Category: Kids
Wednesday, Jul 6, 2011 | Kids, Money, Mothering, Parenting, Work |
My girl takes after me. I like to write my ideas down. I have to write my ideas down, more precisely. It’s my version of “thinking out loud,” and I recommend it to my older children when they are having trouble with anything: mean siblings, unfair situations, anger management, you name it.
Yesterday, I took my own advice. The big kids are at overnight camp, and the little kids are at a dance camp during the mornings, just for this week; and I have no projects on the go. I’ve completed the triathlon, and the related Chatelaine.com blog. I am waiting for line edits on The Juliet Stories. I seem unwilling to commit to a new character and a new story, just yet. I am at the crux of something. Restless. Curious. So I spent the morning talking to myself in terrible printing (barely legible, even to me) inside the pages of a handy notebook.
Did anything come of it? But of course! If not exactly peace of mind, then peace of purpose.
My mother has a phrase she uses often: She likes to “stay open to the possibilities.” And while there’s plenty to recommend the idea, I’ve decided that rather than staying open to the possibilities, I prefer to pursue, invite, and seek out possibilities–and when the time is right, to choose and to commit, which is kind of the opposite of staying open to more and more and more. Commitment means closing off possibilities–at least, some of them. But it also means believing in the possibilities before you and available to you, and not forever hoping that something better may be waiting around the corner. It’s kind of like getting married. When I commit, I like to get it right. That comes with a certain amount (okay, a giant unreasonable amount) of agonizing and analyzing.
But I’m seeing that commitment can be lighter than that, too. I have before me a flexible year. Certain elements are inflexible: my youngest is still a preschooler for whom I am the primary caregiver. But depending on my income generation, there are childcare options to supplement my responsibilities. And I am at home. I can juggle. I’m not tied to the structured hours of a 9-5 job.
One thing became very clear during yesterday’s brainstorming: I am finding more satisfaction from expanding my working life–my public life, essentially. To connect, to be engaged with the world–it’s what I want.
Something clear to me at this exact moment, as my littlest leans his face onto my leg and says, “I’m bored!” is that I’m not a great mother when I’m typing on the computer or trying to think. The balance … is so imperfect.
Thursday, Jun 30, 2011 | Kids, School, Summer |
… of school, of course!
This is the latest that I remember the kids having to go: right until the last day of June. No wonder AppleApple threw her backpack aside and her arms in the air with a whoop of joy!
We said goodbye. Fooey has had the same teacher for her two kindergarten years, and what a loving and caring teacher she has been for my girl, watching her grow and nurturing her all the way along. “She’s half mine, you know,” her teacher said to me, as we said goodbye. AppleApple has also had the same teacher for two years. She wondered, a little bit teary-eyed: “Why is it so much harder saying goodbye to a wonderful teacher after two years than after just one?”
Well, then. Let’s get this summer started. As Albus would say (in truly the sweetest way possible, every morning to me): “Smell ya later, school!”
Sunday, Jun 26, 2011 | Baking, House, Kids, Organizing, Play, Summer |
Yesterday, I got a taste of summer. A whiff. A tingle of this is summer. (See above).
Today, I am getting prepared. There are four more days of school, and then we shall hurtle headlong into the beach, overnight camp, strawberry picking, food preservation, swimming, and a multitude of mini-adventures … such is the hope.
So, I started today in the kitchen (can I return happily to the kitchen after losing all interest this past month? Well, I can try). I baked a batch of bread; didn’t take long, actually. I did dishes. The living-room is moderately tidy. Piles of papers have been sorted and recycled (more remain; and more are on their way home from school, no doubt).
AppleApple helped me make a giant (messy) poster of ideas for summer activities: our categories are Plans (dates for things we’ve already signed up for); Away (ie. zoo, beach, Children’s Museum); and At Home (ie. canning and freezing, making magazines/comics, playing with friends).
Kevin is in the middle of painting us a chalkboard wall: for messages, reminders, planning, and scribbles. Photos to come. (Inspired by this friend).
I am defrosting the freezers. One down, two to go.
And the kids have spent hours together in the backyard, even though it isn’t particularly warm or sunny out. The sidewalk is being chalked. A rung on the climber has been broken. The potatoes are thriving. Wouldn’t it be great to have a treehouse? A trampoline? Another tier of garden beds? Chickens? A dog? I’m looking around and seeing lots of potential.
Friday, Jun 24, 2011 | House, Kids |
Because, though I could look at those triathlon photos forever (and probably will), the moment has passed, and life goes on, even if it appears frozen here in Blogland.
So … in other news: we got a new couch! (Pictured above). We lucked on it half-price back in April, ordered it, and kind of forgot about it, the way one does, until the company called to say it was coming. Now. Queue frantic clearing of living-room. And then queue um, where was this supposed to go, honey, do you remember? Because we’d originally intended it to replace the ten-year-old sofa (aka gymnasium), now sway-backed and spring-popping. But the new couch looked too lovely and clean, and besides, the living-room lacked seating; wasn’t that the whole point of the new couch? So we spent our Friday evening huffing items back and forth (books! shelves! toys!), removing a few, dragging the piano to a new and starring location, hiding the communal computer (somewhat), and keeping both couches. Almost got it finished before Kevin left for his Friday night soccer game.
