cat named pig

I know, right? Where’s all the sap and sentimentality, the reflections on what it is to be a mother, the photos from years past?

Yes. Well. Not so much of that this year. I’m still glad to be a mother, I’m still amazed (as I am at every annual event) that another year has passed and look how much the kids have grown and changed and OMG MOTHERHOOD — what a crazy trip!

And then there’s my mom and my mother-in-law and all the other wonderful moms I know — shouldn’t I have posted something singing their praises and wishing them a happy Mother’s Day?

Yeah. I should have. But I didn’t.

Because I got an iPhone.

(I typed it all normal there, but in my head it’s more like this: I GOT AN iPHONE ZOMG AAAIIIEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

And it was a gift from my mom, who is the Best Mom in the Universe, so a grateful and loving Mother’s Day post would have been even more appropriate. And yet. Didn’t post anything. Because I was too busy playing with my new iPhone and learning how to use it.*

*Talk about your First World problems. I was too busy playing with my iPhone to update my blog. If I didn’t love myself so much for having an iPhone, I might think I was kind of obnoxious.

…..

So we had coffee and pastries with Matt’s parents, then brunch with my mom, then came home (very full) for naps. Before I could get the kids to settle down, I had to play them several YouTube videos of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (It’s not just me who’s obsessed with this gadget, let me tell you.) We had a lovely day, and Mom — thank you. Thank you for being such a wonderful mother, and thank you for the wonderful new toy phone essential piece of business equipment (where business = facebook).

We even hit up the East Lake Street Cinco de Mayo festival for some elote after naptime.

Because if there’s one thing this family loves almost as much as an iPhone, it’s street-fair corn.

I was in the kitchen measuring exactly identical portions of food onto each plate, lest anyone think a slightly smaller pile of beans and rice means they are unloved, when I overheard the following:

“Yeah? Yeah? . . . BELLY-BUTTON!”

That was Elliot, as you may have surmised. So I’m already laughing — because wha? – when Siena walks over to the table singing:

“Little boxes on a hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky. . . and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.” 

Elliot: “BREEN ONE!”

Siena: “There’s a green one, and a pink one, and blue one and a YEL-LOW ONE, and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.“

Elliot: “PEOPLE!”

Siena: “And the people — in the houses — all went to the uni-VER-SITY, where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same.”

Elliot: “DOD-DER!”

Siena [crescendo-ing]: “There’s a DOCTOR, and a LAW-YER, and a BIZ-NESS EX-EC-U-TIVE, and they’re ALL made out of TICK-y-tacky and they ALL look just they same.”

Elliot, clapping: “Yaaaay!”

That’s right. The four-year-old was singing the theme from Weeds, word for word, and the two-year-old was prompting her at the start of each new verse. Because he knows every word too, apparently — he just can’t pronounce ‘em all fast enough to sing along.

I mean, that’s cool, right? It’s not like we let them watch the show or anything. Yet. We just maybe happened to sing that a few times while driving through the suburbs and it kind of became a favorite.*

*No offense if you live in the suburbs. We didn’t mean you — we think you’re unique and interesting and not at all made out of ticky-tacky. Please don’t hate us.

Yeah, it was pretty much a given that, once I posted about things going well and how that was making me slightly uneasy, that someone would get an ear infection. And right on cue, Elliot came down with one. He also passed along a sore throat to me (just like the good old days of ALL THIS PAST WINTER) which has left me busily Googling “sore throat swine flu” as I sit in bed sipping tea.

The good news is, based on extensive internet research, I do not think anyone in our household has H1N1 (or as I like to call it, The Virus Formerly Known As Swine Flu. Matt likes to call it Hamthrax, which is also pretty good.). If you’re concerned that you might have the virus, I recommend going here to learn more.

And if you want nothing more to do with swine flu (I started to type “and if you’re sick to death of hearing about swine flu” but then realized that was probably not smooth), check out some photos of my healthy, if slightly odd, children:

This was taken a few months ago, when there was still snow on the ground (but it was not too cold for popsicles, or bike helmets, apparently).

