Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

Pleas do not think i am greate. I just want a lot of stuf. You can get me sum for christmas.

I would like a fairy dust jewlry set, a fairy musical treasure box, a magz construction set, a quadrilla, a student microscope, a stockmar modeling beeswax, a tumbling mat, balance scale, and silk streamers.

Thank you.

Bela Strong

(Someone just perused the 'Magic Cabin' catalog that came to the door. But it's too late. She already ordered a metal detector from Santa, and he doesn't take returns.)

This Moment

My Friday post. A moment from our week. Have a great weekend!

$25 off

I realize with guilt that I haven't been doing as many things with my older girls as I used to. So a few weekends ago, the afternoon of the festival of lights and the spitting incident, actually, we all managed to get out the door together to go for a simple walk.

Gillian's new favorite pastime is pushing the little red wagon my Mom bought for Bela's first Christmas. She gets so excited, pulls herself up, and off she goes. That girl can log some distances on those big chubby thighs of hers. She pushed her little wagon all the way around the block, which on baby legs must feel like a small marathon.

So while she stiff-legged it down the street and around the corner, I walked with Chris and the girls. Their interest in watching their sister accomplish new feats faded as they began to notice that our neighborhood had been littered with little green fliers advertising $25 off a massage at a local spa.

I don't know why people do this. For my part, the minute I find my house/sidewalk/car the victim of unsolicited advertisements I silently vow to never, ever patronize that business, out of principle. But the girls were into it. They began slowly, picking up the easy ones as we walked past. But soon, our walk turned into a giant scavenger hunt whose purpose was to relieve the block of each and every speck of green paper.

They plucked them off cars. They ran up to neighbors' houses. They found them in lawns. By the time we got home they must have had at least 80. After a second trip out later that day with Chris, they doubled their numbers.

So now, the annoying single piece of green advertisement that once resided only on my car windshield has become 150+ pieces of green advertisement all over my living room.

"What are you going to do with these, Bela?" I asked that day.

"Bring them to the parade to pass them out", she answered.

Somewhere between ridding the block of the irritating litter and redistributing free of charge said litter to a much wider, more diverse audience, lies some irony. But I'm too dense to make much use of it here. 

Bela and Mae packed up their backpacks with the stacks of (really high quality) coupons and we all set off for the Festival of Lights parade, which, as you know, really didn't end up being the best environment for pamphleting, what with all the spitting and shoving.

And so, in the meantime, I'm looking for something crafty to do with all these things. Either that, or you're all getting $25 off a massage this year for Christmas.

Festival of lights

Fireworks over the Chicago River

In the unspoken competition between Dad and Mom, this lady here is 0 for 10. 

Chris and I had a "discussion" last week, and somewhere at some point during our venting and our righting of wrongs, I remember myself critiquing him for never putting any effort into planning anything for us to do as a family.

"I get depressed when we sit around on a Saturday." I said.

"I hate it when the TV is on and it's beautiful outside and the kids are doing nothing." I said.

"I want to do something!" I said.

He could have, but did not, bring up the fact that most of the things I plan end up costing us $100. They turn into major whining fests. They inspire conflict, resentment, and exhaustion.

My birthday weekend I insisted we go to Morton Arboretum to see the fall colors... with the other 4 million bazillion folks in the greater Chicago area.  I won't tell you how much we paid for crappy hot dogs, how long we waited in lines, or how little we saw of the actual trees, but I will concede that it was probably our last visit during fall festival weekend. 

The weekend before that I planned a lovely little hike to our neighborhood park's fall festival and pumpkin patch, where we dropped an embarrassing amount of money on "tickets" which gained us entrance to an even more embarrassing number of "activities." And then we got stuck outside in the middle of a rare Chicago tornado warning.

Not doing so well, you think. Learn from your lessons, Katie, you say.

Which makes me not want to tell you about tonight, except that there is no way I can NOT tell you about tonight.

Some strange and mysterious force set me up to take another fall. Stubborn and ever hopeful, I decided wouldn't it be sweet if we all hopped on the train (it's CHEAP!), rode downtown (it's only 9 stops!) and watched the Festival of Lights on Michigan Avenue (it's FREE admission)!

And Chris, in true winning spirit, agreed. Yes! he said. Yes! I will go! I'm with you! Let's plan this. Let's DO something.

