Ten on Tuesdays: the Summer Bucket List

So it seems the more time I spend on the computer at work, the less time I want to spend on the computer playing around at home. Funny how that works. I love my job and I really love what I’m doing right now. I’m learning how to use Drupal for website building. I already knew a good bit about Wordpress and web design in general from personal projects, but Drupal is a whole new ball of wax. It’s been an exciting challenge and I’ve really enjoyed tackling it. The end result, though, is that my brain is basically fried at the end of the day. I just need to not think at all.

My list this week is my summer bucket list. I have a few things I want to do this summer with my family and I’ve decided to call it our summer bucket list.

1. Fossil hunting.
2. Flying kites.
3. Hike part of the Appalachian Trail.
4. A day at the beach.
5. Visit a historic home.
6. Go berry picking.
7. Have a picnic lunch.
8. Teach the kids something crafty.
9. Go to a parade.
10. Take lots of pictures. (This may sound like cheating, but I’ve been in a creative low and not taking as many photos as I normally do. This is just a reminder to me)

Happy Easter!

Birthday Girl…

My second born child and first born girl turned nine yesterday. She’s a pretty cool kid. Super smart with a total oddball, slightly dark sense of humor. I’m not necessarily claiming credit for either thing, but you know, if the shoe fits. (Totally kidding – I have no idea how my kid ended up being so comfortable in her own skin. It just sort of happened)

Presents!

Cake! It’s a boxed mix lemon cake with gourmet swiss meringue buttercream frosting. Yeah, I’m full of contradictions like that.

A headband from Grandmom and Granddad!

Her first American Girl Doll, McKenna!

And last but not least, cake!

Accidentally crunchy…

I’m accidentally cloth diapering. Yes, my youngest is three and a half and only potty-trained if she’s completely naked. Not the most practical definition of potty-trained. Yes, I’m a stay-at-home mom who can’t seem to get her kid potty-trained. Girls are easier? My ass. My youngest two girls have been the hardest. This one? If I hadn’t already called the baby making quits, I would now (and not just because of the potty-training – Viv’s a challenge all around).

I was buying Pull-Ups last week – for the last time, I promised myself (too bad Viv didn’t similarly promise me)–  when I decided to look at some cloth options. I found a couple of affordable pull-up-like cloth diapers and bought them to test out. I actually wanted to cloth diaper this child the whole time but living in a 250 year old house with dicey plumbing scared me off. We started this morning. So far, she thinks they’re diapers and she’s cool with that.

Between this and my mostly organic garden, I’m getting downright crunchy. Watch out – my candy coating might even disappear.

Just because…

This photo makes me laugh. It’s so…them, right now. Mr. T is all “whatever.” Miss G is a smiling ray of sunshine. Miss S is distracted by something. The Viv is exerting her independence (it was about 75 degrees out and she found mittens and insisted on wearing and either I’m getting soft in my old age or this is a battle I never would have fought, so I let her.). It’s also taken in the shed on our farm, which is very us right now.

Years from now, this picture will say more than it knows. Twenty years from now, my kids might say “in 2011, Mom was an obsessive photographer finding fabulous light. Her cell phone in its cute purple case is sitting behind the kids. Americans still used fossil fuels to power our vehicles. Can you believe it?”

Who knows? I think about the photos from twenty years ago and all that’s changed. And all that hasn’t. I took pictures of everything – big scenes, little details. I was the memory keeper. Funny how some things don’t change.

My next book...

I'm debating starting the books by Lauren Willig. The first one is the Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I think there are four or five others. I saw one at my long leisurely (kidless) trip to the library last week, but since I knew there were others, I thought I'd do some research and see if I needed to read them in order. I have yet to do that research, so I don't know if that will go on my list.

I finally came up on some of my paperbackswap wish lists, so once those books come in (Four Dukes and a Devil, Sleepless in Scotland and How To Tempt A Duke), I'll have a lot of reading to do. The kids go back to school next week, so maybe I'll have time. Not likely, actually. For the first couple of weeks, it will be as rough on me getting back into the routine as it is on them.

