Random Ramblings

It's that time again!

Never Recovering

A couple evenings ago one of our offspring walked in on us.

Yes.

It's probably every parents' nightmare and wouldn't you know, the one time we forget to lock the door and a kid comes to our door at night, which never happens. I'm sure you'll be able to read all about it in this kid's future book:

Traumatized: An Autobiography

Chapter One: I wanted to stick a fork in my eyes

I am very thankful that it wasn't Jack. He's not old enough to know things but he's old enough to know something. He would probably just move out of the house because he couldn't stand to be near us anymore.

"Jack, what are you doing?"

"Taking my mattress out to the workshop. Please don't contact me ever again. You are both dead to me."


I'm sure we'll hear all about this decades down the line, at a family card game or something.

"Hey, you guys remember the time I walked in on you? My life was all downhill from there."

Kids, we just don't have enough in the therapy fund for all of you. You're just going to have to deal.


What Dreams May Come

A friend of ours told us he takes magnesium supplements to feel more refreshed in the morning. He did tell us a side effects is vivid dreams. So far my dreams have consisted of:

1. Everything in my friend's new house is made of paneling. Everything - walls, furniture, food. I struggle throughout the entire dream trying to figure out how to be supportive and positive about her new house but, at the same time, ask her what the frick is wrong with her. I sit at their panel table and try to cut my panel food with my panel knife.

2. I am driving around an unknown neighborhood. It's snowing - a blizzard. The road is treacherous. A white cat is sitting in the passenger seat, arguing with me about directions - we're lost. The cat is my best friend. I know I love the cat, we are like sisters, but I want to wring its furry little neck because she won't stop harping on me about where we should be going.

3. I'm at Comic Con and I'm eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. There's a girl there that everyone likes but I don't and I can't figure out why I don't like her. She's small, a dwarf. It turns out she's actually Hermione from Harry Potter (not the actress but the character come to life). I realize the reason I'm mad is because I thought she was taller and I feel betrayed.

So there you have it, a completely legal way to spend the first moments of each morning questioning your sanity. Recently I read an article that said our dreams are secretly our desires and our minds play them out. I don't think I want to drive around lost in a blizzard with a abrasively chatty cat but hey, maybe I do.

Violence Starts Young

Noah is in pre-k this year and everyone is happy about it. Everyone. The big kids and I get to have quiet homeschool times where we read about Ho Chi Minh (did you know that the city and trail are named after a person who began a revolution in Vietnam? I had no idea. It's so exciting to learn stuff) and discuss Einstein's thought experiments and watch Youtube videos on why cereal is attracted to magnets (there's iron in it but also something about the properties of water - I totally get it).

Anyway, Noah is very serious about pre-k. He tells us all the serious things that happened each day - from the letters they learned to the kinds of cookies they ate for snack (I want to send healthy snacks but every parents seems to send delicious desserts like pudding and rice krispy treats. If I send carrots and hummus, they will probably shank Noah at recess with blunt scissors). He loves going and being picked up by my best friend and her kids.

Noah also tells us how good he is each day. Which is both a frustrating and heartening thing for a mom. While you want your kid to be wonderfully behaved around other people, it's also a real kick in the teeth.

"So what you're saying is that you're completely capable of being kind and sweet and using a soft voice and being obedient and not screaming that you'll never sleep ever again while throwing toys and yet you choose not to be that way when you're at home?

You little punk, you.

The conversations go something like this:

"Mom, I didn't hit anyone today."

"That's good. Hitting hurts people."

"I also didn't pinch. Or kick. Or bite."

It just starts to escalate.

"Or stomp. Or spit. Or punch people's head."

...Or use an AK-47, or detonate a bomb, or steal someone's identity online..."

Please stop telling me all the kinds of violence you could have engaged in but didn't.

We'll be sleeping with one eye open.

And locking the door.

New York 2015: Part 2

When we left off, we were not quite halfway into our NY trip recap.

All during our time in NY, Matt and I were visiting his Grandma Dot in the hospital, who was being treated for pneumonia and the underlying condition of congestive heart failure. Since the kids weren't able to go to the hospital, Matt and I took turns visiting her.

At some point, Aunt Sue told us that they had moved some of Grandma's stuff to her little assisted living apartment and if we wanted to go through the rest of the stuff and take things we wanted and/or reminded us of Grandma, we could. I found a doughnut magnet that said "Lord, if you can't make me skinny, make my friends fat."

Yes. I will definitely take that one.

We also found some sentimental things - Matt took Grandpa's old handsaw, I found some glass goblets with our last name and a crest etched in them, an old fashioned silver butter container, little things the kids would appreciate - costume pearl necklaces for the girls, a little wooden rocking horse for Noah, an old pin from Grandpa's job celebrating a clean driving record that Jack was thrilled to have. Echos of the past that seep into our present.

