or after class getting to know my colleagues, because it's too difficult to arrange extra babysitting for the kids. In the end I feel like I'm failing as a mother and as a teacher, all at the same time.

All semester I've been reminding myself that Eva will go to morning preschool in the fall (and Daniel to full-day kindergarten), and that I need to pick up another class or two, or maybe see a few clients in private practice, to fill those "empty" few hours on Monday and Wednesday mornings. The few days I spent home alone this week showed me that maybe it wouldn't be so horrible if nothing opens up, and I decide to use that time to do all three of my current jobs better. Maybe I could drive the speed limit, show up on time for things, do one task at a time, and just generally be less of a cranky-pants all day. Now THAT would be something!

Why I'm Glad My Children Still Cannot Read

2011-03-04T11:24:00.001-08:00

Today for lunch I fed them veggie burgers, and they didn't know the difference. They even selected the box from the frozen food section at the supermarket.

Daniel has been bugging me for weeks to take him to Burger King for lunch. I have been using, "We don't have the money for that today" as my excuse, but what he doesn't know is that Kyle and I are considering an all-out ban on fast food altogether.

I almost caved today.

I have a cold and am tired from getting up for Eva potty-breaks every night, we had a kind-of crazy morning, and our tax return was just deposited. Luckily there was a good sale at our local grocery store this morning, and I decided at the last minute to suggest buying frozen "burgers and fries" (actually Morningstar Farms veggie grillers and Alexia sweet potato fries) while we were shopping instead of going to the drive-thru on the way home.

Nobody was the wiser. They even thanked me sweetly for making them "a yummy lunch."

Mwaaah Haaa Haaa Haaa!

The Book of Daniel

2011-03-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

I've posted before about our son Daniel's attempts to get more junk food by claiming some of it is going to Jesus, who he believes literally "lives in his heart" (and gets hungry, apparently). It seems that's just the beginning, though, as he's really been on a roll lately.

A good deal of the funny theology that happens in our house centers around the kids' mealtime prayers. We seem to go through phases where both kids insist on contributing to the dinner prayer, then for a few weeks neither of them do, and then they both do again, and get bent out of shape if you don't remember to ask and to let them go first. One night before dinner, as we all joined hands, Kyle asked who wanted to pray (to Jesus).
"Not me!" said Daniel.
"Not me!" said Eva.
"Not me!" said (the Muslim international student who lives with us) Faisal.
I see it as a good sign that Faisal can make a joke in English, especially about our different religions.

Other times, like recently, the kids are really into praying before dinner, but they have each come up with this set script that they go through every night. Daniel's goes something like:
"Dear Jesus, Thank you for this beautiful morning, and for letting us go to _____________ (insert school, church, a friend's house here). Thank you for this food that we have, and we pray that you will give us all a good night's sleep."

This, of course, is a combination of some kind of example he's heard Kyle or I say either in the morning or in the evening, but to him the time of day doesn't matter; he's just going to discuss the morning and the evening all together now at once. In addition, he sometimes continues on chronologically for another 12-24 hours by adding:
"And we pray that when we wake up, it will be another beautiful morning, and that we can go to ______________ (church, school, a friend's house)..."

Sometimes, the prayer continues to include things he wants to do or have, like:
"We pray that we wake up, it will be another beautiful morning, and that we can go to Chuck-E-Cheese, or maybe next week..."
"We pray that when we wake up, it will be another beautiful morning, and that we can have blueberry muffins for breakfast, maybe..."
"We pray that when we wake up, it will be another beautiful morning, and that we can have breakfast together... Maybe I could make you some toast with butter."
And really, it's at times like these when I open one eye and look up to see Kyle peeking at me and Faisal laughing silently, and we're all looking at each other like, "Did he just offer to make Jesus some toast?"

Last week, after Sunday school, Daniel was showing me a picture he colored depicting Mary, Martha, and Jesus. I asked him to tell me what he learned about, and he told me that they learned about when Jesus came to Mary and Martha's house for dinner one time, and how Mary just sat around talking with Jesus while Martha did all the work. He said that Martha was complaining, because she was worried she couldn't get all the food ready for all the people, and I asked Daniel, "So what did Jesus say about that?" Daniel replied, "Jesus told her, 'Don't worry, you can DO IT Martha!'"
So I guess that was a Bible lesson almost learned.

In the end, it's hard to know how to respond to all these little things. On the one hand, I feel like I have a responsibility to try to teach him the correct conclusion to Bible stories and the like. But on the other hand I respect the fact that preschoolers are incapable of abstract thinking, and that him having a sense that God will hear his prayers or that Jesus was a great encourager is enough for now.

I do pray, though, that our kids will grow up to work out their own faith, and to not believe just because that's what they feel like we want from them. I hope that they will spend their whole lives searching and learning and growing.

I've been helping facilitate the Wednesday evening kids' programming at our church recently, despite the fact that teaching large groups of small children is NOT my kind of thing. It does help me appreciate all the work people at our church do to care for and to teach our kids, though. It has also been good for me to do something I wouldn't normally volunteer for, just because it needed to be done.

I think I'm growing from it, in small ways. Last night was a fun night, where kids traded in points they've earned in participation, behavior, and verse memorization for prizes. There is one kid in my class who has repeatedly talked back to me, ignored me, and otherwise been generally defiant or difficult. Many weeks I have not looked forward to seeing him. He hasn't earned a lot of points, and so last night he didn't get very many prizes. One of the few things he got, though, was a pack of gum, and toward the end of the night he shyly hugged me and offered me a piece. I guess grace IS all around.

Lucky for me.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2011-02-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

Before our kids were born, or even when they were little babies, I liked to dream about all the wonderful qualities I hoped they'd have as children. Now that some of those wishes have come to fruition, I'm forced to consider that I maybe didn't think things through as thoroughly as I should have.

For instance, I hoped that our kids would love words; that they would love to read and to find out the meaning of words and would get as excited as their father does about where different words come from. I had not considered that this might mean that my children would have their own ideas about what books to like, and that I might have to suffer through hundreds of readings of our vast library of books on construction equipment, cars, farm animals, dinosaurs, princesses, and Disney fairies (let me just pause here to highly DISrecommend the tome The Fairy Berry Bake-Off).

I also must have forgotten about that joyous phase of every kid's life, where totally inappropriate or even slightly taboo words are the best ones EVER. This weekend, while riding in the car to the store with me, Daniel said, "Mom? You know what word I love?" Just as my pulse started to race at the thrill of my child having a favorite word, he concluded, "Butt." (pause of silence) "BUTT!" (only this time in that gooky voice that comes from talking through an emerging laugh). This is, unfortunately, the favorite word of both our children at this time, and the source of frequent entertainment and merriment in our home. Yesterday for Valentine's Day Kyle and I worked it into our good-morning conversation when we woke Daniel up for school, just to show him we love him.

I'd also hoped that our kids would be creative, which in Daniel's case seems to be playing itself out in the form of some outlandish storytelling. The other day when I picked him up from school, his teacher asked, "You don't actually have, like, 100 chickens on your property, do you?" When I reported that, no, we do not in fact raise chickens at all, she said she thought we didn't, but that Daniel had told her we were raising them in order to make lots of chicken pot pies. And while this particular story might have been a slightly altered version of the plot to Chicken Run, this is not the first time Daniel's teacher has had to seek a little reality-check at pickup time. In the imaginary pets department alone, I've previously corrected stories about us owning a rabbit and some chameleons.

Additionally, at lunch the other day we had some Bugles chips. I told the kids that they had to finish all their carrots before they could have chips, and this was no problem for Daniel. He did do this, of course:

...but who can blame him? I think this is a requisite childhood Bugle behavior.

The real winner in the creativity department this day, though, was Eva. She showed me a carrot-less plate, received and ate her Bugles, and then went down for a nap. Upon cleaning the kitchen, I started to dump out her nearly-empty milk cup and noticed two baby carrots, perfectly concealed under the last inch of milk. Drat! Outsmarted by a two-year old!

Finally, we are at last within sight of that blessed event: the end of diapers. I have been dreaming of the day when we can quit buying and changing diapers, and have been anxiously awaiting Eva's learning to use the toilet. Yesterday morning by 8:15, however, I noticed that we were on our seventh potty trip of the day already. It took me an hour to change sheets around our house, because I had to stop every two minutes to help with wiping and hand-washing and such. Similarly, I spent much of our trip to the library on Friday in the bathroom with Eva, and she's used potty breaks as her excuse to get out of bed twice during today's nap time. At this rate, I won't be able to finish this blog post and make our grocery list before nap time is finished.

So far, our grocery list only consists of our weekly 3 gallons of milk and 5-lb box of oranges. I guess that's what I get for wishing for kids who are healthy eaters.

Our Little Negotiator

2011-02-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

When we were in St. Louis last month, several members of my family noticed that Daniel seems to have turned into a tiny lawyer overnight. He meets nearly every instruction given to him with, "How about this?" or "What if we do X and then do that?" Extra television, junk food, an extra few minutes before rest time; there is really nothing he won't try to negotiate.

Recently we were driving home from a late-evening event, and he'd had an early dinner. He asked if he could have a snack before bed, and I said I thought that sounded reasonable.
"How about some cookies?" he said.
"How about some fruit?" I replied.
"Okay, can I have an orange, then?" he asked.
"Sure."
"Can I have some milk with it?"
"Sure."
"Okay, so some milk, an orange, and cookies, then."

Seriously, this is how so many of our conversations go down. Being his parent requires constant vigilance against the onslaught of craftily-phrased demands. I wonder if this is what Monty Hall's parents felt like. Even when he doesn't get his way, he tries to work in a guilt trip, creating leverage to increase his chances of getting something else later. We're hoping one day that he'll be able to turn this skill into a profitable career as a realtor, union leader, or District Attorney.

On the way to tumbling Thursday, we stopped at the bank, where I turned down the teller's offer of a sucker for Daniel.
"Why did you tell her 'no thank you'?"
"Well, because you had a leftover Halloween sucker 30 minutes ago, and because we're on our way to tumbling, where suckers are not allowed."
Silence.
"You know, Jesus lives in my heart."
"Sure, Buddy."
"You know, I was going to put that sucker in my belly button so that Jesus could hold it. So now Jesus isn't going to get a sucker."
"I'm sure Jesus will forgive me."

Teacher Benefits

2011-02-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

As anyone who watches the news knows, we here in the Midwest had a massive snowstorm yesterday.

We managed to get Faisal back from visiting his uncle in Portland in the early morning hours Tuesday, just before the storm hit and the government closed I-70. We'll be tracking down his luggage for the next few days, I'm sure, but we're thankful we were able to scramble together a shuttle and a ride from his language program Director when his flight from St. Louis to Kirksville was canceled.

While there are surely some people without power, or city works employees weary from plowing all night, this has been a little vacation for us, only with more driveway shoveling. We have plenty of food and we haven't lost power, so no eating cold soup straight out of the can or anything. The snowplow has made a lane in our street, so as soon as I get stir-crazy enough to connect Kyle's driveway shoveling to the plowed lane we'll even be able to get the cars out. The kids are all hanging out in their pajamas, reading books and watching movies and playing whatever this game is here:

And so we arrive at one of the great, uncounted benefits of teaching... The Snow Day. Today marks our fourth one this year, which makes for a pretty easy semester so far. Sure, people in other professions might get higher pay and stuff, but while they are scraping the snow off their cars and driving to work at 10mph we are sleeping in, making pancakes for breakfast, and doing stuff like this:

And that's GOT to be worth something, right?

Old Friends

2011-01-17T20:18:00.000-08:00

Two weekends ago I went to St. Louis in order to attend a memorial service for the father of my oldest childhood friend Maureen. She and I have been friends since we were eight years old, when we lived on the same street and spent nearly all of our spare time at each others' houses. Naturally, we used to spend a lot of time around each others' parents, but less and less over the years as we've become adults. When I'd initially heard about Tom's death, I'd walked around feeling melancholy for a several days, but by the time of the St. Louis memorial, weeks later, I was really more focused on the chance the trip gave me to see Maureen, who lives far away in Texas now.

On the day of the memorial, my dad kept the kids for me, and I was able to meet my brother for lunch first. So pleasant was this rare child-free time with Ian that I kind of entered the church in a light mood. I saw Maureen, her husband, and her kids outside of the building as we pulled up, and actually felt excited to see the family I used to be around so often growing up. That's the irony of funerals; they're so good at bringing people together, but under circumstances nobody wants.

Walking into the church and seeing Maureen's mother sobered me right up, though. Being there, I had to confront the fact that Tom died, and that I would not see him again. And, as older-looking versions of Maureen's once-familiar relatives filed by, I also had to confront the fact that I don't really know them anymore. That, despite our occasional exchange before he handed the phone over to Maureen, I didn't really know Tom anymore, either. As people talked, I thought about how he'd held jobs I wasn't around to witness, had health problems I was only vaguely aware of, even moved to a city I've never been to in order to be closer to his daughter and grandchildren.

I started thinking about how when you've known someone for 25 years your concept of them isn't just who they are now, but who they've been throughout your whole history together. I still think of Tom, and probably always will, as a funny, athletic, boisterous man who teased us about boys (and our overly-hairsprayed bangs, for saying "like" too much between phrases, and for thinking being on the debate team made us cool). I will think of him every time I see a Diet Dr. Pepper or a Wonder Bread truck, or a picture of fireworks over the Arch. I have no idea whether Tom still loved the DDP as much at the end of his life as he did 20 years ago, but I know he hasn't delivered or sold bread for ages and did his photography in Houston these days. But when you don't see your old friends very often, they become like a legend in your head, stuck in an era that, to you, will describe them forever. When I was a kid, Tom's laugh was sometimes so loud and so sudden it would frequently startle me. I'm sad I missed my chance to hear it again.

The morning after the memorial, I did get a chance to catch up some with Maureen. I met her for brunch, along with our other close childhood friend Brittyne. We easily filled an hour and a half with updates regarding our kids, our schooling and work, how our husbands like their jobs... Maureen talked some about her parents, and then we just had time to snap a quick picture or two before it was back to our lives.

Brittyne complained before we left that we didn't have time to get to the reminiscing, the rehashing of the mutual exploits of our youth (like roller figure skating?!?). It occurred to me later that just the fact that we were there, in St. Louis alone together, was kind of reminiscent of another time, considering the seven (soon to be eight) kids between us and the fact that two of us don't live there any more. We do all have separate lives now, in different places. And, though I read Brittyne's blog and talk to Maureen on the phone every month or two, this is just frequently enough to maintain our relationships while forcing us to share only a very narrow version of what is going on in our lives. I have to admit that my perception of the two of them must also be somewhat the stuff of legend, built partially on my memory of who they were as girls. Though I do feel that they (Maureen in particular) know my core in a way that doesn't change over time, I wonder if aspects of the way they see me are somewhat dated, as well.

Despite the distance and the amount of time that has passed, I am very pleased that I can still call these two my friends. Maureen and I were "spit sisters" (too squeamish about cutting our fingers to be blood sisters) after all; if I cannot maintain a lifetime friendship oath sealed by drinking after each other, then what good is my word, really?

It's hard to describe my mood driving back to Kirksville after that weekend. I had a pretty good cold going, and was missing my husband. The kids slept in the back, and I just enjoyed the silence for most of the three-hour trip. I thought about the drive; how quickly I regain my comfort driving in the city on these trips to my hometown, how hopping from one suburb to another or one highway to another feels like an old sweater I forgot I liked. I thought about another faraway friend, Melynne, who'd kept me company on the phone when I'd been drowsy on the way to St. Louis a few days before.

Mostly, though, I felt melancholy again for a bit. I thought about how Tom was the same age as my own parents, and about how I'm now old enough to have a 25-year friendship with someone. About 30 minutes away from home I turned on the radio, and there was someone talking about Bob Dylan. The person was discussing the song A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, which Kyle and I agree is one of Dylan's best. In high school I was obsessed with the version sung by Edie Brickell, and have grown into the original version in recent years. It's not a cheery song, but the sadness and loneliness of it matched my mood, and it was so familiar that hearing it felt like the comfort of an old friend.

Got Her Groove Back

2011-01-11T20:15:00.000-08:00

I'm a little embarrassed to admit how much I really love Zumba at our YMCA. It seems like such a trendy, suburbanite thing of me to jump on some popular fitness craze. Yet there I am, every Tuesday and Thursday, smooshed somewhere up in the front right corner of the gym...

For those of you not familiar with Zumba, it's an exercise class that involves high-impact dancing to Latin and hip-hop music. It's kind of like difficult aerobics where the teacher doesn't call out instructions as to what's coming next. You just have to watch the instructor and catch on.

