Did ya catch the title?
Let’s look at it, just in case.
Now, either you feel an overwhelming urge to read a book with such a title, or you are someone like my brother (Hi Ty!) and have no interest whatsoever.
One more time..
Would I recommend it? I’m here to tell you, that so long as you fall into the overwhelming urge to read camp, you won’t be disappointed.
They play together.
They run and dance together.
They sometimes cry together.
They giggle together while getting into trouble.
They explore together.
They read together.
When I hear the sounds of scraping and dragging in their room at night and find the furniture a bit rearranged in the morning, I know I don’t need to intervene.
They are only moving Clara’s crib so that they can lay in their beds and hold hands together before they fall asleep.
They are good sisters!
I love it and I hate it.
It’s the best part of the day or it’s the very worst.
Every day I look forward to nap time.
In addition to the cuteness factor of the sleeping kids nap time is:
the saver of my sanity,
the part of the day where I can relax and do whatever I’d like with no questions, comments or little helpers,
the part of my day where I can work on projects best left out of the reach of tiny hands, without jumping up every two minutes to keep those little hands away,
the part of the day where grumpy kids are transformed into happy kids.
When it’s over, all three of us are rested and ready to enjoy each others company again.
I love nap time!
Other days nap time brings out all worst parts of stay-at-home-momdom and rolls them into one horrible afternoon.
I turn into:
the schedule keeper,
the enforcer,
the silent gate keeper,
because if I don’t wait quietly, monitoring the situation for escapes or shenanigans, they won’t fall asleep or they’ll escape before they sleep and we’ll all be cranky forever…
… especially me.)
Those days the frustration level builds, the girls get more and more tired and I end up ready to run for the hills by the time John gets home. (Good thing those dogs of ours always need walking!)
Those days the three of us do not enjoy each others company when it’s time to get up.
I hate nap time!
The wonderful happy nap times go like this: I read the girls a pile of books, sing them a song if I feel the need to torture them further, and tuck them in and head off for a bit of whatever kind of rest my day needs.
Ivy is left with these choices:
1) Rest until Clara falls asleep and then get up.
2) Get up after she wakes up.
3) Get up when I come get her.
She’s been great, she knows that the best way to get Clara to fall asleep quickly is to lay quietly and pretend to be asleep herself.
Brilliant, Clara gets a nap, Ivy at minimum takes a bit of a rest and often nods off for a few hours herself.
Unless it doesn’t’ work.
Unless you find both of them in the crib.
Unless Clara throws all her blankets and half her clothes at her sister.
Unless Ivy performs a jail break and you find them coming down the stairs.
Unless you think they finally have really fallen asleep and as you are putting a coat of paint on shutters in the mudroom you hear mysterious noises upstairs and on investigating find them both playing together.
I was happily greeted with a “MOM!” from Clara.
Ivy told me that they were “just plain’ with blocks” as if I would be so excited to see them up and about and “done with our resteses”
I turned around and left the room and as my blood pressure fell back to acceptable levels cleaned up my painting things before heading back upstairs.
Now they have been admonished, separated, and put back in bed and I’m back to being the silent gate keeper.
Here I sit stewing that not only has nap time gone poorly and my shutter painting has been put on hold yet again but that the last of my Christmas chocolate is stuck in the room with Ivy.
Today I hate nap time.
I wrote this post yesterday mid nap time in the midst of internet issues and saved it to post later. Shortly after writing this Ivy came back down stairs and told me that she made her own choice (please note her three choices from above) (please note that the three year old gets to choose a choice, not create one). Her choice was that she decided she was all done taking a rest. The huge smile on her face when she delivered the news that she could make up her own choice and her insistence that it was the new plan may have pushed me over some mental ledge.
That’s the only explanation I have for the hysterical laughter that I tried to hide from her as I ushered her back upstairs.
That and the fact that she’s awful cute when she tries to be sneaky.
Now much later I can officially say that good substantial naps did eventually occur, and I was able to sneak in to get my chocolate.
Friday naps, a success… eventually!
As I read one of our new library books out loud today I had the feeling I had made a mistake in bringing it home from the library.