This is our last gasp of summer vacation. We're trying to make the most of it. We went to the Smithsonian last week, something we'd been planning to do all summer but never got around to. We still have to go to Hersheypark, but I think that might have to be a September weekend. This week is dentist for the kids, visiting my family and school shopping with Grandmom (my mom).

Then we have back to school events and end of summer parties. It's going to be a busy couple of weeks, so maybe my reading list will need to be put on hold.

UPDATE: I decided to order the Secret History of the Pink Carnation with my paperbackswap credits. If I like it, I'll either order more (several were available, unlike most books I want which are wishlisted so long I'll get them in the next decade) or through my library (which for some reason only carries the later ones).

Freaking kids shows...

I just took a step back today and thought about the shows my almost 4 year old is watching. God they're crap. I mean - don't get me wrong. I think most of them are adorable and the moral lessons and imagination they've bred into my lovely Miss S are priceless. But Dora doesn't teach the freaking ABCs - does she? That's what we watch a lot of. And Olivia. And Max and Ruby. All just cute shows. No ABCs or 123s.

Rethinking a lot of things right now. I'm trying to get myself more motivated to keep the house clean on a daily basis. I do fine with the big stuff - washing floors and scrubbing bathrooms. It's the clutter that gets me. But I'm having a good two weeks. Hoping to keep it up for a while. Reading to Miss S - playing with Baby V. I feel good. Then my evil temper will show up (I'm - like a dimwit - slowly starting to associate those with PMS - who'd have thunk?)

Freaking weather...

It doesn't rain the whole freaking month of April, but we've exceeded the monthly average for May already. On the 15th. And it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. The best part? Both my kids in school have field trips tomorrow. The preschool trip is a reschedule from last Friday, when it also rained its ass off.

And I still have a cold. This is three solid weeks of a cold. WTF? I actually did break down and go to the doctor - a sure sign I'm not feeling good at all. It pretty much takes months of severe pain or a limb hanging off my body at an odd angle to make me concede that I might need medical attention. But something about being pregnant, and especially this far along, makes me a little more cautious. The last freaking thing I want is to be pushing out a kid with this much sinus pressure. Maybe I should have planned my kids to NOT be born in the middle of allergy season. Oh, wait, I have year-round allergies? I remember that now.

Right now it's absolutely gorgeous outside. So lovely, in fact, that I think the weathermen are completely lying to us all. No way is it going to rain in a few hours. We took advantage of this to walk Mr T. to school. We're close enough to the school that we don't get a bus, but far enough away to make it a pain to walk all the time, especially if there's any sort of weather out there (rain, sleet, snow - wait, they cancel school for snow forecast, not snow, cold, hot, etc.). We pretty much walk only in the afternoons and only if the temperature is in the 70s and only then if it's also sunny. Since the weathermen seem to think it's going to rain this afternoon and I was up early this morning, we took a rare morning walk.

Why rare? Because I. AM. NOT. A. MORNING. PERSON. At all. Just the three minute drive to Miss G's school leads to enough cursing that I find myself saying "Don't repeat what Mommy just said" an awful lot. And as much as I'd like to blame pregnancy hormones (they do make it a smidge worse, but not THAT much), I'm just a bitch in the mornings. I totally bit Mr. T's head off on Monday morning. Although I still get mad at what he was so concerned about. He actually wanted to know why I let Miss G in the car first. Wha? Because she sits farther from the door. No, he meant last year when we drove to South Carolina. Oh, nuh-UH.

Just when I was starting to sleep...

I had finally gotten a few things taken care of that were keeping me awake at night for a month straight. I could fall asleep easily, but I'd wake up around 1 a.m. and not be able to fall back to sleep. It got to be a pattern after a week or so. Then I just got used to it and felt like crap when I woke up if I actually did manage to stay asleep. But I got over it and was sleeping every night, the whole night through, for at least a week.

Then Tom calls me and tells me the job at his old middle school is open next year and how did I feel about making the move that we'd talked about a few months ago, though not seriously. Turns out I was much more into than I thought I'd be. It would mean moving two hours from where we currently live. From my spoiled suburban existence to a rural small town. I foresee some culture shock. If I don't see what I want in stock at Target, well, I can just drive five miles to the next one. Neither one is more than 3 miles from my house.

