Archiving

I just spent the last two afternoons going through digital files filled with family photos, posting them, and ordering prints. I have a pretty organized collection of books dating to Summer of 2009, but that is sort of where it stops.

So I just placed an order for over 500 prints that will bring our collection up to date. I have my work cut out for me, to say the least.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some of these images that somehow slipped through the cracks over the years.

Have a great weekend.

Bela - two weeks old

Bela - 2

Bela - 2

Mae - 2 months

Mae - about 10 months old

Grandma Paula and Mae

Grandma Paula and Bela

At our wedding, September 2005

This Moment

A moment from our week we don't want to forget. Such great moments. Have a wonderful weekend.

Life Lessons, part II

I've officially reached the stage in my pregnancy where friends and strangers alike no longer hesitate to ask me when I'm due. There seem to be no more awkward "is that a beer belly or a baby?" conversations.

The girls, of course, have known for a few months now, and have been carefully cataloging every change they observe in my body.

Mae is impressed by my cleavage. But then again, so am I. I can hardly believe it belongs to me. Bela really likes to feel the baby kick. Mae swears that as my belly gets bigger, my body gets smaller and my back does this cool "bending" thing she seems to like.

I'm starting to feel like a lab specimen though, constantly touched and stared at by these curious girls. There is nowhere I can go in my own home where I am safe from their ever-observant eyes. I enter my empty, darkened bedroom and peel a shirt off and by the time it comes off over my eyes Mae is peeking through the door. I close the bathroom door and step out of my pants to slip into the shower and I turn around and Bela is walking in.

Tonight after dinner and coloring we climbed on our couch and read a chapter in "These Happy Golden Years", part of the Little House series. After we finished, I sent them off to brush their teeth and for the 100th time today I tidied up their crafting table.

At the end of most days, I re-organize the scattered papers into three piles: paper with at least one clean side left (those go back in the bin); papers with drawings or depictions that were done half-heartedly, scratched out, crumpled up, or otherwise discarded by their creator (those get recycled); and paper that I want to label and file away in the girls' art box.

It's not unusual for me to get a good chuckle out of these gems that I keep. They say so much about where my kids are at this point in their lives: Mae seems to be obsessed with eyelashes, hair bows, and cats. Bela labors over lowercase letters and drawings of homes. But tonight....tonight's find tops them all.

Here it is in all its glory. I suppose this is a woman, not unlike myself, with a swelling midsection that bears no real relation to the relatively small-in-size child growing in her womb. Oh, and a healthy sprouting of pubic hair.

I think I'm going to install a lock on my bedroom door.

Life lessons

Bela and Mae at New Buffalo Beach, Michigan. August 2011

A lot of the important lessons I try to teach my kids come out of my mouth as repetitive, meaningless dribble.
     *Eat your vegetables if you want to grow big and strong.
     *Brush your teeth or they'll rot and fall out of your head.
     *Don't wade out too far in the lake or the rip tide will carry you away.
     *Buckle your seat belt or you might die in a crash.
     *Don't put your finger in your nose or... or... Ok. There's not a really great reason for not doing this.

Once in a fortuitous while, the lesson and its consequence play out in real life, deeply impressing my children in a way that ensures they will never forget:
     *Don't fool around on the bunk bed or you'll fall and break a bone. (Flash back to November 2010 when Mae fell from the ladder and broke her collar bone.)
     *Don't eat too many sweets or you'll get sick. (Winter of 2008, Bela got her hands on far too many treats at her school's Christmas Fair and promptly threw up on the rug when she got home. She has NEVER forgotten this.)

Would you think less of me if I admitted that even though my children suffered (slightly) I found great pleasure in the consequences of their actions? While I was scrubbing the rug, while I was carrying Mae to the hospital across the street, I was secretly doing the "I told you so" dance, feeling vindicated. Feeling calm.  Feeling RIGHT, for once.

But recently, things went terribly wrong.

Bela is constantly picking at Mae: correcting, admonishing, advising, criticizing. It drives us all crazy. One night over dinner, Chris and I attempted to teach her something, a term, to describe her behavior. To help her recognize and label what she was doing to her poor, poor sister.

Nit Picking.

Unfortunately, she learned a short two days later the literal sense of that expression.

In the parking lot of JoAnn's fabrics, on an errand I was running less than 12 hours before leaving town for the wilderness of northern Ontario to fish for a week on an isolated lake while I dumped my children on my poor mother and Stepfather, I - responding to Mae's third complaint of a "scratchy head" - peered once again into the fine, golden hair of my 4 year old under the bright sun in a black-topped parking lot and saw....something. Something tiny. Something brown. Like the tiny tip of a cumin seed. Maybe I saw 5. Could it have been 10?

I shook off any fear of lice. Lice are bigger. Their eggs are white, right? You can see them just by looking, right? My children aren't supposed to get them. RIGHT? And then I looked in Bela's hair, squinting under the weakness of my terribly hyperopic eyes, and found the same mysterious cracked spices here and there near her scalp. I felt like throwing up.

I didn't look further. I didn't try to find any live lice. The nits (eggs) were enough for me. We got in the car and drove across the street to Target and I uncharacteristically loaded up on harsh pesticides. When it comes to infestation with a parasite, apparently my goals in natural childcare are easily compromised.

