Same old

Yesterday was D's sixth birthday and, per our family's tradition, she got to pick the dinner menu and the dessert of her choice. We all enjoyed the macaroni and cheese, although I just couldn't pull it together to make homemade as she initially requested. For dessert, she picked out a chocolate cake w/ chocolate fudge frosting. And Birthday Cake ice cream. I was a little leery at first but I'm happy to report that both were surprisingly delicious and not too noxiously sweet at all! I also discovered that the appliance bay in the kitchen makes a very excellent place to stash a small piece of cake to nibble on surreptitiously. What's that? Why am I hiding food? If you have to ask, you probably don't have kids. Don't judge.

Other than that, after being home for one day, we're slowly getting back in our groove. The kids alternate between crying because they love each other so very much that they can't stand to be apart for one second, or screaming and slapping each other because someone just stepped into someone's space. I've been mediating the usual arguments about who gets to play with the balloon, penguins, beads, or ________ (fill-in the toy of your choice) next. A has learned to say "sorry" very well, although maybe not so sincerely.

We've also started discovering all the little ways the house fell apart in our absence. There's the roof leak (which we knew about), the odd musty odor, the mysterious gaps in the floorboard, the clanking a/c which runs constantly but never cools anything, and worst, the gajillion spiders which took up residence and built webs between every solid surface. It's very strange. The staircase looks like an Indiana Jones set. I can't imagine how it stayed web-free in the year it sat empty before some sucker we bought it. I have this mental image of the realtor -- a very dignified older gentleman -- frantically running around with a Swiffer before every showing. D takes a little whisk broom everywhere, and every hour there's at least one urgent call of "Mommy!! I found a bug!" Such is life in Florida in the summer in our beautiful old house.

We're baaaack

A day later than planned, but still, here. With the attendant bajillion errands to attend to, the 2 weeks of cleaning and unpacking and sorting to take care of, the mountain of mail - bills, thank yous from the umpteen parties D attended at the end of school, the catalogues reminding us ever so un-subtly that summer will end sooner or later (but back-to-school catalogues in early July? Really?)

We had a fabulously awesome time in NC. All of us. On the way home, in between DVDs, I asked everyone what they learned during the last two weeks:

Me: That you can go on vacation with two kids and no other first-aid supplies except a Benadryl stick and a half-empty bottle of infant Tylenol and no one will die.

M: To love big family gatherings.

D: All about kiwis (thanks cousin Jacob!)

A: How to play like a big boy and that I shouldn't run around too much right after I eat. Also, that I can eat almost a whole box of Ritz crackers all by myself over two weeks.

Mostly now we're trying to reacclimate to 90-degree temperatures and triple-digit humidity. A hard row to hoe indeed considering last Tuesday morning we woke up to a bracing 49 degrees. Heaven.

I made it through almost a whole morning of preliminary mail sorting before I turned on the TV for the kids though.

Pre-vacation countdown

Two days to go until the kids & I leave for a few weeks in NC - hurrah!!!

Three's Company will be on hiatus until July as it's hard to post with company here, and cleaning and packing to do, and kids to play with (or turn TV on for.)

So stay tuned for pictures and more.....

Happy Summer Days!

What did he say?!

When D was learning to talk, her word for elephant sounded a bit like she was saying "f**kint" and going to the zoo was an exercise in avoiding other people around the Wild Africa display for fear that the general public would hear her exclaiming in delight "f**kint!!" when she saw the majestic beasts. After a few months of extreme embarrassment, including one incident in the Library's kids' section, she grew out of it and it's become an amusing family (adults only!) anecdote and we're all over our elephant-avoidance phobias. Until this weekend. When we found out that A's words for both Fruit and Fork sound exactly like "f**k." How exciting! I can't wait until the next time we're in the produce aisle. It was easier to avoid elephants.

*sob*

Look I what I found this morning when I sat down with my coffee, clicked onto tastespotting.com as I do every morning and got ready to peruse yummy treats from fellow foodies all over the world:








Why? WHY? WHY????? Lawyer M says it was probably a piracy thing, internet sharing of copyrighted materials, blah blah blah. Whatever. I can think of two cookbooks that I would never have bought - or even heard of - if it weren't for the delicious reviews I found on tastespotting. Doesn't that make up for the occasional posting of a photo? And sure, I can understand if people were posting tons of recipes right out of a book, but the vast majority of posts were either home cooks dabbling with their OWN recipes or people who made tweaks to book recipes and then posted the results.

