The ups and downs of Disney....a brief teaser

Anticipating meeting Buzz Lightyear in person.....

The let-down of waiting.....

and waiting....

and more waiting.....

(G's face says it all.)

Followed by excitement at meeting someone new.....

The jolt of excitement at riding a new ride....

Can't hold 'em back from having tons of fun at Walt Disney World.  

Dang, has it been a week?

Um, hello.  It's summer break so I have all 3 kids underfoot.  And that means no breaks.  At all.  All day long.  And that means that by the time the kids' bedtime rolls around I am drooling and mumbling and in no shape to write even my initials.  

I have also been busy with my 20-year high school reunion which was last weekend.  It was great to see everyone, although it sucked being "in charge" because I totally didn't get to talk to gals like I wanted to.  I was so preoccupied with making sure things were rolling along that I didn't relax as much as I might have had I not been in a responsible kind of position.

It went well, though, and I think everyone had a nice time and was pleased with the meal.

This week has been doing more prep work for our Disney trip as well as dealing with laryngitis.  D lovingly shared his upper respiratory funk with me last weekend.  While I am glad it wasn't a full-blown honking/snorting cold, it has been frustrating not being able to yell at talk to the kids as loudly as I normally do.

N and G are slowly adjusting to being together 24/7, and by that I mean that N starts playing around with G, rough-housing in a fun-way, but then she gets tired and wants him to stop doing whatever it was she initially started doing to get him to play (like squirt water bottles at each other or chase each other with pillows), but he doesn't so then she gets whiney and wants to hang onto me to protect her from the 3-year-old squirt who LOVES it when someone acts scared of what he's doing rather than just smacking him upside the head and telling him to knock it the hell off.

And to think it has only been.....not yet a full week since school let out....
Dear g*d have mercy on my soul.

N has rediscovered her Barbies, and they have taken over my entire couch.  While I am aggravated by the lack of seating, I am also glad to see that she hasn't completely forgotten how to have fun with actual toys.

The other day she completed 14 pages in one of her math workbooks, and I've had her reading daily.  She has also been doing some work in a rhyming workbook.  This might mean she is already slightly bored.  She is my daughter, after all, so what can I expect?

G has been asking to work in his preschool workbooks, although he is very picky about the work he wants to do.  Counting and circling are his thing.  Coloring.....not so much.  We have got to work on some of those fine motor skills, though.

I read a book last night at bedtime that N was really into titled Kate Shelley and the Midnight Express by Margaret K. Wetterer.  We also read Farmer's Market by Paul Brett Johnson.  At the reunion, a friend who is a children's librarian told me he died recently, so I shared this with N before reading the book.  She started asking all sorts of questions about him, so we did a little pre-reading online research about him.

Which brings us to our other focus of the summer.....picture books written by Johnson and other Kentucky writers.

Cross country tryouts and why my enthusiasm is tempered

N came home from school yesterday with information about cross-country tryouts in August.  She said she wants to try out.

And I am ok with that, BUT

She has to be able to run 12 consecutive minutes without stopping or walking.
And I don't think N as a 7-year-old completely gets that concept.  I don't think she understands that 12 minutes (at least to her mom) is a lifetime.

And I feel a certain responsibility to help her prepare, which translates into training her or with her.  In July.  In the insane heat.

I don't know if she will be uber-disappointed if she doesn't make it.
I don't know if she DOES make it that she fully understands what it means to have 2 practices a week plus a meet.
I don't know if I'm prepared to try to contain the boys at meets.....although they will at least be outside where they can run somewhat wild.  
I don't know what meets will mean for my schedule.

I do know that I want her to try to do it if she wants to.
I do know that I don't want her to become involved, decide it is too much work, and then every practice or meet be a friggin' nightmare of yelling and haranguing her about going.

Perhaps I am overthinking this?
Nah, I never do that.

This I believe--The 3rd set of parents are teachers

I enjoyed teaching, and I think I was pretty good at it.  Naive, perhaps, as a young childless person who studied children and parenting from a nice objective distance.

At the time, I believed that I could make a difference in the life of a child and hopefully many children.  I believed that I had talents to share.  I believed that my strengths in organization and writing would be an asset to me in the field.  I believed that my need to have a routine with some organized chaos about it would also be a good fit for teaching.  I believed that teachers did a heck of a lot of work and thoroughly deserved higher pay and longer breaks from school.