I started going this summer because my friend and fellow sorority alumna Diana was teaching, and I knew a few other people who went to her class. The dance moves she did were pretty straightforward, and I danced some back in my cheerleading days, so I caught on pretty fast. It was fun, and involved enough jumping around to be a pretty good workout, so I continued going.

In the fall the regular teacher returned with the start of the school year. She is a college student who is on one of the dance teams at Truman, and I had heard her classes were pretty intense. This turned out to be quite an understatement. Despite having done the class all late summer, the first week Claire took over I was so stiff and sore I could barely move. Really, it's basically an hour of sustained squats, lunges, and jumping, cleverly reinvented over and over with different arm movements and pelvic thrust/hip roll thingies. In Diana's class I could decide to really push myself, or to take it a little easy, but in Claire's class everything is full-out all the time. If you don't move fast and jump high you can't get most of the moves done, and if you slack on the arm movements she will tease you about it.

Here's where we get to what I really love, though: because she's young and on a college dance team all the moves Claire chooses seem to be really too difficult and way too cool for most of the people in the class. You look around, and the class is mostly moms (and even some grandmas); women in their 30's, 40's, and 50's. The parking lot's full of minivans, but inside everyone is dancing like Shakira. There is nothing patronizing or condescending about the way things are presented or taught. Both Claire and Diana basically just put on the music and start dancing, as if this is a song we've all heard a hundred times and nobody is going to have any problem picking up the material. The first time Claire put on Drop it Low and started the dance, the lady behind me said, "Oh she has GOT to be kidding," which (to be honest) was pretty close to what I was thinking. But a week later we were all not just doing it, but doing it fairly well and enjoying it.

I think there is something about being a mother that requires you to be inherently uncool. Sure, there's the spit-up smell, the reduced time for grooming, the focus on another person's defecation habits, but it's something even more than that. It's the status of it, that you're someone's MOM, for goodness sake; I know I pretty much walked out of the hospital with Daniel, donned some loafers and a cardigan sweater and that was it. Nobody expects you to know the songs being played in nightclubs or the latest Lady Gaga video. You have a child to raise now, an important job, and the soundtrack for that job is lullabies and nursery rhymes. Maybe, by the time your children reach adolescence, you can lapse into some kind of bland Top-40-adult-contemporary listening.

I've found that after a few years of youth culture treating you like you're old and boring and uninteresting, you start to feel that way a little. You can fight it as long as you're not a mom, but it becomes much more difficult after that. Having small children creates a haze of need that makes it difficult to see outside your own situation in order to participate in things like world news, social life, or hobbies. I feel like my kids are just starting to get independent enough that I can get back to some friends or interests. I've kind of been having a look around the past few months, seeing what I'm interested in these days.

I think falling into Zumba when I did was good for me. To see that, no, I actually CAN still make myself move like that has been empowering. I wonder if I would have had the nerve to try singing in our church's Christmas Cantata last month if I hadn't tried dancing first. I was interested enough in current music to download some new songs for my running playlist. Songs that our 19-year old international student recognizes!

Now believe me, I have no illusions that a bunch of middle-aged women dancing to salsa and club music at the YMCA is inherently awesome. I think, though, that I am slightly cooler for having done it.

I Couldn't MAKE UP Material This Good

2010-12-15T20:24:00.000-08:00

Maybe my sense of humor is just better now that grades have been turned in for the semester, but it seems like funny stuff is going on all around me lately. Some examples:

From around town
-A few weeks ago someone put a (real) stuffed bear on the roof of the Catholic Newman Center at the University campus. We pass it every morning when we drop Faisal off for school. One day last week Eva said, "What's that bear doing up there?!" "Probably growling," replied Daniel, totally serious.

On Friday, when Eva said, "What's that bear doing up there?!" Daniel said, "Hanging Christmas lights." Sure enough, someone had put a Santa hat on the bear and a string of Christmas lights in its paws.

Sadly, there was a wicked snow and wind storm Sunday, and the bear is no longer on the roof. I will hope that he was safely removed and not blown off.

-The same day we saw the bear with the Santa hat (in fact, immediately afterwards), I noticed that the car in front of us had a little Pekingese dog in its back window. A little Pekingese dog wearing a sweater. And eating a donut. With sprinkles. No joke.

From church
-As I've previously posted, I will be singing this coming Sunday in our church's Christmas Cantata. This past weekend, we were rehearsing a song that contains the line, "Watching wise men journey in a tiny caravan..." when the conductor stopped us to tell the guys in the back row (all adult professionals) to quit talking. "I know what you're laughing at," the conductor said. "Guys! Why didn't we get a bigger van?!" one of the guys in the back row blurted out. Great. Now nobody can sing that line without laughing.

-The kids had their Christmas program at church (Kyle has a video on his blog if you're interested). Daniel and Eva did about how you'd expect a 2- and 4-year old to do on a stage in a costume. At one point, though, there was a trio of 3-year old boys who were supposed to share a microphone to sing one verse of one song. One of the kids, though, pushed the other two out of the way, grabbed the mic, and put it right on his mouth. Of course, then, the other two kids started jockeying for their turn, and it turned into a bunch of pushing and trying to outdo each other's singing. The director of the play tipped the mic so none of them could reach it, causing them to finish the verse on tiptoe or jumping. I laughed so hard I cried.

-Friday we took the kids to Parents' Night Out, a free monthly babysitting service put on by one of the campus ministries at Truman. You basically drop your kids off at a local church for the evening, and the college students play with them, help them make a craft, and show them a movie. When I went to pick Daniel up, we were attempting to identify his craft bag from among the rows of colored-on paper bags. "Here it is!" Daniel said, grabbing a bag. "Does it say Daniel on it?" asked the student who had escorted me back to get him. The bag was prominently labeled (in one of the college students' handwriting) as "Weirk." "Oh, that's his dragon name," I said casually, before realizing that this makes me sound like a total lunatic. This student didn't even flinch, though, but smiled and said "Oh, okay!" and led us back into the hall. Thank goodness for her and for whoever humored Daniel by writing Weirk on his bag. Good to know that somebody else can appreciate our son's (frequently assumed) dragon identity.

From the mouths of our children
-The other day Eva was pointing out the window and saying something about a passing truck. It took me a minute to figure out that she was calling this pickup a "Pull-up truck." Potty training is coming along.

-Come to think of it, Eva says a lot of funny things. For breakfast she likes to have "eatmeal" or yogurt with "knowla" in it (what can I say, the girl likes her oats). She calls her Winnie the Pooh "Poop Bear," and recently told her feverish brother, "Don't worry, Daniel. Daddy's getting you some Tylephone."

-Not to be outdone, Daniel recently told Eva (who was playing dress-up), "Eva, you're the prettiest blutterfly I never sawn."

-Daniel has also recently taken to using the adjective "man-sized" to refer to things. Like, "That's a man-sized candy bar there!" or "Whew! That was a man-sized sneeze!" I have no idea where he picked that up, as it is probably the last thing that would ever come out of Kyle's or my mouth.

...So there you have it. A bunch of stuff that may or may not be as funny to you as it is to me. At least it's saved for posterity, in digital form, to embarrass my kids in 10-12 years.

Anger Management

2010-12-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Daniel is very interested in dragons and superheroes these days, so we've been letting him watch movies like The Incredibles and How to Train Your Dragon. He played these kinds of roles before we let him watch the movies, but sometimes I wonder whether we're feeding some very violent kinds of play. Today, for instance, he convinced me to partake in a rousing game of Trucks vs. Dragons. First, we had to line everything up like this:

The rules of this game, roughly quoted as he explained them to me are:

"Okay, so the Old Person (referring to me) takes the trucks, and I take the dragons, and they just PUNCH into each other really hard like they're trying to break something, 'cause these are REALLY mean dragons. Oh yeah, and Eva has all the flying things (referring to a plane, a helicopter, and Buzz Lightyear), and they're just going to stay over there and watch."

This was pretty much how the game went down, except that we had to start over a couple of times because I was not driving the trucks fast enough or hitting the dragons hard enough, and because eventually he decided that the dragons were going to pick up the trucks, "fly them in the air," and then drop them in a heap of ruins down the hallway. Here was the carnage at the end of all this:

I have to admit that I got bored pretty fast with the reality of Trucks vs. Dragons, despite my amusement with the name and object of the game. Once the trucks had been thoroughly destroyed, I took a break to make a phone call. In typical kid fashion, Daniel and Eva devolved into a screaming, hitting fight two feet from me the instant I got someone on the line. I finished the call with a lot of "uh-huh's," hoping that I sounded like I was hearing and understanding my end of the conversation. I hung up and very sharply explained that this behavior was not acceptable, and that now the person I was talking to likely has a terrible impression of both me and my rude, rude children.

Daniel then started into what seemed like an unrelated ramble, telling me all about the counselor at his school, and how she came to his class today and told them that sometimes kids have strong feelings, and might need to find something to do to calm down those strong feelings, like jump on a trampoline, or ride bikes, or run around in the yard, or take deep breaths, or sing a song or count to ten... Then he says to me, "Mommy, I see that you're having some strong feelings right now. I'm wondering if you should go jump on a trampoline or ride your bike or something."

Really, as a therapist I had to admire his use of the here and now in our session. I ended up telling him what a good idea that was, and how maybe I could just use a few minutes ALONE to take some deep breaths. Maybe I should have just asked to play another round of Trucks vs. Dragons.

Things I am Thankful For, But Were Not Appropriate to Mention at Any Formal "What Are You Thankful For?" Event

2010-11-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

1. My new programmable coffee pot-
Sometime in late October I dropped something on the ancient 4-cup (*actually 2 cups, unless you drink coffee from a thimble) coffeemaker I got in college, and the glass carafe broke. When we found out the replacement part is no longer available, Kyle suggested that I buy a big-girl size coffeemaker, since having to brew 2 consecutive pots in order to serve coffee for 4 loses some of its charm outside of the dormitory setting. I got a nice, basic programmable model, and was surprised the first morning at how much easier it is to get out of bed with the smell of fresh coffee wafting down the hall. The fact that it's already made when I wake up has prevented lots of frenzied drive-through stops before class in the morning. It's also nice to be able to make enough coffee for Kyle, Faisal, and me to each have a cup all at the same time. It's amazing what happiness a little $15 investment can bring.

2. A babysitter that sometimes empties the dishwasher-
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great that our babysitter Katie is reliable, and is good with our kids and plays with them and makes them good lunches. And, no, in no way do I expect babysitters to do my housework. But MAN, on those days when we've run the dishwasher overnight and I have not gotten around to emptying it before I leave for work, it is SO nice to come home and find that detestable little chore finished and the dirty dishes put in the washer instead of stacked all over the sink and counter. If you're reading this, Katie- thank you, it makes my day!

3. Walgreens sales-
If you are not familiar with the deals that can be had at Walgreens, you really ought to look into it. Each week their ad lists some items that, when you buy them, cause the cash register to print out a coupon for money off your next shopping trip (like a paper gift card to the store). For some items, and these are different each week, the amount you get back is as much as the amount you paid in the first place (or more, if you used a coupon on that item). Every week, I march into our Walgreens and use the coupons I got from the week before to buy whatever will print me more coupons to use next week (as long as it's something we'll use). Because of this system, I cannot think of the last time I paid actual money for toothpaste, deoderant, razors, lotion, shower gel, and many other health and beauty items. Don't get me started on this; I think my sister-in-law Ellen once got stuck on a long car ride listening to me expound on my love of this system, and I'm not sure she'll ever want to bring it up again.

4. A live-in international student who is neither crazy nor unmannered-
I actively pursued the opportunity to host an international student in our home this semester. I was not pressured or forced in any way to volunteer for this. But the few days before Faisal arrived I lost a little sleep wondering “What did we do?” and how we were going to get along with a stranger living in our house ALL the time. I worried that he might hate us, or that we might not like him. I worried about how we'd communicate and what we'd DO with him... But none of those things has been an issue; we get along well and actually have fun together. What a relief! I think sometimes that we could be having a very different semester if not for our compatibility with Faisal.

5. Penicillin-
Last week I got what I thought was a stomach bug or a bit of food poisoning on Thursday. Then I started having fever, then by the weekend a sore throat, and by Monday I was completely downhearted from having spent four days feeling so absolutely miserable day and night. Sleep was filled with chills, sweats, and crazy fever dreams; I had no appetite, but could barely swallow anyway; every part of my body ached. Monday afternoon I got in to see the doctor, and tested positive for strep throat. I got some penicillin and a decongestant so I could sleep with my mouth closed, and woke up Tuesday feeling 10 times better. Woo hoo for modern medicine! I was better enough to drive us all to St. Louis on Wednesday, to shop ALL day long on Friday, and, most of all, to attend Thanksgiving dinner with my extended family (and NOT discuss anything on this list while I was there).

Gingle All the Way

2010-11-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

In our town, like most towns, the stores have been preparing us for Christmas since the day after Halloween. At our house, though, we've been in the holiday spirit since Labor Day. As it turns out, one of the funnier quirks of our international student, Faisal, is that he came to America really enamored of the song Jingle Bells. He says he thinks it is a nice American song, and he has dozens of versions of it (complete with video) on his iPhone. Some of these are traditional versions, some have synthesizers or electric guitar; there's the obligatory dogs-barking version, and even a kinda scary techno version complete with little girls dancing around waving pom-poms.

The dynamic between Eva and Faisal is pretty cute to begin with, but the two of them have really bonded over Jingle Bells. Every morning when Faisal comes upstairs for breakfast, Eva greets him with, "Morning, Faisal. I need Gingle Balls." And in his very agreeable way, Faisal always says "Okay, no problem," and pulls it up for her. We spend most of breakfast and the drive to Faisal's school listening to versions of Jingle Bells, and then we repeat the whole scenario again when Faisal comes home in the afternoon. One night in September, as we were driving home from dinner at a Mexican restaurant, with Faisal and the kids in the back seat all laughing at some "Gingle Balls" video, Kyle said to me, "We're a strange little family, aren't we?"
"Indeed."

The other thing that has kept the holiday season in all of our minds this fall has been preparations for the Christmas programs at our church. Daniel and Eva are both going to take part in the children's program, with Eva reprising Daniel's cow role from last year and Daniel stepping up to play Joseph this year. As would any wise children's program director, ours started rehearsals the first week of September. We have been listening to the CD with all the songs to be performed over and over and over in the car for the past few months.

Today all their practices culminated in a dress rehearsal. Now, I was told that Daniel has been chosen for the role of Joseph because he is good at following directions, but not quite as good at remembering to sing or dance during performances. His only major job is to stand in the spotlight and lift the baby Jesus into the air for all the shepherds and angels to see during one of the songs. Today at the dress rehearsal he wasn't feeling very well, but if it was any indication of how the real show will go we are going to need to work on not: (a) dropping the baby Jesus, (b) holding the baby Jesus head-down by the legs, or (c) using the baby Jesus to wipe Joseph's nose.

As for Eva, she wore her cow costume, sat on the stage, and silently drank milk (ironically) from her straw cup. At the finale of the show, when Mary and Joseph stand at the front center of the stage, that little cow wandered up next to them and insisted on holding the baby. I'm hoping that this was because I was the stand-in for Mary today, and that she'll stay in her spot for the real thing. Really, though, for a two-year old, staying on stage is my only real expectation.

My contribution (other than being a Mary stand-in) is to participate in the adult Christmas Cantata. We have also been rehearsing for quite a while, which is good for me considering my level of singing experience. I thought it would be a fun challenge, though, and I've enjoyed having a "thing" of my own. I've been working really hard at standing near good, loud altos who are able to read music at each rehearsal. I'm hoping I can just hold up my part of the singing. Really, though, for a thirty-three-year old who hasn't sung in public since junior high school, staying on stage is my only real expectation.

Last Picked

2010-11-17T19:19:00.000-08:00

If you've spent any time around our daughter Eva, you've surely noticed that she is a hard-core devotee of the thumb-suck/hair twirl combo. She can use either hand for either position, moving back and forth as the need strikes. When she was a baby, this was a boon for us: she is a fantastic self-soother and was never interested in a lot of holding or rocking at bedtime. Just coming off of Daniel's baby years, where we spent every naptime and bedtime rocking him into a coma-depth sleep, we never made any attempt to discourage her habit.

Until recently. Recently we learned that Eva's talent does not, in fact, stop at being able to suck and twirl ambidextrously. No, she is also able to use the remaining fingers of whichever hand she is thumb-sucking to pick at her face, usually around her nose and cheeks. She is additionally able, somehow, to put the unused fingers on her hair-twirling hand to good use scratching and picking at her scalp, all while creating massive, twirled-up, knotty tangles in her hair. Sound like a mess? It is. I'm almost afraid to go in to her room some mornings and see what she's done to herself. For the past several months, she's been walking around with a permanent sore on each cheek, as well as scabs in her scalp made especially visible by her broken-off, thinning hair.