And it was lovely, until we made it to the front lines near Wacker and Michigan.

I breathed in, and then out. I promised I would not lose my cool, and then I did. Immediately.

The problem: it wasn't fair that Bela was on Chris's shoulders. It wasn't fair that Bela had a better view, that she was taller, that her eyes looked higher over the crowd. Mae had a point - she is shorter than Bela, and was sitting on the shorter parent's shoulders.  They fought. They cried. We buckled.

In a ridiculous attempt to appease our children and ensure that they both sat at the same vantage point in the crowd, eyes locked at the same exact height, I - the smaller half of our parental unit - ended up with Bela (50lbs) on my shoulders while Gillian (22lbs) rode strapped to my chest.  Bela was bouncing to get a better view of the top 2 inches of the parade floats when all of the sudden a small group of people pushed their way through our part of the crowd.

They pushed in,  people pushed back. I could feel Bela's attention transition from Santa and Mickey and Christmas trees to the "f*** you, you white trash b****" coming from behind us.
"I'm gonna spit in your face, b****" drifted over, but shortly after, they pushed their way through, tempers settled, nervous laughter and stunned guffaws floated in the air. We turned around to take stock of the damage.

I was feeling a little shaken because I had almost been knocked over, buried under Bela and forced to suffocate Gill, but really I was feeling bad for the lady who had been the target of the group's obscenities. So I was shocked when I noticed the look on her face, a look that only meant she was taking pity on US.

As it turns out, one of the women made good on her threat of spitting, but she didn't have the best aim. For there sat Mae, atop Chris's taller shoulders, with a big, wet, loogie swinging from her coat pocket.

When it was finally over, when the fireworks ended and we had our hot cocoa in hand, we made it back to the train at Clark and Lake. I looked at Bela who was faux gagging and retching in the train station, feigning illness. I looked at Mae who was complaining of cold and sore legs. I looked down at Gillian who had grown irate at being tied to me, and overwhelmed with exhaustion. And then I looked at my husband, who never once said "I told you so."

I smiled at him. And then we squeezed into an overstuffed, hot, smelly train car packed with strollers crying kids and gum popping, and began the long, long 9 stop ride home. 

The best part? After putting the kids to bed, after pouring a glass of wine, we sat on the couch, And Chris looked at me and said, "Next year, we gotta get closer to the front."







.

The lazy homeowners guide to what's what

Ok, I'm actually not lazy. My friends aren't either. But when we want to laugh, poke fun at ourselves, we usually do so by highlighting how we're lazy, unbathed, uncouth little mommies. And it's funny, because it's not true. Well, not completely.

Sometimes we are so busy in other aspects of our lives (i.e., super not lazy) that we have to let other things slide (like bathing).

As we were looking to buy the house, the fact that it was a wee bit nasty inside actually appealed to our DIY inner-selves. Chris talked about tiling, OH! the tiling he would do. I talked about painting and rebuilding and expanding. Oh yes. It was going to be fun. We were going to attack our newly acquired problems with a wrench in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, arms linked and eyes starry.

Now the truth of the matter: We've done a lot. I promise I'll take you on a tour. Walls have been painted. Rugs have been laid. New old furniture has replaced old old furniture. Some pictures have been hung. Things are taking shape.

More truth. We are busy. We are not lazy. We let things slide.

So in the spirit of a good laugh, here is the lazy busy homeowner's guide to what's what.

1) When your hallway floor starts to splinter and cave in right in the middle (and you can't reach the joists underneath without ripping out the finished basement's ceiling) you buy FLOR tiles. They are durable. You lay them down. You walk on them and hope their resiliency distributes the weight of each footstep. You hope they are pretty enough to distract from the disaster below. You hope you don't fall through the floor.

2). When your children abuse their new, personal shower... when they feel that the only way to turn the water on, to turn the water off, is by aggressively jamming the knobs back and forth until all the little doodads inside the mechanism thingy start to slip and slide and water won't stop dripping pouring from the shower head, DO NOTHING. If you wait long enough, it mysteriously just fixes itself. Go ahead. Call the plumber and get the $350 quote, sit on it for an eternity, and voila! Fixed. Free.