Not because I’d already read 37 books out loud today. Often a problem.
Not because it was a poorly written story. Sometimes I hate the books we bring home. I try and sneak those ones back in the library bag when no one is looking.
Not because it was too scary for Ivy. She gets scared in a full body shaking sort of way, even when little lambs get lost in the snow.
Nope none of those normal occurrences, it was because I was afraid it would give her… ideas.
In this seemingly innocent book Baby Bear and Mother Bear are getting ready to hibernate for the winter. Having never slept in a cave before Baby Bear needs some help going to sleep. He needs: a snack, something to drink and then, the moon.
(I bet you already know the “ideas” Ivy had at bedtime tonight.)
The book is good, when Baby Bear asks for the moon and Mother Bear says “You need what?” It was like the book was written from a conversation between Ivy and I.
The real kicker was at the end. Baby Bear needs one more thing: “‘What now?’ grumbled Mother bear” …
…and he of course needs a kiss.
Awww how sweet.
OK, Now that we are done feeling all cute let’s replay a conversation that Ivy and I had today.
While I try to be exact in my replications of our conversations this one may be a little off. Thats because we have a variation of this conversation ALL THE TIME.
Ivy: Mom!
Me: What?
Ivy: What are we havin’ for lunch?
Me: Noodles with green sauce.
Ivy: Mom!
Me: What?
Ivy: Is there goin’ to be shakin’ cheese?
Me: If you get it out of the fridge.
Ivy: MOM!
Me: What?
Ivy: I don’t know how.
Me: Well no cheese for you then.
Ivy: Oh I can get it.
Ivy: Mom!
Me: WHAT?
Ivy: I wuv you mom.
Aww, isn’t she sweet.
Except I’m certain she knows she’s pushed me to the brink and then is saving herself from being put up for adoption every time she does it!
Then of course when she headed up to bed a mischievous glint lit up her eye and she needed, a snack (You already had one.), a drink (Here is your water.), the moon (Sorry, new moon was on Tuesday and it’s cloudy, no moon tonight.)
I’m pretty sure I spoiled the game with a refusal to get her a moon so I was never asked for a kiss. I’m not worried though, tomorrow just when I’m ready to put her on Craig s list, she’ll “wuv” me.
Would I recommend it? Yes. I’m just not sure you should read it to your kids!
After quite a few “fluff” books I thought I’d go for something a little more serious. This book certainly fit the bill.
The subject matter is deep and often unpleasant and the book is populated with unlikable characters, sounds great so far doesn’t it?
BUT, the characters have depth and realism beyond what I expected when I first started the book and the writing is interspersed with great lines like this:
“I kept my smile tight to hold back my pride and stuck all my fingers between all my toes for the low pull of pleasure.”
Would I recommend it? Yes. Not any easy read but a good read.
It is winter in Wisconsin and we don’t have any snow at our house.
I hate that.
The dusting that we got overnight is not enough to make a snowman, go sledding on the new sled, or go skiing.
No matter how much a certain almost four year old asks in a day there is only enough snow to make grassy snow angles.
The only benefit that I can find in this nasty circumstance is that Clara can get outside again.
Not that she couldn’t go outside when we had ten inches of the white stuff, it’s just that now she can walk, and when she falls over she can get back up again.
This means that we have been outside for longer than it takes to get ready to go outside. 
I count that as a major success!
Even with Clara’s increased outdoor mobility I still hate the cold without the snow, so I’ll keep on wishing for more.
In the meantime I have been thinking about people with little dogs.
In specific the people who shovel trails in their yards so their dogs can get around.
I’m just wondering… 
…would it work?
Here is the thing.
Those changing tables in the bathrooms with the cute little koala bears on them. They look all handy and useful, but really they are evil incarnate.
I will change my kids in the car, in the lawn, or on a floor in the corner before I will chose one of those “helpful” devices.
Why?
I’ll tell you why…
For starters bathrooms in Wisconsin are cold. In the summer they always seem to be air conditioned to death and in the winter all that tile never heats up. Therefore the evil koala bears and their hard, weirdly curved, surfaces are also cold. If I were the type of mother who brought along extra blankets and changing mats, this probably wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t. Therefore every time I’ve stuck an infant on one of these no matter what condition the child was in before we started I had an immediate transition to a child screaming bloody murder. And we haven’t even started the fun of the actual diaper change yet.
