Cross-Stitching

So as not to offend any chimp lovers or cross-stitchers, with the statement I made yesterday.  I thought I might post a few pictures of some of the work that I've done:

When I first started cross-stitching I was 26ish and a new mother.  I made a pillow for L, with his initials.  This is, of course, only part of the pillow.  He still keeps it in his bed every night, which account for some of the discoloration and missing whiskers:



I was still on a little bit of a Beatrix Potter kick when I made this pillow as well:

Then I started my first BIG project.  With complicated charts and hard to manage floss:

Here is a close-up of the same piece:

When H was born, I felt that I had to go back to a Beatrix Potter image for his pillow:

In what would turn into a 3-year project, because of international moves and life, I completed my most complicated project to date.  This even has beading....



Many of my projects since then, I've given away as gifts.  This is the latest piece that I've kept:

I may have overstated the simplicity of cross-stitching...

Granola

I secretly wish I were a Granola Mom.

You know the kind…she grows and mills her own wheat to make her own bread. She can make an entire 5 course meal just from beans. She owns a loom. Her kids will try any kind of food. She is a great mother, who doesn’t mind messes.

Sadly, I am not this mom. I don’t have a creative bone in my body. I say this a lot and usually I hear one of two responses:

“You dance!” I USED to dance…and it was choreographed. I didn’t make it up.

“You cross-stitch!” Really people? A chimp could cross-stitch; the only skill it takes is patience.

I don’t want to imply that I doubt myself as an individual or as a mother…I don’t…usually. Rather I see the traits of a Granola Mom desirable to me. I wish I had the knack for whipping up delicious healthy meals with an odd collection of leftovers. I wish that I knew how to create something beautiful and useful from random scraps of paper or fabric.

Mostly, I wish I had a greater tolerance for messes. Usually I like this about myself, everything has a place and everything in its place, but sometimes it’s disruptive. There are nights when I can’t sleep because I know there is a mess waiting for me in the morning. My husband’s “little piles” of pocket contents….make me crazy. Dumped toy boxes and unmade beds actually make me feel stressed. Permanent stains….I don’t even want to think about it.

So I need a book, or something, to guide me into being a Granola Mom. One that lays out simple steps and changes you can make. A book that includes a map and instructions to my local farmer’s market would be ideal….one that has a 10-Step Rehabilitation program for Neat-Nicks.

Nursery Songs

When each of my boys were babies, I had one certain song that I would sing to them.  They became "our song".

Baby L, was a colicky baby, so I spent a lot of time singing this song:

When H was a baby, I sang this:

Not nearly as well, of course.  It probably comes as no surprise that both of the songs are from musicals, or that one of them has Gene Kelly in it.  I am pretty predictable.

Do you and your "baby" have a song?

A Shift

Yesterday, I registered for my first college classes since receiving my bachelors degree.   And yes, I am still feeling a little nauseous today.  Since first deciding to start my Masters degree I have felt a tremendous anxiety about it.  Now that I have books on the way I am down right sick to my stomach.

Some say, "You'll do fine, you're smart."  I am confident that I can handle the actual course load.  I am also fairly certain that not only can I handle it, but that I will do well.  I like school.  I love reading, and I enjoy writing.  However, I also know that it is supposed to be challenging, that's what learning is, right?  Succeeding or mastering something that yesterday you couldn't do or didn't know?

Others say that it is because it is something "new".  I think I can handle change as well as anyone.  I am not a person "set in my ways".  Sure I like the TP to roll from the top, the couch cushions to be strait, and the dishwasher loaded the "right way"....but I'm flexible.  I've handled major moves, I've handled language barriers, I've handled solo-parenting.  I'm good with "new."

I think that it is more than being worried about the course work and it's not just adding something new to my life, it is a shift.  A shift in my thinking. I am going to be doing something BIG, and for right now it's just for me.  I have never made any commitment that requires this much of my time, since becoming a mother.  All the decisions that Chief and I have made in the last 10 years...have been for him and for the boys.  I am not in anyway suggesting that the outcomes didn't involve me, they certainly have.  But they have not been primarily for me.   Except this one.  I am going to school.  I am going to have to fit this into our lives.  No one else has to do anything new.

Except of course, there will be change for them.  They are bright boys.  I will not have as much time as I do now to play with them.  My hope is that one day, I will feel that this has all been worth it, that I am worth it.  That this was in the best interest of  my family.  That this shift, was a positive decision for all of us.  I suppose the only way to make sure that it will be a positive decision is work hard, work smart, and sleep very little. 

 A shift is coming...I hope I'm ready.

Water

We were at the beach last week. Sounds rather cavalier, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. It was a big deal. I’ve only been to the ocean a couple of times, and never since Chief and I married. So this was a first for our boys too. We were there with my brother and his family and our parents. We all stayed in a great house, close to the beach with a big pool. It was, truthfully, one of the nicest vacations I’ve ever had.

