Outgrowing the buggy (almost)

Today I made another effort at going for a morning walk for exercise. This is no small feat when you have to dress & feed kids first, prepare buggy snacks and drinks and assemble the buggy, all before 9 am if you want it to not be too hot. Oh, and really, they should have on sunscreen too.

Anyway, we went for a 2 mile walk, but the difference this time was that L insisted on riding his bike instead of riding in the buggy. (Known to most people as a double stroller, but I call it a buggy.) (By the way, the Dreamer Design double stroller is completely worth the money if you walk places often with 2 kids.)

The thing is, he was fast enough on his bike (w/training wheels), that it went great. He didn't get tired either. Though he did scrape his toes trying to stop on a hill about 1/2 mile from home and decided to ride in the stroller after that since his toes really hurt, so I got to drag a bike behind me after that (and then put it on the stroller, which was awkward but easier).

So it seems like the end of an era is really approaching. The weight limit on the buggy is 100 lbs, so I knew the end was coming, since we are about 12 pounds short of that between them, but the idea that he will be big enough to consistently get himself around without the buggy soon is astounding. He is my oldest, my baby, but he isn't a baby anymore. Another step of independence.

L grew up in jogging strollers almost. We had a single and he loved to ride in it. Then after H was born, we got the double and they loved to ride in it together. They both love to ride in it, with their water, snacks and toys, touring the neighborhood in style while I puff along behind them. So many memories there.

It seems just a few more years and he'll be riding his bike easily, without training wheels, all over the place, not needing me following him and helping him with crossing streets. I can see it coming and I can't believe how fast time is going. How did he get so big?

Oh and I got the official bound copies of my thesis in the mail this week! So cool and official! :)

Tim Taylor moment

Well I guess the perfect follow up to my Heloise moment is a Tim Taylor moment. I spent about 5 hours on Saturday working in the yard, trimming bushes, weeding, and such. Well, I got a little lax about watching the power cord to the hedge trimmer and the photo is the result. OOOPS!

I didn't get an electrical shock until I had already disconnected it from the house and was freeing the cord from the blade, so it was just residual and minor. I finished the bushes by hand clippers afterward.

I called my dad to ask how many power cords he had cut thru and he said just one, but several times. Hee hee. So apparently it is repairable, which is good, since my DH is lamenting his nice power cords' injury. (He has several other nice cords, so I'm not sure why it's such a big deal, but hey, I don't love tools like he does.)

My dad did say that they once got an estimate for getting the bushes trimmed by a service, and it was upwards of $5000! So he said whenever he was trimming bushes after that, he just thought about all the money he was saving by doing it himself. :)

From that perspective, I could probably buy a few nice new power cords for DH. :) (But I couldn't replace the memories, he'd say.)

My Mini Heloise Moment

Before & After Shots of one of the lovely bleach stains in my carpet that are now gone thanks to the genius who invented a method for removing the bleach from the carpet. Possibly the coolest thing ever! Bleach Stain removal website

Icing on the cake

Until now, I did not put frosting on stuff. This was not because I hate frosting, but because frosting hated me. I usually managed to turn baked goods into trifles when I tried to frost them. So I just didn't use frosting.

My friend has a blog with her beautiful creations at it: Create Cakes. I told her I would love to learn how to put frosting on a cake without tearing up the whole cake and she said she'd teach me!

This photo is the finished product. It is my own, monogrammed piece of cake heaven. I learned all about how I need a few good pieces of equipment in addition to my new skills with the frosting/icing. (I don't know if there is a difference between those words yet.)

I was very happy with how nice the frosting looked. Here is a photo of the cake before the decorative frosting was added. Isn't it amazing? It is tapered slightly on the top edge because I learned 2 methods of frosting, one on each half of the cake and to make them look better for a finished product, the slight tapering of the top corner was necessary. It is a beautiful frosting job, I think. :)

I had a lot of fun learning to frost a cake so it looked pretty. And then practicing basic dots and writing skills to make the decorations. It was fascinating. I may even take more classes at some point!

We decided to do some baking challenges of our own, being inspired by those Daring Bakers and Weekend Cookbook Challengers. We picked out our own recipes we've always wanted to make and will blog about them and compare pictures and challenges. Our first recipe will be a flourless chocolate cake. So I will be starting another blog devoted to my cooking adventures. It will be fun! :)

Discrimination

Today we went to the pool as part of a playgroup thing our church does. I'm trying to make new friends. I'm really trying here! I am talking and meeting ladies, though none of them have seemed to be new BFF yet. You never know when you will find a wonderful friend. I'm still looking for one here.

Well, this post is about how L tried to play with some little boys his age at the pool and the bully said: "We can't play with you. You don't go to our church." (Which we do, case in point, we were there.) Excuse me? What? My mama bear instincts kicked in, but all I could do by the time I got there was to hug my son and try to find something else for him to do. Well, I spent the next little bit trying to figure out how to deal with it, because other moms hadn't noticed or done anything and I did not like what had happened. I did not like it, no not one little bit.

