September Wrap-Up

Okay, so this was supposed to be the month I moved more. Well…hmmm…

I can say that I didn’t move less in September than I did in August. That’s something right? I went for exactly one walk in both August and September. I’m calling good and letting it go. Can’t change it now, huh? Okay, so if I went home want walked this evening, it would be a win, but come on, we all know that’s not going to happen. It’s flipping cold outside and raining and yes, I’m lazy. It’s a Friday and I really don’t think I’ll feel like walking this evening. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Sigh.

What I did accomplish in September:

I got the girls’ room painted. It’s lovely.

I painted wooden letters and put them above the girls’ closets spelling out their names. So cute!

I picked up comforters on clearance at WalMart (I know!) in the blue Alyssa loves and the red Olivia loves and they’re sitting so lovely in linen closet (wheee, I have a linen closet!) waiting for that twin mattress I keep reminding Tom that we need to go on the bunk beds so we can move those sweet, lovely, kicky girls into their own room.

I’ve started crocheting afghans for the girls in, you guessed it, blue and red. They’ll be Christmas presents if I manage to finish them by late December. It could happen.

I have all the pants I’ve outgrown (ungrown? Definitely not ingrown, ick!) in the last two months laid out on my bedroom floor waiting to be cut up so I can make my “Fat Girl” quilt. See, if I cut up those pants they won’t sit in my closet, waiting for me to regain the weight and fit into them again. Yes, I will use whatever I can to control my sweet tooth. If I know I have to go out and buy new size (ha, you thought I’d slip that in there, didn’t you?) fat girl pants, I might be more likely to control my eating. Again, it could happen!

I lost another 10 pounds in September, bringing my total weight loss for the two month period to 26.5 pounds. Which led to me being able to wear my wedding ring again. Did I not mention that? No? See, about two years ago, I took off my wedding ring/engagement ring because, well, my fingers were fat and the rings were pinching them. Once they were off, they wouldn’t go back on. So sad. I wore a cheap ring I had laying around that used to fit my middle finger and called it good. Then I came across this really pretty ring at Kohl’s that I wore instead.

But a couple of a weeks ago, I though, hey, I’ve lost some weight. Let’s see if my wedding ring fits. And it does! Go me.

Tom and I canned fourteen jars of tomatoes. It was our first adventure with something so domestic and homey. It wasn’t fun. Not at all. I was ready to smash the lid of the canner over his head. He’s perhaps the most ‘by the book’ person I’ve ever met. I am not so much. I don’t think we should do this sort of thing together very often. It might take months for us to recover from this first experience. But when I use one of those jars of tomatoes to make chili or something savory and comforting on a cold winter day, I hope I’ll do so with fondness and warm memories flooding me rather than a dark desire to beat him senseless with the canning book my mom let us borrow. (Must return that book to her before it becomes a weapon.)

Overall, September was a good month. The girls continue to love school, the bus and all things fall. Tomorrow we’re going to find some fun Halloween decorations to put around the house. We already have an awesome spider we tie to the handrail at our front steps. It makes for a fun surprise for any visitors silly enough to come calling. We also have a creepy green skull I’ll find a place for. So much fun coming in the next month. What new, perhaps attainable goal will I set for myself in October? We’ll see, we’ll see…

The Boss

We watch The Middle every Wednesday night and Alyssa laughs through most of it. Last night, it was about who is in charge and who gets ignored and it made me think.

I know, an ABC sitcom made me think. What is happening in this world?

But the gist was that Frankie (the mom) and Mike (the dad) were discussing who was really in charge of the family. The kids tended to look to Mike for direction. Frankie gave orders, the kids looked at their dad, he nodded and they followed their mom’s orders.

Frankie was annoyed that the kids and Mike seemed to think he was the boss. Mike pointed out that it was her own fault because she’d pulled the “Dad Card” one time too many.

Tom and I decided not to even bother discussing how this is in our house.

Because…well, in some things, I’m the boss. In others, he is.

When it comes to homework, Alyssa looks to me for help. When she needs one of her horses fixed because it broke a leg and she can’t bring herself to shoot it (throw it in the garbage), she looks to Tom and his superglue.