At first, I tried to treat the symptoms. I bought several kinds of children's "tangle-free" shampoo/conditioner combos, as well as some leave-in spray conditioner. I cut Eva's nails so short there was no white showing at all anywhere. We also tried placing band-aids over her cheeks while her sores healed for a few days, in the hopes that the absence of scabs would make the picking less desirable. But really, no amount of conditioner totally prevents tangles, and the constant pulling of the twirling ultimately results in some hair loss whether there are tangles or not. Staying on top of the nail trimming is difficult, and there is a fine line between short and too-short, which I surely accidentally crossed a couple of times. And the worst parent-intervention-fail of this whole story is the time I put an off-brand bandage on one cheek, then pulled it off to reveal at least half a dozen new sores where the glue had irritated her skin overnight.

This, then, was the final straw for Kyle. He decided to move forward with his plan to correct the problem at its source: Princess Gloves. We found some purple mittens with little pink bows on them, and talked them up like they were REALLY something special that she could ONLY wear at night. And this worked the first night; I think the novelty and all the princess flattery was enough to carry her through. The next several naps didn't happen, though, and bedtimes have started becoming more and more difficult. The funny thing is that for the first few days I don't think she put two and two together and realized that the reason she'd been having so much trouble falling asleep was the absence of her favorite activities. A few days in, though, I was there to see the light bulb go on. I was putting her down for a nap and she said, "I can't suck my thumb and twirl my hair with the Princess Gloves on..." and then her face lit up like she'd had one of Oprah's "ah-ha" moments. "I need these off!" she said, pulling at them frantically. I explained to her that we actually would prefer she not twirl her hair and suck her thumb (and pick her face), and want her to wear the mittens to help her remember that. Luckily she relented and has continued to do so despite her nightly pleas and protests to sleep without them.

The other funny thing about it is that the instant the gloves come off in the morning or after naptime she is like an addict jonesing for a fix, sucking and twirling with ferocious gusto. At this point we are not making an issue out of her daytime habit, which is for now fairly minimal and much less destructive, but I know we will have to address it one day.

In a twist of cruel irony, Daniel woke me up last night, screaming "Help! Help!" from the bathroom at 1:30 in the morning. It seems he'd been picking his nose in bed and had caused some bleeding... and by "some bleeding" I mean that when I opened the door to the bathroom it looked like someone had been stabbed in there. This was quite a nosebleed, and by the time I got the floors, toilet, sink, walls, and both of us cleaned up I was ready to go shopping for some Dragon Mittens for Daniel. It seems that as soon as we get one kid to stop picking (Eva's face HAS cleared up a bit in the last week) another one starts. Everyone keep your fingers crossed (and OFF of your noses and scabs) that we'll all pass through this phase quickly.

Has Fallen

2010-11-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

I'd intended to have a nice, plucky end-of-October post about things our family is up to, probably with some kind of slightly corny title like “Fall-in'” or “Fall Falls on the Sterups,” but the truth is that we've been just busy enough doing things that I've not had time to write about them. So here is the slightly late update for all the far-away friends and family about all the goings-on around here.

Where's the Beef?
As part of our continued effort to know where our food comes from, we decided to buy some locally-raised beef from our friends the Nelsons. They have a little farm and a small herd of cattle that live happy, grass-fed lives before eventually ending up as a nice roast or hamburgers or something in the Nelsons' kitchen. We lucked out by asking just in time to get the last half-beef share they had available for sale this fall, and our friends Madeline and John agreed to split the meat with us.

Mid-September the kids and I went out to Middle Earth Farm to meet the herd and select which of two cows we'd like to be ours. The kids were very excited to meet our cow, and since they all look pretty much the same to me Daniel was given the honor of choosing which would be ours. All the cows in the Nelsons' herd are named for characters in Lord of the Rings, and it turns out Daniel chose Boromir (good, because I'm not sure I could bear eating a cow named Eowyn or Galdalf or something).

Just before Halloween we received a call that our cow was finished being processed, and we drove down to Macon to pick up our half beef. As they loaded it all into our car I realized exactly how much meat half a cow really is. When we got back to town we stood out on Madeline's driveway divvying up all frozen bricks of steak, roast, and ground beef like bank robbers after a score. At home I found I barely had room for it all, but managed to cram it in there, tongue (?!) and all.

So the answer to “Where's the beef?” is “IN MY FREEZER, FOOL!” (okay, and Madeline's as well).

Halloween
We had a nice Halloween weekend. On Saturday we carved pumpkins with the kids and, while we had the camera out, goofed around and took some pictures we could use to update our facebook profile pictures.

On Sunday we met up with our friends the Walstons to go trick-or-treating at the University. This, by the way, is another cool perk of living in a college town: warm, well-lit, indoor dormatory trick-or-treating for small kids. We went to the dorm I once lived in (and handed out candy in) as a student.

In under 45 minutes we'd been through 5 floors of college students squealing over what cute little kids we all had, and Eva had so much candy she had to drag her bag on the ground instead of carrying it on her shoulder.

We took a quick trip around our very small neighborhood when we got home, and for the second time that week surveyed our loot. I think it's safe to say that if beef and candy were a well-balanced diet we would not have to shop at all until spring.

Physical Feats
The kids love having a swingset in our backyard, and one of their favorite things is the monkey bars. Which is well and good, except that Eva is clearly too small to make it across on her own, and Daniel refuses to believe that he can make it without help. So I spend much of our playtime in the backyard walking back and forth under the monkey bars, alternating between holding Eva's entire torso and keeping a totally useless hand on one of Daniel's legs so that he can psychologically make it across. We have praised and encouraged, begged and bribed Daniel to try going across by himself, and last week he finally did it.

Immediately after that, I came to the front yard just in time to see Eva pedaling herself across the driveway on her tricicle with no help. This was the first time she'd been able to move around with the pedals instead of by pushing off the ground with her feet or having someone push her, and it was just such a coincidence that she accomplished it the same afternoon that Daniel first conquered the monkey bars. Kyle already had the video camera out, so he just went around taping everyone.

Without all the tricicle-pushing and leg holding I should have a lot more freedom during playtime. Maybe now I can finish the August issue of Parents magazine.

Happy Birthdays
Since our dogs Barney and Bailey came from the Humane Society, we have no real record of when their birthday is. Because we adopted them the first week of March and were told they were four months old upon adoption, we officially deemed November first their birthday. They are eight years old now, which (in dog years) makes them pretty close to being grumpy old men. While they are much lazier now than they were as puppies, they can still catch a rabbit, so we're hoping they have many more years ahead of them. I think they are hoping to live to see the kids old enough to leave them alone already.

To celebrate their special day, we got them each a nice bone, and the kids sang "Happy Birthday" as I unwrapped and handed out the treats. They chewed themselves silly in the backyard all afternoon, coming in only when they were too tired to hold their heads up any longer.

We also celebrated Kyle's birthday last week, but he got a cake and a Kurt Vonnegut t-shirt instead of a bone. Kirksville recently got a Mongolian grill, so we gave it a try and decided that the ability to choose our own vegetable, meat, carb, and sauce combination may be addicting.

So that's our update. Considering how long it took me to write and upload the photos for this mega-post, I may have to consider being a more responsible, frequent blogger.

Captain Neurotic and the Bag Lady

2010-11-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

Eva is in some kind of phase lately where, every time we go somewhere in the car, she wants to bring a tote bag filled with, well... stuff. Really, there's no good way to describe it in a word. There's usually a multitude of doll hair accessories, some children's costume jewelry, a few books, an empty sippy cup, some plastic spider rings leftover from Halloween, and the list goes on and on until the bag is practically overflowing. She doesn't want to play with any of the items in the bag; she really just seems to want to hoard them.

Yesterday as we rode home from picking Daniel up from school, Eva sat in her carseat clutching her bag of treasures while Daniel looked on jealously. After several attempts to coax her out of the contents of the bag, he resorted to wailing loudly and moaning, "WHEN will SOMEbody be nice to me!? Eva, I share all my toys with you all day LONG, and you won't give me ONE little toy!"

Seriously, I'm thinking we maybe need to cut back on his TV time. He's like a caricature of some Jewish grandmother, that boy!

Things My Kids Have Broken

2010-10-25T21:05:00.000-07:00

The list starts out sounding pretty innocent, like casualties of any child's normal growth and development:
-Kyle's glasses, several of my pearl bracelets- All casualties of the grabby baby/toddler days. These things you expect; they're the kind of thing that fuel advertisements for flexible glasses frames.
-Various plates, cups, and other kitchenware- Some of this is drops, spills, normal wear-and-tear. Others are more extreme, like how Daniel used to bite completely through soft-spouted sippy cup tips as a baby. This sheds some light on why he was promptly weaned at 1 year old.

Other things just sound merely inconvenient:
-The pull chain controlling the light on the ceiling fan in my bedroom- Turns out that when you can't reach the chain to turn the light off, jumping off the bed and grabbing it on your way down is effective in the short term, but renders the light useless thereafter. At least the light's stuck in the off position so we can still turn on the switch and use the fan at night.

This summer was an expensive one for broken things, like:
-Our laptop computer- Daniel made up a new game. You might call it “Slamm-o!” To play, you see how many times you can loudly open and close the computer in a minute.
-The paint job on the entire driver's side of our neighbors' car- All at once we learned that Daniel was not as capable of steering or braking his new bike as we thought he was.
-Eva's leg- There were only two of them in that room, and that leg didn't get broken (as Daniel originally claimed) by just standing there in the middle of the room doing nothing.

Today, though, we can now add:
-The law- We ran some errands this morning, including a trip to the resale shop in town where I was selling some of the kids' clothes. There is a nice little play area there, right next to a display of bottle-cap necklace charms. Imagine my astonishment when, at our next stop, the kids each pulled a bottle-cap out of their pocket. I don't think they fully understood at the time that what they did was stealing, but they definitely had carefully chosen their loot, as Daniel's had a Toy Story picture on it and Eva's a princess. The ride back across town allowed me plenty of time to semi-hysterically lecture about what jail cells are like and what the Bible says about stealing. In the end the owner of the resale shop was a little TOO nice about accepting their apologies and brushing it off as no big deal.

We'd had kind of a rough morning up to that point anyway, and a difficult afternoon the day before, so this was the tipping point for me. I think probably the biggest thing that will deter Daniel and Eva from a future in crime was having to listen to my breakdown in the car on the way home. From the (amazing for them) silence and the size of their eyes, I'll assume they'll remember that for a long time.

So while I'd love to end this by adding one last thing to the list:
-Their poor weary mother's heart!!
That seems a little melodramatic.

Instead we'll just say that I'm just adding this to their tab. Maybe one day I can figure all this stuff up, add in a little bit for pain and suffering, and send them a bill.

Barney's Nemesis

2010-10-07T22:09:00.000-07:00

The neighbors have a new kitty, and it LOVES to run around in our yard.

International Man of Mystery

2010-10-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sometime back in August, we saw an announcement that a new language school at Truman was looking for families to host students in their intensive English program. Basically, they were advertising that they needed people to house, feed, and drive to school various international students who were coming for their four-week program, the first session of which started in September. This seemed like a good opportunity to introduce our kids to the idea that not everyone looks and talks like them. And we figured that we have an extra room, eat regular meals, and drive past the university at least once a day already, so we filled out an application. Soon after, we got a call telling us that we'd probably get a student sometime in mid-late September, and that details would be discussed at that time.

So imagine our surprise when, a few days before Labor Day, someone from the program called to tell us that our student would be arriving in three days. The day after that, the program representative came to meet us and have us sign some forms. During this meeting, it came up that the student we'd be hosting actually didn't speak or write much English at all and would probably need a semester's-worth (minimum) of 4-week sessions before he was ready to move on to university level. It also came up that he was from a conservative Saudi Arabian family, and that maybe it would be better if Kyle did most of the talking and we maybe should make some hearty side dishes if we're planning pork for dinner anytime soon. So now imagine our super-duper surprise.

When the day came and Faisal did arrive, though, I was pleasantly surprised at how young and nervous and altogether not-intimidating he looked with his big, messy hair, braces, and shiny designer tennis shoes. We really had an easy time getting along right from the start, despite the significant language barrier. All the things I had been nervous about seemed to be non-issues: he has sisters Daniel and Eva's ages and therefore does not find living with two small kids' noise that shocking; he actually came with a good knowledge of the English alphabet and a helpful translation program on his iPhone; and he seems to have fairly Western ideas about gender roles and no real problem interacting with me at all.

A month has passed now, and really the most surprising thing of all has been how quickly a person can just feel like a part of our family. Kyle and Faisal sit in the family room contentedly not-talking, each with his headphones and laptop. Eva is very enamored with Faisal, and wants to know where he is at all times. He is determined to help Daniel improve his soccer skills, and Daniel just eats up the extra attention. And I have a fellow connoisseur of fine caffeinated Coke and coffee products in the house.

The hardest part of the adjustment for me has not been anything relating to language or culture, but to the shock of suddenly having an 18-year old in our house. I worry about him when he's out late with other students, about whether he has enough cash and a safe ride home. I consider whether all the half-eaten chips and Coke in his room will attract ants, and wonder how one guy can so dirty up a bathroom in a week. We have to pry him away from all the instant messages (and Skype, and facebook, and email, and YouTube, and downloaded movies) for dinner. Kyle went to bed with a pillow over his ears tonight to be able to sleep through the late-night cell phone conversations.

It would be impossible for me to recount all the fun and funny things that have happened to us this month, but there are a few I carry around in my head. Like Faisal's frustrated attempts to get us to tell him the name of that actor he likes from the movie Speed and Anger (actually called The Fast and The Furious here in America). Or nights at dinner where we trade food vocabulary, and Faisal laughs at our attempts to pronounce Arabic words. It has been fun to introduce someone to new foods, new words, and new experiences. We are looking forward to celebrating the heck out of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas this year.

None of us knows how long it will take Faisal to complete the program and get to college-level proficiency with his English (not even him). But in the end I think we're all okay with that. I'm sure Faisal misses his real family (surely not even several phone and Skype conversations a day substitute for the real thing), but he seems pretty chipper and happy-go-lucky so far. So for now we're the Sterups- that family with the four blond people and the Arab guy.

How I Love Those Alpha Gams

2010-09-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

The week before last, I participated in Truman State University's Panhellenic Formal Recruitment for the fifteenth time. Though most of these years I have played the role of advisor, I have also been a helpful local alumna, a member of Panhellenic Council, a sorority member, and (originally) an unaffiliated student looking for an organization to join. By this time, one might think that I would be tired of standing in a line, wearing a matching outfit, chanting songs while waiting for the doors to open and the herd of potential new members to file in, but the truth is that I just am not. I heard someone say this year that there are few organizations where a person can expect the above scenario to take place, and those are mostly convents, the military, cults, and sororities. Despite all its weirdness, I have to admit that I love sorority recruitment. I think the fact that I joined Alpha Gamma Delta at Truman soon after it was founded makes me feel extra invested in ensuring it continues long into the future through recruitment of quality members. This post originated as a simple update for alumnae of the sorority; a way to report back to all the people who donated this year all the wonderful success we had. But, alas, I am a long-winded person, and always one for a story, and as I thought about what to write it seemed that there's a lot more that needed to be said.

The thing is, I regularly run into friends and family who (with varying degrees of directness) argue that, as a grown woman with a family and a church and a job, my continued participation in sorority life as an advisor represents a gigantic waste of time. And I have to admit that, when I'm forced to explain out loud that, for instance, I'm meeting with someone to conference about the importance of wearing pants or of not throwing beer cans at others, it does sound kind of frivolous. Many people are not into the whole matching-outfit thing, and on a lot of levels I get that. But the reality is that there are a lot more instances where I'm meeting to encourage someone to become a better leader by being more considerate or more assertive, to teach them how to plan a large event while staying on budget, to model time management or accountability or responsibility to others. So many college students are standing at the crossroads between childhood and maturity; figuring out who they are, experiencing adult freedoms and relationships, and learning work ethic and job skills... To me, it's hard to see how an investment toward college student development is ever wasted.

As a student, I gained so much from all the organizations I joined, especially my sorority. I am a Christian today because my sister Melanie Duran Kleimola cajoled me to a Bible study, encouraged me to stop blaming Jesus for the faults of his followers, and started me on a path to work out my faith. My sister-daughter Madeline Herrmann Nash was present at my wedding, the births of both my children, and everything in between. As adults, Kyle and I have tried to keep in mind those groups that gave us a lot when we were too poor and too busy with school to return the favor. If I were to pay back all that I owe to AGD, even just for my continued friendships with Melanie and Madeline, I would be advising for a long time.

