Eyes Wide Open

I like my natural disasters to be straight forward. To give some sort of warning.

I grew up in a Chicagoland tornado alley, so honestly, those whipping columns of wind hardly even phase me. I'm like a human radar. I look at the sky patterns and color, sniff the wind and then head back inside.
       Meh, it's fine. Let's finish dinner.
Most of the time it's a false alarm. Either way, you've had plenty of warning if something is going down.

Hurricane's too. While I do not claim to be an expert on this weather phenom, you can see them coming. There have been days and days of incessant news stories and time to prep. And you'd better prep early because everyone now has the fear of Katrina in them. I never see the downside of buying extra milk and canned goods though. There is never any such thing as too much milk in our house. In fact, I think we will be stocking up for Irene this Friday.

Earthquakes though, those are tricky things. No warning. No odd goings-on in the sky or newscasters instilling panic in us. Just BAM: Shooka-shooka-shooka.

Yesterday's earthquake only lasted 36 seconds. It was 36 seconds of quiet panic though. In the metro DC area a person's mind tends to wander towards man-made causes of a shaking building, not Random Acts of God.

It was 36 seconds of panic and then a few minutes of:
Where are my babies? What do I need to grab to leave? Do I have time to tweet this? Does Matt feel this too? Is this an earthquake? Yes, it is an earthquake. No, I don't know what magnitude it is, I am using my phone to tweet. Make sure you grab your stuff, who knows if we'll be let back in. What if the parking garage collapses? What if this building collapses; lowest bidder you know. No, I don't know the magnitude yet, I'm texting.

After an hour of sitting outside with Clare (relatively) in my arms, solidified with confirmation that we did indeed part of the East Coast earthquake and feeding a miraculously found sleeve of Ritz crackers that were in my purse to hungry children, we were sent home so building assessments could be preformed.

While there has been reports of damage to buildings, including the disheartening indefinite closure of the Washington Monument, our house remained unscathed.

Unless you find shifted books and photographs upsetting.

Shannon and the Bean Stalk

At the beginning of summer, I planted three string-bean plants. They were small, scrawny little things. I was positive that they wouldn't grow, but Grace was on a bean kick and who am I to deny her green vegetables?

It took a long time for them to grow. We were producing red tomatoes before the plants had even climbed to the top of their trellis. Then, suddenly, they sprung to life. I added a second cage to the trellis. Up, up, up they went.

I was so proud.

Alas, there were no beans. Shouldn't we have beans by mid-July? I saw a cousin facebook about here bean bounty weeks earlier. Our plants kept growing and growing though. The weight of the plants became too much. It toppled over onto our wood pile. The creeping vines overtook two of  the cherry tomato plants. That was the end of July.

While surveying the damage of our structural collapse, I noticed these. Yea!

And over the next few weeks, it seems we have more little flowers than leaves on this monster of a plant.

And we have our first real bounty of home grown string-beans.

Grace at two and Clare threw hers on the floor. Matt ate them because he knows what is good for him. Me? I savored every bite.

Family Circles

It’s funny how you can love babies before they are even born. How you know you will protect and love them in every way you can before you even see eyes fluttering to look at you. How it doesn’t even matter that they are not part of your flesh and a product of your womb.

I have added another boy to my ranks of children today.

I raced to claim the status of the first outside of the family to caress him. I rocked my swaddled bundle for an hour before I relinquished my hold on his warm little body. I can still smell the sweet, blessed odor of newborn on my skin.



R.K.M.

Welcome to this world little man. You come into with so much more love waiting for you than you can possibly realize.

Up Where the Air is Clear

Clare has been walking for a week now.

One whole week. Only one week. It's like she came out of the womb toddling along.

It's how this kid does everything though. We she crawled, she crawled. There was little wiggle-worm shimmying involved. Same with her steps. Although I take that back, she's been cruising for months. But always with a death grip on something like the Earth would swallow her whole if she let go.

Clare with her boa(constrictor) boa

Last weekend (while I was away) she finally let go. And hasn't looked back.

Me. My. Mine.

I’ve been thinking about this post a lot. I know what I want to say, I just don’t want it to be misconstrued. So let me start off with this:

I LOVED BlogHer. (As a whole), I had a fantastic time. I would will do it again in a heartbeat.