I’m the boss of bedtime and bath. He likes to think he’s the boss of dinner and MILK. Ick. He can have the milk issue. I’m over it.

But last night it occurred to me that I do sometimes play the “Dad Card” myself. I blame him for things I don’t want to fight about.

Alyssa wants a cat/dog/horse? Sorry, Sweetie, Daddy doesn’t like animals in the house or barn or heck, even the yard. If he could figure out how to get the birds out of the trees, he’d probably do it.

Olivia wants frosting for dinner? Okay, that is something I’d put a stop to without calling Tom into the discussion. There are some things that are just a given. Frosting for dinner is an obvious no-no. At least for four-year-olds. When you’re forty? You’ve probably earned the right to have frosting for dinner at least once a month. But don’t tell the kids.

The real problem with playing the Who’s the Boss game is when Alyssa thinks that because she’s older, she gets to be the boss of Olivia. Olivia strenuously disagrees with this logic and there ensues quite a battle of wills. While Alyssa’s way stronger, physically, than Olivia, Olivia has a will of iron. She can outlast anyone is the prize is worth her time.

I’m constantly reminding Alyssa that she’s not the boss of her sister. You know how mature that sounds? Yeah, not so much with the maturity.

But this is how it goes. The older sibling always thinks they should be the boss and the younger sibling sets up to prove her big sister wrong each and every time.

And the older spouse thinks, because he’s old, he gets to be the boss of the younger spouse and the younger spouse sets out to prove him wrong each and every time.

Maturity abounds in our house.

Pajama Day...Everyday?

Okay, when did it become socially acceptable to go out in public in pajamas if you’re over three years old?

I mean, seriously. What is up with people, ADULT people going to places like Walmart, Meijer, the drug store, etc. in their pajamas?

I realize I probably sound like an old school marm but for goodness sake, at least put on a damn a bra! And real shoes. Slippers in public? Really?

Yes, my girls wore their slippers at school yesterday, but it was a special occasion and they wore actual shoes to and from school, changing into the slippers while actually inside the building.

Is this the slippery slope we started down way back in the sixties and seventies when women stopped curling their hair before going out in public? Is this some sort of branch of women’s lib that says we don’t have to wear make-up, or hell, actual clothes to go about our daily business?

I don’t get the laziness of it all, quite honestly. I don’t understand sitting around the house on a Wednesday afternoon thinking, “Huh. I need to go buy some groceries. Ohh, but the chore of getting dressed is just so bothersome. I think I’ll just go in these Tinkerbell pajamas I slept in last night. Who cares that I haven’t bothered to brush my teeth or hair? I won’t see anyone important anyway.”

Please!

Even yesterday, an actual Pajama Day at my girls’ school, they didn’t roll out of bed and wear the same jammies to school that they’d worn the night before to bed. No, I made them get up, change out of the jammies they were wearing and into clean, fresh jammies. It’s just how you start the day, for Pete Sakes!

I work with a woman who has had to tell her twenty-two year old step-daughter not to come visit her at work if she can’t be bothered to get dressed before doing so. Just today, that same young woman (the step-daughter, not the co-worker) called from the parking lot. She was in her pajamas and wanted to know if her step-mom wanted her to wait in the car rather than come in and see her.

When the co-worker/step-mom got back in from going out to see what the pajama’ed young woman wanted, she declared that her step-daughter had just come from buying groceries.

Yes, I’m old. Yes, I’m not hip and ‘with it’ like the young people of today. No, I do not understand why these people can’t be bothered to get dressed before going out in public. I don’t understand why some of them wear their pants so low that you can see six inches of butt crack peaking out behind their stupid, pointless thong underwear. I do not understand how a pair of slippers can keep a person’s feet warm and dry in the middle of winter.

I know. I have young girls who will soon be teenage girls and we’ll be having this fight daily. I can just hear myself now calling out, “Go back up those stairs and put on a bra. And while you’re at it, put on actual clothes, you are not going out in those pajamas that you’ve worn for the past four nights.”

I wonder if the mothers of the sixties and seventies went through this state of not understanding why their daughters couldn’t be bothered to put on a little lipstick and perhaps poof up their hair just a little.

Probably. I supposed the generation gap is one constant we can always count on.