Now I have to go and try to find all my favorite food bloggers on my own.

I am so sad.

Summer school

This week we started our REAL summertime routine - swim lessons, camp, vacation and SCHOOL! Lucky kid to have a mom soooo concerned that she will lose all the skills she learned in Kindergarten that I am making her practice them over the summer. Lucky kid? Or crazy-ass, uptight mom? Hmmm. We read a lot anyway, so I'm not including that in the routine, but I've decided that for one hour every day we're going to practice the other two Rs. Even A is getting in on the action by learning colors, shapes and numbers. He astonished my mom over the weekend by counting to 5, but I think that's just because it's my "mom count" as in "you have FIVE SECONDS, mister, to get over here." They hear that a lot too.

What else do we do for an hour each day? Play at the park (PE), make/eat lunch, do a craft or art project, sit in the car while Mommy goes to Starbucks, and they get to watch one hour of commercial-free TV or a video each afternoon, preferably while I make dinner. What I wouldn't give for an older, teenage-style child that could reliably watch the kids while I make dinner. I'd invite one of the neighbor girls to come over, but I really don't want to pay a babysitter, I just want someone to pry the kid off my leg so I can saute some chicken. I realize that was sortof the role I played in my family growing up and I sincerely hope ('cause I don't remember the details) that I was a help to my mom and that when she asked me to watch the kids I didn't gripe too much.

To all my East Coast friends -- stay cool!!

Am I a bummer?

We've almost completed summer vacation week 1. So far so good, and this was technically our week "off" when we had nothing scheduled or planned -- for the kids at least. I'm still waiting on the results of all the testing I had done earlier this week.

Next week we start swim lessons, then we have a week of Vacation Bible School and then the kids & I will head to NC for a couple of weeks in the mountains with my in-laws. Ahhhh..... two weeks off enjoying the beautiful Smoky Mtns. and the cool nights and cool mornings and Uno on the porch and it's just my favorite thing to do in the summer. And it will be even better this year because my brother in law (Colonel Mike) and his family are going to be coming out for the July 4th weekend too. Hurray! If there is one thing I love it's big crazy family gatherings. It will be the first time that we're all together at my MIL & FIL's house since they moved there and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sure the kids will explore every inch of the mountain -- I'll just have to convince D that she can't do it in a skirt.

Have a great summery weekend!

Summer vacation - day 4

So today is our first real day of summer vacation not consumed with heat, a/c repairmen, appointments, meetings or radioactive isotope thyroid scans. Wheee!

Of course, M is out of town. He had to drive to the Other Coast of Florida for a deposition (taking one, not giving) and he has to go back again of Friday. Which means two days this week of essentially being alone with the kids. Which means... BAKING! I'm making Fruited No-Knead Bread by combining two or three recipes I found on the internet. Yum. Of course the long rise means that I probably won't be baking it off until Friday, but no matter we'll have it for the weekend.

I'll use the next few days to recognize opportunities to be a patient mom and try to stay engaged with the kids. This is the hardest part of parenting for me. I can always think up other stuff I should or could be doing. I've been toying with the idea of turning the computer off during the day to reduce the temptation to send some "quick" emails, or surf my fave bloggers for just a "few minutes" or play a "quick" game of Scrabulous. But the notion leaves me feeling seriously disconnected and then I'd be wanting to do all the above in the evening when I should be spending time with M. And it's not like I have an internet addiction (OK, maybe a wee bit with Scrabulous - but I know that's a passing fancy and I'll get bored trying to break 700 every game.) but it is a convenient way to grab some quick quiet time.

Oh well. Time to go play!

Oh summer

Nothing like a little hardship to put life in perspective.

Our a/c (upstairs this time) quit on us yesterday. Nothing like no a/c on a hot summer Florida day. It was about 90 in the bedrooms last night - there was no breeze so I didn't see the point in opening windows. The fans were going full blast, I had about an inch of baby powder on me trying to keep cool and dry. M wimped out needed a good night sleep, so he went downstairs to sleep on the couch.

Stupid summer.

Of course, the warranty company, ever helpful, said they'd have someone out on Monday. So we're looking forward to one more night in the sweatbox. We're hoping -- in vain? -- that if we wait them out eventually they'll figure out that they have to replace the a/c units and we won't have to shell out the $15-20K it will probably cost to replace them and fix the ductwork, etc. But in the meantime, the units appear to break down at least once a month. Not a big deal when it cools off at night, but I don't think it got much below 80 last night.