My favorite Alpha Gam song is one called Today, and my favorite line says “...a million tomorrows shall all pass away, ere I forget all the joy that is mine today.” Every time I sing it, I think of all the “todays” that I have sung it before, and all the joy that has been mine over the years. Some of it was while I was in college: screaming the lyrics to Karma Chameleon at a date party, packed together so tightly with my 100 closest friends that I couldn't move; living in Brewer Hall and proving once and for all that you can fit three women and a box of Cheez-its in a twin-sized bed. Some of it was on days when I didn't expect any joy to be mine: when my college boyfriend was horribly ill and went home for the semester, and my pledge class all pitched in to buy me a phone card then showed up together to deliver it to my apartment; when our sister Kelin died of cancer before finishing grad school, and we all sat in Applebee's for hours after the funeral, talking and laughing and telling stories about her. Lots of it, though, has been as an advisor: all the girls who told me I was a cute pregnant lady or that my kids are adorable; the hundreds of personalities and jokes that have made me laugh and laugh over the years; and all the times I started writing a simple letter of recommendation and realized what an awesome person I knew. I have a lot of time to go before a million tomorrows pass away. A million's a lot.

Finally, it really should go without saying that any group with a secret handshake (and knock, and password, etc.) is kind of fun to be a part of. This summer at Alpha Gamma Delta's International Convention Madeline and I were given awards for our years of service as advisors, and there was a super-cool secret ceremony that went along with that, too.

Though I have friends who would say that in college they were too intellectual or too mature or too religious to spend their time on Greek life, I can't deny that I was a part of it, that it's where I come from, and that I really loved it. At that convention this summer there was a woman who was recognized for attending twenty-six times (on a biannual basis). As the room applauded her I couldn't help but think that there is something to be said for dedication like that, for being willing to stick with something her whole life, even as that kind of commitment becomes increasingly rare in our culture. For those of you reading this who are AGD alumnae (or any other organization's alumni), I would strongly encourage you to volunteer as advisors or just as helpful alum to your local chapter. It really is worth your time and effort.

Okay, so enough of that. Those of you who are alumnae surely want to know about how things went, and those of you who aren't... well, you can stop reading now or can indulge some bragging and pictures. This summer I wrote to many of our alumnae talking about how other groups on our campus have really been stepping up their recruitment efforts, and how last fall we had lower numbers than usual as we lagged behind that trend. Many sisters responded to my letter with donations of things the chapter can use for recruitment and beyond, like tablecloths and centerpieces and banners and their time.

I am happy to report that all of your support and the members' hard work paid off! We had some of the best return rates we've had in a long time for all the parties, and the best ever for the preference round (100 women!). Our return rates were so unprecedented that we had to run out for more food and flowers before preference party (a good problem to have)! In the end, quota was 36, and we matched the full quota through bid matching, plus an extra 7 quota additions. This put us way ahead of all the other groups, the next-most-successful of which matched only 37 members. As the advisor for a group whose recruitment success is almost always overshadowed by the other organizations', it felt really good to walk out of that bid matching session.

Here are some pictures:

Open had a zebra-print theme with red, yellow, and green accents. Those of you who contributed to the purchase of black tablecloths saved us the cost of rental this year and for many years to come.

Also of note are the fabulous easels, which Ashley Coleman Barton spent hours spray-painting in my front yard during polish (work) week.

Here are some pictures of the preference party and the centerpieces in action. We did receive exactly the number we had asked for, and everything looked gorgeous.

Here is a picture of the chapter on bid day, just before yell-in. Note the snazzy new banner, courtesy of Ashley Hoffman.

And last, but not least, are the beautiful new members!

Thanks again to everyone who wrote, called, donated, came to polish week, or came to recruitment. The chapter is very appreciative, and very excited about the fall semester. Recruitment was, as someone I know likes to say, the most fun we could have had with our clothes on.

Enough

2010-09-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Last night, as I was falling asleep, I realized I had no real obligations on the agenda for today. This kind of day is a very rare occurrence for me, and has been especially absent lately. At the time, I told myself that this would give me the opportunity to do things from my "backup to-do list" (the one that always lives in the back of my mind) like take the kids to the park, do some grading, or write on this blog about some of the things that have been keeping me too busy to post lately. I thought I might make some granola or a special dinner or dessert, or get ahead in my lecture planning. Ooh! Maybe I could clean the garage! Or have a nice run! What a wonderful feeling of accomplishment that would bring!

But this morning when I woke up, none of those things happened. Our house was messy; we've all been too busy to really do a good job of picking up after ourselves. We had loads of laundry hanging out in piles downstairs. It felt icky and chaotic here, and I finally reached the end of my very long willingness to keep going and going and going.

And so today I have done nothing of note. The kids watched a video this morning and then drew on the driveway with chalk. We didn't go anywhere, shop for anything, or do anything special. I did not do any exercise. I didn't make a fancy lunch, and I'm not planning a special dinner. The most accurate term for what I've done today is probably "puttering" around the house. Both the kids fell asleep during rest time this afternoon (which is like the Holy Grail of potential mommy productivity), but I talked to Maureen on the phone and watched some clips of The Daily Show on the internet. I have been leisurely working my way through our laundry and the stacks of mail and kids' drawings that are sitting all over our house.

And I must say: it feels really good. Unusually so. Mostly because I am a person who is always busy, and is prone to fill up these kinds of free days or weekends. I can always think of some extra project that could be done or some fun adventure I could have with the kids. Recently, though, I read something my friend Jennie wrote, about that feeling of always needing to be busy. She talked about what lies we tell ourselves when we believe that we can really "get ahead." Like if I just clean the house thoroughly enough, or plan out my lectures for the rest of the semester, or bolster the kids with lots of extra attention, that everything will be perfect and I will finally be able to rest. That next week will be an easy week. Her conclusion was that there is never an easy week, and that we waste our lives wishing for one.

It would be great to pretend that I thought of all this at the beginning of the day and made a conscious choice to rest today, but the reality is that I just hit a wall, and only see the benefit of our inactivity in hindsight.

Much has been afoot at the Sterup household lately. I have lots of things I could write about; there is lots of news to share. Maybe tomorrow. For now I am just going to tell myself that one little post is enough.

My Genetic Legacy

2010-08-31T12:55:00.000-07:00

So this morning I was watching Eva eat breakfast, giant Cars bandage affixed to her chin, and was thinking I could make my entire blog all about what a mess she seems to be. She always has something on her shirt, bruises all over her legs, two scars from accidents and at least two new sores on her face from where her hand rubs while she sucks her thumb at night. She has big scabs on her hands where she burned herself on the lightbulb from her lamp, as well as an inexplicable one on her chin that showed up on Saturday. She won’t leave any of these scabs alone, so they are taking a long time to heal. Finally, her hair is falling out in big patches from where she twirls it around her finger and gets it tangled. A good portion of the hair she does have left is broken off near her part line where she's tugged on her bows or pigtails.

As I considered this I also had this morning's Developmental Psychology lecture prepping in the back of my head. Today we talked about genetics, and about psychological phenomena we know have some genetic component (and how we study that, etc.). I was thinking about the heritability of personality, and how research suggests that one personality characteristic that seems to be very tied to genetics is neuroticism.

I then started thinking about the ways I am kind of a mess myself; all the little foibles and mini-crises I have created recently:
-While cleaning out the sorority's storage unit a couple weeks ago I managed to puncture a vein in my hand with a wire, causing a surprising amount of bleeding and swelling, and necessitating a tenanus shot.
-While using black spray paint for a project, I managed to color the undersides of my fingernails and all my cuticles black, resulting in a nice auto-mechanic look. I also accidentally spray-painted my wedding ring.
-While doing dishes the night before last my large dangly earring fell out and landed right in the garbage disposal.
-I realized at the end of one day last week that I had eyeliner on only one eye.
-I sent an email instructing a group of people how to look up something online, but directed them to the wrong internet address. I also gave someone directions to my house that didn't include my house number.
-I have had a number of Zumba wardrobe malfunctions, including wedgies, ill-fitting shorts whose pockets stick out every time I squat, and a pair of shorts I wore to class backwards (but luckily noticed before anyone else did). Let's not even discuss that one move I can do for the first 8 counts but then get totally off/lost on for the remaining 24 counts or so.
-Yesterday my boss sent out an email asking us to reply with what classes we'd like to teach next semester and when. I must have hit something on our laptop's mouse with my wrist, and accidentally sent "I'd like to continue teaching psych" before I was able to finish the sentence. I got this annoyed message back saying, "Which psych? How many sections? Day and time?"
-I cannot leave a voicemail message that doesn't include several awkward pauses and numerous "um... yeah"s.

Really, the list goes on and on. Feel free to comment if I've done something weird in your presence and haven't noticed yet.

When I think about it this way, it's no wonder my child cannot remain injury-free long enough for her last wound to heal. If my genetic material is what she stands to inherit, we can probably assume she's doomed to a life free of social graces. Or maybe we both need a little more sleep (or a padded house, or whatever). Either way, maybe I'll go a little easier on poor little Eva.

A Failure to Communicate

2010-08-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

I've recently become aware of a number of things that seem to have gotten lost in translation between us and our daughter Eva. I'm not sure if this is something related to her age, or just something she's especially talented at...

I noticed the first one a few weeks ago, when we were reading one of our favorite children's books. It's called No No Yes Yes, and is basically a cartoon baby that, on the left side of the page, does something that is a "no no" thing. On each corresponding right side of the page, the baby is doing the more appropriate "yes, yes" version of whatever behavior is being addressed. So, for instance, on the "no no" page the baby might be dumping his food on his head, while on the "yes yes" page the baby is happily eating his food with a spoon.

This book was very effective with Daniel; so much so that we would only have to say "What does No No Yes Yes say about picking your nose?" and he'd be off to get a tissue. Leslie Patricelli, you are a brilliant author and you deserve every penny you make off this book that contains only two words. I wish I'd have thought of it first.

The thing is, Eva does not seem as taken with the book, and it doesn't seem to have the same kind of sway with her behaviors. The other night, we were reading it, and I was, as usual, pointing to a picture and saying, "What is the baby doing here? Oh no, no! He's eating the dog's food!..." A few pages in, I noticed that Eva was saying things like "No No putting toys in potty. Here, No No going pee on potty. No no running from Daddy. Here, No No holding Daddy's hand." So it seems that Eva is under the impression that the baby's name is No No, and that he just does all kinds of random behaviors. No wonder this book is not effective as a to do/not to do guide to childhood.

Tonight, now, we were reading her Jesus Loves Me book, wherein some well-intentioned sadist crafted 10 or so extra verses of the song with some corresponding cartoon children depicting the lyrics. I have nothing against the song Jesus Loves Me per se, but after sing-songing the tune a dozen times in a row it really starts to lose its charm. About verse 6 or so, the children are outside playing ("Jesus loves me as I play, Outside inside every day...") and one kid has fallen and lost a shoe in the process. Both of our kids have always pointed this out during every reading, but tonight Eva informed me that "Look, Mommy! Jesus lost shoe!" As we went on, she commented that "Jesus has blue pajamas!" and "Jesus has big-boy bed!"

And so, it seems that Eva has identified the illustration character with the slingshot in his pocket as Jesus, and sees this very long song as a kind of "day in the life" portrait. You know, he's just hanging out, doing the usual Jesus stuff like going to preschool, playing legos, raking leaves in the yard, taking a bubble bath...

It kind of makes me wonder what her interpretation is of the rest of the things we tell her in a day.

Kyle, Me, and the WSOP

2010-08-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

"Let's shuffle up and deal!!"

Despite the advent of the school year, I always look forward to August because it means one of my favorite television indulgences: poker (the World Series of Poker Main Event, to be exact). I don't know why I love it so; I just do. I am a terrible poker player myself, because I value my own money too much to really take a gamble, and because I tend to get bored with it pretty quickly and start doing sloppy playing. So it makes no sense, then, that I would find watching OTHER people playing poker so fascinating.

Very early in our marriage, Kyle and I stumbled upon this televised poker tournament, and for one reason or another we decided to give it a shot. For those who are not familiar with the WSOP, it really is the mother of all poker events; weeks and weeks of smaller tournaments (which are really too many to watch) culminating in the Main Event, a No-Limit Texas Hold-Em tournament with a $10,000 cash buy-in and (in some years) over 8,000 players. Oh yeah, and the prize for the winner is usually several million dollars, depending on the number of entrants that year. The actual World Series is held from the end of May until mid-July, but the Main Event is televised on ESPN at the rate of two hours per week (one hour usually equaling one-half to one day of play) from August until November. And we are a captive audience; you would think we'd have better things to do.

But there's just something comforting about seeing our favorite players year after year, following their ups and downs, celebrating or bemoaning the unlikely hands that sometimes come up. It's like a little poker soap opera for us- there are players we love, and players we love to hate. We would love to see a professional win, even though the number of amateurs is always a better bet, statistically speaking.

So here's who we're rooting for this year (every year, really) in the WSOP Main Event:
Generally speaking
-Almost any pro who is a quiet, tight player (someone who doesn't bluff super-often)
-Almost any female player, except those who try to flirt their way to wins
-A humble amateur with a low-paying job and a family to support who won their entry fee in some other tournament
Specifically
-Kyle is always rooting for Phil Ivey.
-I am always rooting for Howard Lederer (the first episode we ever saw followed him through some very good tournament play, and I cannot betray my first poker idol). I will also accept Annie Duke, Howard's sister (I even read her poker book).
-We both like Daniel Negreanu, who is almost creepy in his ability to call what his opponent has and who always knows the odds of his particular hand winning.

Here's who we are NOT rooting for:
Generally speaking
-People who are really loud and disruptive
-Celebrities (except Jason Alexander, who is fun to watch, a good sport, and consistently a good player)
-People who are whiny babies when they lose a hand or who make fun of or bully their opponents
-Guys who just turned 21, and who got all their practice playing online instead of going to class at their (soon to be former) respective colleges
Specifically
-Phil Helmuth and Jamie Gold

So here's to August, and to the WSOP. Maybe one day we'll outgrow it, but this year you'll still find us, two mild-mannered, financially cautious Midwestern homebodies watching everybody in Vegas play for the bracelet and the really big money. What are the odds?

Our Vegetable Adventure

2010-08-02T21:42:00.000-07:00

So here it is, folks:
One example of the only kind of meal we're likely to make from our garden this year, considering all we've managed to grow is tomatoes and lettuce. There are still a few living pepper and zucchini plants out there, but they all seem to be really good at producing flowers that fall off before any real vegetable forms, so I'm not holding my breath. I think the kids had fun with the experience of planting, and Eva surprised us all by practically eating her weight in lettuce tonight, so I think we're at least minimally satisfied with the outcome. Still, I'm really hoping this will be a learning year in preparation for some more success next summer.

I had a small row garden here before the kids were born, and got a few good vegetables from it each year, but I never seem to be able to consistently raise anything well. This is probably because I have NO idea what I'm doing, and even less experience, and have tried to teach myself with books. We revived the garden again this year with the square foot gardening method. Despite thinking it was going to be the answer to all my problems, the reality was that many of them were still there: the bunnies gnawing away anything leafy and green, those strange black polka dots that take over the leaves of my tomato plants in July, and my general inability to decipher when and how is best to plant and pick things.

You'd think that with all the resources available on the internet I'd look some things up and figure out solutions to these problems. But for some reason this is just the kind of task I tend to avoid. Maybe it's that I get overwhelmed with all I don't know, or am afraid to look like I don't know what I'm doing. These people who know about gardening, where did they learn? Did they have parents who gardened? Did they have several years of mediocrity before becoming good at it? It's funny that I tackle with gusto things like sorting through health insurance run-arounds or choosing and buying a new car, but totally drag my feet to figure out how to prevent all the roots of my plants from becoming exposed. I do seem to eventually make small amounts of progress here and there, and this year was no exception. For next year I at least have the boxes and soil already prepared, and a big roll of garden cloth ready to block the bunnies' access next spring (thanks to my neighbor's suggestion). We may try planting a few fall crops, but will have to commit to that project fairly soon, so we'll see if I get there in time.

Our backup plan for fresh, locally grown produce, though, is only just beginning. Tomorrow we get our first installment of the vegetable subscription we purchased a month or so ago (basically a CSA where we pay a more successful gardener/farmer a fee up-front and then collect part of his harvest each week). The guy we've purchased from seems to be a nice, kinda chatty older man who refers to his program as “the Vegetable Adventure Plan.” Since he chooses each week what will go into our box, and the box is actually quite large, we will surely have plenty of chances to try some new foods. Our friends Madeline and John have been “adventuring” for the full summer, and thus became very acquainted with the many varieties of lettuce earlier this season. I can only assume from talking to them that it is a good thing I learned some basic canning skills last month, as I understand an event called something like “tomato extravaganza” has been foreshadowed in the weekly flyer that comes with the boxes.