Pajama Day

One thing I like about my girls’ school is that it’s a small rural school where kids attend from preschool to their senior year of high school.

I like the sense of community, of belonging that this gives them. It’s a comfort too, for them and for me, knowing they’ll be here, in this building for years to come.

I love that during homecoming week, the entire school gets involved, all the way down to the preschoolers.

This week they’re having a Spirit Week. Yesterday’s theme was Jungle. Alyssa wore a shirt that has a leopard print. Since the preschoolers don’t have school on Mondays, O didn’t get to participate in jungle day. But…

Today is pajama day. The excitement that roared through our house this morning when we took off last night’s pajamas and put on fresh, new ‘school’ pajamas was a stunning thing.

Olivia looked at the green stripped jammies I was about to put on her and put out her hands in amazement. She cried out, “What? I’m going to wear jammies to school?!?”

I told that yes, indeed, she was going to wear jammies to school and so was everyone else.

Her eyes got huge and she decided to go on a hunt for slippers to complete her outfit.

Alyssa donned her purple jammies, found her monkey slippers and joined Olivia in the hunt for slippers in O’s size. They drafted Tom into their slipper-hunting army and eventually found a pair in a box in the closet under the basement stairs. I know. Yes, actually, I did give them some hints as to where they might look.

Tomorrow is class color day. Alyssa, much to her delight, gets to wear blue and Olivia gets to wear yellow. They’re so excited about the fun that this week is bringing.

I’m just glad their school keeps things fun and makes learning something they look forward to. I want them to find joy in school. I mean, they have to go, right? Why not make it something they want to do rather than something they dread?

This week is Olivia’s turn to provide the snacks for her preschool class. Okay, let me rephrase that. It’s my and Tom’s turn to provide the snacks. I stopped after work and got eight servings of bananas, applesauce, Teddy Grahams, grapes and Nutter butters as well as a gallon of milk. Tom, being the champ he is, took the snacks to school for Olivia today. We kind of figured that amount off food would be a bit much for even Alyssa to manage on the bus, let alone Olivia.

These are the kinds of things that make me feel like we’re really home. We’re making a place for ourselves in this community. Our girls are building relationships, memories.

It’s so, so good to be home.

Gray

September has been an especially gray month. I don’t remember September being this gray in years past.

I admit, though, to having a selective memory. I tend to remember the good stuff more than the bad. My dad can attest to this. He tries every so often to probe my memory for some of the more negatives parts of my childhood (aka my parents’ divorce and the years that led up to it) but I have no memories of the worst of it. All I really remember is the relief that came when it was finally over, when my dad moved out and my mom’s mood was lighter, less stressed than it had been in years.

Ahh, memories.

I was talking to Tom the other day about Olivia’s birth.

I remember that right after her birth, she was moved to a table to my left, almost beyond my sight, several feet away and just behind my shoulder. I had to strain to even see the nurses working on her. There were three nurses over there, all surrounding the warming bed, all of them were huddled there together, working on my baby.

I realize now that they were situated the way they were so that I couldn’t see what they were doing, how hard they were working to get Olivia to breathe.

Tom, though, he remembers more because he could see more. His angle was better, he could move around (his feet weren’t in stirrups) and he could see past the nurses to Olivia.

I mentioned something during this conversation about her color, how we were lucky the nurses worked fast and she’d never lost much color as the nurses worked to help her breathe.

Tom looked at me like I was crazy and said, “She lost a lot of color. She was gray.”

Huh. I think I’m lucky I never saw that. I don’t have that memory hovering in my subconscious, reminding me that we got lucky. I’m lucky that by the time I was able to really see Olivia, they had her lung inflated and she was in some sort of mist, helping her breathe that much better. And she was mad. Her color was much better because she was pissed off.

Don’t we all tend to get a little red when we’re angry?

Olivia was pretty angry for the next six months or so. Who can blame her? She was warm and comfy in that cozy place called the Mama. And suddenly, she was evicted (I was induced because she was nine days overdue and failed the stress-test.) She was thrust into this loud, cold, bright world where people made her do things she didn’t want to do, like breathe on her own, and eat and even sleep without the comfort of mom’s heartbeat. It was a tough beginning but we got lucky.

