I do not like the dentist.
Not at all.
I do like Robins, and Sandhill Cranes, and Turkey Vultures and Red Winged Blackbirds.
Since they have all made their appearances I think it’s fairly safe that aside from a bit of freak winter weather spring has come to southern Wisconsin.
Ivy will be so happy.
I hope spring brings you many robins and few dentists.
Now I’m going to go drink my Shamrock Shake while the drugs from the dentist wear off before I type anything truly ridiculous!
One early morning Ivy climbed into bed with me and said:
“Mom are we going to have a special breakfast tomorrow for Kid’s Day?”
My still sleeping brain responded with: “Kid’s Day?”
“Yeah, like Mother’s day when you got a special breakfast and a present but for kids.”
I laughed and fell back asleep.
Then she asked me a variation of that question every morning for a week.
Last night John came home from Canoecopia with a paddle for Ivy (thank you Ed) so with a gift on hand we decided to make today Kid’s day.
There were gifts, a special breakfast of donuts and a trip to the pool, it was the best Kid’s Day ever…
…and then Kid’s day was canceled due to poor behavior.
Better luck next year girls!
You know my friend Sarah? She has a blog, Think Big Much. She also recently had another kid, and it’s possible that sweet Liberty has pushed her over the edge and now she is crazy.
Sarah has decided to give up yelling for lent.
This is a wonderful, admirable, challenge, one that as she says “will hopefully improve the lives of my children, my husband and myself for a period longer than 40 days. Maybe even forever.”
But I still think she’s crazy.
And now I have a glass house stone throwing problem. Somehow, something I said over at Think Big Much must have computed as “I’m up for the challenge”, because I was listed as one of her friends who are joining her… or Sarah is giving me a not so subtle hint. Not being catholic, I’ve never given up so much as candy for lent, so giving up yelling seems a bit extreme, but I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to back down from such a challenge… so I’m in, and probably crazy too.
Today (I’m counting today as my first official day) went well. We are all feeling better and I only yelled once. It wasn’t really a yelling at so much as a startled oh-my-you-are-dumping-your-whole-bowl-of-soup-on-your-lap sort of yell. In that circumstances I thought a “CLARA NO!!!!” was totally appropriate!
So I’m not counting it.
Sarah has a very elegantly written post on why she is undertaking this here: http://thinkbigmuch.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/on-decreasing-the-scream-factor/
She actually has reasons beyond stubborn pride, she’s such a good girl!
I also have a review of Screamfree parenting hiding here: Screamfree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel
Feel free to join us, in this crazy plan…
… crazy, I mean really, a hundred push ups seems approximately a hundred times easier than not yelling at the girls for the next thirty some days!
Sarah has been posting updates on how things are going and I will add my thoughts to hers.
If the crazy bug is catching, feel free to join us, I’m pretty sure this is a good kind of crazy…
…I think…
The last few weeks Ivy has been asking a few times a day, “When is it going to be spring?”
She seems to be done with winter. I think her yearning for spring is largely because she’s ready to be able to run and play outside without spending ten minutes getting ready and only having about five minutes before Clara face plants in a snow drift and wants to go inside. Ivy also knows we’ll be getting this years crop of animals and planting gardens once it’s spring, a month or two is forever to wait for such things when you are only four. Last but certainly not least I’m afraid that her spring question is partially based on an ill founded notion that when it’s spring she’ll be able to get a real horse.
But that’s another story.
This afternoon the snow from yesterday was almost gone and Ivy found a little bit of spring.
Then we checked out all the gardens looking to see what else was coming up. We even checked out the buds on the trees and bushes where Ivy surprised me by telling me that the forsythia would be yellow soon! She was a very happy girl to have found her bit of spring!
I’m thinking that will last right up until she realizes that horses don’t pop out of the ground with crocuses!
This morning when we woke to a winter wonderland outside and a huge flock of red winged blackbirds I thought we’d better go take advantage of what may be the last good snow day.
So during breakfast I took stock of the situation.
Ivy was better, but cranky from being cooped up.
Clara was not feeling as well as Ivy, but definitely on the mend.
And as evidenced by my multiple trips to the bathroom during breakfast, I was feeling decidedly worse.
Left with no option other than to survive the day I took the plunge…
…some herbal tea, a neti pot, a handful of Tylenol, a Diet Coke and it was snowman making time.
Clara ate snow and cried.
Ivy made tracks, snow angels and a snowman.
I helped with the snowman, held Clara, took pictures, and pretended I felt fine.
Faking it with Diet Coke.
It’s not the answer to a quick recovery, quite the opposite I’m afraid, but it gets us through the day!
It’s been a rough week here.
After the fun of the Birkie weekend, and the relief of having Piper back home Ivy got sick,
and then Clara got sick,
and then I got sick,
and now from the way John sounds he’s getting it too.
Life here hasn’t been the best, there have been tears, and fevers, and puking, and coughing, and more tears.
It has made for sleepless nights and difficult days.
Tonight I accidentally used kid number one to knock kid number two off a chair. Kid number two went flying to land flat on her back, which horrified me so I dropped kid number one, and ended up with two kids screaming on the floor.
Then when they were both safely tucked in bed I had a few tears of my own.
Because even though I know it was an accident and everything is OK, there is that nasty mommy guilt.
Because even though I had no idea Clara had climbed up on the chair I still used Ivy to send her flying to the floor.