Right away, the kids started arguing over WHO GOT TO PLAY THE PIANO. I kid you not. I had the kitchen timer going.
The new lay-out has more reading areas. More seating in front of bright windows. More seating, period. And the piano is getting played far more frequently.
Though this is not meant to be a commentary on Boys versus Girls, or Sons versus Daughters, or Mars versus Venus, here’s what the boys were doing in the newly laid-out living-room the other evening.
And here’s what daughter # 1 was doing.
And daughter # 2.
This is not to suggest that daughters don’t wrestle. But whenever daughter # 1 enters into the fray, holding a pillow, with a gleam in her eye, I shut the show down. I don’t think this is sexist, really, I don’t. It’s because she aims with intent. Somehow, the boys wrestle without doing each other any harm. But AppleApple comes out swinging. She wants to Win. (Maybe I am parenting her differently. What do you think?).
Friday, Jun 10, 2011 | Chores, Kids, Mothering, The Juliet Stories, Work, Writing |
Ever feel like you’re just not into the domestic necessities? I can usually find some smidgen to enjoy in some portion of the daily chores that Must Be Done. But not right now.
Right now, due to soccer-all-the-time, I am washing dishes in a grumpy stupor after 9pm. “Remember when I got to wash dishes right after supper while listening to ‘As It Happens’?” I said to Kevin last night, who was also in the kitchen, putting together lunches for school. “Who knew that was such a treat?”
And hanging laundry–an often peaceful activity, a moment of quiet in a noisy day–right now, feels like a relentless intrusion on my time. There’s so much of it and so many stages to the doing of it: gathering, washing, carrying the basket up and down stairs, hanging inside or outside, gathering, folding. The only thing I refuse to do is to put away the stacks of clothes neatly piled and arranged from youngest to oldest, on my bed. C’mon. It’s the least they can do.
Even cooking is not drawing me these days. I haven’t baked bread in over a week. I’ve been stocking up at the half-off shelf at our nearest grocery store (and because our grocery store is frequented by a lot of students, the half-off bread is usually the best they sell: multi-grain or spelt or Red Fife wheat).
I haven’t baked a cookie, square, or cake in ages. I offered my two youngest a half-bag of cheesies to snack on while we sat waiting in the hallway for AppleApple to be done her final piano lesson. I’d assumed we’d be alone, because the music school is pretty much shut down, but of course there was a mother across from us, watching my offspring coat themselves in sticky orange powder. I pretended no shame.
Maybe I wasn’t even pretending, come to think of it.
I am consumed, right now, by two major projects. One is the triathlon, which will happen next weekend (not this one). I am training heavily, and it is eating a great deal of my time, mentally and physically. What I’ll do after it is over, I just cannot fathom. I can’t really think that far. I love the early mornings, but they take a toll. I would like to get together with friends and enjoy a drink of an evening, again, for example. But meantime, I am aimed like an arrow at a target, with a focus I just can’t turn off.
My other major target, on which I feel just as significantly and undistractedly aimed, is my Juliet Stories, several of which I am reworking in quite radical ways. I am rolling with ideas, especially after a conversation this morning with my editor, and trying to be patient and to work within the limits of the time that is put aside for writing work. I am grateful to Kevin, who is taking over everything this weekend, so that I can write.
And so the kids are eating cheesies, and I am resenting the laundry, and we are doing a lot of last-minute barbequeing.
I just realized something. It’s not pretending. There’s no shame. I’ve lost whatever guilt I once had, as a mother, about pursuing interests that don’t revolve around my children and my household. Right now, I am wired tight as can be, focused, excited, energized, exhausted, stretched, and it’s all good.
Wednesday, Jun 8, 2011 | Kids, Music, Summer, Swimming |
Borrowed wetsuit. Climbing in and zipping up. Even the ten-year-old is impressed with the super-hero get-up. 7:30pm, Monday.
In the lake. Taking the wetsuit for a spin. The water is mucky brown and thick with sediment. The sky and trees, perfect. 7:45, Monday.
At the park for soccer practice. Glad it’s within biking distance. A tree she can climb. Mother reading on picnic blanket only wishes the mosquitos hadn’t found her and told all their friends. 8:15pm, Tuesday.
Piano plus soccer uniform = unplanned post-game down-time. He’s not practicing (lessons are over for the summer); he’s making music. 9pm, Tuesday.
Long evenings are short-lived, in our portion of the hemisphere, and we are filling up the extra light with outdoor activities. Arriving home after 9pm with wide-awake children is taking a toll on my early morning training, and perhaps also on my midday thinking, but I’m going with the pull of the season. And the pull of older children with their own schedules and interests: soccer soccer and more soccer. We plan to head back to the lake this evening, this time with friends and a picnic. The kids can cool off in the water. And I hope to swim farther, this time, be braver, with an extra set of eyes on me. Race day is in less that two weeks: in the same lake pictured above.