Elliot, in Elephant Hat, contemplates Elefun (his favorite game).

I don’t know. They do this sometimes. I guess it’s really funny. (To them.)

This too.

[Subtitle: One of those posts where you'll either know exactly what I'm talking about or you'll mentally shrug and think: crazy. But then, we already knew that.]

I sometimes think that if I worry enough about something, then that thing is less likely to happen. I’m a big believer in overreacting on the front end of a situation so you can laugh about it later, about how ridiculous you were when you actually thought *THAT* would happen.

I also sometimes think that if too many things are going well, it means we are due for a run of bad luck. On anxious days, I go about naming the negatives in our life, saying rosaries of our minor misfortunes, to reach the strangely calming conclusion that we have our troubles, too.

Because if we have troubles, by my “logic,” we are probably not about to get hit with something really horrible. (Think about movies: it’s always when things are nice and calm and ordinary that the Really Bad Thing happens.)

I know it’s crazy. It’s certainly not rational. I understand, rationally, that the chances of something bad happening have nothing to do with the fact that we just got a free iPod Shuffle or moved my mom into her beautiful new home or got our first choice for kindergarten in the school lottery. Trust me, I celebrated all three of those things with whole-hearted enthusiasm. (I told Matt about ninety times how cute the wee little Shuffle was. Until his eyes hurt from rolling so much. And that was probably the least exciting of the three.)

But now the celebratory mood has evaporated and we’re back to plain old rainy Wednesday, with preschool and laundry and nonstop swine flu updates on every radio station and website. And I can’t quite shake the uncomfortable feeling that we’ve been lucky lately, maybe too lucky.

That’s normal, right? You totally get that way too sometimes — right?

No? Alright, just don’t roll your eyes too hard. Matt says it hurts.

But, you know, that’s not as fun. My mom moved into her new condo (!) and my brother is in town (!) and in between lots of meals with family members, I’ve been busy tripping over all these boxes and giant piles of junk really nice things that you should totally buy from us.

So we’re going to have a yard sale.

Are we crazy? People seem to think we’re crazy. I’ve never done this before, so I think it sounds really fun. (It’ll be fun, right?) But people keep telling me it’s a lot of work, which totally contradicts the mental image I have of it.

[Cut to scene of Laura and Matt sitting in lawn chairs on a sunny day, cooler of beer topped with iPod and speakers between them, raking in fistfuls of cash for stuff they can't wait to get rid of.] 

Ahhh. . . heavenly. Now where was I? Oh yeah. Sitting in my bedroom, surrounded by wall-to-wall junk stuff you totally need at your house and should buy from us. I guess my point is, I don’t care if the sale ends up being a lot of work. Just living here, when you can’t cross a room without stepping over five extra chairs, is a lot of work. So I’ll be happy to see some of this stuff go. And if our net profit (after beer money) is $20 or more, so much the better.

Any garage sale/yard sale advice? Let us know.

Looking at Twitter, I see that Matt and I both mentioned No TV Week this morning, within about five minutes of each other. I twittered about it before I had even had a cup of coffee today. That should give you some idea of the impact it’s having on our formerly peaceful little household.

Let’s back up. You might be wondering: what is No TV Week? And how much TV are these kids accustomed to watching, that they can’t give it up for a week without freaking the ever-loving heck out?

No TV Week is Siena’s preschool’s version of “National Turn-Off Tune-In Week,” a fascist plot decent-on-the-surface movement to make people examine their TV viewing habits. I say “decent-on-the-surface” because, in theory, I agree with them. Americans watch too much TV. Kids watch too much TV. Commercials create false desire and people watch TV instead of communicating with each other, which is sad, and eat junk food while watching, which is unhealthy.

