Things That Matter

We are working and working on settling in....I keep taking more things out to the garage again, we keep finding spots for things to live, this week I put up some pictures on the walls and the boys and I bought bulbs (science, you know) and double used them as biology lesson and garden improvement. The garden has suffered, the whole yard has from vigorous tiny-male use and motherly neglect while I have been working on the inside. So many balls to juggle.

Last night something gave and I stayed up....way past my bedtime...I snapped and washed every single dish in the whole house, then swept the floor, then wiped down the counters and polished the stove. And then, I had a cup of tea.

And then I got out my paints in the quiet glow of the office and I made colors swirl together and image magically appear on the blank page...until about 3am. So beautiful, so feeding, so irresponsible. Tonight I am going to bed early.

Boxes matter, dishes matter, gardening matters, school work matters....but painting in a silent house with a mug of tea beside you matters too.

Strawberry Lust and Making Eight Hours

It is strawberry season and I am hoping that this weekend, between the graduation open houses, baseball games and grocery shopping, we can wedge in a little berry picking. I am craving Strawberry Shortcake something fierce......please tell me I can still buy rhubarb someplace so that at least one Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp can make an appearance. These things are important rites of passage that my (ahem!) sons need to experience. Its all for them.

Also, strawberry basil water, strawberry ice cream, strawberry cream cheese milk shakes, and our traditional strawberry freezer jam. Yes to the yes. Please, lets pick strawberries! Must make time.

Pom is really trying hard to potty train, although he has instructed us to not tell anyone. He has quite a socially aware personality. I bought him a potty story book for his recent birthday which gets read at least once a day and is much labored over in private corners of the house to boot. He is very bent on the whole process. The trick is, that as of now, he has no personal initiative physically. He doesn't seem to notice when he needs to go....ever. He'll be perfectly potty trained if only I will devote myself to setting timers and being always free when they go off so that I can take him to the bathroom at the drop of a hat. If I do the work, he's potty trained. Having a little trouble getting over the hump.

We are out of school for the summer, minus our ever-present math studies (A is teaching) and some reading instruction. Here it is tempting to throw all focus out the window and do crazy things like spend all day organizing the game cupboard and vaccuuming out the pantry, and then drive a bajillion miles up to a farm to pick up raw milk. Not that we won't do that.....because we will....but I need to consciously remember to pay attention to doing the eventy kinds of things we mean to do during this beautiful time of year (Statue of Liberty!) and also remember to give the boys my real, look-you-in-the-eyes-attention, a few mama projects and adventures are in order. It might be a good idea to actually try to use the reading log from the library for The Summer Reading Program too. Am terrible at logs.

The honeysuckle is blooming...its dripping all over the sidelines of the baseball practice fields and creeping up the highway walls in a fervent froth of scented frivolity. It smells amazzzzzing! Tonight I braved the mosquitoes as Ru finished up catching practice with his coaches to snip a handful for carrying home in the cupholder, tucked in a water bottle. I am putting it on my nightstand as a midsummer sleep tonic.

Working on the whole concept of getting eight hours of sleep lately. Its my latest fitness goal. I am exercising regularly, with an emphasis on strength training and flexibility, eating super clean and researching supplementation and have managed to conquer hydration! I cannot believe that I am smoothly managing to get all my daily water chugged down, but even better.....its becoming pleasant, needed even....and I think I can tell that it impacts my physical self and my emotional happiness. So strange, this morphing to become the person you mean to be. So, on to my next goal, a goal I couldn't have even had very easily in the I-always-have-a-baby stage of my life. Sleeping. I sleep easily, no insomnia unless I'm whipped into an argument right at bedtime, and I am able to go to sleep quickly and I am a very sound sleeper (although easily wakened by my children). This all bodes well. I am aiming at 8 hours. I am hovering at 6 and change. I have a sleep buddy to text at bedtime so that we remind each other to go to sleep, and I have my FitBit all charged up again so that I can consciously monitor how many hours I am getting. Lets do this!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Must Tune In

I know that pain, stress and sickness has a mysterious ability to manifest in the body...even randomly, a little bizarrely. Yesterday, I suddenly got a searing shoulder pain which felt like somebody had walloped me with a sledgehammer.

I've been stressing about things:

•  the baby's high lead test results (old house renovation project bites back)
•  the heat we'd been having
•  my tyrannical to-do list
•  parenting my oldest who constantly tests my limits and my beliefs in my capabilities
•  asserting myself healthily in my marriage
• not painting as much as I'd like
• planning the rest of the summer stuff we mean to enjoy
• my need for connection with friends + my desperation for space and time alone
• keeping up on the summer reading program at the library
• the chaos of organizing and culling through our basement
• the baby's constant pain from teething all his molars at once
• my sister's high-risk pregnancy scares
• etc.