I read a lot of posts from other bloggers before I left denouncing it as a ‘girls weekend’ before I left last week though. For me, that is exactly what it was though. I am completely unapologetic for that. I was there for the sunshine and parties. Contrary to what I felt was a common theme at BlogHer, blogging is not my Business. I was there for four days of being child-free. I registered on a whim and didn’t even look at the session agendas until a few days before. I went into the conference promising that my enjoyment was paramount as was being true to myself.

What does that mean?

It means I had every intention of walking out of seminars that I found lack-luster.

It means that my idea of good times at the parties was an abundance of free drinks and swag.

It means that I wasn’t going to put pressure on myself to network when all I wanted to do was look at palm trees.

So that is what I did. And I had a wonderful time being true to myself.

Come Talk to Me @ BlogHer

So I’m about to go on an adventure.

All by myself.

Well, not really all by myself. Robin and Denise are coming with me.

But right now, I feel all by myself.

I tried packing my bag all weekend long. I put things in, I took things out. Grace put things in and took things out. I’ve analyzed if I have enough room to bring my own pillow like a child because I just don’t sleep right without it.

And now? My stomach is churning. The calendar has flipped and it is officially August and I am officially leaving in 2 days for San Diego.

Posts like this have really been helping, but still…. I get it is OK to be awkward. In my mind though, it is fine for other people to be awkward, but aren’t I supposed to have my shit together and fully embrace the idea of freedom and adventure for five very long days. Part of me relishes the idea of seeing this computer based life in person, but another part of me feels like such a fraud.

You know, you read me. You’ve noticed that my posts have dropped off significantly in the last year or so. Am I a blogger, just because I have a url? Well, I guess I did have business cards made to that effect.

Once I get on the plane I know I will be fine. We have invites to parties galore, and lot of free booze will make all my worries go away, right?

So really, come talk to me. Because I think I will really need it.

Have I mentioned that my stomach is churning?

First of the Lasts

Yesterday, for the first time, the realization that she is leaving friends that she has known since infancy behind for new adventure. With reassurances that since their mama’s were friends, they would of course still see each other, her panic was short lived.

For me, it was one long, ongoing battle. There was lots of tears.

Today is the first of the lasts.

I have drove to work with two children in my car for the last time.

*****

I entered with her for the last time.

I unpacked her for the last time.

I signed her in for the last time.

I asked for my push out the door for the last time.

*****

I packed her up for the last time.

I collected her things for the last time.

I signed her out for the last time.

I exited with her for the last time.

*****

I left work with two children in my car for the last time.

Upon her departure there were heartfelt hugs and gifts. A box covered with glitter and filled with love. Drawings, messages, feelings. When we got home, she carefully went through the box picture by picture, giving each a hug and declarations of friendship.

The countdown calendar still says three days until her starts her new school. I think we planned it wrong. I think today should have said zero yesterday. To me, that was the benchmark. The Last.

The last picture of Grace with her class

The Potty Trained Princess

Lately, Grace’s whole world has revolved around princesses.

In her world, princesses are the ultimate super hero. They dance and twirl and fly, always help those in need. Oh, and the best thing about being a princess? The clothes.

A few months ago, I found a cache of princess dresses and they became out potty training prizes. You peed in the potty? Pick a prize! What will it be? A dress, a wand, some sparkly shoes??

I don’t know if the dresses have really had anything to do with it (she had announced to me that she would no longer need diapers when she went to her new school ages ago), but Grace has been potty-trained for 2 full weeks now.

The feat required one more dress, the one dress that is missing from her extensive collection. The Princess and the Frog Tiana costume. And through the wonder that is the internet, we were gifted* a dress for her final reward from Wholesale Halloween Costumes.

It fit the bill perfectly. Twirly, girly and sparkly. It was everything I had hoped for and more than what Grace expected. She celebrated by watching the movie while wearing the costume.

And then, sly as a fox, edged over to ask what else she could to do earn more princess costumes.

Just keep smiling like this kiddo.

* Wholesalehalloweencostumes.com sent us the Princess and The Frog Tiana dress in exchange for the inclusion of the links you see above. Thank you!

Capitol Fourth

When we do something, we do it big time.
(Sometimes I wonder if it is a fundamental fault of ours.)

Day trips turn into overnights with us all the time.

