Summer Aspirations

Making a list today. Summer is finally here for sure...there's barbeque on every neighborhood breeze and I'm checking my tan in the mirror. So its time to start earlier than I did last year and begin to scribble a list of all the summer stuff I want to do before we smell the first crisp wafts of fall. This is how we actualize folks! Its also how I get all the stuff out of my head that is in it. :)

Things To Do Before Summer Is Over

Pick peaches and can them.

Make apricot jam

Eat a BLT.

Swim more.

Go to a county fair. 

Eat a s'more.

Sit around a campfire.

Go fishing.

Lay on the grass and watch the stars.

Ride in a pick-up.

Eat a popsicle on the porch.

Make a key lime pie.

Feel cute in shorts.

Sit and read in the sun.

Go on a picnic.

Go skinny dipping.

Walk to a store with a friend.

Shoot someone with a squirt gun.

Have astounding sweet corn.

Climb a tree.

Go for a long, wandery beach walk.

Make a daisy chain.

Draw with sidewalk chalk.

Stroll along a pier or dock.

 

 But there are a few things I can already check off. Its worth mentioning to myself again what I have already done!

Things I've Already Done

Eat a lobster.

Pick strawberries.

Go to an outdoor Shakespeare performance.

Grill some good BBQ.

 Sing loudly to the radio with the windows open.

Make a killer salad.

Buy flip-flops.

Run through the sprinkler.

Eat fresh watermelon.

Watch the kids do sparklers.

Find a good book.

Go beach combing with the boys.

 

 

 

A Crisp New January

We are back home. We survived the stomach flu, a manic whirl of trip prep and holiday madness, and the long drive to Michigan and visits with both sides of the family. And here we are, stepping crisply into the new year. Ah! Feels so very, very good.

There's something very cathartic to me about traveling far away for Christmas and then driving back across the country together, bundled up in winter gear, munching leftover cookies, jotting down resolutions and humming on towards a whole new, fresh year together as a family. I love that drive. We talk and think over what our families are like and how we admire them and how we want to out-do them and we talk about our previous year and what went well and what we're primed to tackle next. And I always love it when we get to the part where we plan our travel schedule and make mouth-watering schedules for where and when we'll be adventuring in the coming year. This year we're hoping to see Hawaii, D.C. and New Hampshire as well as maple sugaring in the far north and a family reunion in the ancestral vineyard where we were married. Very apropos for the celebration of our 10th year of marriage together. We have genuine history!

Am feeling full of inspiration, and energy and hope today. My list is long and my spirits are high. I feel like there are good days ahead...I think 2012 is a good one.

Here are the things I'm dreaming of accomplishing in the coming year:

Resolutions 2012

1. Call my parents weekly
2. Help my boys write letters monthly
3. Dream journal
4. Work on the boy's baby books monthly
5. Go on a private "couple's retreat" together
6. Take an interior designs class
7. Take a trip to visit a friend
8. Read three books on genetics
9. Join an art society and hang a piece in an art show
10. Call grandma monthly
11. Plant shrubs on our property
12. Hang pictures in our house (extended family, kids and wedding especially)
13. Find three interior design books that I love and learn from
14. Switch to a local pediatrician and find a family doctor for A and I
15. Put together and follow a car maintenance schedule
16. Organize our basement storage
17. Paint more rooms!
18. Register to vote
19. Join our Neighborhood Association
20. Start an easy food night (pizza, take out, frozen dinner, leftovers etc.)
21. Hire a cleaning service for the first month after Baby Four arrives.
22. Read two great books on blogging
23. Teach the boys to: brush their teeth in the morning, comb their hair consistently and wash their hands before meals
24. Teach Ru to read and Dee to write his own name
25. Potty train Nib
26. Read three new plays
27. Carve out two consistent work times in the day for me-time (one for work and one for personal)
28. Sell three or more paintings
29. Make a new friend
30. Start taking the boys out for special Mommy and Me outings
31. Start an interior design notebook with a section for each room of our house

I might have time later to read through the resolutions from last year and compare and contrast a bit but for now, I'm forging ahead...sometimes blissfully unaware is okay. I'm

Before Kids: A List

I sometimes think idly about how I might have prepared myself more fully for motherhood. I don't mean learning how Tylenol dosage works or practicing diaper changing but more holistic, easily missed or even simple, practical ideas. The kinds of things nobody tells you but you sort of wish you'd known.You know?

I've been compiling my own mental list for a while, here's what I've got.  Maybe you're still in the waiting stage, expecting to be a parent eventually but with a little time buffer between now and then...here's my advice.

Before You Have Kids, You Should.....