My world-traveler sister, N, said that Chief and I ought to go swimming one night in the ocean. “Yeah, that does sound nice.” I said. When really I’m thinking no way, never going to happen. Here is the truth; I CAN swim, but not very well. I can also tread water…briefly. The thought of being in an enormous body of water with powerful currents and not being able to touch bottom….terrifies me. Fortunately the water was too cold for anything besides running from the waves as they came on shore. Pools are better, but only the shallow end. Diving boards? Forget it…..I’ve never stepped foot on one, let alone chickened out of a jump. I am afraid of water.

The boys were a little intimidated by the sound and power of the waves. L would go and fill his bucket…but H wouldn’t even step where the sand was wet on the first day. We built a sand castle for the purpose of watching the tide destroy it. Finally I was able to coax H into sitting on my lap as the tide swept over us and the castle. Sadly one particularly strong wave spun us in a little circle (and filled my suit with 12 lbs. of sand) and that was enough for H. He was back to digging in the dry sand and asking his cousins to fill his buckets. The girls must have made a dozen or more trips!

But they are not afraid of water, in general. L is turning into a good swimmer, but always cautious. That would be one of the three words I would always use to describe my oldest…a trait that I appreciate. H on the other hand….sometimes we call him “Tank”. He will go and do nearly anything, so I was actually very surprised at his reaction to the waves. H’s newest thrill is being “thrown” into the water….and not just clearing the surface of the water either….

Note: the water where he was “landing” is actually much deeper than where Chief is standing.

I hope that they turn into great swimmers...that like jumping from the diving boards.  I will enjoy watching them...from the shallow end.

A Return to Regularly Scheduled Activities

With a planned trip to Indiana at the beginning of the month, Chief’s promotion, and a somewhat impromptu vacation to the Outer Banks (now that I’ve been, am I allowed to write “OBX”, without sounding like a tool?) seems like it’s been go-go-go all month. So now we return to our regularly scheduled summer activities. Which are not all that exciting.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but for the most part my social interaction is in the form of telling the cashier “I have coupons.” Grocery shopping is about the only reason the boys and I leave the house. We have a pool pass, of course. But I will only subject myself to so much sun, and other parents. I’ve already done the math, we only need to use our season pass for the pool 13 times (actually 12.5) to make it a better deal than paying per day.

L has Cub-Scout stuff we could be going to…but these people are crazy. I do not want to spend an entire day, in the scorching heat, to watch boys race boats that “they made themselves” (knowing full-well that Dad made the boat) and exhibit very unsportsman-like behavior. Or meet on a Wednesday night to learn the sport of dodge ball, taught by the parent of the second grader (who failed to teach their child that hurting others is not the point of the game), while being eaten up by every species of mosquito. I am pretty sure L wouldn’t even have a good time.

So we have been going to the pool, several times a week. We’ve been pretending to be spies and squirrels (sometimes at the same time), and playing a lot of hide and seek. The boys are having a great summer.

I have been doing a lot of reading. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie. I just can’t get enough of the “who done it” mysteries. The thing is, I am terrible at it. I always tell myself “pay attention and see if you can figure it out”. I never can…never. I’m always surprised. Or maybe I just get so wrapped up in the story that I forget that I’m trying to solve something….I mean Jane or Hercule will end up solving it anyway (I fancy myself on a first name basis with them). I’ve also been watching television. Masterpiece Mystery, of course, or Masterpiece Classic…or Contemporary. I put together puzzles, and cross-stitch. I just realized, I also spend the better part of last weekend… (gulp) weeding. My siblings are already laughing….I really AM my mother. (Except she gets out more that I do!)

This has been a great summer so far, it’s been so good that I can’t believe I still get another 5+ weeks with my kids!

Sorry I can’t write more…..I’m on a stakeout, gathering intelligence before I infiltrate the dangerous nut-stealing squirrel gang. I don’t want to blow my cover.

Tooth Fairy

L is very close to losing his two front teeth.  How much fun would this be if this were December?  Seriously, I would sing that song all the time.  They are so loose, he has been eating with his side teeth for months now, and he is very excited to lose these teeth.  I hope that they are still missing for school pictures in the fall, how cute would that be? 

Enter Tooth Fairy.

When L first lost a tooth, he was excited about the Tooth Fairy, but also scared.  He really didn’t like the idea of a stranger coming into his room while he slept…can’t blame him.  It is creepy.  So we told him he could leave the tooth in our room so she would leave the money there too.  This was perfect.  It wouldn’t get lost under his pillow, we wouldn’t risk waking him during the exchange, and we wouldn’t forget.  But then we did.  We forgot.  There was the tooth, still there in the morning where he had left it the night before.  It’s a good thing he is seven because they will believe almost anything if you are convincing enough.   I said she probably got busy and was running behind.  Turns out I was right, she got caught up that morning yet, and L was 50¢ richer (I have a hard time believe that parents give their children $5 per tooth!).

