Little Men of Mine
Monday, July 31, 2006
Another Monday Funday
Today we took the kids to a sprinkler park, as it was set to reach 100 degrees here. This time it was four moms and 14 kids, but more joined us for lunch, and we descended on Subway with 22 people. We have to go somewhere different each time because I don't think we're welcome back many places after we hit them with our big obnoxious crowd. But today was a little different because the Subway we visited is owned by one of the moms who was with us. So she called ahead and told them to reserve the back dining room for us, and we had our own, confined space. For once we didn't have to worry about disturbing other patrons with our burping contests (the 8-11 year old boys) and food flinging (the 2-3 year olds)!The thing I love about this group is that, with all the diverse ages of the kids, everybody finds someone to pal around with, take care of or turn to for diversion. Today, we had two 11-year-old girls with us, so they took over the 2-year-olds and sat at a separate table (yee-hah!). The five 3-through-6 year olds had their own table, and the bigger boys all sat together in a corner. The moms really had the chance to talk, virtually uninterrupted (except, of course, for all of the interrupting WE do over the course of a conversation).
It's hard for me to believe that I didn't even know any of these women five years ago. A neighbor recruited me to the group right around the time my oldest turned one. Now, I 'm pretty much the only one left in the moms' group from the old gang, since their kids are all in school, and mine are still little. Of course, there are new people with babies, but I really only see them at our weekly library get-togethers. I haven't become plan-something-once-a-week, sign-all-our-kids-up-for-the-same-team-so-we-can-gab kinds of friends with the newcomers (I'm not kidding--last year we had seven 4- and 5-year-old "buddies" on the same soccer team who considered games their personal social/wrestling/goofing around time. I felt so sorry for the rest of the kids on the team who really wanted to win!).
I don't know, maybe those friendships will develop with time, but I'm really in a different place than the new moms are. Even though I still have babies, my world doesn't so much revolve around babies anymore. I've been through all those firsts three times already. My concerns and immediate goals are so different than theirs are. But on the other hand, this more experienced place is where a lot of my friends were when I started coming around, a first-time mother. And look how far we've come!
Posted by Jennifer @ 3:55 PM
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Rediscovering Youth
I've been really busy this week with my latest project for the newspaper. I conducted five more interviews (three of which were restaurants--not much to get the creative energy going there!), and wrote up three of them as well as my weekly grocery "column." So when Friday arrived and I found a big blank space on the calendar, I decided we needed to do something fun.Since it was over 90 degrees out, and I despise hot-hot weather, I thought we'd check out the pool at a neighboring community (our own local pool breathed its last last summer). I packed up the three boys, some lunches, floaties and sunscreen, and grabbed my niece (6) and nephew (8). We got there in time to get seats under a giant umbrella and then spent a blissful five hours or so splashing in the excellent pool, playing in the awesome sand area, eating sweet, drippy ice cream and enjoying each other's company. It was truly a lovely afternoon, with the exception of the nasty sunburn I sustained on my back--I did manage to slather everyone else up with sunscreen repeatedly, just not myself!
What I truly enjoyed about the day was spending the time with my niece and nephew, who are two sincerely great kids. I've seen a lot of them this summer because my brother started working from home, and they are no longer going to their babysitter's during the day. Instead, they're stuck home with their dad, who is trying to keep them sufficiently entertained while he gets his work done. He has to be on the phone a lot, and it's hard to keep them distracted and quiet, so I've been trying to have them hang out with us as much as possible.
It wasn't this way when they were littler and my kids were babies, but now it's almost like having two extra kids is no added burden! In fact, it can even make life easier. My niece and my oldest son are only a year apart, so they play together wonderfully, and even allow 3-year-old Ted to join in sometimes. My nephew is a great companion for me and likes to follow around and play with the baby. They're both courteous and respectful, and incredibly easy on the eyes. When I have them with me, it's a very strange day if at least one person doesn't comment on how beautiful they are (my SIL is hispanic, and it doesn't even seem like we could be related, they with their exotic brown skin, and us with our glow-in-the-dark pasty whiteness).