She got better. She continues to get stronger and how lucky am I that my biggest worry these days is what to take to her school this week for snacks?

Incredibly lucky, that’s how lucky I am.

Sunday

I didn't grow up in a household that went to church regularly. My cousins and I attended the local Bible School each summer and learned all the sweet little Sunday School songs.

We also grew up with a grandmother who is deeply spiritual. Grandma Dorothy is the one who read Bible stories to us, told us of the strength of Jesus' name to ward off evil. She also taught us to pray. She reminded us that sometimes you just have to fall to your knees and ask God to help you accept His will.

These days, my family is still not a church-going family. We sleep in on Sundays, enjoy a leisurely breakfast and go on about the business of preparing for the coming week.

But I'm trying to continue Grandma Dorothy's teachings. I'm trying to instill spirituality in my girls as my mom and grandma did for me and my brothers. While I don't get much from organized religion, I do get a lot from God Himself and I hope to teach that to my girls.

I want them to know that God is always there for them. That He is always in control, even when they feel out of control.

I want them to know that they are never truly alone. A strong relationship with God will help them with that.

We pray, we talk about God and Jesus and how They sacrificed for us. We talk about heaven and how amazing it is that God loves us so much.

I hope that through our discussions and through living a good life, God and Tom and I will have more influence on the girls as they grow than will their friends, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga.

There are a lot of less than good things in this world but there is also a lot of really, really good out there. I want to prepare my children for both, with a strong sense of self and family and God to help them through anything that might come their way.

To me, this is more important than getting up early every Sunday morning and attending a church service where some man tells us how he interprets the word of God. It's better that we learn to interpret it ourselves, that we listen with our hearts to what God is telling us. Because if Grandma Dorothy taught me anything, it's that God is always talking to us, always telling us which way to go, we just have to listen carefully, live quietly enough to hear Him.

Autumn

I wish I were one of those people who decorate my house according to the season. I’ve always wanted to do that sort of thing.

But honestly, who has time? I barely find the time to vacuum my carpets twice a week. I know. Just give me a bit of warning before stopping by and I’ll race around doing just that.

With today being the official start of autumn I really want to go home and make my house all warm and cozy and, well, autumny. I want to light pumpkin spice candles and hang a string of leaves along the front of our entertainment center (we don’t have a fireplace, so we have no mantle from which to hang this sort of thing.)

I want to make chili and pumpkin bread (which I wouldn’t eat, even if I weren’t ‘eating healthy’ because, yuck!! But my family would love it.)

I want to go through my girls’ closets and purge the tank tops and shorts and replace them with sweaters and tights. Actually, I probably will do that this weekend, leaving just a few short sleeved shirts/tank tops for the occasional unseasonably warm days that are sure to come in the next couple of months.

I want to consciously change seasons, inside and out. I’m ready to start raking leaves and putting bales of hay on our porch for fat pumpkins to sit on, celebrating the harvest.

I’d love to be one of those moms who already has her children’s Halloween costumes hand-sewn and ready to wear in just over a month. Alas, I’m not. My mom, though, she’s one of those grandmas. O has decided she wants to be a butterfly (big surprise) and A’s still in decision mode. She’ll get there soon, though.

I want to buy candy corn and have it sitting in a pretty candy dish on the kitchen table but I fear that would be too much temptation for me and so I haven’t done it yet. Though, I have to confess that I did eat a single kernel of candy corn yesterday. It was soooo good. But I refrained from having a second. I know. Go me, learning moderation and all.

I wish I liked warm apple cider because it would be lovely to have some simmering on the stove, because it gives off the most delightful aroma, filling the house with warmth, comfort.

But no, I’m not a warm beverage drinker. Unfortunately, I’m more like Amy Farrah Fowler in that I prefer tepid drinks to hot or cold, so it would just go to waste. Which would be sad and so I won’t do it. But I want to. I want to welcome the coming coolness in the air and the crunchiness of fallen leaves on the ground.

While I’m not a big fan of winter with its accompanying cold and snow and ice, yuck, ice, I do so love fall and spring. When I grow up, I want to be one of those homemakers who manage to keep their houses seasonal, warm and inviting in the fall and winter, bright and cool in the spring and summer.

Yes, that’s what I’m going to do when I grow up.