• Learn to live by routine. Before I had kids I was the sort of person who had trouble remember to brush her teeth consistently enough, I could never take my multivitamin consistently, I went to bed at random hours...etc. I think one of the main keys to motherhood sanity is simple routines. Always make your bed. Get up early. Shower consistently. Nap-time happens, come hell or high water. That sort of thing. I now live on a menu, have a shopping day, work from a standard home chore list and I'm doing much better but it was an up hill battle....still is. :) Do yourself a favor and get this stuff under your belt now. If you're struggling with home routines...check out Motivated Moms...they have an app for the iPhone and also a Yahoo group that can email you daily chore lists. I love their system.

Quiet day at home, all three brothers.

• Make friends in the same stage of life. I married young which made it easy for me find myself without peers when I was having my first child. BUT, I was also a snob and turned up my conceited little nose at the company of a bunch of "mommy friends." Oh, I was a ridiculous little goose! Learn from me. I now have lots of parenting pals. I think it's really important to have friends who understand what it feels like to be up all night with a screaming toddler, or who are also brainstorming solutions to teething woes, and trying to find pediatricians. People in the same stage of life have sympathy for your issues and also have answers for your puzzles. Seek out your life-stage partners. And if you're worried that the mommy types won't be interesting or engaging enough, seek out people who are your type who also happen to be in the same stage of life. I know this sounds tediously basic but when I was a new mom I thought all new mothers would want to talk about nothing but their kids and wore sweatpants all day. I just had to find a few moms who like to grow their own food, think Monty Python is hilarious and happen to be artists. It's worth looking...you can find all kinds of people in every stage of life.
• Develop personal hobbies and activities that are kid-free and fullfilling. So much of parenthood involves giving to the small people, learning to eclipse yourself and let go...and that's all helpful and good. The other side of that coin is that it is also good to have something that can be a respite for you to retreat into to recover from your kids. It's great for kids to see that their mom has a life beyond them, that she has talents and interests and still grows and learns. It's also good to have something in life that you've held onto that excites you beyond your children for the next stage of life when you stop having babies and decide what else you want to contribute to the world. So, right now while you're kid-free...live in the current stage and dive into whatever you're good at, whatever you're curious about, whatever you've always wanted to try...then keep after it, even in tiny doses once there are little people in your life.

• Get a puppy. I'm just saying. If you've always thought you wanted to have a puppy and you imagine your little ones growing up with a Rover of their own to love....get the puppy now. House-breaking a puppy while potty training your toddler is not to be done. Get the puppy now.
• Learn cooperation (and not just with your spouse). This one is connected to making friends in the same stage of life. Ask for help with parenting. Don't ever suffer under the delusion that "real" moms doing it all by the sweat of their own brows. That's wackazoid! Real moms, healthy moms...are part of vibrant communities where all the flawed and brilliant parents lean on and help each other. Crying your eyes out over discipline? Call a pal. Need childcare for a trip to the dentist? Call a pal. Have a hilarious story about what your 3 year old said on the potty? Get on that phone. Smart parents never parent alone.
• Build a habit of getting up early. I think there are very few parent mood-killers with quite the same potency as the feeling you get when you finally straggle, foggy-headed out of bed and find the mess the kids have been creating all over the house, and look at the clock and realize lunch is in two hours. Getting up early, even if you aren't naturally a morning person...is a huge win. You set the mood for the day, you give yourself more time to get things accomplished, you get your feet on the ground before the kids show their mischievous little faces and you might even get a few stolen moments as a couple before the world is spinning 5,000 miles an hour again. I love this post from the wonderful blog, Like Mother, Like Daughter, about teaching yourself to get up early.

Baby kisses. :)

• Learn to eat well and be active. Take your vitamins every day, make your own food instead of buying processed substitutes, eat multiple colors of produce at each meal, be active every day, don't stock things you don't want to eat all the time. Some of these things are habits, some are education, some are skills....work on them now, while you have the time. Another good thing about working on health before you have kids is that you have the chance to pre-stock your body with the supplies to handle pregnancy, birth, lactation and the stress and pressure of motherhood. 
• Purchase a good bed. (Or at least a killer mattress.) We have a hand-me-down mattress that is in somewhat lamentable condition. I'm truly not sure how old it really is. I wish we'd saved up and purchased a great one before we had kids. When you're really pregnant and sleeping on a mattress with dips and lumps, it's a pretty big insomnia machine, even if you're a great sleeper like me. Now that we're in full-on parenting mode we keep thinking we'll get around to a new one but honestly, I expect us to keep on with the mountain-range model until a spring stabs one of us in the back. Oh to start off on the right foot! And make sure it's at least a queen...we almost started married life on a double and now, I think God every time the baby snuggles down between us or all the kids pile in on a Saturday morning that we actually have the room to allow us and kids sanely.

Sometimes romance has to come, on the fly.

• Spend a lot of time and energy working on understanding sex and getting to know yourself and your partner sexually. Experimentation is good but raw knowledge will give you a turbo boost. Don't just have sex;  read books, listen to lectures, look at diagrams, get out your hand mirror, talk to each other and compare notes, read studies and talk to your friends about their experiences. This is the time to learn and establish sexual skills. Once little people are shrieking in the other room, your man is in the mood and your libido is nursing mother low...knowledge and sexual compatibility will be really difficult (although not impossible, never despair!) to attain. Do it now, this is sexual prime time.