I haven't had the greatest relationship with my SIL in recent years, so I almost feel like my brother's staying home has afforded me this incredible chance to become a bigger presence in the lives of his kids. Neither of my husband's sisters have children, so these two are the only cousins my kids have. We all live in the same town and, until about a year ago when we moved, we were actually only a block apart, but rarely saw them. There's less than a month now until school starts, so I'm taking every opportunity I can find to do things with them and have fun and enable my brother to get some work done. The youth I'm rediscovering is theirs, and man, do I love them.
Posted by Jennifer @ 8:56 AM
Friday, July 21, 2006
Recycling Tip of the Week
No paper with a blank side is thrown out in our house, ever. All of a sudden, Charlie wants to draw constantly. This is the same child who never wanted to draw, color or even do crafts at school. But he's always had this insane imagination, pretending to be whoever or whatever he was into at the time. He would dress in character and even refuse to respond to us if we didn't address him as Captain Feathersword (with my husband's knit watchcap pulled over one eye to approximate a patch) or Clifford (wearing construction paper ears he made at the library) or whoever else he became on a given day.Well, now all that creativity is spilling out on paper. He "writes" entire books. The very first one was "The Crocodile Hunter's Best Adventure Ever," and it detailed the CH's travels to a faraway land where he captures a poisonous rattlesnake. The pages and pages of illustrations were accompanied by words that he would have us spell out for him so he could copy them. These days, he doesn't even bother with words--they just slow him down. Instead, once a book is completed and stapled together, he "reads" it to us.
Now Teddy is getting in on the act. This morning, the two of them were writing "letters"--pages and pages of squiggly lines that they folded up and "delivered" to me under the bathroom door while I was showering. They wrote about 50 of these in around 10 minutes. Now do you see why we never EVER throw out anything with a blank side?
So it's a good thing that I saved every single paper, notebook, syllabus and handout I have ever received from, oh, about fifth grade on. When we moved last year, I brought all of these boxes to the new house before going through them. It had seemed like such a good idea to save all of this stuff at the time. In junior high, I figured there might be something I could use in high school; my high school stuff could only benefit me in college; those college papers and notes might come in handy in graduate school; and ALL of it could be called upon in a time of need once I had a job! Yeah. Well, I went through every book and folder, and anything printed on two sides went into the recycling bin. I pulled all of the notes out of the spiral notebooks, and sold the remaining paper at a garage sale (I'm sure wishing I'd kept all that blank paper now!). Anything with a blank side went into the scrap paper basket.
I tell you, it is cracking me up to "read" Charlie's books with my old literature papers on every facing page! All of my little handwritten notes in the margins, doodles of the name of whomever I was crushing on at the time. I just *knew* I'd need all that stuff someday! I've even gone a step further and started letting him use his school papers (of course, I saved the best ones). It's neat to see the way he progressed in his second year of preschool, juxtaposed with his burgeoning art skills. Now I just need more "gallery" space in my house!
Posted by Jennifer @ 11:55 AM
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Don't I Know You From Somewhere?
This morning, I had to interview a dentist for a story in an upcoming pull-out section for our local newspaper. The thing about dentists is you have to catch them when they're not seeing patients. So we set this interview for 8:00 a.m. Now, to the average person, that's pretty early, but not so bad when you can just get up, get yourself ready and go. I, on the other hand, had to also get three little monkeys up, dressed, fed and out with enough time to drop them at my mom's and still make it to the dentist's office on time.As a rule, my Charlie (5) and Ted (3) are up first, way before I'm ready to stir, usually around 6:00 a.m. or so. Two-year old Lou is still in a crib in his own room, so he's really at my mercy, although he does sleep later anyway. This morning, just because we had somewhere to be, no one got up--I think I can honestly say that, in nearly 6 years of motherhood, that's the first time I ever woke someone up on purpose! Since they're usually duking it out over yogurt while I'm trying to sneak in an extra 15 minutes of sleep, I really had to fight the urge to have a loud argument with myself until they couldn't help but yell at me, "Do you have any idea what time it is? Normal people are still sleeping!"