AND, of course, tonight we won't be suffering alone since my parents are coming up tonight to help watch the kids while I have the testing done on the growths they found on my thyroid. The good times never stop.

Where?

The answer to yesterday's photo quiz is.... (drumroll).... Thessaloniki, Greece! Ah... good times. Look for more reminiscing over the next few months.

Today is the last day of school. Talk about bittersweet. One on hand, I no longer have to get up at 5:30 every morning -- although, truth be told, I probably will because I like to get a headstart on my day and it's practically the only alone time I can get. On the other, I'm going to have to employ all my Creative Mama tricks to keep my lot happy during the day. What age is it when the kids can entertain themselves?

Three years ago...

we were here. Can you guess where?

Terrible twos

Hello, welcome to the part of the show where I gripe (once again) about the kids! What? You say that's all I do? Well, buckle up because I figure on complaining about them for at least the next four years.

Of course, there's lots of endearing stuff in there too. Like on Sunday when we were enjoying some delish grilled fennel (from this week's produce share) and D was simply loving it. She looks up and says enthusiastically, "I'm in town with this!" It took us a sec before we realized she must have heard the "went to town" phrase somewhere. Note to self: watch what we say these days. Also what we spell, since she's more than able to sound out words. And? If you see her silently mouthing consonants to herself? That's EXACTLY what she's doing. So no use spelling "I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M" any more. But you can try "G-E-L-A-T-O" since she doesn't know what that is yet.

ON THE OTHER HAND...there is the wacky crank-monster we know as A. Firmly and precociously entering The Terrible Twos, his favorites words are Mama and No. Often spoken together, at the top of his lungs, in a screech that can be heard three counties over. We are now the family that other parents look at and then exchange the wordless glance that means "whew, glad it's not my kid." I know, because we used to be the family that exchanged that glance -- back when D was our only baby, the most gloriously unfussy, uncomplaining, agreeable, reasonable baby that EVER LIVED. As for A, not so much. On the other hand, he's a snuggle bunny, cheerful (when he's happy), whip-smart and fearless. But sweet Lord, you can only take so much screeching per day. I'm usually tapped out by 9:00 a.m.

So, where do I turn for solace? Prayers & chocolate.

Have a great (short) week. Three days til summer vacation!!

All things Kindergarten

Jeezlouise. For the amount of hoop-da-lah, fanfare, etc. going on at school this week you'd think they were graduating magna cum laude from Yale with their doctorates. It's just Kindergarten. Get a grip.

We've got teacher appreciation stuff -- which I thought that was LAST week, but I guess that's teachers in general. This week it's D's teacher in particular -- Assessment Reviews, "graduation day," a Kindergarten play, a picnic lunch, and then we break for Memorial Day weekend only to have to come back for two-and-a-half more days next week. Unproductive days (after all, they've already graduated!) because what exactly are they going to have them do? I'd rather have them out of school for good on Friday so that we can get on with our summer.

Anyway. Exciting times. I will be a mom to a first-grader. A first grader who just lost her first tooth. Here she is, sorta being shy.








It's funny how one tooth out can change the way a kid looks. If I look at her pictures from a last summer she still looks so young to me. Now? Not so much. I can definitely see the young lady she is becoming.

I warned him

I told M that if he persisted in this activity that I would HAVE to blog about it. There are so many headings I could use: "How Not to Complete a Home Improvement Project" or "Other People Would Have Put Him Down First" or "Things Mothers Should Not See" or perhaps "Why I Can't Sleep At Night."










Luckily, they were both fine. This time. At least it wasn't the big ladder. He wouldn't have taken A up there. Right?

So much for all that

Well, so much for Going Green. It's back to typical Florida weather - in the high 80s/low 90s and about 354% humidity this morning. Needless to say we put the air back on. And of course one of our ancient, Jurassic-era a/c units failed to come on. The downstairs one this time. At least the warranty company had someone out here within two hours to fix it. So we're nice and cool again and my electricity bill will go back to being scary.

And speaking of scary, I just got a call from my doctor's office and hey ho! guess what? After 41-1/2 years of absolutely uneventful check-ups, including having two kids at an "advanced maternal age," they found something weird with my thyroid! I have nodules. As A would say, "Wha' dat?" I will have to wait in suspense to find out next week because they want me to go for some more testing, if I can coordinate it with finding someone to watch A, swim lessons, D's kindergarten graduation, her last Daisy meeting of the year and my chair meeting with the Jr. League president. Did I mention that A has croup and has been up practically all night for the last two nights? And so have I? Good times people, good times.