You know, that sort of thing. 

Anyhow...I had a little insomnia (a once in a lifetime thing for me) during the heat wave, and then the baby kept waking up and the big boys went through a week of waking a lot and then I stayed up late by myself to catch up projects and blow off steam.....and then suddenly....

POW. My shoulder went out. 

This morning on the way home from taking A to the train station I was a genuine mess. With a cup of coffee in my system, only two hours after waking up, I was nauseous, impossibly grouchy, aching and so tired I was falling asleep at the wheel on the 10 minute drive back to the house. It turned out the kids dentist appointment was actually tomorrow and the whole day had no commitments. In the driveway, I sat there with my head on the steering wheel and I had an epiphany. I needed rest and space and recuperation and I needed it now. Pretty genius, eh? I know it sounds obvious but it seemed like a real breakthrough in the moment. :)

I set the boys up with a nest of pillows and blankets and a steady stream of gentle Kipper The Dog programming on the floor next to my bed, closed the bedroom door behind all of us to reinforce the cocooning plan and curled up to nurse Pom and myself to sleep. 

I woke up in the afternoon. 

The soft British accents from the boys show in the background, Pom snoring next to me and the quilt all coiled around my jeans and a smile on my face.  I feel so much more crinkly and alive. I am damp wiping down all the floors where there might be paint chip dust, resolving to bathe the baby more regularly, scheduling follow-up blood testing, reading some boosting advice about personal boundaries and loving assertiveness, praying for my sister, scheduling dates with myself and with friends into the calendar, and making piles excess to give away and store. The world will be okay. I will be okay. Sometimes you just have to take a hint when God hits you in the shoulder with a sledgehammer because tapping you on the shoulder didn't seem to really get through. 

Note to Self:  "Must tune in."

Sweet Sleep

Mattresses are important, people! I had the best night of sleep last night that I have had in forever: dreamless and smooth, rippling on and on, with only a few hip aching moments of dim awareness as I rolled over in the night. I usually sleep pretty well during pregnancy, I'm just lucky like that, or chilled out like that or desperate like that or something. But this pregnancy has been different...our mattress had done its most valiant but there are limits. It had been with us through a decade of marriage and who  knows how many years with another family before us. I honestly think our mattress was from the 60's or 70's. This year it reached astounding heights of absurdity. A and I had begun to joke about going sleep in the soup bowl every night but truthfully it was more like sleeping in a real life game of Chutes and Ladders. There springs poking up, gooshy holes, hard ridges, and broken plastic handles sticking out in gouge-ready positions.

Thankfully, oh so thankfully....I report to you that we are now the proud owners of a new to us, 2 year old mattress that feels like heaven. We lay in bed laughing this morning about the strangeness of sleeping on such a nice bed in our own room, we felt like we were at a hotel! So silly!

Before we carted our old lump-fest of a previous bed to the dump I whipped out a pair of scissors and zipped off the beautiful fabric that covered the box springs. I've been eying it for years and knew even when we first got it that I would someday strip that cloth off for another use. The bonus of ancient mattress sets is the psychedelic, vintage fabric that they come wrapped in. What do you think? Curtains in the bathroom or the kitchen or something more creative?

Early Morning Habit

One of my resolutions this year (I didn't share all of them publicly, a girl has to reserve something) was to get up every morning, at 5:30 (i.e. before everyone else in our house), do a yoga routine and have a morning window of peace to arrange my mind before the house was a wild, humming hive of short males. I have decided that when I am sick sleep is good so, my recent sinus headache was a legitimate reason for "sleeping in" but otherwise, I am now up and at 'em. So, I get up, turn up the heat, make a mug of tea, unroll my yoga mat and light a candle or two.

And I have to tell you....I love it.

The head-start is pretty priceless, the time of stretching and mental dusting and conscious movement is good for my body and soul and folks you have to admit, the stunning sunrises I've been taking in, are a totally swank bonus.

Witness.

Here are a few other little bits and nibbles that might help you make the leap to an early morning start yourself.

I have been doing some of the yoga routines from yogayak on YouTube...all free. I especially like their heart-opener morning routine...yoga in the Costa Rican jungle is very refreshing this time of year.

This little gizmo of a website will help you be sure you can catch the sunrise where you live...and honestly, it's become one of my favorite things about the start of my day.

And then there's this clever little sleep-cycle calculator which will help you be sure that waking is less painful. I am planning to give this a try for the first time this weekend. I will aim to go to sleep 10-ish since that's when the all-wise Cyclometer says I will slip into an effortless rhythm allowing my painless release at 5:30. Wish me luck.