It is even worse if you have a child about 15 months old. *note, this age is not a coincidence* This age looks at the plastic monstrosity and sees some sort of awesome jungle gym. That empty hole that’s supposed to be filled with liners, just an extra handhold to help out while you strive to climb away.
Next we have the size issue. The tables seem so big, until you have a child all stretched out screaming and kicking held down with one hand and a diaper bag in the other. Clearly the diaper bag needs to get set down someplace, but unless you want to set your diaper bag on the child and, depending on the age, either risk suffocation or having the contents of the bag thrown all over the floor you need to set it on the floor. This means that if you forgot to pre-pull anything you may need out of the bag before starting the diaper change you will be forced to do crazy contortions in order to get what you need out of the bag that’s been left on the floor as you keep the child from rolling/crawling/jumping from the “cute” little bench. There is of course the handy dandy safety strap that you can strap them in with… right, good luck with that.
The final evil kicker? 75% of the time the changing stations are located in one of the stalls in the bathroom. Why? Why would you do this? So that a mother holding down a screaming child on a cold hard surface is also forced to deal with the dirty looks of the women standing in line to use the actual toilet? Seriously? That had to be a childless man who thought that one up.
Why am I on such a rant about changing stations?
I’ll tell you why…
On the way home on Christmas weekend we stopped for some fast food and a little leg stretching. Clara needed a diaper change and John kindly did the deed. John does not share my complete hatred of the changing stations so he waltzed into the men’s bathroom, changed her diaper and waltzed back out again. Unfortunately approximately 67 seconds after her first change it was very apparent that another was needed. Since we were already inside and the weather was a bit chilly for a front seat of the truck change, I picked up the ready diaper bag and headed to the bathroom.
It was bad.
It was very bad.
That day I added to my list of reasons I hate bathroom changing stations.
#32 – No matter how bad it is, you can not call your husband into the woman’s bathroom to help. No one is OK with that, except for you, the queen of poop, and apparently, in this case, you don’t count.
I had just finished cleaning the poop off of Clara, the table, the wall and the floor.
I was still trying to pick up my mess and clean the poop off of myself as Clara ran around the bathroom topless (did I mention the poop on the clothes?).
She was near the door trying to figure a jail break which I was mentally encouraging (John was on the outside after all) when a woman came in. The woman made all sorts of fluttery noises about almost running her over, and then picked her up off the floor and out of the way of the door while I washed my hands.
Nice, right?
Ummm, sort of. There is nice and then there are the noises that women who think a child is being woefully mistreated make when they are pretending to be nice while they are actually appalled at what they see before them and wish they could swoop in to save the poor unfortunate child.
What I didn’t know is that apparently some strangers do actually swoop in and pick up your child.
What I also didn’t know is that I’m not so cool with random people picking up my child if her life is not in mortal danger.
What I do know is that when I see those kolas just one look at their beady little eyes and I can see the evil.
While I’m sorry to have been such a spotty poster the last few days I’m going to blame at least half of the lack of posting on this book.
I do most of my writing and posting late at night when sensible people are sleeping, unless I’ve had too many nightmares and woken up screaming too often. Then I try to get more sleep instead of sitting up late at the computer.
Is this book that frighting? Probably not.
Am I that big of a wimp? Sure am.
Would I recommend it? Hmmm… gives me nightmares, a bit cheesy, (writen by Nora Roberts in disguise) yet good characters, and interesting setting…
I think due to my late night screaming and sleeping issues I am unable to give this book a decent recommendation.
Anyone else want to help me out here?
Yesterday I wrote about a few of the traditions in my family, but the Connell family Christmas Cookies were too big of an event to fit on the same post. Now that my laundry pile is much reduced I’m back to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about our Christmas Cookie making tradition!
The event begins a day or two ahead of the gathering of people when Grandpa and Granny (sometimes with assistance by others) use the old hand grinder to grind up almonds and lemon peel and mix them up into the dough. Just the making of the dough is a bit epic, and we haven’t hardly started yet!