Jam session with my parents and my brother, at Christmas-time.

• Make peace with your family. Nothing like having kids to further stress a strained relationship. If things are distant or rocky or just odd between you and your nuclear relatives, do all you can to let bygones be bygones, protect yourself and appreciate their strengths as well as recognizing and accepting their weaknesses. Remember that you're a grown-up now and mistress of your own ship so there's nothing to fear from the previous stage of life when your parents were in change and made other choices. Time for love, in whatever form and within whatever constraints you can deem necessary.
• Learn to love self-improvement and self-forgiveness. Life is always about balance. Learning how to be a good mother is all about setting impossible high goals, those kinds of "When I'm a mom, I'll never...." sort of statements and then when you fall short forgive yourself. If you can forgive yourself you can move on instead of letting yourself get stuck on whatever your failures are as a parent. You will fail. All parents fail. And there is no failure that can't be forgiven and learned from. None. You are what you are...seek to improve and forgive.
• Concentrate some good energy on getting to know and connection to your nieces and nephews, your godchildren and any other important small children in your life. Interacting with kids is the best practice for interacting with kids...not to mention the fact that it is really fabulous to spend the time and energy on children other than your own while you still can. It is much harder to be an involved auntie to my far away nieces and nephews now that I have three of my own here under the same roof with me.

Jane her Megaman, demonstrating A+ aunt and uncle skills.

That's what I've got for now. Maybe sometime I'll share a list of things I did right that I'd do again if I had the chance. Anyone have anything they'd like to add to the list?

My Vanity House Hunting List

Back the great house-hunt. Today I hit the roads in earnest and chalked up a lot of addresses viewed. I had been a little procrastinatory about the whole thing before and was taking a while to rev my engine up to full power again on the whole process. Somehow starting over feels like such a big deal, even though we never really got anywhere to speak of on the farmhouse I fell in love with. But, this weekend there was a bunch of new properties listed that fit our criteria on paper and look well worth viewing so I'm off burning gas again, peering down driveways and madly scribbling notes while idling by the side of the road.

Of course the whole business of buying a home is in many ways, deadly serious...gigantic investments of money, huge risks, so much discussion and evaluation and work to line up values with your spouse so that you can both find the perfect nest together. All that aside, there's frippery involved. Of course there is...I'm involved. Today a little window into the silly small things that I'm looking for or hoping for or dreaming of but don't dare expect to find...etc. Just the slightly embarrassing bits that I can only share with you loyal reader types if you promise not to tell. Shhhhh.....

Little Things I Long For In A House (But You Better Not Tell):

• A romantic street name. I know this doesn't matter but, somehow if I'm really truthful it does make a difference to me. I would be wooed easily but a tiny cottage on Chipmunk Lane but the same house on Center Ave. somehow seems much less sparkly.
• Old plantings. I am a sucker for grandma's lilacs and old heritage apple trees of unknown variety that still bear but are in need of a good firm trim to dress them up the coming fall. A always says, "You can plant your own plants! That's a silly reason to choose a house." And I know he's right but...but...but..*sigh*
• Ramshackly garden sheds, old chicken coops or small barns that have fallen into rescue-able disrepair. I love hints of old farms or at least lush old gardens...signs that once this property produced and was dearly loved by somebody long ago, little outbuildings give me that sort of warm and cozy feeling. 

• Big maple trees with stout branches, just right for hanging a swing off of....bonus points for a charming view of said tree and imaginary swing from the kitchen sink.
• A greenhouse. I realize this is rather unlikely but...a girl can dream. (just keep it on the down low)

• A particular shade of whipped butter yellow with white trim. This color just makes me go weak in the knees, I've dreamed of a house in this hue since I was a wee thing.
• Garden beds rimmed in rocks and/or raised bed vegetable plots all marked out already and neatly positioned in the sunshine. (Pitter pat, pitter pat)
• A root cellar...I realize this is about as likely as the greenhouse wish but, folks, its in my secret heart...how great would that be? *sigh*
• A walking distance little corner store, for those nights when I forget to buy milk or you really need a coffee quickly. Its not necessary but, its part of my fantasy. 
• Moss between the paving stones that make up the walk to the door. I realize that many homeowners, yea even master gardeners are busily scraping moss off their stones and Round-uping any weeds that manage to creep in between the cracks but, I'm weird...I don't care if its a slipping hazard....give me a misting of green moss or some run-away creeping thyme or a little irish moss and I'll be sold.
• A small woodstove. Nothing enormous, nothing truly productive, just the pretty sort of little stove set on curving legs in the corner of the living room or a distant edge of the kitchen...something that will make me feel a touch more pioneer and will embolden me about future power-outs. Extra points for a bit round hoola-hoop of a firewood ring at the back door that comes with the house.