But now he is talking about wanting to leave the teeth under his pillow.  I guess he is more comfortable now that they’ve done business.  So I think I am going to have him put them in a little box?  I’ve got to figure something out.

Do your children believe in the Tooth Fairy?  How much does she leave?

The only thing creepier than a stranger coming into your room at night is the little plastic bag that I keep in my top drawer that has all his lost teeth.   What have you done with your children’s lost teeth?

Shake It Like you Mean It

I was recently in a position to do a lot of handshaking.  Remember I am a stay-at-home mom so aside from church I very rarely shake hands in a more formal way.  Chief’s promotion was an exception so I stood shaking a lot of hands.

Fortunately I didn’t have to shake any “fish” but I shook more than enough “lady fingers” and it wasn’t just women either.  Come on people…you are not royalty…don’t just place your fingers in my hand.  I am not going to bow.  Furthermore, don’t grab my fingers it hinders my ability to handshake properly.  To me, nothing is more memorable (in a negative way) when meeting someone new is a crappy handshake.  It makes me think you lack confidence. 

I’ve looked online and there are as many as 21 steps to a good handshake.  Really?!  21?  Why are they making it so complicated?  Here are my 4 simple steps:

1.  Keep your fingers together and your thumb up.

2.  Reach forward and put your palm on mine so the web between your thumb and forefinger is touching mine.

3.  Squeeze.  Not too hard, of course, but I’d rather have a bone crusher than no squeeze at all.

4.  Pump from the elbow, but not more than twice.

Or it could even be simplified even more:  SHAKE LIKE YOU MEAN IT!

Certainly there is more to a handshake, than just the handshake.  Posture, eye contact, and speaking are all very important too.  One thing at a time….

Chief D

Today’s the day!!! D gets a nickname. Well a nickname that he wants anyway. He had one in high school but never really cared for it. D and his friend Jimmy P.P. call each other “Bung” but that is less of a nickname and more of a term of endearment….for them anyway.

Today is his promotion and his nickname? “Chief” I hope it sticks. In an effort to encourage others to call him “Chief” I will be referring to D as Chief in all my future posts….I hope I can remember.

I’ve never had a nickname. That may not be entirely true….who knows how people referred to me when I wasn’t around. You can’t really do a lot with Mary. Really all you can do is add to it. I was called Marybeth when I was little, Mary-Pie to my dad things like that.

Even our kids’ names don’t lend themselves well to nicknames. Chief (hey I remembered!) had hopes of calling our youngest by a nickname…but H doesn’t like it and won’t answer to it. So we’ve just made up things to call them. I call them Chicken Pot-Pie and Turkey Tetrazzini, Skeisics and Snicklefritz, Click and Clack, or Thing 1 and Thing 2. I could go on….

Anyway…..I am so excited for my husband, but not because of getting called “Chief”, because this promotion is a big deal. It is recognition for his work and experience. It is at once a fruition and mid-point of a long held goal.

And if his only goal had been to make our lives better…he did that a long time ago.

We love you Chief!

Cookie Rules

Everyone knows there are specific etiquette expectations when it comes to cookies:

First, when baking cookies, dough must be checked periodically to ensure quality.  Also the bowl must be scraped clean with a spatula and eaten…just cleaning up.

Second, when transferring cookies from cooling rack or packaging to a cookie jar broken cookies must be eaten immediately.

Third, when getting a cookie from the cookie jar, you may only grab one.  However if that one cookie is then stuck to another, you are duty bound to eat both.

Last and most important, you must share.  If there is not enough for everyone….you’ll have to sneak yours and pretend you don’t know what happened to the last cookie.

 I don’t make the rules people!

That April Day

What are the scariest things you’ve done in your life? 

Probably the scariest thing that I’ve ever done was quit my job.  I had been back to work for only 5 weeks after my maternity leave when I quit my job.  I didn’t wake up that morning knowing I was going to quit, and it took several months before I stopped looking for a job and realized that staying at home was even possible. 

That morning in April turned out to be the first blind leap into this life.  After dropping my baby off at day care I went to my office and on my chair was a letter (the same letter was on all my colleagues’ chairs) informing us of our new hours.  On top of our regular appointments during the day we now were required to work till 9 pm each evening and if we didn’t like it we could quit. I closed my office door and called D.  “Can I quit?”  I asked him after a brief explanation.  He was scared too and didn’t see how we could survive so his first instinct was to say no, but when I read him the letter he said “we’ll make it work.”  On my way to my regular morning meeting with my boss I asked for a box…..  My boss greeted me at his office door and knowing that I would be upset asked if I had a pack-n-play so I could bring L with me to work in the evenings.  I told him that it wasn’t necessary because I was quitting.   Within minutes I was packing my box and saying my goodbyes when the Vice President was standing at the door.  I was feeling forced out, and that this was the intended outcome of those letters as I was the only mom with young children, and I told her as much.  I don’t remember what she said, but it wasn’t satisfactory, but nothing she said would have been at that moment.  Who knows what I was thinking that day?  I was post-partum, I was missing my baby, and I wasn’t sleeping very much.  Maybe not the ideal decision making scenario…..