And then it happened again apparently when I was out of the pool having a snack. This time, L came up to me about to cry: "Mama, those boys won't let me play with them." Grrr... Why are kids mean sometimes??? I managed to behave though and nicely talked to the kids about how we had just moved into the area, were new at church and had left all of our friends behind in Utah. How L didn't have any friends and would like to try to make new ones. I think I did pretty good, considering. The bully said "I have plenty of friends, I don't need any more." Grrr. I responded that maybe it would be nice to find a way for him to have some friends and be included in their games and he found another kid who was playing by himself and told my son and him to play together. They were both happy about that arrangement it seemed, so I went back to tending H, who just wanted to fill up a bucket and dump it out.

Of course, I watched kids twice grab things out of H's hands and run off with them. Grrr. Again, where were their parents, and what are they teaching their kids? They weren't things that belonged to the other kids, they weren't things that they had been playing with previously. Why? When it was time to go and we were about to leave, the bully ran up and said: "L! We didn't recognize you with your goggles on!" Well, at least that was an attempt at an apology. I told them we were getting ready to leave but could play another time. Arrgh.

I was seeing RED y'all. I had been ready to storm out of the pool area, dragging my kids behind and never go to church again. I was ready to find that kids mom, whom I never did figure out who she was, (lucky for her) and yell at her until she begged forgiveness for having such a child. I had a lot of angry thoughts. It wasn't really the best mood to be in for trying to make friends, but COME ON! Who teaches their child that they only play with kids from church that they know?

On the car ride home, I attempted to turn it into a discussion of what we could do to be friendly to all and not be like the bully. L pretty much understood and it was a decent conversation about being friends to all kids and expressing our feelings and thinking about the feelings of others.

It made me think about what some people must feel in Utah where most everyone belongs to the same church and ends up hanging out together, though usually I think it is unintentionally. I don't have tons of experience there since I lived in student land, but I'm sure it isn't any more pleasant than my experience was today.

Book Signing

This photo is of Stephenie Meyer, talking to the person in line before me as she was signing books.

I have recently become a fan of the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. They are fun books, and I have really enjoyed them. While I was visiting my folks, Mrs. Meyer happened to be in their town for a book signing promoting the release of the 3rd book. I decided to go to it, having never been to a book signing before.

It was different from what I expected. There was a Q&A session, which I didn't know about, and so I hadn't thought of any questions. Then for the signing, it was quite literally, have your book ready, she will put in her signature and your name in one book and then you are done. There were maybe 300 people there, so the need to get people thru the line quickly is understandable to some degree, but it wasn't anything like what I thought. I had thought of phrases to have her sign, I had thought of talking to her about my opinion of the latest book, but those weren't what happened. It was still a neat thing to do I think.

Road Tripping USA

I haven't posted in a while... We've been enjoying our long road trip. We've been to all of my grandparents homes, the beach, fishing, visiting my old childhood city, my sister & now we are visiting my parents.

It's wonderful to see my grandparents playing with my children and enjoying their exuberance. In contrast to other people who have complained about them being "too loud".

Seeing my kids enjoy the beach for the first time was amazing. It is the beach that I went to almsot every summer of my childhood, so I have great memories there. Playing with them and introducing them to this was so much fun.

We also went to Angel Oak, this fantastic 1400 year old tree. The kids loved playing around it, though you can't play on it. That's a tricky one.

I have loved the relaxed feel of allowing us to just be ourselves and stop worrying so much about others' expectations. The relief in my son's voice when I explained to him that we weren't going to use time-outs or punishments anymore... it was amazing. And while it does take more thought to have reasons and explanations and take time to talk about things, it has been really wonderful.

Golfing with my family was also alot of fun. I guess I could have been blogging in detail about it all, but I usually blog when I feel the urge of something interesting to post. I know my life is interesting, but it is just regular to me. It's the amazing things that usually motivate me to write a blog post. Maybe I should be writing more. I'm not sure.

Unconditional Parenting in Practice

I really loved the book. I loved all the research included. I enjoy Alfie Kohn's writing style. So I decided to start changing my parenting style.

I'm still dealing with stopping myself from making threats, giving time outs, and withholding love. I'm still dealing with knowing how to say no at the store to my kids requests, but do it respectfully and with a good reason, and when is it okay to say no, versus saying yes on the little things?

I'm still dealing with a son who thrives on praise because that's what he's dealt with for almost 5 years, so how do I help him understand how proud I am of him all of the time without constantly telling him how I approve like I am used to doing?

On the positive side of the coin, I have found more patience and understanding in really listening to my boys needs and in giving hugs immediately and holding them as long as they want to. I see that my son likes the explanations of why something isn't okay and that he wants to immediately try again at stuff to do it right, instead of taking a time out. I am enjoying time with my kids more - which is so good, because having kids should be enjoyable.