But here’s the thing. My kids don’t watch too much TV. (For the most part. Sometimes they do. I am not made of magic here.) They don’t watch TV with commercials. They don’t watch TV during meals, or in place of any quality family time.They watch two PBS cartoons (one hour total) each morning. They watch the first one while Matt showers and heads to work and I eat breakfast and drink a pot of coffee. Then I either a) load the dishwasher and get ready to go to the gym or b) take my shower and get ready for the day during the second cartoon. An hour of TV is an intrinsic part of our morning routine. Depending on what time they start watching, they might even learn something. I’ve heard both of them yelling out alphabet letters during “Super Why” (”Super Y?”).

And, being kids, they love their routine. LOVE IT. Don’t want to mess with it, unless puppies and waterslides are involved. So I knew this wasn’t going to go over well when I saw the “homework assignment” from preschool. In addition to keeping the TV off for a week, we have to fill out a worksheet with drawings and descriptions of what we did instead. I’m sure the teachers would love to see things like “read lots of books” or “built a replica of the White House, complete with the First Family and Bo the Dog, out of popsicle sticks.”

Unfortunately, Siena is going to have to turn in a sheet depicting all of us screaming and fighting with each other. Maybe she will draw the time-out she was put in today, or the way she stomped into room and slammed the door yesterday. Maybe she will phonetically spell out some of the words I muttered while waiting for the coffee to brew during her time-out today. (I hope not. That would be embarrassing. Especially if it said “wirst fa-king idee-ya EVER” or something. I’m just sayin’. Not made of magic.)

No TV Week is probably going to end with somebody calling Child Protective Services, or with me telling my mom it’s a good thing she has that extra queen-sized bed in her new condo — I’m moving in with her.

. . . Because you were probably standing by, with bated breath, wondering whether we had decided to continue with the Laura Ingalls books and risk another heartbreaking conversation about death, or go back to princess stories where death is reassuringly cheated every time (Ha! She was just sleeping! And true love’s kiss woke her up! Phew!) or go on to something new altogether.

Well, Siena really wanted to keep reading Farmer Boy. It is a sweet story about a close family who works very hard (kids included) on their family farm and enjoys sumptuous meals together. For the descriptions of the food alone, I was happy to keep reading it. (Apple pie with breakfast, among other deliciousness!)

And it turned out we didn’t need to do quite as much “editing” as we did with Little House on the Prairie, at least not once we got past the part about the big kids trying to thrash the teacher and break up the school. We’ve even had some good talks about the importance of putting money in the bank like ***spoiler alert!*** Almanzo does at the end — a timely lesson if I ever saw one. Overall, a great choice.

When we finished that one, Siena was dying to start On the Banks of Plum Creek, so that’s what we’re reading now. So far, so good. I remember being entranced with the idea of a dugout house with grass and flowers growing on the roof and walls — Siena seems to love it, too. But when we finish this one, I think we’ll move on to something else for a while.

Which makes it convenient that I just came across a book list by Catherine Newman, one of my all-time favorite parent writers (and more recently, food-blogger) here.

She has a similar take on some of the Laura Ingalls stories, and her spot-on description of the modern Winnie the Pooh stuff made me laugh out loud. Siena loved the original Winnie the Pooh, as well as Stuart Little and the Roald Dahl books, so I look forward to trying out some of her other recommendations.

And a kind reader sent me a link to this list of princess-free books — thanks so much, Amy! We have one of these, The Paper Bag Princess, and we love it. (A welcome antidote to the traditional princess fairy tales.) I have not read most of the others, but many of them look cute and I plan on getting a few for Siena’s birthday.

It’s nice to know we’re not the only ones looking for something more than princess stories or board books, but not quite ready for the heavier themes in some chapter books. Also, it’s nice to have something to do besides this:

Anyone want to get her a Kindle 2 for her birthday?

From where I’m sitting, I can see the thermometer: 74 degrees. There was a point in about mid-February when it had been so long since I’d been thoroughly warm that I couldn’t remember what it felt like. We are grilling out tonight with our extended family, Sara and Avery, and I’m wearing Matt’s T-shirt that says Proud to be AWESOME.* Mother Nature should feel the same way.