But the big thing is leaving my family. I have a huge, very, very, VERY close-knit family. And we'll be moving two hours away from them. I just don't know if I can handle that part. But we will have the support network of my husband's family, at least in theory.

There are very few bads and so many goods to this situation that I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. And it freaks me out. I hate the idea of moving, especially with the kids in school. But all signs seem to be pointing us in that direction.

Please tell me small towns aren't as nosy as television makes them seem. I'm an anonymous surbanite and I like it that way.

Daylight Saving Time has messed us up...

Mainly me, I'm sad to say. The kids are doing okay, especially Mr. T who doesn't seem to sleep anymore (and trust me, that it is NOT a good thing). I've had to wake the girls up every morning this week. But I'm normally up and alert (though I stay in bed) around 7. This week I haven't even opened my eyes before 7:45. Probably the pregnancy insomnia isn't helping. I fall asleep easily at night, but wake up around 1 a.m. (usually to pee) and can't get back to sleep until 6 a.m. or so. And then I get a nice, sound hour of sleep. And as bad as that sounds, the nights when I don't wake up are actually worse. For some reason I wake up feeling even more tired than the nights when I toss and turn.

I'm really hoping this isn't a sign of what this baby will be like on the outside. My other three were mainly good sleepers, so I really don't think I can handle one of those non-sleeping babies.

Like trying to figure out what to have for dinner...

"What do you want to have for dinner?"
"I don't know. What do you want to have?"
"I don't know. What are you in the mood for?"

That's how my kids have been about their Halloween costumes. Completely indecisive. Miss G says something different every single time someone asks her. Miss S is still easy. She just says she's a "frincess." That we can do. I even have a ready-made Cinderella from when Miss G was that age. Perfect. Mr. T wants to be Spiderman. But without the mask. He hates having things on his head, always has. Of course, there's still 29 days for them to all change their minds.

This is why I'm not sewing costumes this year. I did two years ago and they turned out very nicely. But in the long run, I may be crafty, but I'm also pretty pragmatic. Sometimes buying off the rack, while cheap-looking, is just more cost and time effective. If I can't find T H E dream costume, then we can talk making one (like two years ago, I couldn't find Belle for Miss G). But if it's made on a shelf for a reasonable price, I'm probably gonna buy it. Same goes for curtains, clothing, etc. I only make what I can't find elsewhere, which does happen since I tend to get these artistic visions in my head that I can't always find in real life.

So what's everyone actually going to be? Ask me on October 30.

Quirky kids...quirky football season...

I sometimes wonder if I, being the quirky and appreciative of quirks person than I am, am a little too indulgent of my children's odd little habits. Like Mr. T likes things arranged a certain way on his bed. He always sits in the same spot on the sofa every morning. Just a bunch of little things that makes him a twinge obsessive. Miss G has her weird little things (like her Fran Drescher laugh that no one I know does, nor have we ever watched the Nanny in her lifetime, so I have no idea where she picked it up). I'm sure in time Miss S will pick up her own little quirks. And I'll encourage them. I like individuality.

Sometimes it seems Mr. T is a little too rigid in his habits and that laugh of Miss G's can really grate and I wonder if I indulge this too much because I like quirky types. Maybe I should be discouraging these things. It goes against everything I believe in, though. I guess really what I need to do is figure out how to encourage their unique qualities while helping them fit those into an often narrow-minded society (no offense, society).

Seriously, though, do not speak to me about Notre Dame. Unless it is to commiserate. In which case, dude. What's going on? ND and Michigan playing for their first win of the season? Yikes. College football is all shook up. My preseason picks to win it all haven't won a game yet. I really though Michigan had it this year. Returning some really quality players, fired up over their losses last season, but no. They had to go and lose my dollar I bet my brother. His preseason pick (Texas) is still in it, but not without some close calls. I'm kind of liking LSU for the national championship. I hate to say it after the way they beat up on ND last year, but they're looking just as strong this year. Some excellent games have been played though. Double and triple overtime? Awesome.

Gender constructing...

