Tag Archives: kids

Practice What You Preach

Guess what?!?

A piece I wrote is in a magazine!!!

(I’m very excited, please feel free to jump up and down and throw confetti in my honor.)

You see, even though I write all the time and other people (yup, I’m talking about you) even read it, I’ve never had what I’ve written show up in the mailbox in a format I can hold in my hand.

Celebration has been in order!

If you are a Wisconsin resident lucky enough to receive Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine you probably have already had the magazine show up in your own mailbox.

If not, here is the link to the article I wrote about fishing with kids. It’s not quite as exciting as holding it in your hand but it’s a close second: http://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/2016/06/Kid.PDF

And then, because I like to practice what I preach…carp fishing - with kids

…or maybe because I just like fishing with the kids…Jane and Jonas bluegill fishing

…or maybe because I just like fishing…Clara, Ivy, Jonas fishing

…and also because it was Grandpa’s birthday…Jonas, Clara, Jane and Gramps fishing

…we went kid fishing.Jonas, Clara and Grandma Mary

The fish were biting…Jonas and Jane fishing

…there was chaos…
Jane, Jonas, Grandma Mary and Tyler catch a carp together

…and my family kept up a constant stream of teasing references to my article to make sure I didn’t get a big head.Uncle Jim, Aunt Marcia, Gramps, Clara, John and Granny

 

Basically…Jonas and Clara fishing…it was perfect.

Caged!

 

Ducklings, goslings and children all move.

A lot.

But, if you build a 20 duckling, 2 gosling, 3 kid cage, you can photograph them all at the same time!

ducklings, goslings and kids

Remarkably even when you stick these 25 creatures in one small cage, you still get a very good sense of all their individual personalities.

Ivy, is seriously working on socializing the ducklings, she is busy, and can not smile for the camera.

Clara is willing to grin for the camera but will not stop doing what she had been doing, in this case plucking bits of greenery from the floor of the cage to hand feed to the birds.

Jane, of course, abandons all pretense that she was ever doing anything else to make silly faces at the camera.

Meanwhile, the ducklings, observed only by Ivy, are in a slight panic. But only a slight panic, because there is also water in their midst and, as all ducklings know, all water needs to be thrown on the ground immediately.

The goslings are boldly investigating. We are new to geese, but so far bold investigation seems to be their thing!

And, at the rate all 25 of them are growing, this is likely to be the only picture I ever get of them all together.

Grumpy Fairy

When I am well and truly grumpy it is, unfortunately, obvious.

If the smoke coming out of my ears doesn’t clue you in, you can always listen for overly stomp-y footfalls or the slamming of cupboard doors. As if that’s not enough, I also turn into a yell-er.  And not just any yell-er,  oh no, I turn into my mother. I yell at people (and, yes, by “people” I mean my kids) with the same horridly ineffective, high pitched, squeaky voice that I always used to laugh at.

Even by sight I look grumpy, more disheveled than normal, (probably from the stomping and the slamming) and my arms have a tendency to wave and flail about when I talk (to further ineffectively accentuate the squeaks) and my face is not a welcoming one.

When Jane is well and truly grumpy she turns quiet, becomes fairly unapproachable and looks like this:

Grumpy Jane Fairy

 

Maybe I need fairy wings?

Smiling Gators

Jane: “Mom! At Clara’s field trip I saw a real alligator and he was black and really friendly.”

Me: “Friendly? Really? How could you tell?”

Jane: “He was smiling!”

alligator

Mental note- Things to teach Jane. 

  • All that glitters is not gold. 
  • Beauty is only skin deep.
  • Never put your trust in crocodile tears or alligator smiles

Chickens and Children

It seems I’ve taken a lot of pictures of chickens and children lately. And while they are similar beings in that no small garden plant is safe from either of them and food disappears in vast quantities whenever they are around, I feel it’s safe to say that in most other respects they are quite different.

For instance when approached by a camera, they react quite differently.

Children (my children anyway), get a serious attack of the sillies.Ivy, Clara and Jane

Chickens, do not.broiler chickens

Children, barge the camera on the mistaken theory that everything is funnier if it’s closer.Ivy, Clara and Jane

Chickens, do not.broiler chickens

Children, are sad when their sisters have abandoned them and the photo session is over.Jane

Chickens, are not.broiler chicken

(At least I’m pretty sure they aren’t, this girl looks fairly content to me.)

Also, if you live in the area and are interested in purchasing a chicken or two once they are ready for the oven let me know, the chicken order e-mail is going out tonight!

 

Getting Back to Awesome

If you are going to have kids at the same time as your best friend it will initially be kind of awesome.

Or, rather, as awesome as things can be when two sleep deprived people get together with hungry, crying infants on their own separate sleep schedules. So, basically, just like being at home except that when you are still in your pajamas at eleven in the morning covered in milk stains and spit up, your company will smell just like you.Jessie, Sarah, Ivy and Natalie

Eventually the time will come when you get talking, walking kids together. When that happens you can watch the remaining awesome dissipate like mist in the sun as the first kid declares, “Mine!”

As we are now painfully aware, one and two year olds mostly just horde toys and fight. So a “fun” weekend together will in actuality turn out to be exhausting weekends of parallel parenting while refereeing wrestling matches over the toy of the moment.  Of course this stage is relatively short lived but, if you do it like my best friend and I did, just as one starts getting out of the wrestling match stage another new kid shows up until you suddenly look at each other and wonder how you produced six kids when the oldest is only four.

But I’ve got good news. If you can just hold on, through the insanity, the lack of sleep, and the toy wars, in just a few short years (nine short years to be exact) the kids will grow up enough that the biggest problem is that no matter how many plates of food you serve, as soon as the food is put away, one of them will show back up in the kitchen proclaiming, “I’m hungry!”

My friend and I… we seem to have made it out the other side. This spring we got together for multiple days of actual, real life, fun.

Yes, dinner time was hectic and there was still plenty of refereeing to be done.  But at the end of the day we put the kids to bed early and fell back into our old habits of staying up too late laughing until we cried.

If you are going to have kids at the same time as your best friend, initially it will be kind of awesome.

And then it won’t.

But don’t give up, best friends can always make it back to awesome, eventually…

Sarah and Jessie blurred

Of course those friends might not have a picture of themselves taken together since those first kidos were born, but I’m sure that’s just part of the awesome that is yet to come!