One day when I was visiting Grandma with Matt's Aunt Sue, the doctor came in and took off Grandma's O2 and said "Why do they keep putting her on oxygen? Let's see how she does without it."

As a nurse, I was willing to bet big money on two things:

1. There was a reason "they" kept putting her on oxygen.
2. The doctor would forget to put it back on.

Sure enough, the end of the conversation came, at which the doctor bade a hasty farewell. I had watched Grandma's oxygen drop from 98 to 87. So I ran after him and told him I could put the oxygen back on.

Sheesh.

Grandma had been asking about seeing our kids and was sad she couldn't see them this trip. She recounted often the night on last year's visit when she and Tali ate corn and laughed at each other.

So on the last day in their town, while moving Grandma from the hospital to the rehab center, we stopped at Aunt Sue's house so Grandma could see the kids.

And son of a gun, do you know what Noah said as soon as he saw her?

"Grandma, we went to your house when you weren't there and took things you're not using."

She looked up at me with her sweet little old lady blue eyes.

"He might have Tourette's...we're looking into it..."

I do realize this is a terrible picture, Noah's head is cut off and Talitha isn't looking and you can hardly see Matt and Grandma. But the best we could do under the circumstances.

She was much more interested in interacting with the kids than taking pictures. These are the things we want our kids to remember. That it's important to do these trips even when it's tough and long and expensive. When Matt and I moved from Alaska to GA when Jack was a newborn, we purposely started in Chicago so we could visit both his grandpa and mine. They both died within months of those visits and we cherish that last time and the fact that they got to meet Jack. Life is so fleeting and so sweet. It feels good to know that the big kids at least will remember Grandma Dot and the little kids can look at the pictures and know that she was witness to their lives and they were to hers.

That morning we left and drove to Buffalo. Bittersweet goodbyes, a quick breakfast with good cousins and ice cream on the way.

We spent the night in Buffalo with Matt's best friend and his family. We played Marco Polo and tag and ate pizza and, after the kids went to bed, drank beer and watched the Republican debates and made fun of everyone, which is the only way to watch it.

On our last weekend, we drove 5 hours East to spend a couple days with Matt's brother and his wife and daughter. We rode the carousel in Saratoga amidst the horse race frenzy and swam in their pool everyday. Matt's brother was pleased with Noah's swimming ability and would often tell him to go jump in the deep end, to which Noah was take off at a full run and kick out a leg and yelled as he splashed into the pool to swim around underwater and do it again. The guys spent hours throwing the kids into the pool.

We don't get to see them too often, once or twice a year. I really enjoyed getting to know my sister-in-law Taryn a little bit more this trip. We literally spent each evening after the kids went to bed drinking wine (ok, a bottle a night but honestly, they're practically single serve bottles anyway), eating fruit, watching reality tv and doing our nails. We laughed, we talked, we got an extension cord for her little nail dryer. I regaled her with embarrassing stories of my childhood, including the time I moved right before 9th grade and decided to trim my own bangs. One side would be uneven, then the other.

What ended up happening was that I started my high school years (at a brand new school in a brand new state) looking like a recent lobotomy patient. My bangs were literally a short spiky line across my forehead. Straight up.

Needless to say, I was not voted "Best Hair."

Anyway, it's hard to stay at someone else's house with young kids. Every house we went to, the kids acted like they had never been in a house before.

"What's this? A glass door? How odd. Should we lick it? Should we slam it?"

"Wow, a staircase! Let's stomp up and down really fast over and over and then throw a ball up and down the stairs."

It was exhausting. And Matt's brother and his wife are such good parents. Patient, gentle with speaking, constantly attentive. There was a point in our weekend there that Matt looked at me and said "Hey, where's Noah?"

Neither one of us knew. But we just kind of shrugged and went on with our meal.

Speaking of meals (and feeling like a crap parent), Andrew and Taryn would lovingly strap their daughter into her high chair and meals would be a time of exploration and learning, each food had a name and was talked about and praised.

We literally sent our kids to eat at the table by the pool so we could eat in peace. Occasionally we'd open a window and yell things.

After watching this sweet display of engaged parenting, Matt and I would say to each other "Remember when we cared?"

(As a side note, I was telling my bestie about these great parenting moments and my feelings of inadequacy and she interrupted me with an astonished "Wait - they still have a strap on their high chair?" She and I are kindred spirits - Rosie is the Diana to my Anne.)

On the way home, we stopped at a hotel. We ate at a Johnny Rockets where the girls entertained us with dancing. Then we swam in the hotel pool until 10 pm.

Our final destination was my Aunt and Uncle's fabulous new home in SC. Aunt Cindy enjoyed spoiling my oatmeal-eating kids with Toaster Strudels (which was a first for all of them) and I spent some time on their amazing back porch, talking to their neighbor about her upcoming adoption from China. All in all, good times. Til next year, Yankees!