We learned a lot in the months that followed.  We learned that we could survive without cable TV that we could stick to a very strict budget, and that ramen noodles aren’t just for college students.  It was that April day that made this life I live now possible.  It was that beautiful morning that we stepped onto a new road and had no idea where it would lead.  Prior to this day D had often talked of re-enlisting in the Army, but I resisted.  It was scary enough being married to a police officer I imagined that being married to a soldier would be worse.  But after I quit it seemed that the Army was our “open window”. 

Here we are more than 7 years later and I am still able to be home with my boys….we even lived in a foreign country for crying out loud.  It’s amazing this life I am in now.  There are only a handful of individual days that you know will change your life, a wedding day, the birth of children, and the days that you make difficult decisions.  Those days are always scary….and beautiful.

Vacation Pictures...don't get too excited

We had a great vacation. We went to Indiana and Michigan to visit our families. Vacations where you go somewhere new are nice too, most of the time you get to do all that you want and a few things you didn’t know you wanted to do in the first place. Vacations “back home” (where ever back home is) are never like that….you never have enough time to see all the people you want.

If I were wildly popular I would host a big pot-luck party every time we went to visit. That way I would get to SEE everyone and everyone could SEE me. There are only two problems with that. First, it is a lot egotistical, and second you wouldn’t have meaningful conversations with anyone. (Actually three: every third person brings baked beans….I hate baked beans.)

So instead we see only a handful of people. Although this visit, as it coincided with the 4th of July, we went to a party at my aunt’s house, so I got to see a few of my cousins and my sister as well. I contributed a corn casserole which actually was wildly popular (compared to baked beans of course). Otherwise we only made plans with a few people.

I got to see R’s new baby. Spend time with A and her family (she also took some really great family pictures!) and was surprised in getting to visit with A’s cousin whom I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Spent an evening with the Chen family, and a parade with my pen pal and her family. We spent a day with D’s mom and assorted family members looking through old pictures and getting some laughs. We went to the zoo, did some shopping, ran a 5.5K (and didn’t die), got new tires, put together several puzzles, and I ate massive amounts of popcorn. The boys played with cousins and friends, chased peacocks, played with puppies and kittens, and got incredibly sweaty and dirty.

We were so occupied in fact, that there were only 6 pictures on the camera when we got home. For your viewing pleasure: OUR VACATION 2011



in case you ever wondered what a peacock looked like from the back



you're not really that surprised are you? 

Noise

There is a common misconception that the country is peaceful and quiet.  This is simply not so.

When I first went off to college, I thought I would never sleep again.  Even though the college I went to is considered rural, I was not used to all the people and cars.  The noise after dark: flushing toilets, talking in the hallways, the cars (and their stereos), not to mention the singing drunks, fighting drunks, and stupid drunks.

Germany was “my” first duty station when D joined the military.  We lived in an apartment building…or a “stairwell” with 5 other families. We lived on the second level so we shared all our walls except the front and back.  Actually now that I think about it, this was not much different than college, except there were more domestic violence issues. 

Now, of course, we live in suburbia… so it has gotten quieter.  Now we have the guy (I’m assuming) that has a really loud stereo that drives by @11 pm each night that shakes the house.  We have car alarms, barking dogs, the quarry, and the nearby artillery ranges that knock pictures off my walls.  And of course we still have the singing drunks (but they are kind of growing on me).

Here we are on vacation in the country, what could be worse than those things?   Since I’ve not lived at home for many years, the noises that I used to be able to sleep through, I no longer can.  Like frogs…they are loud.  Last night, D and I both woke with a start to what sounded like your typical loud drunken party (with slightly more screaming than normal).  I immediately recognized the sound, but reminded D that it was coyotes and not something worth getting out of bed for.  And let me tell you roosters have NOTHING on peacocks.  Seriously…..  If you’ve never heard a peacock it is a little difficult to describe the noise they make,  a little like  “ah-ell” but long and loud…really loud.  And not just one at a time either.

There is really only one cure for sleeping through the night in the noisy country, and it is exactly what my boys did yesterday.  What my parents do every day.  My mom would call it work but my dad and my boys call it play.  They played all day long, mostly outside.  And as H said this morning “I didn’t even SEE the night.”