Because even though I dropped Ivy because she wouldn’t put her feet down and stand when I asked her to so I could check Clara, I still dropped her to check her sister.
All those people with their warnings about parenthood; in addition to being obnoxious they were wrong.
It’s not the sleepless nights that will get you.
It’s not even the subtle and not so sublte lifestyle changes that occour after you have children that you need to watch out for.
It’s the mommy guilt.
It’ll get you every time.
Yup, It’s been a rough week, but we are hanging on…
… I just hope someone gives us our chair back soon!
P.S. I have no idea how Clara got herself in this predicament today. I walked into the kitchen and found Clara looking fairly happy and stable, so I snapped a quick picture before helping her down.
Ivy was nowhere to be seen.
Normally diaper changes are not what I would call memorable. There are the few that went horribly awry but even the poop smeared Koala changing stations and bath times gone bad had nothing on today.
Today I took Clara’s diaper to the toilet to flush away the contents and as I went to shake it out, it looked right back up at me.
Yes, as it turns out, googly eyes pass right though!
The author of Motherhood Uncensored is doing a “be a better spouse challenge” for the month of March.
John and I discussed that while we are already perfect, it couldn’t hurt to stay that way so we are going to follow along.
If you are interested you can find the first day here Day 1: Let bygones be bygones.
Keep in mind that this is from “Motherhood Uncensored” I doubt this will be your normal self help program, instead it’s bound to be, interesting, humorous, thought provoking and, of course, completely uncensored.
You know those canoe races I do? The ones where I can’t beat my Mom?
You know that triathlon where the boys couldn’t beat her even when they worked together?
The training my Mom does for the event this last weekend is no doubt why none of us can catch her all summer long.
For 18 years my Mom has skied the Birkebeiner, a 50 Kilometer ski race from Cable to Hayward. Of course being my Mom she doesn’t just ski it, she does disgusting things like come in third in her age group in a race of more than 8000 participants.
While I do ski I haven’t yet done a Birkie, instead I’ve tagged along with Mom and her friends as a spectator on most of the Birkies in the last ten years. So this last weekend I drove all by myself to meet up with my brother so we could watch our Mom ski the Birkie, a very cold Birkie.
When Tyler and I got up Saturday morning, we noticed it was a bit chilly.
How cold was it you ask?
Too cold for GU that’s how cold.
For those of you not up on your gooey supplements GU is an energy… uhh… goo that athletes can eat during races. It comes in a little foil pack that can be…well… gooed out into their mouth easily delivering a shot of carbohydrates and other important stuff. It helps a person do crazy things like keep skiing for hours in below zero weather. Often in the Birkie you will see racers staple the GU to their numbered racing bibs so they can grab it and rip it off and eat it without stopping.
On Saturday morning thermometers were at ten below at start time. At that temperature nobody staples on their GU. At ten below they would be GUsicles, nobody wants a GUsicle.
After delivering a hitchhiking skier to the start of the race Tyler and I had hiked out along the trail at the halfway point to watch for Mom. The first sight Tyler and I had of herwas as she came barreling across the trail at us yelling “Get my GU! Get my GU!”
This raised some questions in our minds.
A: Why she couldn’t get her own GU?
B: Where was the GU? Did she have it? Were we supposed to have it?
C: Were we going to be in trouble later for fumbling the GU feed that we didn’t know we were supposed to be doing?
D: Did the race and the cold do her in? Had the last of her marbles been lost on the trail?
E: If “D” is even a question why do both of us keep contemplating joining the insanity and racing ourselves?
While Tyler and I stared in confusion Mom made it clear that the GU was tucked into the hip of her ski pants and that she needed it out and opened up for her.
Now.
Tyler, the dutiful son, dug it out, opened it and looked up to Moms best impression of a hungry baby bird on skis.
I, the not so dutiful daughter, took pictures.
You don’t get to be one of the fastest grandma’s in the Birkie by hanging around with your kids midway through a race. In seconds she had sucked her GU down and was headed back down the trail, leaving a her son staring at an empty packet of goo wondering what had just happened.
Tyler and I continued to ponder what had happened as we scooted down to Hayward where we were able to catch Mom on the trail one final time as she came across the lake before finishing in town. It wasn’t until later when she had sort of warmed up that we got the answers to our many questions.
A: Her hands were frozen and she knew if she were able to get it out of her pants she’d never get it open
B: It was of course stuffed in her pants so that it wouldn’t freeze, she was expecting us to be there and was watching for us so we could help her out. Poor watchers we had been distracted by one of her high school skiers moments before and would have missed her if she hadn’t come at us yelling!
C: Nope, ever since the time the group of us giving her a personal feed tripped her… twice… so long as she stays on her feet it’s a job well done!
D: It appears some marbles have remained in her head. It’s possible that after a night with the shotski they left, but that’s a whole different issue.
E: I have no idea.
Congrats to Mom and all her friends – Not only did you have great ski’s, but you did it with minimal frostbite!
Anne, as soon as your ready to commit to that babysitting I’ll send in my registration for next year! 🙂
If not I’ll see you at the finish line!
Have fun at worlds!
After an emergency vet visit and surgery followed by a two day recovery at the vets office Piper is back home!
She’s got a line of staples up her belly, bottles of pills, restrictions and schedules but Piper is back on the couch for the rest of her recovery.
It sure was a welcome sight when I got home tonight!
Behind the Willows 