We live close enough to Washington, DC, to take advantage of the city semi-regularly. However, we live just far enough away from it to make it a pain in the ass to get to. When my work put out an all call memo a few weeks ago asking for volunteers to walk with our float in the DC Forth of July parade, I submitted my name. I never expected to be selected.

When I was, it turned into an all out adventure.

This was our day:



9:30 am: Start the trek to Washington, DC

9:45 am: Get a flat tire

9:50 am: Fix flat tire (*totally wanted to take pictures, but I knew that was a bad idea)

9:57 am: Drive to gas station to put air in the spare tire

10:15 am: Leave gas station, but realize that there is no way get there by 11am

10:50 am: Call parade organizer and announce late arrival

  

What says "America" more than an

inflatable Uncle Sam?

11:20 am: Arrive at parade

11:45 am: Walk in parade

12:00 pm: Wave at family as I pass by

 

I love the Where's Waldo quality of the picture.
Can you find my family?



12:30 pm: Find family in crowd 

 

Watching the parade march past.
My favorite? The gay cowboys.

1:15 pm: Load hungry, tired, pissed off children into the car

1:45 pm: Arrive at hotel

2:15 pm: Try to make tired, pissed off children take a nap

2:45 pm: Abandon the nap and go swimming instead

3:30 pm: Give the nap one more try

3:50 pm: Clare falls asleep, Grace goes with Matt to buy much needed wine

4:45 pm: Matt returns with wine and we drink ½ the bottle in 10 minutes

5:15 pm: We head to dinner

6:00 pm: We settle on 4th of July sushi and shumai

6:15 pm: Our children start fighting over chop sticks in a fairly not-child-friendly atmosphere

7:00 pm: We leave the restaurant leaving a wake of dumpling scraps and melting ice cubes

7:05 pm: It starts to drizzle

7:30 pm: We decide we’ve made it this far- if we get wet, we get wet- but we are going to watch the fireworks damn-it

9:00 pm: It never does rain more than a pleasant drizzle and over-tired meltdowns are kept to a minimum with a constant stream of ice cream, angel food cake and strawberries

9:15 pm: The fireworks start and the world comes to a standstill



The spectacular view from our hillside perch

9:35 pm: We load the girls back into the stroller

9:40 pm: They are both sound asleep

10:00 pm: We are all sound asleep

Happy Feet

I have a dent in my forehead.

It's only noticeable when I raise my eyebrows, and if I'm raising my eyebrows at you there is probably too much going on to notice an imperfection in my scull. I received it as a consolidation prize for walking / falling into the corner of the dishwasher when I was 3 years old. Shortly after that incident my mom signed me up for dance classes.

I will admit those classes served me well. I am a klutz to the extreme. I tend to look down when I'm walking to avoid tripping. The 10 years of tap-jazz-ballet-pointe, has spared me from a lot of injury that could have been much, much worse.

******
Case in point:

Clare's new hobby is throwing my cookbooks on the floor.

I will admit they are very colorful, ideally located at toddler height and ripe for tossing, so I can't really blame her. On Sunday night, I didn't immediately clean up her thrown book pile. I let it sit until after dinner. Grace was playing on the floor and I was carrying Clare down the single step to our slightly sunken family room. The books lay in our path just on the other side of that step. I was looking down at them. Grace called my name, and suddenly I was no longer looking down at them.

And I stepped on a banana peel book. One foot in motion on the sunken, wooden floored book and one foot stationary on the tile above. While holding a writhing 20lb child.

Was my thunk loud? Yes.
Am I injured? Yes.
Did I have enough grace not to drop the baby? YES!

******
And that, combined with her incessent begging lately, is the reason why Gracie will also be starting to dance classes on Tuesday.

The class is 20 minutes of tap, followed by 20 minutes of ballet, followed by 15 minutes of creative movement where I assume they just let the kids run around in circles and do the alligator on the floor. Her shoes came yesterday. A full test run was required.

Fully outfitted in tights, leotard and ballet slippers, she jumped into her daddy's arms for an impromptu Swan Lake-esque lift.

She then asked me how she actually does ballet, and I showed my little girl how to put her arms and feet into first and second position, complete with pliés.

Ahhhhh.

OK, maybe her enrollment in these classes are as much for me as they are her.