And I still believe all this stuff, and even more now that I have the insight of being a parent with a child who will be a 2nd grader in August and a soon-to-be preschooler in September.

I believe that a parent is a child's first and potentially best teacher if he/she is consistent, kind, willing to sacrifice and encouraging of learning in all its incarnations.  A parent teaches a child to share, to deal with disappointment, to be responsible, to be polite, to not burn bridges and many other challenging life lessons.

I believe that grandparents are a child's second teacher....the ones who teach them absolute fun and unconditional love.  The kind of love that showers them with attention and adoration.  The kind of love that parents would like to give but can't because they have to teach their children to be decent.  Grandparents can get away with indulging the yard-ape-behavior and sugar-addictions.

I believe that teachers are a child's 3rd parent---the ones who teach them it is ok for mom and dad to be away because the child will still be safe and cared for; the ones who teach them to be a little wary about how they behave since not everyone adores you like a grandma or would die for you like a mom; the ones who can somehow manage to get the child to do his/her best work without argument (which mom is simply unable to do no matter how hard she tries.)

Even though I am nearing 40 years of age, I remain in contact with my 8th grade teacher, Mrs. S.  She was in my wedding.  She has been a voice of constant reassurance and guidance and encouragement to me for years.  She is among the first people to get a little note and pics of my children when I pick them up from the portrait studio.

She is a large part of the reason I became a teacher.

Teaching and love of learning are in my soul.  They are the reason I immerse my kids in things they love.  They are the reason I take an active role in their education.  They are the reason I opted to stay at home with my kids----devoting my life for a time to the early childhood development of my own.  

My parents taught me to respect my teachers.  I knew my teachers were the boss of me at school, and my parents were the boss of me at home.  And I knew that if I got in trouble with my teachers I would catch holy heck for it as soon as my butt hit the back door.  I knew that my parents had my best interests at heart but would also always listen to the authority of my teachers and their experience/education before believing any old random explanation I gave them.

On this last day of school, after having realized I forgot this entire school year to get a picture of her with her 1st grade teacher, I ran up with both boys in tow to snap a quick pic of N and Mrs. B.

To her and all my friends who taught me or taught my child or teach my child or will soon teach my other child or who teach any child----

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My 8th grade teacher, Mrs. S, and the kids.  

Ms. M, N and Ms. S (N's 3-year-old preschool teacher)

Ms. J and N (her 4-year-old preschool teacher)

Mrs. A and N (Kindergarten teacher)

Mrs. C and N (Kindergarten teacher assistant)

Mrs. B and N (1st grade teacher)

I hosed the hose

I lose it fairly often with the kids, especially when N starts something with G but then wants to get all scaredy-cat-like when he decides to come at her with something hard....like an empty plastic bin.  She's all about whacking him with pillows until he brings out the big guns.

But then there are times when I lose it about household minutiae, and I am borderline Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

While the boys napped today, I emptied both the baby pools which have been sitting on our snowman crop circles in the backyard (from last year's pool setups) and end up pretty muddy once the kids start kicking around in the water.  I decided I was going to put black cloth liner over the circles and edge them with mulch, so they won't become quite as muddy.

After doing this and laying the extra mulch around the yard in the 90 degree heat, I went to fill the pools up with water.  I pulled the hose from the Hose King (looks something like this) a stand-alone contraption that holds the hose as well as takes up a tremendous amount of space in the garage during winter and falls over repeatedly whenever the wind blows hard or I try to pull the hose from the reel.  I began spraying water into the pool when the Hose King fell over and the water stopped spraying.

Awhile back the Hose King was blown off the patio during a storm, putting an odd crimp in the connector leading to the house, so I started fiddling with that, trying to get it detached.    Water started spraying at crazy angles which I assumed was due to another "injury" from falling over and making the crimp even worse.  I eventually got it detached but decided to take the hose off the Hose King so that this crimped part wouldn't screw up the water pressure.

Due to rust and general oldness, I had to get the screwdriver out to take the Hose King apart to get the hose off.  I twisted the hose onto the faucet and still no water spraying.

Commence fiddling with the sprayer, which I have not been able to get off the hose for years.