3) When you have no time for yard work, when you really want to remove the rotting pumpkins but can't find the energy after a long day of work, DON'T. Eventually, the squirrels will eat them all. When I saw what Snaggle Tooth Squirrel (our roommate upstairs) did to Mae's pumpkin, I dragged the rest from the front of the house and left them in the back yard - to his utter delight. This baby's only got a day and a half left, by my estimate.

Wait, WHAT? You don't know Snaggle Tooth? How have I not introduced you! Zoom in on this beauty below. (S)He lives here with us, up in the roof somewhere. Which reminds me of something else that needs taking care of - all the missing fascia on our roof. In the meantime, we're going to start charging the squirrels for their cozy housing.

Competition

Halloween is pretty important for kids. You'd know this if you came anywhere near our house in the last two weeks. My adorable girls have been counting down the days, checking the progress on the costumes (which until yesterday was non-existent). They've been barking orders about lawn decorations (but not helping out). And they've been dancing circles around the halloween candy bags like little vultures.

Things are pretty hectic here; Chris and I both work, there are three little ones underfoot, and the girls' and my own expectations are usually pretty unattainable. We set the bar high.

Yesterday, with the clock ticking down, I got to it.

In the few hours before I had to go to work, I managed to  prep a pretty yummy pot pie for dinner, bake pumpkin cupcakes with green slime frosting and black sprinkles,  and make some progress on Mae's Fiery Phoenix and Bela's Ghost Bride costumes. I cleaned the house a bit, threw on some clothes, grabbed my breast pump, and headed out the door when the babysitter came.

At the tail end of the day, I came home, fed the baby, got the pot pie in the oven, did homework with the girls, and finished the costumes.

Did they thank me? Did they rave about my ability to manage so many tasks so well? Did they fall over themselves trying to reach me to give me hugs for making all their wishes come true?

No. They complained that the costumes weren't just right. They stuck their little fingers in the frosting of 50% of the cupcakes. They cried about the two brussels sprouts I put in the pot pie.

And then Dad came home, with a single green light bulb in his hand, to add to the spooky decor. A single green energy efficient lightbulb to screw into our front window light, and you would have thought the Halloween Master himself had walked in the front door.

DADDY!!!!!! YOU'RE THE BEST~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chris laughed and gave me that look, the one that acknowledges that this is not a competition, but even so - he won. I gave him my shitty little laugh that really means this is not a competition but I'll still beat you in the end.

Within two minutes of his homecoming Mae dropped (and broke) the awesome green light while she was spinning in circles and singing his praises.

We exchanged playful glances, my opponent and I. And I walked to the kitchen to dish them up some Halloween Cupcakes (made with leftover butternut squash, whole wheat flour, and that Garam Masala I threw in when I mistook it for Cinnamon).  As they stuffed them in their mouths I thought to myself: they don't know it, but I just won.

But hey, this isn't a competition. Right?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Moment

My (occasional) Friday post; a moment from our week I'd like to share and remember. Friday, Happy Friday!

Something Wicked This Way Comes

But what father ever really believes [his child is his own]?He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring. 

Three A.M. That's our reward. Three in the morn. The soul's midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair...

Bela at 4 - fishing the drainage ditch

I'm reading Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes to the girls. It's not age appropriate, but it takes place in small town Illinois the week leading up to Halloween. It's perfect.

I've never read the book before, but saw the movie at the Castle Theater in Bloomington, Il, way back when. I must have been 8 or 9 years old. It obviously stuck with me.

We're taking it slow, they're asking a lot of questions. The book is flooded with metaphor, analogy, hyperbole. Mae likes to listen, doesn't mind if she's not following along perfectly, falls asleep while I'm reading. Bela though, she is on it.

I read the above passage earlier this evening as they were tucked into their beds. I was struck by it, feeling like I've been pondering this very thing, from the other end. When I finished, I asked Bela what she thought about Charles Halloway - the father of one of the main characters, the man to whom this internal dialogue belongs. I figured she wasn't following at all.

"I think he wishes he were a better man. No, a better person."

Sometimes I look right at that girl without seeing her. Sometimes, it's easy to think of her as just a bundle of messy clothes, crooked teeth, and bouncy hair I have to feed, help with homework, get to bed. But that girl, she always comes around and blows my mind.

Good night.

tick tock

The girls spent their time well last weekend.

