beach daytrip

Quite possibly this little family's best beach daytrip yet. (Amy, you guys totally should have come along!)

bishop's close

I had the pleasure of meeting up with Caroline* & Anneke, and Christie & Henry (yes, I tagged along even though Josie was in school... read on and you'll see why I was glad she missed out on this dangerous outing!) at The Elk Rock Garden at Bishop's Close this morning. The first of our new photography field trips!


















We were all having a swell time enjoying the pretty scenery.

And then...

Henry fell in a pond.

(A *very* shallow pond, but a pond nonetheless.)

(A pond that had newts in it.)

Head first.

And then it was time to go home.


*Yikes! I must have been tired when I wrote this because it took me 2 days to realize that I misspelled Caroline's name! So Sorry, C! I swear I do know your true name!

pseudo-outdoor cats

Cupid and Comet have been trying to get outside more and more as the weather has been getting warmer. But given our tragic experience a few years ago with an outdoor cat, we've been trying to keep them in. Comet is okay with that plan, but Cupid has been sneaking out the second anyone opens the door for the past week or so. What to do, what to do? Cat leashes of course!

Of course putting a leash on the cats required that they wear the collars that neither of them has worn since about a week after we brought them home. That was a total deal-breaker for Comet; he'd rather just stay inside, tyvm. Cupid wasn't thrilled with the collar or leash by any means, but she tolerated them to get out the house. Once outside, she barely moved and was very timid. So much for our grand plan.

Far and away, it was Avery who got the most enjoyment out of the cats' first outdoor experience.

rhyming

Josie's big on pointing out words that rhyme (well... "rhyme" might be a bit strong of a word, but let's just say she's starting to get the concept of words that sound the same.) Yesterday in the car, she pointed out several pairs of words that sound the same... mouth and mouse, jump and drunk, Joe and Josie, etc.

This morning she was at it again: rain and train, cat and can't. Then out of nowhere she got so excited and yelled to Cayden and me, "Jump and Alexandra sound the same!" Hmn.

too much quality time?

I'm not sure if there actually is such a thing as too much quality time, especially with your kids. But, judging by the pictures I downloaded from my cell phone tonight, I'm guessing I might be getting close:

fluff(in an effort to get that last post farther down the page)

I have the feeling we are going to experience the "summer of the helmet" around here. Josie is obsessed with riding her trike, or apparently anything else with 2, 3, or 4 wheels. We met up with some friends this morning to explore the Sunday Parkways and then headed straight to Elise's (bike-themed!) 3rd birthday party, so Josie had her helmet on for a good chunk of the day. As hot as it was at the party, she kept that puppy on almost the entire time. While riding bikes of course, but also while playing on the play structure, while swinging on the swings, while eating cake, and even while driving home (in the car).

In other exciting news, Josie is now very much interested in getting her own scoot(er). Avery & Cayden both have big-kid versions but she's never expressed any interest in them until today. She tried out a couple of smaller-kid-friendly versions and she is now a big fan. She also got a chance to try out Alexandra's big-kid bike with training wheels and she did much better than I thought she would:

toxic

I'm going to get in trouble for writing this post, so I'm going to tread carefully. But since this blog is the closest thing to a journal that I've got, I don't feel like I should (or should have to) censor myself too much. I've had a bit of an epiphany throughout the course of the past 7 days. It will probably seem so simple all spelled out in words, but I can't stress how huge it's been because the issue at hand has been weighing on me for some time now.

There are times when a relationship with someone (a friendship, a romance, whatever it might be) just isn't healthy. It's toxic. It brings out the worst in you when ideally every connection that you have with other people should bring out the best in you, even in some small way. And trying to maintain that connection just takes too much out of you long-term to make it worthwhile. Every good relationship should involve some give-and-take. It will, at times perhaps, require an uneven amount of either of those, but in the grand scheme of things there should be some feeling of balance. But when the majority of encounters with someone leaves you feeling like you've lost something (or like something's been taken from you) there's a problem there.

Common sense, yes. But it gets tricky when it's real people and there's a desire to nurture that bond, because you grew up with her or because he's friends with your friend or because they're family.

I had to make the decision recently to end a toxic relationship in my life.

(Reading that over makes me feel like I'm sitting at an AA meeting.)

Crazy as it sounds, it was actually hard for me to accept that it was in my own best interest to walk away and so that meant that it was the absolute right thing to do. I've been worrying all this time about what impact that would have on other people, when that just can't be my concern anymore. I kid you not, this relationship has been eating away at me for a long time now. It's made me question and doubt myself in ways that I never have before in my life. It's made me consistently feel like I was never quite doing or saying the right thing, or doing or saying enough. Of course it was all relatively subtle so it took a long time to fully realize the comprehensive impact it was having on me over time.

The combination of things that led up to this grand epiphany is comical: Facebook and my father-in-law. Late last week an acquaintance from high school posted an update on FB about how she was considering walking away from a long-standing friendship. I thought nothing about the original post but stumbled upon it again later in the day and the feedback really spoke to me. When someone asked her if her she thought she could ever begin to get out of the relationship all that she's invested into it, the flicker of a lightbulb went off in my head. And then on Mother's Day, I got a card from my mother- and father-in-law, who have always been nothing but welcoming and kind to me. My FIL wrote a very nice note inside, confirming things about myself that I have hoped were true all along, but had sadly begun to question (see above).