Back before I had kids and was stuck in post adolescent idealistic phase (post regarding quoteable movies, like Clueless, to follow), I thought that all you had to do was buy your kids all the boy and girl toys and they'd like everything. I truly believed that we made girls like babies by buying them babies. I had major moral objections to the girl aisles being pink and boy aisles being full of violent predators. I questioned my grandmother on the choice of a toy broom set for one of my cousins. "Why don't you buy that for one of the boys?"

Turns out sometimes boys really just like boy toys. The gender constructing thing is more after the fact than a marketing ploy. My girls are into babies. My son is into cars and trucks. And since I have both male and female children, we have ALL the toys (it feels like a freaking toy store most of the time). They could choose anything. Sometimes Miss G likes to play with cars and dinosaurs. Sometimes Mr. T likes to take care of a baby doll (only for a minute or two, though).

And so now both Miss G and Mr. T are playing with Barbies. Oddly, Miss G is Ken and Mr. T is Barbie/Mom. Barbie/Mom thinks they need to leave their baby with its aunt, but Ken thinks they should just leave it home alone.

On Children's Television...

I admit it. I'm a total television addict. In a totally dorky way, though. My favorite channels are the History Channel, Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV and DIYNetwork. I only watch a select number of shows on the big networks (House, Bones, Scrubs, My Name is Earl...I can't think of any others. That might be it).

So it seems only natural that my kids would occasionally watch tv. No more than half an hour per day, right? Yeah, sorry, that's not going to happen. First of all, I'm not a morning person, so the hour it takes me to wake up is tv time. And then my almost 2 year old likes to turn the TV on. So I make sure it's tuned to something I don't mind them seeing. Like public television or other programming designed to be educational for toddlers and preschoolers. There's just so much quality television for the under-5 set that I can't see letting them watch shows not intended for little kids (like Spongebob or Rugrats - is that even on anymore?). My only exception is Jimmy Neutron, which is usually clean and promotes child geniuses. Can't argue with that.

Unfortunately for me, I am unable to tune out some of the weirdness of kids shows. Like the Berenstain Bears always makes me question what Mama and Papa were thinking when they named Brother. What if they hadn't had another kid? For that matter, wasn't it rather presumptuous of their parents to name them Mama and Papa as infants?

Oh, there's more coming another day...

Can you see me smirking?

I totally am. Do you know why? Because my husband, who for five years has mocked me every time I watch American Idol, actually offered to put it on last night. And watched with me. I'm sure if I suggest that he likes it too he'll tell me he's just watching to stay current with his students or for watercooler-type chats or something. But at least now I won't have to DVR it and watch it the next day.

I've been trying to post some thoughts with an accompanying picture through Picasa, but it's not working for me. And I'm too lazy to resize the picture to upload it directly through Blogger. Just imagine a baguette, okay? I'm a bread lover. I get this from my mother. From her I learned that it's not just how good a restaurant's food is, it's also how good their bread selection is. When I was in college and couldn't afford a restaurant that actually gave you free bread, I fell in love with the baguettes at the grocery store that was within walking distance of the campus. Anytime I needed groceries, I would buy a baguette and start eating it the minute I left the store.

A few years ago, they built one of those same grocery stores just up the street from me (seriously, like not a whole mile away). And I resumed my habit of buying a baguette and eating it in the car on the way home. Now it's turned into a tradition - one child will notice which grocery store we're going to and immediately ask if we're buying French bread. If I say yes, a cheer erupts. No sooner do we leave the store with our baguette than they start asking for a piece. I rip the end off and save it for myself (sorry, kids - I love you and all, but that's my favorite part) then rip off pieces for each kid. Even Baby S, who starts grabbing at the bread from the seat of cart as we leave the store.

So my point about all that was more about creating memories than bread, believe it or not. It's one of those things that makes me conscious of what my kids might remember. I hope this is one of those things. A few weeks ago Tom and I popped some popcorn and ate it in bed watching Mythbusters (yeah, we're dorks, so what?). Two little heads popped in the door. "We smell popcorn." Giggle. So we let them come in and eat popcorn with us. Afterwards, I said to Tom - "that's probably something they're remember one day." That's what it's about. Making memories.