Next we gather as many family members (and sometimes brave friends) as possible into the farm house in Pewaukee where we will shape and bake the cookies.
Once gathered the cooking making begins with the rolling. That’s grandpas job and has been for as long as I can remember. Sometimes he has helpers, sometimes he smashes the dough into his helpers face to make “nose prints,” sometimes it’s hard to be Grandpas helper. 
Then a cutter must come and trim edges.
They are followed by the butterer…
…who is followed by the sugerer.
Once sugared they are cut into squares, or if Ivy is helping something with about four sides, not necessary straight nor uniform in size.
Then they are finally picked up and baked.
After baking they are cooled on racks before getting put away into the tins. This has been my Dads job for many years. This year there was much harassing about how he is almost as good at it as the 90 year old lady (my great grandma) who’s job he inherited.
Which brings us to the next part of the tradition.
The harassment.
The cookies are too thin, too thick, not buttered enough, too little sugar or not enough. “Your making postage stamps again!” is often heard to be yelled at a cutter. Oddly enough, Granny in the baking position gets very little flack on her work, I’m thinking this isn’t a coincidence.
And all this fun, it’s been going on for years.
I asked Grandpa this year just how long we have been making Christmas cookies.
He said: “Since 1848.”
He was kidding.
Just a tip, never trust Gramps, they don’t call him “The Big Fink” for nothin’.
Then Granny told how they were not always made this way. My Great Grandma used to cut them out with a round cutter and dip them in butter and then in sugar. Granny thought that was ridiculous therefore we don’t do it that way any more. After we got that story behind us (it’s a yearly event) we attempted to figure out just how long we have been making the Christmas cookies. It turns out 1848 isn’t too far off. The recipe is entitled “Lena Puchners Christmas Cookies”, it calls for 5 cents of potash, (we’ve updated that to baking soda in our new fangled ways and the cookies seem no worse for the wear) and in the top corner is written “Hayton.”
This means -stop reading now if you want to save yourself from the family history- that the Connell family (my Moms, Dads family) had brought the recipe to Pewaukee with them from Hayton Wisconsin where they used to live before my Great Grandfather (James A Connell – Grandpa’s Dad) bought the farm in 1913. My Great Great Grandfather (Richard Connell) had died when James was only 16 and so when he came to Pewaukee at the age of 28 he brought his mother (Betsy Amelia, who is sometimes called Betsy and usually called Amelia which always manages to confuse me) and her Christmas Cookie recipe along with him. Shortly after they were joined by Jessie (my Great Grandmother) the maker of the round cookies.
What does all this mean?
It means that while we have no idea who Lena Puchner was, or how long before the move Amelia may have made the cookies, we do know that Lena’s got some pretty darn good cookies and my family has been making them for at least a hundred years.
Now that’s a tradition. 
Today Ivy was exercising her mastery of the art of cheerful noncompliance.
Giving any sort of direction she would cheerfully tell me “No thanks!” and dance off in the opposite direction or say things like “I’m writing a Christmas Card to Johny. How do you spell Love Johnny?”
When taking a shower with Clara she cheerfully washed Clara’s hair after I had to her not to, all the while telling me how helpful she was.
When told to get dressed she continued to turn a 70 sheet tablet of colored paper into confetti (also known as dinosaurs, sailboats, and trains) which she would give to Clara (the confetti spreader), while telling me she was putting her clothes on in “just a moment,” all the while turning our house into a colorful fire hazard.
When asked to sign her name on a birthday card under the writing, she smiles and says… “How about over here?”
The worst part is she knows what she is doing, as soon as she pushes things a bit too far she happily dials back down, right before she pushes a few more of my buttons with a big smile plastered on.
The girls are having a lovely time.
Ivy is skating the edge of getting into trouble and squeaking back out of it.
I’m beyond crabby.
Is there anything worse than a kid who cheerfully ignores all suggestions/commands/threats/demands/if/then statements and then at the last second happily complies?
It’s enough to make me want to throw that noisy-smiling-confetti-making little face out in a snow bank.
I think I need more Diet Coke.
Behind the Willows 