Now, I am a particularly planful cook who hashes out a meal list well in advance, so rolling with whatever is in our box each week will really be a challenge for me. In addition to being more relaxed with the planning, I will probably have to look up some vegetables (like what is purslane, anyway?), and push myself to learn how to chop and cook and serve things I've never seen before. In the end, then, the produce subscription will be much like the garden in that it will make me learn to solve food problems I know very little about in a time-sensitive manner. Because the only thing I hate worse than having to teach myself a new skill is wasting good food...

Rookie Season

2010-07-18T13:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay; so it's been a long time since I've posted on this blog. We've had a busy summer, with lots of travel, lots of guests in our house, and (unfortunately) lots of computer problems, all of which I plan to write about eventually. These events have, however, reduced my internet time to only what is necessary to run my class and keep my inbox from overflowing. I have lots of ideas for blog posts in my head, though, and so I've finally decided to get one of them written down.

One thing we've done this summer is introduce Daniel to organized sports. We signed him up for t-ball at the beginning of the summer, and even though he was the one playing I think I also learned a few things. For instance, we showed up to the first game with no lawn chairs or blanket or water bottles or snacks, and quickly learned that we would probably need to invest in all of these things. We learned not to park in the spot closest to the fields unless we would like to wait for the entire parking lot to empty before we can pull out. And I finally started to understand why parents can run into problems getting their entire family to sit at the table together for dinners: six o'clock game times for just one kid really threw off our nightly schedule; I can only imagine trying to work around two or three different kids' sports schedules.

Also, I learned that the term "organized sports" should be applied very loosely to the four-six age range. Daniel's first turn at bat ended with him running straight across the field, toward second base, while all the parents and coaches yelled, "No! Go THAT way!!" Most runners on base forgot to advance to the next base until the runner behind them came up and gave them a tap. There were two fielding styles: the wearing-glove-on-head-facing-the-wrong-way camp, and the fight-other-members-of-your-team-for-every-ball group. There were no outs or scores, and though this was probably a good thing, it removed most of the structure from the activity.

I also learned a lot about expectations adults impose on youth sports. I was surprised to see that many players consistently had both parents, all their siblings, and some aunts, uncles, and grandparents at their games. Daniel's coach seemed really alarmed that Daniel would sometimes want to use the pink Barbie bat, and would run over to take it from him, saying, "Oh no, Pal. You don't want that bat. Try this one (handing him the Hot Wheels bat). This is the POWER bat. This is the one you want." All pretty amusing considering this coach was otherwise fairly hands-off. A kid on one team we played was very competitive and aggressive, sneering at other kids and repeatedly announcing things like how his team was going to "cream" them (a real feat considering the no-score thing). Kyle and I looked at each other, wondering aloud what that kid's parents were like, and what he'd be like by the time he gets to high school.

Let me not, though, exclude myself from this review of parental expectations. See, I enrolled Daniel in t-ball with the expectation that he would get some exercise, have fun, and learn how to play a team sport. Apparently I also had an expectation that he would pay some attention to the game, so I have to admit that I was fairly disappointed to see his lack of focus or enthusiasm during play. He was always excited to go to t-ball, and always said he had fun, but honestly spent nearly all of game time staring off into space and/or sitting down in the field. He almost never ran, neither after hitting nor during one of his very few attempts to field the ball. Frequently he missed the fact that his team had changed from the hitting team to the fielding team or vice versa, until his coach or Kyle or I specifically got his attention and instructed him to go to or come in from the field. In fact, Kyle and I (and the coach) spent a lot of time at games calling to Daniel to "Put your glove on your hand, Buddy!" or "Turn around!" or "Pick up that ball! The one that landed right in front of you!" as he stared off into space.

Daniel was also obsessed with snacks, specifically whether there would be any after the game and if so what they would be. Unfortunately we appeared to have been randomly placed on the only team in the league that did not organize some sort of snack-bringing turns system and therefore rarely had anything after the games. During the last game, Daniel was sauntering from third base to home to end the last "inning" for his team when he stopped dead in his tracks to peer into a bag on the ground that held juice boxes and fruit snacks. No encouraging yells from the coach or parents could break the spell as he stood there, transfixed by the snacks, while the whole game waited for him.

And here's where I come in. On this occasion we had driven five hours back from Nebraska and left all the unpacking undone at home in order to make this game on time. Despite the fact that we had gone out to eat immediately before the game, Daniel had spent most of his time in the field mooching the sunflower seeds the coach had in his pocket instead of playing the game. I was so frustrated when Daniel stopped running the bases that I got up and loudly chastised him in front of the whole field while roughly dragging him to home base by his arm. Nothing like ending the season with a bang, right? Now I could have imagined it, but it did seem like some other parents were averting their eyes from me on the way out of that game, probably because I had acted like a total LUNATIC over four year-old t-ball.

And this is uncomfortable to admit about myself, that I am more competitive or aggressive than I'd like to be, and that this extends to the kids' behavior as well. I'm not saying that I expected Daniel to whack home runs and make double plays at every game, but I did expect that he would care enough to try and to pay attention and listen to the coach. It was frustrating and embarrassing to me some days to have the kid who didn't DO anything. And I don't think that this will be the last time Daniel and I will struggle with this as he continues through childhood. His temperament is just slow-to-warm up and very cautious, something that I've had to work to be patient with. On the one hand, I appreciate and respect this about him, and know that when he's older I'll be able to give him more independence, knowing he will not do things that are reckless. But on the other hand, I worry so much that his fears and hesitancy will cause him to miss out on great experiences or to have problems relating socially to other kids.

I thought of this again today when Daniel was riding his bike, another activity that we introduced this summer. For the most part he is perfectly content to ride in little circles, over and over, on our small driveway. After little crashes he needs to be coaxed or even bribed to get back on the bike rather than give it up "until he's five." Last week I was so excited when he asked to leave the driveway and go around the block, only to cringe as he forgot how to brake and wiped out in the first 50 feet, bumping his head and putting a nice deep scratch all down the driver's side of our neighbors' car.

Since this incident, Daniel has once again refused to leave the driveway, but today I was overcome with the sense that if I didn't make him go back out there he would never want to. So I asked him, then begged him, and then forced him to sit on the bike and walked him, screaming bloody murder, out into the street. Even writing that now makes me feel kind of like a jerk. But as I avoided our neighbors' questioning looks and pushed the bike down the street, I noticed that Daniel had started pedaling. And then he stopped screaming and followed my instructions to practice braking. Then he started smiling and even laughed when I said, "See? You're doing it!" And though there's no excuse for dragging him to home base at t-ball I wonder if sometimes looking like a totally deranged, aggressive parent will be necessary to get Daniel past whatever is holding him back.

The challenge for me is trying to figure out the difference between a constructive push and a destructive airing of my own frustration. And I wonder if all kids and all parents go through this kind of thing on the way to learning how to play baseball or ride a bike. I don't ever want to encourage Daniel to abandon his sensitivity or sweetness, but I also don't want him to lack courage. And though I am enjoying Daniel leaving babyhood and becoming a full-blown kid, I sometimes think of all the challenges ahead of us as parents and feel like I'm the one who is totally out of my league.

Our Blueberry Haul

2010-06-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

This morning we went to opening weekend at a blueberry farm just outside town. The kids were able to stay focused for a reasonable amount of time despite the warm weather conditions, and we came home with almost 7 pounds of blueberries (two big bags like the one pictured above)! Actually, let me rephrase that: we checked out with almost 7 pounds of blueberries. Quite a number of them were consumed in the car on the way home...

This is just one more perk of living in a rural area. When I was a kid I don't think I actually knew where blueberries came from (trees? plants?), much less had a chance to pick and eat them right off the bushes. And boy are they delicious this way; I can hardly blame the kids for wanting to eat them by the handful. In fact, I am planning a blueberry cobbler for dessert tonight and blueberry muffins for Father's Day breakfast tomorrow. I'm wondering if it is possible to actually turn into a blueberry, like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ("I have a blueberry for a daughter!"). Gosh, let's hope not.

Today was a good indulgence of my recent Michael Pollan "know where your food comes from" kick. We're thinking about buying some grass-fed beef this fall from some friends who have a small farm and herd. I wonder if the kids will be as excited to eat burgers when they've actually previously met Bessie the Cow (actually, this family names all their cows Lord of the Rings names, so it would probably be more like Gimli the Cow or something). I can't imagine that going over as well as the berries. Then again, it's hard to imagine anything going over as well as the berries. I guess we'll see...

Joy Joy Joy!

2010-06-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day, and what I would like to consider the official start to the Sterup family summer. It started off early in the morning; as I was leaving to go jogging the dogs just looked so excited and hopeful to see me putting on my shoes that I couldn't resist letting them come along. And though my run in general was less than refreshing (it's HOT, even early in the morning, and I am SLOW, just now getting back to exercise after being sick), the sight of Barney and Bailey excitedly trotting down the street with their ears back and their tails wagging really made my morning.

We had homemade cherry almond scones leftover from the weekend (they'd been frozen, we weren't eating stale pastries), then Kyle emptied the dishwasher while I was in the shower (least favorite chore: completed for the day). After Kyle went in to work the kids and I went to the doctor to have Eva's leg looked at, and Dr. Bailey pronounced her healed enough to REMOVE HER CAST!!!

The saw was VERY loud, and Eva screamed bloody murder the whole time they cut the cast off. But Daniel was very sweet, standing with his hands over his ears in the furthest possible corner from us, yelling "It's okay, Eva! Don't cry! It's okay!" over and over. And the whole thing was very quick; we were out of the office in 20 minutes, and made it to the library program I had assumed we'd have to miss.

We had a great time at the library. The weather was good, so they held the show in a nice shady area outside instead of cramming us all into the building. At last week's event the librarian had billed this as a mime act, but there was a distinct absence of white grease paint and quite a bit of talking. It was very funny, though, with lots of juggling and magic tricks. Both the kids won super-cool stuff in the door prize drawing, and I wasn't fined for returning a book a day late, which is kind of like a prize for me.

After that we had a picnic in the park and played on the playground to celebrate Eva's two-legged freedom. When we got home the kids collapsed, sweaty and exhausted, for some glorious simultaneous naps. I saw an e-mail for a sale on children's clothing, but after a few minutes I realized there is really nothing we need. And THAT is a good feeling.

So energized was I by our fantastic morning that this afternoon I cleaned our bathrooms, sorted laundry, and swept, mopped, and vacuumed all our floors. We used gift certificates the kids earned through the summer reading program to go out for pizza for dinner, and then all went to Daniel's t-ball game. He actually fielded the ball twice, which he has never done before in a game, and he was so thrilled that he'd actually touched the ball.

I am surprised at what a relief it is to have Eva's cast off, for her to be able to run in the mud or go to the pool or take a bath. I'm glad to be over being sick, and to have some energy. The weather forecast had predicted rain for today, so the sunshine we got feels like something sneaky we got away with. We are getting used to Kyle's and my more relaxed summer schedules, and the local blueberry farm opens for picking tomorrow. Today just seems like the first day of the rest of our summer, and it was a really good one.

At some point during the day while we were in the car, Daniel just started saying "Joy, joy, joy!" over and over in a sing-song kind of way in the back seat. As I sit here tonight, belly full of pizza, in our clean, air-conditioned house with my healthy family all sleeping peacefully, all I have to say is:
My thoughts exactly.

C is for Coyly Threatening Your Mother

2010-06-08T20:50:00.001-07:00

Today the kids and I finally got around to making the cutout cookies I'd planned on baking before I got sick a couple of weeks ago. It was rainy here today, so it was the perfect thing to keep the kids occupied. Eva and I made the dough this morning while Daniel was playing at a friend's house, then after lunch Daniel and I rolled out and cut out all the cookies while Eva napped. By the time Kyle got home from school we'd just finished baking and we all frosted them together (This really is an all-day thing; this recipe makes about 12 dozen cutout cookies. If they weren't amazingly delicious we'd never make them). Everybody had fun with the sprinkles, and when we were done we each had one cookie. Happy day, right?

Before we'd even eaten our "one cookie each," Daniel started working on me about being allowed a second one after dinner. I put him off with the classic parental "We'll see...," but really I knew I'd end up giving him one. After all, he's a four-year-old who spent the entire afternoon focused on this project; I thought he kind of deserved a second. So eventually we settled on one extra cookie to anyone who ate a good dinner. I should have seen it coming, what with all the dough-eating, the licking of dripped frosting, the sampling of sprinkles. Nobody ate dinner. Well, nobody under the age of 30, anyway.

I made a meal the kids like, we gave lots of warnings, we encouraged and cajoled and gave them way past the end of the meal until I'd cleaned up the kitchen, but still no dice. So we calmly announced there were no cookies and started bath time. And you would think these kids had never seen a consequence before in their lives. Eva spent her first 30 minutes in bed tonight wailing "YES COOOOKIEEEE!," while Daniel came to the kitchen to "help" me put the cookies into containers to be given away or frozen. Our conversation went something like this:

"You know, I am feeling very angry to you right now."
"Oh yeah, Bud?"
"Yeah. You know just now when I asked you for a cookie for dessert and you said 'NO!!' (scrunching his face and yelling wickedly); that made me really mad. Do you REALLY want me to be angry to you?"
"Well, actually I was willing to give you a cookie if you ate your dinner. You're the one who decided not to eat. Maybe you should be angry with yourself."

Silence, thinking... Now very calmly, in a kind of menacing tone...

"You know, tomorrow, we will go somewhere and I will see someone and I will tell them that you did not give me ANY dessert, and they will say 'YOUR MOMMY DID NOT GIVE YOU ANY DESSERT?!?!,' and I will say, "Yes."

End of conversation.

Well, let's hope we don't run into any law enforcement officers or DFS workers tomorrow. Maybe they'll let me off the hook if I give them a cookie. :)

Two Heads Are Better Than One

2010-05-31T19:20:00.000-07:00

This past week was our son Daniel's birthday, and this weekend was the long-awaited birthday party. I'd mentioned to him sometime in March or so that we might think about inviting some friends over, and have subsequently been asked on a weekly basis to calculate the number of days remaining until the party. Yes, it was quite an anticipated event, with the extra excitement of a dinosaur theme and a visit from Grandma Jan thrown in for good measure.

And, as many kids' birthday parties seem to be, this started out as a simple idea that got more complicated as time went on. Now, I am not implying that we had an extravagant party or anything; there were no ponies or bouncy houses or ice sculptures. Just that, as these kinds of things go, it's hard to pick just two or three friends to invite knowing we're leaving out others. And once you buy the dinosaur plates you might as well get the matching cups and invitations. And, well, if our friends are bringing Daniel presents the least we can do is make up some games and send them home with some party favors. We were happy to do these things, but they turn a little get-together into a formal event, and while this seemed like a fine idea two months ago our family's recent health surprises (see previous two posts) put a kink in my advance planning.

And so my mother arrived on Thursday to find me miserably sick, Kyle tired and stuffed up as well, Eva in need of extra attention, and our house not exactly dirty but certainly not clean. Now, like many women, usually I have a love/hate relationship with visits from my mother. On the one hand, she brings too many toys, fruit snacks, and cereal I would never buy. She buys restaurant food for every meal and lies to the kids to get compliance (like telling Eva her nose will fall off if she picks it instead of just saying it's bad manners). On the other hand, she is great with the kids, and they LOVE to play with her. I do like doing things with her and talking to her in the evenings, and she is a good sport about going along with whatever stuff we've got planned for the week. She is as generous with Kyle and me as she is with the kids, and after all who doesn't enjoy getting out of cooking for a few days?

This week, though, a visit from my mom was just what the doctor ordered. She had good ideas for things to put in the goody bags for the party, bought me cold medicine and a patio umbrella, gave the kids the extra attention they needed, and let Kyle and me use her convertible to go out to eat without the kids Saturday night. I was more than happy to just order out all weekend, and to have extra help preparing for the party.

The other major thing that my mom did was design and help make the cake. Daniel had mentioned when we first started planning the party that he really wanted a dinosaur cake. So my mother went on a search for something that would be doable, but also really cool for Daniel. She happened to be taking a cake decorating class this winter and spring, so she arrived this weekend with a fully stocked arsenal of cake decorating supplies and knowledge. When I first saw the design for the cake I was a little intimidated: I had never made a 3D cake before, and I wasn't sure about all the little frosting stars and something that required a dowel rod. But she said she could do it and I agreed that the cake might be achievable with her help.