At this point I am tired and hot and not in the mood to deal with shit from the hose, Hose King or any other piece of outdoor equipment.

So I get a clamp and try twisting it off.  No dice.
I get a hammer and try breaking the stupid plastic sprayer off.  It's not budging.
I use the backside of the hammer to tear at the plastic.  Mother F*CK!!!!  It is not moving.

And then I lose my mind completely, grab a pair of scissors from the house and cut the effing hose so that I can fill the goddamn pools up with water.

Tomorrow I will be purchasing a new hose reel that looks like this, that I can set deep in the ground by the house and take the whole fucking hose off of it.

Why is it that things that are supposed to make one's life easy make it more complicated?

Books we're enjoying (and summer focus)

My friend KB recommended a book for me to read with N titled, The Journey of the One and Only Declaration of Independence.  She and I have both been enjoying it, especially since it ties in perfectly with a Flat Stanley project that N's class did in April.  For the project, N mailed a picture of Flat Stanley to my friend G and her son A, who live near Philadelphia PA.  They took Stanley to visit where George Washington crossed the Delaware and sent N postcards of the liberty bell and Independence Hall.  And lots of this stuff is discussed in the Declaration picture book, so that has been tremendously cool.

KB also recently told me about a Scholastic warehouse sale where I purchased a book for N titled, Lives of the Presidents:  Fame, Shame (and What the Neighbors Thought).  I will be interested to see how we can tie what we have read about the Declaration of Independence to what we read about Thomas Jefferson and other early presidents.

We've been reading tall tales lately after G took a liking to Paul Bunyan vs. Hals Halson:  The Giant Lumberjack Challenge by Theresa Bateman. The kids really liked Stagecoach Sal by Deborah Hopkinson, and I have been meaning to check some websites to learn one of the folk songs from the book with which I am not familiar---"Sweet Betsy from Pike."  Both N and G liked me warbling "Polly Wolly Doodle" so I thought it might be fun for us to learn another one.

G is into anything dinosaur right now so I pick those books up when I can.  I think we must have read Dino-Soccer by Lisa Wheeler at least 30 times.  G also really liked the book Moonpowder by John Rocco which didn't seem like something he would go bananas over, but he did anyway.

Since N is in school, I try to pick books that I think she will like.  Even though she reads short novels on her own....bits and pieces since she never finishes any of them (which drives me nuts)....I want her to continue reading picture books.  I don't think one is ever too old to not get something from a picture book.  We read one I had selected called The Seeing Stick by Jane Yolen, which I thought was neat, and I think she enjoyed too.  N is pretty easy to please and rarely says she dislikes a book.

I really enjoyed Guyku:  A Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Rackza.  Earlier today N was trying to write a haiku in her Junie B. Jones journal, so I had D read this to the kids before bed tonight.  Even though it is written "for" boys, the book is cute for any person who is around boys and understands how they are.

Here is N's haiku from earlier:
The pool is so fun.
I am going to the pool.
Pools are fun to do.  


I am always game to hear about books other people with similarly aged children are reading and enjoying so send me your suggestions if you have any.  

The suicide of someone I know

Most of the time, I don't think about my nervous breakdown in 2004.  I don't remember too much about how miserable I felt.  How sad, how hopeless I felt.  How empty and alone.  And I never once thought about killing myself.  But I can imagine why someone who felt as I have felt might think of it.

My mother called me this morning and told me that her hairdresser shot himself.  At one time he did my hair too.

He left behind a wife and two teenage sons.

My first thought was, "How could he think that suicide was a good idea?"

And my second thought was to remember just how irrational my thinking was in the midst of my nervous breakdown.  Everything was desperate.  Nothing was ever going to work right again.  Catastrophes were everywhere around me.  I didn't know if I would ever not be sad or scared again.

My rational mind was taking an ass-kicking from my irrational, depressed, anxious mind.

I remember meeting some friends for lunch during the worst of my breakdown, and it was all I could do to not break down.  It was all so bleak.  I was so not the Carrie they knew.  I was a shadow of myself, a shell with nothing inside but sorrow.

So my heart really breaks for this man who was eaten alive by his irrational thoughts, and for his family who lost this man twice.  Once when the depression stole his mind and then when it stole his entire existence.