As I pushed the giant red cart through the aisles of the pharmacy, trying in vain to locate the product without having to die of embarrassment and ask for help, Mae kept chanting "I have eggs in my hair!" with glee. I was horrified.

After finally asking where to locate the lice shampoo, after suffering the look on the face of the young female pharmacist, I grabbed the $20 box and hightailed it home.

My mom was a trooper. Of course, by not calling to inform her first I didn't give her a chance to back out. But after a sleepless night filled with sobbing, washing, picking, packing, and dreaming about lice, I dropped the kids off in Wisconsin with coloring books, watercolors, bathtub toys, and RID, and I went on my semi-merry/semi-miserable way.

Now the ordeal has passed (mostly). And every night, after dinner, we all sit around the table with freshly washed hair and engage in some good, old-fashioned, nit picking.

  

This Moment

A moment from our week we want to remember always. No words necessary. What's your moment?

Vacation

Northern Lights from Pilot Lake - Photo by Chris, circa 2007? They used it on their website.

With the summer teaching semester finally finished, Chris and I are headed to Canada today. We'll be joined by my cousin and some friends for a fly-in fishing trip for the next week, where we will be catching and feasting - mainly on Walleye - on a thousand acre lake. The best part? We will be the only people on this lake, the only people for miles and miles, in a little cabin that is inaccessible by car. Which leads me to the worst part - to get to this cute little abode we have to throw backpacks, duffel bags, cases of beer, sundries, photo gear, and  oh - fishing gear- into one of those teeny tiny planes that takes off from and lands on water. Not my favorite part.


One of these years we'll be bringing the girls with us. While I do appreciate some time away in fantasy land, where I'm not just a parent but an adult too (and one who likes to sleep in and stay up late), I also feel a pang of regret every time I adventure without my babes.

Back in March when we made our budget and tried to prioritize our spending, we needed to keep it clear in our minds that our top priorities were not home ownership, nice clothes, or tuition-based grade schools, but rather traveling: packing up, moving around, exploring, tasting, smelling... removing ourselves from our comfort zones and stuffing what's left of our very fortunate lives full of new adventure. And Bela and Mae, and soon enough baby # 3, are all part of those very fortunate lives.

I can't wait to take them along with us on all our adventures, I really can't. But in the meantime, I am very grateful and fortunate to have so much family nearby to help out during these little escapades of ours... In this case, my mother, Mary Lou and my step-father David. They've been off for the last month on their own almost 9,000-mile RV adventure through Canada and into Alaska and back. And they only just arrived back home last Thursday, but are allowing us to dump our children on them for the next week. Thank you guys. I love you.

So here's to adventure, to northern pike, to walleye, to family, to time spent on a solitary lake with loons, eagles, elk and bear. And in the wise words of my 6 year old daughter, here's to hoping that while away we "just don't die."


http://www.great-fishing.com - Wilderness Air

This Moment

It's time to share our moment of the week. Have a great weekend, everyone. Enjoy your moments. 

The Pool

Is there anything more iconic than the public pool to represent what summer means to a kid? I remember sewing my Ash Pool pass onto my blue and purple swimsuit when I was a girl, riding my bike with my friends and spending the entire day, rain or shine, pool side. I remember the laffy taffys and the sweet tart pops purchased at the concession stand, the deep pool, the diving board, the kids.

My girls are no different. If I allowed them they would go every single day to the pool. And is there really a better place to be when it's 100+ degrees outside? After all, it's free, they get a lot of exercise, they gain confidence in the water, and they while away the hours they would have otherwise spent at home fighting.

Bela is a strong swimmer who is now learning to dive head first into the 8 foot pool. Mae has become a real swimmer herself this summer, diving under the water, jumping in from the side to the deep end, swimming on her back, somersaulting, braving her way down the water slide.

I am so proud of my girls, their pool-water bleached hair, their tans, their strength, their pure joy as they splash through the water and gain self confidence by leaps and bounds.

But here's the thing. I hate the pool.

I am so sick of the pool. In June, when the temperatures first soared a little and our house was hotter than a bread proofer and just as humid, I reveled in the cool waters of Pulaski Pool. But now...

I've been hit in the head too many times with a rubber ball (who the heck lets these kids bring toys into a crowded public pool?). I've been splashed with cold water, had someone else's hair stuck to my arms, dodged too many band-aids, and been pushed aside by way too many teenagers. And to boot, I've lost sight of my nether-regions and there is nothing more uncomfortable than strolling the pool deck in a bikini when the only part of me I can see is my growing belly. I have no idea what the rest of me is doing.

And yet I go. If I don't have to get in, I no longer do. If there is a grandma, a friend, or a reasonably responsible looking adult within three feet of pool depth of my children, I sit on the edge. Chris hates the pool more than I do, so there has been no relief.

The girls have only a couple of days left of summer camp, and then the home-stretch towards school. This is it for them, August. Their pool time is running short, and I'm thanking my lucky stars that the park district shuts them all down come September.

*Note that in the image above I have taken the photo from the safety of my seat, on the side of the pool.