The moment before I die, as images and moments and history float before my dimming eyes, I will briefly dwell on one single regret: there was never enough time.

Go ahead. Carve it on my tombstone: HERE LIES KATHRYN. SHE NEVER HAD ENOUGH TIME. 

However long I live (and I'm hoping I'll reach a ripe and stinky age), it won't be enough - not nearly enough to accomplish all I hope to do.

The childless and the single most likely feel the same way, but the parent... oh, don't parents know the true meaning of limited time? If Chris and I choose to do A on any given night, it is only because we are not doing B. Or C, D, E, F, G. Unfortunately, A usually winds up being some mundane, monotonous task: preparing and cleaning up after dinner. Homework with the girls. Ridding the house of stinky diapers. Laundry. Errands. Kids kids kids kids kids.

But on the off chance we can sneak in a few minutes of ME time or even WE time, it's a never-ending struggle of choice: If I'm knitting, I'm not reading. If I'm reading, I'm not blogging. And if I'm blogging, I'm definitely not sewing Halloween costumes, or hanging fake spider webs, or baking cute little monster cookies. 

If Chris is putting together his basement work studio, he is not painting that picture for the art show. If he's working on the art show, he's not hanging out in the woods with his camera. If he's fishing, he's not hanging out with his kids. If he's building wonderful worlds out of Legos with his wonderful girls, he is definitely not bidding on that next job.

And if we manage to cram in some pleasurable, solo activity, we are NOT spending time together.

I limit my kids' extracurricular activities in an attempt to keep their lives simple, underwhelmed. One thing at a time is the rule. (If only I could live by the same one!) Mae is pretty cool with it. Bela, well, she's a bit more like me in this regard. She accepts the rule, but she has plans, that one. Her list:

Ballet
Then Flamenco
Then karate
And...
Swimming
Gymnastics
Art class
Spanish
Chinese
Ice Skating
Piano

Mae is either more laid back or less forward thinking. Her list?

Swimming.

And mine?

Learn to use my serger better
Train for another marathon
Take the next banjo class
Join a singing class
Try out that trapeze class
Personal training
1 on 1 swim lessons
Drawing class
Square dancing
Book club
Get certified to teach in the public schools
Finish the farm mat I've been making for 3 years
Sew a quilt
Do some needlework
Paint the rest of my house
Reupholster my chairs
Finish the hand embroidered Christmas stockings I didn't finish last year
knit a sweater
travel to Nepal to see Mt. Everest
take a kayak somewhere. Anywhere.
sleep.

and on
and on
and on

And now if you'll excuse me, I have a load of things I want to do that I'll never accomplish. Gotta run!

Auditions

Bela's 1st grade class put on an end-of-the-year play last year. It was very sweet; all the kids learned all the parts and presented the play in chorus format. They took turns playing the lead roles and no one had any solo lines. Bela got to play the princess in the final scene, and don the coveted princess gown and dance with the king. 

Chris and I stood at the back of the performance space, proud as any two parents could be. That is, until the play was over. Our joy and excitement for her was replaced suddenly by feelings of awkwardness and discomfort when she refused to leave center stage. We watched in growing horror as she curtsied and smiled and practically blew kisses to the crowd while her teacher was trying to give a little speech and the rest of her class remained back in their spaces like well-behaved, mildly disinterested performers. We secretly wished someone would take one of those long canes with a hook at the end and yank her off the stage.

It took us about 6 months to get over that. Now I want to get her right back up there.

I loved theater in school, though was late to dabble in it after my smashing 3rd grade star performance in Mrs so and so and the Pear Tree. About half-way through high school, though, I turned in my cheerleading uniform and joined the drama club and the speech team and never looked back. And still never do.

What an amazing gift drama and theater give to kids, don't you think? Childhood, puberty, adolescence - these are times in our lives when things seem big and scary and always changing. When one day we feel like one person, and the next another. Heck, I suppose this never changes. But drama lets our kids try on different personalities, explore different parts of themselves. I really want to get my girls involved.

I began to search for an option that didn't involve me spending gross amounts of money, especially with the risk that they would hate it. What a waste. Old Town School of Folk Music has some really great looking classes, as well as all the other theaters in the area. But I wanted something cheaper. I wanted something free.