So Friday afternoon we baked the cakes, and after the kids went to bed Friday night we began assembling and frosting this thing. It really was easy enough, though it was time-consuming and the three batches of buttercream frosting made a big greasy mess all over the kitchen. Finally, at 1:00 in the morning the cake was complete. We dyed and toasted some coconut for "grass" to put around it, put it up where the kids couldn't mess with it, and took some pictures. We'd had some problems getting the head to stay together, but had finally gotten enough frosting to stick everything together fairly well. We crossed our fingers and went to get ready for bed.

Somehow, though, while I was brushing my teeth, I had a feeling that we were not home free. I only noticed it when I looked at the cake through the lens of the camera, but it seemed like the neck was pulling away a bit. I prayed that God would let the cake stay together until the party, then chastised myself for praying for something so completely frivolous. I revised it as a prayer for appropriate perspective on a silly dinosaur cake. Which was good, because when I finished brushing my teeth and went in to shut the lights off, the head had come completely unattached, fallen down, and broken into several pieces on the coconut grass. I went downstairs to tell my mom, and after examining the cake and bellyaching for a few minutes we decided to just go to bed and redo the head in the morning.

And so, about an hour before the party, we fashioned a different head (one that did NOT stand up) out of a store-bought angel food cake and covered it in a tub of premade Wilton frosting. Mom was dyeing and piping that frosting on like the Cake Boss himself. And in the end, I think it looked better than the original. We had a fun party, and Daniel has claimed the head as his own special piece of cake leftovers.

So Grandma Jan saved the day, for the cake and also for our tired little family. Thanks, Mom! We love you!

Rash Thinking

2010-05-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

My last post was about our daughter Eva's trip to the hospital, and our family's general not-healthiness last week. This post is not entirely about that, though I'm afraid things around here have only gotten worse.

Eva woke up yesterday morning with a rash from head to toe (I took these pictures this morning at breakfast, and they really don't do it much justice). We spent the morning getting her new cast put on and the afternoon at the family doctor for the ear infection follow-up and rash inspection. The medical opinion is that the rash is due to a virus, and that the same virus has caused the wheezy breathing and cough that Daniel had last week, and that Eva, Kyle, and I all have this week. In Eva's case, though, the doctors got a good listen to her lungs and started talking pneumonia. She is quite a mess; between the bright purple cast, the bright red rash, and the Darth Vader breathing we certainly turned some heads at Daniel's preschool drop-off this morning.

In the long term, I'm sure Eva is going to be fine. She, of course, is totally unfazed by all of this. She may look and sound sick, but is not acting the part at all. She has revived the monkey crawl from her younger days, and is destroying our house at, well, roughly the rate of any other two year-old on steroids. We had to rent a nebulizer to give her breathing treatments, and even for these she sits cheerfully in her booster seat, looking around while the steam puffs out of her little mask.

What really is going to be hurt the most by these recent happenings is the way I think of myself as a mother. Last night I was giving Polka-Dot-Eva a sponge bath and thinking to myself, "Now, how did I let all of this happen again?" This morning it was difficult to miss the moms and teachers at Daniel's school visibly cringing at the sight of Eva. Yesterday at the doctor's office and pharmacy Daniel (tired, I think, of seeing Eva get all the attention) made himself such a bratty nuisance that I could barely have a conversation with the doctor and pharmacist. I think it's easy to allow myself to think that I can always control what happens to my family, or the way my children behave, and to even take credit for them when they're being good.

Along with this comes a pressure (from myself) to uphold a certain imaginary parenting standard. And we are NOT meeting it this week. Last night Kyle was drinking the Blue Death-flavored nighttime cough medicine right out of the bottle. We are both tired, phlegm-y, and "itchy" (Daniel's word for "achy"). I have done zero housework this week, despite the fact that I am not teaching right now and my mother is coming to visit later this week. Daniel's birthday is the day after tomorrow, and we have not bought him a present yet. But nobody seems as upset about this as I am.

I had planned to spend the day today making birthday cookies for Daniel to take to school tomorrow, but the recipe (from my friend Jennifer for literally the BEST cutout cookies in the universe) requires lots of time to make, chill, roll, cutout, bake, and frost the cookies. Sometime late this morning it occurred to me that I could just buy some cookies at the store. Though I could feel the relief just at the THOUGHT of not spending my whole day on this project, I went back and forth about it for a full hour or so. Why? Do I think Daniel's teacher will think I'm a better mother for sending homemade cookies? Do I think Daniel will care, so long as there is a quarter-inch of frosting on his cookie?

I think the bottom line is that somehow I've fooled myself into thinking that store-bought cookies would be fine for other mothers, but that I should just do BETTER. That somehow, saving my kids from red dye number five and high-fructose corn syrup means that I love them more than if I don't. That having a cleaner house makes me a better person, and that I really must be the perfect from-scratch cook and mother and housekeeper. And now I sound like the latest flavor-of-the-month author on what's wrong with modern mothers (and NOBODY wants to hear about that again).

So here it is, America. My daughter looks like a contagious train wreck and I am taking her to my son's t-ball practice anyway (we'll just keep our distance). We will probably eat take-out tonight for dinner. Tomorrow I will send bought cookies to school because I took a nap today instead of baking. There are large tufts of dog hair on the floor under my dining room table, and the sheets in the guest room are not clean (okay, maybe we'll remedy that one before Thursday, Mom). We will probably be up late the night before Daniel's birthday purchasing and assembling a big-boy bicycle. And at the end of this week, at least we will have plenty of material to have a big, long, laugh at ourselves. And hopefully for everyone else's sake, this will be the last you'll have to read about the Sterup health saga.

Curious Eva Goes to the Hospital

2010-05-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

When thinking of a title for this post, I considered many alternatives. First was "Well, I Guess We've Met Our Deductible," then "Sickly Sterups" and "...Had a Great Fall," followed by "Of Course There's a Recall on Children's Tylenol Right Now" and finally "Just Forward Our Paychecks Right to Pfizer." Let's just say we've had a less-than-healthy week, starting with Eva's ear infection and Kyle's allergies (both requiring visits to the doctor on Monday), continuing with Daniel's wicked cough and my equally wicked migraine headache, and culminating in Eva's broken leg yesterday afternoon.

Neither Kyle nor I was in the room when it happened, but we think that Eva climbed on either her stepstool or her toybox to get a book off her shelf and fell (was pushed?) down. Funny that she would get so injured on a short fall that has happened a hundred times before. Kyle came downstairs to find her crying and unable to stand up. I was on my way to Moberly to attend graduation for the community college where I work, and had to make my carpool turn around when Kyle called me.

The thing about having a barely-2-year-old with an injury is that they're not very specific about where exactly it hurts. "Leg hurts" was all we could get out of her, and the doctors couldn't find anywhere that was bruised or swollen, so we had to have 8 X-rays done of her pelvis, hips, legs, and ankles in order to find the problem. As I helped the tech get Eva arranged on the X-ray table, all I could think of was Curious George Goes to the Hospital:

In the next room stood a big table, and a doctor was just putting on a heavy apron. Then he gave the man one just like it. George was curious: Would he get one too? No, he did not.
"You get on that table, George," the doctor said. "I am going to take some X-ray pictures of your insides." He pushed a button and there was a funny noise.

It didn't take long after the X-ray for the doctors to find the problem (lower left leg), measure and apply a splint, and give us our discharge papers. Which was good, because from the second they applied the wet, plaster-y splint, Eva started screaming, "Off! Off! OFF!" As Kyle carried her out, I heard nearly everyone we passed do the "Aww... Poor baby!" face and corresponding noise. If you've not seen a tiny child with a cast on, it IS a fairly pathetic sight:

Since last night, I've had a number of thoughts regarding our little situation, and the first is this:

Yesterday, on the way home from a program at Daniel's preschool, Eva took her shoes off in the car. Daniel pointed out that she had a hole in her sock and suggested we throw it away and put new socks on her. I pointed out that she also had pink punch spilled down the front of her dress, and said that we were just going to ride out the rest of the day with the dirty shirt and holey sock and start again tomorrow. If I'd known that we'd be taking her to the Emergency Room later in the day, and that half the staff of Northeast Regional Medical Center would get a good look at that punch dress and holey sock, I'd have just gone ahead and changed her. I'm sure nobody was judging us, but I'd have felt more confident filling out the DFS form recounting EXACTLY how it was my child broke her leg if she looked like we took better care of her. I guess it's kind of like that motherly admonition to always wear clean underwear in case you're in an accident.

Secondly, this event has reinforced for me what horrible eyewitnesses children are. The first time Kyle asked Daniel what happened, he insisted that he and Eva had been innocently standing on the floor in the middle of the room when she just fell over (hard enough to break her leg). As we pressed him more, and the doctors asked him about it, he wavered back and forth between Eva being on her stool and on her toybox when it happened. Sometimes the fall involved both he and Eva on top of each other, and sometimes it was just her that fell. Either way, let's hope that my children are never the only witnesses to some heinous crime.

Thirdly, I am not sure what a visit to the ER, 8 X-rays, a temporary cast, a couple visits to the orthopedic surgeon, a permanent cast, and whatever other accessories come with that costs, but I'm pretty sure it will be at least as much as our insurance deductible. This will end the debate over what we will spend Kyle's summer school earnings on, but will also free the rest of us up to go to the doctor whenever we need to the rest of the year. It's kind of nice to know I might actually be able to consider seeing someone about my migraines or some funny-looking mole instead of putting it off.

Finally, I have concluded that the author of the helpful ER brochure on fractures does not have children, as it suggests things like "not tampering with the splint or dressings" and "keeping the fracture elevated" while "avoiding unnecessary movement." I am wondering how VERY many times Eva will try to get up and walk, then cry "Leg hurts!" until she's picked up and rearranged, only to get back up immediately to try again.

Let's all pray for a speedy recovery, shall we?

Patrons of The Arts

2010-05-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

This month has been a busy one in our house so far. And a surprisingly creative one, too. As I thought about how to summarize all that's been going on in our family recently, the one theme I can find is that we've all been busy creating something or other, or enjoying the fruits of each others' creations. It all started with Eva's birthday...

Painting
Several members of our extended family went together to buy a swing set for the kids' birthdays. It came in (literally) hundreds of little pieces, and Kyle, Kyle's mom Barb, and I spent a couple of evenings in the garage brushing water sealant on all the boards.

Sculpture
On a Saturday, my dad and his fiance Karen drove up with my brother, and we had a long day assembling the set. They worked from mid-morning until dark, and ALMOST finished.

Culinary Arts
While everyone was in town we had a nice little family party for Eva's birthday, and Barb and I worked hard the night before making a monkey cake for the occasion.

More Sculpture, Acrobatics
Kyle spent a few nights after school finishing up the swingset, and the kids have had a ball, playing on it any time we have a break from the rain.

Performing Arts
Unfortunately, we have actually had quite a lot of rain, so we've been forced to devise some inside activities to entertain the kids. On Tuesday we went to the circus (see Kyle's blog for more details on that). It was a great time; I think we all had a different favorite act.

We also went to a kids' carnival Saturday that was put on by the local Ambulance District. The weather held out long enough for us to go in the bouncy house, down the big slide, and on the train. There was a clown making balloon animals, and Eva asked for a doggy. That poor dog almost made it all the way home in the backseat with the kids. We knew it was in trouble when Daniel commented that Eva was pulling on the doggy, and that it was starting to look more like a worm.

Mixed Media
The kids have also recently struck up an interest in... we'll call it "card-making." What this really means is getting out lots of paper, crayons, stickers, glue, scissors, markers, and a stapler, and going to town making lots of creations for our family and friends. Daniel is currently very enthralled with the stapler. This afternoon I had to refill it with staples two different times. Seriously, if there is someone out there with some tedious office work, this kid would be all over it.

Vocal Stylings
Finally, our kids have been big into singing lately; especially Eva. In her case, though, there is really only one song that she likes to sing, and it is "Happy Birthday." She sings it over and over, happy birthday to me and Daniel and our dog Bailey. And she sings it in this breathy little voice reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe singing "happy birthday, Mr President..." This morning on the way to church we tried to get her to sing something else, and after saying "No, no, NO!" about our singing, she went right on back to the birthday song.

This evening Daniel was walking around the house singing "Jesus likes the little children; all the children of the world." I've posted about Daniel's and my tendency to mangle song lyrics, and he remains strong in this area.

Hopefully the weather will warm up and dry up soon, so I can work on the art of gardening and the kids can continue in the art of getting dirty. Keep your fingers crossed for us, and in the meantime anyone looking for a little culture is welcome at our house.

Best Mother's Day Ever

2010-05-09T19:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've really only been able to celebrate four Mother's Days, but this one was pretty good. Kyle, despite being stricken with terrible allergies lately, worked really hard to give me a great day.

First let me tell you what I did NOT do today:
-Cook
-Clean
-Work in the yard
-Write psychology lectures
-Grade

Now let me tell you what I DID do today:
-Ate eggs and cinnamon rolls with coffee for breakfast
-Played outside with the kids in beautiful weather; chatted with the neighbors
-Went shopping by myself for, like, three whole hours this afternoon during nap time
-Went jogging while Kyle made our dinner
-Played Boggle (my favorite game, despite having only beaten Kyle once in ten years)
-Watched two episodes of Arrested Development
-Gave myself a much-needed pedicure
-Wrote this blog post

To top it all off, I got some nice flowers and cards from Kyle and the kids. Daniel's teacher helped him complete a questionnaire about me, which was hilarious (apparently I am 5 years old, my favorite color is black, and my favorite film is some grown-up movie). Before bed, Eva let me trim her nails with NO struggle whatsoever (which is really a miracle worthy of calling the Vatican over). As I tucked Daniel in he said, "I like you, because you're a mom. I love you."

All that equals one satisfying day, and one very lucky mother :)

On Unnatural Childbirth

2010-05-06T21:48:00.000-07:00

Four years ago, as I prepared to give birth to our son Daniel, I did what many educated first-time mothers do: I read books on childbirth (and pregnancy and baby care). Lots of them. After reading those books I had a healthy skepticism of what has become the "standard" hospital birth in America. So I made a birth plan, discussed it with my doctor, and prepared myself for the most natural childbirth I thought I could manage short of doing a home birth.

Then about two months before my delivery my doctor unexpectedly left the practice he was in and took several months off work before setting up a new one. I was assigned a new doctor, who was much less on-board with the whole birth-plan idea, and who one day, after I had been dilated past four centimeters for about two weeks, frowned as she listened to my unborn son's heart. She suggested an ultrasound, a non-stress test and some fetal monitoring, then an immediate induction. Nothing super-emergency, but a tired-looking placenta and decelerating heart rate that she didn't want to let go unsupervised over the long Memorial Day weekend. And even though I didn't feel great about the induction, I knew that I would make myself sick for three days wondering if he was wasting away in there, and so I went to the hospital planning to stick to the rest of my birth plan as closely as possible.

After many hours of pitocin-induced contractions, missed meals, and no sleep, I almost kissed the anesthesiologist who put in my epidural. I enjoyed the couple hours of rest I had before all the pushing and pushing that didn't move the baby at all, and then the eventual c-section that finally got that boy out where I could see him. And so I became the poster child for what natural childbirth advocates warn not to do, for the one intervention that leads to another until a full cascade of medical technology was unleashed in my hospital room.

After Daniel's birth I was disappointed. Disappointed that I hadn't followed my plan, that I hadn't boldly refused intervention in favor of a "wait and see" approach like all the books told me I should, and disappointed to have missed what it felt like to actually give birth. Instead I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. But I didn't think too much about it because I had a beautiful, voracious nurser with fabulous APGAR scores and I was just so excited to see him. And that was it; I obsessed over it for a little while afterward, wondering whether something could have been done differently, but in the end I did not feel bitter or sorrowful about Daniel's entry into the world.

Only later did I realize that I was not in The Club. As I met other mothers and talked about birth experiences I started to get a vibe from some women that a person who has a medical birth is foolish or weak or maybe too self-absorbed to have insisted on the very best birth experience for her child. I had several people assume that I must be devastated at the experience of walking out of the hospital with a perfect, healthy child who was born by c-section. I wrote and submitted my birth story for a collection being made by a local nursing support organization, and was stunned to find that it had been placed in the chapter of traumatic births (which included a warning that pregnant women might best avoid reading it until after their deliveries).