It hit me like a ton of bricks at that moment that the person I am aspiring to be cannot be a part of this relationship. At my core, I am a decent person (massive faults and all) and my reward for that is to surround myself with people who make me feel good about myself. If other people want to surround themselves with people who make them feel less-than-good about themselves (or people who make me feel less-than-good about me), that's fine too. But I'm a grown-up (a mother of three, for crying out loud) and I can make those decisions for myself now.


Hmm, I'm really beginning to wonder if I should just erase this. It all seems a bit "deep" for a mommy blog. (And there are way too many parentheses.)


Oh, what the hell.


PUBLISH POST

as if we hadn't been sick enough this year...

Josie has some sort of nasty stomach bug. She woke up at about 12:30am with a bed full of... nevermind, you probably get the picture. She had all sorts of nastiness in her hair and the whole scene smelled awful. She threw up one other time before sleeping through the rest of the night (well, give or take).

This morning she actually managed to keep down a few bites of dry cereal and some water, so I thought things were looking up. But when I tried to give her some juice later, her tummy swiftly rejected that, along with the bites of cereal, I suspect.

When I put her down for her nap this afternoon, she was very excited that her sheets were all nice and clean straight out of the dryer. I was impressed by how excited she seemed about such a small detail, given her current state. She then saw the towel I had placed over her pillow (just in case) and her eyes lit up. She said, "Ooooh, I love sleeping on that comfy towel. It's so-o-o scratchy on my face!"

I feel like I could learn something from her eternal optimism.

the low-down, nitty-gritty on mother's day

"Mother's Day Express," by Cayden

I hate to sound like a complainer, but Mother's Day was a total mixed bag for me this year. As usual, Andrew was great and tried his best to make it a relaxing day. He kept Josie while I went to brunch at Timberline Lodge with the big kids, my mom and my pseudo-mom. He cleaned up the house while we were gone, got me flowers, and even surprised me with the fisheye lens I've been coveting. If it hadn't been for those pesky kids, the day would have been swell.

But alas, the kids were pretty awful. Maybe it was all the pressure of trying to be on their best behavior, but they didn't even almost reach that goal (if that was in fact their goal). Josie was exhausted after waking up at 6:40 with a wet bed. Yes, you read correctly... a wet bed for the first time ever. On Mother's Day. I didn't have to get to spend much time with her during the day but by the time we headed to dinner with Andrew's family, she was d-o-n-e. She was too tired to eat, too tired to play and just tired enough to be really cranky.

Avery was equally tired because she'd been out late the night before with a family friend. She was snarky with everyone (especially Cayden, of course) and had an overall bad attitude. That's not all that uncommon with her anymore, unfortunately, and a sign of things to come in the next few years, I'm sure. Normally, she'll snap out of it with a few minutes alone in her room, but of course that wasn't an option during such a lovely all-day, family event.

Meanwhile, Cayden was... just... well, I'm not really sure what his deal was. He made several rude comments to family members (extended family, not the 4 of us) and kept having to be asked not to do various things several times. It's all too common for him to have to be asked once, but not usually more than that, and although he's never super chatty with people, I've never known him to be outright rude. I think he was bored more than anything. We had almost 3 hours in the car to/from Timberline, then a long wait while the dads cooked dinner and there really wasn't a chance for him to expend any decent amount of energy all day.

Overall, I think everyone's expectations were too high (myself included, although when I really stepped outside of the "Mother's Day" box, it was clear that the kids were in fact worse than on a normal day) and no one had enough sleep. Bad combination. I could have done a much better job of foreseeing and preventing some of these issues, but that would have defeated the purpose of Mother's Day (as I see it): to sit back, relax, and enjoy your well-behaved children without having to do any work (see high expectations above).

Of course, there were great things about the day as well. I've never been to Timberline before and, no surprise, it was breath-taking. I had two delicious meals with some of my favorite people, and received armfuls of handmade cards and notes. In the grand scheme of things, I'd much rather have had this Mother's Day than no reason to commemorate the day in the first place.

my new friend, friend fred, by josie

For my birthday, I got a gift card to Build-a-Bear from my cousins Brianna & Jacob. It was very hard to choose just one bear to keep. I wanted every single one that I saw, but finally decided on a panda. I immediately decided on a name for my new friend: "Friend" (no coincidence there).

I thought I got to keep the stuffed panda on display, but apparently "Build-a-Bear" isn't just the name of the store. It's also the name of the game, as my dad would say (just for the record, he's never actually said that; I thought it just sounded good).

So I got to stuff Friend, and put a red heart inside Friend's body, and help sew Friend up.

Avery and Cayden helped me wash Friend (with air), and brush Friend (with a brush). Then I picked out some ballet shoes and a princess shirt for him. Yes, him. Is that a problem?

When we were all done, we got to bring Friend home. At which point I changed my mind and decided his name is Fred after all.

(Thank you Brianna & Jacob!)