Then I saw the posting on Every Block. The local Methodist church was holding auditions for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Coat. They needed kids 4 and up for chorus roles.

Perfect!

We arrived at the church at 6:00 on the dot and there was only one other little girl there. Others began shuffling in as we were getting started. I felt all the nervousness and anxiety of my high-school play audition days return.

Then they called Bela. She belted out a perfect Happy Birthday, in tune with the piano and all. She was glowing. Then, to my surprise, Mae ran to the piano and did equally as well. I was such a proud mama.  We hung around to hear a few more auditions (some pretty comical), and then went back home and had dinner.

That was several weeks ago. I was just about to give up hope when there was another announcement posted on Every Block. Due to severe lack of adult talent, the play has been postponed.

I guess that means, however, there is still hope for Bela and Mae. Stay tuned!

The math test

I haven't been sleeping so well lately. If it's not the baby waking three times a night, fussing over new teeth, it's the cats. Or the cold. Or bad dreams.

Last week I had a dream that Bela failed 2nd grade. Her teacher hated her.  She complained that when Bela would write sentences they were completely illogical. That she couldn't do any math. That she wouldn't listen.

We fretted over the emotional transition facing Bela (and Mae), going from a Waldorf model of education to the public school version. But the academic transition has proved to be harder, by a bit.

Our dreams have some foundation in reality, after all, right? My own insecurities whisper to me that Bela's teacher might not like her very much. My own observations had me realizing that Bela's homework is not always clearly recorded in her agenda, and that she had no real sense of what was going on in the classroom (aside from the social aspect).

My doubts were confirmed mid week. Bela brought home some math homework and some other papers. "This one has all these red Xs and I don't know why" she reported, casually.

It was her math test. D+.

My knee jerk reaction was, as always, the wrong one.

"Bela! This is a BAD grade!" Blank stare from Bela. She doesn't even know what a test is, let alone a grade.

"Bela! If you get grades like this all year you won't make it to third grade!"

Once I finished shaming her and worrying her unnecessarily, I calmed down. And then I began to blame myself. Bela got a bad grade because I had failed her.

Bela's reaction? Confusion, realization, frustration, tears. "I don't understand her teacher words!"

I constantly have to remind myself that Bela is not me. I am not her. Does anyone else get fooled into thinking that our children's lives are just mere extensions of our own? Why do I feel anxious about who likes her and who doesn't? Why do I  feel inadequate when she gets a bad grade on her math test? Why do I only make them put on shoes to play outside when other parents are watching - letting them go barefoot when I assume we're all alone?

Because I believe I am being judged by how likeable, smart, and well-behaved my kids are. Because I secretly judge others by the same standards. But that's me. Absurdly self-aware but with a shameful lack of self-control.

I read somewhere we should consider ourselves, as parents, to be responsible to our kids instead of responsible for. What an easy line to read and a hard philosophy to live by, no?

Here are the promises I make to myself every day, even though every day they are as hard to uphold as they were the day before, and I hardly ever do a very good job at them:
     I will try to be more present and more honest in my parenting.
     I will teach my children good manners but I won't crumble to pieces when they forget them all in front of other parents.
      I will sit down with them every night and practice counting money, practice reading instructions, practice spelling words and filingl out science worksheets. I will answer their questions, encourage them to do their best. And then I will send them to school and not freak out if the results are not perfect.

Maybe if I do all this, I'll sleep a little better at night.

Yesterday, Bela came home all smiles. She got an A+ on her spelling test.

This moment

My weekly post - A moment from our week I want to share and remember.

Happy Friday!

Halloween is upon us

Halloween Decoration #1 - check

 I made a promise to myself a real long time ago that when I had my own house, I would do it up real big when it came to the holidays. Well, Halloween is upon us, and by golly I finally got me that house. And while I joke and poke fun at the state of things around here, I also realize that little by little we really ARE turning this formerly dirty little thing into a home. Did I mention it's blue? Man I love a blue house.

So, that being said, I'm turning my attention away from the endless painting that has become my life, and the girls and Chris and I are making big plans (we're so good at making the plans) to decorate our abode for our neighborhood's celebration of all things ghoulish.

We've been told that the Independence Parkers take their Halloween seriously. We plan to go spider web to spider web with the best of them this year.