Going green

For mid-May in Florida, we've been having some really nice weather. After our big Mother's Day weekend, it cooled off considerably and we've actually had our a/c off all week. The windows aren't painted shut in this house so we've been able to open up and air out. It's a bit stuffy upstairs from about 5 - 10pm, but we just keep the ceiling fans going and not even the kids are complaining. We/I love having all this fresh air in the house, I don't even mind the heat right now, and it's something we were never able to do at the old house. I'm enjoying it -- and saving on our electric bill -- while we can.

Actually, we have the potential to be very green here. We already have solar power for the water heater, which is way more efficient than either gas or electric, so we may consider installing a converter box for the whole house. There was a large rebate for solar power available in Florida last year, but it just expired in December so we'll wait to see if they revive it. We can also tap into reclaimed water to water our yard, but we'd have to do a lot of prep work and I'm not sure if it's better than reviving our well.

And our final Big Green Moment of the week... we restart our membership in the organic produce co-op tomorrow! Hurray! The co-op actually opened a St. Pete satellite location to service all their members up here without us having to drive to Sarasota each week. I can't wait to see what's in my first basket.

OK.. gotta boogie. BigMan A is off at Mom's Morning Out today and I have 3 hours of chores to cram into the 45 minutes before I have to get him. Wish me luck!

Naps

The Kid and I went to the beach yesterday. It's getting hot so our beach days are limited and we might as well enjoy them while we still can. We had a great time, just the two of us. We ran upandown, upandown. We juhjumped in the (big) waves. We splashed our toes and fee. We threw shells into the wawa. We ate french fries for lunch (I had 1 1/2 grilled cheeses with pickles too) and we played in the beach shower afterwards. It was great and so relaxing. Then, because we weren't tired at ALL when we got home, we played animal hospital and then took D to swim lessons (more running upandown) and then Daddy/M came home early so we had an early dinner and then played outside until almost 7 and then took a nice bubble bath and then finally collapsed into bed at 7:30. And we only woke up once all night to get a drink! Wow!

But we got up early because D had a dentist appointment so we played before and after breakfast, we played at the dentist's office, we came home and played at the kitchen table -- he showed me how he can climb, heartstoppingly, upandown from the chairs! -- and then we played upstairs a little. And THAT is how you get a 21-month-old to nap. Two days of almost near-constant activity = 2 hours of naptime.

I should vacuum but I'm not up to dragging that thing upandown the stairs so I think I'll just take the baby monitor out to the porch and have a little siesta. And I wonder why I can't get it ALL done.

May is for movies!

Yay May! Two much-awaited events coming up soon... Prince Caspian and the new Indiana Jones movie. Squeal! Bringing together in one little month two of my favorite childhood things - Narnia and Indiana Jones. I must start plotting now to see them both in the theatre, no easy feat since it has probably been two years since M & I went to a movie together.

And if I were 15 years old? I'd have SUCH a crush on High King Peter.

Next weekend is the big Aunt Debbie's birthday/Mother's Day celebration. We are really looking forward to entertaining in our new house and having both my parents and my sister Jenn stay with us. Yay! O happy May!

What I'm doing

12 hours into my new Healthy Eating & Weight Loss lifestyle, I find out about this little site:

http://www.tastespotting.com/

OMG. Well, I guess there's nothing that says I have to make (and eat) any of this stuff.

An open letter to the nice lady at my doctor's office this morning

Dear ma'am, I'm sure you meant well when that nurse announced my weight in an very loud "outside" voice and it was a number I'm used to associating with the phrase "second trimester" and you saw the look of utter dismay on my face as I turned around and lurched off the scale. However, you saying consolingly "that's what I weigh too!" does me no good since you are at LEAST 7 inches taller than I am. You only served to emphasize that I am both larger and shorter than I'd like to be. But I know you meant well.

So. No more ifs, ands or buts (butts). I can't change my height but I am willing to work on the rest. My goal? To lose a lofty, hefty 30 lbs. by the end of the year. Really -- that's only 5 lbs. per month! I can do it! I will start by not eating the entire, delicious, low-fat banana coffee cake I just baked. I will give it away instead. Hey, it's a start.