Two anecdotes:

I was at Home Depot for the 37th time this week and trying to find the right kind of mulch. L was pushing a cart all around when he ran into someone. I saw it happen, I saw him immediately veer off and start pushing the cart again without any acknowledgement of what had happened. I called him to come talk to me, using my best calm and polite voice. The woman looked at me and said "He ran me over!" in an indignant voice. (She was still standing, so this was a bit of an overstatement.) I said "I understand." and calmly turned my attention to L. I asked him what had happened and how he felt and how he thought the lady felt. The thing that surprised me is he said he felt angry because he had not turned the cart right and had hit her. Suddenly, I saw the whole situation in a different light. He had been practicing his cart driving skills and had an accident. He was upset and wanted to practice more. I asked him how he would feel if he got hit by the cart and he didn't really know or want to think about it, I'm not sure. I explained that the lady probably felt sad and had been hurt and maybe it would be nice to say sorry. (She had already walked off in a huff, apparently because I hadn't barked out a command for him to apologize.) He said he didn't want to, and since I was ready to leave, I said, okay, let's go. That's a big deal to me, as I normally would have forced him to apologize immediately, but I decided to try the whole "work with" your child thing in the situation. :) We started to leave and he said he'd changed his mind and wanted to apologize. We had to walk around a bit to find her and he was acting shy, so I said he wanted to say something and he mumbled out "Sorry." and she said "Thank you." and turned and went about her business. L asked to try again at driving the shopping cart so I let him get another one and watched as he carefully manuevered it thru several aisles, before asking him if we could go. We left, both in a good mood and calm, L talking about his good driving skills.

Allowing myself to not care what the lady thought immediately and tending to my childs' needs was a good step for me. The whole situation could have played out so differently!

Another anecdote is when I took the kids to lunch at Potbelly's one day and the each immediately ran and got a bottled drink. Normally, I would have immediately vetoed those, but I decided that if I wanted one, I would get it, so the same respect should go to them - if they wanted it, they should have it. L further tested me, by asking for chips and then ice cream as well. I got them all of it that time, as I kept telling myself we were out to lunch for a nice relaxing time, and it was a nice treat. What it really made me think about was the article in Live Free Learn Free called "Starbucks Worthy" in a different way. When I had first read that article, I thought I was good about treating my kids well at restaurants. At Potbelly's I realized that wasn't really so. It made me realize that eating out was going to be more expensive - a great deterrent to eating out too much, but also interesting to think about going to the fast food restaurants because, I know that the kids meals are all they usually want there. Downside: I don't like any of the food at all. BK has the veggie burger that is okay - but at Wendy's it's a baked potato and salad. So again - another reason not to eat out much.

A possibly related part of this is now L asks for food at pretty much every store that has any type of restaurant, Target included, even if we just ate before coming to the store. I remind him of this and he proclaims "But I'm still hungry!" I still think of this as him testing his new limits - though it's hard to say. I can't just stop taking my kids with me to the store, so I have to figure something out about it. I guess it is something I really need to think about, but I'd love to know what others do. The little things don't bug me, but when I've just fed them breakfast or lunch and they want another meal at the store, it does frustrate me. I remember being a kid. I remember just wanting to try stuff at the store because it was new and different. Perhaps that's all he wants and I should plan a trip to do that - but then on the flip side - whenever we go to the farmer's market - L & H both remember the ice cream booth we went to the first time and run immediately there and ask for ice cream. Can I not go to the farmer's market with them without buying ice cream now?

Pondering Parenting

While reading other blogs, I stumbled across a book recommendation called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn. I have read and enjoyed some of his work previously, and the premise sounded interesting so I went and checked it out from my local library.

It has been fascinating. Things I have never pondered or realized could be an issue. I am enjoying it so much. It is really changing my lens thru which I view things.

Ch ch ch changes...

Well, it seems our summer of change is just filling up with more changes. I decided to stop eating meat for a myriad of reasons last summer. And I felt good about it and was happy about it for a long while. But recently things have started to change. I have been reading a lot of food books, and they have slowly been affecting my point of view. The latest book was called Nourishing Traditions. It was an amazing read and it is partially a cookbook. So DH & I are working to change some of our other eating habits - like sugar and processed foods. Working up to going without chocolate most of the time will be the hardest for me probably - I eat chocolate almost daily.

So I am eating meat again, when it is from pastured, free-range, humanely treated animals. Which pretty much makes me a veggie still at most restaurants. Visit Eat Wild for info on places near you that might offer pastured meat products. I have considered calling my new eating habits "flexitarian" instead of vegetarian, but I'm not really big on labels holding me down.

H has started to potty train himself almost. He takes his diaper off and goes "potty" at least once a day. He also tells us almost immediately when he does #2 now, which is a big change - he's gaining awareness. Of course he would choose the time around moving to do so...oh well. More changes...