The question that gets asked around here the most these days is 'how many more days until Halloween?' As we tick off numbers, we also make lists. Here it is so far:

1) Spider webs and fake spiders
2) Tomb stones in front yard
3) Sidewalk to the house lined with many carved jack-o-lanterns
4) Ghosts hanging from the front tree
5) A pumpkin with a bloody leg coming out of its mouth; a man-eating pumpkin. Mae swears it should be called a pumpkin, eating man. I forgive her her misunderstanding of hyphenation.
6) A fog machine in the front yard
7) eery sounds coming from the front door
8)A pumpkin fence (This is Mae's idea, inspired by the candy cane fences she loves at Christmas time. I tried to tell her it would be a very short fence.)
9) A bat chandelier hanging by front door. (Link here). I didn't follow the directions exactly, and I think I made it easier.

It goes on, but I'm trying to keep a touch of reality to the whole planning process, so I usually cut them off at a certain point. And since we will be out of town quite a bit before the big day, we are really limited in terms of crafting time.

Today I finished item #9 on the list. The girls got all excited when they saw the supplies come out. I gathered them around me and started to direct but the looks on their faces stopped me.

What? I asked.

We don't want to help, they said. We want to go outside and play with our friends.

It looks like I've got my work cut out for me.

Recap, photographically

I know I haven't had much to say these days. I'm going to kick myself one day for being so silent during this insanely eventful period in my life. Chris just processed a bunch of photos that we had sitting on our camera, taken here and there during the last 4 months of our lives.

So, without further ado, here's what we've been up to.

Our beautiful kitchen floor, under the three layers of vinyl tile. Pre-sanding.

Me, in the getup I wore all through June.

Our friend, in our kitchen. After he tore it to bits.

Bela - early days at the new house.

Unpacking craft supplies adjacent to dining room. You can see what color I finally chose after tearing down all the wallpaper, having a friend skim coat and sand. A wild and crazy "clay beige." In fact, it's almost the exact color of the wallpaper I tore down.

Girls playing on back porch

Sweet Mae

Bela builds a fairy house out front

Gill hangs out in the girls' room (pre-painting. It's no longer green, it's a very pale blue called "fresh day".)

The neighborhood kids love the pigs.

Late summer melon, enjoyed in a freshly painted kitchen (a green, scottish something or other).

Gill in the living room. Crawling!

Walking to the circus

Mae digs for lollipops and popcorn

Gillian - Independence Park - Midnight Circus

Midnight Circus

Bela and Una on stage at the circus

This Moment

My weekly post - a moment from our week I want to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

A "yes" moment. Ni-ni baby!

 It's been well documented that my doctor feels that Gillian is a bit, well, large. That she is in danger of becoming an obese child. 

Clearly, she's not.

In fact, at our 9 month well-baby appointment it was discovered that, GASP, she hadn't gained a single ounce since the appointment before. She dropped down ever-so-slightly in her weight for height percentile rating, thanks to the zero gain and a little extra help from me in stretching her limbs as the nurse measured her length on the paper that covers the exam table. Can you blame me?

My doctor likes to worry; she likes to advise. She feels that is what she is being paid for, I'm sure. She advised me to limit Gillian's tv watching (do 9 month olds watch tv???) She suggested Gillian might be eating out of boredom. She worried that her head was too large. She recommended I night wean as soon as possible. She  told me to limit my use of the word "no". 

I, on the other hand, like to ignore. I make eye contact and smile, I nod, I look away or down at my baby when she's saying things I don't agree with, so she can't see my eyes rolling. But when she recommended I not use the word "no", I was intrigued.

Yes, I do suppose that we parents overuse this little two letter tool. I walked away from that office with a new personal challenge: avoid the word NO. 

It's been pretty funny around here, to say the least. Gillian is crawling and scooting all over the place. She's snatching my glasses off my face, the water out of my hands. She's chewing on computer cords, getting into the as-of-yet never used gas fireplace with the fake logs and the weird fake charcoal/rock pieces. She's ruining games of SORRY out on the front lawn  by eating the green pawns, she's stealing crayons, pooping without a diaper on, pulling the cat's tail. 