In celebration of Spring! Finally! and spending more time outside, here are some artistic photos, I think taken by Siena.

And here’s one from a few weeks ago, when it was still cold and we just sat around yearning to be outside.

Even when we had friends over for playdates, as you can see Siena, Elliot and their buddy Jackson gazing out the front door and wishing they were outside running around with bare feet.

The only drawback to the official presence of Spring! Finally! seems to be the bugs. Siena is terrified of bees this year (we’re still not sure if Elliot actually got stung, or if that was just her paranoia). We spend a SERIOUS lot of time talking about bees and other insects, and which ones sting or bite and how much it hurts. My favorite discussion went like this:

Siena: And getting your ears pierced is just like a bee sting — right, Mama?

[I had described it that way in a previous conversation. I told her she could have pierced ears whenever she wanted and that was what it felt like. So far, she hasn't wanted to.]

Mama: Yeah, I think so.

Siena: So if I get stung by a bumblebee, that means I can just head straight over and get my ears pierced.

Mama: Well, um, not exactly. I mean, it would still hurt when you got your ears pierced too. It’s not like getting a bee sting makes everything else not hurt.

Siena: I hate bees.

….

*I gave it to him for his first Father’s Day; being the modest type, he never wears it. I, on the other hand, am happy to broadcast that message to the world.

I really love being on the road, going anywhere that is not our house for a few nights or longer. And while we can’t afford to do the sort of international travel we really crave, at least not at this point in our lives, we console ourselves by “training” for it with little road trips here and there. (If marathon runners “trained” for their marathons by jogging a mile every week or two while eating a pizza and drinking beer, that would probably be the equivalent of our driving to Michigan for five days as “training” for spending a year abroad. But, like I said, it’s what we tell ourselves so we don’t get all bummed out about our boringness.)

And I actually think there is some merit to the comparison — if you can’t survive several days of four or more hours in the car together, there’s no way you’ll survive an overseas flight as a family. The two situations are fairly similar: kids are buckled into seats where the only options available for entertainment include coloring, reading, or finding new ways to drive Mom and Dad crazy. There are snacks, but not many decent options for meals. Annoying behavior is regulated with bribes much more frequently than at home, as time-outs are not really an option in such close quarters. And everyone is grateful to get out of there at the end of the day.

So anyway, we are home from our Marquette/Duluth Spring Break Trip (to visit our friends Heather and Sean and the adorable Baby Harland, and to spend one night at a water park hotel in Duluth). We are tired and everything smells like chlorine, but it was a very fun little vacation.

The following are a few key points I’d like to remember for the next trip:

1. Do not take Siena along for the pre-trip snack shopping. She will select some things you just know everyone is going to hate, like banana chips (I think bananas are disgusting, and they are no better in chip form, just less healthy and exponentially more likely to make everyone’s breath smell like a rotting corpse). She will also select fruit snacks and not stop talking about them for one single minute of the time leading up to the trip or the duration of the trip. She will ask for so many fruit snacks that you will lose all patience and threaten never to buy them again FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE (and you will say it like that, all caps, in your patented Don’t Mess With Mama Voice) and then she will cry and you will feel bad. But not bad enough to give her more fruit snacks.

2. Expect more whining than you ever hear in a typical day at home. If you expect this, you won’t be constantly shaking your head and looking at your partner with a baffled expression, asking why they are being so whiny.

3. Any meal they eat that is not mac and cheese or grilled cheese is a pleasant surprise, an unexpected bonus point scored for Team Nutrition, and NO, they won’t try something familiar that looks slightly different so don’t bother asking.

4. When booking hotels, if you cheap out and decide not to go for the two-room suite, be sure to ask about the size of the bathrooms. This will be important when you put the kids to bed and then sit in the bathroom reading for two hours — the best hotels will have bathrooms big enough for you to drag a chair into, so you don’t have to sit on the toilet or in the bathtub.