Somehow I managed to get us all out of the house in record time and with only one of them grumbling. I dropped everyone at Grandma's, made it to the dentist's office 10 minutes early, sat in my car for another five so I wouldn't be *too* early, and went in only to find out that he wasn't there yet. After 15 minutes, the receptionist came to get me, apologizing because he'd actually been there all along, and she just didn't know it, which didn't really help me because then he thought I was late.
But he shook my hand anyway as I introduced myself, and I forgot to point out his receptionist's error because then he asked me the question I get everywhere I go. "Have we met before?" It might not always come in that form. Sometimes I hear, "Do I know you?" or, "Where are you from, you're so familiar?" or, "You look just like my sister's best friend's cousin" or some such variation.
Now, I know a lot of people. I came back to live in the town where I grew up, so it's possible that I've met a lot of its residents at some time or another. But I can never find any past connection with any of the people who ask me these questions--ever! None of them actually know me or have ever met me. Likewise, I have never met any of my doppelgangers who are apparently walking around in every town in America. My poor kids--two of the three of them resemble me. Are they, too, doomed to a life of looking just like someone that everyone else knows?
Posted by Jennifer @ 8:51 PM
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Monday Funday
This summer, my local mom friends and I decided that we'd do something fun with all of our kids every Monday. Some of the events are bigger, requiring coordination, carpools and cash. Other times we just pack a picnic lunch and gather at a nearby park or pool. Yesterday, we went on the coolest field trip to a real working dairy farm, where we learned all about the milking process, birth and milking cycles, and manure as a renewable source of energy, and even saw a "4-d" movie complete with vibrating seats and squirting water.But the best part--even better than the fresh cheese and ice cream we got to sample--was seeing a calf born. When you first walk into the main lobby of the dairy, there are big "birth announcements" posted, indicating how many boys and girls have been born on that day. The website boasts that about 80 calves are born there per day! Well, we were just getting ready to go into the movie when our tour guide announced a change of plans. A cow was about to deliver, so we needed to hustle on over to the birthing barn, pronto! As our group of 6 moms and 17 kids settled onto the bleachers to watch through a window, the poor mama cow was lying on her side in a bed of hay with two hooves sticking out of her rear end. For the next 20 minutes, we watched as the contractions hit, and she'd dig her top back leg in for leverage to push. That little bugger just didn't want to come out. Finally, a birthing aide wearing a glove that reached her shoulder climbed in and began pulling on those hooves and helped the baby's head out.
My niece proclaimed it "boring," my nephew thought it was "yucky," my middle son was more interested in climbing up and down the bleachers, and my oldest pouted because his juice box was still back in the lunch room. But every other mother in that room and I stared into that mama's big brown eyes and read her pain. With every push, we grimaced and pushed with her and cheered her on. It was my first time in the delivery room where I wasn't the one having the baby, and I still wanted it to be over. And at last, it was. All of a sudden, the rest of the calf slithered out (What's black, white and red all over? A newborn calf, covered in muck!), and mama could finally rest. But about a minute later, the birthing aide made her stand up, and she got to work licking her baby clean. It was a beautiful moment, although somewhat bittersweet, considering what we had already learned at the dairy that day--the calf will be taken away to be fed pasteurized milk and raised elsewhere, while mama will begin her approximately 10 month milking cycle, hooked up to a milking-go-round twice a day until she's six months along with her next baby (cows have a nine-month gestation, just like us).
Anyway, we learned a lot and took home some valuable experiences, all for only $5 per person. And a friend kept the baby for the entire day for me, so I was only a moderately raving lunatic by the time we headed for home! Aah, Monday Funday.
Posted by Jennifer @ 12:22 PM