In the spirit of the challenge, I end up running after her with awkward moaning sounds coming out of my mouth. They sound something like Nooaaaahhhhhhhh. Naw. Num. Nu-hu-huh. Instinct number one is to say NOOOOOOOOOO. Reflex takes over; but only long enough to get the NUH sound out. Then, I remember the challenge. And that's where the noises get weird.

This was a lot easier before she started crawling.

this moment

My weekly post - A moment from our week I'd like to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

1/3 of our dining room table

Strike

My bed - this morning @ 7:00am

That really boring blog post I was telling you about... The one I was working on two weeks ago? I never finished it. And now it seems pointless. It sure is hard to blog when you have a newly mobile little one, two bored older kids, a job, and a house that is in a constant state of packing and unpacking, painting and sanding. And cleaning. Oh, the cleaning.

The post was about the first day of school. It was, as per my usual, way too many silly words to describe a single, simple event. The girls started school. Bela is in 2nd grade. Mae is in kindergarten. They are no longer at Waldorf. It was, at first, a hard transition. Now, we are very happy.

Well, almost very happy.

They had one glorious week at school. Every day they came home and said, "it was awesome!". I loved it. They loved it. They had drama, art, library, gym, computer class, and two recesses every day. Not bad for Chicago Public Schools. When asked what they didn't like about it, Bela reported 'nothing! I loved it all!' Mae, slightly more pessimistic at times than her sister, stated quickly that her least favorite part was something called "Chicago runs." 'We have to run around in circles for like 10 minutes. I HATED it.'

Clearly, she is not her mother's daughter.

One "awesome" week in, though, and they were back on summer break, minus the stifling heat. You may have heard about our little teachers' strike here in Chicago; the only teachers visible in our neighborhood these days are the ones who have set up camp outside the middle school on our street. I walk by them every day as I walk the girls to the field house at our local park, which, thankfully, is offering free "strike camp."

We stand behind our teachers over here. We support them in this fight, which is our fight. Which has our children's best interest in mind. We agree that they should consider the offered contract carefully.

But I'm also ready for these girls to be back in school, where they belong. As a fellow educator already disillusioned with public education in general, and the sad state of the Chicago Public School system in particular, I find myself treading strange middle ground because I am also a parent and I don't like to see my kids locked out of a school and used as leverage in any way, shape or form. And these days, I just kind of don't like seeing my kids Monday through Friday, in the middle of the day, at our house.

So GO TEACHERS! Damn it. FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU AND OUR CHILDREN DESERVE! Get my kids out of my house please. DON'T LET YOURSELVES BE BULLIED! Don't mind me if I give you half an evil eye as I drag my whiny kids past your picket line. STAND UP FOR OUR UNDER-SERVED COMMUNITIES! I can't honk as I drive by because I'm yelling at my kids in the back seat.  CLOSING DOWN SCHOOLS IS NOT REFORM! I'm going to move to the suburbs soon.

This moment

My Friday post. A moment from our week I want to share and remember. Have a great weekend, everyone!

I was  working on a really boring blog post last week in my free time, which boiled down to about 1 sentence a day. I thought maybe today I'd finish and post, but something much more pressing is on my mind.

We moved from a very hip and happening neighborhood to a very sleepy one with a tragic lack of local businesses. Our closest coffee shop within a 1 mile radius is the nearby Dunkin Donuts. The newest restaurant of note getting ready to break ground and open its doors to the Independence Park neighborhood is Olive Garden.

But we didn't move here for hip and happening. We moved here for the kids, and man we didn't go wrong.

Take last Friday. After walking Bela and Mae the three blocks to school in the morning, our babysitter arrived to take Gillian off my hands. I hopped on the train and headed to work. I spent the day hablando español  and hopped that train back.

As I approached our house, I caught glimpse of Bela and Mae running around in circles in the front yard. They were waiting for their new friends to come over: a pair of 7 year old twins who visit the woman across the street every day after school.

The girls pulled up, exploded out of their car, and ran ahead of me with Bela and Mae into our house. They ran upstairs and played with Calico Critters. They ran downstairs and did puzzles and painting. Their dad came to get them and they burst into tears.

The girls and I headed to the kitchen to start dinner and someone came a-knocking at our back door. Enter the 12 year old boy from down the street and a friend of his from school. Four pairs of feet went running up the stairs again. They played with guinea pigs upstairs. They threw a bunch of crap around in the basement and made a mess downstairs. They ran outside.