5. Stickers. Just, stickers.

On the whole, it was a good time. It was great to see Heather and Sean and the new baby, the kids loved playing with their dogs more than perhaps anything else (except the fruit snacks), and I only muttered “I’m going to KILL someone” a few times under my breath. More trip stories and/or photos coming in the next few days, I’m sure.

For the last few months, we’ve been reading chapter books with Siena (I think we reached our limit with the Disney princess stories she wanted to read nightly and we were all “Hey — this book is called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it’s about a boy and a factory of CHOCOLATE and not a princess and doesn’t that sound awesome?!?!”

So we read some Roald Dahl books and some E.B. White books and then looked around to see what other children’s chapter books we had that maybe weren’t about princesses. We settled on the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series, which I remembered fondly from my own childhood.

Of course, reading them as an adult (sort of) to my own child is a slightly different experience. I hadn’t realized just how much “glossing over” it would take to get through these stories without leaving Siena totally traumatized and wracked with fear.

In Little House on the Prairie alone, the Ingalls family survives a perilous crossing of a flooded creek (in which they think their beloved dog drowns — fortunately for Matt and me and our nighttime peace, he survives and finds the family in a later chapter), howling wolves, a log falling on Ma as they build the cabin, a prairie fire, a panther, and an Indian gathering where the tribes come together to discuss whether they will massacre all the white settlers in the area. The book ends with the family being driven off their land because they are a mile or so over the border into “Indian Territory,” and the U.S. government decides to hold off on its plan to drive the tribes further West (for a few years at least) and instead tells the settlers they have to leave.

(Oh, and Farmer Boy? Which we just started? Opens with a description of the older boys who come to school every winter for the sole purpose of “thrashing the teacher.” And last year’s teacher apparently died as a result of this beating. Like I’m prepared to explain any of that to my almost-kindergartener. I went with the slightly-less-terrifying “come to school to make trouble for the teacher.”)

Now, some of this stuff is enough to leave an adult feeling unsettled, never mind a four-year-old with what you might generously describe as a heightened sense of drama. So I toned it down, a lot. I skipped every bit of overtly racist dialogue (”The only good Indian is a dead Indian” seemed to be a popular refrain in those days) and barely touched on the chilling descriptions of a circle of wolves surrounding the log house and howling all night long. I made the log falling on Ma’s foot seem like a stubbed toe, and I tried not to sound too sad as I read about the family leaving behind a year’s worth of hard labor and hopes and dreams when they drove away at the end. When Siena is older, we will read these again and I hope we will talk more frankly about the many differences between pioneer life and the present, but for now I felt it would be best to “edit” the content a little.

I thought I had actually done a pretty good job navigating the emotional land mines of the book — until I read the final paragraph and looked over to see Siena sniffling into her pillow.

Crap.

I asked her if she was sad that the family had to move away from their little house on the prairie.

“No.”

Her shoulders shook as the sniffles deepened into full-on sobs. I asked if she was sad that the book was over. (I don’t know — she’s four. They get sad about weird things sometimes.)

“NO. I’m sad because you shouldn’t have read that last part, where Pa was singing.”

“Why, hon?”

“You shouldn’t have read it, because it makes me sad when he talks about dying.”

[Actual song: Dixie. Actual lyric: "I'll live and die in Dixie."]

“Oh, Sweetie, he’s not talking about when he actually dies. He’s just singing the song — that’s just how the words go. It’s an old song, and he was just singing it and playing his fiddle. I don’t think he was feeling sad or thinking about dying.”

[To be continued. . . . I'm stopping here for now, because this is getting long and is kind of a downer to write about on a sunny Sunday afternoon. But there's more to the story, and more that I want to say on the subject, so check out Part 2 later on. You know, if you want to. Or if you'd prefer something more cheerful, check out this picture of Siena and Avery that I Cornified for her entertainment earlier today:

See? Not always trying to make my kid depressed! Sparkly happiness forever!]