At first this bothered me, this feeling that I was somehow not as good as other mothers who had delivered their children vaginally, or that I should be really sad about Daniel's birth. And I thought maybe I could redeem myself with a VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarian). But 18 months later, a new obstetrician completed an exam, reviewed my records, and took a good look at the size of my husband. He said that as much as he knew I wanted a VBAC, he was going to have to recommend a repeat c-section. He reasoned that (because of hospital and anesthesiologist policies in our town) an epidural wouldn't be an option, and he feared my chances of another long, hard labor with a c-section on top might be really good. He encouraged me to get a second opinion, but after going home and giving it a good long think, I never did.

In the end, I decided that for me the stress of whether I'd accomplish the VBAC was worse than the c-section. I didn't want to spend the end of my second pregnancy like the end of my first one, thinking and re-thinking all the possible scenarios, rehearsing all the pain-management positions, and lying awake worrying about whether things would go as I wanted them to. Maybe I'm a perfectionist, and can't stand the thought of doing something I'm not sure will turn out just right. Or maybe I'm lazy and can't live with the chance that I might expend a lot of effort for naught. But I think I realized that I cared more about enjoying welcoming my second child into the world instead of making myself sick over it.

And so, two years ago today I woke up early in the morning, drove calmly to the hospital, checked in, and relaxed in bed listening to my husband read the Longfellow poem Evangeline. At the scheduled time I was wheeled into the operating room and my own beautiful Eva was born. There was no agonizing worry, no yelling, no crying (at least not from stress). I was able to meet and give consent to a number of nursing students who wanted to observe a c-section being performed. I felt really peaceful and calm, and recovered so quickly and easily afterward that I was asking to go home the next morning.

I want to be clear that I am not advocating c-section as the ideal birth method. I would love to have had my children naturally, without medications or bright lights or shiny metal instruments. My neighbor Laurie is a doula, and graciously speaks to my Developmental Psych class each semester about the pros and cons of different birth alternatives. I love to watch the videos she brings of the women giving birth, because of the wonderful look on their faces as they push the baby out and realize what they've accomplished. I am also a reasonable person who is persuaded by research that highlights the benefits of natural childbirth for the mother and the baby. But as Laurie points out each semester, there has to be a good fit between the mother's personality and her support system and her birth method. And I have to admit that as much as I wanted natural childbirth to be a good fit for me, it just wasn't. Eva's birth was really positive for me because I was able to admit that to myself and to choose just this one time not make everything a struggle.

I also want to be clear, though, that I was not passive about this situation, either. There were several decisions I made that I think helped me live with the kids' c-section births. This is where I think many of the childbirth books I read fell short; they spent so much time trying to encourage me to avoid a c-section that they dismissed any discussion of how to improve my experience in having one. I argued to carry Eva fully to term instead of going with the traditional 38 or 39-week delivery common to many planned c-sections. I researched available surgeons and made sure to schedule my delivery on a day the one I liked best was in the OR. Additionally, I fought (and I mean FOUGHT-with both kids) to be allowed to have them with me in the recovery room.

On Eva's birthday, as I think about her birth and come to terms with the idea that we probably won't have any more children, I am just now fully realizing my feelings about this whole situation. I don't want to portray myself as being abused by the natural childbirth community; certainly there are times when I was more a victim of my own self-consciousness than anyone else's condemnation. But I would like to add my birth stories to the dialogue, not as an example of what not to do, and not under the heading of traumatic births, but as an encouragement that even when things don't go as you plan them they can still be satisfying or even beautiful.

(Probably Not) Born to Run

2010-05-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I began jogging. Or maybe I should say returned to jogging after a long hiatus (like, since high school, really). Kyle started it by doing the spring post-season running program with the Truman swim team, and after a few weeks of watching him get regular kid-free time to exercise, I decided I wanted a turn for that, too. So one day I just put on my shoes and took off.

Here's the thing, though: I stink at running. I always have. In high school I went out for track, mostly because my father did track and field in high school and college and was pretty good at it (actually, maybe I shouldn't talk in the past tense; he is still pole vaulting at 55 in the state Senior Olympic games). He was very excited to see me doing track, and would even take me up to the school on the weekends to practice. But at the first meet I ran the 300-meter low hurdles and was so exhausted that at the last hurdle I stopped, put my hands on the hurdle, and stepped over. I could hear my dad calling, “What are you doing?!” in the stands. And so began my illustrious running career. I ran for 2 seasons in high school, but was never very good and had some serious shin splints, so eventually I quit. I went back to it for a few months at a time, once in graduate school (until my running partner revealed she had an eating disorder and needed to quit) and then again before we had the kids (until heavy Daniel in my belly made jogging VERY uncomfortable), but it never stuck.

Because of jogging's and my sordid past, I spent a few weeks on the fence before deciding to begin my current endeavor with it. Really, I have a number of excuses for not jogging, which include:
1.It hurts. It hurts my lungs, it gives me perma-blisters on the arches of my feet, and leaves me with sore muscles the next day. And I am a giant baby about being uncomfortable.
2.Sometimes it is very hot outside. Or very cold. Or raining, or windy, or the sun is in my eyes. Maybe to avoid the heat I will have to get up very early in the morning.
3.All logical running routes from our house begin with going up a hill. Not a good hill, like one that would allow me to say something like, “Yeah, I've been adding some hills into my workout”, but a slight incline that is just enough to make me feel winded right off the bat and gets me thinking “Wait... why am I doing this?”
4.Well-endowed women with short little legs are not built for running.
5.Sometimes circumstances require that I bring along 2 dogs (who insist on frequent stops to sniff at or pee on stuff) and/or push a double jogging stroller with 65 pounds of kid in it, which intensifies excuse #3.

However, there are a number of things I do enjoy about jogging, which include the following:
1.It is cheap. Free, really, if you don't count the running shoes I would have bought for walking anyway. And I am very thrifty.
2.It is fast. Compared to walking, I can burn WAY more calories and exercise the dogs just as much in far less time. I am also pretty Type A, so this is fairly appealing.
3.It is a good stress-reliever. Since we live near edge of town, there is a nice mix of residential areas and cornfields. It's very wholesome-feeling to run past vast rows of crops, with the sun coming up in the distance, with Polyphonic Spree singing Light and Day on my iPod. Speaking of the iPod...
4. I can listen to whatever music I want. Kyle insists that good running music is angry, but I disagree. My workout playlist is a ridiculous assortment of silly, frequently misogynistic music that Kyle wouldn't tolerate and that I would NEVER play for my kids. That's right; it's okay if the Blackeyed Peas want to know what I'm going to do with all that junk inside that trunk, because in a couple of songs Sir Mix-a-Lot will tell me how much he loves my Oakland booty. I enjoy hearing the Beastie Boys scream “Whaaaaaaaaaaa!” really loud, and I want to hear a chorus of “Zut, alohrs, non! Zut, alohrs, non, non!” at the end of Tangerine Speedo.
5.After all, any jogging route that always begins with a slight uphill always ends with a slight downhill, and if I'm lucky Eva will yell “Whee! Fast, fast, fast!” as we speed down it.

So for now jogging is winning over not-jogging. I am even thinking about entering some formal 5K runs this summer, or that local 8K in August. But I think that's it for me. For now I am going to appreciate my willingness to enjoy doing something I am so not-good at. I have enough stress in my life to add competing with other people or feeling the need to push myself faster and faster. Whereas Kyle likes to come home after a run and calculate his distance, time, and speed, I feel pretty indifferent about my run statistics. So don't look for me to post the data from a Nike sport gadget-thing on facebook anytime soon. But for the record it would look something like this:

Erika Sterup plodded around for 3 miles and some change at a speed barely faster than walking today. She feels pretty good about that.

The Daniel and Eva Show

2010-04-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I wrote something totally focused on the kids and the funny things they've been doing, so here's one for the grandmas and far-away friends. Fair warning to those who stumbled upon this blog post through facebook and don't care what cute things the Sterup kids are up to... I won't be hurt if you navigate away from this shameless promotion of my offspring.

So Eva is talking a lot more these days, and is doing a lot of funny things. A couple of weeks ago I was trying to get her excited for another trip to the hardware store to buy something for our garden, and was reviewing all the great things we are going to grow this summer, like
"...peas, and green beans, and tomatoes..."
"Cheese."
"Well, Baby, we don't really grow cheese in the ground, but we can have carrots..."
"No. Cheese."
I think someone is going to be very disappointed a few weeks from now. Actually, maybe two of us, since I spent time planning our nice, organized, square-foot garden only to have Eva shake half a packet of lettuce seeds ALL over the garden and yard. But I digress.

Eva also has been renewing my self-consciousness regarding my singing voice by saying "NONONONONO!" and holding up her hand every time I sing a song to her. This is bad news for both of us, as a good portion of my parenting repertoire involves silly made-up songs.

Daniel is turning into quite the entertainer. We went to Nebraska over the weekend for Kyle's grandma's 85th birthday party, and Daniel spent most of the day working the room. He climbed all over Kyle's cousins, put fake worms on Kyle's aunts, and went ahead and saved Great-Grandma the trouble of having to blow out her own birthday candle.

After a LONG trip back to Missouri today, we pulled in to find the annual dandelion takeover in full swing on our block, and Daniel exclaimed, "Look Eva! Look at ALL the FLOWERS!" While Kyle and I unpacked the car, he went around the yard picking them and showing us all his "Daniel-lions." During the unpacking, a fly got into our house. He was very concerned about getting the fly out of his room before bed, but then told us that after he went to bed we could just let that fly right out the door and then "Don't worry; everything will be back to normal."

Last week our babysitter told me that he sat down at the table and told her "This looks really nice! Thanks for making us this good lunch." then told her that this is what Daddy usually says to Mommy. Another day he told us "I laughed so hard I made myself funny!" Also, he noticed one afternoon that I had neglected to empty the canister on our vacuum, and told me "THAT is NASty-nast. You should empty that." The upside is that when I didn't stop folding laundry to get right on that he took the canister, emptied it, and returned it to the vacuum for me. Finally, he told me this evening that my ability to jump on one foot is just aMAzing. Maybe he was trying to make me feel better about myself in light of my terrible, terrible singing.

It Just Makes Me Feel Like an Id Again

2010-04-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is a post about how totally geeked-out I am about psychology. Many years ago, when I was in junior high school, a friend's mother gave me one of her psychology textbooks from college. I'm not sure how it came about, but I'm sure I must have told her that I was interested in the subject. I'm also not sure whether she ever thought about the book again, but I have to admit that the summer I received it I read the entire An Introduction to Theories of Personality (second edition) by B.R. Hergenhahn, cover to cover, at least twice. At the time, I think I enjoyed the thought of getting through something so far above my expected reading level, but also I loved learning about the ways people have attempted to explain human behavior over the years.

I went on to major in psychology in college, and then on to a masters' degree in counseling. I have worked as a therapist, and now as a community college instructor. I can no longer keep track of the number of books I have read on the subject of personality, but I am still not tired of psychology. I am always on the lookout for psych-related articles or news stories to discuss with my students, I once took a summer course in psychopharmacology just for fun, and I am constantly updating my stockpile of cool videos and audios to show to my classes.

Through all this time reading and using and teaching psychology, nobody has piqued my curiosity or held my interest better than Sigmund Freud. His theory is at the same time ludicrous and brilliant, and there is nothing quite like teaching a roomful of students about penis envy and the Oedipus complex. One time I was teaching a group of students at another location via satellite, and on my screen I had a power point slide that was obscuring my camera view of the classroom. I heard some talking, then some tittering, then some giggles, and when I turned off the slides to investigate I found a whole group of students crowded around a chart in the textbook, trying to contain their embarrassed laughter over Freud's psychosexual stages.

And this is why Freud is the most fun of all to teach. He strongly believed in the power of our unconscious to direct our behavior, and in the end mostly everything comes back to some kind of threatening, inappropriate deep-seated sexual desire, or to something your parents did to mess you up. He proposed that little boys sexually desire their mothers. He said little girls are just dying to know why they don't have a cool penis like dad's, and are secretly resentful toward their mothers for not keeping better track of theirs. He says having an anal-retentive personality has to do with too early or too high-pressure potty training, and that smoking may be a person's way of coping with the trauma of being taken off their mother's breast. Certainly this is not the kind of lecture that students sleep through.

The thing is, though, that if Freud were only responsible for some wacky theory about the origin of adult personality, he would never have endured the way that he has. No, Freud is really fantastic to me because of his fabulous observations of kids learning to identify with their gender, and his ability to recognize that we often act in ways that don't match our conscious explanation. So many parts of his theory are such givens in our modern thinking that we don't even realize they are Freudian. Ideas like denial, rationalization, repression, and projection are all his. The idea that there is something behind a man forgetting his anniversary, or your slip of the tongue; or the recognition that some things that happen to us as children can shape the way we are even 50 years later. It's fascinating to think that his theory was first, and that his therapy was first, and that everyone else is just kind of a response to him.

In the end, despite the fact that as a therapist I much more resemble Carl Rogers than Freud, there is a part of me that thinks the idea of a terrible unconscious, driving our behavior, so appalling that we would be threatened if we knew its contents is just. so. cool. And so I get a little excited each semester as the chapter on theories of personality rolls around.

I'm aware that there is a joke among my students that I tend to say I just LOVE each new chapter of their text, and that each chapter is SO interesting, but secretly I look forward to talking about personality the most. We just finished the Freud section, and even the promise of discussing social psychology this week is kind of a letdown compared to talking about the id, ego, and superego. My first psych book is still on my shelf, though, in its special little place, waiting for next semester.

I Give Up

2010-04-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, Kyle and I gave up sweets for lent this year. We were both feeling the need to eat better, and felt ready to cut out a lot of the sugar we (and the kids) had been eating. Furthermore, we discussed how self-control is easily the fruit of the spirit least-practiced in our house, and that it would be a good physical and spiritual challenge for us. Doing it together made it easier, since neither of us would be parading dessert around in front of the other.

We got off to a bummer of a start, as on Ash Wednesday dinner at our church included fabulous-looking turtle cheesecake left over from the Valentine's banquet. Someone had calculated that there would be just enough slices for each adult at our Wednesday-night meal, and so we were asked, over and over by platter-wielding church ladies, whether we'd gotten our pieces yet. By the end of the night, practically the entire congregation had heard me announce that we were not eating sweets this lent, which is unfortunate considering I'd been thinking we should not be all forward and braggy about our commitment.

But it turns out that this was really the most difficult night, and that the whole six weeks or so were much, much easier than I'd thought they would be. We had some debates, like the "is a muffin considered a sweet" conversation (Kyle says no, and I say yes unless it's maybe a bran muffin), and some near-forgets at the beginning, but I can actually say that I didn't really even feel deprived. We even each lost a few pounds.

And lest I sound too proud of myself, let me admit that in October I "gave up" eating fast food, but have not had the success that I had with sweets during lent. I still want to allow the kids a Happy Meal once in a while, or I'm on a road trip with another person driving and there are no other non-fast-food (slow food?) options at that highway exit... And, though I've really minimized my fast-food eating, it has been much more difficult and much less absolute than this was. Maybe I've had the holy spirit interceding for me with the sweets, or maybe there is nothing like having God watching you to keep you accountable ALL THE TIME.

So that leaves me in my current state: regret over having to give up giving up sweets. Now a rational person might point out that I could continue giving up sweets any time I want to, and that if need be I could even make another formal commitment to God or myself or Kyle or whatever. But I know that it just won't be the same. There is something about knowing I am participating in a set period of sacrifice, with a finite end, along with many, many other people everywhere. And for a moment I can really understand Catholicism or other denominations that are more focused on corporate traditions than my own church. Something about the solidarity of being a part of a group makes me feel more accountable, like I can't renegotiate the rules when things get difficult.

For now, I am looking forward to enjoying a doughnut and a cup of black coffee (best combination ever) at our church's Easter breakfast. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll find a way to not give up giving up.

Beep, Beep, Beep!

2010-03-31T05:54:00.000-07:00

So there is this song we sing sometimes at our church that goes (I think) like this:

And now, let the poor say "I am rich"
Let the weak say "I am strong"
Because of what the Lord has done for us
Give thanks

Inevitably, this song gets stuck in my head for a week or so afterward, and I walk around the house singing in the back of my mind:

And now, let the poor say "I am weak"
Let the weak say "I am rich"

I catch myself doing it, then think "Wait, no; That's not right..." But an hour or so later I'm back to:

And now, let the rich say "I am weak"
Let the poor say "I am strong"

I realize again that, despite being more correct in the sense of the spirit of the song, I am still singing it wrong.

This morning I was getting out of the shower and heard Daniel getting ready for school in his room. He was singing:

The wipers on the bus go "beep, beep, beep..."

Must run in the family.