The boys left for a Sox game, and the girls headed out to the front yard after dinner to clean the guinea pig cage.  This drew the attention of some other little friends of ours: the two little grand-daughters of one of our neighbors. They also have a guinea pig at home, so they sat in our yard, did some sidewalk chalking, and played with the girls and the piggies.

By this point I was thinking to myself how incredible this all was. We were hanging out in our yard, entertaining every child on the block, talking to parents and passersby alike. Could it get any better?

And it did. We met for the first time the little girl who lives three doors down. She is very close to Mae's age and owns an impressive array of dress up clothes. I know this because it took me the next 40 minutes to drag my kids out of their house.

I feel at times like I'm on the set of some very wholesome, strangely utopic family movie. I keep waiting for our house to get broken into, for someone to steal the junk out of our back yard, break the windows of my car. Snub me on the sidewalk.

But every day, something super duper nice happens around here. The neighbor lady bakes us two dozen cookies (and we eat them in 24 hours). We get invited over for playdates, sleep overs, fall festivals, bike rides. All of these kids were here before us, and yet none of them played together before. I honestly feel like Bela (and to a lesser extent, Mae) has brought this neighborhood together in a new way.

And how cool is that?

This Moment

My weekly post. A moment I'd like to share and remember. Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

This Moment

Weekly Friday post - an image from our week I'd like to share and remember. Have a great weekend!

Chez Pig

I don't know how to turn this into an interesting story, but I'm dedicated to returning to this blog, so here it is. All sloppy. Don't have much time here folks. I've got to squeeze in time for another chapter in A Clash of Kings before I nod off. Ser Mandon Moore of the kingsguard has just betrayed Lord Tyrion with a bold slash of his sword. WILL THE DWARF SURVIVE?????  The suspense is KILLING me!

What? What's that you say? You say this all already aired on TV? Yeah, I know. Even though I know what is going to happen I can't get enough. Paula, please put book 3 in the mail for me.

Anyway. Guinea pig hotel.

Back at the end of July I made good on a promise to Bela to help her with a lemonade stand. She had asked me at least once every three days for the last year, and I always said "Sure, we'll do that. Someday."

Well, July 21st was "some day". Our local neighborhood association scheduled a community DIY garage sale that day. I, unplanned and unprepared as always, decided last moment that it would be the perfect day for a lemonade stand. I went to the store, bought supplies, pulled some random crap I wanted to sell out to the front yard to attract attention (since no one else on our immediate block set up any yard sale), and plopped my two kiddos in the front yard at a table already sticky with lemonade.

They practically chased down customers, running as far as 8 houses away to catch up with pedestrians trying to escape their ploys. They played dumb while making change and ended up raking in $10 by selling about 6 cups of the sweet stuff. AND, they met their new best friend, "S".

At the beginning of the friendship things were fun but uncertain. Bela was laying the charm on thick and S seemed overwhelmed. I decided to up the ante so to speak and invited her to go peach picking with us in Michigan. It was sure to cement their budding friendship.

The weather did not agree though, and we canceled our plans. Little S's Mother, however, had to hurry off to work, peach picking or no, so Bela's friend walked across the yard and entered our door shuffling her feet.

"What are we going to do today?", she asked me.

Gulp. I had nothing planned, and her mother wasn't coming for another 6 hours.

"Um, why don't you take the guinea pigs outside? Why don't you build them a house?"

Those were magical words, my friends. Those two girls spent two full hours constructing a McMansion that Mama Mia and Pumkin could call their own. At one point S looked over at Bela and said "This is the best day ever with you so far!"

Bela agreed.

It's hard in the photos to get a sense of the sprawl and span of this not so humble abode. The girls used some moving boxes (sorry, Maureen), cut doorways to join them, taped them together, created tunnels and trap doors, filled it with food and bedding, and gave some of the boxes a paint job.

The Play Room

The "bed bye" room and the time out room

The "surprise" room

 Chez pig got a lot of use and stayed mostly out of the elements on our screened in back porch. But like most new construction, it started to fall apart suddenly, and let's just say that from their vantage point the pigs could not see the sign that said "bathroom" and did their business all over. We executed a complete tear down yesterday, though it's prime real estate really, and I'm sure some new investor will be building there shortly.