I promise, if you live in a busy household, it is one of the only things I've found that give you a little island of peace in the middle of the madness. Even if it sounds painful, even if it IS painful...try it. I almost promise you won't regret it. :)

You Can Lead A Kid To His Carpet Square.....

So, basically, what I wanna post about tonight is...how do you make kids sleep? And yeah, yeah, I know that whole thing about leading a horse to water but really. When we're talking about kids, who never seem to want to do the things they need, and when we're sure they still need it...how do make it happen?

Specifics. Dee doesn't like to sleep. Honestly, neither of the two older boys do. Ru tries to stay awake as much possible, but he's slightly more responsive to verbal reprimand. Basically, they both try to squirrel around instead of sleep (at naptime and night), but Ru will listen when I finally break down and give them a good stern scolding. My little Dee on the other hand will not sleep. Until he wears himself out.

At naptime, he will talk and play and sing and shout and walk his feet up the wall and toss his pillow around and anything else he can think of without actually getting out of his bed and only fall asleep after an hour or more of messing around. The other way to get him to go to sleep is for me to sit there in his bedroom and say over and over "No talking. Go to sleep." *wiggle wiggle wiggle* "No playing, lie down and go to sleep." *wiggle wiggle wiggle* "Close your eyes and stop singing, its time to sleep." etc.etc.etc. ad nauseum

I had been doing that, but I'm wearing out. This takes a lot of patience and also a lot of time out of my day since it takes about a half an hour of reminders till he finally goes to sleep.

At bedtime, forget it. The boys both fuss and cry and ask for one more drink of water FOREVER...we just go to bed and ignore them at this point. I hate it but, we have no idea how to teach them to go to sleep.

I thought that if I sat with them at naptime and used those verbal instructions: "Close your eyes. Lie down. Go to sleep. This is a time for rest...etc." They would start to do it without being told and I could give fewer and fewer reminders and basically pull out and see them go down easily after a fashion. No dice. Part of what is wearing me out is that there seems to be virtually no improvement.

You might say, "Maybe he doesn't need to nap anymore?"

I can't imagine that being true. By dinner time with no nap he is a freaking basketcase....out of his mind with bad behavior and over-emotionality, and he's also only two.

So, yeah...whaddya got? How do you all make kids sleep?

One of Those Days.....

Oh man. It's one of those days.

Sorry for being MIA last night. It was another in a long string of over-extensions and I'm afraid I've been pushed right over the brink. No more teetering precariously, I done fell! Last night I went on a manic errand run after dinner and came home just dragging myself up the back steps. I put groceries away for a while and then I heard a thin manic wail from Dee's room.

Yeah, and then I was up for four hours, pulling my hair out, trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with my evil-minded son. Who would only tell me that "nothing was wrong" through his continuous howl. Urgh.

Yeah. And then A relieved me and he told him that his ear was hurting. Blast.

This morning I woke up beyond tired and possessed of a throbbing head, achy limbs and a sore throat. There's only so much abuse a body will take.

I just couldn't bring myself to post last night and honestly, I feel even worse tonight...and so this folks is my cop-out missive.

I love you all but tonight, I need a bed.

Dee in Detail

Highlighting my middle son today. I like to do this from time to time. Helps those relatives and friends from afar get to know my kids and also is a good way for me to both document the small things as they pass and notice myself who each of my children has become individually. Good stuff, noticing.

Dee Likes:

• Fish, in any form: smoked salmon, sauteed trout, grilled shrimp, canned sardines, whitefish pate, or steamed mussels...he loves it any way he can get it (he's his mother's boy!)
• Whipped cream. Its his dessert of choice. He's not big on sweets and if given a sliver of pie or a small wedge of cake, he'll scrape and lick the whipped cream off and leave the dessert all naked. We have taken to keeping spray whipped cream around so he can have a ramekin full when the rest of us have dessert.
• Frog and Toad. His favorite stories at the moment.
• Banjos and pianos (how's that for a great honky-tonk pairing) This is what he answers when you say "What instrument are you going to play when you get bigger?"
• Fishing. Every stick is a pole and every puddle is a lake. (Not that we actually take him fishing....that's what we plan to do at my parents this summer!)
• Digging. He has his own small plastic trowel and spends forever gouging a hole in the turf at the edge our fence and delving around in the bark mulch at the side of the next unit. Kid needs a sandbox badly.
• Pretending to be a kitty-cat. The boys often spontaneously turn into cats when A comes home. Somehow this seems like a good greeting-plan to them. Its kind of bizarre.
• Staying awake. (Yet again, his mother's son I'm afraid) We are having, find-some-freaking-way-to-get-the-toddler-to-stay-asleep-issues lately...pretty much every night and I've taken to sitting next to his bed with my hand physically on his body to help him slow down and go to sleep at naptime.
• The Zacchaeus Song. This is how I get him to calm down when he's hysterical or when he has a nightmare...I sing it over and over and over. Its endlessly loved by the little man. Not sure exactly why or how he got attached to it.
• Milk. He loves all milk but holds a special place in his heart for the milk we pick up from New Pond Farm. He holds his little cup out and tells us that he'd like "milk of fahm, pease!"
• Rocks, sticks, leaves and other natural ephemera. I have to check his pockets carefully before I wash his pants because there's always a load of treasures. There are often rocks in our dryer. I keep saying he might end up a naturalist with this kind of penchant for collecting.
• Wearing his rubber boots. Every day is a rainy day!
• "His" baby. Always lots of kisses to give out and every day starts with a dead run for our bed where he says first thing, "Good morning Baby!"
• Play-Doh. The answer is always yes.  
• Scrambled eggs. The boy loves my scrambled eggs. My little mommy heart goes, pitter-pat.

Discovering Similes At Night

So, pretty much every night after the kids are "supposed to be in bed" we have one of those shouting-down-the-hallway-in-the-dark conversations with Ru. I hate them. So annoying...such a stalling technique. Why do they not just go to sleep? Take for instance, this little snippet of dialogue from last night.

"Mommy?"
"What Ru?"
"Will you make me breakfast?"
"Yes, in the morning. Go to sleep!"
"I love you Mommy!"
"I love you too, sleep now."
"Daddy? Will you keep me safe?"
"Yes, Ru...I will. Goodnight!"
*silence*
(maybe he's asleep!)
"Mommy?"
(crap) "Yes Ru?" *sigh*
"Do you know how much I love you Mommy?"
*me pausing, smiling in the dark*
"How much Ru?"
"Mommy, I love you just like a bee loves a flower!"
"I'm so glad Ru! I'll see you in the morning."

*melt melt melt melt melt melt* 

I love it when my kids catch me off guard in sweet ways. Counter-acts all the times when I wind up sobbing and completely disheveled, heaving into A's shoulder, "I don't know how to do this parenting thing!" and suddenly, everything is worth it and the world is absolutely okay.

What Geeks Say In Their Sleep

Dear A...sweet, geeky man who is occasionally more machine now than man. Your coding work, I fear, has stolen some piece of your brain that may be irreplaceable. At least your technology riddled inner self is amiable, even in sleep. 

Just had to share this experience I had last night around 3 A.M.

So, its pitch black and I'm sleeping and then I wake up to that oh-so-familiar pit pat pit pat pit pat sound of small feet coming down the hall in the dark. And I hear Ru pad up to A's side of the bed and say quietly but insistently, "Daddy?"
There is no real response and I think about intervening but, I note that he's looking for A and decide not to meddle so I lie there quietly in the dark and listen instead.
"Daddy???"
*finally, grunt-style acknowledgment from A*
(Good enough...Ru forges ahead) "
Mommy was making a typing noise, typing on her computer in the rocking chair in my room but her is not there now." (hmmm clearly he's been dreaming...there is no way I was up typing at 3, heh) I wait to see what A will say to soothe him back to sleep.
*There is a slight pause from A and the air hangs still for a bit.* Then:
"Well." (Brightly) *another small pause while Ru and I wait for the rest*
(A continuing)
"What you should do is make a draft of the document using your template and then transfer the template over."
*And here I suddenly have to burrow deeply into my pillow to keep from laughing uproariously and ruining the whole serious scene and wait to see what Ru will do with that*
There is a long pause...and I peek over A's shoulder and see Ru's eyes, saucer-wide peeking over the edge of the bed. And then he finally says:
"Daddy? What are those?"

And then...yes, I did intervene. I explained that nobody was typing in his room and that I was right there and he didn't need to worry about templates or drafts tonight and did he want a kiss on his way back to bed? So he scampered off and A never even grunted again, the rest of the night.

He might have been sleeping deeply last night but his brain was on, full power...at least full power work mode. Heh.

Come Hell or High Water

Dear Readers....
Last night and the night before I got 5 hours of sleep combined...and then there was a minor flooding emergency in our house today (thankfully now remedied and all mopped up) but, all that to say...I'm beyond exhausted and tonight the right thing to do is hit the hay, thinking of you all as I drift off.

Much love and many warm weekend wishes,