Circle

2010-03-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

So this past week I was on spring break, the source of my annual feeling that I should do something big around our house. This year I chose a yard sale, mostly because we were still hanging on to ALL of our kids' clothes from birth to their current size, and we had officially run out of room. I spent a good portion of the week hiding out in our study, frantically labeling all our old stuff with tape and a Sharpie. On Friday we opened the garage door, set our junk on the driveway, and by afternoon had fat wallets and a small enough amount of stuff left that we were easily able to fit it into our trunk to be donated to the high school's after-prom fundraiser rummage sale.

The thing about selling your kids' stuff, though, is that they inevitably see the things you've plucked from their shelves and drawers displayed neatly in the garage. We have tried very hard to regularly purge the kids' old toys, and to balance a message of taking good care of our things with one of willingness to let things go. But, as these things go with preschoolers, I found myself in many lengthy conversations throughout the week about my reasons for selling Daniel's toys and clothes:

-"No, I'm not giving away your new toys. Only the old ones you don't play with any more."
-"No, actually, rattles are generally for babies and you are a big boy."
-"We get rid of our old things so we can have a clean, comfortable house that is not full of junk."
-"Actually that Lightning McQueen shirt does NOT still fit you. See how I can see your belly button when you put it on?"
-"We sell old stuff so we have room for and money for new things that might be more useful to us now."

By the end of the week, I was considering some kind of Lion King-themed Circle-of-Life explanation for the yard sale, claiming that his toys would have new life in the hands of a smaller, younger child. Finally, though, I resorted to allowing each of the kids to buy something new with money we'd earned, and I think a new Spiderman shirt really drove the "out with the old in with the new" message home for Daniel.

For me, though, the yard sale served as a reminder of the great circle of friends and family I have. As I looked through the kids' clothes and toys, I could remember
the people who had lovingly bought, made, and given so many of them. Two friends participated in the yard sale with me, and by the end of the day we had each given some things to each other. It felt good to just let go of bargaining and trying to make money and to just give and receive those things.

There were friends who dropped off and returned borrowed tables for me, who rearranged play dates to make time for me to have the sale, and who came by to see how we were doing. My friend Bethany and I spent the week leading up to the yard sale hashing and rehashing the weather and the logistics, plotting like mini tycoons of used baby items. The night before, when I was knee-deep in junk and nowhere near ready for the morning, my friend Janice dropped off some things and stood joking and laughing with me in my chilly garage.

Living in a college town where a lot of friends come and go has taught me to appreciate my friends, but to hold onto them loosely, like Daniel with his toys. But it is always amazing to me that despite all the transience I am rarely short of friends, local or long-distance, when I need to talk or scheme or laugh. Or sell a bunch of junk on my driveway.

Bow!

2010-03-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

When we found out that our first child was a boy, I was somewhat relieved. Boys seem lower-maintenance, and I could just see myself as a mother of a boy. When we found out that our second was going to be a girl I was kind of surprised, despite the roughly 50/50 chance of this being the case. I had kind of settled into the boy routine; I had learned the names of various construction machines and all the characters in the Cars movie. Most (all?) of our close friends had boy kids first, so Daniel had lots of friends and all us moms were pretty much on the same page with things like potty training and feigning interest in monster trucks.

Before Eva was born I told myself that I would have to think really hard about what we were going to do about things like makeup and princess movies and dance teachers who have 5-year-olds shake their booties. For the most part I'm still avoiding these things, assuming we'll deal with them on a case-by-case basis as they come along. So for the first almost-two years of Eva's life we've been knee-deep in baby dolls and tiny pink accessories, but have otherwise not treated her much differently than we treated Daniel at her age.

But now we've reached the stage where Eva's hair is long enough to go in pigtails or clips or other things qualifying as hairstyles (all of which she refers to as "bows"). At first this seemed like a good thing; her hair got tangled and gummy from her twirling it around her finger, so getting it out of the way was a good solution. And though strangers in public were always nice to us before, they didn't fawn and point and exclaim like they do now when her hair is in the cute little sticky-uppy pigtails. I've adjusted to having a girl now, and the world of tiny hair accessories doesn't seem so overwhelming. Eva likes seeing herself in the mirror with her hair done, and when she sees me combing my hair in the morning she runs into the bathroom, sits on the toilet and points to her head saying, "Bow! Bow!" What could be bad about a couple of pigtails?

The problem, as you can see here, is that Eva's bows have a way of coming out. Mainly that way is that she pulls on them. What's left is something that looks a little like the plumage of an exotic bird or Wolverine from the X-Men. Really, once the bows are in there is no going back for the rest of the day. And now I seem to have a new part-time job: maintaining Eva's bows. So in addition to remembering all of our usual kid stuff any time we leave the house, I now have to pack extra tiny elastics in my pocket to replace all the ones that are lost in the car or the grocery store. And, though Eva is enthusiastic about the idea of the bows, the reality of getting them is much less exciting for her, and I sometimes find myself having to sit on her or give her a very serious talking-to in order to get her to hold still long enough to have the bows done or re-done.

At some point, I have to ask myself what part of the bows are for her benefit and what part are really just about me? I remember being the childhood victim of some seriously elaborate hairstyling, and I don't want to be the kind of mom who cares more about how my kids look than how they feel. But there is just something in me that cannot abide going into the library with a toddler who has hair like Don King. And so we embark on what will surely be a couple decades of struggle between us. Today her hair preferences tend to be based on a moment's whim or her hair-twirling convenience, but surely someday Eva will want to have some kind of hair or clothes that are embarrassing to me as her parent. Will I be able to put my money where my mouth is and focus on her character instead of her appearance? Can I make a positive contribution to how she feels about how she looks, or will she end up someday telling her therapist about how her mom made her wear these awful BOWS as a child...

Excuses, Excuses...

2010-03-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

As we rode home from church tonight, Kyle and I could hear Daniel in the backseat saying "Excuse me... Excuse me... Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me."

Daniel is almost four years old. We were lamenting today that we still have to remind him to say please when he asks for something, to wash his hands after he goes to the bathroom (he's really sneaky at trying to avoid that one), and to say thank you when people give him gifts or compliments. We wondered together when these habits will finally become ingrained enough in him that he will do them without prompting...

But one time, probably almost two years ago, one of us told him he should say "excuse me" when he farts or burps. We have never had to remind him again. He remembers every time. Every single time.

Local

2010-03-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

We have been living in Kirksville for a long time. I realized recently that in just a few months I'll hit the 15th anniversary of the day I moved here. Though we initially came as students, and decided to stay here to work at the university, in the end we continue to live here even though neither of us is going to or working for Truman anymore. So, basically, we're what the students would call "townies." That seems weird.

This fact seems almost deniable most of the time, but the other day I realized that we're more entrenched in the local culture than I give us credit for. An old college friend was saying on facebook that his first date with his now-wife took place with a group of us at a local diner called the Northtown Cafe. We had gone there as a joke before a sorority date party, a bunch of college kids dressed for a jungle-themed event, dining among the blue-haired regulars in the dirty, smoke-dense restaurant. Several former Truman students commented on the post, remarking about the disgusting nature of that restaurant, and other Kirksville establishments in general.

10 years ago, I might have agreed with them. But now I found myself defending the Northtown Cafe, wanting to explain how it's moved to a new, cleaner building with more light and no smoke. The handwritten menus and mismatched floral plates that seemed lowbrow in college seem pretty charming now. Rosie's Northtown Cafe serves the best, cheapest breakfast in town, and people who live here know you can eat there without wading through throngs of hungover college students looking down their noses at you.

But what got me thinking about this whole thing was that I bought some dog food yesterday. When we originally got our dogs, we figured out that the cheapest place to buy good dog food was the local feed store instead of a supermarket or other chain store. The feed store has changed owners and locations several times in the years since, but we've continued to follow it around because going there makes me feel happy.

First off, the slogan of the Kirksville Feed & More, displayed in the front window, is "if it eats we feed it." How can I NOT like a place that's as to-the-point as that? Secondly, the owners are friendly. They never make me feel like I don't belong there, even though I'm the only one wearing loafers instead of coveralls or boots. They carry the giant bag of dog food to my car for me and always thank me profusely for my business. Farmers I pass in the parking lot always greet me, and comment on the weather or one of my kids. The best thing, though, is that there are usually a few guys standing around in the shop discussing things like which wild animal is overpopulated this season and creating a nuisance to their herds. They all seem to know each other and each others' business, and say things like "how's that sick calf o' yours?" I don't know the first thing about farming, except that it takes an amount of work I cannot comprehend. I will never be a local in the sense that these men are, but for just a moment I feel like one. And this is a strangely good feeling.

Though I sometimes yearn for proximity to things like Target and Starbucks, there is something cold and corporate about those places that doesn't give me the feeling I get at Rosie's or the Kirksville Feed & More. We like to say that living in a small town is good because we avoid rush-hour traffic and crime, but it's also good because of the feeling of belonging, and of investment that comes from buying from people you know.

So I'll admit it. I am a townie. But we really prefer to be called locals.

The Sun Will Come Out.... Today?

2010-03-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

No, this is not a post about Kirksville finally digging itself out from under our most recent 9-inch snowfall (though the past few days of sunny weather have been great; who knew 38 degrees could feel so warm?).

This is a post about time, and how difficult it seems to be for us to explain time to a preschooler. Here is a composite of many conversations that have taken place in our house recently:

"Am I going to Gus's house today?"
"Nope. Tomorrow."
"Is tomorrow today?"
"Nope. Tomorrow will be what it is when we go to sleep and wake up in the morning."
"Is it tomorrow when it gets dark outside?"
"Nope. That's tonight."
"Tonight... Is today tonight?"
"When it gets dark later today, it will be tonight."
"Is tonight tomorrow?"

And so on and so forth for several minutes, over and over. Every single day. Honestly, probably every single day with each parent. Don't even get me started about the questions identifying which day of the week it is today, and when it will be Tuesday, and what day it will be when we go to church/school/whatever special event he's looking forward to that week.

I never realized before now how very difficult it is to explain time without using other similarly-misunderstood time words. We have tried getting out a calendar, pointing to days, explaining what day it is, where tomorrow is, where Tuesday is, when he will go to church next, etc. to no avail. We have tried pointing out different times of the day, commenting on how it is now "this afternoon" or "tonight." Still nothing. It makes me wonder what Piaget would say about preschoolers' cognitive readiness for something as abstract as time (guess who I'm teaching about in my Lifespan Development class this week?)...

The end of most of these time conversations, though, usually comes down to this:

"When do I get to watch a case movie? I think I want to watch my car movie next."

What he usually wants to know is the next time he gets a full 90-minute video instead of just the 20-30 minutes of Sesame Street we limit him to on school days. It may start out with questions about when he'll see his buddies or go to school, but it usually ends with television.

Should I worry about that? Maybe I'll think about that tomorrow.

Whoa!

2010-02-28T19:46:00.000-08:00

Our daughter Eva, who is about 21 months old now, is one tough cookie. The other night, while standing on a stool in the kitchen watching me cook dinner, she fell off the stool backward, landed on her bottom, fell back to hit her head, then rolled the rest of the way over. Her reaction was to stand up, look around, and say "Whoa!" like a little Keanu Reeves... Then climb right back up. This is frequently her reaction to this type of spill, which I'd estimate she takes several times per week.

Other people notice this as well; the other night we were at a gathering where another kid whacked her on the head with a plastic stick-like object a couple of times- and she didn't cry. A few minutes later she fell on some stairs and hit her head, only to get up and go right back to playing. One of the other parents at this event commented that she's like that Timex watch campaign- "takes a licking and keeps on ticking."

I think Eva's attitude makes her conveniently low-maintenance. My friend Madeline says it makes her the awesomest little girl ever. Assuming she makes it through childhood without some kind of major head trauma, maybe she could grow up to be a great boxer or distance-triathlete or something.

But that's only half of the story. This morning I had nursery duty at church, and it so happened that Eva was the only child present. The other worker went on to the service, and Eva and I were left alone to play during church. With full run of the nursery, Eva commandeered all the "babies" in the toy box. She was quite the little mommy, changing one baby's clothes, throwing another in the crib for a nap, all the while talking to them in her little toddler gibberish. She had me pour a bowl of Cheerios, then placed one baby facedown in the bowl for some breakfast. After attending to the other "infants," Eva returned to help this baby eat, cramming cereal pieces into the baby's little plastic lips and giving her drinks from her sippy cup of milk.

As I watched this, I started thinking about how great it is to be a girl. Though research suggests Eva's science teachers might subtly discriminate against her, and that she may someday make less than her male peers, there is something I've always appreciated about the way we allow girls to be both tough and sweet. She can play sports and wear a dress all in the same day, and nobody will bat an eye. Our son Daniel is more emotionally expressive than Eva, and cries a lot when he's hurt even a little bit. He will spend his childhood being encouraged to "toughen up" or discouraged by well-meaning men from playing with dolls or anything remotely pink at all. We just don't allow boys the freedom we allow girls in their gender roles. It makes me a little sad for Daniel, but hopeful that we can stay open-minded as parents and allow both our kids the freedom to be who they want to be, at least with us.

Blocked

2010-02-25T20:06:00.000-08:00

I like to think of myself as being fairly organized and a reasonably neat housekeeper. So that is why this little green block under Eva's crib has me in such a state of cognitive dissonance. See, this block has been on the floor, just barely under the edge of Eva's crib, for several weeks (a month or two?). I see it every time I sit on the floor in her room to change her diaper, read her a book, or wrap her in her blanket for a nap or bedtime. I think to myself, "Man, that block is still there. I should really pick that up." But I don't.

I have helped Eva pick up her room countless times since this block first appeared. I have put away stacks of books, done a weekly sheet-changing to the bed, even moved the rug to vacuum. I have reorganized our kitchen, steam-cleaned our carpets, but somehow it never seems convenient to me to pick up this block. I tell myself that I'll have to bend WAY over and reach under there and then open BOTH the drawer containing the blocks AND the lid to the box, and then it just seems like an inconvenient time for this whole block-picking-up thing.

Part of me wonders if I am subconsciously engaging in some sort of housekeeping chicken, waiting for Kyle or one of the kids to pick up the block first. They have messed up and cleaned up Eva's room dozens of times, also missing this block every night. How can this be? I mean really; they've even had that set of blocks out, and this one's not very far under the crib. They could have easily picked it up.

The thing is, it seems like there is always one thing like this in my life; one nagging thing that would be so easy to just take care of and be done with, but that I put off, over and over, carrying it to the next day's "To-Do" list like a remainder in some elementary-school math problem. I spend most of my summer putting off cleaning the garage. When I was working full-time, it was writing letters of recommendation for students. Last year, I left a pair of Kyle's pants hanging on our closet doorknob, waiting for a new button, for almost the entire regular school calendar (and even then it was Kyle's mom who fixed them in the end). It's like something in me needs to have something left undone. And I wonder, do other people do this kind of thing? Or do normal people put off actually unpleasant tasks instead of just trivial ones like I seem to?

Eventually, though, I always break down and do whatever it is that I've been avoiding. I never know what it is that gets me over the hump. Too much caffeine one morning? A particularly slow day in the Sterup house? Neither of these seemed to be the case this evening, but I finally did it. I reached under there, grabbed the block, and put it in its place. In my approach I also identified a couple of other things, way far back under the crib, and figured I'd better just go ahead and get those out while I was feeling all motivated about it.

The whole thing makes me wonder what morning will bring. I can sleep well tonight, basking in the relief of a task completed. Now that I've picked up the block it seems like I have a lot less to do tomorrow. Who knows what I'll accomplish?

I Have a Good Idea

2010-02-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

So our son Daniel has a number of catch phrases he's picked up recently, one of which is "I have a good idea...". The thing is, about 99% of the time, you can be sure that the very next thing out of his mouth will be something that is decidedly NOT a good idea. For instance:
-"We should skip taking baths tonight."
-"We could have m&m's for lunch."
-"I could skip my nap and watch a video instead."

Recently, I have been thinking about all the funny things our kids say and do, and all the family and friends we have living so far away, and thinking that I might like to start a blog. Somehow I feel more comfortable writing on a blog than I do commenting on Facebook, as here people only have to read my ramblings if they choose to click on the link, put me on their RSS feed, or whatever.

The thing is, that like many well-intentioned folks out there, I often start things with an enthusiastic bang, only to let them fizzle out after a period of weeks or months. To look around on the internet, it seems that blogging is one of those things that, like dieting or flossing your teeth, seems too easy to let slip. Knowing myself, I fear that I will fall into this trap, and will kick myself for wasting a whole nap-time setting this thing up in the first place. But I also know that there are many days when it would be so nice to just write my thoughts down, and goodness knows that in my time as a therapist I certainly recommended writing to my clients enough...

So I've decided to start, and to keep my fingers crossed that this blog won't be a good idea in the sense that Daniel has good ideas.